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People’s Daily Refused to Publish U.S. Ambassador’s Op-Ed, Accusing U.S. of Being Overbearing

Terry Branstad, the U.S. Ambassador to China, recently approached the People’s Daily, hoping to publish his op-ed on improving U.S.-China relations. People’s Daily, however, rejected the U.S. Ambassador’s request. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and People’s Daily responded on Thursday September 10, calling the U.S. Ambassador’s article “full of loopholes” and accused the U.S. of being ” illogical, overbearing and unreasonable” in this matter.

In the Op-Ed titled, “Resetting the Relationship Based on Reciprocity,” Branstad stated that the relationship between the U.S. and China has become increasingly imbalanced. U.S. companies, journalists, diplomats, and even civil society have been given unequal access. While U.S. journalists face restrictions on reporting and even entering China, Chinese state media workers have long enjoyed open access in the United States.

At a regular press conference on Thursday, Zhao Lijian, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that Branstad’s article “attacks” and “smears” China, saying that the U.S. request of “publishing the op-ed with its full content with no alteration” clearly has nothing to do with freedom of the press. Zhao Lijian said that the US is “deliberately touching porcelain to find fault” [Editor’s note: deliberately manufacturing the outrage to find fault with China.]

U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo issued a statement late on Wednesday night to the People’s Daily for refusing to publish Branstad’s op-ed criticizing China’s propaganda agencies of hypocrisy and lack of reciprocal treatment and that China’s Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai alone has published five Op-eds this year in prominent U.S. news outlets.

Since the beginning of this year, the U.S. has begun to put pressure on the Chinese authorities to achieve reciprocity in terms of the number of media, the working environment of journalists, and the free flow of information. Related measures have caused a strong backlash from China. The People’s Daily, Xinhua News Agency and other Chinese propaganda agencies have recently published long articles in succession criticizing U.S. practices.

On August 25, the People’s Daily published a 30,000-word article in three pages criticizing the China policy speech delivered by US Secretary of State Pompeo at the Nixon Presidential Library.

Source: Voice of America, September 10, 2020
https://www.voachinese.com/a/china-u-s-trade-attacks-after-paper-refuses-to-carry-envoy-s-op-ed-20200910/5578345.html

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Micron Announced Cut-Off of Supply to Huawei

Well-known Chinese news site NetEase (NASDAQ: NTES) recently reported that Micron, Huawei’s sole primary memory and flash memory supplier for 20 years, announced compliance with the U.S. ban on Huawei. This is another major blow to Huawei’s supply chain after TSMC’s similar announcement. Micron is the world’s largest semiconductor memory vendor. Micron, Samsung and Hynix together own 95 percent of the world’s DRAM market. Micron is also one of the six vendors that together hold 99 percent of the world’s NAND flash memory market. The only hope Huawei has now is to obtain domestic support from Yangtze Memory Technologies for NAND, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) for DRAM, and Jinhua Integrated Circuit (JHICC) for DRAM. However, the U.S. already banned JHICC in 2018, due to a lawsuit that Micron filed for unauthorized use of intellectual properties. Yangtze Memory’s manufacturing process depends heavily on high-end equipment like the mask aligners from the Netherland’s SAML, which also uses U.S technology. If the U.S. blacklists the other two Chinese domestic suppliers, Huawei will face a death sentence on the memory side too, in addition to the central processing chips.

Source: NetEase, September 2, 2020
http://dy.163.com/article/FLJ48FM70517M7S3.html

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology US-China Relations

Google and Facebook Gave Up on Hong Kong Submarine Cable Plan

Well-known Chinese news site Sohu (NASDAQ: SOHU) recently reported that the Google and Facebook joint venture plan of laying new submarine cable now officially dropped the U.S.-to-Hong Kong segment. The two quickly adjusted and submitted a new plan to connect with the Philippines and Taiwan. The adjusted pacific fiber cable plan eliminated the earlier partner named Pacific Optical Data Communications, headquartered in Hong Kong. The move was in response to the objection from multiple U.S. government organizations, including the FCC and the Justice Department, as well as several U.S. national security agencies. In April, Google obtained a six-month temporary permit to proceed. The new plan is the official amendment to the original application. The FCC confirmed the national security concerns. Google validated the report and ensured the public that the application is going through the proper channels for final approval. A Facebook representative encouraged people to check the official FCC filing information for more details.

Source: Sohu, August 30, 2020
https://www.sohu.com/a/415573819_99956743

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People’s Daily Attacks Pompeo, Again

On August 25, the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece newspaper People’s Daily, in three full pages out of a total of 20, published an extremely lengthy opinion that runs through a barrage of criticisms against U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as a response to his speech on July 23, 2020, at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in California.

The first two paragraphs read:

“A few days ago, U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo delivered a speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in California. He totally negated China-U.S. relations, maliciously attacked the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and China’s political system, drove a wedge between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people, and made groundless accusations on China’s domestic and foreign policies. Pompeo spread the ‘China Threat Theory’ in an attempt to provoke and piece together an international anti-China alliance and contain China’s development.”

“Pompeo’s remarks, ignoring history and reality, are full of strong ideological prejudice and a Cold War mentality. Not only did the Chinese people condemn Pompeo’s remarks, but also rational people in the United States and the international community criticized and opposed them.”

It then dug out 26 statements from Pompeo’s speech and ran a point-by-point rebuttal. The 34,000-Chinese-character-long article, if put into Word with a font size of 12 and normal margins, would be 30 pages long.

Source: People’s Daily, August 25, 2020
http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/html/2020-08/25/nw.D110000renmrb_20200825_1-10.htm

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LTN: Huawei Came up with New Method to Avoid U.S. Sanctions

Major Taiwanese news network Liberty Times Network (LTN) recently reported that, with the United Stated continuously tightening up sanctions against Huawei in order to cut off its chip-making capabilities, leading U.S. Electronic Design Automation (EDA) vendor Synopsys saw strong growth. The source of the growth came mainly from China. Many integrated Circuit (IC) companies in China suddenly started purchasing chip design software on a large scale. This type of software is on the Huawei sanction list, so Huawei can no long purchase licenses. Synopsys, along with two other U.S. companies Cadence and ANSYS, plus the German vendor Siemens, control over ninety percent of the global chip design software market. Chinese local governments were also found to be purchasing U.S. EDA software. IT Experts from Japan expressed the belief that it is highly likely Huawei can use Chinese chip design firms to perform the design work previously done by its own branch named HiSilicon. All it takes is for HiSilicon to send a group of semiconductor engineers to a small local firm to bypass U.S. sanctions on software completely.

Source: LTN, August 21, 2020
https://ec.ltn.com.tw/article/breakingnews/3267514

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology US-China Relations

China State Media Says Military Exercise over Taiwan not Impossible

On August 18, 2020, the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece China Central TV reported that, at the end of U.S. Secretary of Health Azar’s visit to Taiwan, the Eastern Theater District of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) announced that it had organized actual combat exercises in the Taiwan Strait and on the northern and southern sides of the Taiwan Strait and made it clear that it was a necessary action for the current security situation across the Taiwan Strait and the maintenance of national sovereignty.

The state media claimed that, as a result of the China military “showing its muscles,” the United States immediately announced the withdrawal of the USS Ronald Reagan from the East China Sea.

“Today it is an exercise in the Taiwan Strait and on the north/south sides of the Strait. Tomorrow it is not impossible to carry out a large exercise around Taiwan Island or even an exercise over the Taiwan Island. The strength, confidence, and determination of the People’s Liberation Army will determine that once the ‘reunification by force’ is triggered. ‘The first battle’ will be the ‘final battle.’”

Source: The Paper Times, August 18, 2020
https://m.thepaper.cn/wap/v3/jsp/newsDetail_forward_8779848

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China Sends Soft Signals to the U.S.

An unverified source recently disclosed that the CCP leadership has decided to adopt “three soft and three hardline policies” amid the contention between the US and China. “Three soft” means China needs to show a soft stance towards the U.S. and the west and take a soft approach on China’s own actions. “Three hardline policies” refers to displaying a hard grip domestically, continuing a hard propaganda campaign and holding a hard position against Hong Kong.

Recent signals from senior CCP officials and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also appear to indicate that the CCP wants to take a soft stance against the U.S. On Wednesday August 12, in an interview with Chinese media, Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng said that the next few months will be critical for Sino-US relations and that the U.S. and China need to work with each other no matter how difficult and complicated the issues are. He said he wants China to “stay focused without being swayed by any extreme forces, to keep to the right direction of the bilateral relationship and to prevent it from spiraling out of control or getting derailed.” He said he is ready to have a dialog with the U.S. Earlier this month, Yang Jiechi, director of the Office of Foreign Affairs, published an article on Xinhua calling for a dialog between the U.S. and China and the expansion of a mutually beneficial cooperation in a number of fields. Hua Chunying, Spokesperson for China, stated the following on her twitter account on August 8, “Respect history, look to the future, and firmly safeguard and stabilize China-US relations.” As to the news related to U.S. sanctions of 11 Hong Kong officials, CCTV aired the news which lasted about 90 seconds. The People’s Daily used a corner space of a page to “strongly condemn” the sanctions that the U.S. imposed. This is in sharp contrast to CCTV ‘s airing 12 consecutive segments of counter-attacks after the U.S. Senate passed the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act” in November of last year.

A Chinese official media reporter broke the news to Radio Free Asia that the Chinese media have received instructions to stop posting the attacks on the U.S. that have been going on for several months and to prohibit verbal abuse and attacks on the U.S., especially the use of rumors to attack the U.S., so as not to trigger a greater backlash. If they violate the order, the Publicity Department could strip them of their salary and bonus pay.

Source: Secret China, August 14, 2020
https://www.secretchina.com/news/b5/2020/08/14/942894.html

Briefings | | |   US-China Relations

Lianhe Zaobao: Mainland Banks in HK Complied with U.S. Sanctions

Singapore’s primary Chinese language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao recently reported that large Chinese state-owned banks operating in Hong Kong have taken actions to comply to the latest U.S. sanctions of the top Hong Kong government officials, including the top Mainland official dispatched to Hong Kong to oversee the implementation of the new Hong Kong National Security Law. Those large Chinese banks which conduct a good amount of U.S. business stayed very conservative on allowing the opening of accounts by those who were sanctioned, including even the city’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam – at least one bank completely stopped such service. Foreign banks in Hong Kong also tightened up reviews on their customers’ accounts. Experts expressed the belief that these cautions were taken to safeguard the channels to obtain U.S. dollars and the banks’ international network. According to data that Bloomberg released, by the end of 2019, the four largest Chinese state-owned banks had a total U.S. dollar-based financing volume of $1.1 trillion. The banks and the Hong Kong government declined to comment on this matter.

Source: Lianhe Zaobao, August 14, 2020
http://http//www.uzaobao.com/bolg/20200814/76481.html

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