Skip to content

China’s Reaction to Trump’s Election Win

Read More ...

Xinhua Commentary Series: Spotlight on the U.S. Presidential Election

Read More ...

Wu Guoguang: Xi Jinping’s Reversal of the Course, Will China’s Transition be Peaceful or Marked with Bloodshed?

Read More ...

Cheng Xiaonong: U.S.-China Strategic Relations Have Crystallized

Read More ...

Zelensky: China Is “Ambiguous” on Russia’s Invasion

Primary Taiwanese news agency Central News Agency (CNA) recently reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said not long ago that he wants to mend relations with China. However, he described China’s position on Russia’s aggression into Ukraine as “ambiguous.” Zelensky said in a French media interview that he hopes China can help Ukraine, but he also said it would be “difficult,” at the moment, to arrange a call with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Zelensky also said that before Russia’s aggression against Ukraine seven months ago, there were ‘channels of communication” between Kyiv and Beijing. The two countries used to have “a lot of economic and trade cooperation.” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York last week. Kuleba later tweeted that Wang Yi told him that China respects Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and opposes the use of force as a way to resolve differences between countries.

Source: CNA, September 24, 2022
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/aopl/202209240220.aspx

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

BBC Chinese: How Much Russian Oil Did China and India Buy?

BBC Chinese recently published a fact-check article looking into what the latest transportation data showed. China is buying more Russian oil, and India is ramping up imports from Russia as well. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been going on for more than half a year. Asian countries bought oil and gas from Russia at a discount as the West has imposed sanctions on Russia and plans gradually to to reduce its energy dependence on Russia. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian energy exports to the EU have fallen.  Never-the-less, the EU is still buying huge amounts of oil, more than a million barrels a day. However, EU member states have said that, starting in December, they will ban all oil shipped by sea and most Russian oil is transported by sea rather than through pipelines. India and China, however, have recently become big buyers, accounting for more than half of all seaborne oil exports from Russia. In March, China and India imported more oil from Russia than the 27 EU member states combined. Ocean shipping information showed that India’s import of Russian oil known as Urals and ESPO (Eastern Siberia Pacific Ocean) showed sharp increases. Since March, China has also been buying a lot of Urals and ESPO. In early July, China reportedly bought a record amount for the second month in a row. By contrast, Japan has made it clear that it will phase out imports of Russian oil, while South Korea’s imports of Russian crude oil have also declined. While the price of Russian oil is attractive, India’s big refiners are facing difficulties in how to finance these purchases due to sanctions on Russian banks. One of the options India has is to trade in local currencies. Russia also asked India to pay in UAE currency. China’s state-owned oil companies are increasingly using Chinese Yuan instead of US. Dollars to buy oil from abroad. In July, Russia remained China’s largest oil supplier for three consecutive months.

Source: BBC Chinese, September 11, 2022
https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/world-62834711

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

Biden Said U.S. Will Defend Taiwan In the Event of a China Invasion

The 60 Minutes TV program that aired on Sunday, September 18, showed an interview with U.S. President Biden on September 15, in which Biden clearly stated that the U.S. will defend Taiwan.

The 60 Minutes correspondent, Scott Pelley, asked President Biden,”What should Chinese President Xi know about your commitment to Taiwan?”

Biden answered, “We agree with what we signed onto a long time ago,” “that there’s one China policy, and that Taiwan makes its own judgments about their independence. We are not moving– we’re not encouraging their being independent. We’re not– that– that’s their decision.”

“But would U.S. forces defend the island?” Pelley asked.

“Yes, if in fact there was an unprecedented attack,” Biden said.

“So unlike Ukraine, to be clear, sir,” Pelley continued, “U.S. forces, U.S. men and women would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion?”

“Yes,” Biden replied.

Many observers felt this would shift the U.S. policy on defending Taiwan from “strategic ambiguity” to “strategic clarity.”

This is the fourth time that President Biden said the U.S. will defend Taiwan if China invades the island. He made similar statements last October and also in May this year.

Each time afterward, including the recent 60 Minutes interview, the White House spokesperson said the U.S. position on Taiwan has not changed.

Robert Tsao, a Taiwanese tech tycoon, told Financial Times in an interview that Taiwan’s stand-off with China is not about unification or independence. “These are fake issues,” he said. “China’s nationalism is anti-civilizational. Taiwan, on the other hand, stands on the side of civilization, which values reason, science, progress, peace, human rights, the rule of law and democracy. That is why we cannot be together with them.(ie. with China)”

Sources:
1. VOA, September 20, 2022
https://www.voachinese.com/a/us-taiwan-china-2022-09-19/6754043.html
2. CBS, September 18, 2022
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/president-joe-biden-taiwan-60-minutes-2022-09-18/
3. Financial Times, September 20, 2022
https://www.ft.com/content/e72d62af-7f01-40d4-83dc-b15612cf9764

Briefings | | |   @CS Defense/Military US-China Relations

The China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC) Is Delinquent in Malaysia

More than 50 subcontractors and local suppliers for the Light Rail Transit 3 (LRT3) packages GS05 and GS06 in Malaysia protested to China’s Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC) because they have been delinquent on payments for over a year.

The peaceful demonstration took place at Seksyen 1, Shah Alam, on September 14.

The protesters said that the China Railway 17th Bureau Group, or CRCC 17, owed them payments coming to a total of 25 million MYR (Malaysian Ringgit), or US $5.5 million. CRCC 17 has promised to make the payment several times in the past, but has never done so.

In the past couple of years, China’s real estate companies have struggled to pay their debts on time, but those were mostly private companies and related to construction projects within China. This case involves a state-owned enterprise that is delinquent on an overseas project.

Source: eNanYang.my, September 14, 2022
https://www.enanyang.my/财经新闻/抗议拖欠2500万-承包商要中铁17局还钱

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources Geo-Strategic Trend

China’s Local Government Debt Issuance Up 24 Percent in the First 8 Months

According to the Choice database of East Money Information, a Chinese financial and stock information provider, the scale of total local government debt issuance in the first eight months of this year reached 6.05 trillion yuan ($870 billion), an increase of 24 percent year-on-year. Among them, the newly issued local debts issued were 4,021 billion yuan, up 62.4 percent year-on-year. Of the new local debts, 3,519.1 billion yuan ($505 billion) were  specifically for special bonds.

There were three small and medium-sized bank special bonds, one important type of special bonds, with a total amount of 48.5 billion yuan ($7.0 billion), including 5 billion yuan ($0.72 billion) by the Dalian city government, 30 billion yuan ($4.3 billion) by Gansu, and 13.5 billion yuan ($1.9 billion) by Liaoning.

The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) said that it has worked with the Ministry of Finance and the central bank – the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) – to accelerate the issuance of special bonds by local governments to supplement the capital of small and medium-sized banks. In the first half of this year, CBIRC allocated 103 billion yuan ($17.5 billion) of special debt quota to Liaoning province, Gansu province, Henan province, and Dalian city.

Source: Sina.com, September 2, 2022
https://finance.sina.com.cn/roll/2022-09-02/doc-imizmscv8739259.shtml

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources

In August, China Suffered its Biggest Monthly Decline in Chip Production

According to data released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on September 16, 2022, China’s integrated circuits (ICs) production in August 2022 was down by 24.7 percent year on year to 24.7 billion units. It is the largest monthly decrease since 1997 when NBS started collecting data. For the first eight months of 2022, China’s total semiconductor output fell by10 percent year on year to 218.1 billion units.

According to statistics from the business database platform Qichacha, a record 3,470 companies in the semiconductor business went out of business in the first eight months of the year. Analysts attributed it to China’s zero-COVID-19 policy and sluggish consumer demand. Chinese semiconductor companies cannot hold on and have eventually withdrawn from the semiconductor business one after another.

According to the NBS, in August,the  production of microcomputers dropped by18.6 percent to 317.5 billion units, marking the largest drop since December 2015,  The microcomputer category includes personal computers, smartphones, video game consoles, and other handheld electronic devices.

Sources:

China’s National Bureau of Statistics, September 16, 2022
http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/zxfb/202209/t20220916_1888302.html

Sina.com, September 14, 2022
https://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/it/2022-09-14/doc-imqqsmrn9012387.shtml

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources

China Builds More Nuclear Power Plants

The standing Committee of China’s State Council recently approved the Zhangzhou (Fujian Province) Nuclear Power Plant Phase Two project and the Lianjiang (Guangdong Province) Nuclear Power Plant Phase One project. Guangdong province will have ten nuclear plants which will range 30 to 250 miles away from Hong Kong.

So far this year, China has approved the new construction for 10 nuclear power generation units. This is the highest in quantity since the year 2008. In that year China approved 14 units.

As of June of this year, China had 54 nuclear power generation units in operation, ranking third in the world. It also has 23 units under construction or in the pipeline, which would give it the top ranking in the world.

Source: Radio Free Asia, September 15, 2022
https://www.rfa.org/cantonese/news/nuke-09152022093318.html

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources

626 Million Surveillance Cameras Are All over China: 432.2 surveillance cameras per 1,000 people

According to a 2019 projection by IHS Markit, a leading information analysis firm, 54 percent, or 540 million, of the more than 1 billion surveillance cameras deployed around the world by the end of 2021 are or will be deployed in China. In fact, this is a low estimate. The latest statistics and estimates put the number of public surveillance cameras across China at 626 million.

A study published by the information research firm Comparitech on July 11, 2022 analyzed that if one takes the lower estimate, which is 540 million surveillance cameras deployed in China, there is an average of 372.8 surveillance cameras per 1,000 people; if adopting the higher estimate, 626 million surveillance cameras, that translates into an average of 432.2 surveillance cameras per 1,000 people. By either figure, the ratio exceeds that of the other most populous cities in the world by hundreds of times.

For example, in the world’s largest city, Tokyo, the capital of Japan, there is an average of only 1.06 surveillance cameras per 1,000 people; the fifth largest city, Mexico City, Mexico, has an average of only 3.62 surveillance cameras per 1,000 people. New York, the largest city in the United States has an average of 6.87 surveillance cameras per 1,000 people. The second largest city, Los Angeles, has an average of 8.77 surveillance cameras per 1,000 people.

Among the hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras installed in China, more than 200 million surveillance cameras are controlled by the Chinese police force’s ‘Skynet’ surveillance system. It spreads across commercial and residential areas and highways. The ratio is almost one surveillance camera for every two Chinese people.

Source: Voice of America, August 26, 2022
https://www.voachinese.com/a/ai-technology-has-become-an-effective-tool-for-china-s-control-over-its-citizens-20220826/6718069.html

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology