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

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

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Xinhua Commentaries: “Exposing the Three Major Political Deficits of the U.S.”

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The CCP’s Performing Arts Troupes in the U.S.

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China’s “Foreclosed Houses” Surge; Local Government’s Finances Are in Danger

Because of the impact of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s’) zero-COVID policy, many cities in China have been locked down. This has resulted in an economic recession, corporate layoffs, falling housing prices and an Increase in foreclosed houses and properties for residents and for business owners.

Recently, Chinese netizens revealed that, according to the bank’s financial system risk control meeting, there are nearly 40 million houses nationwide for which the mortgages have not been paid. More than 10 million foreclosed homes have been or are being auctioned off.

According to a report that the China’s National Finance and Development Laboratory released on June 29, the number of foreclosures increased from 500,000 units in 2019 to more than 1.6 million units in 2021.

In China, it takes about two years from the time a house’s mortgage is not paid until the house is sold at an auction. There will be more and more houses auctioned off in the future.

Real estate itself accounts for about 8 percent of China’s annual GDP growth. Incorporating the related industries, this results in an addition of up to 20 to 30 percent of China’s GDP. About 1/3 of the local government’s fiscal revenue comes from the sale of its land. Due to the downturn in the real estate market, land sales will certainly not do well. The local government’s finances are facing a dangerous situation.

Source: Newtalk, June 28, 2022.                                                                                                                                                                     https://tw.news.yahoo.com/斷供潮來了-中國-法拍房-暴增-房市面臨崩盤危機-053638657.html

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources

Document: Government Sanctioned Forced Adoption of Illegally Born Children

In the past, when China enforced its family planning policy, parents who had children who were born illegally were often fined. A document that recently circulated on the Internet revealed a policy in which a local government office has taken those “illegal” children away  for “rearrangement.” The document, dated July 1 and bearing the seal of the Health Bureau of Quanzhou County in Guangxi province, is an official response to a petition letter filed by a resident who reported a child abduction case.

The Health Bureau of Quanzhou replied that, according to the family planning policy enforced in the 1990s, the Quanzhou county government made the decision to “select” a child for “rearrangement” if the child was born in violation of the laws or regulations and policies on family planning. It ”was made at the request of the higher authorities, including the Guilin city government and the Guangxi provincial government.”

The document stated that the petitioner’s seventh illegally born child was “carried away by the county for social “rearrangement,” and there was no “child trafficking.” No record was kept of the whereabouts of the child.

A lawyer in Beijing said that if the incident involved a joint effort between law enforcement officers and human traffickers, it could be a crime of trafficking of women and children, which carries a maximum sentence of death.

In the past, similar cases have been reported in China. In 2014, China Youth Daily  and in 2011Caixin Magazine  exposed the forced removal of illegally born babies in Dazhou of Sichuan and Shaoyang of Hunan respectively.

To control population growth, China has had a family planning policy since the 1970s, which for a long time allowed only one child to be born to an average family. However, in recent years, as the birth rate has declined, the country has relaxed the policy several times.  In 2021, It shifted toward encouraging people to have three children.

Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), July 5, 2022
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202207050238.aspx

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources

Xinhua: Turkey Reiterates Its Rejection of Sanctions against Russia

Xinhua recently reported that a Turkish presidential spokesman reiterated not long ago that Turkey will not follow the West to sanction Russia, and Turkey needs to consider its own economic interests. Turkey has publicly informed Western countries about its position, but, from time to time, it is still under pressure from Western countries to sanction Russia. Turkey emphasized that the Turkish position is “very firm” that they “will not do that.” Since Russia launched a special military operation against Ukraine on February 24, the United States and the European Union have imposed multiple rounds of sanctions on Russia. However, as Russia is the EU’s main supplier of natural gas and crude oil, the backlash caused by the sanctions has made the EU even more embarrassed. Turkey’s disagreement with Europe revolves not only over whether to sanction Russia, but also over whether to support Sweden and Finland’s accession to NATO. On March 29, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators started a new round of negotiations at the Presidential Palace in the Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul, Turkey. Turkish President Erdogan met with representatives of both sides before the start of the peace talks and expressed his willingness to facilitate the Russian-Ukrainian Presidential Meeting in Turkey.

Source: Xinhua, June 27, 2022
http://www.news.cn/world/2022-06/27/c_1211661204.htm

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

Lowy Poll: Australians See China as a Military Threat, with Record Low Trust

Australian news network SBS recently reported in its Chinese Edition that a 2022 Lowy Institute Poll showed growing concern over Russian and Chinese foreign policies and the possibility of a potential war on Taiwan. Few saw the Covid-19 pandemic as a threat in 2022. Three-quarters of respondents said China was “very” or “somewhat” likely to be a military threat to Australia over the next 20 years, a 30-percentage point increase from 2018. Only 12 percent of respondents said they trust China, down 40 percent from 2018. A majority of Australians (65 percent) saw China’s foreign policy as a “significant threat” over the next decade – up 29 percent from 2017. Only 11 percent said they had “great” or “somewhat” positive confidence that Xi would make the right decisions on world affairs. This figure is half of what it was in 2020 (22 percent) and 32 percent from 2018 (43 percent). For the first time in the survey results, a majority of Australians (51 percent) said they would support Australia sending troops if China invaded Taiwan and the US decided to intervene. Data also showed 88 percent of Australians were “very” or “somewhat” concerned that China could open a military base in the Pacific island nations.

Source: SBS Chinese, June 30, 2022
https://bit.ly/3R4SVgh

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

Lianhe Zaobao: Pew 19-Country Poll Showed Negative View on China

Singapore’s primary Chinese language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao recently reported that a recent poll of 19 countries by the Pew Research Center, an American think tank, showed that an average of 68 percent of respondents hold a negative view of China. Many countries are at or near record highs. Among them, the ratios of Japan, Australia, Sweden, the United States and South Korea are all over 80 percent, 87 percent, 86 percent, 83 percent, 82 percent and 80 percent, respectively. Laura Silver, a senior fellow at the Pew, said that two things stood out about this year’s polling results. First is that the proportion of people with a negative view of China continues to be at or near an all-time high. In most of the places Pew surveyed, and in the three survey reports published in the past, few places have become more positive about China. Second is that, in many European countries, the proportion of people who have negative opinions on China is relatively low – this goes hand in hand with negative perceptions of China. Also, 79 percent of the respondents believe that China’s human rights policy is a serious problem, of which 47 percent believe that it is very serious. Around 72 percent are worried about China’s military power. At the same time, 66 percent and 59 percent are concerned about China’s economic competition and China’s involvement in their own politics, respectively.

Sources: Lianhe Zaobao, June 30, 2022
https://www.zaobao.com.sg/realtime/china/story20220630-1288105
Pew Research Center

Negative Views of China Tied to Critical Views of Its Policies on Human Rights

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

Japanese Eyewitness’s Description of Live Organ Harvesting Situation

Ushio Sugawara (菅原潮) is a former member in the Yamaguchi Group, a large organized-crime syndicate in Japan. He left the group in 2015. The Epoch Times newspaper interviewed him on June 20 of this year at which time he talked about the organ harvesting he witnessed in China.

In 2007, the brother of a Sugawara’s friend needed a liver transplant. Within a month, the Beijing Armed Police General Hospital offered him a matching organ for 30 million Japanese Yen (U.S. $222,000). When the hospital was ready to do the operations, it found that the blood product of albumin they had was a fake product. His friend asked Sugawara to bring albumin from Japan to China.

Sugawara was stopped at the Beijing airport for not having permission to import albumin to China. Though a high-ranked armed police officer came to meet him, the airport police, which was not under the same command as the armed police, stopped him for several hours. Eventually some politicians got involved and released Sugawara and his albumin.

Sugawara visited his friend’s brother before the transplant. The doctor, who had previously studied in Japan, showed him the organ supplier who was in the next door and was still alive. He was a 21-year-old male and he was under anesthesia. The doctor told the friend’s brother that the organ supplier was a bad person and would die anyway. This way, they would “let him make a contribution before his death.” That doctor also said, “He is young and his organs are very healthy.”

Sugawara kept inquiring about the person and was told that he was a Falun Gong practitioner.

The hospital severed the Falun Gong practitioner’s tendons in both hands and feet the day before. The doctors told Sugawara that they did it to prevent him from escaping and also to have a better result when cutting the organ. When people are scared, their bodies curl up and that can affect the quality of their organs.

However, the surgery failed. Both the Falun Gong practitioner and Sugawara’s friend’s bother died.

Sugawara said that doctors in Japan knew about the live organ harvesting but kept sending patients to China, and Japanese media also knew about it but remained silent on it as well.

Source: Epoch Times, June 27, 2022
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/6/25/n13767360.htm

Briefings | | |   @CS Government/Politics

Xi Jinping Praises ‘One Country, Two Systems’ while Hong Kong People Flee Faster

On June 30, Xi Jinping, general secretary of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) arrived in Hong Kong to attend a meeting celebrating the 25th anniversary of its return to China and the inaugural ceremony of the sixth-term government of the Hong Kong. Xi highly praised “one country, two systems” as a good system. However, Hong Kong people refute that Hong Kong no longer has two systems and do not trust CCP. Hong Kong’s economic outlook has become bleak, and a new wave of emigration has begun.

“One country, two systems” means that Hong Kong and mainland China have two different systems. In the Sino-British Joint Declaration signed in 1984, it is stated that after Hong Kong’s handover in 1997, China shall, under the principle of “one country, two systems”, ensure that Hong Kong’s own capitalist system and way of life shall remain “unchanged for 50 years”, and will protect Hong Kong people’s rights and freedoms of person, speech, publication, assembly, association and religious belief.

But today, 25 years later, former Hong Kong legislator Raymond Hui told Free Asia that the freedoms that Hong Kong people used to enjoy have been completely taken away under high-handed governance, and that “one country, two systems” has disappeared.

A poll conducted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong last year showed that nearly 60 percent of the 800 respondents aged 15 to 30 want to leave Hong Kong once they have chances.

Hong Kong’s economic outlook has become bleak over the past 25 years since the handover, the Wall Street Journal reported on the 30th, especially for the younger generation, their life has become much more difficult.

Since 1997, Hong Kong’s real estate prices have risen sharply. Many people cannot afford to buy a house. Young people’s monthly salary is also much less than that in the past. According to official data, the average monthly salary of Hong Kong people aged 20 to 24 in 2019 (the most recent year for which annual data are available) is 25 percent less than that of the same age group in 1994 after adjusting for inflation.

In 2021, the latest year for which full-year data are available, the unemployment rate for people aged 20 to 29 in Hong Kong is 8.1 percent, compared with 5.2 percent for the total population; In 1997, the difference between the two was only 0.6 percentage points.

Some young people in Hong Kong also believe that jobs are being taken away by mainlanders. In 2020, according to recruiting firm Robert Walters Group, about 30 percent of investment banking jobs in Hong Kong were filled by local staff, that was down from 40 percent of two years ago. While 60 percent of the jobs were filled by mainland staff and 10 percent by overseas staff.

Hong Kong resident immigration figures show a net outflow of over 140,000 Hong Kong people in the first three months of this year. And a cumulative net departure of 329,808 people as of April 3 this year, calculated from July 1, 2020 (20 months). In 2022, in February and March alone, the net outflow has reached 99,018 people, in contrast to 11,829 people in the same period last year.

One of the immigration hot spots for Hong Kong people is the United Kingdom, where authorities opened British National Overseas (BNO) visa applications at the end of January last year, allowing BNO passport holders and their families to apply for visas to work, study and live in UK. The British Home Office announced last month the latest data, 2021, a total of 103,900 people applied for BNO visas, of which more than 93% have been approved.

Sources:

1. Epoch Times, June 30, 2022.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            https://www.epochtimes.com/b5/22/6/30/n13770900.htm

2. Capitalwatch, April 6, 2022.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      https://www.163.com/dy/article/H49579MR0519ANON.html

Briefings | | |   Social Stability

Chinese Premier: Prevent Incidents that Break the Moral Bottom Line

On June 27, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said at an event that, “The population trapped in dire conditions has increased due to the impact of the epidemic and natural disasters.” Li told China’s officials to “detect in a timely manner those people who lost their jobs, those who need to be included in the low-income programs, and those in temporary distress, and prevent the occurrence of incidents that break the moral bottom line.”

Although Li did not specify what the events might be that could “break the moral bottom line,” this is not an often used wording for the premier to use to describe China’s economic difficulties.

Li Keqiang considered that the current economy has recovered to a certain extent, but “the foundation is not yet solid.” He emphasized that, “The unemployment rate should be brought down and controlled as soon as possible.”

The above remarks were made on June 27 when Li Keqiang visited the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.

Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), June 28, 2022
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202206280409.aspxhat

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources