Chinascope – Page 180

Some IOC Members’ Have Business Connections with China

A report shows that several members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have successful business connections with China. When talking about the IOC’s policies, they have downplayed China’s human rights issue.

John Coates has been Vice President of the IOC (2013 to 2017 and 2020 to the present) and the President of Australian Olympic Committee: The Daily Beast conducted an investigation that showed that Mr. Coates has been the Chairman of William Inglis & Son Ltd, Australia’s largest and oldest bloodstock auctioneer. In its auction last year, a Chinese buyer bought horses worth over $13 million. In 2019, the auctioneer sold the horses worth $3.5 million to a “secret” China horse club . The company also sponsored “Inglis Sino-Australia Cup” Equestrian Competition in Shanxi Province, China, which the representative of its Chinese office said is the highest-prized competition that Inglis sponsored outside Australia.

Mr. Coates said the IOC pays attention to human right, but pressuring Beijing on the Xinjiang issue is not within the power of the IOC. He said the IOC should respect the hosting country’s sovereignty.

Dick Pound is a member of the IOC and former Vice President of the IOC. Mr. Pound is an advisor to Stikeman Elliott LLP, a Canadian law firm. The company has long history of experiences in China. Its website claims that it has provided legal services to many big Chinese enterprises, and listed several of them including, for example, China National Petroleum Corporation, CITIC Group, China Investment Corporation, along with may others.

Mr. Pound said human rights issues are political when answering Xinjiang forced labor camp and genocide question. He suggested (with hope) that an independent investigation on what is happening in Xinjiang would be helpful and maybe the Chinese are preparing to consider it.

Sebastian Coe, is a British member of the IOC. Mr. Coe is a Non-Executive Board Director of the Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) and receives $130,000 as annual pay. Out of FMG’s several billion dollars in revenue in 2020, ninety percent came from China. A Chinese state-run company is a major shareholder of FMG.

Mr. Coe said last year that an international political boycott of Beijing Winter Olympics had no meaning but would only cause damage.

Source: Epoch Times, February 5, 2022
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/2/5/n13557473.htm

Briefings | | February 7, 2022 | Government/Politics

Follow up by IOC and NOS on the Dutch Reporter Who Was Dragged Away in Beijing

On February 4, when a Dutch news reporter Sjoerd den Daas was doing a live broadcast on a street in Beijing, on his home TV station NOS, a Chinese authority’ staff-member in plain clothes grabbed his arm by force and dragged him around. The Chinese staff-member was wearing a red armband (indicating he was from the authorities). He dragged the reporter out of range of the camera and told him that he should not do broadcasting at that location. Then another Chinese staff member also took their lighting equipment. The TV news broadcast was interrupted and the home anchor was shocked and astonished. Sjoerd den Daas then moved to a parking lot at the corner to continue his TV broadcast. Later he told people that he was at the location where the Beijing authorities allowed news reporters to do broadcasts.

The International Olympic Games (IOC) spokesperson Mark Adams said that they had contacted the NOS about this unfortunate incident. He further called it a single incident and assured people that they could continue their work in the “closed loop,” an isolated section that Beijing had set up for the Olympic athletes, staff, and reporters.

However, NOS said that the IOC had not contacted it. The IOC had not contacted the NOS management, the news and sports chief editor, the manager of the Olympic team in Beijing, nor the news reporter himself. The IOC had not contacted any of them.

Sjoerd den Daas said this was not the first time he received this kind of treatment in China. He tweeted that in the past few weeks, he and several colleagues from other countries, were interfered with or were stopped multiple times when they were reporting about the Olympic Games.

Source: Epoch Times, February 5, 2022
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/22/2/5/n13557122.htm

Briefings | | February 6, 2022 | Government/Politics

Global Times: Alert! Japan Clamors to Use Electromagnetic Guns to Intercept Hypersonic Weapons

Global Times, an English-language Chinese newspaper under People’s Daily recently reported that Japan is working on electromagnetic railgun technology to counter hypersonic missiles. This is because Japan is eager to deal with hypersonic weapons from China, Russia, and North Korea. The country has emphasized the need to strengthen deterrence against China. However, while Japan is exaggerating the threat of hypersonic weapons from other countries and making excuses for its own military spending, Japan is also actively developing offensive weapons including hypersonic missiles. Japan’s Defense Ministry is working on rail-gun technology that can fire artillery shells through electromagnetic acceleration, which means they can be fired faster than conventional interceptor systems and can fire continuously. Along with long-range missiles, this next-generation weapon system will provide Japan with multiple layers of interception capabilities. Hypersonic weapons typically travel at more than five times the speed of sound. In November last year, the Financial Times reported that, in August 2021, China conducted a test of a hypersonic weapon saying that the weapon could launch missiles during flight. North Korea also claimed to have conducted a new test of its Hwasong-8 hypersonic missile in September last year. Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously stated that, in 2022, Russia plans to deploy hypersonic cruise missiles. Japanese policymakers see hypersonic weapons as the next generation of military weapons and believe Japan must immediately strengthen its deterrent capabilities, especially against China.

Source: Global Times, January 5, 2022
https://mil.huanqiu.com/article/46H3xOyIBJS

Briefings | | February 6, 2022 | Defense/Military Geo-Strategic Trend

Global Times Editorial: Washington Set a Fire in the Ukraine; Now the U.S. Should Put it Out

Below is an excerpt from an editorial article that was in China’s state-run media, Global Times::

“U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Nuland revealed at a press conference on (January) 27 that “We are calling on Beijing to use its influence over Moscow” to resolve the Ukraine crisis through diplomatic means.

“Obviously, Washington is trying to create such an impression to influence public opinion. The United States is working very hard to ease the crisis and then kick the ball to Russia and China. The United States is making itself seem like a good person, but it is shifting the responsibility to China and Russia. Washington lit a fire in the Ukraine, posing as a victim, fantasizing that Beijing could ‘persuade’ Moscow to put it out. It must be pointed out that this is a kind of public opinion smoke bomb reversing the cause and the result.

“The root cause of the Ukraine problem is that the United States unrestrainedly promotes NATO’s eastward expansion, forcing Russia into a corner where there is no way to retreat. Washington is the initiator of the crisis. The U.S. hopes that China will come forward to ‘persuade’ Russia. Actually it is hoping that China will persuade Russia to make concessions to the U.S. in order to realize a ‘perfect solution’ which is what the U.S. would like to have. That is, Russia should unconditionally cooperate with the U.S.’s insatiable desires in geopolitical terms. What an absurd logic this is.

“Not only Ukraine, but many major regional crises in recent years have had their roots in Washington, such as the North Korean nuclear crisis, the Iranian nuclear issue, and the chaos caused by the withdrawal of the U.S. military from Afghanistan last year. The United States messed up a region, and finally found that it could not clean up the situation, so it wanted to pull in other countries to pay for it together. Over the years, Washington has wanted China to coordinate in the resolution of almost all major international crises. On the one hand, it is doing its utmost to suppress China, and on the other hand, it looks to China for help. The same is true this time.

“To solve the Ukrainian crisis, if we really need to ‘persuade’ someone, we would like to persuade Washington to give up this zero-sum game and the Cold War mentality as soon as possible and you should put out the fire that you set yourself using the right way.”

Source: Global Times, January 28, 2022
https://opinion.huanqiu.com/article/46aeRs2BVArW

Briefings | | February 4, 2022 | US-China Relations

Taiwan: Chinese Think Tanker: China Can Take Taiwan by Force in One Week by 2027

Jin Canrong, a Professor and Vice Dean of the School of International Relations at Renmin University in Beijing, is a hawkish think tanker in China. He got the world’s attention for providing diplomatic advice to the communist authorities.

In his recent interview with Nikkei Asia, he made the following statement:

“Reunification by force will be pushed to become a reality after the Chinese Communist Party’s 20^th National Congress is over in the fall of 2022. The leadership is likely to bring the date to 2027, around the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).”

“China already has the capability to reunify Taiwan within a week. The PLA can defeat any U.S. force within 1,000 nautical miles of (China’s) coast.”

“Japan should never intervene in the Taiwan emergency affair. The United States can no longer win over China on this. If Japan intervenes, China will have no choice but to defeat Japan as well. (Japan) should realize that a new change is taking place.”

Pandemic: Hangzhou and Xiong’an Suffered CCOVID-19

On February 1, China reported 63 COVID-19 infection cases from 8 municipalities and provinces, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangdong, and others. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is known for hiding COVID-19 information, so the actual number of cases is not known.

Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province has reported cases daily since it first reported an Omicron case on January 26. The Binjiang District, which had the most cases, sent over 300 buses to transfer 2,000 families, with about 9,000 people, from their homes to designed isolation sites. In some situations, the bus took people to certain hotels, but the hotels refused to accept the people. By now, the city has moved 30,000 people into designated isolation sites.

Xiong’an, Beijing’s satellite city, which has been designed to host the Beijing city government (Beijing will host the central government functions), reported five COVID-19 cases recently and locked down the city. However, this is a “secret” lockdown: the government didn’t publicly announce it, but only told the 1.3 million people in the city that they must stay at home and not go out. It also blocked the roads so people couldn’t leave the city. Foreign media confirmed the lockdown. Also commentators pointed out that the infection number was likely to be much higher than five, otherwise the authorities did not need to lock down 1.3 million people.

Taiwan: IOC Pushed Taiwan to Attend the Olympic Opening Ceremony

On January 28, Taiwan announced that its athletes who were attending the Beijing Winter Olympic Games would not attend the Olympic’s Opening Ceremony and the Closing Ceremony. From January 29 on, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) contacted Taiwan’s Olympic Committee multiple times, stating that the Olympic Charter requests Olympic Committees of all countries to attend the related ceremonies. The Taiwan Olympic Committee discussed the issue with the athletes and then announced that they would attend both ceremonies.

The Taiwan team uses the name “Chinese Taipei” to attend the Olympic Games. In January, Beijing suddenly called it “China Taipei” making many Taiwan people feel it was purposely belittling Taiwan (indicating Taipei is under China). That is why Taiwan announced earlier that it would not attend the ceremonies.

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

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

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

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