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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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Xinhua: The U.S. Considers Rebuilding First Fleet

Xinhua recently reported, based on various U.S. media sources, that the United States Navy is considering rebuilding the Naval First Fleet, in order to counter China’s growing maritime power. General Philip Davidson, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said that General Aquilino, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, is studying the pros and cons of rebuilding the U.S. First Fleet. In November last year, Kenneth Braithwaite, then U.S. Secretary of the Navy, stated at a Senate hearing that he would rebuild the First Fleet and deploy it to the Indo-Pacific region. Currently the Seventh Fleet, headquartered in Japan, is largest frontline fleet of the U.S. and is the only one stationed in the Asia-Pacific region. The First Fleet was founded in 1947 and discontinued in 1973. American military experts expressed the belief that, if the First Fleet is rebuilt, Singapore or Australia would both be good choices for its home base. The Spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Defense commented that the U.S. is once again playing the old game of establishing a fake enemy in order to get more funding. China firmly opposes this Cold War mentality. He also called for US-China military cooperation and proper management of differences.

Source: Xinhua, March 16, 2021
http://www.xinhuanet.com/mil/2021-03/16/c_1211069110.htm

Briefings | | |   US-China Relations

Xinhua: China Has a Red Line that Cannot Be Touched

On March 20, 2021, Xinhua reported an article from Anchorage, Alaska with the title, “China Has a Red Line that Cannot Be Touched.” The red line is the ruling position of the Communist Party of China.

 

Xinhua reported that from March 18 to 19, China and the United States held a high-level strategic dialogue in Anchorage, Alaska. “The two sides conducted candid, in-depth, long-term and constructive communications on their respective domestic and foreign policies, Sino-US relations and major international and regional issues of common concern.”

 

“The Chinese side emphasized that the ruling position of the Communist Party of China is the choice of history and the choice of the people. China’s development is inseparable from the leadership of the Communist Party of China. This represents the high degree of consensus of the Chinese people and reflects the common understanding of the international community. The socialist system with Chinese characteristics is the system most in line with China’s national conditions and the “code” for China’s development. It has been proven that socialism with Chinese characteristics is a correct path, and we will continue to walk along this broad road.”


“The ruling position of the Communist Party of China and the security of the system must not be compromised. It is an untouchable red line. The leadership role of the Communist Party of China and the core position of the Party’s leader are based on past arduous practice, and have received the heartfelt support of 1.4 billion Chinese people. This collective will is as firm as a rock and will not waver.”


Source: Xinhua, March 20, 2021

http://www.xinhuanet.com/world/2021-03/20/c_1127235796.htm

Briefings | | |   US-China Relations

New Report on How China Secures Diversified Resources by Pivoting toward Autocratic Regimes

A new study revealed a trend that China is turning to more autocratic regimes in securing natural resource supplies and is buttressing its tactics to weaponize trade against geopolitical rivals.

“China’s resource security redrawing geopolitical map,” a section of the report Political Risk Outlook 2021 recently issued by Verisk Maplecroft, a U.S. based research group, describes how China diversifies its imports and achieves its resource security.

“Beijing prefers suppliers from stable autocratic regimes over democracies that involve frequent changes of governments and potential shifts in policy. Autocracy is a governance system it is comfortable operating with and can influence.”

“China is seeking to strengthen its control over global supply chains via overseas investments and partnerships with international majors. Beijing has been supporting Chinese SOEs (State Owned Enterprises) to ‘go global’ and establish control of resource bases overseas since the late 1990s. … The number of Chinese-owned base metals and gold companies in Oceania has grown from zero in 2000 to 59 in 2020.”

“Geopolitical instability in the Middle East and the South China Sea has induced China over the past decade to diversify its seaborne imports with overland imports, as reflected by its massive investment in energy pipelines with Russia and Central Asia. The Myanmar-China oil and gas pipelines are another example of China’s attempt to reduce its reliance on a sea lane that transits through strategic chokepoints, in particular the Strait of Malacca.”

BY diversifying its natural resource suppliers, Beijing is able to bring greater geopolitical leverage. Beijing can use trade as a coercive weapon. “This diplomatic tool is most effective when wielded against commodities in which China has a diversified import profile and the target state is dependent on the Chinese market.”

Beijing has also strengthened its relationship with Russia driven by their deteriorating relationships with the West. With increased Chinese investment in and trade with the “Belt and Road” countries, “these partnerships will reshape multilateralism with an economic order that is more China-centric.”

Source: Verisk Maplecroft, March 18, 2021
https://www.maplecroft.com/insights/analysis/chinas-resource-security-redrawing-the-geopolitical-map/

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

China’s Warrior Diplomacy Reappeared: Chinese Ambassador in France Attacked French Think Tank Researcher

On Friday March 19, in a prominent position in a French newspaper, on the Le Monde website page, there was an article about a Chinese ambassador’s verbal attack against a French think tank researcher. The article said that China’s “wolf warrior diplomacy” reappeared. It cited that the Chinese Embassy in Paris posted on its twitter account calling Antoine Bondaz, a member of a French independent think tank Foundation for Strategic Research, “petite frappe.”

According to the article, in mid-February, after Chinese ambassador Lu Shaye learned that a group of French senators planned to visit Taiwan, Lu sent a warning letter to the chairman of the senator team. In return, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs replied that French parliamentarians are free to go where they want to go.

Bondaz wrote on his twitter account saying that Chinese ambassador’s behavior is not acceptable and that Beijing has no right to tell French elected officials what to do, let alone that a diplomat made the demand. Bondaz learned about Lu Shaye’s response through his friend because it has been over a year since Ambassador Lu blocked Bondaz on twitter. Bondaz then replied on his twitter account saying, “Insulting researchers instead of arguing with them is a sign of weakness.”

Le Monde’s article pointed out that after France started to talk about the mass detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, its relationship with Beijing became tense.

Bondaz received wide support for his remarks on twitter. European Parliament member Raphaël Glucksmann replied, “If our leaders have a little dignity and a sense of a nation, we should explain (to China): “if you keep pissing us off, you will go straight back to China.” François-Xavier Bellamy, another European Parliament member told Bondaz “Don’t let this go. Otherwise, it would mean (you are a) coward and (that is) dangerous.”

This is not the first time that Chinese ambassador Lu Shaye made similar insulting remarks. On April 14, 2020, French Foreign Minister Le Drian summoned the Chinese ambassador because Ambassador Lu Shaye made some comments to the medical staff in a French nursing home. He wrote on the Embassy website that the medical staff in the French nursing home “left their jobs overnight and left the elderly in the nursing home to die of starvation and disease.”

Source:
1. Radio France Internationale, March 19, 2021
https://www.rfi.fr/cn/%E4%B8%93%E6%A0%8F%E6%A3%80%E7%B4%A2/%E6%B3%95%E5%9B%BD%E4%B8%96%E7%95%8C%E6%8A%A5/20210319-%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E9%A9%BB%E5%B7%B4%E9%BB%8E%E5%A4%A7%E4%BD%BF%E9%A6%86%E6%94%BB%E5%87%BB%E4%B8%80%E6%B3%95%E5%9B%BD%E7%A0%94%E7%A9%B6%E5%91

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

BBC Chinese: Inside China’s Internet Censorship – A Former Inspector’s Experience

Liu Lipeng, a former cyber inspector, defected from China in 2020. He gave his personal recount of what a cyber inspector does in China.

Liu took a job as a Sina Weibo cyber inspector out of curiosity. He had little knowledge of what the work entailed. There was no formal training because any college graduate in China knows what the politically sensitive words are. When there are certain political events, the inspectors will receive orders from the top telling them that certain related words must be deleted and blocked. From 2011 to 2013, Liu recalled being notified of a dozen words a day to block or delete. Then the number increased to several dozen a day. The list kept getting longer over the years. Sometimes they would get over 200 instructions a day to block or delete contents. As a cyber inspector, Liu had to read documents containing hundreds and thousands of words each day. He also kept a daily log of his work activity, which he is currently organizing as he plans to publish it on the China Digital Times website.

As the log was accumulating over the years, Liu started to fear for his safety. In the past, he also supplied some of the information to foreign media. If he had been caught, it would have been considered a crime. After the COVID 19 outbreak in 2020, China put a tighter control over the public. There are checkpoints everywhere and people are required to swipe their mobile phone to show their personal code. Fearing for his safety, he decided to leave China.

According to Liu, it is known that China has been using the firewall to censor domestic opinion. However, the Western world knows little about China devoting efforts to develop an Internet army force to launch a propaganda campaign outside of China and to shape public opinion around the world.

In terms of Tiktok, Liu said it has 20,000 people working daily to improve the content flow and make it more appealing and easier to control. So they don’t need a cyber inspector. Regarding the Xinjiang issue, China’s censorship system is very discriminatory and has no respect for Uyghurs or for the Uyghur language. For people who use Clubhouse, if the cyber inspector hears people speaking Uyghur, they can immediately delete the posting. If it was in a live broadcast and they heard someone speaking Uyghur, they would warn the person to switch to Chinese, otherwise they would cut off the live broadcast.

Source: BBC Chinese, March 20, 2021
https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/56348346

Briefings | | |   Social Stability

Norway Closes Confucius Institute

Norway will close its first and only Confucius Institute, the one in Bergen and affiliated with the University of Bergen and Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. This will be the second Nordic country, after Sweden, that will no longer have a single Confucius Institute.

In an interview with Radio Free Asia, Harald Bøckman, a researcher at the University of Oslo, said, “China has tried to establish a second Confucius Institute, but local authorities opposed it and thwarted their effort. The Confucius Institute in Bergen was challenged from the beginning. Other research institutes refused to set up Confucius Institutes because Beijing ran them.”

The initiative to establish the Confucius Institute in Bergen in 2007 came from the College of Western Norway, later renamed to Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. As the school’s focus is on martial arts, China’s Beijing Sport University became its partner. In addition to Chinese language teaching activities, the most unique feature of the Confucius Institute in Bergen is the teaching of martial arts. The Confucius Institute also quickly took root at the University of Bergen, working with Chinese language teaching as an academic discipline within its language department.

Sweden has had a total of four Confucius Institutes at its universities and by December 2019, all had been closed. The last Confucius classroom was closed in April 2020, making it the first country in Europe to close all Confucius Institutes and classrooms.

The Confucius Institute in Bergen has been criticized as being controlled by China’s Hanban and an extension of official Chinese propaganda. Bøckman pointed out, “It is certainly the same problem, because the Confucius Institute is a program and goal set by the Beijing government and runs counter to the standards used by Western academic institutions. The Confucius Institute remains a propaganda tool that is a soft power outlet for the Chinese authorities.”

In recent years, the Chinese government’s crackdown in Hong Kong and Xinjiang has indirectly affected the closure of the Confucius Institute in Bergen. However, the straw that broke the camel’s back was that, starting last year, the Chinese government decided to replace its cooperation partner from Beijing Sport University, which had been in place for many years, to China University of Political Science and Law. The China University of Political Science and Law is one of the main academic institutions for the training of Chinese elite in terms of ideology. Its relationship with the Chinese Communist Party and government has been very close. This was what finally prompted the University of Bergen to decide to close the Confucius Institute. The Confucius Institute in Norway will thus become history.

Source: Radio Free Asia, March 19, 2021
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/junshiwaijiao/cl-03192021135434.html

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

Facial Recognition Installed in Many Stores in China; Personal Data Accessed

On March 15, 2021, China Central Television (CCTV) reported that many stores have had monitors installed. Because of facial recognition, this has allowed access to the customers’ personal information. According to one of the companies that installed the monitors for those stores, the amount of facial recognition data collected is in the range of hundreds of millions.

It has been reported that such monitors are almost ubiquitous in China. Monitors installed in some stores seem to be harmless but they contain facial recognition systems and the stores secretly access data without informing the customers.

CCTV has visited more than 20 stores across the country that are equipped with facial recognition systems. These stores have all secretly accessed the facial recognition data collected from their customers. They include stores of well-known foreign companies such as Kohler, BMW, and 4S Stores in Shenzhen, Wuxi and Max Mara.

As soon as customers enter a store that has a facial recognition monitor, their faces will be captured and identification numbers automatically generated, without their knowledge. For a chain store, the store will know which location the customer goes to and how many times they have been there.

Companies that help these stores install monitors with facial recognition include Suzhou Wandianzhang Internet Technology Co., Ltd., Yoluoke Electronic Technology Co., Ltd., Guangzhou Yaliang Smart Technology Co., Ltd., and Shenzhen Ruiwei Information Technology Co., Ltd.

According to Suzhou Wandianzhang Internet Technology Co., Ltd., it has installed millions of monitors with facial recognition and its database contains hundreds of millions of records that the stores have collected.

Source: China Central Television, March 15, 2021
https://news.cctv.com/2021/03/15/ARTIieo9QjynMSXTVDb224QE210315.shtml

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology Social Stability

Peoples’ Daily Strikes Back at State Department’ Sanctions of Chinese Officials over Hong Kong

On March 18, People’s Daily, the mouthpiece newspaper of Chinese Communist Party, published an editorial titled, “Advice to the U.S. to put away the tricks of political intimidation.” The editorial was a counterattack against the State Department’s sanctions of 24 Chinese and Hong Kong officials one week after China’s ceremonial legislature approved a plan to reduce the number of Hong Kong lawmakers elected by the territory’s voters.

The article starts, “On March 17, the U.S. State Department issued a so-called statement denigrating the adoption of the relevant decision by China’s National People’s Congress to improve the electoral system of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and threatening to impose financial sanctions on Chinese personnel. The U.S.’s bullying and interventionist behavior on issues related to Hong Kong is a serious violation of international law and basic norms of international relations. It represents a serious interference in China’s internal affairs and a full exposure of its sinister intentions to disrupt Hong Kong and obstruct China’s stability and development, which is disgraceful.”

The article continues, “The U.S. side is trying to resort to political intimidation by wielding the baton of sanctions, but this nasty behavior cannot stop the general trend of Hong Kong to move from chaos to order. In recent years, under the guise of “human rights,” “democracy,” and “freedom,” the U.S. side has been wielding the baton of sanctions and sparing no effort to back up anti-China and anti-Hong Kong forces. It is a vain attempt to create chaos in Hong Kong and undermine its prosperity and stability, but the facts prove that the so-called declaration of sanctions is just a piece of scrap paper. Since China enacted and implemented the Hong Kong national security law, the law and order in Hong Kong have been maintained, the human rights of Hong Kong residents have been effectively protected, the international community has become more optimistic about the prospects of Hong Kong’s prosperous and stable development, and the confidence of foreign investors in Hong Kong has increased.”

“Hong Kong is China’s Hong Kong, and how the electoral system of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is designed and improved is purely China’s internal affair and no country has the right to say anything or interfere with it. Over the past few days, nearly 100 countries have reiterated their support for China’s implementation of ‘one country, two systems’ in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region at the UN Human Rights Council, stressing that non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states is an important principle of the UN Charter and a basic norm of international relations, and that one should effectively respect China’s sovereignty and stop interfering in China’s internal affairs, including those of Hong Kong. This shows that the Chinese government’s position on Hong Kong-related issues is widely understood and supported by the international community.”

The article ends, “China’s determination to implement the ‘one country, two systems’ policy fully and accurately is unwavering, as is its opposition to any outside interference in Hong Kong’s affairs and China’s internal affairs. Any interference or slander will not shake China’s strong will to safeguard the national sovereignty, security, interest, prosperity and stability of Hong Kong, nor will it stop the firm pace of Hong Kong’s transition from chaos to order and China’s development and growth. In one sentence, the U.S. should put away its tricks of political intimidation as soon as possible.”

Source: People’s Daily, March 18, 2021
http://paper.people.com.cn/rmrb/html/2021-03/18/nw.D110000renmrb_20210318_2-03.htm

Briefings | | |   US-China Relations