{Editor’s Note: After the United States Capitol Hill conflict that happened on the January 6, 2021, Xinhua published an article to mock the U.S. Continue reading
Economy: How Much Did China Buy from the U.S. in 2020 to Fulfill Its Trade Agreement Promise?
The United States and China signed the Phase I Trade Agreement on January 15, 2020. Washington agreed to reduce some added tariffs in exchange for Beijing, in the years of 2021 and 2022, agreeing to buy an additional total of $200 billion in goods and services from the U.S., over and above China’s purchases from the U.S. in 2017.
A year after the agreement, China didn’t reach its purchase target and the U.S. trade deficient from China increased again.
China agreed to buy around $159 billion in American goods. However, according to a report from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, by November 2020, China’s actual purchases were around $82 billion, or 52 percent of the target.
China fulfilled 67 percent of its purchase goal on agricultural products, 52 percent on manufacturing goods, and 31 percent on energy products.
On the other hand, China kept increasing its exports to the world. Beijing stated on January 7 that leading with the strong export of medical supplies, China’s trade surplus with the world has increased to $535 billion, the new high from 2015.
The U.S. also tried to remove structural blocks that American companies faced in China in the Phase I Trade Agreement, in the areas of protecting intellectual property, avoiding forced technology transfer, and easing restrictions on market entry to China.
Last June, China announced it would open its $45 trillion financial market to the world. It also granted American Express a license for clearing house transactions. In September, China issued a draft regulation on protecting business secrets. However, these actions have not materially changed the real situation in China.
Some analysts think that the positive side of the trade agreement is that the Trump administration changed people’s view of China in the economic field and made companies rethink their dependence on the supply chain from China.
Doug Barry, the spokesperson of the US-China Business Council told VOA, “I hope the new administration can support the successful completion of the Phase I agreement and reach an accord with China to start the work of Phase II, which will focus on resolving China’s subsidies to state-owned enterprises, opening more economic fields to foreign competitors, and other trade issues.”
Source: VOA, January 16, 2021
https://www.voachinese.com/a/china-trade-economy-tariff-20210115/5739614.html
Diplomacy: Chinese Vaccine’s Effective Rate Is Only 50 Percent
Kexing Biopharm, a Chinese biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Shangdong Province, developed a COVID-19 vaccine, CoronaVac. Continue reading
Sichuan Professor Fell to Death, in Protest of Forced Demolitions
Tuo Jiguang, a professor at Sichuan Normal University, fell from a campus building around 8 o’clock on the morning of Monday January 18 2021. His friends said that Tuo, after experiencing 10 years of forced eviction and different forms of suppression, finally chose to fight with death.
Professor Tuo Jiguang was a doctor of literature, a postdoc in journalism and communication, and a postdoc in law. Before teaching at Sichuan Normal University, Tuo worked as a reporter and editor at the two largest local newspapers, West China Metropolis Daily and Chengdu Economic Daily.
In October 2020, Tuo Jiguang, filed a public complaint against Pu Fayou, head of Chengdu’s Chenghua District, for abusing power and violently demolishing citizens’ legally owned property. Tuo mentioned in the complaint letter that, since 2011, his two residences in Chenghua District had been subjected to the immediate danger of demolition. During the process, the demolition staff resorted to a number of means such as threats, pressure from his workplace and online defamation to force him into an agreement. “But the family finally withstood the pressure and did not succumb.” In the end, Pu Fayou presided over an executive meeting of the district government and ordered the two houses to undergo “violent demolition.”
Mr. Chen, one of Tuo’s friends, told Radio Free Asia that the reason for his suicide was because the Chenghua District government demolished his two houses. These two houses were his legal residences. He has been defending his rights since 2011. Mr. Chen also pointed out that even with dual post-doctoral degrees and qualifications as a lawyer and journalist, under the suppression of government agencies, social elites like Tuo Jiguang can only be forced to fight with death.
In 2009, Li Chuncheng, then head of Chinese Communist Party committee of Chengdu city, carried out massive demolition and triggered intense government-civilian confrontation. A woman named Tang Fu-zhen burned herself to death in protest of the forced demolition, drawing widespread attention. Tuo is another tragic case of human death due to “forced demolitions” which are rampant across China.
Source: Radio Free Asia, January 18, 2021
https://www.rfa.org/cantonese/news/professor-01182021060434.html
Falun Gong Identifies 75 Perpetrators among Leaked List of 1.95 Million CCP Members
Sky News of Australia reported on December 13, 2020, about a leaked register with the details of nearly 2 million Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members in organizations around the world. “Along with the personal identifying details of 1.95 million communist party members, mostly from Shanghai, there are also the details of 79,000 communist party branches, many of them inside companies.”
Falun Gong’s official Minghui.ca website reported that, among the 1,957,239 mostly Shanghai CCP members exposed, there are 75 “610” members, most of whom can be found on the List of Villains, a compilation of the people who have actively participated in the persecution against Falun Gong.
The “610” office is an extra-legal apparatus set up by then head of the CCP Jiang Zemin when he launched the campaign to eradicate Falun Gong in 1999. Its sole responsibility is to carry out the persecution of Falun Gong throughout the whole country. The “610” offices are subordinate to the CCP committees at different levels of the Chinese government. The Central “610” Office was once able to mobilize the entire state apparatus and almost all social resources, using the police, military, armed police, intelligent agents, diplomats, and even the medical system, to implement its persecutory policy. According to Minghui, over the past two decades, the “610” office has been responsible for at least 4,595 deaths of Falun Gong practitioners in Mainland China.
Cui Tiejun, head of the “610” Office in the Xuhui District of Shanghai city, was among the 1.95 million leaked CCP members. Since June 2004 when Cui took the position, he has personally given hate speeches in order to incite hatred against Falun Gong. The “610” Office in Shanghai has branches spread all over the districts and counties, and all the way down to townships, villages, and neighborhoods.
On December 10, the U.S. announced sanctions against 17 officials of foreign governments for violations of human rights or for corruption. Among them was Huang Yuanxiong of Xiamen Public Security Bureau Wucun Police Station for his involvement in the detention and interrogation of Falun Gong practitioners.
On December 10, 2020, Falun Gong practitioners from 29 Western countries including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, submitted a latest list of persecutors to the local governments, requesting that the authorities prohibit the entry of persecutors and their families and freeze their assets.
The list includes a few high level CCP officials: Politburo Standing Committee Member Han Zheng, head of the CCP’s Political and Legal Affairs Committee Guo Shengkun, Supreme Court Chief Justice Zhou Qiang, deputy secretary of Central Commission for Discipline Inspection Liu Jinguo, and the deputy director of The National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Deputy Director Fu Zhenghua. Almost all of these top officials once served as 610 cadres.
Source: Minghui, January 16, 2021
https://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2021/1/16/418642.html
CCP’s Coverup – Hebei Province Reported False COVID-19 Counts
Hebei Province is one of areas in China that has the highest infection of COVID-19. It is not clear how many people have been infected since the Chinese Communist Party is known for hiding such information and for reporting a much smaller count. However, even the government’s numbers show false reporting.
- On January 14, Longrao County, Hebei Province reported that its massive test of the country residents was negative for everyone. However, on January 17, the country reported 2 confirmed cases and 1 asymptomatic case. The local government then blamed the company conducting the tests for reporting the result before receiving test results.
- On January 16, Meng Xianghong, Deputy Governor of Heber Province, stated at a news briefing, that Shijiazhuang City had completed its second round of nucleic acid testing on January 14 and found 247 positive cases. However, on January 15, Hebei Provincial Health Commission reported that on January 14, the province had 90 newly confirmed cases, including 84 cases from Shijiazhang. The number 84 was much smaller than 247 – the number of positive cases that the Deputy Governor mentioned.
- Netizens found that the Hebei Provincial Health Commission had been reporting the same infection count on three out of four consecutive days: January 12 – 90 count, January 13 – 81, January 14 – 90, and January 15 – 90. Some people posted under China Central Television microblog page: “Why did Hebei report 90 cases on each of those days? Is it a coincident or because they did not dare to report more?”
- A netizen posted a list of COVID-19 patient names on January 3, including six confirmed cases in Shizjiazhang city. On that same day, the government reported only 1 confirmed case.
Pandemic: U.S. Disclosed Three Possible Investigation Areas on Whether the CCP Generated COVID-19 Virus in Lab
The State Department of the U.S. issued a fact sheet that stated, “The U.S. government does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus—known as SARS-CoV-2—was transmitted initially to humans. We have not determined whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, China.” “The previously undisclosed information in this fact sheet, combined with open-source reporting, highlights three elements about COVID-19’s origin that deserve greater scrutiny.”
1. Illnesses inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV):
The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in the autumn of 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.
2. Research at the WIV:
Starting in at least 2016 – and with no indication of a stop prior to the COVID-19 outbreak – WIV researchers conducted experiments involving RaTG13, the bat coronavirus identified by the WIV in January 2020 as its closest sample to SARS-CoV-2 (96.2 percent similar). The WIV became a focal point for international coronavirus research after the 2003 SARS outbreak and has since studied animals including mice, bats, and pangolins.
The WIV has a published record of conducting “gain-of-function” research to engineer chimeric viruses. The WIV, however, has not been transparent or consistent about its record of studying viruses most similar to the COVID-19 virus, including “RaTG13,” which it sampled from a cave in Yunnan Province in 2013 after several miners died of a SARS-like illness.
3. Secret military activity at the WIV:
Secrecy and non-disclosure are standard practices for Beijing. For many years the United States has publicly raised concerns about China’s past biological weapons work, which Beijing has neither documented nor demonstrably eliminated, despite its clear obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention.
Despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military. Since at least 2017, the WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military.
Source: State Department website, January 15, 2021
https://www.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/
The Paper: North Korea’s Nuclear Plan Sent Signals to the U.S.
Well-known new Chinese news site The Paper recently reported that on January 9, North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, delivered a speech at the Eighth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea describing the current relationship with South Korea as “on the brink of collapse.” Coupled with the speech, North Korea has been publishing information about its plans for tactical nuclear weapons, nuclear submarines, multiple warhead technology and hypersonic missiles. The message to the outside world is that North Korea will continue its nuclear ambitions and the work is focusing on nuclear weapon reliability and the expansion of tactical options. Researchers from the American Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences indicated that Kim is trying to send signals to the new U.S. administration and to firm up North Korea’s “bargaining chips.” The intent is to mount pressure on the U.S. and to demonstrate that North Korea is not eager to go back to the negotiation table, especially when Biden’s previous position was not to meet with Kim unconditionally.
Source: The Paper, January 12, 2021
https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_10754474