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Swedish Court Rejected Huawei’s Appeal

Well-known Chinese news site Sina (NASDQ: SINA) recently reported that the Swedish court rejected a case filed by Huawei on participating in the nation’s 5G network construction process. Huawei was originally excluded from the bidding process for Sweden’s 5G spectrum auction. The country’s telecommunications industry regulator PTS (Swedish Post and Telecom Authority)   made the decision. Huawei requested the Swedish Administrative Appeals Court to block the PTS 5G spectrum auction before the court decides on Huawei’s eligibility. The Administrative Appeals Court later ruled in favor of PTS and lifted the injunction so that the 5G spectrum auction could proceed. However, Huawei then appealed to the Supreme Administrative Court in order to overturn the decision by the Administrative Appeals Court. The Supreme Administrative Court then rejected Huawei’s case and stated that the Appeals Court’s decision was final. Huawei did not respond to the media’s request for comments. In the meantime, out of fear of China’s retaliation, the CEO of Ericsson, the Swedish telecommunications giant and one of Huawei’s top competitors, spoke out to support Huawei. He said Sweden, “though it was the soul and home base for Ericsson,” is now a “very bad nation” for Ericsson.

Sources:
(1) Sina, January 16, 2021
https://cj.sina.com.cn/articles/view/1704103183/65928d0f020023qj4

(2) Deutsche Welle Chinese Edition, January 5, 2021
https://bit.ly/3oSt9NN

Pandemic: COVID-19 Spreading in China

In the past month, the COVID-19 virus has been spreading in China. Several cities have been locked down, with a total of 29 millions people impacted. Out of the total 32 provinces in China, 29 have asked people to stay where they are and not to travel during the Chinese New Year.

#1: As of January 18, 2021, the Chinese government announced 4 high-risk areas and 88 medium-risk areas, all in Beijing, Hebei Province, and the three Northeastern provinces – Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning.

The high-risk areas are:

  • Gaocheng District, Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province (河北省石家庄市藁城区)
  • Xinle City, Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province (河北省石家庄市新乐市)
  • Nangong Shi, Xingtai City, Hebei Province (河北省邢台市南宫市)
  • Huiqi Township, Wangkui County, Suihua City, Heilongjiang Province (黑龙江省绥化市望奎县惠七镇)

The Medium-risk areas are in the following cities:

  • Beijing City (with 6 medium-risk areas)
  • Tonghua City, Jilin Province (20)
  • Changchun City, Jilin Province (11)
  • Langfang City, Hebei Province (1)
  • Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province (35)
  • Xingtai City, Hebei Province (1)
  • Dalian City, Liaoning Province (3)
  • Shenyang City, Liaoning Province (2)
  • Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province (4)
  • Suihua City, Heilongjiang Province (1)
  • Hehei City, Heilongjiang Province (3)
  • Tsitsihar City, Heilongjiang Province (1)

#2: By January 11, 29 out of the 32 provincial administrations in China have asked people to stay in their current location (do not travel or go back to your hometown) for Chinese New Year (February 12, 2021). Traditionally, Chinese people return to their hometown or go to their parent’s home to celebrate Chinese New Year. Beijing was the first to launch the “stay in current location” initiative. (Xinhua)

#3: Local governments provided different incentives to get people to stay where they, including rent reductions, subsidies, and offering of free bus rides, free data on the Internet, free movie tickets, and free entrance tickets to tourist sites. (VOA)

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More Verfication: CCP Harvests Organs of Live Falun Gong Practitioners

On December 29, 2020, the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG) released a report based on an interview made in October 2016 on how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was harvesting the organs of Falun Gong practitioners while they were still alive. The statement by the interviewee, Mr. Lu Shuheng, corroborates previous reports and allegations and confirms that those at the Shanghai Armed Police Hospital did not use anesthetics in the organ harvesting process.  


Mr. Lu, a former Shanghai native residing in California, called the Sound of Hope Radio station in September 2016 while a program on organ harvesting was on the air. On October 2, 2016, Mr. Lu came to the Sound of Hope Radio station and sat in the studio to have a telephone interview with the WOIPFG about his knowledge of the CCP’s policy of harvesting organs from live Falun Gong practitioners.

 

To protect Mr. Lu, the WOIPFG did not release information about the interview until December 29, 2020.

 

Mr. Lu has been in the United States for over 20 years. Several relatives of his in Shanghai had been involved in harvesting the organs of live Falun Gong practitioners.  

 

During Mr. Lu’s visit to China in 2002, one of his relatives asked Mr. Lu to refer those people in the United States that needed an organ transplant. This relative said, “You keep an eye on this. If you can get in touch with a person (to do an organ transplant), you can earn a lot more money than doing renovations!” On another occasion, Mr. Lu learned that another relative, a doctor, performed organ transplant surgeries at the Shanghai Armed Police Hospital and was paid for each operation. “Money can be earned very quickly and in large amounts (when you do organ transplants). So, you just go outside to get (business)!” “The organs are of very good quality and are all fresh, all alive!” 

 

While on the operating table, Falun Gong practitioners would shout out “Falun Dafa is Good” until they succumbed to the pain. The parts needed for organ transplants were not anesthetized because the fewer anesthetics used, the fresher and better the organs would be for transplant.  

 

Mr. Lu has another relative who was deputy director of the Shanghai Labor Reform Bureau and deputy director of the Judicial Bureau. Sometimes, the CCP central government in Beijing would request this relative to swap Falun Gong practitioners for some prisoners so that these prisoners could be released. For each Falun Gong practitioner arrested, the Shanghai police would receive 500 yuan in cash. No booking record would be maintained and the Falun Gong practitioner would be sent directly to a secret location in Pudong, Shanghai.

 

The first allegation of the CCP conducting organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners was made on March 17, 2006, when a nurse from the Liaoning Thrombosis Hospital in Sujiatun, Shenyang City, came forward in Washington, D.C. to disclose the CCP’s large-scale organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners. From 2001 to 2003, the hospital held about 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners. More than 4,000 of them were directly burned in a “cremator” in the backyard of the hospital after their organs had been harvested.

 

On July 6, 2006, two Canadian lawyers published an independent report. After assessing 18 elements of evidence that the authors submitted were ‘‘verifiable and in most cases incontestable,’’ the report concluded that ‘‘there has been and continues today to be large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners.’’

 

On June 17, 2019, an independent tribunal sitting in London concluded that the killing of detainees in China for organ transplants is continuing, and victims include imprisoned followers of the Falun Gong movement.

 

Source: World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, December 29, 2020

https://www.zhuichaguoji.org/node/130426

HKET: U.S. Companies in HK Felt Pessimistic about HK’s Prospects

Hong Kong Economic Times (HKET), the leading financial daily in Hong Kong, recently reported that the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Hong Kong just released its findings from a study it conducted between December 11 and January 4. The survey was among the 1,400 members of the HK Chamber. The results showed that 61 percent of the respondents expressed the belief that Hong Kong’s business environment last year was unstable and had deteriorated over time. More than 40 percent of the respondents were pessimistic about the city’s outlook for 2021. The report also showed that around one third of the interviewees said Hong Kong’s competitiveness as a global business center has decreased in the past year. Experts widely believed the Pandemic and numerous social events, such as the movement calling for democracy and freedom and the implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law, significantly impacted the business environment of Hong Kong.

Source: HKET, January 12, 2021
https://bit.ly/2XNMmnW

“Big-head” Baby Reappears in China; Antibacterial Cream Had Hormones

In the past, China has seen multiple cases of children developing “big-head” disease after drinking inferior milk powder. A more recent case of a child with a “big-head” was reported after the parent used an antibacterial cream, which caused abnormal head development of the baby. The government of Zhangzhou City of Fujian Province, where the incident occurred, has ordered manufacturers to recall the product and launched an investigation.

On January 7, Wei Wenfeng, a Chinese consumer product safety expert, broke the story via Bilibili, a Chinese video sharing platform. The video indicated that in 2020, a parent bought the Aiyingshu (嗳婴树) brand “Multi-effect Special Antibacterial Cream” and applied it to his 5-month-old child.

The parent found that after applying the cream, the child experienced a swollen face, hairy forehead, and even stunted growth, which are typical “big-head” disease symptoms. After the incident, the parent took the child to seek a medical examination. It was not until the doctor asked whether the child had used hormone ointment that the parent suspected that there was a problem with this antibacterial cream and stopped using it.

The manufacturer of this antibacterial cream, Fujian Ouai Baby Health Care Products Co. LTD, was registered in Zhangzhou in April 2017. The company also has another “Happy Forest” baby cream. These two products, after being tested at professional institutions, both contained hormones that should not have been added to these products.

However, Fujian Ouai had published a statement claiming that, according to the reports conducted by a local government medical technical center on March 6, 2019, the test results on its antibacterial cream showed “normal” and showed that the product “contained neither hormones not antibiotics.”

Source: Central News Agency, January 8, 2021
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202101080281.aspx

Top Executives of Chinese Pharmaceutical Companies Abruptly Resign for “Personal Reasons”

The sudden resignation of a number of top executives of Chinese pharmaceutical companies suggested that the efficacy of the domestic developed COVID 19 vaccines could have been exaggerated.

On January 13, Zhong Shanshan, CEO of Chinese Wantai Biosciences and the richest man in China and Asia, abruptly resigned citing “personal reasons.” Before Zhong’s resignation, Wantai was collaborating with Xiamen University and the University of Hong Kong to develop a nasal spray COVID vaccine. On January 6, Wantai released a statement stating that the company is uncertain as to the trial results from phase one through phase three and is unable to project when the product will be available for sale.

On January 12, Li Zhiming, chairman of the board and Li Hui, board member of pharmaceutical company Sinopharm Holdings also resigned for “personal reasons.” Sinopharm Group is a state-owned pharmaceutical company in China. On December 31, 2020, it just received the official approval to have a limited launch of its COVID vaccine, but a recent news report suggested that among the SOE expatriates deployed to countries including Serbia and Angola, about three hundred of them still contracted COVID 19 even after they received Sinopharm vaccine.

Meanwhile, according to the data the Brazilian Research Institute released on January 12, the China developed Sinovac vaccine efficacy in clinical trial phase three was 50.4 percent, down from 78 percent that the Brazil’s Butantan Institute reported one week ago. Last December, China’s official media refused to disclose the COVID vaccine trial results in Brazil. It published the results from Turkey instead and claimed that it was 91.25 effective. However, the data from Indonesia showed the number was only 65.3 percent.

Source:
1. Epoch Times, January 14, 2021
https://www.epochtimes.com/gb/21/1/14/n12688272.htm
2. Radio Free Asia, January 13, 2021
https://www.rfa.org/cantonese/news/vaccine-01132021064840.html

Declassified U.S. Strategy in Indo-Pacific: Denying China Sustained Air and Sea Dominance

Less than a week before the end Trump’s first term, on January 13, the Trump administration just declassified a national security document—its 2018 strategic framework for the Indo-Pacific. It includes but is not limited to preventing China from establishing new, illiberal spheres of influence; enabling Taiwan to develop an effective asymmetric defense strategy and capabilities’; and strengthening the capabilities and will of Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Australia to contribute to the countering of China’s aggression.

According to ABC Australia, the document was previously classified “secret” and “not for foreign nationals.” It was officially declassified 30 years earlier than would normally be the case. This approach was unusual and it is believed that Trump was trying to put pressure on the next administration to avoid a major alteration of the China’s policy.

The document is 10 pages long with a number of redactions. It listed measures to enable the U.S. to maintain diplomatic preeminence in the Indo-Pacific region. It stressed that China and North Korea pose grave threats to the security of the region. U.S. strategy is to align with those of Australia, India and Japan to create a quadrilateral security framework to counter China’s growing economic aggression while enabling Taiwan to gain the defense capabilities to engage China on its own terms.

In the sections about China, it emphasized that the objective is to “prevent China’s industrial policies and unfair trading practices from distorting global markets and harming U.S. competitiveness; and to build an international consensus that China’s industrial policies and unfair trading practices are damaging the global trading system. It laid out actions including working closely with allies and like-minded countries to prevent Chinese acquisition of military and strategic capabilities; broaden the scope of the Committee on foreign Investment in the United States to cover venture capital and other forms of investment by China; and adopt domestic policies that promote growth in key technologies.”

Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at ANU, said, “This is a highly significant document. It is extraordinary that it has been released decades early. … This strategic framework is very forthright on China — not quite confrontational but very firm.”
Sources:
1. Radio Free Asia, January 13, 2021
https://www.rfa.org/cantonese/news/us-declassified-01132021042324.html

2. ABC Australia, January 12, 2021
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-12/details-of-trump-administrations-indo-pacific-strategy-revealed/13052216

3. The White House, January 12, 2021
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-national-security-advisor-robert-c-obrien-011221/