According to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post on the 13th, after the US presidential election, China and the United States restarted their stalled behind-the-scenes diplomacy. This semi-official communication channel is usually through former officials, think tanks and business leaders. A Chinese government consultant revealed that semi-official exchanges between China and the United States have been suspended in recent months, but they have now resumed. Professor Wang Xiangsui of Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics revealed that several people close to Biden have recently contacted China and discussed with Chinese think tanks how to restart Sino-US relations.
Wang Xiangsui said that the message from the Biden camp is positive. The message sent by the Democrats visiting China is that China and the United States should avoid a Cold War or direct conflict. Both parties must learn how to manage their differences and find ways to coexist. A Chinese government adviser had previously met Kurt Campbell and Jake Sullivan from the Biden camp. He said that in the past few years, some former Democratic Party officials have visited Beijing many times.
Source: China Press, November 16, 2020
http://www.uschinapress.com/static/content/SZ/2020-11-16/777859594532954112.html
China’s Response to the “Five Eyes Alliance” Statement Concerning Hong Kong: Watch Out for Your Eyes
At the regular press conference of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China on the 19th, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian answered questions from reporters regarding the “Five Eyes Alliance” statement on Hong Kong, China-Australia relations, and U.S. documents on China.
A reporter asked: The foreign ministers of the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement requesting the Chinese government to reconsider its actions against Hong Kong legislators and immediately restore the relevant membership qualifications. How does China respond to this?
Zhao Lijian said, “The Chinese never cause trouble, nor are they afraid of trouble. Regardless of whether they have ‘five eyes’ or ‘ten eyes,’ as long as they dare to harm China’s sovereignty, security and development interests, they should watch out for their eyes, or they will be pricked blind.”
Source:
China.com, November, 19, 2020
http://news.china.com.cn/txt/2020-11/19/content_76928439.htm
State Department Issues Research Report on China’s Challenges
The Office of Policy Planning Staff of the United States Department of State (DOS) issued a research report on Tuesday November 17, which summarized the behavior of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), analyzed the ideological roots behind the behavior and the vulnerabilities that the Chinese Communist regime faces, and provided suggestions on how the United States should respond to China’s challenges.
The report, titled “The Elements of the China Challenge,” states that “awareness has been growing in the United States — and in nations around the world — that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has triggered a new era of great-power competition. Yet few discern the pattern in China’s inroads within every region of the world, much less the specific form of dominance to which the party aspires.”
The report characterizes the Chinese Communist regime as “modeled on 20th-century Marxist-Leninist dictatorship.”
The report is composed of five sections: the China Challenge, China’s Conduct, the Intellectual Source of China’s Conduct, China’s Vulnerabilities, and Securing Freedom.
The report said, “The CCP aims not merely at preeminence within the established world order — an order that is grounded in free and sovereign nation-states, flows from the universal principles on which America was founded, and advances U.S. national interests — but to revise the world order fundamentally, placing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) at the center and serving Beijing’s authoritarian goals and hegemonic ambitions.”
The report concludes that “meeting the China challenge requires the United States to return to the fundamentals. To secure freedom, America must refashion its foreign policy in the light of ten tasks.”
The ten tasks include:
1. “Securing freedom at home by preserving constitutional government, promoting prosperity, and fostering a robust civil society,” 2. “Maintaining the world’s most powerful, agile, and technologically sophisticated military while enhancing security cooperation,” 3. “Fortifying the free, open, and rules-based international order that it led in creating after World War II,” 4.“Reevaluating its alliance system and the panoply of international organizations,”
5. “Strengthening its alliance system by more effectively sharing responsibilities with friends and partners and by forming a variety of groupings and coalitions to address specific threats to freedom,”
6. “Promoting American interests by looking for opportunities to cooperate with Beijing, subject to norms of fairness and reciprocity,”
7. “Educating American citizens about the scope and implications of the China challenge,”
8. “Training a new generation of public servants — in diplomacy, military affairs, finance, economics, science and technology, and other fields — and public-policy thinkers who not only attain fluency in Chinese and acquire extensive knowledge of China’s culture and history,”
9. “Reforming American education, equipping students to shoulder the enduring responsibilities of citizenship in a free and democratic society by understanding America’s legacy of liberty,”
10. “Championing the principles of freedom through example; speeches; educational initiatives; and public diplomacy.”
The 70-some-page-long report contains more than 20 pages of footnotes, accounting for almost half of the main body of the report.
Source: State Department,
https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/20-02832-Elements-of-China-Challenge-508.pdf
Must Religions in China Follow the Party Line?
No religious groups in China can escape the CCP’s control. On November 6, the Great Ci’en Temple in Xi’an organized sessions to study the key points from the fifth plenary session so its members could “maintain a high degree of compliance with Xi Jinping’s dictates while cultivating and practicing core socialist values and steadily promoting the process of the Sinicization of Buddhism.” In November 2019, nuns from the Thousand Buddha Pagodas of the Cloud Gate College of the Guangdong Buddhist University completed a similar session following the CCP’s fourth plenary session. According to a public announcement that the London-based human rights organization, Tibet Watch, made last month, at least two monastery management committees in the Tibet Autonomous Region forced monks to study the messages from the Seventh Tibet Work Forum.
Even though the constitution guaranteed the Chinese people freedom of religion, the reality is that religion is being further limited in its development in China. In 2017, the State Council issued a revised “Regulations on Religious Affairs,” which imposed tighter reviews on religious groups. The newly revised “Regulations” not only emphasizes restrictions on the setup of religious schools and the distribution of foreign religious books; it also clearly stipulates that all religious groups must register with the government and go through a strict financial auditing of its books. They are also required to be vigilant to restrict foreign forces from using religion to infiltrate China.
According to the statistics in a White Paper, “China’s Policies and Practices to Guarantee Freedom of Religious Belief,” which the State Council released in 2018, there are nearly 200 million religious believers in China, about 5,500 religious organizations, and more than 10,000 students in religious schools.
Source: Radio Free Asia, November 11, 2020
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/shehui/bx-11112020094152.html
China USES Microwave Weapons against India
A few days ago it was reported that the Chinese military used microwave weapons to retake the two hills that the Indian army occupied after the standoff that occurred at the disputed border for several months. By releasing microwaves at the foot of the mountain, the Chinese military turned the mountain top into a “microwave oven.” The Indian troops on the mountain began to vomit and couldn’t stand and eventually had to leave.
Microwave is a high-frequency electromagnetic wave with a radiation wavelength range from one millimeter to one meter, a frequency between 0.3 GHZ and 300 GHZ, and a propagation speed equal to the speed of light. Microwave weapons, also known as radio frequency weapons or electromagnetic pulse weapons and can be used to attack the electronic systems of various weapons and equipment. This is especially important information with regard to warfare targets such as command and control centers and communication transmission networks, causing the entire combat command system a “sudden death.” It can also penetrate armor to kill the personnel directly.
In the field of microwave weapons, the United States, China, and Russia are the leading countries in research and development.
On January 9, 2017, a research team at China’s Northwest Institute of Nuclear Technology was awarded the first prize of the State Science and Technology Progress Award for 2016. The winning project was the “High Power Microwave Anti-Missile System.” Huang Wenhua, the team lead, said, “This achievement is for a disruptive technology that represents a major leap forward. It is also a pioneer internationally.”
China’s high-power microwave anti-missile system can be used for naval air defense and anti-missile warfare. It is reported that China’s Type 055 destroyer is equipped with a microwave anti-missile system which can disable the electronic equipment of incoming enemy aircraft and missiles, and even burn the enemy’s pilots.
Sina.com once quoted a paper in March 2017 and reported that China’s microwave weapons are currently undergoing a series of tests for aircraft self-defense, space control, suppression of enemy air forces, and combat command and control communications. It also successfully developed gigawatt-class high-power microwave air defense weapons, and conducted experiments to destroy aircraft and other targets.
Source: Lianhe Zaobao, November 16, 2020
https://www.zaobao.com.sg/realtime/china/story20201116-1101404
Four Reasons Why the CCP Arrested Farmer Businessman Sun Dawu,
On November 11, following the arrest of Ren Zhiqiang, China’s real estate tycoon, Xu Zhangrun, a professor at Tsinghua University, and Geng Xiaonan, a publisher who openly supported a dissident law professor, Sun Dawu, a 66 year old businessman from Hebei province, was also arrested. The charge was for alleged “disorderly behavior and the sabotage of business operations” over a land dispute. State media reported that the homes of 28 members of the senior management team of the Dawu Group, including Sun’s wife, son and daughter-in-law were raided overnight.
On November 15, Han Lianchao posted on his twitter account that Sun Dawu is a well-known farmer and businessman and is highly respected in China. After his arrest, the Internet in China was flooded with people’s reactions. Not only did people from the legal and the economic communities, the news media, and private business circles express their support for Sun in a number of different ways. They vaguely and strongly called attention to Sun’s arrest. Han also published an article a netizen from China wrote commenting on Sun’s arrest. It summarized the following four reasons why Sun was arrested:
1. He disregarded the unspoken rules. Sun always speaks the truth and refuses to collude with the party officials from the county, the provincial level and the Ministry of Agriculture. He therefore offended the officials.
2. He was Involved in a land dispute. When a state-owned farm tried to take land from the villagers, the Dawu group tried to intervene. The state-owned farm and the officials from the local county sent people to demolish the Dawu group’s building and got into a physical fight with the workers from Sun’s companies.
3. He openly comments on reform and supports constitutional democracy. Sun is sympathetic to the rights lawyers and to dissidents.
4. He owns 28 subsidiary companies. All of them are well managed and successful. They even donated money to build a hospital and schools and the locals favored them.
The article stated that people know what right and wrong are. Totalitarian tyrannies can suppress the public voice but they can’t silence it. Violent suppression will only make China’s peaceful transformation less likely. In facing future social transformation, having blood shed could be inevitable.
Source:
1. Twitter: Han Lianchao, November 15, 2020
国内网友传来一篇短文，评孙大午事件，特转发于此。中国大陆再次爆发反抗极权暴政的呼声。
孙大午是中国知名农民企业家，在民间享有很高声望。事件引爆中国网络舆论，法律界、经济学界、新闻媒体以及民营企业界人士，纷纷以各种方式表达对孙大午的支持肯定，隐晦而强烈呼吁关注孙大午！ pic.twitter.com/HyVnuCLMO3— 韩连潮 (@lianchaohan) November 15, 2020
2. Sina, November 13, 2020
https://finance.sina.com.cn/chanjing/gsnews/2020-11-13/doc-iiznezxs1748082.shtml
Beijing’s Bullying: Blacklisting “Taiwan independence” Personnel
Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing Ta Kung Pao newspaper carried an article stating that the Chinese regime is preparing to blacklist “Taiwan independence” diehards, and may launch crackdowns and impose life-long sanctions, referring to the legal provision of the “crime of committing secession.”
A Ta Kung Pao front page article on November 15 claimed that “Authorities in mainland China are preparing to blacklist ‘Taiwan independence’ diehards, and punish those who have made aggressive ‘Taiwan independence’ remarks and committed vile ‘Taiwan independence’ actions, along with their major sponsors. Legal provisions from the anti-secession Law, criminal law, and the national security law will be used to bring those people to justice and hold them accountable for life.” The article pointed out that the crime of secession can have a sentence of up to life in prison.
Shuh-Fan Ding, a professor at National Chengchi University in Taiwan, told Radio Free Asia that the purpose of the blacklist is more for intimidation than for real punishment. “The mainland wants to have a psychological impact. First, it aims to warn the people about ‘Taiwan independence’; second, it attempts to reduce Taiwan’s support for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) through intimidation because the DPP is considered a ‘Taiwan independence’ party.’” Shuh-Fan believes that, considering the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) handling of the Hong Kong issue last year, this crackdown and sanctions against “Taiwan independence” will also have a counterproductive effect.
Paul Huang, a Taiwanese freelance writer, said that the CCP’s implementation of the “Taiwan Independence” diehards list, similar to the promulgation of the Hong Kong national security law, is to enforce Beijing’s will. “What I am worried about is that the mainland will enact an unlimited authorization bill, or that the list can be expanded at any time without any warning. Then hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese in mainland China may be upset because of this. One must be cautious with his words and deeds even inside Taiwan. This is the biggest concern.” “We need to look at the detailed enforcement (measures). If it is just a blacklist, similar to the US Department of Commerce’s sanctions mechanism against China, it is just a concept of denying entry. If it is more offensive, the mainland will turn this into a law that can be criminally prosecuted, much like Hong Kong’s national security law.”
Since the enforcement of the Hong Kong national security law in June this year, Beijing has arrested a number of student leaders for violating the national security law and inciting the secession of the nation. The CCP’s General Secretary Xi Jinping put forward the “Five Points” on Taiwan in 2019, namely, cross-strait reunification, the Taiwan version of “one country, two systems,” no promise of abandoning military reunification, deepened cross-strait integration and development, and promotion of the consensus of peaceful reunification. At the same time, the “Five Points” was formally written into the decision of the Fourth Plenary Session of the CCP’s 19th Central Committee.
The Mainland Affairs Council, the Taiwanese government’s agency handling cross-strait affairs, issued a statement in this regard, stating that the mainland’s use of force and legal means to bully and threaten dissidents with the intent of intimidating Taiwan into self-censorship, inciting cross-strait antagonism, and sabotaging peace and stability will only be futile and counterproductive. The Mainland Affairs Council stated that Taiwan will not give in under threats.
Source: Radio Free Asia, November 16, 2020
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/gangtai/bx-11162020103136.html
RFI Chinese: Chinese Ministry of Education Urgently Issued New Rules for College Teachers
Radio France Internationale (RFI) Chinese Edition recently reported that, after several incidents of graduate school students committing suicide this year, the Chinese ministry of Education urgently issued The Code of Conduct for Graduate School Teachers. The new code of conduct established ten rules on what a graduate school professor cannot do. These rules mainly include that the professor cannot neglect academic supervision and guidance, cannot require students to participate in activities unrelated to their academic or research topics, cannot delay students’ graduation time, cannot violate established academic norms and cannot damage students’ academic rights. The report gave a few examples of graduate students committed suicide in Dalian on October 13, 2020, in Beijing on May 1, 2020, and in Nanjing on December 15, 2019. These all involved graduate school professors’ misconduct in not providing academic advice, delaying final graduation grading, and personality insults over a long period of time. Some of these professors reportedly have been punished.
Source: RFI Chinese, November 11, 2020
https://bit.ly/32IKoYS