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• [Sport] China spacecraft to try to land on Moon's far side
• Shanghai-bound internship students leave Hong Kong on mainland Chinese-built C919 jet’s first commercial flight from city
• Shangri-La Dialogue: China will ‘never be soft’ on foreign interference, PLA official warns
• Shangri-La Dialogue: Indonesia’s Prabowo calls for Palestinian state, end to war, remains firm on non-alignment in US-China rivalry
• China’s new India envoy urges neighbours to ‘get along well’ amid talk of Xi-Modi meeting and border military build-up
• Shangri-La Dialogue: Australia says peace with China remains despite Yellow Sea military skirmish
• China watcher says Hong Kong’s talk of need for wealthy tourists over mainstream ones makes ‘mainland compatriots very uncomfortable’
• Who buys ‘good night messages’ on China e-commerce sites? Woman who delivers them spills the beans
• Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific needs to launch more direct flights to 8 mainland Chinese cities newly added to travel scheme: industry leaders
• Mainland Chinese drone user drops leaflets on Taiwanese outlet in ‘anti-independence protest’
• US defense secretary says war with China neither imminent nor unavoidable, stressing need for talks
• China ‘Liujiang Man’ skeleton originally believed to be more than 200,000 years old was probably far younger
• China finds poor data storage leads to waste, as AI, satellites and self-driving cars generate masses of bytes
• New AI battle adopts old price war strategy as Chinese tech giants keep start-ups at bay behind the Great Firewall
• In Vietnam’s ‘game of thrones’, is China the only constant?
• Shangri-La Dialogue: US defence chief Lloyd Austin pledges to hold more talks with China, says conversation is ‘a necessity’
• Malaysia’s 50 years of China pragmatism hits a US rivalry roadblock
• Foreign visitors find barrier to entry at China’s museums, which may translate to losses for tourism industry
• In war on disinformation, US may be able to work with China, State Department official says
• China’s noble hydrogen hopes for bike-sharing sector hit pothole as recall leaves outlook inert
• China sister pretends to be dead sibling, works her job for 14 years before receiving US$55,000 pension

[Sport] China spacecraft to try to land on Moon's far side

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cxeejp0y2pjo[Sport] China spacecraft to try to land on Moon's far side

Shanghai-bound internship students leave Hong Kong on mainland Chinese-built C919 jet’s first commercial flight from city

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/3265027/shanghai-bound-internship-students-leave-hong-kong-mainland-chinese-built-c919-jets-first-commercial?utm_source=rss_feed

More than 100 students from Hong Kong universities took to the skies on China’s first home-grown narrowbody passenger jet on a service to Shanghai on Saturday for an internship programme as the aircraft type made its first commercial flight from the city.

Chief Secretary Eric Chan Kwok-ki, the government’s No 2 official, said at a take-off ceremony at the city’s airport that it would be an unforgettable experience for the students to fly on the C919 airliner and get a first-hand understanding of national development.

He added he hoped more of the city’s young people and residents would have the opportunity to fly on the plane, which went into service last year, and on other types of domestically made aircraft.

“Today, we will witness two ‘firsts’ together – the country’s domestically developed C919 plane will make its first commercial flight in Hong Kong, and it is the first time that the C919 will carry a group of university students from Hong Kong to the mainland for exchange and internship,” he said.

Chan highlighted that a C919, along with a ARJ21 jet and designed for regional routes, visited Hong Kong last December.

The visits by the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac) planes sparked an aviation craze, with members of the public allowed to board the two aircraft for tours.

“This series of activities is a good example of patriotic education, which not only makes Hong Kong’s young people deepen their understanding of the country’s aviation development, but also enhances their identity and pride in the country,” Chan said.

Some students on the government-funded programme said before take-off that they were delighted to fly on the jet.

“I feel so excited and honoured to be able to board the C919’s first flight from Hong Kong to Shanghai and learn more about the industry behind the country’s domestically built aircraft,” one said.

“I’m excited and looking forward to it as it is my first time flying on the domestically made plane,” another added.

The Transport and Logistics Bureau said the flight of a C919 from Hong Kong to Shanghai marked a milestone in cooperation between the two cities.

The bureau agreed the flight allowed young Hongkongers to experience the country’s achievements in the aircraft industry, which helped cultivate patriotism and promote innovative thinking.

The C919 is China’s first domestically developed narrowbody passenger jet.

It was created to compete with the American Boeing 737 and Europe’s Airbus A320 family of single-aisle aircraft.

It can carry between 158 and 192 passengers and was designed for medium-haul routes.

The C919 has a range of 5,555km (3,452 miles), about the distance between Hong Kong and the Maldives or the United Arab Emirates.

The plane, along with a ARJ21, touched down in Hong Kong last December and attracted a crowd of hundreds along the Victoria Harbour waterfront to watch a fly-past over the city.

Enthusiasts hailed the two aircraft as a fresh start for the country’s aviation industry.

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Shangri-La Dialogue: China will ‘never be soft’ on foreign interference, PLA official warns

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3265014/shangri-la-dialogue-china-will-never-be-soft-foreign-interference-pla-official-warns?utm_source=rss_feed

Beijing will not be “soft” on foreign interference, a senior PLA official warned at a security forum on Saturday, suggesting that there would be more military exercises around Taiwan to come.

The comments from Lieutenant General Jing Jianfeng at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore came in response to US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin’s speech on Saturday morning, when the American official said disputes should not be solved through “so-called punishment”.

Without naming Beijing, Austin’s remarks were an apparent reference to recent military drills by the People’s Liberation Army around Taiwan. Beijing said the exercises were meant to “punish” the island’s independence forces.

Speaking during a press conference, Jing said the PLA military drills around Taiwan were aimed at fighting the island’s independence forces and deterring external interference.

“The PLA will never stop enhancing combat readiness, never stop our fight against Taiwan independence forces and never be soft on defeating external interference,” Jing added.

Jing said that the US had “betrayed its promise, hollowed out the one-China principle” and armed the island.

Calling the situation in the Taiwan Strait “grim”, Jing said that “Taiwan independence means war”.

Jing also accused Taiwan’s new leader William Lai Ching-te of pushing the island towards the “abyss of disaster” and being “the main culprit” in undermining the status quo in cross-strait ties.

Beijing viewed Lai’s inauguration speech last month as provocative. Days later, the PLA kicked off two days of large-scale military drills around the island. The exercises drew concerns from several countries, including the US.

China’s new Defence Minister Dong Jun held his first face-to-face meeting with Austin on the sidelines of the forum on Friday. During the talks, Dong accused Washington of sending the wrong signals to Taiwan independence forces.

Two PLA military vessels entered restricted waters off Taiwan-controlled island of Quemoy, also known as Kinmen, on Wednesday, the Taiwanese military said on Saturday.

The PLA’s recent exercise around the island was a “rehearsal” for possible combat operations against Taiwan in the future, said PLA Lieutenant General He Lei on the sidelines of the conference.

“This military exercise is the closest to actual combat for the PLA’s task forces to familiarise themselves with the battlefield environment, strengthen coordination, and improve command capabilities,” He said.

“I think it was a rehearsal of one of our combat plans,” He said.

He added there was a risk of war between the PLA and US military, and Washington’s provocations, including its support of the Philippines and Taiwan independence forces, posed “extreme” risks.

Beijing does not want to see Washington get involved in a war in the Taiwan Strait, he added, “but we do have countermeasures if that happens”.

Observers said the two days of PLA military drills were the biggest and closest exercises ever held near Taiwan.

The PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command said the exercises were “punishment” for “Taiwan separatists” and a “severe warning” to outside forces intent on interference and provocation.

During the PLA press conference on Saturday morning, Jing also accused the US of seeking to build an Asia-Pacific version of Nato to maintain its hegemony in the region. The comment was in response to Austin’s remarks about strengthening alliances and partnerships across the region.

Jing also addressed tensions between Beijing and Manila over the South China Sea, saying “provocations” by the Philippines and interference by the US were the root of the problem.

PLA Major General Xu Hui said that while the US would continue to strengthen its alliance in the Pacific region, “it does not necessarily mean that China and the US would engage in conflict ”.

“[Austin] may not want direct conflict with China over the Philippine issue,” Xu said.

During their talks on Friday, Dong and Austin agreed to maintain communications between the two militaries.

Washington should “exercise some restraint” and “encourage the Philippines to talk to us, rather than encourage the Philippines to provoke”, Xu said, adding that this would also be beneficial for the US.

PLA Senior Colonel Zhou Bo said Austin was “restrained” in his speech when it came to Taiwan, noting that his remarks about “so-called punishment” stopped short of directly mentioning Beijing.

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Shangri-La Dialogue: Indonesia’s Prabowo calls for Palestinian state, end to war, remains firm on non-alignment in US-China rivalry

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3265018/shangri-la-dialogue-indonesias-prabowo-calls-palestinian-state-end-war-remains-firm-non-alignment-us?utm_source=rss_feed

Indonesian president-elect Prabowo Subianto on Saturday called on the international community to provide a “just solution” to the Israel-Gaza war under which both sides have a “right to exist” and there would be a Palestinian state.

“The only real solution to lasting peace and security for both Israel and Palestine is a two-state solution,” he said in Singapore at the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum.

“Why this is important for us? Because Indonesia is part of the Islamic world. Although physically, we are not of the region, but what happens in the Middle East, what happens in Gaza affects, concerns … the Indonesian people,” he said.

The former general added that Indonesia would “do whatever we can to provide humanitarian assistance” and contribute to peacekeeping efforts.

“Indonesia also is very willing to evacuate and treat wounded Palestinian civilians and those needing hospital care in Indonesian hospitals.”

Indonesia is home to the world’s largest Muslim population and has consistently expressed support for Palestine’s independence within the framework of a two-state solution.

Prabowo, 72, said the resolution should consider both Israel’s right to exist and the rights of the Palestinians “to have their own homeland, their own state, living in peace”.

“We are also cognisant of the fact that the resolution of this crisis must consist of mutual respect for the rights and the concerns of all parties. There cannot be a single narrative that is legitimate as it’s often been repeated,” he said.

Prabowo also commended US President Joe Biden’s three-phase proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza: “Although we have to further study the details of this proposal put forward and announced by President Biden, we do view this proposal as an important right step in the direction that we have to go.”

He reiterated Jakarta’s commitment to the “support of comprehensive and permanent ceasefire” in the Middle East, which would be a move towards a “real peace between Israel and Paslestine, and thus, real peace in the region”.

Following his remarks on peacekeeping efforts, he added: “President Joko Widodo has instructed me to announce that we are ready to evacuate, receive and treat with medical care, up to 1,000 patients in the immediate future.”

Prabowo won Indonesia’s February general election and is set to take over the reins in October.

Asked about his views on Jakarta’s response if forced to pick sides amid the intensifying US-China rivalry, Prabowo reiterated the country’s long-standing policy of non-alignment.

“We must maintain the policy of non-alignment, of maintaining the best relations with all nations of the world,” he said.

“So regarding the issues between China and the United States, we will always promote all efforts to achieve coexistence, to achieve collaboration, to achieve compromise.”

Analysts had previously said Prabowo’s visits to China and Japan shortly after he had been confirmed as president was a “major diplomatic coup” and signalled his future foreign policy direction as one that sought to maintain balanced relations with all.

Prabowo met Chinese President Xi Jinping in April on the latter’s invitation, at a time when Beijing and Washington are seeking to expand their influence in the region, amid rising tensions in the South China Sea.

Indonesia is not a claimant in the South China Sea territorial dispute, but Beijing and Jakarta have their own dispute over its exclusive economic zone in the North Natuna Islands.

This has led to skirmishes in the disputed waters a number of times in recent years, such as in December 2022 when China sent Coast Guard 5901, the world’s largest coastguard vessel, to patrol the North Natuna Sea.

During a meeting with Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun in April, Prabowo said Indonesia was looking to deepen defence cooperation with Beijing and promote the development of the relations between the armed forces of both sides.

Beijing has built a strong relationship with Jakarta under Prabowo’s predecessor Widodo.

Last year, China was Indonesia’s largest trading partner and second-largest foreign investor.

During his speech, Prabowo also said Jakarta’s non-alignment policy was derived from the so-called “Asian way” of dealing with conflicts.

“Real security comes through very good relations between our immediate neighbours. This is part of our Asian culture. We must be close, friendly with our immediate neighbours,” he said, noting that Indonesia has had conflicts with Singapore and Malaysia in the past.

“But now, we are the best of friends. We resolved our differences without interference from any external power,” he said.

“We are like brothers. Now we are talking of making perhaps a land bridge between Singapore and Batam, a land bridge between Malaysia and Indonesia.”

During an interview with news channel Al Jazeera last month, Prabowo had struck a similar tone and said states in the region had solved issues without foreign interference and through dialogue, in response to a question about what the “Asian Way” meant to him.

China’s new India envoy urges neighbours to ‘get along well’ amid talk of Xi-Modi meeting and border military build-up

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3265011/chinas-new-india-envoy-urges-neighbours-get-along-well-amid-talk-xi-modi-meeting-and-border-military?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s new ambassador to India Xu Feihong presented his credentials at a ceremony in New Delhi amid speculation over a possible meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping next month.

Xu, who arrived in New Delhi three weeks ago to fill an 18-month vacancy, was among seven envoys who presented their letters of credence to Indian President Droupadi Murmu at the presidential residence on Friday.

According to the Chinese embassy in India, Xu also paid a courtesy call to Murmu, during which the ambassador called for joint efforts to “enhance political mutual trust, manage differences properly, and advance mutual beneficial cooperation so as to bring China-India relations forward along the right track”.

He also called for the two sides to explore ways for “major neighbouring countries to get along well with each other”.

Xu’s appointment, which was announced in early May, filled the post’s longest vacancy since 1976. His predecessor, Sun Weidong, left in November 2022 and took a vice-ministerial role at the foreign ministry in Beijing.

Ties between the two Asian powers have deteriorated sharply since 2020, after the Chinese and Indian militaries clashed at multiple locations along their disputed Himalayan border, resulting in casualties on both sides.

Since then, China and India have carried out several rounds of military talks and have disengaged from four points along the border. But ties remain frosty, and the two sides have steadily built up military capabilities in the border region.

Citing satellite images taken on Monday, Indian broadcaster NDTV reported that China had deployed six J-20 stealth fighter jets – its most advanced – at a dual-use military and civilian airport in Shigatse, the second largest city in Tibet autonomous region. Shigatse is less than 150km (93 miles) from China’s border with India’s Sikkim state.

This is believed to be the biggest deployment of J-20 jets near China’s border with India captured on commercially available satellite images. In 2020, two J-20 fighters were reportedly visible at the Hotan airbase in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, about 320km from the disputed region of Aksai Chin.

Meanwhile, India has stepped up its military presence near the border. In March, Bloomberg reported that India had deployed 10,000 soldiers from the country’s western border to patrol the disputed frontier with China.

Last month, the Indian army said it had set up two high-altitude tank repair facilities in the eastern region of Ladakh, including one just 25km from the border with China.

However, there have been hopes of a thaw between the two Asian rivals as Modi is expected to secure a third term as prime minister and resume diplomatic activities soon after election results are announced on June 4.

In an April interview with Newsweek, the 73-year-old Modi, who came to power a decade ago, said India and China should urgently address the “prolonged situation” on their border.

According to Indian news portal Firstpost.com, the diplomatic agenda for the newly elected prime minister is expected to include the Group of 7 summit in Italy from June 13 to 15 as well as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Kazakhstan in July, where he might meet Xi.

In 2017 India joined the SCO – a Eurasian bloc formed by China, Russia and four Central Asian states focused on counterterrorism as well as political and economic cooperation.

Xi and Modi last met briefly on the sidelines of the Brics summit in Johannesburg in August.

Shangri-La Dialogue: Australia says peace with China remains despite Yellow Sea military skirmish

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3265010/shangri-la-dialogue-australia-says-peace-china-remains-despite-yellow-sea-military-skirmish?utm_source=rss_feed

Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles was confident Australia had a legal right to be in the Yellow Sea, where it had an aerial confrontation with China last month, but said the incident did not detract from “peace” between the two nations.

Last month, a Chinese fighter jet released flares in front of an Australian military helicopter that had been launched from the HMAS Hobart that was in the Yellow Sea enforcing United Nations Security Council sanctions against North Korea.

Despite the skirmish last month and a November run-in between the two nations’ navies off Japan’s coast, the “vast bulk of the interactions that the Chinese navy has with Australia’s are safe and professional”, he said to This Week in Asia at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Saturday.

It underscores the pull-and-push in the newly stabilised China-Australia ties, where there is willing engagement between the two nations when friction arises in shared areas such as regional seas.

“If there are interactions with other militaries, in this case with the Chinese navy, what needs to happen is that assistance in those interactions occur in a professional and safe way.”

Reciprocal professional approaches are critical between two nations trying to work together, he says.

“We do have peace here, there is peace between Australia and China,” he said.

“We’ve gone through a period of non ministerial contact for two or three years … and since then we’ve had numerous interactions at the ministerial level. That’s a good thing, we want that to continue.”

“There are disagreements … and we need to speak clearly and frankly with each other even if those messages are difficult.”

Just two years ago, bilateral relations between the two nations were at record lows amid finger-pointing about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, and China’s restrictions of Australian exports.

Exports of major Australian goods like coal to China have resumed since, while China has also lifted duties on Australian barley.

Canberra also said two days ago it had eased a ban on five meat processing plants exporting to China. Eight beef processing plants were allowed to resume exports to China, while two facilities remain suspended.

More efforts are being made to lift remaining trade impediments including those on Australia’s rock lobster industry, following a meeting between the two nations’ foreign ministers in March – the highest government meeting between the nations since 2017 – and as Canberra readies to receive Chinese Premier Li Qiang on June 18.

Marles reflected on the same push-and-pull issues in a separate plenary speech on Saturday.

As China continued to increase its military capability and stepped up to a larger global role, it would be more heavily scrutinised, especially on its adherence to rules, norms and binding treaty commitments.

“There is no indelible hostility to China. It is about how we build a safer world and a safer region.

“A stable and sustainable regional order won’t be possible unless all countries – but especially big ones – pursue their strategic objectives in a manner that respects the sovereign rights of our neighbours and the obligations imposed by international law.”

He pointed out that attention must be paid to China’s strategic behaviour and the signal it sent, pointing to the two naval skirmishes between the two nations, Chinese use of water cannons and ramming of Philippine vessels in the West Philippine Sea, and Chinese military exercises of attacks and blockades of Taiwan.

China responded to Marles’ speech, saying in a question and answer session after the speech that it had never waged war on any nation but it has sovereignty to defend its national security including territories and borders in accordance with international law.

A Chinese army member of the audience said there were mistakes in Marles’ claims about China’s engagement with Taiwan and the Philippines.

“More Taiwanese people welcome the PLA to protect them. And Taiwan is a province of China and will not endanger Taiwan’s security,” he said.

“And you didn’t mention that the Philippines intentionally collided with China’s coastguard ship.”

While leaders reinforced the importance of the rule of law, the Chinese army member questioned how states like Australia could adhere to that law if there were increasingly small group military alliances across the world.

In relation to “small groups”, Marles told TWIA separately that in terms of Aukus – the trilateral pact among Australia, Britain and the US that was not a military alliance – Australia remained steadfast in its role as a steward when it comes to nuclear waste and contamination once the nuclear-powered submarines under the pact were delivered.

Responding to Chinese comments at the dialogue, however, Marles said the rules-based order underpinned peace and security in the region as well as economic prosperity and growth within Asia-Pacific.

“China has benefited from that. Australia has benefited from that. And we have benefited from our relationship with China,” he said.

“I have repeatedly said that we value the most productive relationship that we can have with China.”

China watcher says Hong Kong’s talk of need for wealthy tourists over mainstream ones makes ‘mainland compatriots very uncomfortable’

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/hong-kong-economy/article/3265003/china-watcher-says-hong-kongs-talk-need-wealthy-tourists-over-mainstream-ones-makes-mainland?utm_source=rss_feed

A veteran China watcher and academic has appealed to Hong Kong officials to downplay talk of the need for high-quality tourists and called on the city to tackle discrimination against visitors from mainland China to help restore their confidence.

Lau Siu-kai, a consultant to the semi-official Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies think tank, said a report from the Beijing-endorsed China Tourism Academy released last week had looked at the emphasis Hong Kong put on bringing in big spenders.

The report suggested that Hong Kong should work to make mainland tourists feel welcome in the city.

“Some people in Hong Kong often talk about attracting high-quality tourists, which makes mainland compatriots very uncomfortable,” Lau said.

“Negative public opinion” and the anti-government protests of 2019 were mentioned in the report as reasons for the fluctuation in the number of mainland visitors to the city over the past 10 years.

“Social divisions, grievances, and lingering stereotypes and discrimination against people from the mainland make tourists feel uncomfortable, and they also feel they have become the target for locals to vent their anger,” Lau said.

“This affects their experience and impression of Hong Kong.”

The report highlighted China’s push for domestic tourism development, as well as its bid to become a major destination for the rest of the world.

It added tourism was a tool for cross-border exchanges, and that Hong Kong and Macau should focus on tourist satisfaction.

Lau said the report was designed to provide “well-intentioned and constructive advice to Hong Kong”.

He added the suggestions had little to do with the work of the Hong Kong government, but focused on the social and cultural atmosphere of the city.

Lau said tackling Hong Kong’s tourism problems needed a joint effort by the government and society to make mainland visitors less willing to splash out in high-priced shops and hotels feel at home.

The need to attract “high-quality visitors” with big budgets has often been touted by tourism authorities, industry leaders and lawmakers since the city’s borders reopened after the coronavirus pandemic and Hong Kong realised the previous guaranteed group of high-spending mainland visitors had changed their habits.

The latest example was on Wednesday when lawmaker Nixie Lam asked Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism Kevin Yeung Yun-hung at a Legislative Council meeting about the development of high-end experiences for wealthy visitors.

Yeung said the Tourism Board planned to adopt a multipronged strategy to attract big spenders to the city, enhance their experience, encourage them to extend their stay and increase their spending.

The academy’s report also said Macau became the top-rated destination for mainland visitor satisfaction in the first quarter of the year with a score of 83.49. Hong Kong ranked seventh with 81.77 points.

Hong Kong placed fifth for the whole of 2023 and Macau took third spot.

The report did not say what the other top cities were, but a separate one released by the academy in April listed the 2023 national top 10 tourist cities with the highest levels of visitor satisfaction as Suzhou, Hangzhou, Xiamen, Kunming, Chongqing, Qingdao, Xian, Nanjing, Beijing and Shenyang.

Hong Kong and Macau were not included on the April list.

Entertainment tycoon and government tourism adviser Allan Zeman said Macau’s tourism industry had become much more competitive in recent years because it had diversified its economy away from gambling.

Zeman added the Macau government’s goal to generate 60 per cent of the city’s gross domestic product from non-gambling sources by 2028 meant pressure was being put on casinos to invest in alternative entertainment.

Six of Macau’s major casino companies agreed in December 2022 to invest 118.8 billion patacas (US$14.78 billion) in non-gambling activities over the next decade after their licences were renewed.

Zeman, who is also the chairman and independent non-executive director of the Wynn Macau resort, said that operators in Macau were keen to bring in the right kind of entertainment and that they were “getting better and better”.

“So Macau is becoming an exciting city. Every week there’s new names coming, putting on shows, and it’s competition for us – we don’t have that,” he said.

“And, of course, the casinos earn a lot of money, so they can keep bringing out new things and reinventing themselves … Macau has suddenly become a very fun place to go to.”

Who buys ‘good night messages’ on China e-commerce sites? Woman who delivers them spills the beans

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3263012/who-buys-good-night-messages-china-e-commerce-sites-woman-who-delivers-them-spills-beans?utm_source=rss_feed

A woman in China has been sending “good night messages” to complete strangers for the past 12 years – for a small fee.

Jiumei, who is in her 30s sells the service on China’s e-commerce platform, Taobao, which is operated by Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post.

About 10,000 people have bought the messages from her at one yuan (14 US cents) a night. She has sent more than 50,000 messages in total.

The wording varies from a simple “good night” in Chinese, to poetic verses and consolations.

Jiumei told the mainland media outlet Personage that her messages are a comfort to “modern people suffering from loneliness”, and a window for her to glimpse into the lives of others .

Many clients have bought good night messages for people they are secretly in love with or exes they miss.

Jiumei refuses to send messages from single to married people to avoid causing trouble for the receivers and their families.

One mother asked Jiumei to say good night to her 14-year-old daughter, who suffered from anxiety and was addicted to her mobile phone.

The youngster stopped trusting her parents who found it hard to understand her illness. The mother wanted to “console her lonely heart and remind her to sleep early”.

Another person bought the service for her brother, a late-stage cancer patient who increasingly shut himself off from his family. She hoped the messages would keep him company.

Another client, a man in his 30s who ran a start-up business, bought the messages himself for support.

Jiumei also took it well when people stopped buying her service, because she hoped it meant they were no longer feeling lonely.

The good night message service has been Jiumei’s part-time job for 12 years. During that time she also became a director at a company in the city of Shenzhen, Guangdong province, southern China, then opened a cafe. She is married with two sons.

She says the business has never been profitable, earning her a maximum of 3,000 yuan (US$400) a year. She considered giving it up, but changed her mind after former clients contacted her to thank her.

Jiumei said the service has also helped her emotionally. The ninth daughter of a Chaoshan family in southern China’s Guangdong province, she said her parents had lavished all their love on her little brother, their only son.

She thinks of her good night messages as providing a “sense of ritual” as well as comfort.

Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific needs to launch more direct flights to 8 mainland Chinese cities newly added to travel scheme: industry leaders

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/hong-kong-economy/article/3264997/hong-kongs-cathay-pacific-needs-launch-more-direct-flights-8-mainland-chinese-cities-newly-added?utm_source=rss_feed

Hong Kong should launch more direct flights to the eight mainland Chinese cities recently added to a solo traveller scheme, industry players have said, urging an active response to Beijing’s favourable measures to boost the city’s economy.

Mainland Chinese authorities earlier announced that residents from Taiyuan, Hohhot, Harbin, Lhasa, Lanzhou, Xining, Yinchuan and Urumqi could apply to visit Hong Kong from Monday without the need to join a tour group. Only four locations have non-stop flights to Hong Kong at present.

Flights to those four cities – Taiyuan, Lanzhou, Yinchuan and Urumqi – operate twice a week. Passengers from Xining and Hothhot need to transfer once before arriving in the city, while those from Harbin and Lhasa have to take up to two connecting flights.

Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu previously said the scheme’s expansion was expected to bring about 300,000 extra visitors to Hong Kong and generate up to HK$1.5 billion (US$192 million) in additional revenue each year.

Lawmaker Jeffrey Lam Kin-fung, also a member of the government’s key decision-making Executive Council, said local airlines, including Cathay Pacific Airways, should actively roll out more new routes and direct passenger services to the eight newly added cities to fully capitalise on the benefits of Beijing’s goodwill measures.

“Without direct flights, there is no incentive for mainland tourists of these remote cities to come a long way to Hong Kong. You cannot expect them to fly more than 10 hours with layovers at different places just to visit the city,” he said.

“Our nation has specially looked after Hong Kong by adding more cities to the solo travel scheme. Local airlines should actively provide more offerings to respond to Beijing’s favour, which is designed to bring in more long-haul mainland tourists to the city.

“We cannot afford to miss out on this golden opportunity to boost the economy and tourism.”

Lam advised the government not to rely so much on Cathay Pacific for opening new routes, saying it could allocate more air traffic rights to other local airlines for running the relevant direct flight services.

“Authorities may consider opening up the traffic rights, bringing more opportunities to other local airlines. Many people say Hong Kong should not just let one airline dominate the market.”

Tommy Tam Kwong-shun, chairman of the Society of IATA Passenger Agents, said Cathay had an “unshirkable responsibility” to offer to the four cities without direct services.

“As Hong Kong’s flag carrier, Cathay should offer direct services not yet available to the cities because it is a landmark offer from Beijing,” he said. “Cathay also has a social responsibility to Hong Kong after the government bailed it from its setback during the pandemic.”

He suggested that some routes could even be run by its low-cost arm, HK Express.

Tam said Cathay played a key role in Hong Kong’s positioning, adding anywhere in the city could serve as a tourist spot as Beijing’s top official on Hong Kong affairs, Xia Baolong, said recently.

“Cathay’s strength lies in its global network, which means Hong Kong can serve as a connecting point for passengers travelling between the Shandong cities and Sydney through Hong Kong, for example,” he said.

Paul Weatherilt, chairman of the Hong Kong Aircrew Officers Association, said when Cathay shut down its subsidiary Cathay Dragon in 2020, it sacked 550 pilots and 3,000 Chinese-speaking flight attendants.

“This tore the heart out of the China network and they have only been able to partially rebuild it, let alone add new destinations,” he said.

“Cathay has not been able to resume its old network in full and has concentrated on partially restoring the more profitable and high-profile routes.”

But Weatherilt said other local airlines also had their limitations when it came to opening more routes to different mainland destinations.

“Whilst Cathay has idle aircraft available but insufficient pilots, other Hong Kong airlines such as the Greater Bay Airlines and Hong Kong Airlines do not have the aircraft available to operate these routes nor do they have the pilots,” he said.

The Transport and Logistics Bureau said the government was very grateful to the central government for further expanding the Individual Visit Scheme to cover the eight new cities.

The bureau also emphasised that it, jointly with the Airport Authority, had engaged both local and mainland airlines to strengthen or commence services to and from these cities.

“We understand that the airlines are now actively planning more service enhancements to these cities, including scheduled flights to and from Harbin in June 2024,” it said.

Cathay said it welcomed the expansion of the scheme to more mainland cities which would further attract more tourists to Hong Kong, and contribute to the sector’s continued growth and development, adding that it was currently flying to 17 mainland cities at present.

“We look forward to providing high-quality passenger flight services for more customers from different cities on the mainland … As we have rebuilt, we have been progressively adding more flights and destinations for our customers, and this will continue,” it said.

Mainland Chinese drone user drops leaflets on Taiwanese outlet in ‘anti-independence protest’

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3265002/mainland-chinese-drone-user-drops-leaflets-taiwanese-outlet-anti-independence-protest?utm_source=rss_feed

A mainland Chinese man’s solo drone campaign against Taiwan has been praised by online nationalists for “showing the public’s support for unification”.

The unnamed man started flying drones over the closest Taiwanese outpost to the mainland dropping fliers that attacked independence a day after the People’s Liberation Army finished two days of drills in protest at the inauguration speech of the island’s new leader William Lai Ching-te.

The incident echoes the decades-long propaganda war between the two sides following the Communist victory in the civil war in 1949, which saw balloons carrying pamphlets and food being sent to both sides.

This time there has been no official endorsement from Beijing of the flights, but the mainland has strict rules on drone use and there has been no apparent intervention to stop the man’s activities.

In recent years there have been a string of incidents in which unidentified drones have flown over restricted waters, around Quemoy, also known as Kinmen, which is just a few kilometres off the coast of the Chinese mainland. Two years ago Taiwanese troops shot down a drone in the area.

The man behind the latest campaign has not disclosed his identity, but uses the online alias Twenty Years of Stargazing and says he lives in Xiamen, a coastal city in Fujian province near to Quemoy.

He declined to speak to the Post, but earlier this week wrote an article for Guancha.cn, a site that is popular with Chinese nationalists, in which he said he wanted to project “mainland voices for unification and anti-independence” to protest against Lai’s inaugural speech last month.

He wrote that he felt the Taiwanese people are “family”, but the leaders of Lai’s Democratic Progress Party have been smearing the mainland and inciting hatred.

Beijing has repeatedly denounced Lai as a separatist and his inaugural speech, which described the island as “sovereign, independent nation”, was followed, three days later, by exercises that observers said were the biggest ever held near Taiwan and the closest to the island’s coast.

Last weekend a post on the WeChat account of the PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command said the exercises by its land, navy, air force and missile forces were “punishment” for “Taiwan separatists” and a “severe warning” to outside forces intent on interference and provocation.

The latest drone flights were described by some Taiwanese media outlets as a “new harassment measure from the mainland”, while some members of the public have asked why the military did not respond or shoot down the drone. One online commentator said these incidents “make the Taiwanese troops seem incompetent”.

Shen Yi, a professor at Fudan University who advised the drone user on what to write on the fliers, said the flight was “simple patriotic behaviour”.

In a more detailed video the drone user posted on Weibo and video site Bilibili last Sunday, he said he had “dropped off Taiwanese troops some textbooks so they could learn a lesson”.

The video showed fliers that said “there’s one China and one Chinese nation across the Strait, Lai’s ‘Taiwan independence’ is a dead-end” and “refusing unification by force is doomed to fail”.

It also showed a drone that flew from Xiamen to Erdan, an island in the Quemoy chain before dropping a box apparently containing the fliers on a military base before returning to the mainland.

The drone user made similar flights over Erdan earlier this year, filming troops transporting ammunition and other supplies.

The Kinmen Defence Command said the latest flight was meant to incite outside attention but it “will not dance” to that tune.

Shen said the wording on the leaflets reflected the official mainland view and it was up to the Taiwanese public whether they wanted to believe them.

Song Zhongping, a former PLA instructor, said Beijing sees no need to interfere with acts carried out with “good intensions”.

“If these are all personal interests and hobbies, then there’s no need for the government to interfere, that’s the core of the issue,” he said. “It does not matter what the Taiwan administration and military think. The users only have to consider Chinese law.

“If Taiwan is fully unified with the mainland, authorities will also set boundaries for where civilian drones can go, but because of the special status of the two sides, all areas controlled by Taiwan are not subject to any restrictions.”

The mainland Chinese authorities do not acknowledge or regulate drone flights of this type, and appear to have given them their tacit support.

In 2022 the foreign ministry said there was no reason to be surprised by “Chinese drones flying over Chinese land” after a civilian drone landed on Lieyu, another island in the Quemoy chain, with a message for Taiwanese troops and then declined to elaborate a few days later when a drone was shot down.

The flights have been categorised by some observers as a “grey zone” tactic in which indirect measures are used to intimidate Taiwan without the use of physical force.

Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including itsmain international supporter the United States, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take it by force and is committed to providing the island with arms to defend itself.

Additional reporting by Phoebe Zhang

US defense secretary says war with China neither imminent nor unavoidable, stressing need for talks

https://apnews.com/article/shangrila-dialogue-austin-china-taiwan-philippines-defense-46868bec3799f5043276d9fdeca62a41U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin looks on during the Shangri-La Dialogue summit at the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore, Saturday, June 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian)

2024-06-01T03:40:48Z

SINGAPORE (AP) — United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told a gathering of top security officials Saturday that war with China was neither imminent nor unavoidable, despite rapidly escalating tensions in the Asia-Pacific region, stressing the importance of renewed dialogue between him and his Chinese counterpart in avoiding “miscalculations and misunderstandings.”

Austin’s comments at the Shangri-La defense forum in Singapore came the day after he met for more than an hour on the sidelines with Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun, the first in-person meeting between the top defense officials since contacts between the American and Chinese militaries broke down in 2022 after then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, infuriating Beijing.

Neither side budged from their longstanding positions on Taiwan — which China claims as its own and has not ruled out using force to take — and on China’s sweeping claims in the South China Sea, which has led to direct confrontations between China and other nations in the region, most notably the Philippines.

While declining to detail the specifics of their conversation, Austin said the most important thing was that the two were again talking.

“As long as we’re talking, we’re able to identify those issues that are troublesome and that we want to make sure that we have placed guardrails to ensure there are no misperceptions and no miscalculations … that can spiral out of control,” he said.

“You can only do that kind of thing if you are talking.”

Addressing the same forum on Friday night, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. bluntly outlined what could be at stake, saying that if a Filipino were killed as China confronts his country’s coast guard and merchant fleet to press its claims in the South China Sea, it would be “very, very close to what we define as an act of war and therefore we will respond accordingly.”

Marcos added that he assumed the Philippines’ treaty partners, which include the U.S., “hold the same standard.”

In his own speech, Austin lauded how Marcos “spoke so powerfully last night about how the Philippines is standing up for its sovereign rights under international law.” But when pressed later, he would not say how the U.S. might react if a Filipino were killed in a confrontation with China, calling it hypothetical.

He did say the U.S. commitment to the Philippines as a treaty partner is “ironclad,” while again stressing the importance of dialogue with China.

“There are a number of things that can happen at sea or in the air, we recognize that,” he said. “But our goal is to make sure that we don’t allow things to spiral out of control unnecessarily.”

Beijing in recent years has been rapidly expanding its navy and is becoming growingly assertive in pressing its claim to virtually the entire South China Sea.

Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Richard Marles noted that not only had Philippine ships been rammed and hit with water cannons by China, but said a Chinese warplane dropped flares above an Australian helicopter earlier in the year, and in November a Chinese navy ship injured Australian divers in Japanese waters with sonar.

“In the face of these multiple sources of tension, it’s even more imperative that every country plays its part in managing increasing strategic risk,” he said.

The U.S., meantime, has been ramping up military exercises in the region with its allies to underscore its “free and open Indo-Pacific” concept, meant to emphasize freedom of navigation through the contested waters, including the Taiwan Strait.

Chinese Senior Col. Cao Yanzhong, a researcher at China’s Institute of War Studies, asked Austin whether the U.S. was trying to create an Asian version of NATO with its emphasis on partnerships and alliances, a common Chinese claim. He suggested that could trigger conflict with China, citing ally Russia’s claim that NATO’s eastward expansion was a threat, which President Vladimir Putin has used as an excuse for his invasion of Ukraine.

“The eastern expansion of NATO has led to the Ukraine crisis,” Cao said. “What implications do you think the strengthening of the U.S. alliance system in the Asia-Pacific will have on this region’s security and stability?”

Austin said the U.S. is simply cooperating with “like-minded countries with similar values” and not trying to create a NATO-type alliance, while rejecting Cao’s interpretation of the cause of the Ukraine war.

“The Ukraine crisis obviously was caused because Putin made a decision to unlawfully invade his neighbor,” Austin said.

Expressing the concerns of some in the region, Indonesian academic Dewi Fortuna Anwar said any de-escalation of tensions “would be very welcome to this part of the world,” but wondered whether the U.S. would allow China’s assertive military posture to grow uncontested if Washington’s main emphasis was now dialogue.

“We are also worried if you guys get too cozy, we also get trampled,” she said.

Austin said that many of those issues were best addressed through talks, but also assured that Washington will continue to ensure that the rights of nations in the region were protected and that they continued to have access to their exclusive economic zones.

“War or a fight with China is neither imminent, in my view, or unavoidable,” Austin said.

“Leaders of great power nations need to continue to work together to ensure that we’re doing things to reduce the opportunities for miscalculation and misunderstandings,” he said. “Every conversation is not going to be a happy conversation, but it is important that we continue to talk to each other. And it is important that we continue to support our allies and partners on their interests as well.”

DAVID RISING Rising covers regional Asia-Pacific stories for The Associated Press. He has worked around the world, including covering the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine, and was based for nearly 20 years in Berlin before moving to Bangkok. twitter mailto

China ‘Liujiang Man’ skeleton originally believed to be more than 200,000 years old was probably far younger

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3264686/china-liujiang-man-skeleton-originally-believed-be-more-200000-years-old-was-probably-far-younger?utm_source=rss_feed

A skeleton that was once believed to belong to one of the earliest humans to live in China was likely far, far younger.

Archaeologists first discovered the skeleton in 1958 in the Liujiang district in Guangxi autonomous region in southern China, and some analysts believed it was upwards of 140,000 years old.

A new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature in late April reexamined the Liujiang skeleton and, through multiple strategies for dating fossils, determined that it was likely between 23,000 and 33,000 years old.

“If a human fossil lacks a reliable age, it is useless. While the new age is younger than the previously assumed age, it allows placing the Liujiang human at the correct position in the human family tree,” said Shao Qingfeng, a study co-author from the School of Geography at Nanjing Normal University.

“With this reliable age, the Liujiang skeleton is now important for understanding the relatively recent migration of Homo sapiens in the continent of Eurasia,” he told the Post.

If the fossil were indeed 140,000 years old, it would have made the Liujiang skeleton one of the earliest human fossils discovered outside of Africa, predating the earliest fossils found in Israel.

The new study places the Liujiang fossil in line with the theory that Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa in several waves starting around 300,000 years ago. A significant and permanent migration into Eurasia began over 100,000 years ago, and Homo sapiens then made their way to East Asia somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago.

That being said, there is no smoking gun to definitely prove how the first humans left Africa.

The new dating of the Liujiang fossil places the person as part of a massive dispersal event across Eurasia and into East Asia between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago.

No matter its age, the skeleton is far better preserved than other human remains discovered in Asia, a fact that helped cast doubt on the initial age estimation of 140,000 years old. The archaeologists unearthed a nearly complete cranium, large skeletal remains of the spine, and fossils of leg bones.

However, Shao said dating the skeleton proved difficult because it was discovered by accident, meaning nobody knew what sedimentary layer the bones were from.

“The dating was complicated by the poor preservation of the organic material in the fossils, which can be used for carbon-14 dating,” he said, adding that the warm and humid burial environment of southern China facilitated the decay of organic material.

Despite the difficulties of determining the age of “Liujiang Man”, scientists have studied the cranium over the years and have concluded that it exhibits evolutionary features more in line with Cro-Magnons, who settled in Western Asia and eventually migrated into Europe.

Shao said that compared with the older fossils like the ones found in Zhoukoudian Upper Cave in Beijing (dated to 36,300-39,000 years ago), the Liujiang fossils display a cranium that is more rounded and has a less developed brow ridge.

To further confirm this discrepancy, the scientists used three fossil dating techniques to age the skeleton: radiocarbon, which can date fossils younger than 60,000 years old; optically stimulated luminescence, which reveals how long nearby soil has been exposed to sunlight; and U-series dating, which analyses uranium instead of carbon.

Combining these three methods allowed the scientists to confidently proclaim the Liujiang skeleton was between 23,000 and 33,000 years old.

The study also decoupled human interactions with regional fauna found in China from the Late Pleistocene, which included Stegodons, an extinct relative to elephants, extinct giant tapirs, and also giant panda remains.

The mammal fossils were dated from between 97,000 and 227,000 years ago, older than when the Liujiang humans would have occupied the same area.

China finds poor data storage leads to waste, as AI, satellites and self-driving cars generate masses of bytes

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3264938/china-finds-poor-data-storage-leads-waste-ai-satellites-and-self-driving-cars-generate-masses-bytes?utm_source=rss_feed

China is wasting much of its vast data resources because its storage and data processing capability lags behind its data generation, with a new survey finding that less than 3 per cent of data generated in the country last year was stored and processed.

The findings of the National Data Resources Survey Report 2023 – the first nationwide data resource survey by Chinese authorities – was released on May 24 at a digital economy summit in Fuzhou in coastal Fujian province.

Driven by the rapid development of 5G, AI technologies and the wider availability of smart devices, China generated 32.85 zettabytes (ZB) of data last year, according to the survey.

But while data production rose 22 per cent, data storage only increased 0.95ZB last year – less than 3 per cent of the amount of data generated in the same period, the survey said.

The survey acknowledged China’s data generation and storage conversion ratio was still low and that “the potential value of data needs further exploration”.

It also noted that use of stored data remained low – nearly 40 per cent of data stored by the companies last year was not read or being reused after being stored.

“The insufficiency of data processing capabilities leads to an underestimation and difficulties in uncovering and reusing a large amount of data,” the report said.

Professor Andy Chun from City University of Hong Kong’s College of Business, said China’s 3 per cent figure for storing data was consistent with global measures that found only a fraction of data generated was preserved.

According to German statistics portal Statista, 2 per cent of the data created and consumed in 2020 was stored for use in 2021.

“There are many reasons for this selective retention, with data privacy and security being paramount. Most nations enforce regulations that restrict data storage to what is necessary for defined purposes, mandating its deletion once it no longer serves those ends,” Chun said.

“Storing vast quantities of data not only presents security vulnerabilities but also entails significant costs and technological challenges.

“The infrastructure required to store such volumes of real-time data demands continual advancements in storage solutions, which can be cost-prohibitive,” said Chun, who is an adviser to the AI Specialist Group of the Hong Kong Computer Society.

Chun said he anticipated an imminent and substantial rise in China’s data retention rates soon, propelled by the embrace of generative AI technologies around the world.

Successful AI output depended on both the volume and quality of the underlying data, he said, adding that as the trend veered towards more personalised generative AI applications, it was likely that more personal data would be kept to train AI models.

“To accommodate this growth, it would be prudent for China to channel investments into the advancement of storage technologies, aiming to enhance capacity and drive down costs. This strategic focus could support the burgeoning AI-driven demands while fostering innovation across the industry,” Chun said.

The National Data Resources Survey Report 2023 also urged China’s large enterprises to invest in digital transformation. Some 22 per cent of companies surveyed said they still had no data management system. Among those that had undergone a digital transformation, only 8 per cent reused their data and achieved additional value from it.

“There is still a long way to go to explore the full value of data,” the survey said.

But it also noted that China’s demand for quality data products remained very strong, with demand reaching 1.75 times that of supply, according to the survey’s results relating to China’s data exchange centres.

Chun said that although there was no comparable American survey, based on population he inferred the volume of data generated in the US was significantly less than in China.

The demand for computing power for large AI model training is expected to remain high, and the demand for computing power from science institutions, government affairs, finance and other industries also increased accordingly. It recommended China accelerate the construction of its national integrated computing power system to meet the demand.

The National Data Resources Survey Report predicted China’s data production would increase more than 25 per cent in 2024, driven by large-scale application of new technologies, such as satellite communications, self-driving cars and generative AI.

Jiang Yan, director of the National Industrial Information Security Development Research Centre which was in charge of the survey, said China had an initial scale advantage for its data resources.

“But more needs to be done to release the potential of massive data, as China’s data resource management and utilisation are in the initial stage as a whole,” Jiang was quoted as saying by China’s Daily Economic News.

CityU’s Chun warned that the expansion of personal data storage “must be carefully managed, with vigilant adherence to privacy regulations, ethical standards, and robust data protection protocols”.

He added that for sustainable data growth, China must engage in strategic investment beyond merely augmenting storage capacity.

Advancing data management practices that prioritise quality, security and governance was essential. Such a comprehensive approach was vital to fully leverage the capabilities of generative AI, ensuring that the principles of responsible AI were maintained, he said.

New AI battle adopts old price war strategy as Chinese tech giants keep start-ups at bay behind the Great Firewall

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3264909/new-ai-battle-adopts-old-price-war-strategy-chinese-tech-giants-keep-start-ups-bay-behind-great?utm_source=rss_feed

In the 18 months since Microsoft-backed OpenAI launched ChatGPT, Chinese tech firms large and small have rallied around a singular goal – besting the San Francisco-based start-up with their own Chinese-language chatbots.

The results have been mixed, with some tech giants claiming to have better results than GPT-4, OpenAI’s most advanced model, with Chinese queries. But with a deluge of more than 200 Chinese large language models (LLMs) – the tech powering these chatbots – from a slew of companies all jostling for market share, China’s AI firms can claim at least one other clear, albeit less boastworthy, advantage over their US counterparts: price.

In recent weeks, TikTok owner ByteDance, internet search giant Baidu, e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group Holding and social media behemoth Tencent Holdings have all drastically slashed prices on their LLM services, with some offering a variety of services for free. One premium offering from ByteDance’s Doubao Pro costs as low as 0.0008 yuan (0.011 US cents) per 1,000-token prompt, 99.8 per cent less than what OpenAI charges for GPT-4 access.

“It’s like the bad money is driving out good money,” said You Yang, a computer science professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

The price war indicates a lack of competitiveness based on the merits of the models themselves, according to You, making them incapable of attracting customers at previous market prices.

In the US, tech giants like Google owner Alphabet, Facebook owner Meta Platforms, Amazon.com and Microsoft have also been competing in AI by following the “blitzscaling” playbook that has become commonplace in Silicon Valley: acquiring users as quickly as possible, at the expense of revenue, to corner a market.

Yet even while enjoying the “walled garden” behind the Great Firewall that censors foreign internet services, Chinese firms face limits from Washington’s export restrictions on advanced chips from Nvidia, whose graphics processing units have become central to AI model development. They also have less corporate spending power than their peers in the liquidity-rich US market.

“The price reduction [for Chinese AI services] mainly aims to attract more clients and is more like a branding practice,” Xu Li, CEO and co-founder of Hong Kong-listed AI company SenseTime, told the South China Morning Post in an interview this week.

ByteDance launched the opening salvo of the price war in mid-May when it unveiled the pricing of its Doubao AI enterprise services that aggressively undercut its domestic rivals.

Under this pricing, 1 yuan could buy 1.25 million input tokens. By comparison, it would cost around US$37.50, or 272 yuan, to buy 1.25 million GPT-4 tokens.

In AI, a token is a fundamental unit of data that is processed by algorithms. For Chinese LLMs, a token typically equates to between 1 and 1.8 Chinese characters.

Other Chinese tech heavyweights were quick to respond.

Alibaba, owner of the Post, was the first to react, dropping the price of its Tongyi Qianwen (Qwen) service by as much as 97 per cent, from 0.02 yuan per 1,000-token prompt to 0.0005 yuan, or 0.0003 yuan cheaper than ByteDance.

Several companies including Baidu, Tencent and iFlytek, an AI specialist known for its audio recognition technology, followed with even more drastic price cuts, some offering access to their less powerful LLMs for free.

Wang Sheng, an investor with Beijing-based InnoAngel Fund, said this kind of “vicious” price competition is hurting local AI start-ups.

“When it comes to developing LLMs, Big Tech companies are not necessarily better than start-ups,” Wang said. “But their practice of subsidisation to grab a bigger market share is detrimental to these firms.”

Alain Le Couedic, senior partner at AI investment house Artificial Intelligence Quartermaster (AIQ), suggested that the price competition will pay off for some over time.

“The race for dominance in the market is a sign that many players see attractive opportunities down the road, even if this requires some pain in the short- to mid-term,” he said.

LLMs are energy intensive, making them expensive to run, so the marginal cost of adding a new user is likely higher than for other online services. This makes blitzscaling more complicated for AI services. A race to make LLMs more efficient could eventually change this math, though.

“People are pursuing these improvements in efficiency … because it pays to do so,” Bill MacCartney, chief technology officer at the venture capital firm SignalFire and a computer science professor at Stanford University, told the Post at the UBS Asian Investment Conference this week. “It costs a growing amount of money to operate these models, and people have a powerful economic incentive to find ways to make it cheaper.”

MacCartney noted that resources are pouring into finding efficiency gains across multiple levels: “There’s improvements at the silicon level, there’s improvements in model architecture, there’s improvements in that kind of software that we layer above the models.”

“It’s not far-fetched to imagine that we’ll see over a three-year horizon … maybe a 10x improvement in inference efficiency broadly across AI,” he said.

Some companies have said improved efficiencies in training and running models are the main reason for their price reductions. OpenAI credited new efficiencies for the reason behind the much lower pricing on its GPT-4o model launched in May.

Robin Li Yanhong, founder and CEO of Baidu, said in April that the efficiency of training its flagship Ernie LLM improved 5.1 times within a year. The model’s inferencing performance increased 105 times, reducing inferencing costs by 99 per cent.

ByteDance also said it cut prices because it is confident in being able to reduce its costs through technical improvements.

Wherever profits stand, tech companies have been quick to attribute rising revenues to the AI boom.

Alibaba Cloud said its 3 per cent growth in the March quarter was buttressed in part by AI-related income that accelerated growth. Baidu Cloud reported 12 per cent revenue growth in the same quarter, with generative AI and foundation model services accounting for 6.9 per cent of total AI cloud revenue.

US tech giants Google and Microsoft have likewise reported robust demand for their cloud-based LLM services. In its third-quarter results, revenue at Microsoft’s intelligent cloud unit grew 21 per cent from a year earlier. Google, meanwhile, saw first-quarter revenue expand 28 per cent year on year.

“We have witnessed Microsoft’s market capitalisation soar, and everyone is eager to capitalise on this opportunity,” said Ivan Lam, an analyst at market consultancy Counterpoint Research. “The Chinese market is particularly keen to establish quick links between [AI] applications and business [uses] in order to foster further advancements in its LLMs.”

Alibaba declined to provide data on the growth in usage of its LLMs after its recent price cut, but the company said that the number of calls to its Qwen application programming interface (API) from a top Chinese recruiting firm spiked 100-fold within a week.

At least for users of these LLMs like that recruiting firm, the current economics of AI services appear to be paying off.

Zhao Chong, founder and CEO of AI-powered graphic design service iSheji, was upbeat about cheaper LLMs in an interview with the Chinese news portal Sohu.com published on May 24.

“For start-ups like us building applications, [the price war] is a good thing,” Zhao told Sohu. “LLM costs used to account for between 5 and 10 per cent of our total costs, now it could be 1 per cent, boosting our profit margins.”

These consumer-facing service providers have in turn been reducing the prices of their own offerings, with many available for free.

Meanwhile, start-ups that are in a position to do so are trying to sit out the price war. Beijing-based Baichuan and 01.AI – a company established by Lee Kai-fu, a Taiwanese computer scientist who previously headed Google China – have dismissed the idea of cutting prices.

You, the NUS computer scientist, noted the benefits of low prices for app developers, but he cautioned that these applications might not perform well if built on subpar foundation models.

Despite this, the price war has emerged because companies have limited options. Competing on price is always easier than endless improvement to model capabilities, according to Yan Lijie, founder and CEO of Shanghai-based MiniMax, one of China’s four “AI Tigers”.

“[Reaching] the upper limit of a technology is less certain and requires more exploration,” Yan said in a fireside chat published by Chinese technology news site Geekpark on May 23. “Whereas there is always a way to cut price.”

Counterpoint’s Lam said that price competition may be inevitable for companies looking to maintain dominance in AI services as the market becomes increasingly crowded.

Some of China’s tech giants would appear to have an edge when it comes to compute resources and money to burn. AIQ’s Le Couedic said it is too early to predict a potential winner of an AI price war, as the industry is still not mature. Business models and technical edge will both be key factors in determining the dominant players, he added.

“At the end of the day … companies with the best services and best technologies will win,” Le Couedic said.

Additional reporting by Matt Haldane.

In Vietnam’s ‘game of thrones’, is China the only constant?

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3264952/vietnams-game-thrones-china-only-constant?utm_source=rss_feed

Vietnam may have another new captain at the helm, but the ship of state is charting a familiar trajectory when it comes to China, analysts say.

Though police general To Lam, who was sworn in as president on May 22, previously sought Beijing’s advice on shoring up domestic security, foreign-policy experts believe Hanoi will stay the course in its dealings with its powerful northern neighbour.

Lam, Vietnam’s former chief of public security, took office amid a major leadership reshuffle that also saw the country’s parliament elect a new chairman.

Two state presidents and the parliament speaker have now stepped down within 18 months, in a series of high-profile departures linked to unspecified “wrongdoing” as a sweeping anti-corruption crackdown upends the one-party state’s typically staid politics.

Lam, 66, replaced Vo Van Thuong, who stepped down in March after being accused of violating party rules – just over a year after taking office.

Despite recently upgrading ties with the United States, Japan and Australia, Vietnam has mostly kept its relations with China on an even keel. During a state visit in December by Chinese President Xi Jinping, the two countries pledged to “open a new stage” in bilateral relations and step up cooperation.

Huynh Tam Sang, an international-relations lecturer at Vietnam’s University of Social Sciences and Humanities, said it was not in Hanoi’s best interests to alter its foreign-policy trajectory.

“The country’s current approach is likely to remain unchanged,” he said, adding that Hanoi’s foreign policy was decided based on consultations between members of the ruling Communist Party’s Politburo “instead of relying on any top figures [individually]”.

“Vietnam will continue to hedge among great powers,” Huynh said, referring to Hanoi’s foreign policy approach that Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong first termed “bamboo diplomacy” in 2021.

Evoking the strong roots, stout trunk and flexible branches of the bamboo plant, the term describes Vietnam’s nuanced strategy to navigate geopolitics: preserving its independence and benefiting from multiple international partnerships without becoming beholden to any one power.

Vietnam’s newly-elected president visited China in September last year, during which his Ministry of Public Security picked up “a lot of tactics” – most notably in counterterrorism and anti-riot measures – from its Chinese counterpart, according to Huynh. Monitoring dissent and the surveillance of activists are two of the ministry’s main roles.

Huynh said Lam had also asked for “both theoretical and practical advice” from China’s security chiefs on how to keep Vietnam’s Communist Party “in complete control over authority and leadership” back in January.

“Chinese officials know they can rely on Lam because of his symbiotic comradeship with General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, who has attempted to maintain close ties with Chinese President Xi Jinping.” he said.

Vietnam’s leadership has “always viewed the world through a similar lens as China’s”, said Zachary Abuza, a professor of security strategy at the National War College in Washington.

“They fear ‘colour revolutions’, their policy priority is always regime survival, they equate regime security with national security,” he said, referring to a series of pro-democracy uprisings that swept several former Soviet states in the early 2000s.

Abuza, who is also an adjunct professor of security studies at Georgetown University, said the prevalence of public security officials in Vietnam’s 12-member Politburo – at least five, including Lam – and a broad-ranging directive it reportedly issued last year warning of “hostile and reactionary forces” pointed to growing insecurity among the ruling elite.

Directive 24, a copy of which was obtained by regional human rights activists, supposedly contains dire warnings about the threat posed to national security from Vietnam’s growing international ties.

“We are definitely seeing the Communist Party of Vietnam adopt many Chinese instruments of maintaining regime survival,” Abuza said.

“Hanoi does learn from Beijing, whether in cybersecurity laws, the use of tax laws to target regime opponents, or extrajudicial renditions.”

But he said Vietnam would continue to balance ties with the US and China as it needed both economically while it struggled with problems such as an insufficient power supply and infrastructure weakness.

“Vietnam is very much dependent on being integrated into the global economy and has been a huge beneficiary of corporate de-risking strategies,” Abuza said.

Yet the unprecedented political instability of recent months, coupled with a massive financial fraud case that resulted in a former property tycoon being sentenced to death in April, is said to have spooked investors.

Alexander Vuving, a Hanoi-born professor at the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Hawaii, said he expects Vietnam’s political turbulence to continue until at least early 2026 when the Communist Party is scheduled to hold its next national congress and elect a new party chief.

Despite recently tightening its grip on civil society, Vuving said Hanoi has not veered closer to China. Instead, Vietnam has stuck to its balanced “bamboo diplomacy” approach, which has also allowed it to preserve good relations with both Russia and the US, and avoid taking sides amid their hostility.

Vietnam and the US elevated their partnership to a “comprehensive strategic” level last year. Meanwhile, Russia remains an important military and energy partner for the Southeast Asia nation, with historical ties dating back to the Soviet era. Hanoi has been reluctant to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, due in part to this long-standing relationship that saw Moscow provide significant support in the years after the Vietnam war ended in 1975.

“Vietnam’s game of thrones will continue,” Vuving said, adding that a reorientation of its foreign policy would only likely be triggered by a transformation of the strategic environment.

“Such a transformation may be China crossing Vietnam’s red lines in the South China Sea or a rapid deterioration of Cambodia-Vietnam relations”, he said. “In both cases, Vietnam is likely to tilt away, not towards China.”

In March, Hanoi objected to China redefining its baseline – the low-tide shoreline used to determine territorial waters – in the Gulf of Tonkin, as the South China Sea waterway between China’s Hainan Island and Vietnam is known internationally.

Beijing said its move in what it calls the Beibu Gulf “strictly complies with domestic laws, international laws and bilateral agreements” and “will not impact Vietnam’s interests or those of any other nation”, according to a foreign ministry statement cited by China’s Global Times tabloid.

Hanoi’s foreign ministry issued a statement later in March saying it “resolutely opposes and rejects” claims that are contrary to international law and violate Vietnam’s sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction over its territorial waters.

Vietnam’s ties with neighbouring Cambodia have also been strained in recent months by the Funan Techo Canal. Hanoi has voiced concerns about the potential environmental impact of the 180km project, which is aimed at connecting the Mekong River to the coast. However, some analysts believe Vietnam’s anxieties also stem from fears of its declining influence in Cambodia as China’s role in the Mekong region grows.

In recent years, Cambodia has significantly strengthened its political, economic, military and security relationships with China. But given their geographical proximity and shared history, Vietnam has traditionally viewed both Cambodia and Laos as falling within its sphere of influence.

Shangri-La Dialogue: US defence chief Lloyd Austin pledges to hold more talks with China, says conversation is ‘a necessity’

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3264992/us-defence-chief-lloyd-austin-pledges-hold-more-talks-china-says-dialogue-not-reward-necessity?utm_source=rss_feed

Washington is seeking peaceful resolution of disputes through dialogue, “not coercion and certainly not through so-called punishment”, US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said on Saturday, stressing the importance of alliances and partnership in the Indo-Pacific.

In a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore about US strategic partnerships in the region, Austin said “dialogue is not a reward but a necessity” and pledged to hold more talks with China.

“The key issue is that we’re talking. And as long as we’re talking, we’re able to identify those issues that are troublesome and [ …] we want to make sure that we place guardrails to ensure that there are no misperceptions or miscalculations,” Austin said.

He added that if his Chinese counterpart Dong Jun calls with an urgent matter, “I will answer the phone. And I certainly hope that he’ll do the same”.

Austin met the Chinese defence minister on Friday on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue. It was the first bilateral meeting between the two countries’ defence chiefs in two years.

During the meeting, Austin emphasised the “importance of maintaining open lines of military-to-military communication” between Washington and Beijing and “welcomed plans to convene a crisis-communications working group by the end of the year”, according to a Pentagon press release.

Austin’s remarks came after the People’s Liberation Army conducted joint military drills surrounding Taiwan last week, which it referred to as a “punishment” for Taipei’s “separatist acts” after the inauguration of new Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te.

Austin expressed “concern about recent provocative PLA activity around the Taiwan Strait” and reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability near the self-ruled island.

“[Beijing] should not use Taiwan’s political transition – part of a normal, routine democratic process – as a pretext for coercive measures,” Austin said.

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Malaysia’s 50 years of China pragmatism hits a US rivalry roadblock

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3264943/malaysias-50-years-china-pragmatism-hits-us-rivalry-roadblock?utm_source=rss_feed

Malaysia expects to welcome Chinese Premier Li Qiang this month for a visit marking 50 years since Kuala Lumpur first forged diplomatic ties with Beijing. But the celebratory mood may be tempered by the increasingly awkward questions experts say the US-China trade war is asking of Malaysia’s leadership.

China has now been Malaysia’s top trading partner for the past 15 years in a row – a reminder of the Asian giant’s dramatic economic ascent since the two countries established formal relations on May 31, 1974.

But these deep economic ties have also fuelled concerns that Malaysia may find itself caught in the middle of the intensifying rivalry between the United States and China, as sanctions ripple through global supply chains traversing Southeast Asia and the region’s leaders increasingly come under pressure to pick sides.

Amid the diplomatic peril, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim sees opportunity. At an industry event in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday, he made a pitch to global semiconductor players that Malaysia was their best bet for a “neutral and non-aligned location” to do business.

Yet experts caution that neutrality may prove elusive in the months ahead, especially if the bitter sparring between Washington and Beijing over tech and trade issues intensifies.

US and European Union envoys wrote to Malaysia’s government last year warning of national security risks if Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies were allowed to bid for a role in the Southeast Asian nation’s 5G telecommunications infrastructure.

Malaysia was left in an uncomfortable bind.

“Being pressured by one major trading partner on economic [cooperation] against another is a major concern for Malaysian policymakers,” said Thomas Daniel, a senior foreign policy fellow with the Institute of Strategic and International Studies Malaysia.

“Given the geopolitical realities we face, however, it is a prospect we must plan for. It will require no small amount of grounded planning, deftness in diplomacy and fortitude to uphold our interest.”

As blocking Huawei would have indicated a shift away from Malaysia’s long-held foreign policy principle of neutrality, it instead said it would not rule the Chinese company out of the bidding process for a parallel 5G network to complement its existing infrastructure built by Swedish telecoms giant Ericsson.

Experts warn that snubbing Chinese firms to appease Western governments could carry dire trade consequences for Malaysia, given its deep economic ties with China. Malaysia’s trade with China totalled 450.8 billion ringgit (US$96 billion) last year – accounting for 17.1 per cent of the Southeast Asian nation’s total trade and nearly double its volume with the US, according to Malaysian government data.

China has also invested billions of dollars in Malaysian infrastructure, including high-profile projects under the Belt and Road Initiative such as the 50 billion ringgit (US$10.6 billion) East Coast Rail Link in Peninsular Malaysia that is slated to provide both freight and passenger services once it is up and running in 2027.

More than one-fifth of the country’s imports were shipped from China last year, ranging from electronics to machinery, chemicals and equipment.

These in turn feed Malaysia’s all-important manufacturing sector, which produces more than 85 per cent of the country’s exports.

But some analysts believe Malaysia can extract even more value from its relationship with China and its 1.4 billion-strong population.

“It’s a large economy, and a very open economy. Sure, China’s growth will be affected by [population] fragmentation, but it [the population] will continue to be an economic driver,” said Cassey Lee, coordinator of the regional economic studies programme at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

While Malaysia’s economic performance took a hit from China’s near total shutdown during the pandemic and its slower-than-expected recovery, Lee said the sheer size of China’s domestic market and its political stability would provide long-term payoffs.

“There’s a bit of doom right now because you have business cycles that affect trade volume in both countries … but if you look forward another 50 years, China will continue to be an important trade partner to Malaysia,” he said.

Malaysia has already learned first-hand the risks of over-dependence on Chinese investment.

The near-empty US$100 billion Forest City project in southern Johor state facing Singapore has been a perennial embarrassment for successive Malaysian administrations since its 2016 launch.

It was billed as a flagship belt and road project, but has now become a largely uninhabited eyesore after developer Country Garden suffered a cash crunch on the back of capital controls imposed by China’s government, frightening off buyers.

“A slowdown in China might affect trade in [Southeast Asia], especially in the volume of the region’s exports to the country and the volume of strategic investments by China in the region,” said Collins Chong Yew Keat, an international-affairs analyst with the University of Malaya.

“There needs to be a strategic and careful calculation of the future of the economic transformation of the country and the region, taking into account the geopolitical and economic changes of both the US and China.”

Stalled China-linked construction projects also pepper the landscape of Kuala Lumpur, where hollow superstructures occupy prime locations around Malaysia’s capital with little indication of progress after the promised influx of Chinese consumers never materialised.

Despite the problems, Malaysia continues to pitch for more investments and economic engagement with China. In April last year, Prime Minister Anwar announced that China had committed nearly US$39 billion in fresh investment after his first official visit to Beijing since taking office.

Migration has followed. Malaysia ranks as the sixth most popular destination for Chinese expatriates, according to a survey by property technology firm Juwai IQI. More than 1.5 million Chinese tourists also visited last year, while in 2022 more than 22,000 Chinese students opted to pursue degrees in the country.

During his three-day visit scheduled for June 19-21, Chinese Premier Li is expected to meet with Malaysia’s top leaders, including an audience with the king and meetings with Anwar and the parliament speaker.

But ties between the two Asian nations were not always so cordial.

In the early years of the Cold War, pre-independence Malaysia – like many of its peers across Southeast Asia just starting to rebuild from World War II – grappled with a communist insurgency that received ideological, economic and military support from China’s Communist Party.

The conflict went on for decades, leaving a deep sense of distrust of China and of Malaysia’s ethnic Chinese community, even after the Malayan Communist Party formally surrendered in 1989.

But the insurgency did not stop Malaysia’s second prime minister, Abdul Razak Hussein, from visiting Beijing in 1974 and declaring the start of diplomatic relations alongside China’s then-premier Zhou Enlai.

“Despite the apparent reasons for refrain – our ideological chasm, our seemingly irreconcilable differences – our leaders dared to think beyond convention and took a bold leap of faith. This audacious move has blossomed into a rich and fruitful partnership,” Anwar said on Friday in a statement commemorating 50 years of diplomatic ties.

Malaysia-China ties took on greater substance during Mahathir Mohamad’s first tenure as prime minister, beginning in 1981. His influential “Look East” policy served as a platform to industrialise Malaysia by learning from East Asian economies such as Japan and Taiwan, while also establishing deeper ties with nations including mainland China.

It was during this time that Malaysia extended economic and technical assistance to China, helping get its economy and industries off the ground. A few decades on, the pendulum has decisively swung in the other direction.

“Today, we are asking Chinese entrepreneurs to invest in Malaysia, through various initiatives and programmes like the Belt and Road Initiative,” Senate Deputy President Nur Jazlan Mohamed told parliament on Thursday during a seminar to mark the 50th anniversary of Malaysia-China ties.

“In the past, they did not have skilled contractors. Just 30 years later, they can carry out mega projects in Malaysia and help us reinvigorate our economy.”

Mahathir, an expert in gauging the Malaysian public’s mood, rode a wave of anti-China sentiment to regain power in the 2018 national elections. On the campaign trail, he argued that then-leader Najib Razak – Mahathir’s former protégé and the son of Abdul Razak – had sold the country out to China, pointing to the troubled Forest City project as an example.

In his second stint in office, Mahathir swiftly cancelled a slew of China-funded infrastructure projects and ordered a review of the East Coast Rail Link.

Despite the domestic political aggravation, the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s State of Southeast Asia 2024 report found that fewer than half of the Malaysians surveyed believed China’s economic rise to be worrying – a sharp decline from 61.7 per cent just a year earlier.

The study also found growing acceptance of China’s regional, political and strategic influence among Malaysian respondents at 43.8 per cent, nearly double the 27.3 per cent rate from 2023.

“This has been 50 years of walking hand in hand. High-level exchanges between the two countries have become increasingly frequent, building solid mutual trust and deep friendship,” China’s ambassador to Malaysia, Ouyang Yujing, said in an opinion piece run by national newswire Bernama on Friday.

Malaysia has other problems in its dealings with China, including a long-standing dispute over competing territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Although not as confrontational as the Philippines, Malaysia has complained in the past about Chinese coastguard ships making their presence felt in waters Kuala Lumpur argues fall within its exclusive economic zone.

It has issued diplomatic protest letters, the most recent of which was sent in 2021, and in 2016 unleashed a media blitz to draw attention to a fleet of 100 Chinese fishing trawlers discovered in Malaysia’s exclusive economic zone.

China’s foreign ministry said at the time that it was “fishing season” in the contested waterway.

Malaysia’s decision to dial down its public opposition to Beijing’s South China Sea actions in recent years has been widely seen as a pragmatic approach – more so as Anwar’s administration seeks to bolster the economy after years of atrophy.

“You cannot sharpen the pencil on both ends. So you can only maximise and shout about what you gain, and minimise and keep quiet on what you lose when dealing with a superpower,” said Oh Ei Sun, a senior fellow with the Singapore Institute of International Affairs.

Lee of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute agreed, saying that China’s aggressive moves in the South China Sea do not yet warrant a “black-and-white position” from Malaysia, which still needs the superpower’s trade and investments.

“They [Malaysian authorities] say they have detected some fishing trawlers, or there has been overflight by their [Chinese] planes … but those are not worth losing the billions in trade and investments from China.”

But Malaysia’s pragmatism may not last forever, especially if it intends to explore more of the rich oil and gas deposits in the parts of the South China Sea it claims sovereignty over.

The Southeast Asian nation has managed to extract most of what it considers important from the waterway so far, according to Thomas from the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, even if it had had to deal with “increased harassment” while making sure not to escalate the issue.

Instead, Malaysia has been a strong proponent of non-militarisation in the South China Sea, a position the fellow claimant states in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have echoed as they seek to avoid a naval build-up by China, or the US and its Western allies.

“The challenge, of course, is in whether Malaysia might have reached the limit of its current approach,” Thomas said, adding that “this will largely be determined” by China as it “controls and decides on the facts on the ground”.

But Malaysia may have a few tricks left up its sleeve yet.

Even as successive leaders have emphasised the country’s close ties with China, Malaysia has remained steadfast in its neutral stance amid the ongoing diplomatic tensions between Washington and Beijing.

That neutrality will become increasingly important for Chinese enterprises – as well as any business with interests in the global tech and semiconductor supply chain – as Washington presses ahead with sanctions on China, accusing it of spying and developing technology that threatens US national security.

The global semiconductor industry is projected to be worth US$588 billion by next year, according to big-four accounting firm Deloitte, as silicon chips continue to drive the development of everything from electric vehicles and renewable energy to artificial intelligence and smartphones.

Malaysia already accounts for around 13 per cent of global demand in the semiconductor assembly, packaging and testing sector, according to government data. Its ability to balance the interests of the US and China could help it mitigate disruptions to global supply chains, making it an attractive destination for companies – and their affiliates – from both of the sparring superpowers.

“Malaysia’s ability to stay neutral could make it attractive as a key FDI definition for European and American companies, and even Chinese companies,” ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s Lee said.

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Foreign visitors find barrier to entry at China’s museums, which may translate to losses for tourism industry

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3264932/foreign-visitors-find-barrier-entry-chinas-museums-which-may-translate-losses-tourism-industry?utm_source=rss_feed

The National Museum of China, which houses the richest collection of Chinese cultural relics, has long been a top attraction for domestic and overseas tourists.

But, to the detriment of foreign visitors, they must pre-book by choosing a time slot and registering their information through the museum’s Chinese-language “mini-programme” – an application that functions within the WeChat super app.

This and other similar systems were developed during the Covid-19 pandemic when there were no international tourists in China. The museum’s English website provides a link for bookings, but it is now defunct.

Other popular tourist attractions, such as the Shaanxi History Museum in China’s ancient imperial capital, have similar issues. While its website advises visitors to book their visit through either WeChat or a link to an online ticketing system, the latter leads nowhere.

China’s technological revolution has made life for its own population more convenient than ever before, but that added ease may now be inadvertently skewed towards the domestic population – to the potential disadvantage of foreign tourists – and those issues are showing up in museums.

Most major attractions in China require visitors to make advance appointments through mini-programmes, which means visitors must have a WeChat account and a grasp of how it works, as well as basic Chinese language proficiency, to plan their trip.

As tourism rebounds, global hub Shanghai has taken the lead to better accommodate foreign visitors. While the Shanghai Museum requires online reservations via the super app – with passports and foreign permanent resident identity cards accepted as valid papers – the booking pages on the mini-programme are also available in English.

The neighbouring Museum of Art Pudong offers a semi-bilingual mini-programme that non-Chinese users could navigate with a little guessing. Recently, it has cancelled the prior booking requirement. Similarly, visitors can purchase tickets in person at the Power Station of Art, another landmark building in Huangpu, while its WeChat interface remains Chinese-only.

Many existing prerequisites could be “discouraging” and prove “a significant barrier” for those on a short stay, said William Figueroa, an assistant professor of international relations at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, who visited Beijing recently.

While he was able to tour Tiananmen Square and the Palace Museum, where a select range of Iranian and Saudi Arabian artefacts were on show, Figueroa could not visit the campus at Peking University, where in-demand time slots are released seven days in advance.

“Since [advance booking] is a new regulation, many travellers attempt to make the trip unaware and end up leaving disappointed,” said Figueroa, who did not know he had to snap up tickets to his alma mater the week before visiting. “While WeChat is very convenient if you manage to set it up, it is notoriously difficult for foreigners for a variety of reasons.”

Furthermore, in this highly digitised realm, text messages are the primary login and sign-up mechanism for websites, services, Wi-fi and mobile applications – most of which only work with Chinese phone numbers. For locals, everything is just an authentication code away, while for foreigners it is more difficult.

To get a phone number in China, users must visit a telecoms retail store with valid identification documents, and foreigners must bring their Chinese visa.

However, Figueroa said there were workarounds for most issues, and the Chinese public was largely “aware and sympathetic to the problems foreigners face” in the country. On his trip, he relied on the kindness of locals and the flexibility staff members gave him.

“For at least one site where I was not able to get a booking in time, I simply made an online booking for a later date, went in person early in the morning, and explained my situation – they were happy to move up my reservation,” Figueroa said.

He said it was understandable that China’s tourism industry was prioritising domestic travellers while foreign tourism was yet to rebound to pre-Covid levels.

According to Hong Kong legislator Adrian Pedro Ho King-hong, there are unjustified narratives about China curbing international visitors, when the reality was that its digital infrastructure had not yet caught up to the return of international tourism in the post-pandemic era.

“It’s definitely foolish to think that China does not want foreign visitors – that’s just nonsense. No country in the world does not want visitors, but when [mechanisms] are not as friendly, and comparisons are drawn with other places, I can see why people feel frustrated.”

Ho suggested that tourists give museums feedback following their visit and identify areas for improvement, such as the bilingual capabilities of staff. He noted that translators were often present at large exhibitions.

In addition to daily guided tours, the Shanghai Museum provides audio devices in Chinese, English, French, Japanese, German, Korean, Spanish and Italian that provide a guide to the museum’s permanent collections.

Figueroa said while new exhibits at the Forbidden City had “enough English [information] to be comprehensible to a visitor”, they were often limited to the beginning and end of a display while the in-depth English descriptions of individual objects was lacking.

“I was even discouraged from visiting the new Museum of the Chinese Communist Party by the staff because, as they put it, everything in there is mostly written in Chinese and will not be very interesting to a foreigner,” Figueroa added.

Sharing Figueroa’s concerns, Zoon Ahmed Khan, a Beijing-based researcher at the Centre for China and Globalisation, said many key destinations lacked staff and tour guides who could communicate in English, even though the quality of displays and bilingual signs at museums had improved under Beijing’s direction.

“Language barriers exist everywhere, but a visible desire to address it matters more, especially given fierce regional competition for tourists,” said Khan, adding that if left unaddressed, China’s soft power potential could be curtailed.

“For China, international tourism above all is an opportunity to promote its culture, history, economic progress, as well as the Chinese society’s dynamism and hospitality, and showcase its reality against prejudiced media coverage, particularly from the West.”

Museums are not the only sites with barriers to entry by foreigners. Other conveniences enjoyed by Chinese nationals in top-tier cities may also be unfriendly to non-residents. Since most tickets must be bought with a Chinese identity card, ticket scanners have been largely replaced with smart card readers. Locals need only their ID to move around, but for foreigners there is a manual process.

Khan further argued that overseas visitors unaccustomed to providing a range of personal information for basic activities may be turned off from visiting.

“The custom of gathering detailed information on travellers, which expanded during the pandemic, is likely to trigger discomfort to an extent, especially among Westerners whose standards of privacy protection are different,” said Khan, adding that these perceptions were contrary to Beijing’s objective of promoting China as a relaxing and welcoming destination.

Similarly, while the digitisation of payment methods allowed China to increase the quality, safety standards and accessibility of its services, it could also appear “daunting” to visitors who did not have the time to familiarise themselves with the Chinese way, according to Khan.

“China’s cashless society, while offering advantages for local users, serves equally as a barrier for newcomers. When cash and other international alternatives aren’t accepted by vendors, hotels, restaurants or taxis alike, a short-term traveller will naturally feel frustrated,” she said.

However, China’s top-tier infrastructure and visa-free arrangements with its counterparts remained attractive, Khan added. Addressing the on-the-ground barriers for tourists would deliver geopolitical benefits that “go beyond economic gain”.

Tings Chak, the Beijing-based art director at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, said making domestic tourists a priority allowed hundreds of millions of Chinese to travel across the country and enjoy activities such as museum-hopping for the first time.

“This is coupled with the government’s post-Covid dual circulation policy, to stimulate domestic consumption rather than relying primarily on exports to foreign markets to drive economic growth, and that includes promoting domestic tourism,” Chak said.

Chak, who was born in Hong Kong and raised in Vancouver, said international tourists must be catered to because of their potential to become “informal cultural ambassadors” at home.

“Living in this ‘new cold war’ moment, with increasing disinformation targeting China, it’s important that the negative experiences that tourists may have in China – often for the lack of appropriate or accessible infrastructure – aren’t inadvertently contributing to the anti-China sentiment and climate,” she said.

Chak said that making a positive impression on tourists had “effects that extend beyond the individual”, and authorities should ensure visitors were aware of the ways in which their experiences were being improved.

“The government has some recognition of the barriers that deter people from wanting to come and travel in China. For example, there have been a series of policies regarding visas, including waivers, visa-free transit and eased extension and renewal processes,” Chak said.

Hong Kong’s New People’s Party, which Ho belongs to, has also received complaints from locals about the widening technological gap between the city and the mainland, which runs on cashless payments and an identity verification system that often requires a local phone number and/or locally issued documents.

Ho said mainland authorities were “working really, really hard” to address the concerns of travellers from Hong Kong and overseas.

“China values the experience of foreign visitors, because they know that the perception of a country often comes from individuals’ experience during the time they spend within it, whether it’s for leisure or for work,” Ho said. “They do want to make sure every visitor has a pleasant experience in China.”

Ho said most avid travellers would be able and willing to adapt to China’s system, as they do in other places with unique lifestyles and practices.

“A lot of people were satisfied with their overall experience in China – [in situations] where a cashless system wasn’t as friendly to foreigners, manual service was provided.”

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In war on disinformation, US may be able to work with China, State Department official says

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3264984/war-disinformation-us-may-be-able-work-china-state-department-official-says?utm_source=rss_feed

As the US battles foreign disinformation and manipulation ahead of its November elections, a senior State Department official said on Friday that Washington may have some hope of cooperation with Beijing that is largely unthinkable with Moscow, Pyongyang or Tehran.

Elizabeth Allen, the department’s undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, acknowledged that the prospect for disruption remains huge given the growing sophistication of foreign state-backed disinformation campaigns.

“China is manipulating the information space … they’re using information as a lever of their power,” she told the Council on Foreign Relations.

However, she added, “we find that our relationship with China is one that we have to manage to chart the future of the world in a way that is different and there are necessary opportunities for collaboration”.

A prime example, she said, were the US-China talks held two weeks ago about artificial intelligence.

“As we are on the one hand calling out manipulation where we see it, we also have a relationship in which we are managing it responsibly in terms of shared issues,” she added.

A State Department report in September said that Beijing’s information manipulation includes the use of propaganda, disinformation and censorship.

A report released on Thursday by the tech firm OpenAI – which operates the ChatGPT artificial intelligence service – found that Chinese, Russian, Iranian and Israeli influence operations were using its product in efforts to manipulate the US public. These include China’s Spamouflage operation.

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Allen conceded that the US and many of its democratic allies are struggling to counter the flood of disinformation by foreign actors, but added that they are also cooperating, with some 17 memorandums of understanding signed among the partners in the past year.

One State Department approach has been to analyse and expose disinformation campaigns by China, Russia and others as a disincentive.

Another is to answer disinformation with credible information, as when Washington declassified intelligence shortly before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine – predicting the attack before many in the Russian military knew what was coming.

But that carries a risk, she noted: “We have to be careful about hyping, setting that expectation, that we’re going to be able to do that every time and that we’re not overplaying our hand.”

Amid growing concern about US election interference, turf issues are also a factor. While the State Department can work to counter malign foreign actors overseas, once foreign campaigns gain traction in the US, these become the responsibility of the departments of Justice and Homeland Security.

And even overseas, the Department of Defence conducts its own sizeable disinformation initiatives.

Allen acknowledged that China is a worthy adversary to the US, wielding influence through internet plumbing in Africa and other parts of the world, spreading its 5G network standards and Huawei Technologies hardware.

And it often provides state-owned Xinhua News Service content for free to countries with few alternatives.

But Washington is trying to counter, she said citing efforts in Southeast Asia, a region “extremely contested” between the US and China.

Two years ago, Washington introduced a free news feed to distribute Associated Press and Reuters content, she said, adding that it is also working with Japan and South Korea to offer similar programmes in their respective languages around the region.

And while artificial intelligence systems are worrisome, they may also prove a double-edged sword, Allen said. On the one hand, they threaten to promote disinformation to a different level; on the other, they offer new opportunities.

The State Department, for instance, has developed an in-house platform to translate US policy messages and analyse and track news into far more local languages than it could ever afford with its own staff.

“Once we scale it to every embassy overseas, we are going to save 180,000 working hours next year,” she said. “That’s an enormous opportunity for us. What am I going to do with 180,000 hours in my workforce? A lot of in-person, people to people diplomacy, media relations.

“That actually gives the US competitive advantages over China and Russia. People want to talk to us.”

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China’s noble hydrogen hopes for bike-sharing sector hit pothole as recall leaves outlook inert

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3264915/chinas-noble-hydrogen-hopes-bike-sharing-sector-hit-pothole-recall-leaves-outlook-inert?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s hankering to harness the power of hydrogen has expanded to the bike-sharing industry – with a number of cities offering cyclists easy-to-ride bikes powered by low-emission fuel – but the road has been a bumpy one.

More than a year into a trial run in suburban Shanghai, shared hydrogen-powered bikes were recently recalled amid complaints about various technical failures, according to local users and the bike’s manufacturer, Youon Technology.

Compared with conventional electric bikes that use lithium batteries, those powered by hydrogen fuel cells are meant to offer advantages such as faster recharge times and longer service lives, while also being more environmentally friendly – producing only water during operation.

But the ones that residents have seen rolling through the streets of Lingang since the autumn of 2022 are now being subjected to “certain adjustments”, an online customer service representative for Youon said on Monday.

Lingang, a tech hub in southeast Shanghai, is among a number of areas in China promoting eco-friendly shared bikes amid the country’s efforts to curb pollution while striving to cultivate a low-carbon, tech-driven economy.

Such bikes can also be found in other cities such as Lijiang in Yunnan province, Duanzhou in Guangdong province, and Xiaoyi in Shanxi province, according to local media reports.

About 1,500 hydrogen bikes had been made available in Lingang, according to a report last month in Shanghai-based news outlet The Paper, which cited Youon sources. The company did not reply to the Post’s request for an official comment.

Lingang resident Wang Xu said the bikes disappeared from the streets last weekend after people took to social media to complain.

“I rode this bike three times – the first two times it ran out of power in the middle of my ride. And the third time, I had trouble returning it,” he said.

“You might only need a 10-minute ride, but it could take you 20 minutes to successfully close the order … I had already brought the bike to the designated parking area, but the app insisted I had not [returned it] and continued charging me.”

Accelerating growth in the hydrogen industry was included in China’s government work report this year for the first time, as Beijing seeks to reduce reliance on oil imports amid geopolitical uncertainties and to meet its carbon-emission targets.

The sector is also regarded as a source of new economic growth, following China’s success with electric vehicles, lithium batteries and solar cells.

Besides bikes, most hydrogen-powered vehicles now in commercial use are trucks, as they can traverse farther and are easier to refill than those powered by lithium batteries.

However, “hydrogen vehicles are generally not yet competitive compared with electric vehicles because, despite being a zero‑carbon energy source, hydrogen still has high costs in production, storage, as well as transport”, said Lin Boqiang, head of the China Institute for Studies in Energy Policy at Xiamen University.

Noting that most of the hydrogen in use in China is still made from polluting materials such as natural gas or coal, Lin said the country needs to look for more environmentally friendly ways to produce it.

“It’s a new area that deserves patience,” he said, estimating that a relatively mature market may not manifest for another decade or so.

China aims to bring 50,000 hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles to its roads by 2025, with a number of hydrogen refuelling stations, according to the government’s development plan for hydrogen for the 2021-35 period, issued in 2022.

The plan also aims to produce 100,000 to 200,000 tonnes of green hydrogen using renewable feedstock resources per year, by 2025.

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China sister pretends to be dead sibling, works her job for 14 years before receiving US$55,000 pension

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3263005/china-sister-pretends-be-dead-sibling-works-her-job-14-years-receiving-us55000-pension?utm_source=rss_feed

A woman in China who impersonated her dead older sister to work for many years using her identity in order to pick up her retirement pension has been sanctioned by a mainland court.

The woman was sentenced for pension fraud after working for 14 years to collect a total of nearly 400,000 yuan (US$55,000) in pension payments.

Despite her transgression, however, she has received sympathy on mainland social media.

The woman, surnamed An, from Wuhai in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, northern China, secretly resumed her sister’s work at a local factory following her death in a car accident in 1993.

It is not known if the two women looked alike.

According to Haibowan District People’s Court of Wuhai City, An worked at the factory until her retirement in 2007.

In January 2008, posing as her deceased sister, An processed her retirement and began to receive pension payments, continuing until April 2023.

Over the period, An received a total of 393,676 yuan in pension funds.

Summoned by the police, An confessed to the crime and voluntarily pleaded guilty and repaid the money.

The Haibowan District People’s Court of Wuhai City found An guilty of fraud.

As a result of her confession and restitution, the court finally sentenced her to three years in prison suspended for four years, plus a fine of 25,000 yuan (US$3,500).

However, online reactions have been largely sympathetic.

Many people recognised An worked for 14 years, demonstrated her capability for the job and fulfilled her duties. In addition, the factory’s oversight was largely overlooked.

One online observer said: “Who would work for 14 years just for a pension? She simply took over a job. Working for 14 years proves she was capable of performing it.”

“She didn’t pay less into social security, nor did she work less. Why shouldn’t she receive the pension now that she’s old? She is much more honest than those who hold official positions yet collect a high salary without working,” said another.

A third person said: “The sister impersonated her for over a decade to draw a salary. I don’t think there’s much wrong with that. It used to be acceptable to replace someone at work.”

“Similar situations were quite common in the past. She was just unlucky to get caught, someone probably reported her,” another person said.

Many also referred to the historical “replacement system” in China, a well-known phenomenon from the 1950s to the 1980s, where children replaced their retired or resigned parents in their jobs.

Although this system was phased out in the late 1980s with the shift towards a market economy and the values of fair and competitive employment, it resolved many employment issues at the time.