Mistral点评

• Ukraine war: US warns China to halt exports that support Russia or face ‘further steps’
• US accuses Chinese ‘underground bankers’ of laundering $50m in cartel drug money
• Ecuador suspends visa waiver for Chinese citizens, citing irregular migration
• China warns US over congressional delegation’s trip to meet with the Dalai Lama
• Chinese ‘underground bankers’ launder Sinaloa cartel drug money, US says
• Former NDRC official calls for improved dialogue between China and the West
• UK woman, Christine Lee, labelled Chinese spy by MI5, says she was ‘political football’
• China’s property crisis sees homeowners scramble to pay off mortgages at record pace
• Intel’s China arm acquires minority stake in telecoms subsidiary of Apple supplier Luxshare
• Will China’s historic paper on lunar far side samples be in English or Chinese?
• Amid Philippine anger over US anti-vax report, possible fallout could benefit China: analysts
• How the UAE is leveraging ties with China for its own security needs
• China’s economic woes demand renewal of pro-market reforms, prominent scholar says
• Zhang Lei, China parkour expert, Donnie Yen stunt double dead at 39 from heart attack
• South China Sea: Philippines sailor suffers ‘serious injury’ from China coastguard ‘ramming’
• From Alibaba to BYD, Chinese sponsors jostle for attention at Euro 2024 football tournament
• Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing says it has no timetable for Hong Kong IPO
• Australia’s Albanese concerned over ‘ham-fisted’ China diplomats incident with journalist
• Xinjiang’s 400ha desert wheat harvest is a milestone in China’s push for food security
• Japan wary of new conflict ‘flashpoints’ in East China Sea over coastguard law: analysts
• ‘Urban drifters’: China’s jobless roam city streets during working week to hide plight from families
• China’s top spy agency calls trial of Hong Kong 47 a ‘pivotal test’ of rule of law
• US renews warning it’s obligated to defend the Philippines after its new clash with China at sea
• Global aviation giants hope Beijing business is unscathed by China-EU trade rows
• China targets Europe’s farmers, and not its automakers, in response to EU tariffs on electric cars
• China traffic trickster stages rush hour ‘crashes for cash’, caught by previous victim
• Taiwan military drones unlikely to hasten US ‘hellscape’ against mainland Chinese attack
• Bridgewater founder’s stock tip: diversify to avoid getting caught in US-China rivalry
• China’s Realme apologises after armed robbery of flagship smartphones shipment
• China seen easing coal mining curbs as it prioritises growth, energy security: Goldman
• South Korea sees 470% more Chinese visitors, as Thai tourists stay away
• China’s south bears brunt of rains with at least 9 dead and hundreds homeless
• China’s next-gen sexbots powered by AI are about to hit the shelves
• Ex-Trump adviser urges him to cut economic ties with China, restart nuclear tests
• The US wants to decouple its military supplies from China – but can it?
• Date my cat: China youth host matchmaking events for pets to relieve stress, pressure to get married

Ukraine war: US warns China to halt exports that support Russia or face ‘further steps’

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3267146/us-signals-further-steps-loom-halt-chinese-exports-support-russia-ukraine-war?utm_source=rss_feed

US President Joe Biden’s administration on Tuesday signalled it may take further steps aimed at halting Chinese exports to Russia that support Moscow’s war efforts against Ukraine.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken “made clear” during his meetings in April with senior PRC senior officials that “ensuring transatlantic security is a core US interest”, an official in Blinken’s department told reporters.

“If China does not curtail its support for Russia’s defence industrial base, the United States is prepared to take further steps,” the official said.

“PRC companies are providing Russia with significant quantities of machine tools, microelectronics, optics, UAV and cruise-missile technology, and nitrocellulose, which Russia uses to make propellant for weapons.

“These materials are filling critical gaps in Russia’s defence industrial base, which had otherwise suffered significant setbacks due to our sanctions and export controls.”

The provision of nitrocellulose has come up repeatedly in discussions among Washington policymakers about what constitutes the provision of lethal aid to Russia.

In a US Senate Armed Services committee hearing last month, Republican senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas suggested to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines that China had already overstepped a “red line” Biden had set when he warned Beijing not to supply Russia with lethal weapons.

In response, Haines said: “There was a lot of focus on China not providing lethal support and what they have done is to try to avoid what is characterised as lethal support – in other words, a fully constructed gun or weapon system.”

“But what has happened in the meantime is they provided effectively dual-use materials such as nitrocellulose, [and] a whole series of critically important long poles in the tent for Russia’s reconstitution of the defence industry.”

The US Treasury Department last month announced sanctions on 20 Hong Kong and mainland Chinese companies for their alleged roles in the development of Russia’s industrial base and military.

Dozens of other businesses and individuals based in Russia, Turkey and elsewhere were also targeted.

Treasury Department followed up with additional sanctions largely trained on entities in Hong Kong and mainland China to curb the flow of goods that support the ability of Russia’s defence industry to continue the war it has waged since February 2022.

Biden has also been pushing allies in the Group of 7 to do the same.

In a meeting last week on countering Chinese industrial overcapacity, “unfair” state subsidies and state-led dominance of strategic industries, the G7 vowed to take action together against Chinese financial institutions boosting Russia’s wartime economy.

Discussions over similar action by Nato are likely to dominate a meeting of the security alliance, scheduled for next month in Washington.

At a joint press conference with Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday, Blinken said: “We’re looking at countries that are supporting Russia’s defence industrial base, which is allowing Russia to continue the war, including China’s”.

“President Biden has made clear that we have a real concern, not with weapons being supplied by China to Russia,” Blinken added. “That’s not what they’re doing.”

“But what they are doing … is providing critical support to Russia’s defence industrial base.”

Washington’s top diplomat said 70 per cent of the machine tools and 90 per cent of the microelectronics imported by Russia now are coming via China.

“That has enabled Russia to keep their defence industrial base going to keep the war machine going to keep the war going,” Blinken said. “So that has to stop.”

Last year, Russia surpassed Australia and Germany to become mainland China’s sixth-largest trading partner by individual countries and regions – after the United States, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan – in 2023, Chinese customs data showed.

The bilateral trade has surged in spite of blanket Western sanctions leveraged on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, further anchoring the “no-limits” partnership between Beijing and Moscow.

US accuses Chinese ‘underground bankers’ of laundering $50m in cartel drug money

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/18/us-mexico-sinaloa-china-drugs-money

The US Justice Department has accused Chinese “underground bankers” of helping Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel launder more than $50m in drug trafficking proceeds.

An indictment unsealed in California charged 24 defendants with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and methamphetamine and money laundering offenses.

Drug Enforcement Administration chief Anne Milgram said a years-long investigation dubbed “Operation Fortune Runner” had “uncovered a partnership between Sinaloa cartel associates and a Chinese criminal syndicate operating in Los Angeles and China to launder drug money”.

The justice department said the Chinese “underground bankers” had helped the cartel transfer drug profits from the United States to Mexico.

Chinese nationals are barred by that country’s laws from moving more than $50,000 a year out of China, it said, and some individuals seeking to move more than that seek “informal alternatives” to move funds.

“Drug traffickers increasingly have partnered with Chinese underground money exchanges to take advantage of the large demand for US dollars from Chinese nationals,” it said.

The DoJ said 20 of the 24 defendants named in the indictment are to appear in court in Los Angeles in the coming weeks.

Homeland Security adviser Liz Sherwood Randall said China and Mexico had each arrested one individual in connection with the case.

Randall said China’s actions “build on the commitment made between President Biden and President Xi at the Woodside summit in November 2023 to resume bilateral cooperation to combat global illicit drug manufacturing and trafficking”.

The DoJ said $5m in narcotics proceeds had been seized during the investigation, along with 302lbs (137kg) of cocaine, 92lbs of methamphetamine and 3,000 ecstasy pills.

Ecuador suspends visa waiver for Chinese citizens, citing irregular migration

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/americas/article/3267138/ecuador-suspends-visa-waiver-chinese-citizens-citing-irregular-migration?utm_source=rss_feed

Ecuador on Tuesday announced the suspension of an agreement with China that had waived visas for Chinese citizens travelling to the South American country, citing a “worrying” increase in irregular migration.

Ecuador’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the suspension of the bilateral agreement is temporary and it will start on July 1.

It added that the measure was taken after authorities saw that around 50 per cent of Chinese nationals entering Ecuador didn’t leave the country “through regular routes” nor within the permitted 90 days they were allowed to stay under the waiver agreement.

This measure would mean reinstating visas for Chinese citizens, but the Foreign Ministry did not provide any details.

Since 2023, people from China are among the top nationalities of migrants reaching the United States.

Ecuador, the only mainland country in the Americas that offered visa-free entry to Chinese nationals, has become a popular starting point for Chinese migrants who would trek northward through Central America before entering the US.

The Washington-based think tank Niskanen Centre, citing official data from the Ecuadorian government, said that Chinese nationals entered Ecuador 48,381 times in 2023 but only left 24,240 times. The difference of 24,141 was the highest of any nationality, according to Niskanen.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said at a daily briefing on Tuesday that Beijing “firmly opposes all forms of human smuggling” and that the country’s law enforcement has been “tough on all kinds of human smuggling groups and individuals engaged in illegal immigration”.

China also has been working with other countries to “jointly tackle human smuggling activities, repatriate illegal immigrants and maintain a good order in cross-border travel”, Lin said.

Lin said the mutual visa exemption agreement between China and Ecuador first came into effect in 2016.

As bilateral relations are stabilising, Beijing has resumed cooperation with Washington to repatriate Chinese nationals who are in the US illegally.

The number of Chinese immigrants entering the United States rose drastically last year, when US border officials arrested more than 37,000 Chinese nationals on the southern border, 10 times the number during the previous year.

The monthly tally fell in the first three months of this year, but it rose to 3,282 arrests in April. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican US presidential candidate, has suggested that the Chinese migrants, mostly men, could be building an army on American soil.

The Chinese migrants and their advocates have rejected Trump’s claims, saying they have left China for better economic prospects and a freer society after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

China warns US over congressional delegation’s trip to meet with the Dalai Lama

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3267142/china-warns-us-over-congressional-delegations-trip-meet-dalai-lama?utm_source=rss_feed

After a US congressional delegation arrived in Dharamshala, India, on Tuesday to meet with the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama, Beijing issued a stern warning vowing “resolute measures” if Washington fails to honour its commitment to recognise Tibet as part of China.

“It’s known by all that the 14th Dalai Lama is not a pure religious figure, but a political exile engaged in anti-China separatist activities under the cloak of religion,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.

He called on Washington “to fully recognise the anti-China separatist nature of the Dalai group, honour the commitments the US has made to China” on issues related to “Xizang” – the Chinese name for Tibet.

China urged the US to “have no contact with the Dalai group in any form, and stop sending the wrong signal to the world”, Lin added.

Specifically, Lin warned US President Joe Biden not to support recently passed congressional legislation – the Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Dispute Act – that challenges China’s claim of control over Tibet.

“The US must not sign the bill into law,” Lin said. “China will take resolute measures to firmly defend its sovereignty, security and development interests.”

The bipartisan delegation, which includes Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, and Representative Michael McCaul, the Texas Republican who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, plans to meet with the exiled spiritual leader on Wednesday.

And in a move that could complicate Biden’s recent attempts to stabilise ties with China, Pelosi – whose 2022 visit as speaker to Taiwan prompted Beijing to suspend all cooperation with Washington for months – addressed the Tibetan parliament in exile on Tuesday.

Though a video of Pelosi inside the building circulated on Indian news channels, it was not known what she said in her speech.

Additionally, in what Beijing might regard as a further provocation, during the delegation’s meeting with the Dalai Lama on Wednesday, it plans to discuss the China-Tibet legislation.

“We are very excited to see His Holiness tomorrow to talk about many things, including the bill we passed out of Congress, which basically says that the United States stands with the people of Tibet,” McCaul said upon the group’s arrival.

Asked whether Biden would sign the bill, McCaul asserted, “yes, he will”.

The 88-year-old Dalai Lama is scheduled to travel to the US on Thursday to undergo medical treatment for his knees.

Beijing maintains that Tibet has been under central Chinese governance for more than 700 years, though Tibetan advocates argue there were periods of effective self-rule. The Dalai Lama has stated that he does not advocate for political independence for Tibet but has not endorsed Beijing’s historical claims.

China also accuses the Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959, of instigating unrest in Tibet since the late 1980s. Formal dialogue between the two sides has not occurred since 2010.

The US State Department considers the autonomous region and other Tibetan areas as part of China, and no sitting US president has met with the Dalai Lama since Barack Obama did in 2016, though there have been regular visits by US officials and former presidents.

India, which has hosted the spiritual leader and his followers for decades, recognised Tibet as part of China in 2003. But since a deadly border clash in 2020 killed at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers in the contentious Kashmir region, New Delhi has abandoned its deference to Chinese sensibilities over the issue.

The US delegation’s trek to Dharamshala coincides with a trip by US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell to New Delhi, where Sullivan met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi while Campbell spoke with other officials.

According to Harsh Pant, an international relations professor at King’s College London, the delegation’s meeting with the Dalai Lama will add another layer of complexity and tension to fraying US-China relations.

“It signals that there is bottom-up pressure on the Biden administration – that is trying to stabilise relationship with China – to relook at the question of Tibet,” Pant said.

Pant said that the relationship would remain “tumultuous going forward” because the wider political establishment in the US remains focused on elevating issues like Tibet and Taiwan “which perhaps in the past would have been considered not so important in the larger scheme of things”.

“I think China is going to be more focused on this sudden interest and sudden attempt by the US in reopening this question” of Tibet, Pant added.

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Chinese ‘underground bankers’ launder Sinaloa cartel drug money, US says

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3267145/chinese-underground-bankers-launder-sinaloa-cartel-drug-money-us-says?utm_source=rss_feed

The US Justice Department on Tuesday accused Chinese “underground bankers” of helping Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel launder more than US$50 million in drug trafficking proceeds.

An indictment unsealed in California charged 24 defendants with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and methamphetamine and money laundering offences.

Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) chief Anne Milgram said a multi-year investigation dubbed “Operation Fortune Runner” had “uncovered a partnership between Sinaloa Cartel associates and a Chinese criminal syndicate operating in Los Angeles and China to launder drug money”.

The Justice Department said the Chinese “underground bankers” had helped the cartel transfer drug profits from the United States to Mexico.

Chinese nationals are barred by that country’s laws from moving more than US$50,000 a year out of China, it said, and some individuals seeking to move more than that seek “informal alternatives” to move funds.

“Drug traffickers increasingly have partnered with Chinese underground money exchanges to take advantage of the large demand for US dollars from Chinese nationals,” it said.

The Justice Department said 20 of the 24 defendants named in the indictment are to appear in court in Los Angeles in the coming weeks.

Homeland Security Adviser Liz Sherwood Randall said China and Mexico had each arrested one individual in connection with the case.

Randall said China’s actions “build on the commitment made between [US] President [Joe] Biden and President Xi [Jinping] at the Woodside Summit in November 2023 to resume bilateral cooperation to combat global illicit drug manufacturing and trafficking”.

The Justice Department said US$5 million in narcotics proceeds had been seized during the investigation, along with 137kg (302 pounds) of cocaine, 42kg (92 pounds) of methamphetamine and 3,000 Ecstasy pills.

Former NDRC official calls for improved dialogue between China and the West

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3267080/former-ndrc-official-calls-improved-dialogue-between-china-and-west?utm_source=rss_feed

Beijing needs to engage with the West on the question of overcapacity in the new-energy sector and should not rush to impose countermeasures as a substitute for dialogue, a prominent former official has suggested while also recommending cooperation between Beijing and Washington in the green economy despite ongoing frictions.

Xu Lin, formerly in charge of fiscal and financial affairs at the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), told the Post earlier this month that a level of excess capacity in China’s new-energy sector is a “natural result” of competition, and that the country need not rush to retaliate against restrictive measures imposed by the West.

“On the contrary, even as Washington ramps up actions with 100 per cent tariffs, I don’t think Beijing should respond with its own punitive duties,” he said. “It still needs candid dialogue with the West.”

While admitting that overcapacity has become endemic in China’s sprawling new-energy sector, Xu argued that China is not “deliberately” exporting overcapacity. Instead, he said, some certain level of excessive output emerged in serving the international market and is a natural result of competition amid market dynamism.

“Production capacity formation is driven by both domestic and international markets. It is not that there is excess capacity first and then China seeks to export it,” said the 64-year-old Xu, now chairman of the China-US Green Fund.

He stressed that this is not the first time the West has accused China of exporting excessive capacity. And the ultimate reason behind the recent accusations, in his view, is that Chinese products – ranging from wind and solar power equipment, to energy storage batteries and EVs – are competitive enough in terms of quality, innovation and price.

“In response [to competition pressure], the US simply described the reasons as overcapacity and government subsidies,” Xu said. “They really need such a narrative.”

Xu’s comments came before Beijing employed the same narrative on Monday when announcing an anti-dumping investigation into European pork and levelling accusations of overcapacity and government subsidies.

That action followed a European Union decision last week to impose tariffs on Chinese carmakers from July 4, following a seven-month probe. Xu declined to comment on the EU’s latest move.

In May, Washington also hiked tariffs on Chinese EVs from 25 per cent to 100 per cent after raising concerns about China’s overcapacity and alleged national security risks posed by Chinese EVs. This action came even though few Chinese EV makers directly export to the US, with many flocking instead to Europe and Southeast Asia in their overseas forays.

“If the West blocks China’s exports through high tariffs, it is likely to accelerate the process of clearing up overcapacity in China and could put existential pressure on some inefficient, uncompetitive producers,” Xu said.

“This will be a process of survival of the fittest, which will ultimately benefit China’s new-energy technology innovation and further cost reductions,” he added.

Xu, who was also at the helm of the NDRC’s planning department for years and took part in drafting five-year plans for industry development, including for EVs, offered his take on the role of local subsidies.

Xu said local-level Chinese governments are in head-to-head competition to attract innovative companies with strong commercial prospects, and doing so involves subsidy payments. But this practice can lead to capacity expansions and even overcapacity to some extent, he explained, resulting in some firms being forced to close up shop, thereby wasting public resources.

He argued that it could be difficult to convince local officials to abandon this practice when Western governments are also doling out subsidies for semiconductors, artificial intelligence and new energy. “This seems to be setting an international example for local governments in China,” he said, warning that local cadres must recognise the huge cost of continuing the subsidy race.

Xu said Beijing needs to draw a red line to restrain cadres, thereby avoiding excessive competition and more international trade disputes. Leading firms, he also added, should be encouraged to acquire existing manufacturers rather than opting to expand by adding new capacity.

He also lent his voice to the call for Chinese companies to not only export more, but to shift more production to Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the US to defuse supply-chain security concerns and contribute to local economies and employment.

Beijing should also rev up the construction of wind and solar farms and energy-storage facilities to help “digest” excess capacity at home, he said, while accelerating renewable-energy substitutions and the transformation towards carbon neutrality.

On green-energy cooperation between China and the US, Xu highlighted abundant opportunities, including making urban buildings more energy-efficient, more collaboration in trade, investment, scientific research and standard-setting in low-carbon technologies and products, as well as helping the world’s least-developed countries decarbonate with financial and technical assistance.

“Chinese companies should not be the only players out there in the new-energy sector. There should be sufficient competition among companies from various countries,” said Xu, adding that this will foster greater innovation and reduce costs amid the global effort to fight climate change.

“The [US and China] share the potential for a stable institutional framework for the green sector, but now this cooperation is very much influenced by US domestic politics, hindering progress,” he lamented.

UK woman, Christine Lee, labelled Chinese spy by MI5, says she was ‘political football’

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3267130/uk-woman-christine-lee-labelled-chinese-spy-mi5-says-she-was-political-football?utm_source=rss_feed

A woman publicly branded a Chinese spy and a threat to the nation’s security by Britain’s intelligence agency MI5 says the “politically-motivated” decision had destroyed her life and left her a prisoner in her own home. In January 2022, the domestic spy agency MI5 sent out an alert notice (IA) about lawyer Christine Lee, alleging she was “involved in political interference activities” in the United Kingdom on behalf of China’s ruling Communist Party.

The unprecedented warning, circulated to lawmakers, said Lee had “facilitated financial donations to serving and aspiring parliamentarians on behalf of foreign nationals based in Hong Kong and China”.

Lee, along with her son, is now suing the spy agency, arguing it had acted unlawfully. Since the alert was issued she has not spoken publicly, but in a witness statement submitted to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in London, she said it had ruined her reputation and career.

“In short, I can summarise the issuance of the notice by the Respondent has totally destroyed my life, my family’s lives, my business and my business colleague’s lives,” she said.

Amid a deterioration in relations in recent years, British security chiefs have regularly warned of the threat posed by China, while both London and Beijing have traded spying accusations, with Lee’s case one of the most high-profile.

Two Britons, including a former researcher for a prominent British lawmaker, face trial next year on charges of spying for China, while Beijing in June accused a married couple of being British spies.

In her statement, Lee, a British citizen who moved to Britain from Hong Kong in the early 1960s, says she was given no advance warning or details about the allegations against her. She said she had been used as a “political football” to divert attention from the woes of then Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

“I maintain my claim that the IA was only issued against me as a political diversionary tool,” she said.

She said her work involved close dealings with both British parliamentarians and Chinese officials, and had included a private meeting with former British prime minister Theresa May in 2019.

MI5 said the alert about Lee been issued on the grounds of national security to protect parliamentary democracy from foreign interference, and had been the most effective means of addressing the risk.

“We dispute and deny that there was any [political] interference,” the agency’s lawyer Victoria Wakefield told the tribunal.

Lee left the public gallery in tears on Tuesday, the second day of the hearing, which has mostly focused on whether MI5 had the authority to issue the alert notice and if it had breached her human rights. The tribunal said it would give its judgment at a later date.

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China’s property crisis sees homeowners scramble to pay off mortgages at record pace

https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/3267105/chinas-property-crisis-sees-homeowners-scramble-pay-mortgages-record-pace?utm_source=rss_feed

Celine Jiang, a university teacher in Guangzhou, is trying to sell her two-bedroom flat as quickly as possible to pay off the loan for a bigger unit she purchased at the end of 2022 for 12 million yuan (US$1.65 million).

“Like most ordinary Chinese people, I used to think housing prices and the economy would always go up. But now, the housing market has taken a sharp turn, and prices are continuing to fall,” Jiang said. “For me, the mortgage interest rate is too high, and I don’t have better investment options, so why not pay back the mortgage?”

For many households, investment expectations and risk assessments have drastically changed over the past two years. And with increasingly sluggish returns on various investments, many Chinese families are looking to repay their loans earlier.

Jiang hopes to sell her small flat for about 5 million yuan and use all of the proceeds to pay off the bigger house, which is now worth only about 9 million yuan.

“We bought this large apartment with plans to have a second child and live with my parents,” Jiang said. “Now … maybe the financial pressure is affecting our mood, and the child has not been conceived, yet.”

A research note from Guotai Junan Securities on June 6 said that the nation’s early-repayment rate of mortgages hit a historic high of 37 per cent in April, reflecting residents’ rising interest in freeing themselves of the financial burden faster than they had planned.

Meanwhile, China’s medium- and long-term new yuan loans among households, comprising mostly mortgages, totalled 51.4 billion yuan in May, or 117 billion yuan less than the same period a year prior, according to another research note from Guotai Junan Securities on Tuesday.

The early-repayment rate and falling new-mortgage-loan data reflect the trend of China’s household deleveraging, despite recent government efforts to stimulate housing demand and absorb inventories.

Gary Ng, senior economist at Natixis Corporate and Investment Bank, said that the impact of Beijing’s latest support measures remains to be seen as China’s homeowners might have turned to safer investments such as bank deposits and government bonds.

“The measures can help channel financing to property developers, but we will need to see if it leads to significant growth in new property sales,” Ng said.

Stella Fu, a human resources manager in Guangzhou, managed to repay her remaining mortgage loan of 400,000 yuan two months ago by selling stocks and other financial products, and by borrowing money from her in-laws. Now her family’s monthly mortgage payment has dropped from more than 7,000 yuan to less than 4,000 yuan.

“This choice was intuitive and required no hesitation,” Fu said. “My commercial loan’s annual interest rate is close to 5 per cent, while my family’s investment return rate dropped from nearly double digits a few years ago to less than 2.3 per cent last year, including wealth-management products, funds, and stocks.”

Michelle Lam, Greater China economist at Societe Generale, expects the deleveraging trend in the household sector to continue, as the property market has yet to bottom out.

“The pickup in total social financing in May was primarily due to government bond issuance, while credit growth to households, by our calculations, slowed to 4.4 per cent from 4.8 per cent in April,” Lam said. “The reason is the weak housing market and consumer sentiment, which have also prompted households to pay pack mortgage loans early.”

Annual growth of outstanding total social financing (TSF), a broad measure of credit and liquidity in the economy, picked up slightly to 8.4 per cent in May from a record low of 8.3 per cent in April, according to data from the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) released on Friday.

But credit demand from households and companies remained weak in China, PBOC data also showed. The growth rate of the M1 money supply, which covers cash and deposits used for immediate transactions, and the M2 supply, which includes more savings deposits, fell to record lows in May.

“The possibility of a drop in existing mortgage interest rates is very slim, so there are clients recently applying for early repayment,” said a customer service manager from a Guangzhou branch of the Agricultural Bank of China. “Currently, the application process takes about one to two months.”

On Monday, China’s central bank kept the rate on one-year policy loans – the so-called medium-term lending facility – steady at 2.5 per cent, in line with expectations that the PBOC is prioritising the steadying of the yuan exchange rate as the currency has come under depreciation pressure from a strengthening US dollar.

With China facing “lacklustre demand”, Lam at Societe Generale said: “What the PBOC can do is probably cut rates further, but they may not be willing to do it quickly given the focus on foreign exchange stability. It’s even more important for policymakers to stabilise the property market to shore up confidence.”

Last month, the Chinese government announced a new suite of policies to restore the property market, including lowering the minimum down-payment ratio for first-time homebuyers to 15 per cent, and to 25 per cent for residents’ second home purchases.

Other measures include setting a 300 billion yuan relending pool, and allowing local governments and state-owned enterprises to buy unsold land and housing from distressed developers.

On Monday, government data showed that new home prices in China extended a decline in May, falling by the most in nearly 10 years as the government’s rescue package has yet to make an impact.

Meanwhile, some families have said that even though they want to pay off their mortgages early, they simply do not have the money to do so.

“I already made some early repayments at the beginning of last year, at a minimum of 50,000 yuan each time,” said Zhang Jing, a Shenzhen-based exporting trader. “But the problem is that I haven’t had any surplus money to do it again. It has become increasingly difficult to scrape together enough money to make the monthly payment each month.”

Intel’s China arm acquires minority stake in telecoms subsidiary of Apple supplier Luxshare

https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3267114/intels-china-arm-acquires-minority-stake-telecoms-subsidiary-apple-supplier-luxshare?utm_source=rss_feed

Intel’s China arm has acquired a minority stake in the telecommunications subsidiary of Apple supplier Luxshare Precision Industry, according to business registry records, as the US semiconductor giant looks to navigate the geopolitical tensions between the world’s two biggest economies.

Dongguan Luxshare Technology, a manufacturer of 5G-related products for data communications and wireless networks, has added Intel’s China arm as one its shareholders with a 3 per cent stake, according to information published on Monday by Chinese corporate database Qichacha.

Shenzhen-based Luxshare Precision, also known as Luxshare-ICT, has a nearly 90 per cent shareholding in its telecoms subsidiary. Electronics contract manufacturer Luxshare Precision makes a range of Apple products, including iPhones, AirPods, the Apple Watch and mixed-reality headset Vision Pro.

Intel and Luxshare Precision did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

Intel’s latest investment on the mainland, where the US firm set up its Shanghai-based subsidiary in 1985, reflects the company’s efforts in driving the buildout of sophisticated data centres used for the development of artificial intelligence systems.

Intel recently unveiled its new Xeon 6 data-centre processors at Taiwan’s Computex trade show, months after launching its Gaudi 3 chips for enterprise generative AI projects.

US tech sanctions, however, have led Intel to develop modified versions of its Gaudi accelerators, releasing the China-specific HL-328 and HL-388 chips with reduced capabilities to comply with Washington’s export restrictions.

While China accounted for 27 per cent of its total revenue in 2023, Intel in May warned that its second-quarter revenue is expected to fall below the midpoint of previously guided range of US$12.5 billion to US$13.5 billion because of a new US ban on chip exports to Huawei Technologies. The US government in May revoked certain licences that allow Huawei to buy chips from Intel and Qualcomm.

Established in 2017, Dongguan Luxshare counts Chinese tech giants Huawei and Lenovo Group as major clients, according to its website.

Telecoms products and components accounted for 6 per cent of Luxshare Precision’s total revenue in 2023, which was up 13 per cent from the previous year, according to the firm’s annual report

Shares of Luxshare Precision in Shenzhen closed 2.68 per cent higher to 37.99 yuan (US$5.23) on Tuesday.

Will China’s historic paper on lunar far side samples be in English or Chinese?

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3267042/will-chinas-historic-paper-lunar-far-side-samples-be-english-or-chinese?utm_source=rss_feed

With China’s Chang’e-6 mission on its homeward journey, carrying the first samples to be retrieved from the moon’s far side, the scientific community’s dream of discovering what secrets they hold is about to become a reality.

But in what language, and where, will the historic findings be written and published after the samples – scooped from the northeastern part of the moon’s South Pole-Aitken basin on June 2 and expected to weigh up to 2kg (4.4lbs) – are analysed?

Within China’s scientific community, there persists a notion that publishing in English is not only a medium of communication, but also a bridge to global recognition. The use of Chinese remains taboo, a silent sacrifice at the altar of international acceptance.

Chinese scientists customarily pen their research findings in English, sharing them with the wider world through esteemed journals like Science magazine in the US or the journal Nature in Britain.

When China’s Chang’e-5 mission in 2020 retrieved the first lunar samples in decades from the moon’s near side, the first research was carried out by a joint team of Chinese and Western scientists and appeared in Science magazine in October 2021.

This was followed by three more scientific papers published by Nature in the same month, according to an editor with the Science China Press, a scientific journal publishing company of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), recalling the global sensation.

The rocks collected in 2020 led to a number of surprising discoveries, as they turned out to be much younger than the samples brought back by the US Apollo and Soviet Luna missions in the 1960s and 1970s.

“We certainly hope that some of our country’s groundbreaking scientific and technological achievements can appear in China’s top journals, so that we can expand our influence,” said the editor, who asked not to be named.

It was not always so. Tu Youyou, who won China’s first Nobel Prize for science in 2015, published her paper on the discovery of artemisinin in the Chinese Science Bulletin in 1977.

The journal, co-sponsored by CAS and the National Natural Science Foundation of China, once published many major discoveries but since the 1990s has suffered from a lack of quality manuscripts.

Speaking at a conference in 2018, George Gao Fu – a leading scientist in the field of virology and immunology and former head of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – said Chinese as a language of academic communication “used to be glorious”.

Breakthroughs, including Tu’s achievement and the discovery of high-temperature iron-based superconducting materials, had been published first in Chinese-language journals and then recognised by the world, he said.

However, for three decades China’s important scientific research results were “basically first reported by foreign journals”, Gao noted.

Interestingly, just a few years later, Gao led a landmark study by a Chinese CDC team on the epidemiology of Covid-19 that was first published in January 2020 by the New England Journal of Medicine.

The move caused controversy in China, where the public was eager for any information about the new coronavirus that causes Covid-19 as the country grappled with the early stages of the pandemic.

The response to the overseas publication of the study reflected a broader, uncomfortable dilemma for Chinese researchers: while they recognise the importance or necessity of writing in their native language, it is difficult on a practical level.

Newton’s Principia Mathematica was written in Latin. Einstein’s first influential papers were written in German. Marie Curie’s work was published in French.

Yet, since the middle of the last century, there has been a shift in the global scientific community, with most scientific research now published in a single language – English, which is spoken by only about 18 per cent of the world’s population.

While it is estimated that up to 98 per cent of global scientific research is published in English, the number of papers by Chinese scholars has been climbing.

As early as 2010, Chinese biologist Zhu Zuoyan, a CAS academician, observed that the number of papers published by scholars from China had risen from 0.2 per cent of the world’s total to 10 per cent within a decade, second only to the United States.

But China’s academic evaluation system encourages the flow of excellent papers to foreign journals, which had partly led to the country’s lack of international academic impact, despite having the second largest number of academic journals – more than 4,800 – in the world, he said.

In late 2019, Li Zhimin, former director of the Ministry of Education’s Science and Technology Development Centre, called for papers to be published in the country’s official language if the research is funded by the government.

The requirement would make it easier for funders to review research projects, facilitate exchanges with their domestic counterparts and improve the nation’s scientific literacy, he said.

A CAS physicist, who declined to be named, stressed that the proposal to “write research results on the soil of the motherland” could not simply be understood as submitting and publishing articles in domestic journals and in Chinese.

That would be “parochial”, he said. Rather, the key is to focus research on solving crucial issues or problems in China’s development, rather than blindly following global research hotspots and wasting research funds and resources.

But at an individual level, there are plenty of pragmatic reasons and incentives for researchers to do just that. Under China’s evaluation system, getting articles published in prestigious English-language journals often brings rewards.

In addition to promotion opportunities and academic honours, there is also fame, with overseas scientific recognition tending to attract wide media and public attention.

Last month, for example, biologist Zhu Jiapeng earned a prize from Nanjing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine for his “outstanding contribution” and a grant of 1 million yuan (US$138,000) as one of the lead authors in a study published by Nature.

Astronomer Deng Licai, with the National Astronomical Observatories under CAS, believes that research results from national missions such as the Chang’e programme should be prioritised for publication in domestic journals.

Deng, who has been a team leader on China’s giant telescope project since its development in the 1990s and 2000s, said he insisted that the first batch of studies to emerge from the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fibre Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) appeared in domestic journals.

“This can firstly highlight the nationality of these independent and cutting-edge major scientific projects, and also help to enhance the international impact of domestic academic journals,” he said.

But English has become the international scientific community’s lingua franca and should be used as a medium of communication, Deng said, adding that it had nothing to do with politics.

According to Deng, the scientists who study the Chang’e-6 lunar samples could consider publishing in some of China’s English-language journals, such as Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics (RAA).

“All of our pre-research articles on the LAMOST programme published in RAA have made it into international lists of highly cited articles,” he said.

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher Zhu Rui, who prefers to publish in Chinese journals – partly because the academy encourages it – said that using his own language when writing academic papers is not an obstacle, as long as the scientific community maintains substantive communication.

Amid Philippine anger over US anti-vax report, possible fallout could benefit China: analysts

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3267123/amid-philippine-anger-over-us-anti-vax-report-possible-fallout-could-benefit-china-analysts?utm_source=rss_feed

A controversial report about an alleged campaign by the US military to discredit the effectiveness of China’s Sinovac vaccine in the Philippines at the height of Covid-19 has led to condemnations and demands for an investigation by Filipino government officials.

Analysts say the report could seriously damage Filipinos’ trust in the United States, which would benefit Beijing in the midst of its intense geopolitical rivalry with Washington over influence in the region.

In the wake of the report, which was published on Friday, a number of Philippine government officials have called for an inquiry into the alleged US disinformation campaign.

“The findings by Reuters deserve to be investigated and heard by the appropriate authorities of the involved countries,” Albert Domingo, assistant secretary at the Department of Health, told reporters on Sunday.

House of Representatives Deputy Minority Leader France Castro urged her House colleagues to look into the issue, which she described as “deeply troubling”.

“The impact of this operation on public health cannot be overstated. Public health experts have rightly criticised this campaign for endangering lives and undermining trust in vaccines, including those manufactured in the United States,” Castro said on Sunday.

The report alleges the US military used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China’s vaccines among the Filipino public at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day.

The US Defence Department did not deny the report and suggested on Sunday that the effort was an attempt to counter “malign influence campaigns” run by Beijing.

While some Filipino officials called for an investigation into its accusations, Carlito Galvez Jnr, former president Rodrigo Duterte’s vaccine tsar, expressed doubts about the Reuters report in a statement released on Monday.

“I am not aware of anything like this since all countries through their embassies are trying to help us to acquire available vaccines in the market. As far as I can remember, most of our friends and allies even said that ‘the best vaccine is the vaccine in our shoulders’. Meaning whatever vaccine we had and available, we have to take it immediately,” he added.

In the Philippines, China’s Sinovac was one of the first Covid-19 vaccines made available by the government at the height of the pandemic. The Duterte administration received a total of 50 million of Sinovac vaccines.

Former health secretary, Congresswoman Janette Garin, on Monday condemned any effort that “demonised” a vaccine, noting it could lead to public distrust in immunisation programmes.

Ramon Beleno III, head of the political science and history department at Ateneo De Davao University in Davao City, said the report would only benefit China, which was jostling with the US for greater influence in the region.

“The report is not fake news. But the timing of when it was released matters. To sow fear among Filipinos,” Beleno told This Week in Asia on Tuesday.

“We Filipinos are inclined to believe that the US is more credible compared to China. It will be problematic if we put all our eggs in the US and at the end of the day they will not help us. The US was not honest with us all along. That’s dangerous because the promise of full support is coming from people we trust.”

Beleno said President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr should balance his foreign policy amid the central government’s all out dependence on Washington.

“What China knows is that our government is dependent on the US. One way for us to distance ourselves from the US is to discredit the US itself … To plant a certain amount of doubt. When they do that, it’s a big impact,” Beleno said.

“The government should have a neutral stance … Yes, there is assistance coming from the US, but we should not close our door in talking to China. What if the US will not be on our side any more, how do we deal with China?”

Security analyst Chester Cabalza, founding president of the Manila-based International Development and Security Cooperation think tank, told This Week in Asia that the report could be a political risk for Duterte as he endorsed Chinese-made vaccines and volunteered to be vaccinated with the Sinopharm jab.

Asked why the report came out at a time when the US was actively opposing China’s actions in the West Philippine Sea, Cabalza said it was part of the ongoing cognitive warfare between the superpowers in the Philippines.

“Mainly because Filipinos trust the US more than China in the country. So Manila becomes a guinea pig of power contestation of the two opposing powers to edge each other on soft and hard powers,” he said. “This is just the beginning of a global intensification of US versus China tensions in Philippine territory.”

Don McLain Gill, a geopolitical analyst and lecturer at the Department of International Studies of De La Salle University, said the spread of any form of information operation like the Reuters report needed to be addressed by the central government.

“The Philippines is a known victim of various disinformation campaigns. Given our limited cyber defence capabilities, it is crucial to encourage public private partnerships,” Gill told This Week in Asia.

China has been accused of conducting disinformation campaigns in the Philippines, most recently involving the amplification of rumours about a potential civil war, which analysts linked to Beijing’s larger efforts to weaken the government in order to press its territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Comparing the two alleged disinformation campaigns, Gill said Beijing’s might be considered a greater danger overall.

“If we are objectively assessing the case of the Philippines, Chinese information operations aim to dismantle the state’s capacity and to secure its sovereignty and sovereign rights. This is far more critical and dangerous than information operations that seek to offset another power’s influence,” he added.

How the UAE is leveraging ties with China for its own security needs

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/asia-opinion/article/3266924/how-uae-leveraging-ties-china-its-own-security-needs?utm_source=rss_feed

Bilateral relations between China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are changing in scope, with recent developments reflecting a shifting balance of power, in which the United States is no longer seen by Arab Gulf countries as a long-term security shield.

Earlier this month, China released a joint statement with the UAE, expressing support for a peaceful resolution of a dispute regarding three islands – Abu Musa, Greater Tunb and Lessen Tunb – that have been under Iranian control since 1971, days before the UAE was founded as an independent country.

Iran reacted by summoning the Chinese ambassador to Tehran. This is not the first time China has expressed support for negotiations to resolve the dispute. In response to a similar statement released in 2022, Tehran also called in Beijing’s ambassador. Ebrahim Raisi expressed “dissatisfaction and complaints” over the 2022 statement. Chinese President Xi Jinping then invited Raisi to Beijing, perhaps to smooth things over.

For China, the UAE might be coming ahead of its relations with Iran. China-Iran relations have seen major progress in the recent years, with Beijing pledging investments and trade growth. Yet, the relationship is uneven, with Iran partly relying on China for increased oil sales and support in the international arena.

Meanwhile, China’s support for a peaceful resolution over the disputed islands fits into its plan for increasing engagement with the Gulf region. A pragmatic China seeks closer ties to maintain a balancing between competing Middle East powers.

China reaffirming its stance on the three islands came in the wake of UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan’s visit to Beijing just days earlier. Relations between the two countries have developed into a strategic partnership.

This is evident in the scale of bilateral trade, as well as cooperation in sectors such as infrastructure, education, tourism, security and finance. Last year, the Chinese and UAE central banks renewed a US$4.9 billion currency swap deal.

The UAE is also interested in cooperation with Chinese firms to advance renewable energy. A major Chinese contractor has been working on the world’s biggest solar energy project in the UAE. However, artificial intelligence (AI) is where bilateral cooperation might be the most impactful, especially given the UAE’s relations with the US.

Chinese companies such as Alibaba and Huawei have been involved in the UAE’s infrastructure- and 5G-related projects, though they remain significantly behind the presence of Western companies like Microsoft.

It’s important to note that increased cooperation between China and the UAE may affect Abu Dhabi’s relations with the US, which is worried about Chinese influence in the region. If China were to a establish a military outpost in the UAE, as the US believes, it could warrant American punishment. After all, negotiations on a deal to acquire advanced F-35 fighter jets fell through over concerns about Abu Dhabi working with Huawei on 5G technology.

During Sheikh Mohamed’s visit, both sides also talked about sharing their experience with defence and security to advance bilateral military coordination. The ambitious plans follow practical steps the two sides have already taken. Last August, the UAE and China held their first air force drills. The two sides also signed a deal that allows the UAE to purchase Chinese fighter jets.

Bilateral ties have indeed been building for years. A US$11 billion project between Beijing Daxing International Airport and Dubai’s Emaar Properties that includes residential and recreational amenities was signed in 2019. More recently, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company have reportedly struck a deal with state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation.

The wider geopolitical picture helps to explain the shift in Beijing’s engagement with Abu Dhabi. The Gulf region, especially UAE and Saudi Arabia, have been in the process of reconsidering how to conduct relations with the US. Washington has long been seen as a security guarantor to the region. This has been changing with the US somewhat shifting its attention to Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific region, prompting some countries in the Gulf to rethink relations with the US.

Meanwhile, China now presents an effective counterbalance, which allows countries like the UAE to pursue a multifaceted foreign policy. Navigating between several big actors requires diplomatic skill, as well as genuine economic and political influence – exactly what the UAE possesses.

The UAE will surely abstain from ditching the US altogether or even scaling down bilateral relations. Instead, it can use the “China card” to extract greater military and economic cooperation with the US, similar to what Saudi Arabia does when it tries to reach a mega deal, such as a formal US security guarantee in exchange for normalising ties with Israel.

The UAE’s increasing gaze towards China also fits into the growing trend of multipolarity and the shift towards a more transactional approach in world affairs. For the UAE, China is a simpler partner, which is not interested in human rights issues or promoting a discourse that splits the world into democracies and autocracies.

Sensing the opportunities emanating from UAE’s dissatisfaction with the US, Beijing will try to evade being dragged into direct competition with Washington because it will push Gulf countries to make radical foreign policy choices that complicate their diplomatic balancing acts.

In an increasingly multipolar world, the attraction which holds the UAE and China close is mutual. Moreover, the UAE’s multifaceted foreign policy also provides a glimpse into the emerging global order.

China’s economic woes demand renewal of pro-market reforms, prominent scholar says

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3267118/chinas-economic-woes-demand-renewal-pro-market-reforms-prominent-scholar-says?utm_source=rss_feed

The third plenum of the Central Committee of China’s Communist Party, scheduled for next month, is expected to set the tone for the country’s economic policy for the next several years. In advance of that meeting, the Post spoke with notable scholars and observers about their own expectations – as well as their thoughts on China’s economy at large.

As policymakers prepare to lay out China’s economic agenda for the coming years at a high-level gathering next month, a prominent scholar has called for Beijing to recommit itself to pro-business reforms and uphold its 2013 pledge to let the market play a “decisive role” in the allocation of resources.

The exhortations from Wang Xiaolu, deputy director of the National Economic Research Institute, come as expectations reach a fever pitch for substantial government action to address the issues bedevilling the world’s second-largest economy, including a slump in the property market, unease among private firms and increasingly onerous trade restrictions from the West.

“Economic reform in the past four decades transitioned from a government-led [resource allocation] to a market-oriented one … The core is marketisation,” he told the Post in an interview ahead of the third plenum of the Communist Party’s Central Committee in July, a meeting where economic policy has typically taken centre stage.

“We should continue unfinished tasks.”

Wang, who gained prominence among market-minded reformists thanks to his work on the country’s rural economy in the early 1980s, has developed indices to measure China’s level of marketisation and the state of the business environment over the past 25 years.

His research team found that China’s marketisation index showed a drop in 2019, with the government-market relations sub-index deteriorating fast and accelerating a downward trend that would persist through subsequent years.

Proportions of fiscal expenditure vis-a-vis gross domestic product, survey-based measurements of government intervention into corporate activities and estimates of government size are the three parameters Wang and his team have primarily used to gauge the state of relations.

The sub-index started its decline in 2008, when the government took a firmer hand to steady the economy in the wake of the global financial crisis. A massive stimulus package gave local government financing vehicles responsibility for funding much of the balance, spurring a frenzy of activity.

“There were rounds of competition for investment and duplication of construction between local governments in the past, which resulted in excess production capacity,” Wang said. “Such [government-led] investments generate no return, but losses.”

Wang credited the embrace of the market and support for private businesses with China’s rapid GDP growth over the past four decades. Currently, the private sector contributes to more than 60 per cent of national GDP and creates over 80 per cent of all urban jobs.

Long-term monetary stimulus was also explicitly opposed by Wang, who instead called for economic reforms to unleash growth potential.

“China’s rapid economic growth in the past four decades was not because of stimulus, but marketisation and reforms,” Wang said.

“[Persistent] stimulus measures would make the economy increasingly ineffective, its structure unbalanced, and slow growth further.”

Wang’s research arrived at a pivotal moment in China’s economic development, as growth threatens to drop to a level that could jeopardise a national effort to double the country’s 2020 GDP by 2035 – a goal that would require annual average compound growth to hold at 4.8 per cent or more for the next 11 years.

Experts are debating the best way to address the issue, with one camp calling for larger government stimulus to keep the economy growing and another insisting on painful structural reforms.

Like many of his like-minded colleagues, Wang has called for a return to the spirit of a document from the third plenum in 2013 which detailed 336 tasks to put the Chinese economy on a more market-driven path.

“Many problems can be solved according to this principle,” he said.

Wang also cautioned against an overreliance on government guidance in the development of advanced tech – an approach used early in the country’s history, when direct state administration was in place to oversee work on atomic bombs and satellites – even as US-led restrictions on trade make domestic production all the more essential.

“It would mean a retreat to the planned economy era, where government takes care of everything,” he warned.

Though he did say Chinese authorities can play an active role in promoting scientific and technological progress, he added “the main driving force comes from the market, not from the government.”

Wang and his team found that government intervention into corporations – inspections, verbal instructions, fines and other actions – had increased significantly despite an overhaul of administrative approval from Beijing as it works to renew its appeal to businesses.

Chinese authorities launched a charm offensive to court both private entrepreneurs and foreign firms last year, but investor confidence remains weak.

“The best way is, of course, to protect the legitimate rights and interests of enterprises,” he said. “But what matters is not what you’ve said, but what you actually do.”

Zhang Lei, China parkour expert, Donnie Yen stunt double dead at 39 from heart attack

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/china-personalities/article/3267068/zhang-lei-china-parkour-expert-donnie-yen-stunt-double-dead-39-heart-attack?utm_source=rss_feed

Trailblazing Chinese parkour practitioner Zhang Lei, who was a stunt double for Hong Kong acting star Donnie Yen Ji-dan, has died at the age of 39 following a heart attack.

Zhang passed away in Beijing at 11 am on June 12 after treatment for his condition was unsuccessful, according to The Beijing Extreme Sports Association.

A tribute issued by the association described Zhang as “a true parkour enthusiast who dedicated his life to the sport”.

Zhang served as the stunt double for Yen in several films from 2009 to 2014.

While Yen, often hailed by Hong Kong media as “the strongest in the universe”, performed most of his own stunts, Zhang stood ready as his official stunt double in Bodyguards and Assassins, Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen, Swordsmen, The Monkey King, The Iceman, and Special ID.

On his Douyin account, Zhang shared film clips of himself deftly manoeuvring through crowded narrow streets, leaping and rolling across war-torn battlefields or evading pursuers on rainy night streets.

“My ability to start quickly and to move powerfully in a short time is quite impressive, which is similar to Yen. I believe this is the main reason I was chosen as his stunt double,” said Zhang in an interview with The Beijing Extreme Sports Association.

His performance as a stunt double in Bodyguards and Assassins was among the first films in mainland China to fully showcase parkour.

Zhang also collaborated with Hong Kong actor Yuen Wah in the TV series A Legend of Shaolin Kung Fu.

In 2010, he began teaching as a top-level parkour instructor at the Sammo Hung Kam-po International Film and Television Training Base, an institution founded by Hong Kong action star Sammo Hung.

Since parkour’s introduction to China in 2007, Zhang was among the first to embrace the sport and dedicated his life to promoting it.

“Even though injuries are common for me, I still love this sport. Parkour lets me fully unleash myself. It feels like flying. I love the pounding in my heart it brings,” said Zhang.

He added that he was born for parkour.

Zhang clinched the championship at a national parkour competition in 2010 and initiated several major parkour events in China.

In 2008, he founded a parkour club, where he taught the skills to more than 2,000 students.

“I trained with Brother Lei for a while, he was a good person. He truly loved parkour and led us passionately,” said one Douyin observer.

In 2023, he led a team to establish the first group standard for parkour projects in the country.

Originating in France in the 1980s, parkour is an extreme sport that incorporates elements like climbing, jumping, and rolling.

It emphasises moving through a known environment in the fastest and most efficient way possible, attracting many young people with its freedom, agility and challenge.

Despite some concerns about the impact of extreme sports on physical health, most online observers have expressed regret over Zhang’s passing.

“It’s such a pity. He was so young,” said one.

“He was my son’s coach. Farewell!” added another.

South China Sea: Philippines sailor suffers ‘serious injury’ from China coastguard ‘ramming’

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3267109/south-china-sea-philippines-sailor-suffers-serious-injury-china-coastguard-ramming?utm_source=rss_feed

A Philippine navy sailor suffered “serious injury” after what the country’s military called on Tuesday “intentional-high speed ramming” by the Chinese coastguard during a resupply mission in the South China Sea.

The Philippine military said in a statement the Chinese coastguard’s “continued aggressive behaviour and unprofessional conduct towards a legitimate humanitarian mission is unacceptable.”

China and the Philippines have accused each other of being at fault for Monday’s collision near a disputed atoll in the South China Sea.

Philippine officials said China disrupted a military mission to resupply sailors stationed in Second Thomas Shoal in a rusting navy ship BRP Sierra Madre that Manila deliberately beached in 1999 to bolster its maritime claim.

China’s coastguard disputed this and said the navy vessel deliberately and dangerously approached a Chinese ship unprofessionally, forcing it to take control measures such as “warnings and blockades, boarding inspections, and forced evictions.”

The Philippines said China’s account was “deceptive and misleading”.

The Philippine military said on Tuesday the injured sailor had been successfully evacuated and was being treated. It did not specify the nature of the injury.

The Second Thomas Shoal has been a flashpoint in recent months between the countries. The atoll lies within Manila’s 200-nautical mile maritime zone, which China also claims as its own.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, including parts claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei.

A 2016 arbitral ruling rejected China’s historical claims to the resource-rich waterway, a decision Beijing has rejected.

The US State Department called the incident the latest in a series of Chinese “provocations” to impede supplies from reaching Philippines personnel stationed at the BRP Sierra Madre.

The United States also renewed a warning on Tuesday that it’s obliged to defend its close treaty ally, the Philippines.

Canada and United Kingdom also condemned China’s actions, while France and Japan have expressed concern over the incident.

Additional reporting by Associated Press

From Alibaba to BYD, Chinese sponsors jostle for attention at Euro 2024 football tournament

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3267079/alibaba-byd-chinese-sponsors-jostle-attention-euro-2024-football-tournament?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese technology brands from Alibaba Group Holding to BYD make up a third of Euro 2024 football tournament’s 13 worldwide sponsors, an example of their growing global footprint and commitment to expanding in overseas markets.

The Chinese sponsors include television and home appliance manufacturer Hisense, Alibaba’s global shopping platform AliExpress, financial technology giant Ant Group, smartphone maker Vivo, and electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer BYD. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

With many Chinese companies looking abroad amid slow domestic growth, investing heavily in publicity in major global sporting events has become a key strategy.

E-commerce giant PDD Holdings’ international shopping app Temu spent tens of millions of dollars on a marketing campaign during last year’s Super Bowl, the annual championship of the US National Football League, resulting in a spike in web searches for its name.

“They focus on future international expansion, using their foundation and capital strengths in China to boost overseas market presence and revenues, particularly in Europe,” said Howard Yu, professor at the International Institute for Management Development.

“What’s new and interesting here is that Chinese companies, for the first time, will need to engage the Western market and learn to localise, [changing] their image from being Chinese companies with an international presence to becoming companies that consumers will associate with strong local relevance.”

Chinese brands are doing more than just advertising on the football pitch.

Ant’s cross-border payment service Alipay+ has launched a Euro 2024 ticket giveaway. AliExpress, which signed an advertising deal with football star David Beckham, is hosting its summer sales during the tournament.

Hisense is providing technical support for the video assistant referee system used in matches, while BYD has replaced host Germany’s home-grown car giant Volkswagen as the event’s official vehicle supplier.

The European Championship is expected to draw a cumulative global audience of more than 5 billion, according to the marketing director of the Union of European Football Associations. Other global sponsors of the event include Adidas, Booking.com, Coca-Cola and Qatar Airways.

Some of the Chinese brands making an appearance at Euro 2024 already have a sizeable global presence.

Hisense shipped 25.9 million television units worldwide last year, second only to South Korea’s Samsung Electronics, according to market research institute AVC Revo. Vivo controlled 8 per cent of the global smartphone market as of March, ranking it among the top five, according to data provider Statista.

BYD, which temporarily surpassed Tesla as the world’s largest producer of EVs in the fourth quarter, grew its global car sales last year by 62 per cent to 3.02 million units. The Shenzhen-based company is operating or building factories in places such as Thailand, Brazil, Indonesia, Hungary and Uzbekistan.

Meanwhile, Ant in March restructured its operations into three independently-run business units that include overseas unit Ant International, headed by the group’s chairman and chief executive Eric Jing Xiandong.

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Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing says it has no timetable for Hong Kong IPO

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3267050/chinese-ride-hailing-giant-didi-chuxing-says-it-has-no-timetable-hong-kong-ipo?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing, whose New York initial public offering (IPO) in 2021 triggered a cybersecurity investigation by mainland authorities that led to its delisting and a $1.2 billion fine, said it has no specific timing for its plans to float shares in Hong Kong.

“The company has been maintaining regular communications with investors to keep them updated on business progress,” a Didi representative said on Tuesday, after a recent report by The Information said the Chinese company aims to go public again next year in Hong Kong. “Regarding the IPO, there is no timetable at present.”

The Beijing-based firm, operator of the most popular ride-hailing service in China, said it is “currently focused on continuously developing our main business, better serving riders, drivers and partners, and constantly improving product services and innovation capabilities to create long-term value for the industry and society”.

Didi had planned to list in Hong Kong this year, having kept a close eye on the progress made by Alibaba Group Holding’s Cainiao Smart Logistics Network, which was pursuing an IPO in the city before calling if off in the first quarter, according to a person close to the ride-hailing giant, who requested anonymity to discuss private business matters.

The source said Didi had been referencing Cainiao as an indicator of China’s regulatory environment and market conditions. Joe Tsai, chairman of South China Morning Post owner Alibaba, said in a post-earnings conference call in March that the market would not “reflect the true intrinsic values” that Cainiao can bring to Alibaba.

Didi announced late last year a plan to buy back up to US$1 billion of its shares over two years. The company was pursuing a Hong Kong IPO in 2024, Bloomberg reported at the time.

Chinese authorities shocked investors in July 2021 by launching an unprecedented cybersecurity review into Didi, two days after it went public in New York under the name Didi Global. Didi completed its delisting process in 2022, shortly before the Cyberspace Administration of China fined it US$1.2 billion for data violations.

Didi’s net loss widened 16.7 per cent to 1.35 billion yuan (US$186 million) in the first quarter this year, while revenue rose 14.9 per cent to 49.1 billion yuan.

Australia’s Albanese concerned over ‘ham-fisted’ China diplomats incident with journalist

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/australasia/article/3267078/australias-albanese-concerned-over-ham-fisted-china-diplomats-incident-journalist?utm_source=rss_feed

Australia voiced concern on Tuesday about the “ham-fisted” actions of two Chinese diplomats at a media event, tarnishing a highly touted visit in which Premier Li Qiang has sought to celebrate trade and friendship.

China’s second-most powerful man has posed in front of giant pandas, warmly toasted Australian wine, and highlighted the need to peacefully work through “differences” during his rare trip to Australia.

But the carefully choreographed tour briefly unravelled during a signing ceremony inside Australia’s parliament on Monday, when two Chinese diplomats appeared to shadow high-profile Australian journalist Cheng Lei.

Cheng returned to Australia in October last year after three years detained in China on opaque spying charges, and has spoken unflinchingly of her bleak prison conditions.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese criticised the “ham-fisted” behaviour, saying on Tuesday Australia had “followed up with the Chinese embassy to express our concern”.

“When you look at the footage, it was a pretty clumsy attempt, frankly, by a couple of people to stand in between where the cameras were and where Cheng Lei was sitting,” he told national broadcaster ABC.

“And Australian officials intervened, as they should have, to ask the Chinese officials who were there at the press conference to move.”

Footage showed two Chinese diplomats hovering next to a seated Cheng, repeatedly ignoring requests to move from animated Australian officials.

Cheng said they “went to great lengths to block me from the cameras”.

“And I’m guessing that’s to prevent me from saying something or doing something that they think would be a bad look,” she told Sky News Australia.

“But that itself is a bad look.”

Albanese had told Li in closed-door talks just hours earlier that “foreign interference wasn’t acceptable in Australia’s political system”.

The highest-ranking Chinese official to visit Australia since 2017, Li’s visit shows the growing rapprochement between Beijing and Canberra after a years-long trade dispute.

“Of course, we all know that in the past few years, our bilateral relations also encountered some difficulties and twists and turns,” Li said before departing Australia on Tuesday afternoon.

“But thanks to the joint efforts of both sides, the bilateral relations have been put back on the right track.”

Premier Li ended his visit with a tour of a Chinese-controlled lithium refiner in Western Australia, a sign of his country’s vast appetite for Australia’s critical minerals.

Australia extracts 52 per cent of the world’s lithium, the vast majority of it exported as ore to China for refining and use in batteries.

It is a crucial ingredient in China’s world-dominant electric vehicle industry.

China’s involvement in the country’s critical mineral industry is sensitive because of its dominance of global supply chains.

Despite the goodwill on show, both sides have acknowledged lingering “differences” – a nod to diplomatic jostling in the Pacific.

“We won’t always agree, and the points in which we disagree won’t simply disappear if we leave them in silence,” Albanese said.

Australia accused China last month of “unsafe and unprofessional” conduct after one of its warplanes allegedly fired flares in the path of a naval helicopter over the Yellow Sea.

It also said late last year, a Chinese destroyer blasted navy divers with dangerous sonar pulses.

Additional reporting by Reuters

Xinjiang’s 400ha desert wheat harvest is a milestone in China’s push for food security

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3267097/xinjiangs-400ha-desert-wheat-harvest-milestone-chinas-push-food-security?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese farmers have grown wheat in the country’s largest desert amid ongoing efforts to turn arid regions into fertile soil and the drive to strengthen food security.

The first harvest of a 6,000 mu (400ha or 988 acres) wheat crop is under way in the southwestern edge of the Taklimakan Desert in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in western China, according to state media.

China has the largest area of desertified land in the world. Its almost 4.5 billion mu of desertified land – land that has been degraded because of a variety of factors – affects the production and lives of more than 400 million people, according to official figures. A mu is a unit of measurement commonly used in China, with 15 mu equivalent to 1 hectare and about 6 mu equalling 1 acre.

Wang Jianjun, deputy manager of Xinjiang Wuzheng Green Agriculture Development Company, said the project’s unit yield exceeded expectations.

“This batch of wheat weighs 825 grams per litre, meeting the standard for first-class wheat of the wheat yield measurement, and the yield exceeds 260kg per mu,” Wang told China News Service this week.

He said the company aimed for a 400kg unit output by improving plantation technologies.

China has ramped up its push for food security in recent years amid volatile global markets, the effects of climate change on food sources and geopolitical complications.

The winter wheat was planted in October in Makit county on the southwestern edge of the desert in China’s inland Kashgar prefecture in Xinjiang.

Makit is typical of a desert climate, with an average annual rainfall of 42.3mm and average evaporation of 2,349mm a year, according to Xinjiang weather bureau statistics from 2021.

“After withstanding overwintering, resisting sandstorm and drought, the wheat seedlings have successfully survived,” Wang said.

To grow wheat in harsh conditions, the Wuzheng group based in Shandong province developed a method of cultivation and water and fertiliser management specifically to grow crops in the desert.

Wang and his team increased the application of organic matter and soil conditioners and adopted “fertigation” technology – which allows crops to absorb nutrients through irrigation – a method that improves the accuracy and efficiency of water and fertilisers.

The water-fertiliser operation is timed and quantified through a mobile app to save on both resources, Wang said.

The team is set to expand the desert wheat planting area to beyond 50,000 mu within five years, deputy director of Makit county’s Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureau, Han Yong, said.

Xinjiang, which has one-third of China’s saline-alkali land, has worked to increase agricultural production.

In 2023, its annual grain output reached a record high 21.2 million tonnes, with a yield of 500.1kg per mu that ranks second nationwide. This year, it aims for an annual total grain output of at least 22 million tonnes, according to China’s agriculture ministry.

The region’s grain planting area in 2023 reached 42.4 million mu, an increase of 5.9 million mu over the previous year, according to Xinhua.

The region also positions itself as a supplier of the nation’s agricultural and animal husbandry products.

Wheat is not the first crop to be grown in Xinjiang’s desertified land. In 2018, Chinese scientists successfully harvested 7,100 mu drought-resistant upland rice in the region, a breed they had developed in the Gobi desert. The rice breed is better suited to the arid environment of Xinjiang than the unmodified rice, according to Xinjiang Daily.

Japan wary of new conflict ‘flashpoints’ in East China Sea over coastguard law: analysts

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3267092/japan-wary-new-conflict-flashpoints-east-china-sea-over-coastguard-law-analysts?utm_source=rss_feed

The Japanese government anticipates further escalatory moves by the Chinese coastguard in the disputed waters in the East China Sea after Beijing began enforcing a new law allowing for the detention of anyone entering what it considers to be its maritime territory, a situation analysts warn could create new “flashpoints” for conflict between the two countries.

Beijing claims sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, but that is disputed by Tokyo, which refers to the territory as the Senkaku archipelago and presently exercises administrative control over the uninhabited islands.

Under the revised Chinese law, which went into effect on Saturday, coastguard officials are permitted to detain for investigation anyone who has intruded into China’s territorial waters for up to 30 days. That period can be extended for an additional 30 days if the investigation is considered to be complex.

Tokyo has been watching developments around disputed islands and atolls in the South China Sea, a number of which have been claimed by Beijing and occupied by Chinese troops. At present, the Second Thomas Shoal has become the focus of tensions in the region, with China and the Philippines reiterating their claims to the territory and Chinese vessels using water cannons against Philippine vessels.

The concern in Japan, analysts say, is that a similar scenario could play out around the Diaoyu Islands.

“In late November last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the headquarters of the coastguard in Shanghai, which has responsibility for the East China Sea,” said Masayuki Masuda, head of the China Division at the National Institute for Defence Studies in Tokyo.

“Xi clearly ordered the unit to strengthen ‘law enforcement operations’ under the new law that was coming,” he said.

The coastguard responded by drawing up the details of a programme for the inspection of foreign fishing boats that were detected operating in Chinese waters. As Beijing claims waters around the Diaoyu archipelago, that permits Chinese coastguard vessels to intercept Japanese vessels operating in waters that Japan also claims.

“This means that a new legal framework has been established that allows the Chinese coastguard to conduct law enforcement operations in Japanese waters around the Senkakus,” Masuda told This Week in Asia.

There have been reports in Japanese media over the last couple of years of Chinese patrol vessels chasing and attempting to halt Japanese fishing boats off the disputed islands and Masuda said it was “highly possible” that, operating under the new law, the Chinese coastguard would attempt to do the same again very soon.

“Japan refuses to recognise China’s claim to the islands and the ‘law enforcement’ actions that it is carrying out,” he said. “But it will be quite difficult to stop the Chinese operations, so Japan needs to strengthen its own activities in the region and not allow China to push us around.”

Masuda declined to speculate on the retaliatory action that Tokyo might take if a Japanese boat and its crew were seized and detained for up to 60 days under the new law, although he conceded that it would have a “serious impact on overall diplomatic ties”.

Ryo Hinata-Yamaguchi, a project assistant professor of international relations at the University of Tokyo, also expected China to start to “throw its weight around more than ever”.

“They have spent the last few years building up their coastguard to the point that it has become effectively a second Chinese navy,” he said.

“The Chinese coastguard is well armed as well as qualitatively larger than the Japanese coastguard, which could be overwhelmed as it tries to guard Japanese territory.

“An alternative flashpoint scenario to the seizure of a Japanese fishing boat operating within Japanese waters could involve the deployment of dozens of Chinese militia fishing vessels close to the islands,” Hinata-Yamaguchi said.

Japan would be duty bound to try to attempt to halt the illegal fishing operations and to usher them outside Japan’s waters, although that would almost certainly result in the Chinese coastguard intervening in the situation.

“The new Chinese law is one part of the problem, of course, but it also compels enforcement and that will lead to extra flashpoints,” he said.

Hinata-Yamaguchi was also not optimistic that Beijing would be willing to engage with Tokyo to move back from a confrontation on the issue if it perceived it had the upper hand.

“There would be lots of diplomatic messages and discussions over this, but I am not optimistic that China would be flexible,” he added.

‘Urban drifters’: China’s jobless roam city streets during working week to hide plight from families

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3264511/urban-drifters-chinas-jobless-roam-city-streets-during-working-week-hide-plight-families?utm_source=rss_feed

The term “urban drifters” has recently gone viral on social media in China.

It is used to describe jobless people or those struggling to find work who roam city streets during working hours to hide their plight from their families.

China’s National Statistics Bureau has reported that the urban unemployment rate from January to April stands at 5.2 per cent, a 0.2-per-cent decrease from last year.

The youth unemployment rate for 16-24 year-olds, excluding college students, was 14.7 per cent in April.

The Post takes a closer look.

Zhang Ni, 35, had never been out of work in her life, but she decided to take her time after resigning from her last job because it had such a detrimental effect on her physical and mental health.

She said the Beijing start-up company she worked for did not treat her equally and loaded her with excessive work.

After leaving the company last November, Zhang did not want her family to worry about her, so she commuted to a book cafe every weekday. She is still doing so six months later.

Zhang posted on her Xiaohongshu account @KouniConnie that it was an experience filled with both anxiety and blessings.

Despite worrying about her reduced income and the lack of achievement, she felt unable to begin a new job she did not like.

On the up side, drifting helped her rediscover the beauty of Beijing. She enjoyed having the time to appreciate the city she had lived in for years.

A 31-year-old man in Shenzhen known as Zen, told the mainland media outlet Shenran that he chose to hide his unemployment from his family and friends because “everywhere in this city is nei juan. I feel wasted and abandoned.”

Nei juan, is an on-trend Chinese term used to describe the endless and seemingly futile process of surviving in the workplace.

Zen’s favourite fake workplace is a coffee shop, where he can sit the whole day for a minimal cost and becomes immersed in new study materials he hopes will help him begin a new career.

Another Beijing resident, Liu Jinyan, 35, became an urban drifter for the third time when he was fired last year.

He said coffee houses are the “best shelter for jobless, middle-aged people” as they offer him space to think about his future.

On mainland social media there is much discussion about the “35-year-old crisis”. Many companies reject job applicants over 35, so if they are fired around that age, it is harder for them to find new work.

On May 26, China’s so-called air con queen, Gree Electric Appliances chairwoman Dong Mingzhu, sparked controversy by saying the “35-year-old crisis” does not exist.

“If nobody recruits you again, you can start your own business,” she said.

However, many disagree and one said on Weibo: “We no longer live in an era in which you can confidently say, ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way.’”

China’s top spy agency calls trial of Hong Kong 47 a ‘pivotal test’ of rule of law

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3267074/chinas-top-spy-agency-calls-trial-hong-kong-47-pivotal-test-rule-law?utm_source=rss_feed

Beijing’s top intelligence agency has called the landmark trial of Hong Kong 47 opposition politicians a “pivotal test” of national security and the rule of law which will have far-reaching implications for future rulings.

The Ministry of State Security on Tuesday also said the ruling was a warning to all “anti-China troublemakers” and foreign forces that any attempts to challenge the country’s national defence would be “severely punished”.

It was the first time the ministry had weighed in on the city’s biggest trial under the Beijing-imposed national security law. The High Court last month convicted 14 out of 16 opposition activists who contested the charges over an unofficial “primary” election in 2020 deemed subversive.

Thirty-one others had earlier pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit subversion, and face possible prison terms ranging from three years to life.

The ministry said the trial, which lasted 118 days, also asserted the “authority of the rule of law” and clarified legal disputes surrounding the national security legislation and the definition of relevant provisions.

“It declared Hong Kong’s zero-tolerance attitude towards the subversion of state power, and allowed Hong Kong’s legal system for safeguarding national security to bare its teeth and thorns,” the post on WeChat said.

“This will have far-reaching implications for future rulings on similar cases in Hong Kong.”

The ministry said the ruling also served as a warning to “anti-China troublemakers in Hong Kong” and external forces from the US and the West that “whoever dares to challenge China’s national security” would be “severely punished by the law”.

Shortly after the verdicts were announced on May 30, a US government agency, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, urged President Joe Biden’s administration to sanction Hong Kong judges and prosecutors responsible for the “political prosecutions”.

Britain’s minister for the Indo-Pacific, Anne Marie Trevelyan, also said the “verdict would tarnish Hong Kong’s international reputation” and “send a message that residents could no longer safely and meaningfully participate in peaceful political debate”.

China’s top spy agency called such comments and threats of sanctions from external forces of the West “noise”, saying they were doomed to fail and would make mainland Chinese and Hong Kong residents more united.

It also singled out legal academic Benny Tai Yiu-ting, the alleged organiser of the “primary” plot, pointing to the judgment that concluded he had led others to interfere with the proper functioning of key political organs, with the aim of subverting state power.

Last week, Hong Kong’s Department of Justice filed an appeal over the High Court’s acquittal of barrister Lawrence Lau Wai-chung, one of the 16 opposition figures who contested the subversion charges. The department said it would not pursue the second acquitted defendant, social worker Lee Yue-shun.

The court will hear mitigation claims from the others who were convicted on June 25.

Separately, Hong Kong leader John Lee Ka-chiu said he would present the Chief Executive’s Award for Exemplary Performance to the team behind the legislation of the city’s domestic national security law, including staff from the Department of Justice, Security Bureau and police.

Lee said the award was well-deserved for the efforts to fulfil Hong Kong’s constitutional responsibility by enacting the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance after more than 26 years of delays.

Lee announced the creation of the award in his maiden policy address in 2022 to recognise and encourage “meritorious and exemplary” service by civil servants. The first recipient was a Hong Kong rescue team deployed to help search for survivors in a major earthquake in Turkey last year.

US renews warning it’s obligated to defend the Philippines after its new clash with China at sea

https://apnews.com/article/south-china-sea-philippines-second-thomas-shoal-75c2ecc0804d1160e691f6e066c88f10FILE - Philippine navy ship BRP Sierra Madre is seen at the Second Thomas Shoal, locally known as Ayungin Shoal, at the South China Sea, April 23, 2023. A Chinese vessel and a Philippine supply ship collided near the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea on Monday, June 17, 2024, China's coast guard said.(AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

2024-06-18T06:59:54Z

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The United States renewed a warning Tuesday that it’s obligated to defend its close treaty ally a day after Filipino navy personnel were injured and their supply boats damaged in one of the most serious confrontations between the Philippines and China in a disputed shoal in the South China Sea, officials said.

China and the Philippines blamed each other for instigating Monday’s hostilities in the Second Thomas Shoal, which has been occupied by a small Filipino navy contingent aboard a grounded warship that’s been closely watched by Chinese coast guard, navy and suspected militia ships in a yearslong territorial standoff. There is fear the disputes, long regarded as an Asian flashpoint, could escalate and pit the United States and China in a larger conflict.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell discussed China’s actions with Philippine counterpart, Maria Theresa Lazaro, in a telephone call. Both agreed that China’s “dangerous actions threatened regional peace and stability,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

Campbell reaffirmed that the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty, which obligates Washington and Manila to help defend the other in major conflicts, “extends to armed attacks on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft – including those of its coast guard – anywhere in the South China Sea,” according to Miller.

A Philippine government task force overseeing the territorial disputes condemned what it said were “dangerous maneuvers, including ramming and towing,” which disrupted a routine effort to transport food, water and other supplies to the Filipinos manning the territorial outpost aboard the BRP Sierra Madre at the shoal.

“Despite the illegal, aggressive, and reckless actions by the Chinese maritime forces, our personnel showed restraint and professionalism, refrained from escalating the tension, and carried on with their mission,” the Philippine task force said without elaborating. “Their actions put at risk the lives of our personnel and damaged our boats in blatant violation of international law.”

The Chinese coast guard said the Philippines “is entirely responsible for this.” It said a Philippine vessel “ignored China’s repeated solemn warnings … and dangerously approached a Chinese vessel in normal navigation in an unprofessional manner, resulting in a collision.”

Two speedboats — attempting to deliver construction materials and other supplies to a military vessel stationed at the shoal — accompanied the supply ship, according to China’s Foreign Ministry, which described its coast guard’s maneuver as “professional, restrained, reasonable and lawful.”

Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. said Monday night that his country’s armed forces would resist “China’s dangerous and reckless behavior,” which “contravenes their statements of good faith and decency.”

“We will exert our utmost in order to fulfill our sworn mandate to protect our territorial integrity, sovereignty, and sovereign rights,” Teodoro said. “It should now be clear to the international community that China’s actions are the true obstacles to peace and stability in the South China Sea.”

Several incidents have happened in recent months near the shoal which lies less than 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from the nearest Philippines coast and where it maintains the Sierra Madre, which had become encrusted with rust since it was deliberately grounded in 1999 but remains an actively commissioned military vessel, meaning an attack on it could be considered by the Philippines as an act of war.

China has increasingly become assertive in pressing its claim to virtually the entire South China Sea, which has led to a rising number of direct conflicts with other countries in the region, most notably the Philippines and Vietnam.

A new law by China, which took effect Saturday, authorizes its coast guard to seize foreign ships “that illegally enter China’s territorial waters” and to detain foreign crews for up to 60 days. The law renewed a reference to 2021 legislation that says China’s coast guard can fire upon foreign ships if necessary.

At least three coastal governments with claims to the waters — the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan — have said they would not recognize the law. Malaysia and Brunei are also involved in the long-seething territorial disputes, which are regarded as a delicate fault line in the longstanding U.S.-China rivalry in the region.

___

Associated Press journalists Aaron Favila and Joeal Calupitan in Manila contributed to this report.

JIM GOMEZ Gomez is The AP Chief Correspondent in the Philippines. twitter mailto

Global aviation giants hope Beijing business is unscathed by China-EU trade rows

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3267035/global-aviation-giants-hope-beijing-business-unscathed-china-eu-trade-rows?utm_source=rss_feed

Trade tensions between China and the European Union have intensified, but leading European aviation and drone manufacturers hope their impact on bilateral aviation trade and cooperation will be limited.

During Eurosatory, one of Europe’s largest defence exhibitions in Paris, Emmanuel Huberdeau, spokesman for Airbus Helicopter, said it was hoped his company’s business in the Asia-Pacific, including China, would not be significantly affected by the tensions.

“Airbus Helicopters and Airbus as a company work a lot with China … On the civil side, we have very good cooperation with China,” Huberdeau said while showcasing the company’s latest multi-mission VSR700 naval unmanned aerial system (UAS) helicopter at Eurosatory.

“We’ve been developing helicopters with the Chinese authorities. We sold a lot of helicopters in China. So I don’t think this will be linked [to the trade tensions].”

China’s top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission, signed a memorandum of understanding with Airbus during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Paris last month, pledging to deepen cooperation in aviation and relevant emerging sectors.

Airbus was in talks with China over a potentially major aircraft order, Reuters reported in April.

But the rising trade tensions have triggered concern about potential retaliatory measures from Beijing, including against the aviation sector.

Another Airbus official, who asked not to be named, also forecast that the EU’s trade tensions with China would have little impact on the company’s business.

“We have many opportunities in Asia-Pacific. It’s difficult to find one country where our products are not operating at this moment. It is a good footprint for extending the area of operation,” the official said.

Airbus is showcasing uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) at Eurosatory this week. Among the rotary and fixed-wing systems displayed are the Eurodrone – a combat UAV in joint development between France, Germany, Italy and Spain – which the Airbus official said was aimed to be in service by 2030 and could be exported to other regions, including the Asia-Pacific.

The remarks come as trade tensions between China and the EU increased after the European Commission announced last week it would impose provisional duties of up to 38.1 per cent on electric vehicles imported from China.

Beijing said the commission was weaponising trade with China by “holding high the banner of green development in one hand and wielding the stick of ‘protectionism’ in the other”.

It hit back on Monday by launching an anti-dumping investigation into certain pork products imported from the EU.

Matthew Knowles, spokesman for Britain’s largest defence contractor, BAE Systems, similarly said European defence contractors’ business in the Asia-Pacific remained largely unchanged despite tensions rising between China and the EU.

BAE Systems displayed not only land-based weapons, such as howitzers and infantry vehicles, at Eurosatory but also showcased its ongoing emphasis on drone technology, such as the T-650 heavy-lift electric unmanned aerial system, which it said could be a “cost-effective, sustainable rapid response capability to military, security and civilian customers”.

Knowles said there were “a lot of conversations” during BAE Systems’ drone display at the Defence Services Asia exhibition in Malaysia last month.

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China targets Europe’s farmers, and not its automakers, in response to EU tariffs on electric cars

https://apnews.com/article/china-eu-pork-ev-tariff-31a110502889141200bfb0d99be3f59aA promoter at a booth for imported Spanish pork prepares for another day at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai, on Nov. 6, 2018. The Chinese government is taking aim at European farmers instead of German automakers by launching an investigation into European Union pork imports, just days after the EU said it plans to impose provisional tariffs on China-made electric vehicles. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

2024-06-18T05:31:43Z

BEIJING (AP) — The Chinese government is taking aim at European farmers instead of German automakers by launching an investigation into European Union pork imports, just days after the EU said it plans to impose provisional tariffs on China-made electric vehicles.

The Commerce Ministry didn’t mention the EV tariffs when it announced Monday that it is opening an anti-dumping investigation into pork from Europe, but the move is widely seen as a response to the EU move on electric cars. It also gives China a bargaining chip in any trade negotiations.

China could have slapped a 25% duty on imports of gasoline-powered vehicles with large engines in the name of combating climate change, a step that would would have hit Mercedes and BMW hard. In choosing not to do so, at least for now, the government may be acknowledging the public opposition of the German auto industry to the EU tariffs, as well as its sizeable production in China.

The Chinese market is a major one for German automakers, and the head of the country’s auto association, the VDA, described the June 12 EU tariff announcement as a further step away from global cooperation. “The risk of a global trade conflict is rising further as a result of this measure,” Hildegard Müller said in a statement.

The investigation of EU pork imports will cover various products including fresh and frozen pork meat, intestines and other internal organs. The announcement says it is expected to take one year, with a possible six-month extension.

Olof Gill, a spokesperson on trade for the European Commission, told journalists in Brussels that EU farm subsidies “are strictly in line with our WTO obligations” and that the commission would follow the investigation very closely and intervene as needed to ensure that the Chinese probe complies with World Trade Organization rules.

Chinese officials have said the EU investigation into subsidies for electric vehicle production in China is “typical protectionist behavior” that disregards WTO rules. The EU plans to impose provisional tariffs of 17.4% to 38.1% on EVs from China for four months starting July 4. They would apply to vehicles exported to Europe by both Chinese and foreign brands, including Tesla.

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China traffic trickster stages rush hour ‘crashes for cash’, caught by previous victim

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3264638/china-traffic-trickster-stages-rush-hour-crashes-cash-caught-previous-victim?utm_source=rss_feed

A bicycle rider in China has been detained for staging road accidents to blackmail car drivers after netting 100,000 yuan (US$14,000) in ill-gotten gains over a two-month period.

The modus operandi of the man, surnamed Zhang, was to ride a bicycle on streets in Beijing during rush hours and deliberately approach vehicles which were illegally driving on the non-motorised lanes so that he would easily be knocked down, reported Beijing TV.

Many drivers use the non-motorised driveways because they hate waiting in a queue, especially before the intersections, in the hope of stealing a march on others.

In China, if a car is found using a non-motorised lane, the driver will be fined 200 yuan (US$28) and have a two-point deduction from their driving licence.

Zhang said if he was hit by a car, he would demand between hundreds and thousands of yuan in compensation. His extortion scheme relied on the feelings of guilt felt by drivers.

Last month, a driver, surnamed Li, fell victim to Zhang’s racket by paying him 2,500 yuan (US$350) in compensation after his car knocked Li down near a main crossroads in Beijing’s Shijingshan district at 6am on a work day.

However, days later, at the same place and at the same time, Li met with Zhang again as the latter rode a bike and fell down beside his car again.

Li called the police and surveillance footage showed that Zhang had done the same thing in mid-April and asked another driver to give him 500 yuan.

At the end of April, police officers caught Zhang and detained him for fraud.

He admitted that he staged such accidents 3-4 times per day, with his income from the racketeering scheme reaching 100,000 yuan over the past two months.

Blackmail cases involving road accidents are common in China.

Three men were detained by Beijing police in May for extorting two men out of 18,000 yuan (US$2,500) in a deliberate rear-ending accident.

Taiwan military drones unlikely to hasten US ‘hellscape’ against mainland Chinese attack

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3267023/taiwan-drones-unlikely-hasten-us-hellscape-against-mainland-chinese-attack?utm_source=rss_feed

Taiwan’s plan to acquire nearly 1,000 military drones equipped with artificial intelligence this year is aimed at bolstering its asymmetric warfare capabilities to counter the escalating threats posed by the People’s Liberation Army, experts said.

However, the observers cautioned that achieving a substantial fleet of advanced drones to implement the US-proposed “hellscape” strategy in the Taiwan Strait – designed to thwart potential PLA attacks – remains challenging and unlikely in the near term.

In a report submitted to the legislature for review on Monday, the defence ministry outlined its intention to procure 968 attack and surveillance drones this year from the island’s premier weapons builder as well as private contractors.

According to the report, the government-funded Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology will provide the attack drones, including medium and large-sized variants, with the private sector fulfilling the rest of the ministry’s requirements.

The report said that private contractors will provide second-generation short-range uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), as well as miniature, target acquisition, surveillance, ship-based, and land-based drones for military use.

The acquisition of these seven drone types “has already factored in existing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies,” the report said.

Capabilities will include one-button take-off, autonomous return, path planning flight, dynamic target tracking, and coordinate distance calculation “to reduce operator workload, minimise flight risks, and enhance operational efficiency,” it said.

The ministry underscored the significance of drones within its broader military plans, citing their widespread use in recent conflicts, including last year’s Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The military armaments bureau and the economics ministry will jointly explore ways to enhance the island’s defence capabilities by integrating domestic sources and production capacity while avoiding reliance on vulnerable “red supply chains”, it said.

The report also anticipates the inclusion of emerging AI technologies in future drone development plans.

Su Tzu-yun, a senior analyst at the Institute for National Defence and Security Research, a government think tank, said the drones and UAVs were significant in “constructing asymmetric warfare strategies and enhancing methods to counter adversaries”.

“Drones’ relatively small size makes them difficult to detect on radar screens. The integration of AI technology primarily serves to assist decision-making systems, enabling autonomous attacks in scenarios where communication is disrupted,” he said.

Despite the planned acquisition, it will take time for the drones to become fully militarily operational, the experts said.

The legislature’s foreign relations and defence committee head Wang Ting-yu, from the ruling independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, said the UAVs must be integrated with military units before they can be effectively deployed.

“Ensuring efficient and effective operations requires validation methods tailored to each military branch and command unit,” he said.

According to Wang, the key to successful AI integration will lie in how the Chung-Shan Institute and the local defence industry incorporate AI into decision-making processes and C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) systems.

Military commentator Lu De-yun, a former defence ministry press secretary, noted that AI-equipped drones are not new, with most local UAVs possessing the capability for at least a decade.

“These drones typically feature functions such as path planning flight, target tracking, and distance calculation, enabling them to record flight paths and return to their original starting points,” he said, adding that mainland China’s drones share similar functionalities.

According to Lu, Taiwan is intensifying its efforts to keep pace with the mainland and the US, both of which are extensively using UAVs. But the “hellscape” strategy proposed by the American Indo-Pacific Command chief is still some way off.

Admiral Samuel Paparo said the plan – to thwart a mainland attack on the island by unleashing an unmanageable swarm of drones in the Taiwan Strait – aims to make Beijing “miserable for a month” and give the US crucial response time.

Beijing regards Taiwan as part of China, to be reunited with the mainland by force, if necessary. The US, like most countries, does not recognise the island but Washington is opposed to any unilateral change to the status quo.

While the US is Taiwan’s largest arms supplier, Washington has long pursued a policy of “strategic ambiguity”, refusing to state whether it would come to the island’s defence in the event of a mainland attack.

According to Lu, Paparo’s warfare concept is still in the planning stages and “would require advanced AI applications and thousands of drones”, but he noted that “the US is actively working on this approach”.

Lu said that the application of AI is intended to empower a few individuals to control hundreds, or even thousands of UAVs. “However, implementing such a strategy in the near term remains unlikely.”

Taiwanese defence minister Wellington Koo acknowledged that Taiwan lacks enough drones to fully support the United States’ “hellscape” strategy and said increasing the number of UAVs and further strategic coordination with the US were “essential steps”.

“The military will continue to acquire various types of drones through multiple channels to rapidly build combat capabilities for defence operations,” he said.

Bridgewater founder’s stock tip: diversify to avoid getting caught in US-China rivalry

https://www.scmp.com/business/markets/article/3267041/bridgewater-founders-stock-tip-diversify-avoid-getting-caught-us-china-rivalry?utm_source=rss_feed

Billionaire investor Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, has warned that US and China will continue to “press up against the other’s red lines” as the US election nears, and smart money should prepare for heightened volatility by diversifying investments.

The two great powers are “on the brink of a much worse economic or military war” but neither wants to cross that line, as a major deterioration from current conditions could be disastrous, Dalio said in exclusive comments made to the Post. This strained but contained rivalry is set to pose major risks for global investors, he added.

“I expect that there will continue to be a vicious competition,” he said in an emailed response to the Post. “As a result they will both press up against the other’s red lines, and they both have their own big domestic challenging circumstances that could cause instability.”

The domestic situations within each country, especially how the internal conflict in the US pans out over the next year, will have a greater impact on US-Chinese relations and what the new world order looks like than anything else, he added.

“Both countries and the world are in risky positions” amid the elevated debt burden, technology and climate changes, he said. “That makes diversification of investments in different asset classes and different countries more important than ever.”

In China, an unbalanced economic recovery since exiting Covid lockdowns, ballooning local government debt, and the ongoing property market downturn that Dalio describes as “a classic big real estate bubble that burst”, have all spooked foreign and domestic investors, leading to a sell-off.

The CSI 300 Index tracking the biggest firms listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen has tumbled some 38 per cent since a peak in February 2021, while the Hang Seng Index, tracking the largest and most liquid stocks listed in Hong Kong, slipped over 42 per cent during the sell-off.

Bridgewater, which managed over US$171 billion in assets as of March, has also been offloading Chinese shares in recent months, to join the retreat of global investors. In some of its most recent moves, the Connecticut-based investor cut stakes in nearly all US-listed Chinese stocks it held including Pinduoduo, Yum China and Trip.com, by up to 78 per cent in the first three months of this year.

The total value of Bridgewater’s Chinese stock holdings had plummeted to US$313 million at the end of the first quarter, an 86 per cent drop from a recent peak of some US$2.2 billion in early 2022, according to calculations made by the Post.

Yet Dalio, said he now sees opportunities in the market downturn as Chinese assets now look cheap after “unsustainable” selling by foreign and domestic investors. The markets now just need to see less selling to stage a rally, and “that is likely in this case” because the selling cannot continue at the furious pace that was seen in recent weeks.

“The combination of cheap prices and the momentum of selling tapering off is a dynamic that is consistent with price gains,” he said.

International investors, especially those in the US, are worried about potential blowbacks from their own governments for investing in China, as anti-China policies are set to gain bipartisan support in the US election this year, he said at the Greenwich Economic Forum in Hong Kong earlier this month.

Still, diversification in the world’s second largest economy is “desirable” as the assets are “attractively priced” and can balance the portfolio, he said.

“In my opinion, no exposure to any asset class or country should be more than 10 per cent of one’s portfolio. And with one’s limitations at that sort of level, one can operate without much risk in all of these markets.”

China’s Realme apologises after armed robbery of flagship smartphones shipment

https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3267039/chinas-realme-apologises-after-armed-robbery-flagship-smartphones-shipment?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese smartphone maker Realme apologised to consumers for possible delays of its latest handset because the devices were stolen while in transit to Spain just a few weeks ahead of the product launch.

A shipment of Realme’s GT6 smartphones, which has a launch event in Italy set for Thursday, was stolen on its way to Spain “for reasons beyond our control”, the company said in a statement on Friday published to its Spanish account on X, formerly Twitter. Spanish tech media Zonamovilidad.es reported on Friday that the robbery occurred in late May when the vehicle carrying the devices was robbed “at gunpoint”. The theft is causing delays in both Spanish and Portuguese stores, according to the report.

“We haven’t been able to get them back despite doing everything we can, so we won’t be able to ensure the in-store experience we would like during the launch week,” the company said, adding that it “sincerely apologises” for the situation.

Neither the number of handsets stolen nor their value has been disclosed. Realme did not respond to a request for comment.

The incident deals a blow to Shenzhen-based Realme, which spun out of Oppo in 2019, as it tries to compete in Europe, one of its key markets. Its market share in the region was flat at 4 per cent between 2022 and 2023, according to Counterpoint Research, but shipments in the first quarter surged 59 per cent year on year, driven by growth in Western Europe and a sharp rebound in some key markets such as Italy and Spain.

The launch of the GT series handsets in 2021 was meant to position the company to “compete in mature markets such as Western Europe and China”, the company wrote in a promotional Wall Street Journal article that year.

Realme has advertised the GT6 as its latest “flagship killer”, a common moniker from Chinese brands selling smartphones with high-end hardware at relatively budget prices. The GT6 runs on Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, according to Chinese media reports, and will have artificial intelligence functions. The company has yet to reveal more details about the highly anticipated product.

Chinese smartphone brands have been doubling down on overseas expansion in recent years, and Realme is one of the fastest-growing brands.

Realme was originally incubated by Oppo, which along with Vivo was started by Chinese consumer hardware giant BBK Electronics. The company said it has shipped more than 200 million handsets as of last November, five years after its founding, with most sales coming from outside China.

In January, on the sidelines of the CES trade show in Las Vegas, Realme unveiled its 12 Pro+ smartphone as part of a rebranding effort to better target young overseas consumers.

China seen easing coal mining curbs as it prioritises growth, energy security: Goldman

https://www.scmp.com/business/commodities/article/3267044/china-seen-easing-coal-mining-curbs-it-prioritises-growth-energy-security-goldman?utm_source=rss_feed

China is likely to ease mining safety curbs in Shanxi, the nation’s top coal producing province, despite a string of accidents that has reduced output this year to ease energy security pressure and rejuvenate the economy, according to Goldman Sachs.

The US investment bank forecast in a report this week that China’s annual coal production will grow by about 100 million tonnes compared with last year, in line with the 2024 targets of the main coal producing firms and provinces, but slower than the average growth from 2021 to 23.

Overall coal output narrowed to 0.8 per cent year-on-year in May, but production from January to May decreased 3 per cent year on year to 1.86 billion tonnes, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

“We believe the weakness in China coal production has been driven by stricter mining safety checks, especially in Shanxi, China’s top coal-producing province,” Goldman analysts Wei Hongcen and Samantha Dart said in the report.

“For the remainder of 2024, we expect a catch-up in coal production in Shanxi province, as it would be under both economic growth and energy-security pressures to loosen restrictions to produce more.”

In early April, Shanxi, the nation’s top producer of the commodity, accounting for a quarter of the output, issued a circular to strengthen mining safety measures because of several fatal accidents. Two separate accidents the previous month killed 12 people, which was preceded by dozens of fatalities the previous year.

The number of metal and non-metal mines in the province will be cut by at least a fifth by the end of this year compared with 2022, while the share of medium and large mines’ production will rise by 15 percentage points, the Shanxi provincial government said in a directive.

In a separate directive, the provincial government announced a coal output target of about 1.3 billion tonnes, 4.2 per cent lower than last year.

Shanxi, where mining contributes nearly a third of economic output, saw coal production plunge 16.9 per cent year on year in the year’s first four months to 369 million tonnes, amid tighter safety measures and weak demand.

In the first quarter, Shanxi’s gross domestic output fell 7.3 per cent in absolute value. If the impact of price disinflation is taken out, economic output grew 1.2 per cent, the weakest among the nation’s 31 administrative regions and much lower than the national growth of 5.3 per cent.

Sinopec Economics and Development Research Institute, a unit of the nation’s largest oil refiner, projected China’s coal consumption will peak at 4.37 billion tonnes next year and fall to 380 million tonnes in 2060, when the country aims to reach carbon neutrality.

Coal demand last year grew 5.6 per cent to 4.35 billion tonnes as the economy recovered from the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Last year, coal and natural gas-fired power plants generated 69.9 per cent of the country’s electricity, versus 69.3 per cent in 2022, as droughts crimped hydro power production, even as wind and solar power’s contribution rose to 12.4 per cent from 11.5 per cent.

South Korea sees 470% more Chinese visitors, as Thai tourists stay away

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3267016/south-korea-sees-470-more-chinese-visitors-thai-tourists-stay-away?utm_source=rss_feed

Foreign tourists arrivals in South Korea have surged this year, but fewer are coming from former top Southeast Asian source country Thailand, which has fallen to third place behind Vietnam and the Philippines.

Data from the Korea Tourism Organisation shows 119,000 Thai tourists visited South Korea from January to April, a 21.1 per cent decrease compared to the same period last year. In contrast, the overall number of foreign tourists increased 86.9 per cent during the same period, according to Yonhap News Agency.

Chinese tourists increased by 470 per cent and Japanese by 86 per cent, the data showed. Other Southeast Asian countries also saw significant increases, including the Philippines (76 per cent), Indonesia (51 per cent), Malaysia (35 per cent), Vietnam (29 per cent) and Singapore (11 per cent).

Even compared to pre-pandemic levels, the recovery rate of Thai tourists remains low. From January to April this year, Thai tourist numbers were only 59 per cent of what they were in the same period in 2019, significantly lagging behind the overall foreign tourist recovery rate of 88 per cent.

In 2019, Thailand was the top Southeast Asian country in terms of tourists to South Korea with 572,000 visitors, surpassing Vietnam (554,000) and the Philippines (504,000). However, this year, Thailand has fallen to third place with 163,000 visitors, behind Vietnam (163,000) and the Philippines (158,000).

Industry experts attribute the decline in Thai tourists to negative sentiments arising from entry refusals at South Korea’s borders.

The introduction of the K-ETA (Korea Electronic Travel Authorisation) system, which requires travellers from 112 visa-exempt countries to register and obtain entry approval online before departing for South Korea, has been a significant factor.

Although K-ETA exemptions were temporarily granted to 22 places of origin – including Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore – Thailand was not included.

The high number of K-ETA rejections and lack of clear explanations for these rejections have fuelled dissatisfaction among Thai nationals. Some travellers, even after receiving K-ETA approval, were denied entry upon arrival in South Korea, further exacerbating the issue.

These entry refusal stories have become a hot topic on Thai social media, contributing to the decline in tourist numbers. The stricter entry requirements for Thai nationals are partly due to Thailand being South Korea’s leading source of illegal immigrants.

The Ministry of Justice has emphasised that the measures are necessary to prevent illegal immigration and are not discriminatory against Thai nationals.

However, the tourism authorities, aiming to attract 20 million foreign tourists annually, are concerned about the decline in visitors from what was once the top Southeast Asian country for tourism to South Korea.

“The decline in Thai tourists can only be explained by the K-ETA issue,” a Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism official said. Despite our request for a temporary exemption of K-ETA this year, which is designated as Visit Korea Year, the Ministry of Justice remains firm on its stance.”

South Korea and Thailand have designated 2023-2024 as the “Korea-Thailand Mutual Visit Year” in hopes of strengthening tourism ties between the two nations.

China’s south bears brunt of rains with at least 9 dead and hundreds homeless

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3267018/chinas-south-bears-brunt-rains-least-9-dead-and-hundreds-homeless?utm_source=rss_feed

At least nine people are dead and 17 missing as heavy rains sweep through southern China, leaving many homeless.

Several provinces have issued flood warnings, sending teams to rescue residents and deliver food and supplies as the extreme weather continues.

Extreme rainfall hit Meizhou city in Guangdong province’s east on Sunday, leading to flash floods and landslides in multiple counties.

At least five people had been found dead as of Monday, 13 were trapped and 15 were missing, according to the provincial headquarters for flood, drought and hurricane control.

More than 9,000 people joined emergency teams organised by the local government, which has raised Guangdong’s flood emergency response to level 3 – the second lowest in a four-tier system.

Three helicopters and 18 provincial teams of professionals have been sent to disaster-hit areas, the headquarters said.

As of Monday evening, 19 of the province’s river monitoring stations had detected water rising past warning levels, with the Hanjiang River reaching 55.32 metres (about 181ft), more than 5 metres (17ft) above the trigger point, Yangcheng Evening News said.

The same report said Guangdong’s Sanhe River was running at 48.1 metres (158ft), a full 6.1 metres (20ft) above the warning level.

Landslides in the neighbouring province of Fujian left four dead and two people missing in Longyan city’s Wuping county, in the province’s southwest, state broadcaster CCTV said on Monday evening.

Around 47,800 people in Wuping were affected by the heavy rains, with 378 houses collapsed, the report said.

According to CCTV, 7.3km (4.54 miles) of the county’s roads have been damaged and 880 hectares of crops affected, with an estimated economic loss of 415 million yuan (US$57.2 million).

Guangxi Zhuang, the autonomous region bordering Vietnam, and Hunan province issued orange alerts on Monday evening, the second-highest alert level, as the rainstorms moved north and west.

Southern China has been battered with record-breaking rainfall since April. Water levels in the Bei River, a tributary of the Pearl River, have exceeded a 50-year high while cumulative rainfall has hit a record for the month in several areas.

China’s next-gen sexbots powered by AI are about to hit the shelves

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3266964/chinas-next-gen-sexbots-powered-ai-are-about-hit-shelves?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese scientists and engineers are applying ChatGPT-like technology to sex robots, aiming to create interactive, AI-powered companions in the face of technical and ethical challenges.

In Shenzhen, Starpery Technology, a major producer of sex dolls, is now training its own large language model to enhance its product with artificial intelligence. These sex dolls with unprecedented capabilities – available in male or female forms – will soon be hitting the shelves.

“We are developing a next-generation sex doll that can interact vocally and physically with users, with prototypes expected by August this year,” CEO Evan Lee said early this month.

“Technological challenges remain, particularly in achieving realistic human interaction,” he said. “While simple dialogue is easy, creating interactive responses involves complex model development by specialised software companies.”

Traditional dolls, supported by a metal skeleton and a silicone exterior, are limited to simple responses and lack the expressive capabilities needed to engage with a human.

“The new generation of sex dolls, powered by AI models and equipped with sensors, can react with both movements and speech, significantly enhancing user experience by focusing on emotional connection rather than just basic conversational abilities,” Lee said.

The company, which has been focusing on the market outside China, is now also targeting the domestic sector.

Despite being a largely conservative society, with general reluctance to discuss such topics, Lee said China hosted the largest market for sex dolls, surpassing the combined sales of the US, Japan and Germany.

“People in the industry know China has a huge market, with purchasing power in major cities surpassing many European countries. The market is also open in mind – though aesthetically different from the European market,” he said.

Starpery’s road map includes developing robots capable of household chores, helping people with disabilities and providing aged care. By 2025, the company aims to launch its first “smart service robot”, capable of more complex services for people with disabilities. By 2030, these robots could be protecting people from hazardous jobs, according to the company’s plan.

To achieve this level of development, there are two main challenges: battery capacity and artificial muscles, Lee said.

Firstly, unlike electric vehicles, humanoid robots lack space for large batteries, so for them to operate independently the energy density of batteries must improve. Secondly, current engines lack the flexibility of human muscles, which can exert force over a wide range and can be both hard and soft, fitting closely to the skin, according to Lee.

Currently, to ensure realism the dolls can often weigh up to 40kg (88lbs), which is too heavy for the motor and poses a risk of falling or hurting the user.

“Therefore in the first stage, we focused on reducing the weight through improvements in materials and production processes,” Lee said. By July 2023, their 172cm-tall doll weighed just 29kg.

Lee said robots that could do household chores was a societal vision but it remained a long time away. Robotics companies could use servo motors to achieve certain functions, but considering stability and cost, commercialisation was still in the distance.

“The entire industry will need about 10 years to achieve the goal,” he said.

In addition to technical difficulties, Starpery also faces cost and ethics challenges.

Reducers – which transfer power between the motor and the robot joints – are key components in the mechanical system of humanoid robots. They generally account for 30 per cent of the robot’s cost and might need multiple gears at different joints.

“We strive to decrease the cost so that more people can afford realistic dolls, while adding motors will increase the cost [to] some extent,” Lee said.

Dolls from Starpery, which has a complete supply chain and lower manufacturing costs, are priced around US$1,500. An advanced Harmony doll produced by Abyss Creations in the United States starts at US$6,000.

Starpery is in Shenzhen, in southern Guangdong province, which is now the world’s largest production base for adult products, providing the company with price advantages.

“The supply chain in Guangdong is complete, and manufacturers respond quickly to market demands. New technologies can usually be seen in products, the following month it shows up somewhere else,” Lee said.

Besides Starpery, other Chinese manufacturers are also integrating AI into physical dolls. WMdoll, in Zhongshan, another Guangdong city, and EXdoll, in Dalian, in the northeastern province of Liaoning, also plan to launch interactive products.

In the past year, large language models have significantly advanced various sectors, notably transforming the humanoid robot industry.

“Innovations spurred by tailored models, trained on diverse data sets, have unleashed a wave of products that are transforming industry landscapes and user interactions,” said Tang Jie, a professor of computer science at Tsinghua University.

In the humanoid robot industry, for example, large language models play an important role in its development.

Ou Jinyan, spokesperson for LimX Dynamics, a robot development company, said: “It not only speeds up iterations in robotics, enhancing motion control, but also produces a suite of user-friendly tools that significantly [boost] developer productivity.”

In addition to technical issues, the industry faces very human considerations. AI-driven sex robots could blur ethical boundaries and reinforce harmful attitudes regarding consent and negative gender stereotypes.

Criticism includes the view that overreliance on AI companions for sexual or emotional fulfilment might lead to less genuine human connection, affecting a user’s ability to form healthy relationships with real people.

And the rapid development of AI-driven sex robots outpaces existing legal and regulatory frameworks, leading to a legal grey area concerning their use, ownership and the responsibilities of manufacturers and users.

In its 2023 paper, “Research Report on AI Ethics Governance”, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology stated: “AI that can make decisions under certain conditions could challenge human autonomy and self-perception. Large language models also pose risks of data leaks and privacy violations, as information from users could become material for training generative AI.”

Ex-Trump adviser urges him to cut economic ties with China, restart nuclear tests

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3267008/ex-trump-adviser-urges-him-cut-economic-ties-china-restart-nuclear-tests?utm_source=rss_feed

If Donald Trump returns to the White House, he should sever all economic ties with China, consider deploying the entire US Marine Corps to Asia and resume live nuclear-weapons testing, his former national security adviser writes in an article offering the most detailed account of what foreign policy may look like in a second Trump term.

The proposals are spelled out in an article set to appear in Foreign Affairs magazine written by Trump’s last national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, who may get another top job if Trump wins a new term as president in November.

While O’Brien was a hardliner and helped fuel the tougher stance toward China that emerged late in Trump’s time in office, the prescriptions he spells out go far beyond anything he publicly advocated at the time.

“As China seeks to undermine American economic and military strength, Washington should return the favour,” O’Brien writes in the article’s most explosive policy prescription, saying that “Washington should, in fact, seek to decouple its economy from China’s.”

There’s no guarantee Trump would adhere to the policy proposals on China that O’Brien lays out in the article, especially one that would have such a seismic impact for the US and the world given how interwoven the two countries’ economies have become.

But O’Brien said recently that he remains in “regular contact” with the former president, and he’s taken the public stage more often in recent months, meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel and criticising US President Joe Biden for what he considered an insufficient response to attacks on US troops in Iraq and Syria.

The article is only the latest in a series of such initiatives from former Trump administration officials and conservative think tanks. But O’Brien’s previous role and the prospect of his return give it more weight than others.

Christian Whiton, a State Department political appointee under presidents George W. Bush and Trump who helped O’Brien produce the article, said O’Brien gave a copy to Trump campaign adviser Susie Wiles. Whiton said Wiles showed a printed copy to Trump.

But Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign representative, disputed that account, saying it wasn’t true that Wiles had received the article or shown it to the former president.

“Let us be very specific here: unless a message is coming directly from president Trump or an authorised member of his campaign team, no aspect of future presidential staffing or policy announcements should be deemed official,” Wiles and Chris LaCivita, a campaign senior adviser, said in a statement that Leavitt provided on Monday evening.

At more than 5,000 words, the article – “The Return of Peace Through Strength: Making the Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy” – argues that the 60 per cent tariffs on China that Trump has floated should be only the first step, followed by tougher export controls “on any technology that might be of use to China” and other measures.

“This morass of American weakness and failure cries out for a Trumpian restoration of peace through strength,” O’Brien writes.

He also advocates a military challenge to China beyond the additional attention the Biden administration has paid to the Asia-Pacific region.

O’Brien argues for the US to help expand the militaries of Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, increase military assistance to Taiwan and boost missile defence and fighter jet protection in the region.

O’Brien calls for a complete reorientation of US forces, saying the US should consider deploying all its 177,000 Marines to the Pacific region, “relieving it in particular of missions in the Middle East and North Africa”.

The US should strengthen its nuclear arsenal by conducting underground nuclear tests for the first time since a self-imposed ban in 1992, and he argues the US should resume production of uranium-235 and plutonium-239 “if China and Russia continue to refuse to engage in good-faith arms control talks”.

Trump has said he’d end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours. O’Brien writes in the article that Trump has “made clear that he would like to see a negotiated settlement to the war that ends the killing and preserves the security of Ukraine”.

He writes that Trump’s approach “would be to continue to provide lethal aid to Ukraine, financed by European countries, while keeping the door open to diplomacy with Russia – and keeping Moscow off balance with a degree of unpredictability”.

There are moves O’Brien doesn’t call for, and that may be a pleasant surprise to uneasy allies. There’s no mention of withdrawing from Nato – in fact, he says Trump made the defence alliance stronger by demanding that European governments spend more on defence.

O’Brien calls on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to rotate ground and air forces to Poland to boost its capabilities close to Russia’s border “and to make unmistakably clear that the alliance will defend all its territory from foreign aggression”.

O’Brien also takes on what he sees as the Pentagon’s bloated procurement policies. He advocates a push toward “nimble newer defence suppliers such as Anduril and Palantir,” companies that he says are “rooted in the innovative tech sector” to get away from costly and unnecessary programmes.

“There was no authoritative preview of Trump foreign policy 2016,” Whiton said of O’Brien’s thinking about the article. “The audience is foreigners and the establishment. As much as Trump views himself as an insurgent, there’s utility in calming things down and providing some things. I think you’re seeing that.”

The US wants to decouple its military supplies from China – but can it?

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3266929/us-wants-decouple-its-military-supplies-china-can-it?utm_source=rss_feed

This is the fourth in a about China’s military development, from weapons and aircraft to its role in the global supply chain and how it compares with the United States.

China’s central role in the global supply chain has prompted the United States to initiate a series of measures to de-risk its relationship with the world’s second largest economy as relations worsen.

For the US defence industry, it seems inevitable that Washington will want to go further and seek to cut out China completely.

Whether it will work is another question, though. China now plays a central role in the global economy as a leading producer of everything from the raw materials used to make basic equipment and rare earth metals to the hi-tech equipment that is vital to the production of some of America’s most advanced weapons.

When it comes to global arms exports, China accounts for a relatively modest 6.6 per cent of the market, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

But because China accounts for 20 per cent of total global manufacturing trade, according to Beijing’s own figures, the picture is very different when looking at the components used to make weapons.

If all made-in-China parts and components were removed from existing weapons as well as from the international arms industry’s supply chain, it would lead to chaotic consequences for arms manufacturers around the world. Precision-guided missile makers would struggle to find enough sensors, there might not be enough infrared lenses for night-vision goggles and shortages of bulletproof fibre would have a knock-on effect on supplies of body armour.

It could also cause the war in Ukraine to suddenly stop. Much of the Western equipment supplied to Ukraine – from Javelin anti-tank missiles to Patriot air-defence systems – would stop working, and the same would apply to significant parts of Russia’s arsenal, from drones to armoured vehicles.

Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II, the cornerstone stealth fighter for the US and its allies, would see production lines coming to a halt while the existing fleet would run out of replacement parts.

The plane’s engines and flight control systems use critical high-performance magnets, made of rare earth materials such as neodymium, dysprosium and praseodymium – all sourced from China.

As China also dominates the global rare earths processing industry there would be no immediate alternative source for these high-grade magnets.

China also has “a near-total monopoly over gallium, a critical mineral used to produce high-performance microchips that power some of the US’ most advanced military technologies”, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, said in a report last July.

It produced 98 per cent of the world’s supply of raw gallium and controlled a majority of gallium extracted from bauxite, the centre said. The Rand Corporation has also said that 18 out of the 37 minerals relevant to defence applications are concentrated in China.

Advanced batteries, described by US deputy defence secretary Kathleen Hicks as “essential to thousands of military systems” such as drones and electric vehicles, is another area where China dominates the supply chain from mineral extraction, processing and component-making to battery assembly.

A report by the Pentagon earlier this year examining the US military’s supply chain vulnerabilities and pointing out ways to reduce them said it provided 94 per cent of the world’s lithium hydroxide, 76 per cent of cells and 76 per cent of electrolytes.

Even when it comes to basic raw materials, China holds a dominant position. The world’s second biggest economy is also the world’s top producer of intermediate metal products, which are vital for a whole range of weaponry – more than the next seven countries combined.

It manufactures half the world’s crude steel, the largest volume of aluminium and refined copper, and exports more than twice the amount of these materials than the second-ranked producers, according to the data-gathering platform Statista.

The rapid boom in the Chinese electric vehicle industry is a further concern for Washington, which may find itself lagging when it comes to producing the military transport vehicles of the future.

Given the increasing tensions between Washington and Beijing and the obvious vulnerability in globalised supply chains highlighted by the Covid-19 pandemic, rebuilding domestic manufacturing, and reducing heavy reliance on China is a priority for the US across the political divide.

In his first month in office, Joe Biden signed an executive order to build “resilient American supply chains”.

Some key industries, such as laser and microwave weapons, continue to depend on China, though direct supplies in some critical technologies, such as nuclear weapons, space, artificial intelligence and advanced communications, did see a significant drop between 2020 and 2023 despite other areas seeking a strong post-pandemic resurgence, according to defence acquisition information firm Govini.

Timothy Heath, a senior international defence researcher at the Rand Corporation, said due to the globalised production chain and complex subcontracting links, the US and its allies face a “difficult challenge” in tracing any component or part of their weapons and platforms that may have been made in China.

“However, the US government seems determined to reduce its vulnerabilities and so it has directed an extensive effort to relocate production of parts and components from China to friendlier countries,” he said, adding that the success of the supply chain reshaping would depend on how quickly the US can “identify and develop alternative sources of rare earths and other critical materials”.

“Both [the US and China] are likely to carry out measures to reduce risk and, if possible, decouple from the other country as a way to reduce vulnerabilities and ensure secure supply chains.”

In the case of rare earths, the “friendlier countries” could be Australia, which has rich reserves of some of the critical minerals and has already formed a partnership with the US to develop “critical minerals”, such as rare earths, tungsten and cobalt.

Other measures put forward include more investment into domestic manufacturing and small businesses, research and development, STEM education, industrial standardisation and cooperation with allies, to tackle the country’s systematic industrial base challenges such as low capacity, technical dependence, workforce shortage, as the Pentagon’s 2022 supply chain action plan suggested.

However, China too has its vulnerabilities, most notably when it comes to chips.

The US has moved to restrict China’s access to the most advanced chips and equipment used to make them, pushing allies such as Japan and the Netherlands, which make key components, to follow suit.

Although Beijing is trying to become self-reliant in this area by developing its own industry, the Chinese mainland currently imports nearly half the world’s semiconductor chips, many of which come from Taiwan.

Further complicating the picture, many of these are then used to make electric products or parts that China then exports, including to US defence contractors.

Last year, 41 per cent of the semiconductors in the US weapons systems and associated infrastructure were sourced from China, according to Govini.

These can be found in some of America’s most advanced weapons, ranging from warships – including its Ford-class aircraft carriers – stealth bombers, ballistic and anti-ship missiles and warplanes.

In some cases, manufacturers are also buying components, including electronics, software, fuses, detonators and data links, the Pentagon report found.

Eugene Gholz, an associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, said the US still had significant advantages, saying the relationship is “not equally dependent” as the US economy is more flexible and innovative, and it has access to more alternative suppliers than China.

He also argued that Washington was well on its way to achieving its goal of military decoupling.

“The US defence supply chain already has many reasons not to use many Chinese components and materials, so in effect, while the broader US and Chinese markets are highly interlinked through trade and investment, the defence supply chain is largely ‘decoupled’,” Gholz added.

“When specific instances of components from China have been identified in US weapon systems, the United States and its prime defence contractors have generally been able to find substitute sources.”

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Date my cat: China youth host matchmaking events for pets to relieve stress, pressure to get married

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3264502/date-my-cat-china-youth-host-matchmaking-events-pets-relieve-stress-pressure-get-married?utm_source=rss_feed

Young adults in China are hosting matchmaking events for their pets, a practice which has been described, tongue-in-cheek, as a bid to release the pressure they are under to get married.

The trend has even morphed into a new form of social interaction among the younger generation.

One such event that took place on May 25, was called “If You Are the Cute One,” and attracted significant online attention, Star Video reported.

The idea was inspired by the Chinese television dating show, “If You Are the One,” in which male contestants introduce themselves in video clips, and female guests show their interest by turning the lights on for “yes” and off for “no”.

During the pet matchmaking event, a male cat that was described as “having a car, a house and financial independence” stood out as a desirable candidate as he sought to find a partner.

The cat’s dating profile amusingly disclosed that he “has just turned two years old and is successful in his career”.

The profile went on to describe the feline as “introverted, appearing cold on the outside but warm on the inside, sexy and shy, quietly passionate, with a strong physique, and a lover of fitness”.

“Today, I am publicly seeking a suitable companion in the feline world, aiming to join paws with a gentle and lovely young cat to nurture a thriving family together,” it said.

Four female cats who were attracted to the profile described their family backgrounds, talents and other details.

The trend is not the only way the younger generation in China is creating entertainment for themselves while searching for a mate for their pets.

Many have also turned to second-hand websites, such as Xianyu, where they post ads for “pet dates.”

Owned by Alibaba, which also owns the South China Morning Post, Xianyu has about 3 million people using its platform every year to find partners for their pets and has even created a “Pet Matchmaking Corner” to facilitate connections.

Ads on the site are often creative and funny, with owners highlighting their pets’ attributes.

Some emphasise personalities, such as “adorably silly and honest” while others show photos of their pure breeds, boasting that they have “fur as soft as silk”.

The trend has sparked a lively discussion on mainland social media.

“Has the pet matchmaking market become so competitive that even male cats must be successful and financially stable?” one online observer joked.

“Whether it’s young people or their cats, one of them has to go on a date. It’s better if I’m single, rather than my pet,” said another.

“It seems that young people pressured to marry are passing their stress onto their pets,” wrote a third.