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• China beats Puerto Rico in Olympic women’s hoops, puts itself in contention to advance to quarters
• Philippines fortifies South China Sea outpost for a decade
• How easily can foreigners travel to China and spend money in August 2024?
• China’s Xi sends congratulatory note to ‘comrade’ Lam, Vietnam’s new party chief
• China investigates executives of state-owned energy and finance companies
• Ancient China shipwreck unveils insights into Song-era smuggling and government apathy
• Chinese nanotube wire rivals copper in conductivity and could someday be used in space
• The era of the entrepreneurial Chinese local government is over
• China actress Angelababy eases back into spotlight after Crazy Horse Paris controversy
• South China Sea: Beijing opens hardware store on disputed Woody Island
• Bridge collapse in China’s Sichuan sends cars plunging after mudslide hits expressway
• ‘Softcore harassment’ China live-streams let remote control toys lift women’s skirts
• China unveils 5-year plan for better rehab, schooling for autistic children
• Why China’s backing for Cambodian canal on Mekong River could push Vietnam closer to US
• China’s EV, battery firms bolt into emerging markets as trade remains caustic
• As China, India ramp up naval rivalry, is the Indian Ocean at a maritime crossroads?
• What I know as a Chinese-looking person travelling the world
• Florida lawyer pleads guilty to Chinese embassy bombing attempt in DC
• US lawyer pleads guilty to trying to detonate explosives near Chinese embassy in Washington
• China’s tourism policy must now go beyond visa-free travel
• South China Sea: what is Beijing’s ‘maritime militia’ and how does it support the PLA?

China beats Puerto Rico in Olympic women’s hoops, puts itself in contention to advance to quarters

https://apnews.com/article/2024-olympics-womens-basketball-8ed12edb08049dcc1571a42a553ecb76China's Li Yueru, right, shoots as Puerto Rico's Tayra Melendez defends during a women's basketball game at the 2024 Summer Olympics, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024, in Villeneuve-d'Ascq, France. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy)

2024-08-03T10:56:02Z

VILLENEUVE-D’ASCQ, France (AP) — Li Meng scored 18 points and China topped Puerto Rico 80-58 on Saturday in the Olympic women’s basketball tournament to keep its chances alive of reaching the quarterfinals.

Now China will have to wait until Sunday to see if it advances to the elimination round. The top two teams in each group as well as the next best two squads will advance to Paris for the quarterfinals on Wednesday. The tiebreaker to determine the final two slots is point differential. China has a point differential of minus-1 points in its three games.

Spain faces Serbia later Saturday to determine the winner of Group A.

China (1-2) was up six points after one quarter and 40-29 at the half. It extended its lead to 16 in the third quarter on Li’s 3-pointer and Puerto Rico never got within single digits again.

Arella Guirantes led Puerto Rico (0-3) with 20 points.

The loss ended a disappointing Games for Puerto Rico, which remained winless in two Olympic appearances. The Puerto Ricans had good chances to win their first two games before falling by three points to Serbia and one to Spain.

Puerto Rico came into the Olympics after reaching the quarterfinals of the 2022 World Cup.

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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

Philippines fortifies South China Sea outpost for a decade

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3273093/philippines-fortifies-south-china-sea-outpost-decade?utm_source=rss_feed

The Philippines has carried out substantial reinforcements on a grounded World War II-era ship in the contested South China Sea, enough to make the outpost at the centre of tensions with Beijing last at least another decade, according to four people familiar with the matter.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s government ramped up efforts to maintain the military outpost on Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands after taking office in 2022, two of the people said. The BRP Sierra Madre was first deposited on the reef in 1999 in a move meant to reject on Beijing’s expansive claims in the region.

In 2021, the rusty and decrepit Sierra Madre was thought to only have a remaining lifespan of three to five years, one of the people said. While some efforts had previously been made to fortify the ship, Marcos’ government accelerated that work, two of the people said.

The improvements to the outpost, on which the Southeast Asian nation maintains a handful of troops it has to regularly resupply with fresh food, water and basic goods, has been sufficient to fortify it for years, according to three of the people.

All four of the people who spoke to journalists asked not to be identified, saying they were not authorised to discuss the sensitive issue publicly.

The resupply missions have been a constant source of tension with China, which has used its coastguard and a fleet of fishing vessels known as its maritime militia to block and intimidate Philippine ships. In one incident this year, axe-wielding Chinese sailors threatened Philippine sailors, with one losing his thumb when his small vessel was rammed by a Chinese boat. China has said that its actions were lawful.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry responded to a request for comment by reiterating that Beijing opposes any moves by the Philippines to supply construction materials, repair, or reinforce the warship.

Colonel Francel Margareth Padilla, a Philippine military spokeswoman, said the armed forces are “dedicated to ensuring the decent living conditions of our marines and sailors stationed on the BRP Sierra Madre.” Those efforts include “sustaining our presence in the West Philippine Sea, where the Philippines exercises sovereignty, sovereign rights, and jurisdiction,” she added.

In a shift from his predecessor, President Rodrigo Duterte, Marcos has pushed back more assertively against Beijing’s expansive claims over the South China Sea, a region critical to global trade. China has maintained its claims even after a UN-backed arbitration panel ruled in Manila’s favour.

Beijing maintains 27 outposts in the disputed sea, while Manila occupies nine features including Second Thomas Shoal, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. Other nations which have competing claims in the region include Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei.

In addition to fortifying the ship, Marcos’ administration has repeatedly invited journalists to cover missions to Second Thomas Shoal and film China’s coastguard seeking to interfere with those efforts. He has warned that the death of a Philippines service member by “an attack from any foreign power” would prompt him to invoke a mutual defence treaty with the US.

China has long opposed the delivery of construction materials to the Sierra Madre and repeatedly urged the Philippines to tow the vessel away.

After several high-profile confrontations over the past year, the two nations agreed to ease tensions last month, hammering out a confidential “provisional arrangement” on Manila’s missions to Second Thomas Shoal as well as a hotline that includes representatives of Marcos and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In a sign that de-escalation may be working, the Philippines said its latest mission to Second Thomas Shoal over the weekend – the first following the agreement between Manila and Beijing – was conducted without incident.

How easily can foreigners travel to China and spend money in August 2024?

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3272979/how-easily-can-foreigners-travel-china-and-spend-money-august-2024?utm_source=rss_feed

China has been pulling out the stops to bring back tourists after relaxing its zero-Covid restrictions in late 2022.

The moves have included expansions of visa-free travel schemes, as well as efforts to optimise payment methods, which have been seen as a hurdle for foreigners who want to spend money in a society that has gone largely cashless in the span of just a few years.

With few businesses accepting international credit cards, coupled with a curbing of cash payments across the country, foreigners have lamented how difficult it can be to open their wallets in China.

Chinese mobile payment platforms, dominated by domestic firms, cater to locals and restrict use by foreigners due to financial and data-control laws.

But in late July, the People’s Bank of China vowed to make it more convenient for visitors to make payments in China amid a wider effort to lure back overseas tourists and foreign investment.

Yan Fang, head of the PBOC’s Payment and Settlement Department, said foreign visitors could flexibly choose among various payment methods, including bank cards, cash and mobile payments, according to state media.

In June, 1.61 million transactions were made via overseas bank cards in China, with the transaction volume amounting to 2.9 billion yuan (US$400 million) – both approximately doubling the levels seen in February, according to Yan.

In the first half of the year, more than 5 million inbound visitors used mobile payments, representing a fourfold year-on-year increase, Yan added.

In early March, the central bank eased limits on mobile payments for foreigners, with the single transaction limit raised from US$1,000 to US$5,000. And the annual mobile payment ceiling for foreigners who register their ID was also raised from US$10,000 to US$50,000, on par with the limit for Chinese nationals.

Also in March, the State Council vowed to offer greater acceptance of cash and overseas bank cards, promising to improve policy support to optimise payment methods.

Since late last year, China has relaxed a wide range of policies, including visa-free entries, to boost its tourism sector that was ravaged for three years under leadership’s zero-Covid policy.

And according to the National Immigration Association, China welcomed 14.64 million international visitors in the first half of 2024, representing a 153 per cent increase from the same period a year prior.

The association said 8.54 million visitors took advantage of visa-free entries, representing a 190 per cent surge, with the official Xinhua saying the increase was partly due to China’s 144-hour visa-free transit policy.

Passport holders from 54 nations, including Australia, Japan, the United States and countries throughout Europe, can reach much of mainland China via its international airports, which can process visa-free arrivals for transit passengers for 72 to 144 hours.

A further 23 countries have mutual visa exemptions, including Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia.

At the start of August, the southernmost tropical destination of Hainan was added to the list of regions embracing the 144-hour visa-free policy for foreign tour groups.

Foreigners holding a standard passport from any nation with diplomatic ties to China can visit the island province by joining a tour group – of at least two people – organised by a registered travel agency in Hong Kong or Macau.

And since May, foreigners arriving on international cruises at all of China’s 13 cruise ports have been able to remain in the country for 15 days without a visa.

China’s Xi sends congratulatory note to ‘comrade’ Lam, Vietnam’s new party chief

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3273097/chinas-xi-sends-congratulatory-note-comrade-lam-vietnams-new-party-chief?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory telegram to Vietnam’s new party chief To Lam on Saturday, with a call for further efforts to bolster political trust between the two neighbours.

The message was sent hours after Lam, who is the Vietnamese president, was named to the nation’s top position – general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

Lam was unanimously elected by the party’s core central committee in Hanoi on Saturday morning.

The 67-year-old career security official replaces Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnam’s longest-serving party chief who died two weeks ago.

Xi, who is also party secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, addressed Lam as “comrade”, a reference highlighting the links between their parties.

“I am ready to work with Comrade General Secretary To Lam to lead the construction of a community of destiny between China and Vietnam,” Xi was quoted as saying by state news agency Xinhua.

He also pledged to “carry forward the traditional friendship, to consolidate political mutual trust, to deepen strategic communication, to promote practical cooperation [and] to bring more benefits to the people of the two countries.”

Lam, a former public security minister who oversaw Vietnam’s anti-corruption drive, became president in May after a series of leadership shake-ups, with the country’s president and National Assembly chairman facing dismissal from their positions due to alleged links to corruption cases.

Observers expect Lam to maintain stable ties with Beijing and continue Trong’s pragmatic policy of “bamboo diplomacy” – a delicate balancing act between China and the US as the two powers jostle for regional influence, despite a deepening rift with Beijing over maritime claims.

Trong, who had been party chief since 2011, was ailing and died on July 19 aged 80.

In a meeting in Hanoi on July 17, Lam told then outgoing Chinese ambassador Xiong Bo that the two sides should work together to “step up exchanges at all levels, [and] consolidate political trust … so as to better manage disputes”.

Developing ties with China was “always a consistent policy, a strategic choice, and a top priority in Vietnam’s foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, and multilateralisation, and diversification”, Lam told Xiong, according to the official Vietnam News Agency.

The two countries on Friday wrapped up two weeks of joint anti-terrorism drills, as part of their latest efforts to bolster trust.

The drills in the Chinese border region of Guangxi were the first such exercise between the People’s Armed Police Force – a paramilitary organisation primarily responsible for China’s internal security – and Vietnam’s Mobile Police Force, the public security ministry’s tactical unit and paramilitary arm once headed by Lam.

To improve mutual trust and collaboration capabilities, mixed teams of Chinese and Vietnamese personnel carried out training in simulated scenarios to tackle terrorist threats in urban and natural terrains, including residential buildings, forests and rivers.

Participants were also placed in scenarios generated in an immersive mixed-reality platform, putting on virtual reality headsets for real-life training.

A number of unmanned equipment and arms were also used during the drills, including small aerial drones, robotic dogs and unmanned ground vehicles.

This was “so that participants from the two sides could strengthen research and practice in the fields of unmanned and intelligence technologies”, one of the Chinese commanding officers told state-owned CGTN’s national defence channel.

While leaders in Beijing and Hanoi have repeatedly called for further efforts to deepen cooperation and enhance political mutual trust, tensions have emerged from time to time over contesting claims in the South China Sea.

Both countries are among rival claimants to the Spratly Islands – which China calls the Nansha Islands – as well as the Paracels archipelago, called the Xisha Islands by China and Hoang Sa Islands by Vietnam.

Last month, Hanoi filed a submission with the United Nations to seek formal validation of the outer boundaries of its legal continental shelf beyond the 200-nautical mile (370km) limit and extending into the contested area.

This came after the Philippines, another claimant to the Spratlys and a US treaty ally, filed a similar request in June seeking to confirm the extent of its continental seabed in the western part of Palawan province, which overlaps with Beijing’s claims to much of the South China Sea.

Both Manila and Hanoi are the most vocal critics of China’s expansive claims in the strategic waterway.

However, Beijing appears to have refrained from criticising Hanoi’s steadily expanding land reclamation in the Spratly Islands in recent months, even as it has been engaged in fierce confrontations with Manila over resupply missions to a contested reef in the Spratlys.

The difference in approaches has given rise to speculation over whether China is trying to avoid a new crisis with another rival at sea, after the US has repeatedly reaffirmed its treaty obligations to defend the Philippines.

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China investigates executives of state-owned energy and finance companies

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3273096/china-investigates-executives-state-owned-energy-and-finance-companies?utm_source=rss_feed

Four current and former senior executives of China’s state-owned enterprises in sectors including finance and energy have been placed under investigation for alleged corruption.

They are Zuo Zuqing, deputy director of the state-run China National Nuclear Corp’s capital operational centre; Chen Xiaopeng, former party secretary and director of the China Securities Regulatory Commission’s Shenzhen branch; Dong Guoqun, Shanghai Stock Exchange party committee member and deputy general manager; and Yuan Fei, former party secretary for the Banking Regulatory Commission for the city of Dalian.

They are under investigation for alleged “serious violations of discipline and laws”, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the country’s top anti-graft watchdog, said in separate statements released on Friday and Saturday.

No details of the cases have been revealed.

Dong joined the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 1996 and was less than a year away from retirement, according to local media.

The list of party cadres and corporate executives suspected of corruption has grown since Xi Jinping’s speech at a CCDI plenary session in January, when he called for a crackdown on corruption in sectors where “power is centralised with abundant funds and rich resources”, including finance, state-owned enterprises, energy, medicine and infrastructure projects.

Energy, tobacco, medicine, infrastructure projects, and bidding processes have been key areas of the Communist Party’s anti-corruption efforts this year.

Since the beginning of the year, more than 40 officials and executives in China’s energy sector have been investigated for violations of discipline and the law.

Li Dong, retired deputy general manager of the state-run coal mining and utility giant China Energy Investment Group, was sentenced to life in prison last month for taking bribes of over 108 million yuan (US$14.9 million).

From 1999 to 2023, Li used his position to offer favours to others in product sales, coal procurement, business operations and job placements in exchange for illegal gains, the Yichun Intermediate People’s Court said.

China’s disciplinary authorities handed down punishments to more than 610,000 people last year, including 49 provincial or ministerial-level officials.

The CCDI said in a post on its website in December that corruption was taking new forms and becoming harder to detect.

“At present, the soil where unhealthy tendencies can thrive still exists, as does the risk of a rebound in corruption cases,” the statement said.

Ancient China shipwreck unveils insights into Song-era smuggling and government apathy

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/article/3273060/ancient-china-shipwreck-unveils-insights-song-era-smuggling-and-government-apathy?utm_source=rss_feed

Over 1,000 years ago, a ship left port in Guangzhou in southern China weighed down with a fortune of raw materials fit for a small nation.

This Song dynasty (960-1279) trade vessel would not make it far, sinking to the bottom of the ocean near the coast of Taishan in Guangdong province, where it would remain untouched until 1987.

Almost 40 years after its initial discovery, the Nanhai No 1 has become one of the most important sites for understanding maritime trade during the Song dynasty thanks to a comprehensive salvage project in 2007 and a decade-long excavation project starting in 2013.

The core revelation from the shipwreck is that it was weighed down with a large amount of metal cargo, indicating that the Nanhai No 1 was probably involved in a significant smuggling operation, which the team of scientists from Guangzhou University said was extremely common during that era.

“Despite repeated government bans, smuggling of metal goods continued throughout the Song dynasty, with no significant reduction in the scale of the metal trade...highlighting the inadequacy of government control over illegal smuggling activities,” wrote the authors.

An important contradiction is that, while the laws were clear about metal export bans – and some of the punishments were extreme – the research team believes the government deployed a strategy of deliberately overlooking smuggling operations or even encouraging them.

Smuggling was a core feature of a golden age of maritime trade during the Song dynasty. For the first time in Chinese history, overseas commerce surpassed land trade. In an effort to better manage this booming industry, the government launched the Guangnan Shibosi in Guangzhou, which was the first maritime trade administration of the era.

The Shibosi was responsible for managing taxes and policy, and it implemented strict rules for merchants and prescribed punishments for smuggling.

Typically, merchants had to register their ships, identify the crew, disclose the goods on board, and inform the bureaucrats about their destination. They would then receive a gong ping, an official document that became their only way to enter the port legally.

During the Song dynasty the government had hostile relations with the Liao and Jin dynasties to the north, so the Shibosi was largely in charge of enforcing trade embargoes to prevent cooperation with their antagonists. They also imposed similar trade bans with empires in Korea and Vietnam.

When the Nanhai No 1 sank, metals and their raw materials were prized commodities as China had made advancements in smelting technology to produce metals that were of higher quality than those produced in South and Southeast Asia.

This meant that Chinese metals were sought after during the Song dynasty but were rarely allowed to leave China. If merchants were caught violating the trade embargoes, their cargo would be confiscated, and they would be imprisoned.

“Iron was an essential material for military weapons at the time, and its export was prohibited by the [Song government]. Therefore, the 300kg of silver and 124 tons of iron cargo carried by Nanhai No 1 were undoubtedly goods intended for export and, thus, contraband smuggling,” the authors wrote.

Gold, silver, and copper coins were also particularly valuable. The booming maritime trade during the Song dynasty made coins a common medium of exchange, similar to the status of the US dollar today.

The Song government imposed a rule that merchants could not carry more than 500 coins out of the country, and the punishment for violating this rule was death.

“As of now, approximately 30,000 copper coins have been found on Nanhai No 1, enough to sentence 30 people to death,” the authors wrote.

The sheer volume of the metals and coins on the ship suggests that much of the cargo was not legal, and indicates that, while the Song-era embargo rules could be harsh, they were not strictly enforced.

The ship could have been part of a tribute trade caravan, which was an avenue for banned goods to enter and leave China, but the authors found this unlikely.

So, assuming the Nanhai No 1 was a regular merchant ship, the researchers argued that it would have been nearly impossible for it to have evaded inspection, indicating that officials knew what was on the ship and allowed it to continue on its journey.

The researchers believe there were two reasons why ships like the Nanhai No 1 were allowed to smuggle without even a slap on the wrist.

First, the Song government pursued a policy of privatising its maritime trade industry. It lightened the hand of bureaucratic control over trade, which led to the flourishing of the sector. As officials and merchants became wealthy, they pursued higher profits, which led to the proliferation of corruption, making it easy to smuggle.

Second, the “corruption” was viewed by the government as a feature, not a bug, because it increased tax revenues. Wars with the Liao and Jin dynasties emptied the coffers, and Song leaders were constantly searching for avenues to generate revenue.

The authors wrote that money generated at two maritime ports – Guangzhou and Quanzhou in southeastern China’s Fujian province – accounted for one-fifth of the country’s total annual revenue.

“As a result, historical records show that the government deliberately overlooked and even encouraged illegal smuggling activities by merchants in order to increase tax revenues,” the authors wrote.

Part of what makes the Nanhai No 1 site so valuable is that it was a ship destined for the open sea that sank near the coast. This provided a rare opportunity to access a ship that would be nearly impossible to find in deeper waters, offering rare insights into large-scale maritime trade.

Chinese nanotube wire rivals copper in conductivity and could someday be used in space

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3273087/chinese-nanotube-wire-rivals-copper-conductivity-and-could-someday-be-used-space?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese scientists say they have created a superstrong carbon nanotube wire with record-breaking ability to conduct electricity that could someday be used in aerospace and other critical industries.

Nanotubes are cylindrical molecules made of carbon atoms linked together in a hexagonal shape with a diameter as small as 1 nanometre. By comparison, a strand of human hair is about 100,000 nanometres thick.

Carbon nanotubes are 100 times stronger than steel pieces of the same size, with only a fraction of their weight.

But figuring out how to bind tens of thousands of these tiny tubes together into a visible and usable fibre has proved to be a challenging task – one that took the research community more than two decades to achieve.

To overcome these challenges, scientists from the Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science improved on a common fibre formation method known as “dry-jet wet spinning” to ensure maximum preservation of the nanotubes’ properties.

The team was led by researchers Liu Chang and Hou Pengxiang of the Shenyang institute, which is under the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Liaoning province. Their findings were published in a paper for in the peer-reviewed journal Advanced Functional Materials last month.

The resulting fibres “have a record high electrical conductivity”, according to the paper. The authors say the conductivity of their wire is 86 per cent that of copper, an excellent metal conductor of electricity.

These fibres exhibit other desirable properties, such as a tensile strength of 1.65 Gigapascals (GPa) – which is “among the highest” for fibres produced by the same method, the researchers said.

The researchers also tested the performance of the fibres and found their integrity and conductivity were well preserved after more than 5,000 bending cycles.

According to Gao Enlai, an associate professor at Wuhan University’s department of engineering mechanics, carbon fibre sets the benchmark for high-performance materials used in hi-tech sectors such as aerospace. For example, many Airbus and Boeing aircraft modules are made of carbon fibre-reinforced composites.

Gao, who was not involved in the Shenyang team’s research, said carbon nanotubes would be far superior to the carbon fibre used now, unlocking potential for very broad applications, such as energy storage and space elevators.

Since their discovery in 1991, carbon nanotubes, also known as buckytubes, have been hailed for their potential to be one of the most innovative materials of the 21st century.

For more than 20 years, researchers have been working to optimise their manufacturing process, according to Gao, who believes that China is a front runner in the field, both in terms of academic research and process optimisation.

As part of their innovation on the spinning method, the Shenyang team designed and built a new apparatus capable of aligning the nanotubes in specific positions and making them more compact.

“Individual carbon nanotubes, if not properly aligned and assembled to ensure the whole wire is very smooth and dense, can affect the overall performance of the final product,” Gao said.

In June, Gao and his collaborators, including leading expert Zhang Jin of Peking University, published a paper in Science journal about how they produced carbon nanotube fibres with a dynamic strength of up to 14 GPa, much stronger than any known fibre material.

However, he noted that there remained a global hurdle in turning these laboratory breakthroughs into economically viable and competitive commercial products, and that his team was working to scale up the production of their ultrastrong fibres.

Last November, an international team of researchers from universities in the United States, Europe and Asia was granted more than US$4 million to advance the understanding of carbon nanotube synthesis and its potential for more sustainable production of industrial materials.

“We already know how to make these materials with the right properties; now we have to understand how to make them efficiently and sustainably, which requires a completely different level of understanding of the underlying processes,” Matteo Pasquali, a member of the international research team and professor at Rice University in Texas, said in an interview last year.

The era of the entrepreneurial Chinese local government is over

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3273016/era-entrepreneurial-chinese-local-government-over?utm_source=rss_feed

Decentralisation of decision-making from the central government to local authorities is widely regarded as one of China’s most effective policy reforms of the past four decades. As the Communist Party’s priorities shifted from class struggle to economic development, decentralisation turned out to be a tremendous catalyst for growth.

Compared to the centrally planned system, local governments were better positioned to tailor economic decisions to local conditions. Local governments were also better placed to facilitate economic activity in an underdeveloped market, including by protecting ownership rights and coordinating business transactions.

Once the reform took hold, subnational governments competed fiercely to deliver rapid economic growth, with studies showing a correlation between local leaders’ opportunities for advancement and their jurisdictions’ gross domestic product growth.

Mayors acted as CEOs of municipal economies, and all levels of local government implemented investment promotion programmes, offering a wide range of subsidies to potential investors. As a result, local governments were crucial to China’s economic take-off.

But decentralisation is not the same as market liberalisation, even though it did initially lead to efficiency gains. The power to allocate resources remains in the hands of government, albeit local rather than national.

Turning municipalities into agencies that fulfilled both governmental and business functions was, to a certain extent, a transitional arrangement. And it worked for some time, especially during the first three decades of reform, when China’s markets were not functioning properly. But that period is over. Today, local governments are arguably the greatest source of market distortion and financial risk in China.

For example, municipalities derive a substantial share of their revenue from the sale of state-owned urban land, the proceeds of which go exclusively to local governments. This is one of the main factors behind China’s ever-growing property bubble and the associated financial risks. Moreover, local leaders often spend much of this revenue on vanity projects – parks, concert halls and airports – that are rarely fully used.

Local governments also promote the development of industries targeted by the central government. In the case of green energy, for example, they try to attract companies by offering tax reductions, access to subsidised credit and the free use of land. But instead of overcoming technological bottlenecks, this localised industrial policy mainly serves to expand production capacity.

Making matters worse, local governments sometimes discourage failing companies from shutting down, out of concern for local employment and living standards. This approach to “investment promotion” tilts the playing field, distorts resource allocation, lowers the quality of goods and exacerbates the overcapacity problem.

Perhaps most worryingly, the massive volume of local government debt, representing 32 per cent of Chinese GDP last year, is a major financial risk. The starting point of this dangerous over-leveraging was the mismatch between local governments’ fiscal resources and their spending responsibilities.

To make ends meet, cash-strapped local governments adopted innovative revenue schemes, one of which was the local-government investment vehicle. But while local governments were borrowing from the market, investors considered only the central government’s ability to service debt. This permitted local governments to borrow and spend at unsustainable rates.

China can pursue further economic reform only if it reins in its local governments. The recently concluded third plenum of the 20th Party Congress reiterated the country’s commitment to allowing the market to play a decisive role in resource allocation, while highlighting the need to remedy market failures. Regulating local governments’ behaviour is a crucial step in this direction.

To that end, the plenum detailed several reforms, such as the standardisation of investment promotion programmes to prohibit improper industrial subsidies, and increased oversight of local governments’ debt management. But implementing these changes will not be easy. The Chinese government will need extraordinary determination and deft policymaking to lower local government debt, redistribute spending responsibilities and manage financial risks.

Three principles should guide this process. First, local governments should refrain from intervening in resource allocation and price formation, which should be steered by markets and enterprises.

Second, the central government should manage all industrial and fiscal policies, without imposing additional spending responsibilities on subnational governments.

Lastly, local authorities should focus more on basic government functions, such as building infrastructure, providing public services, maintaining social order and correcting market failures.

These changes, if implemented, would go a long way towards supporting robust economic growth in China and meeting the Chinese government’s goal of building an advanced socialist market economy.

China actress Angelababy eases back into spotlight after Crazy Horse Paris controversy

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/china-personalities/article/3272877/china-actress-angelababy-eases-back-spotlight-after-crazy-horse-paris-controversy?utm_source=rss_feed

Controversial Chinese actress Angelababy is gradually resuming her public activities after being banned by the mainland authorities for flying to Paris to watch an adult show.

The Shanghai-born star, who is a Hong Kong resident and whose major fan base is in the mainland, received the “soft ban” after she went to France in 2023 to watch the racy Crazy Horse Paris cabaret.

At the end of July, the TV costume drama Xiang Si Ling in which Angelababy plays a leading role received broadcast approval from the mainland authorities, meaning the ban on her was lifted, according to a report in the news outlet Sohu.

The presence of the 35-year-old model and actress – whose real name is Yang Ying – at the Paris show was seen by the authorities to be an act of support for a pornographic event.

Although the Chinese government did not slam her publicly for attending the show she disappeared from public view.

She was forbidden from using Weibo and Douyin, the two major social media platforms in China, for three months.

Also, some domestic companies terminated their advertisement partnerships with her.

At the end of last year Zhejiang TV did not invite her to join the latest season of the popular program Running Man, in which she had participated as an important guest for a decade.

At least five movies and TV series starring Angelababy finished shooting last year and are still pending approval for release by the authorities.

In recent months the actress has been gingerly returning to public view by posting occasionally on Weibo, where she has 100 million flowers.

In June, an advertisement for the shoe brand Hong Qing Ting, for whom Angelababy is product ambassador, was released.

She also joined a live-streaming session to sell goods with top online celebrity Xin Ba at the end of June.

Angelababy was once called the most beautiful female star on the mainland despite facing criticism for her poor performing skills.

She triggered a controversy in 2022 after a video of her smoking at a private gathering was revealed online.

Angelababy married the first-tier Chinese actor Huang Xiaoming in 2015 and divorced him seven years later. They have a seven-year-old son.

South China Sea: Beijing opens hardware store on disputed Woody Island

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3273082/south-china-sea-beijing-opens-hardware-store-disputed-woody-island?utm_source=rss_feed

China has opened a hardware store on a disputed South China Sea island, according to the local government, as Beijing ramps up efforts to expand civilian facilities and cement claims in the strategically important waterway.

Covering an area of about 100 square metres (1,076 square feet), the Xinyi Hardware Store is located on Woody Island in the Paracel Islands, a contested archipelago known in Chinese as the Xisha Islands and in Vietnamese as the Hoang Sa Islands.

The store, situated next to the cargo terminal of the Sansha Yongxing Airport, opened for business on Thursday, according to the government of Sansha city, which oversees the Paracels as well as the Macclesfield Bank and the Spratly Islands – another disputed archipelago known as the Nansha Islands in Chinese.

According to the Sansha government, the store provides “several thousand” products, including electrical items, fire safety equipment, water pipes, door and window accessories and paint.

Wang Hailong, deputy manager of Sansha Tianqin Service Management, which is in charge of civilian services on the island, said the company spent about two months on market research “to understand what kind of hardware is needed by soldiers and civilians on the island and nearby”.

Located about 300km (186 miles) from the southern island province of Hainan, Woody Island, known as Yongxing Island in China, is the largest outcrop among the 30 or so islands that make up the Paracels. The archipelago is controlled by Beijing but also claimed by Taipei and Hanoi.

To assert its claims to the resource-rich waters, Beijing in 2012 announced the establishment of Sansha city on Woody Island to administer the disputed South China Sea islands and features.

Since then, Beijing has steadily stepped up efforts to expand both civilian and military facilities on the island, which Chinese media said would become “an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the South China Sea”.

In 2017, an Israeli satellite imagery company captured a photo of HQ-9 surface-to-air missiles on Woody Island. Beijing has not confirmed the deployment.

The island has a post office, banks, a meteorological observatory, schools, a library, parks, hospitals and power plants.

It is also home to a civil-military airport on the island, which features a 3,000-metre take-off runway that can accommodate a fully loaded Boeing 737 airliner, and a 5,000-tonne wharf.

According to the latest census, the island had a population of 2,333 as of November 2020.

Infrastructure construction on Woody Island has often sparked protest from rival claimants, particularly Vietnam.

A hotpot restaurant opened on Woody Island in April of last year in a move that drew Hanoi’s ire. The Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said at the time that the country was “working to ensure its sovereignty and jurisdiction over the waters to protect its legitimate rights”.

Bridge collapse in China’s Sichuan sends cars plunging after mudslide hits expressway

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3273075/bridge-collapse-chinas-sichuan-sends-cars-plunging-after-mudslide-hits-expressway?utm_source=rss_feed

A highway bridge between two tunnels in southwest China’s Sichuan province collapsed in a mudslide on Saturday morning, sending three vehicles plunging in mountainous terrain.

One person was rescued and five others were missing as of noon on Saturday, state news agency Xinhua reported, citing the government publicity department of Sichuan Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, where the accident occurred.

The accident took place at around 3.30am on Saturday, when a sudden mudslide hit the Kangding-Luding section of the Yakang expressway. The Ministry of Emergency Management has sent around 300 rescuers to the site. Rescue work is under way.

In the nearby Ridi village, “a sudden mountain torrent and landslide” on Friday night destroyed homes, killed at least two people and left 12 missing, state broadcaster CCTV reported, quoting the Ganzi government.

While summer is typically the rainy season in most of China, episodes of extreme weather have become more frequent this year as heavy rains triggered floods, landslides, dyke breaches and road collapses across the nation.

The disaster followed another highway bridge collapse in Shangluo in the northwestern province of Shaanxi on July 19. The death toll in that incident has climbed to at least 38, with 24 still missing after a three-lane section of the bridge plunged into a river after a sudden downpour and flash floods, Xinhua reported on Friday. Authorities have also confirmed that 25 vehicles were swept away when the bridge collapsed.

In China’s deadliest road collapse incident over a decade, 48 people died after a section of the Meizhou-Dabu highway in the southern province of Guangdong collapsed on May 1. Around 18 metres (59 feet) of the mountainous stretch of highway in Meizhou city crumbled into the forested slope beneath, causing vehicles to tumble.

Following the Meizhou disaster, President Xi Jinping ordered local authorities to make an all-out effort to save lives and ensure “overall social stability”. He also urged authorities to inspect and deal with potential risks in a timely manner.

The Yakang expressway, connecting Yaan in the east and Kangding in the west, opened in 2018. It shortens the car trip from provincial capital Chengdu to the resort city of Kangding by two hours, for a total journey of four hours. Bridges and tunnels make up 82 per cent of the expressway.

Some social media users in China called for improved extreme weather monitoring and warnings, while others questioned the quality of infrastructure.

“Three tragedies in a row! I was so shocked,” one user wrote on social media platform Weibo. “China should launch a crackdown on tofu-dreg projects.”

In Chinese, a “tofu-dreg project” is a phrase used to describe poorly constructed infrastructure. Such projects came under the microscope in 2008, when hundreds of students died in shoddily built school buildings during the Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan.

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‘Softcore harassment’ China live-streams let remote control toys lift women’s skirts

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/article/3272882/softcore-harassment-china-live-streams-let-remote-control-toys-lift-womens-skirts?utm_source=rss_feed

A new trend on China’s social media platforms that allows users to lift the skirts of young women during live-streaming, is causing widespread concern.

A simulated beach setting with sand on the floor, a virtual sea, and palm trees in the background, includes barefoot women hosts wearing skirts or tight trousers.

The women are sitting on beach chairs and are surrounded by toy vehicles, such as excavators and road rollers.

Mainland reports revealed that viewers can download an app that allows them to remotely control the vehicles during the live-streams – so they can move them around, operate the arms and use them to dig in the sand.

A live-stream account called Xianshan Remote Control Centre, posted on its social media account: “We want to showcase our self-developed system, allowing people to enjoy the fun of remotely operating an excavator.”

However, some viewers move the excavators so they are touching the women hosts’ legs and stomachs, and some even attempt to lift their skirts.

One online user said there is also a first-person perspective, which makes them feel as if they are sitting in the driving seat of the toy vehicles.

The live-streams can attract up to 3,000 viewers at a time, according to NetEase News.

Despite being harassed by the viewers operating the excavators, some female hosts continue to interact, patiently correcting the “naughty” vehicles by repositioning them on the sand.

“It feels quite comfortable when being grabbed, like being tickled,” one female live-streamer said.

There were also reports of “gift-giving” interactions, in which a female host does a 10-second split on the sand if a viewer sends a virtual rocket gift worth 1,000 yuan (US$140).

The bizarre form of entertainment has sparked criticism on mainland social media for its potential to exploit women.

“These young female live-streamers are absolutely being exploited – it’s softcore harassment. These accounts should be banned immediately,” one online observer said.

“The frightening thing is that the women are allowing the men to control the toy cars and touch them. They have become numb to being exploited,” said another.

Such accounts have been permanently banned from live-streaming, and the relevant apps have been removed from social media platforms.

In recent years, live-streaming in China has grown dramatically, with millions of aspiring hosts joining the lucrative industry.

Statistics show that the market size of the country’s live-streaming industry exceeded a staggering 200 billion yuan (US$28 billion) last year.

Hosts seeking quick profits are using sexually suggestive audio for videos or narrating stories with explicit language during live-streams to entice viewers to click on porn site links.

China has been making efforts to crack down on such content.

This year, the country’s popular short video and live-streaming platform Douyin has reportedly helped police arrest 11 people and banned more than 2 million accounts for including pornography or using offensive language.

In 2022, Kuaishou, the second-largest live-streaming platform in China, also helped police arrest 148 people for redirecting live-stream viewers to pornographic content.

China unveils 5-year plan for better rehab, schooling for autistic children

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3272953/china-unveils-5-year-plan-better-rehab-schooling-autistic-children?utm_source=rss_feed

China has launched a five-year action plan to strengthen care services for children with autism and solve the “urgent, difficult and anxious” problems faced by their families when seeking support.

The Autism Children Care Promotion Action plan was jointly released by the China Disabled Persons’ Federation, the Ministry of Education, and top public health bodies, with a pledge to increase rehabilitation services.

According to the notice announcing the plan, some regions and departments have achieved “remarkable results” in recent years to improve screening and diagnosis, as well as rehabilitation and education levels, but there were still “outstanding difficulties and problems”.

Over the next five years, the plan aims to further strengthen services to promote healthy growth and all-round development of children with autism, the notice said. “We will strengthen overall planning, coordination and linkage, and resource integration,” it said.

About one in 100 children has one or more of the diverse group of conditions that constitutes autism spectrum disorder, according to the World Health Organization.

More than 10 million people in China – 0.7 per cent of the population – are estimated to have the condition, according to a report released by Wucailu Centre for Children with Autism in March.

Of those, an estimated 3-5 million are children under the age of 14, with about 160,000 new cases each year, said Wucailu, one of China’s largest autism research and intervention centres.

The action plan’s first key task is to improve rehabilitation services based on local needs, followed by improved training for personnel working with autistic children. The plan also calls for an integrated education and rehabilitation programme.

Under the plan, provincial capitals and large cities will be encouraged to build special education schools. Teaching assistants will also be able to accompany autistic children in classrooms to support their integration into school life.

The number of schools for children with special needs in China has risen in recent years, from 1,76 in 2010 to 2,314 in 2022. Full-time teachers in special needs education have also been on an upwards trend, from 40,000 in 2010 to 72,700 in 2022, according to official data.

In a paper published in June last year, Tang Zhaoyun, professor in public policy and social security at Huaqiao University, noted that the vast majority of autistic children miss “the best intervention opportunity” at an early age.

But there was still a large gap between the number of teachers and special needs children, especially those with autism, he said.

“Currently, there are less than 70 institutions in China offering majors in special education, and there is no major focusing on special education for autistic children, which makes teachers fully understand autism even less.”

Another challenge for autistic children in China is that many parents are reluctant to admit that their child may have the condition, according to junior school teacher Liang Huiming in Guangzhou, provincial capital of Guangdong in southern China.

“When I teach in regular school, I have noticed some students show typical symptoms of autism. Even if I advised parents for physical checks, usually they wouldn’t take the issue seriously,” said Liang, who also runs art classes for children with special needs.

Jasmine Peng, whose 13-year-old son has Asperger’s syndrome – an autism subtype – said she faced strong opposition from her family when she decided to seek a medical diagnosis.

Peng realised there was something different about her son when he was two, but her family described her concerns as “complete nonsense”, she said. After his diagnosis, Peng’s relatives did not believe the boy needed special help.

According to Peng, the family was optimistic that her son would grow up with special abilities – in line with another prevalent stereotype in China, that people with autism have high intellectual gifts.

In fact, while some people with autism can live independently, others have severe disabilities and require lifelong care and support, the WHO says.

The action plan includes a commitment for national themed campaigns each April for World Autism Awareness Day, in a bid to overcome some of the misconceptions and encourage them to seek out early screening, diagnosis and intervention.

Parents are also concerned about how their autistic children integrate into society and whether they can look forward to meaningful employment when they grow up.

The action plan addresses these concerns with support for schools to offer majors in subjects that are adapted to the learning characteristics of autistic students and the needs of the market, laying the foundation for future employment.

Peng is optimistic for her son’s future. “There are many companies now hiring autistic employees, such as baristas,” she said. “This is already an improvement in society.”

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Why China’s backing for Cambodian canal on Mekong River could push Vietnam closer to US

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3273014/why-chinas-backing-cambodian-canal-mekong-river-could-push-vietnam-closer-us?utm_source=rss_feed

A China-backed canal in Cambodia could push neighbouring Vietnam closer to the US, Chinese observers have warned.

Hanoi might then be inspired to take a tougher stance against Beijing in the disputed South China Sea, one of them said, while another called for “wisdom” on both sides to minimise shocks to ties.

Phnom Penh will hold a groundbreaking ceremony on Monday for the Funan Techo canal, a 180km (112-mile) project expected to reduce Cambodia’s transport dependence on Vietnam.

The US$1.7 billion waterway, which will connect the Mekong River to the Cambodian coast, is expected to be partially funded by China.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet called the waterway a “historic” project, saying it aimed to ensure the Southeast Asian nation could “breathe through our own nose”.

However, the project has triggered waves of friction over the past few months with eastern neighbour and fellow Asean member Vietnam, which has repeatedly voiced its concerns over water security and the likely impact on its “rice bowl” Mekong Delta region.

The United States has also urged greater transparency from Cambodia, citing the project’s “potential implications for regional water management, agricultural sustainability and security”.

In addition, Chinese investment has raised questions over whether Beijing would take advantage of the canal to amplify its clout with “ironclad” friend Cambodia, and even use it to expand its military presence in Southeast Asia.

The US has repeatedly expressed concerns over what it sees as the growing influence of China’s military in Cambodia, including its support for the redevelopment of the Ream naval base on the Gulf of Thailand.

Cheng Hanping, a senior research fellow at Nanjing University’s Collaborative Innovation Centre of South China Sea Studies said the project had been “attacked by rumours” from Vietnam and the US.

He said it was obvious that Funan Techo would impact Vietnam’s earnings from Cambodian ship transits, but there was not enough “scientific data” yet to conclude that the canal would affect downstream flows and the Mekong River ecosystem.

“I think it is untenable to claim now that it will have [any such] impact,” Cheng said.

However, the US would view a further strengthening of China’s bonds with Cambodia as a “reduction” of American influence in the region, he warned.

Zhou Chao, a researcher with the Beijing-based independent think tank Anbound, was of a similar view.

Funan Techo could help China expand its economic and geopolitical influence in Cambodia and even across Southeast Asia, which is not something the US wishes to see amid intense regional rivalry between the two powers, he said.

Vietnam would also be reluctant to lose its own leverage in the Cambodian economy, Zhou said, given its maritime disputes with China and alleged ambition for “dominance in mainland Southeast Asia”.

“Regarding the controversy [with Cambodia] over the canal, environmental protection or other arguments are not substantial reasons,” Zhou said. “Fundamentally, it is the wariness and resistance of the US and Vietnam towards the continuous rise of China’s influence.”

The project was likely to bring the US and Vietnam closer and lead to a stronger Vietnamese stance against Beijing in the South China Sea, he said, while urging the Chinese side to be mentally ready for this scenario.

Vietnam, a fellow communist state, has drawn closer to the US in recent years amid a deepening rift with Beijing over the latter’s expansive claims in the South China Sea. Last month, Hanoi drew protests from Beijing after it filed a claim with the United Nations for an extended continental shelf in the disputed waters.

Funan Techo will be Cambodia’s first water transport project to connect the Mekong with sea routes. It will run from the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh – a riverside trading hub – to its ports on the Gulf of Thailand.

The project was approved in May last year by the then Cambodian cabinet led by former prime minister and Hun Manet’s father, Hun Sen. Cambodia is one of China’s closest partners among the 10-member Association of Southeast Nations, and Beijing funded billions of dollars worth of infrastructure during Hun Sen’s four decades in power.

China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC), a state-owned firm, signed an investment framework agreement on the canal with the Cambodian government in Beijing in October.

The project is expected to take about four years to complete, and will include at least 11 bridges and three water gate systems.

Rising in western China, the Mekong passes through five other countries before draining into the South China Sea on the Vietnamese border.

The 4,350km waterway is vital to regional cross-border shipping. About 33 per cent of Cambodia’s global cargo throughput uses Vietnamese ports via the Mekong River.

The aim with Funan Techo is to trim that freight to 10 per cent, Cambodian deputy prime minister Sun Chanthol told Reuters in May.

He also sought to downplay Vietnam’s environmental concerns, saying the canal would consume less than 1 per cent of the Mekong’s water flow.

CBRC initially pitched the project as an “important achievement” of docking China’s infrastructure-led Belt and Road Initiative with Cambodia’s national development strategy.

But Hun Sen, who now heads the Cambodian Senate, said in May that the canal had been initiated entirely by Phnom Penh. It was not a part of China’s belt and road strategy, he said, rejecting speculation that it would be used to transport Chinese warships.

In March, Vietnam’s state-backed Oriental Research Development Institute cited experts as highlighting the risk of the canal becoming “dual-use” – with Chinese military ships using it to travel “deep into Cambodia’s interior and approach closer to” the border with Vietnam.

Several analysts have challenged the view, saying the canal would be unable to carry large naval hardware or move vessels covertly.

“Vietnam will not distance itself from Cambodia due to the canal,” Cheng at Nanjing University said. “As to whether it will affect China-Vietnam relations, that will require both sides to show wisdom.”

He suggested that China share detailed data, particularly on environmental assessments and water flows, with Vietnam. This would “clarify their misunderstandings” and prevent them from “being instigated and exploited by forces outside the region”, he said.

Cheng also called on Vietnam to approach the issue with a “scientific attitude” instead of interpreting China’s support for the Cambodian canal, along with its Ream naval base, as driving a wedge between the Southeast Asian neighbours.

“If you sing the same tune as forces outside the region, it will definitely affect China-Vietnam relations,” he warned, in a likely reference to the US.

Beijing appears to have maintained a low profile on the matter so far.

According to a Cambodian statement, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi “affirmed support” for Funan Techo when he met his visiting Cambodian counterpart Chenda Sophea Sok in May.

But Beijing’s statement only read that China would “assist the Cambodian side in actively exploring the idea of an integrated water conservancy project”.

Also, while Phnom Penh said in October that the CRBC deal had paved the way for the company to study the project in detail for eight months, this was not mentioned in the CRBC statement.

In early June, Hun Manet said the canal was no longer a fully foreign-invested project, as Cambodian enterprises held a 51 per cent stake.

Zhou of Anbound said China should be wary of likely suppressive measures from the US and Vietnam over the canal.

“Both political and economic [measures] should be analysed in depth and responded to as early as possible,” he said, cautioning that China should be fully aware of the “stubbornness” of Vietnam’s confrontational stance.

China’s EV, battery firms bolt into emerging markets as trade remains caustic

https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3272983/chinas-ev-battery-firms-bolt-emerging-markets-trade-remains-caustic?utm_source=rss_feed

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) and battery makers are continuing to expand their presence in emerging markets like Latin America – despite heightened political resistance from the European Union and United States – as the country looks to cement its leading position in the industry.

EV giant BYD and battery producer Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL), two firms among many in the rapidly expanding field, have announced plans to make inroads into overseas markets.

The former signed a multi-year partnership with Uber to bring its cars to Europe and Latin America on Wednesday, and the latter has formed a consortium with mining company CMOC to acquire mineral rights for two lithium brines in Bolivia and opening a new avenue for the supply of the substance, an essential raw material in battery manufacturing.

“In the coming five to 10 years, regions such as Southeast Asia, Europe, Latin America and parts of Africa are expected to have high demand for Chinese-made cars and electric vehicles,” said Matteo Giovannini, a senior finance manager at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and a non-resident associate fellow at the Centre for China and Globalization.

Giovannini cited economic growth, urbanisation, government policies, environmental regulations, advancements in EV technology and changing consumer preferences as reasons for the spike.

The trend of Chinese EV and battery makers building overseas factories or taking part in joint ventures foreign companies would “intensify”, Giovannini added, as cost and efficiency considerations weigh on companies looking to expand along with a pressing need for diversification against risk. Economic incentives and global market integration are also playing a role, he said.

As numerous countries have committed themselves to meet carbon emission reduction targets within a decade – particularly in Europe – EVs are quickly moving into the mainstream. Models from newer firms like Tesla and storied legacy outfits like BMW, General Motors and Toyota are in fierce competition with their Chinese counterparts.

Figures from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers as quoted by Fitch Ratings showed that EV exports from the world’s second-largest economy rose 30.5 per cent year on year for the first half of 2024, a total shipment of 2.8 million units.

“We expect demand for China-made cars and EVs to transform into demand for Chinese-branded or Chinese-licensed cars and EVs over the next decade,” said Yang Jing, director of Asia-Pacific Corporate Ratings at Fitch.

Chim Lee, senior analyst for Asia (China) at the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), said that some markets will see explosive EV demand growth thanks to copious incentives and subsidies.

“Even in the conventional internal combustion engine passenger car segment, Chinese proprietary brands have been gaining market share in certain geographies like Saudi Arabia,” he added.

Nezha Automobile, a subsidiary of Hozon New Energy Auto, has made strides in the Southeast Asian, Latin American, Middle Eastern and African markets, launching local subsidiaries in Brazil and Indonesia.

“Some countries have rolled out rules that require carmakers to invest in factories there if imports have exceeded certain levels,” said Zhang Xiang, general secretary of the International Intelligent Vehicles Engineering Association, an industry trade group. “For example, Thailand and Brazil have these policies.”

Some big Chinese carmakers would choose to make overseas investments, Zhang said, because high demand in those markets would justify the expense and provide a reasonable return.

BYD, the world’s largest EV maker by units sold, has signed deals for production facilities in Brazil and Chile, with construction already under way on a complex in Brazil. The company is also scouting potential locations for a factory in Mexico.

The global EV supply chain is already shifting to accommodate the upswell in demand, as countries seek to maximise the benefits of the resources or advantages they have in relation to the sector.

A February report from research provider Rhodium Group said some governments in emerging economies have begun to restrict exports of unrefined minerals, citing the example of Indonesia’s controls on nickel that have brought in more foreign direct investment in local processing.

“So far it appears that Chinese companies could emerge as the main beneficiaries of the bans and nationalisation plans,” said Gregor Sebastian, a senior analyst with the group.

“In comparison to global rivals, [Chinese] firms often have closer ties to downstream customers and financial resources to invest in local refining.”

As markets with major automotive sectors are concerned their local industries will be affected by imports, Lee at EIU noted that governments are using a combination of “carrots” and “sticks” to attract Chinese investment and localised production, with investment incentives and import tariffs serving a complementary function.

BYD, Great Wall Motor and SAIC Motor have responded in kind, with plans to build manufacturing facilities in European countries such as Hungary and Turkey. Leapmotor and Chery Automobile, meanwhile, have announced plans to work with joint venture partners in Poland and Spain, respectively.

Stephen Olson, a senior adjunct fellow at the Pacific Forum and a visiting lecturer and non-resident fellow at the Yeutter Institute, said that Chinese companies now “expect joint ventures to be pursued primarily to obtain some specific strategic advantage the foreign partner could provide”.

Regarding the US, the Rhodium report said a fraught political situation and regulatory uncertainties would slow the pace of Chinese carmakers entering the market, but it is “too big” to ignore.

“To evade scrutiny, Chinese firms are becoming increasingly creative in their overseas engagements. For example, Geely-owned EV producer Polestar aims to outsource part of its vehicle production to Renault’s South Korean plant in Busan before the vehicles are shipped to the US,” Sebastian said.

“The same is true for CATL’s licensing arrangement with Ford, which could be compliant based on current rules. Ford has pushed for CATL’s continued involvement in the US market, despite still-heavy political scrutiny over the deal.”

As China, India ramp up naval rivalry, is the Indian Ocean at a maritime crossroads?

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3273020/china-india-ramp-naval-rivalry-indian-ocean-maritime-crossroads?utm_source=rss_feed

Dangerous squabbles in remote Himalayan borderlands between China and India may, at least for now, have been soothed by a recent meeting between the two nations’ top diplomats.

But the Indian Ocean looms as the next potential flashpoint, security analysts say, as New Delhi flashes increasingly anxious eyes at Beijing’s ports and ship deployments across a vast expanse of water in India’s backyard – but crucial to China’s supply of oil.

In July, on the sidelines of an Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) meeting in Laos, S. Jaishankar and Wang Yi, the respective foreign ministers of India and China, agreed to thrash out differences that have resulted in mobilisation of troops along their shared Himalayan border.

The diplomats agreed “to work with purpose and urgency to achieve complete disengagement at the earliest”, according to a statement by India’s Ministry of External Affairs.

The meeting – which followed a visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Russia – left hints that their common friend Moscow may have played a role in nudging the two Asian giants towards calming tensions along a border, which flared into war in 1962 and have since seen sometimes deadly skirmishes between rival militaries, the worst in 2020 leaving 20 Indian and four Chinese troops dead.

Russia probably “urged both countries to put aside [their] differences”, said Christopher Blackburn, a British political and security analyst. “It looks like they have listened.”

With the mountain border spat simmering down, analysts say control and influence in the Indian Ocean presents a new and formidable challenge.

China, which relies on free passage of the ocean for 80 per cent of its crude oil imports, has steadily accumulated strategic ports and related infrastructure in a zone which stretches from the Arabian Sea to the Strait of Malacca, sharply aware of its vulnerability to blockades in vast, open waters in the event of a major conflict.

Yet its investment has raised alarm bells in Delhi which views the Indian Ocean as its home turf yet is playing catch up with its own investments.

“The sea route from the Middle East to the coastal cities of China is running through the Malacca Strait, which is a location that the US and India can blockade,” said Satoru Nagao, a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute focusing on US-Japan-India security cooperation.

The scenario is dubbed by analysts as the “Malacca Dilemma”, in which naval forces of rival powers such as the United States or India could disrupt Beijing’s vital supply route.

The Indian Ocean region has thus far been relatively unscathed by the disruptions roiling global shipping routes thanks to the Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine wars.

Indian policymakers are looking to China’s frequent run-ins with Southeast Asian neighbours in the South China Sea as a guide to how China’s strategic imprints can over time become painful pinch points between nations.

From port projects in Sri Lanka and Sudan, Kenya and Pakistan, China has built a network of assets referred to as a “string of pearls” that is perceived by Delhi and others to have encircled India.

Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative – which has enrolled Bangladesh, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka – has further fuelled concerns in India, which lags behind in economic might, diplomatic currency with fractious neighbours, as well as in the capacity to deliver its own state-backed mega-projects, including ports in the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Sittwe in Myanmar.

Wider competition is setting the tone of relations between the world’s two most populous nations.

While the Indian economy is largely pegged to the service sector, Modi’s government has been vying for a slice of China’s global manufacturing pie by doling out incentives and slashing India’s notorious red tape to access a large, cheap labour pool.

Meanwhile, Modi and China’s leader Xi Jinping have rarely met face to face since the Himalayan stand-off.

“Relations with China are not doing very well,” said Jaishankar, referring to the still unresolved border issues between the two countries, at a news conference in Tokyo on the sidelines of a Quad meeting this week.

“For India the primary question in the Indian Ocean region is security,” said Aditya Gowdara Shivamurthy, associate fellow with the Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation. “For China, it is crucial to win in the Indian Ocean because it cements its position as the Asian power.”

At the same time as financing and building ports, China’s naval presence is growing. The presence of its ships in the Indian Ocean has stirred suspicion from Delhi that so-called “research vessels” deployed by Beijing are in fact spy ships.

Earlier this year, two Chinese research vessels were spotted near India’s coast. In March, one was spotted near the Bay of Bengal region, which followed the docking of another vessel at a Maldivian Port.

Beijing says its vessels are simply carrying out ocean-bed surveys for scientific reasons. But Indian officials allege such vessels have a habit of “going dark” or turning off the vessels’ automatic identification system transponders.

Shivamurthy says these ships are believed to be manned by the People’s Liberation Army “and we don’t know much about their use”.

A January report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies alleged that 80 per cent of Chinese civilian research vessels had “demonstrated suspect behaviour or possess organisational links”, suggesting that their work was connected to military objectives.

Suspicions intensified last October when Beijing docked a vessel – Shi Yan 6 – at Sri Lanka’s main port of Colombo.

It was virtually a replay of another Chinese research vessel, Yuan Wang 5, which docked at Hambantota Port in August 2022. The port is under a 99-year lease to the Chinese-state owned company that built it after Colombo failed to service a US$1.4 billion loan to pay for the project.

“India protested but could not succeed in getting the Yuan Wang 5 out of Hambantota,” said Srikanth Kondapalli, the dean of the School of International Studies and a professor of China studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in India.

“This incident indicated that China has more rights and say on Hambantota than the Sri Lankans themselves,” he added, noting that there was an opportunity for Beijing to move “military-related assets” to such ports in the future.

In January, Sri Lanka declared a moratorium on foreign research ships entering its waters for a year, in a move observers say was linked to pressure from Delhi.

But last month Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Ali Sabry told Japanese state media NHK that it would resume permitting calls from foreign research vessels at its ports from next year as the government “cannot only block China”.

Japan – along with India and France – is a co-chair of Sri Lanka’s Official Creditors’ Committee that in June firmed up a debt treatment deal with Sri Lanka.

China’s expanding activities in the Indian Ocean region are viewed as a “big threat” by India, according to Nagao from the Hudson Institute.

Despite China’s accumulation of infrastructure assets in the Indian Ocean region, analysts say most are for commercial and not military purposes. Moreover, without a naval base, Chinese vessels will be dangerously exposed in the event of a violent flashpoint.

“The Chinese navy and the Indian navy can never be in a situation of confrontation unless China has a base in the Indian Ocean,” Shivamurthy said. “China might have economic and military leverage but India has geopolitical leverage.”

The Pentagon’s 2023 China Military Power Report published in October says China’s navy has about 370 warships, which is expected to grow to 435 ships by 2030.

The US fleet is smaller, with about 280 vessels and expected to reach only 300 in the early 2030s. In comparison, India possesses around 130 warships that is expected to grow to 160 by 2030.

“India has the advantage of geography because China is a far-off country,” said Manoj Joshi, a security expert at the Observer Research Foundation, adding without naval bases in the Indian Ocean any ambitions by China will be limited.

“But China sees itself as competing with the US rather than India.”

India could easily defend itself even with a smaller naval fleet size, he said, adding that the chances of a conflict was likely to arise only if Delhi decided to take a strong stance against Beijing in the event of a future conflict, such as siding with Taiwan.

Beijing sees the island as part of China and has never ruled out the use of force to take it back. Most countries, including the US, do not see Taiwan as an independent state, but are opposed to a change of status quo by force.

In the event of a full-scale war over Taiwan, Chinese oil tankers traversing the Indian Ocean could be sunk or captured, draining their capacity to engage in a sustained conflict, analysts say.

The Pentagon report listed 11 potential Chinese bases in the Indian Ocean, including in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Tanzania. These locations align with Beijing’s diplomatic and commercial initiatives under its belt and road programme but have not materialised into military assets.

The report noted that China has “little power projection capability” in the Indian Ocean.

Experts also note that China does not have “tactical air support” for any naval deployments into the Indian Ocean.

“The Chinese may bring the aircraft carriers into the Indian Ocean, but they are sitting ducks,” Kondapalli said.

Meanwhile, Nagao argues that the Indian navy alone will not be able to deal with China.

“However, China is alone, and India is not … the number of political partners has been a decisive factor in geopolitical struggles,” he added.

As Delhi is spooked by China’s growing footprint, India may need to tug harder on its partnerships with other countries including co-members of the “Quad” group – the US, Japan and Australia.

“The challenge is bound to get more pronounced,” said Harsh Pant, a professor of international relations at King’s College London, noting the risk of further Chinese expansion especially if the US-China rivalry again comes to boiling point in coming months.

Donald Trump, the front runner in the US presidential election, adopted a hardline stance towards China in his previous term, lumping blanket tariffs on Chinese goods and talking tough on their rivalry. President Joe Biden has extended the trade war, determined to tuck back in the rise of Chinese tech.

“If US-China rivalry escalates, China is going to push for these [port] projects across the world. India will also have to recalibrate its responses accordingly,” Pant said.

Delhi’s option to stave off any metastasising presence in its neighbourhood will be to leverage its partnerships with the European Union, Japan and the US and build more strategic assets across nations craving investment but lacking in cash.

“China has more money but we [India] bring different capabilities. We bring partners like the EU, US and Japan,” Pant said, adding that it was vital for India to build outposts.

In October, India will hold naval exercises in the Bay of Bengal region with its Quad group members, manoeuvres which cannot fail to catch Beijing’s attention.

At the same time, to avoid onerous state spending and the risk of bungled delivery, the South Asian country may also support private enterprises to build new infrastructure in countries with major needs from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to the Maldives.

Last December, India’s Adani group, controlled by one of Asia’s richest people Gautam Adani, launched a project to develop the Colombo West International Terminal project in Sri Lanka’s capital, backed by more than US$500 million in funding from a US government agency.

From energy generation to telecommunications, a slew of other private firms are eyeing projects across the region, industry officials say, a potential to outbox Chinese investment in a crucial region.

Last year, Adani’s companies faced a major stock rout following accusations from short-seller Hindenburg Research, which alleged widespread fraud and stock market manipulation by the conglomerate. But the group has bounced back on infrastructure bets, with shares of Adani ports jumping to record highs in June.

There have also been reports the billionaire shares close ties to Modi, implying his business plans align with Modi’s economic growth strategy for India.

China too has marked its presence with projects such as the China-Maldives Friendship Bridge in the Maldives, the first cross-sea bridge built on the Indian Ocean.

Ties between India and the Maldives came under strain after President Mohamed Muizzu was elected on an anti-India campaign late last year. But since then the island country has sought to mend fences with rounds of diplomatic visits and invites by Indian policymakers.

“China’s economic footprint will continue to expand in the global South and Central Asia as the US and perhaps Europe become increasingly hostile,” said Einar Tangen, a senior fellow at the Taihe Institute think tank in Beijing.

Now there are guide ropes for de-escalation in the Himalayas, experts say China, the world’s second-ranked economy, may next have to take the lead in defusing tensions or suspicions over its plans in the Indian Ocean region.

“If China can show a willingness to engage with its neighbours and lower its aggression and expansive policies, then … I don’t see a potential conflict in the Indian Ocean. But the onus is on China to stop being so aggressive,” Blackburn said.

“Can it deliver on its promises to India? We shall see.”

What I know as a Chinese-looking person travelling the world

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3272873/what-i-know-chinese-looking-person-travelling-world?utm_source=rss_feed

I still remember what I was wearing that day in the 1990s, when I flounced up the escalator leading to a high-end mall in Hong Kong, a young woman excited to be shopping alone during a family trip to the Chinese-speaking world’s capital of cool then.

Looking back, I wonder if the black floral dress I was wearing would have seemed more frumpy than timelessly romantic to a fashion-conscious Hongkonger. Was my insufficiently brushed hair to blame? Perhaps my excitement somehow looked like the anxiety of a fish out of water.

I had barely stood still in a boutique when a sales assistant sized me up, decided I couldn’t be a fellow Hongkonger, and asked if she could help me, in Mandarin. While she wasn’t exactly rude, there was enough hauteur in her voice to make me feel I had failed. In that moment, it didn’t seem to matter that I had spent a good part of my teen years studying second-hand videotapes of Stephen Chow Sing-chi comedies like they were Cantonese textbooks, and composing letters in colloquial Cantonese to my pen pal in Hong Kong, so I could one day land in the home city of Cantopop culture and fit right in.

I had been found inadequate before I could open my mouth. After I replied in Cantonese that I was just browsing, the sales assistant let me be and I left soon. Still, I found myself wishing I had bought something pricey, as if it could prove I wasn’t whatever she had presumed I was. Which was what? Someone from a sleepy backwater of mainland China?

Born to a Chinese-speaking family in Singapore, I had always been comfortable in my skin as a child of the Chinese diaspora. We lived on a high floor in a public housing block, and the corridor outside our flat every so often rang with neighbourly chit-chat in Mandarin, Hakka and Cantonese. At my secondary school, English and Chinese were taught as first languages.

It also fell to me, the firstborn, to send annual greeting cards to an uncle in a village in Dabu county in Guangdong province: an address I can rattle off to this day, even though our village relatives have long since been reachable by video chat.

Hong Kong was the first place we flew to as a family and that day in the 1990s was the first time I rubbed up against assumptions about me, simply for being a Chinese-looking person from elsewhere.

It is remarkable to me, however, how assumptions and expectations of a Chinese body have evolved as China’s fortunes changed. For a Chinese-looking person walking down the street in a strange city, the world has become a very different place in a matter of decades.

Although its economy had been picking up speed since the late 1970s, in the 1990s, China’s growth miracle was still many years away from becoming an inescapable fact worldwide. Up until the late 2000s, travelling to countries as far afield as Turkey and France, I was able to enjoy a certain anonymity. In tourist districts in Istanbul and Paris, where hopeful vendors tried Japanese greetings on me, I could slink away with a shrug. Boisterous Turkish schoolchildren on an outing through the courtyards of Topkapi Palace smiled wider at the sight of me and called out any Japanese word they could think of: “Konnichiwa!” “Toshiba!”

Back in Singapore in the 2000s, it was a different story. As thousands of female newcomers arrived from China, often with children to enrol in the city state’s bilingual schools, and after some of these women got massage parlour jobs, pretty much this whole demographic – and I – became an uncomfortable focus of fascination. Suddenly, my classroom Mandarin was too decent for me to be a believable Chinese Singaporean. I learned to stop speaking Mandarin in properly rounded tones during taxi rides, to avoid pointed curiosity about where I was from and what I was doing to make money.

In the 2010s, during yet another trip to Paris, I had a slightly disconcerting experience at Charles de Gaulle airport. A uniformed man came up to me and said something repeatedly, patiently, but I understood nothing. It didn’t sound like anything I could recall from beginner-level French, and I was starting to worry when it clicked that he was making thickly accented Chinese sounds – “Ni haooour” – and directing me to the tax refund office.

There and then, it was clear to me mainland Chinese consumers had truly arrived.

I have now lived in Hong Kong long enough to make educated guesses about who is or isn’t a Hongkonger in a line of faces and fashion choices on an escalator.

Sometime in the past year, I went to Phuket with three friends from Hong Kong. One friend had booked us in at a tucked-away wellness resort that wasn’t favoured by large groups of mainland Chinese tourists, so we wouldn’t have to compete with them for the breakfast buffet. Her caution might not have been necessary, however.

When we ventured out of the resort to go to a seafood market, we didn’t cross paths with any tour group but were wooed in Mandarin every time we neared a stall or restaurant. Vacationers ambled by in twos and threes, not that different from us. One of them, in floaty dress and clunky shoes, caught my eye and I could tell she was from mainland China before I could tell anyone why. So what though?

With much of the world economy in post-pandemic recovery mode, it seems to hardly matter what my friends and I identify as, or how many distinctions people across the Chinese diaspora try to draw. Sales and service folk in Thailand and elsewhere may simply see us all in the same light, as livelihood-saving Chinese tourists.

Florida lawyer pleads guilty to Chinese embassy bombing attempt in DC

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/02/florida-lawyer-pleads-guilty-bombing-chinese-embassy-christopher-rodriguez

A Florida attorney pleaded guilty on Friday to using a rifle to try to detonate explosives he placed outside the Chinese embassy last year in Washington DC.

Christopher Rodriguez also bombed a sculpture of the communist leaders Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong in a courtyard outside the Texas Public Radio building in San Antonio, Texas, in 2022, according to a court filing accompanying his guilty plea.

Rodriguez, 45, of Panama City, Florida, is scheduled to be sentenced in Washington by chief judge James Boasberg on 28 October.

Under the terms of his plea deal, Rodriguez and prosecutors agreed that an appropriate sentence for him would be seven to 10 years in prison.

Rodriguez pleaded guilty to three counts: damaging property occupied by a foreign government, damaging federal property with explosive materials and possessing an unregistered firearm.

Rodriguez acknowledged that he drove from Florida to Washington and took a taxi to an area near the Chinese embassy in the early morning of 25 September 2023.

He placed a black backpack containing about 15 pounds of explosive materials roughly 12ft (3.6m) from a wall and fence around the embassy grounds. Rodriguez admitted that he tried to detonate the explosives by shooting at the backpack with a rifle, but he missed his target.

In November 2022, Rodriguez drove to San Antonio in a rental car and scaled an eight-foot fence to enter the courtyard containing the sculpture of Lenin and Mao. He placed two canisters of explosive material on the base of the sculpture, climbed on to a roof overlooking the courtyard and shot the canisters with a rifle, triggering an explosion that damaged the sculpture.

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US lawyer pleads guilty to trying to detonate explosives near Chinese embassy in Washington

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/3273047/us-lawyer-pleads-guilty-trying-detonate-explosives-near-chinese-embassy-washington?utm_source=rss_feed

A Florida lawyer pleaded guilty on Friday to using a rifle to try to detonate explosives outside the Chinese embassy last year in Washington.

Christopher Rodriguez also bombed a sculpture of communist leaders Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong in a courtyard outside the Texas Public Radio building in San Antonio, Texas, in 2022, according to a court filing accompanying his guilty plea.

Rodriguez, 45, of Panama City, Florida, is scheduled to be sentenced in Washington by Chief Judge James Boasberg on October 28.

Under the terms of his plea deal, Rodriguez and prosecutors agreed that seven to 10 years in prison would be an appropriate sentence.

Rodriguez pleaded guilty to three counts: damaging property occupied by a foreign government, damaging federal property with explosive materials and possessing an unregistered firearm.

Rodriguez acknowledged that he drove from Florida to Washington and took a taxi to an area near the Chinese embassy in the early morning hours of September 25, 2023.

Rodriguez placed a black backpack containing about 7kg (15 pounds) of explosive materials roughly 3.6 metres (12 feet) from a wall and fence around the embassy grounds.

He admitted that he tried to detonate the explosives by shooting at the backpack with a rifle, but he missed his target.

A US Secret Service officer found the unattended backpack after Rodriguez left the area.

In November 2022, Rodriguez drove to San Antonio in a rental car and scaled an 2.4-metre (eight-foot) fence to enter the courtyard containing the sculpture of Lenin and Mao.

He placed two canisters of explosive material on the base of the sculpture, climbed onto a roof overlooking the courtyard and shot the canisters with a rifle, triggering an explosion that damaged the sculpture.

Rodriguez, a US Army veteran who was born in Puerto Rico, was arrested in Lafayette, Louisiana, on November 4, 2023.

Investigators tied him to the attempted attack on the embassy using DNA from the backpack.

China’s tourism policy must now go beyond visa-free travel

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3272519/chinas-tourism-policy-must-now-go-beyond-visa-free-travel?utm_source=rss_feed

“City or not city?”, the humorous meme coined by an American vlogger in China to ask whether a place is fashionable or has the flair of a major city, encapsulates the allure of China’s dynamic and evolving cities – and also its picturesque countryside.

Beyond the charm of China’s cities and beauty of its rural scenery lies a deeper sense of excitement and development that is palpable in its culture, economy and society. This phenomenon has captured the world’s attention, providing the emotional underpinnings for the recent surge in foreign tourists.

China’s successful tourism campaign has been supported by policy decisions, including reinstating the 144-hour free transit visa – which covers 54 countries and was recently expanded to 37 entry points – and offering visa-free travel to several countries.

The statistics speak for themselves. In the first half of this year, 14.64 million foreigners visited China, up by 152.7 per cent year on year. Visa-free entries exceeded 8.5 million, accounting for more than half of inbound trips and are a staggering 190 per cent rise year on year.

This success reflects China’s determination to remain open and welcoming. In the face of negative views and criticism, China’s bold and innovative approach to attracting foreign visitors could also herald a turning point in its efforts to reshape the global narrative about the country and to shift perceptions and attitudes. By promoting open and accessible travel, China is breaking down the barriers and building bridges with the world.

Despite China’s positive moves to reconnect with the world, however, tourist arrivals still lag behind pre-Covid levels. In 2019, for instance, almost 98 million foreign visitors entered and left China.

On a trip this week to London and Beijing, I noticed a stark contrast in the number of foreigners in both cities; Beijing had far fewer visitors, even when compared to itself in 2019. While China has taken a positive first step in reconnecting with the world, more concrete actions beyond visa-free travel are necessary.

Firstly, accessibility and convenience are key factors. For a country to be truly tourist-friendly, visitors should be able to feel at home. For instance, even in countries under severe Western sanctions, such as Russia, people can easily access social media such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Google, all banned in China.

China’s internet firewall has left it disconnected from the world in many ways, including having an online payment system that is not widely recognised and accepted for global travel. To attract more foreigners, China must reconnect its unique online payment system with the world’s.

Foreigners also report much inconvenience and difficulty when they try to book a Chinese museum visit online. In contrast, London offers easy and convenient online booking and free entrance to some of the world’s most renowned museums for all visitors from around the world.

Addressing these challenges that foreign tourists face in China would be an excellent way to showcase and strengthen China’s soft power. And the impact would extend far beyond China’s actual visitors and be a valuable tourism investment.

Secondly, interaction is crucial in bridging the gap between China and the rest of the world. Seeing is believing – witnessing something first-hand is more powerful than reading about it in the media. When people interact, it allows Chinese to better understand the changes outside the country since the pandemic and foreign tourists to see a China different from what they may have read about in the media.

For example, before my trip to London, I changed some money into sterling and carried cash, only to discover that London has become a largely cashless city. Even ice cream vendors often did not accept cash, and credit cards can be used directly on the Tube like Octopus cards in Hong Kong. All types of tickets can also be bought online via Apple Pay.

For Chinese travellers, London’s online payment system differs from China’s approach of developing and depending on WeChat Pay or Alipay. Exploring the world can narrow the gap of understanding between China and the rest of the world.

Thirdly, the interaction must be two-way: the inflow and outflow of tourists are equally important. Breaking down the barriers of travelling is essential to China reconnecting with the world.

Crucially, Chinese citizens must have opportunities to travel the world, after a hiatus from many global tourist hotspots due to the three-year Covid-19 lockdown. While China hopes to attract Western tourists back, European countries are anticipating an influx of Chinese tourists.

In London, Chinese tourists are starting to return, but many seem to be children, such as students on summer programmes. The China Tourism Academy expects outbound trips from China to reach 130 million this year, after last year’s tepid growth.

However, the recovery of Chinese tourists in Europe and North America remains below market expectations and pre-pandemic levels, partly due to visa restrictions on Chinese travellers.

It is remarkable to see how London, as a truly international metropolis, attracts tourists from a wide range of countries and backgrounds. During my visit to Britain, I met people not only from Europe but also from Latin America, Central Asia and Africa.

Though it was not part of China’s brand campaign for tourism, the “city or not city” meme has sparked the interest of many people and is a positive step towards bringing foreigners back to China.

Revitalising China’s inbound and outbound tourism is an essential way to reconnect with the world, and the positive moves are encouraging. But China needs to do more to attract and retain the interest of international tourists.

South China Sea: what is Beijing’s ‘maritime militia’ and how does it support the PLA?

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3272432/south-china-sea-what-beijings-maritime-militia-and-how-does-it-support-pla?utm_source=rss_feed

Tensions are mounting in the South China Sea – a hotly contested and globally significant waterway that’s become a flashpoint for conflict. In the final instalment of a four-part series we look at the role of a rising auxiliary force in the region.

China’s fleets of civilian vessels and fishing boats known as the maritime militia have become more visible as confrontations have grown between Beijing and Manila in the South China Sea.

On several occasions, the crews of these boats have been accused by the Philippines authorities of helping China’s coastguard encircle, outnumber and sometimes overwhelm Philippine resupply boats sent to Second Thomas Shoal, a frequent flashpoint between the two sides.

The Philippines and some think tank analysts believe these vessels are part of the Chinese maritime militia, a backup force that works in close coordination with the Chinese coastguard as Beijing asserts its vast territorial claims in the South China Sea.

But the militia’s existence has been largely left out of official Chinese statements about marine clashes with the Philippines. China’s foreign ministry has repeatedly denied the involvement of the “maritime militia” in South China Sea stand-offs.

Most recently, Manila accused this maritime militia of taking part in the June 17 confrontations, one of the worst clashes between Beijing and Manila.

“The PLA Navy, China Coast Guard and Chinese Maritime Militia vessels engaged in dangerous manoeuvres, including ramming and towing,” the Philippines’ National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea said.

Additionally, Manila said more than 135 Chinese militia boats swarmed the Whitsun Reef in December, describing their growing presence at the reef as “alarming”.

But Beijing rejected Manila’s accusations, insisting that the vessels were Chinese fishing boats that had a right to be there.

“It is justified and lawful for Chinese fishing boats to operate or shelter from wind in the area, and the Philippines is in no position to make irresponsible remarks,” foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.

According to a report in February by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative under the US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an average of 195 Chinese militia vessels were observed at nine key “features” in the Spratly Islands on any given day last year, a 35 per cent increase over 2022.

The report described China’s maritime militia as “a force of vessels ostensibly engaged in commercial fishing, but which in fact operate alongside Chinese law enforcement and military to achieve political objectives in disputed waters”.

China’s 2013 defence white paper categorised the country’s militia as one of the three components of China’s armed forces, elevating its importance both on land and at sea.

Beijing defines its national militia as an armed mass organisation composed of civilians retaining their regular jobs and serving as an auxiliary and reserve force of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

China’s maritime militia comprises a civilian wing of licensed commercial fishermen who are not full-time military personnel. They could also include former servicemen, demobilised soldiers and fishermen who receive financial support and military training from the government.

In a 2021 study, Cui Haoran, a maritime law specialist from Shanghai University’s law school, wrote that under China’s domestic law and maritime rights enforcement practices, maritime militias were regarded as a flexible, emergency policy tool. Although maritime militias were essentially paramilitary organisations with a certain degree of operational autonomy, they were mostly limited to serving as auxiliary forces for the navy and coastguard, he added.

According to a 2021 report by the CSIS, China’s militia boats mostly fall into two categories: professional maritime militia fishing vessels and Spratly backbone fishing vessels, some of which are over 55 metres (180 feet) in length.

Beijing’s deployment of a maritime militia for sovereignty patrols and as reservist forces has been widely criticised by Western countries for exploiting “grey zones”, because while the vessels may not trigger direct military conflict, they can still affect neighbouring countries that have rival territorial claims.

Zhu Feng, an international relations professor at Nanjing University who specialises in South China Sea affairs, dismissed the concerns as an “overreaction” to China’s maritime militia, saying they had been “hyped up by the United States and Western society”.

“The presence of maritime militia aims to strengthen Chinese fishermen’s ability to defend themselves in the face of harassment or forced evictions at sea by other countries,” he said.

China’s fishing militia first made its mark during a battle with Vietnam over the Paracel Islands.

In 1973, several Chinese civilian fishing boats began operating around the Vietnamese-held islands, raising flags and physically occupying at least one feature, prompting South Vietnam to send warships to investigate.

An eventual naval battle in 1974, in which the maritime militia took part, saw China gaining control of the Paracels – known in China as the Xisha Islands and in Vietnam as the Hoang Sa Islands.

The status of the maritime militia was further elevated during a 2013 visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Hainan province, where he inspected and commended a maritime militia unit based in the fishing port of Tanmen.

The same militia had also played an important role in “chasing away foreign fishing boats” from Scarborough Shoal the previous year, according to state media reports, resulting in China taking control of the submerged coral feature.

In 2014, the militia also confronted Vietnamese vessels during a two-month stand-off near a Chinese-controlled oil platform near the Paracels.

In 2015, the PLA journal National Defence published an article that predicted an increasingly complex security situation at sea, and argued that building a strong maritime militia could form the backbone of China’s maritime defence.

The maritime militia essentially performs six functions: maintaining Beijing’s presence in remote waters; surveillance and reconnaissance at sea; cooperation with authorities in law enforcement; search and rescue; supporting land reclamation work; and aiding naval operations during wartime.

The “floating pieces of sovereignty”, according to Collin Koh, a maritime security researcher at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, have helped strengthen China’s sovereignty claims in the strategic waters and made them “first responders to any contingency at sea”.

The National Defence article said that one of the maritime militia’s goals was to maintain a regular presence through fishing operations.

In the event of a large-scale armed clash, the militia could provide key information about the adversaries and can “contribute to perimeter patrols, warnings … engagement, and evicting the enemy”, the article said.

China’s maritime militia is unmatched in numbers and reach. Because the vessels appear as low-profile fishing boats, they can complicate law enforcement efforts by any country that aims to curb the militia’s actions, according to Koh.

The maritime militia has also been a valuable source of reconnaissance, broadening the channels of China’s naval intelligence with stealth-like abilities, covert ferrying tactics and operations in sensitive or radar blind zones not suitable for Chinese military ships.

“The maritime militia has unique advantages in dealing with sovereignty disputes – [it] not only avoids negative political and diplomatic consequences brought by military involvement, but also strengthens control over its maritime territory,” a 2013 article published in National Defence said.

The militia also has an elaborate communications and command network that is essential for alerting available fishing vessels that can quickly outflank a foreign coastguard patrol, making it difficult to expel Chinese boats, according to Koh.

However, Cui, from Shanghai University, said in the same study in 2021 that merely pursuing hard power in disputed waters through enhanced administrative strength and equipment does not necessarily translate into law enforcement strength, adding that frequent use of navy and coastguard forces could exacerbate tensions.

If a nation’s navy or coastguard uses coercive measures to expel civilian vessels from other countries, it often leads to confrontations between military and civilians or the coastguard and civilians, actions that can provoke international sympathy for the “weaker actor”, according to Cui.

Maritime militias should only use force to defend their rights as a last resort – in self-defence, or to prevent further military confrontation, he said in the study.

Maritime experts said they expected the role of China’s maritime militia to grow in parallel with China’s navy and coastguard so it could better support their operations. They also expect Beijing to double down on incorporating the maritime militia into its national strategy.

Koh said he did not expect a significant increase in the number of vessels deployed at sea, in part because of a manpower shortage. Young people were “comparatively less … motivated” to join such outfits, although he expected that Beijing would continue recruiting efforts, he said.

Nevertheless, other countries that have territorial disputes with China would struggle to match the Chinese militia fleet.

“Even if such forces are built in claimant states, matching their Chinese counterparts in terms of scale and organisation also requires a huge amount of investment,” Koh said.