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• [Sport] Russia airspace ban forces BA to drop China flights
• [Sport] Laugher misses out as China win diving gold again
• China’s supply chain under scrutiny amid report HP shifting more PC production overseas
• China’s new hypersonic glider can power-jump to the other side of the Earth: scientists
• China must focus on human development over infrastructure, population expert says
• China state-backed banks named and shamed for manipulating prices as bond rally takes toll
• Chinese sneakerheads’ favourite shopping app Dewu to cut 500 jobs as weak spending persists
• China mutes law professor on social media after cybersecurity ID plan criticism
• ‘No more beauty duty’: China airline allows flight attendants to ditch high heels
• South China Sea: Vietnamese navy frigate visits China amid flurry of drills in waterway
• Shenzhen joins Chinese local governments taking unsold homes off developers’ hands
• How China’s Communist Party is building political schools, and influence, in Africa
• Swire Pacific, Wharf results dragged down by Hong Kong, China property markets
• What China watchers should know about where the country is headed
• South China Sea: what can the Philippines do to counter Beijing’s island-building?
• China looks to play greater role in shaping international law to protect its interests
• Where China’s top leaders discreetly go in summer: a brief history of Beidaihe
• China confirms the discovery of a major natural gas field in the South China Sea
• China firm slaps zodiac ban on certain job applicants fearing bad luck for ‘dragon’ boss
• Trumpian treatment of China’s athletes hardly in keeping with Olympic spirit
• [Sport] Behave yourselves, China tells its Olympic fans
• Panama arrests 15 for smuggling Chinese migrants through Darién Gap, a route to US border
• How Hong Kong can fulfil its crucial role in China’s modernisation
• Eyeing US Midwest, Chinese state-owned firms seek new business amid tense ties

[Sport] Russia airspace ban forces BA to drop China flights

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ykrkv0m5mo

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[Sport] Laugher misses out as China win diving gold again

https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/articles/cg586r7np4go

China’s supply chain under scrutiny amid report HP shifting more PC production overseas

https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3273757/chinas-supply-chain-under-scrutiny-amid-report-hp-shifting-more-pc-production-overseas?utm_source=rss_feed

United States-based personal computer giant HP said it remains committed to its operations in China after denying a report that it was shifting more production outside the world’s second-largest economy, which sparked fresh scrutiny of the mainland’s manufacturing supply chain.

HP – the world’s second-largest PC vendor behind Lenovo Group, according to research firm IDC – told Chinese tabloid The Global Times that Nikkei Asia’s report on Wednesday about the company’s “most aggressive shift of production away from China” was false.

“In China, HP’s PC manufacturing business remains pivotal,” HP said in a statement cited by Global Times, which is under the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily. “To further enhance the resilience of the supply chain, we are actively optimising our strategy and increasing our flexibility to better serve our global customers and meet their diverse needs.”

HP did not immediately respond to an emailed inquiry on Thursday.

The company was formed in November 2015 as the legal successor to the original Hewlett-Packard, which spun off its enterprise product and business services units as Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

HP’s statement to mainland media in response to the Nikkei Asia report provides little to boost confidence in the mainland’s manufacturing supply chain, which has been hit hard in recent years by US tech restrictions and trade sanctions, and Beijing’s previous enforcement of rigid Covid-19 control measures.

According to the Nikkei Asia report, HP plans to make up to 70 per cent of its PCs outside China within two to three years. The firm was looking at potential production sites in Thailand, while it sets up a backup design hub in Singapore, the report said.

Last year, Nikkei Asia reported that HP was shifting some production assembly operations from China to Thailand and Mexico. HP said that it remains “deeply committed” to its computer manufacturing operations in Chongqing, the report said.

Other American tech giants, including Apple, Dell and Microsoft, are already making moves to to diversify their supply chains outside the mainland.

Foxconn Technology Group – the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer, as well as Apple’s prime supplier of iPhones, iPads and other devices – has been making steady strides in building production facilities in India and Vietnam. The Taiwanese firm, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, last month said it will invest about US$551 million in two new projects in Vietnam.

Microsoft earlier this year offered China-based employees working in artificial intelligence the option to relocate overseas in countries such as the US, Australia and Ireland, according to a South China Morning Post report in May, which cited sources. Microsoft has reportedly shifted production of its Xbox game console from China to Vietnam before 2022.

According to a January 2023 report by Nikkei Asia, Dell plans to stop using China-made semiconductors this year and urged its suppliers to cut down on components sourced from the mainland amid concerns over escalating tensions between Beijing and Washington.

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China’s new hypersonic glider can power-jump to the other side of the Earth: scientists

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3273658/chinas-new-hypersonic-glider-can-power-jump-other-side-earth-scientists?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s hypersonic weapons are poised for a significant upgrade, according to scientists involved in a project to develop a new type of hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV).

Using a trajectory similar to a skipping stone, the hypersonic glide vehicle can dive into and jump out of the atmosphere repeatedly at speeds exceeding Mach 15, thanks to a new solid-fuel booster capable of multiple ignitions.

A hypersonic glide vehicle is a type of warhead that can manoeuvre and glide at hypersonic speed to control a missile’s trajectory after launch.

By using the skipping stone trajectory, a missile’s kill range can be increased by more than one-third, extending the primary use of the hypersonic gliders from regional conflict to global operation.

This new generation of hypersonic weapons “possesses significant advantages in [military] application, featuring long range, high manoeuvrability and unpredictability”, the team led by Yong Enmi, a researcher with the China Aerodynamics Research and Development Centre, wrote in a peer-reviewed paper published in the Chinese Journal of Astronautics in June.

Through their research, the young scientists – the average age of those in Yong’s team is around 30 – are trying to surpass the dreams of Qian Xuesen.

Known as the father of Chinese rockets, Qian first proposed the concept of hypersonic gliders back in the late 1940s. The idea is that a glider is carried by rocket above the Earth’s atmosphere, and then it descends without power.

With the lift generated by its wings, it can fly thousands of kilometres within the atmosphere at speeds above Mach 7.

This non-ballistic flight is known as the Qian Xuesen trajectory. Currently, all known hypersonic glide weapons equipped in the military, such as China’s DF-17 missile, are designed based on this principle.

These hypersonic gliders can penetrate air defence systems with unparalleled speed and manoeuvrability.

According to war games recently disclosed by the Chinese military, these weapons could be launched from the Gobi Desert and effectively destroy US aircraft carrier fleets and military bases in the South China Sea.

But a more radical trajectory was proposed in 1941 by Eugen Sänger, an Austrian scientist working for Germany during World War II.

His Silbervogel (silver bird) aircraft was designed with a booster engine, allowing it to move in the upper atmosphere like a skipping stone.

This jump-glide flight path, or the Sänger trajectory, can increase the range and manoeuvrability of hypersonic weapons.

Sänger believed that the Silbervogel could be launched from Germany, drop bombs in New York, and land on Pacific islands controlled by Japan.

But his proposal has remained only on paper – until now.

“Many key technologies related to the development of aircraft with this trajectory are not solved and have not yet reached the technical maturity for engineering applications,” Yong and her colleagues wrote.

Boost-glide aircraft are larger and heavier than unpowered gliders. The multiple start-stop operations of solid-fuel engines are more challenging than liquid-fuel rockets. The optimisation of the Sänger trajectory is also much more complex than the Qian Xuesen trajectory.

Due to military sensitivity, previously published related research in China was limited to pure theoretical models.

But one glider design in particular has stood out with close links to practical applications, according to Yong’s team.

This aircraft features a slender body with fuselage integrated with wings. The trailing edge of the side wings has elevators, while the rudder is located on the wing’s raised tip.

“This layout has been verified through numerical simulations and wind tunnel test data and has been extensively used in the stages of optimisation design and model selection,” Yong’s team wrote.

Based on this new aircraft, they used a novel algorithm to optimise the Sänger trajectory. Computer simulations show that the aircraft’s top speed approaches Mach 20 and can maintain a speed above Mach 17 for more than half an hour by jumping repeatedly above the atmosphere.

After flying continuously for more than an hour, the aircraft can still glide at a speed above Mach 7. This means it can strike almost any location on the planet.

The gentler descent also reduces friction with the atmosphere. Compared to unpowered gliding, the maximum heat flux experienced by the new aircraft is expected to be reduced by half, which is beneficial for reducing the burden on the thermal protection system.

Yong’s team said the current technology still does not fully meet the requirements for actual combat.

The military demands that the aircraft be able to flexibly change its trajectory to bypass specific territorial air space. This requires additional auxiliary equipment such as reaction control systems.

The combination of multiple active and passive steering methods will pose unprecedented challenges to flight control, according to the researchers.

China is currently conducting extensive testing of related technologies.

According to public reports, the development of solid-fuel pulse engines capable of multiple ignitions has been completed.

The Sänger trajectory has been used to decelerate return capsules with speeds exceeding Mach 30 during multiple lunar sample return missions, all of which have been successful.

In 2021, China conducted a test flight of a hypersonic glide aircraft capable of going around the Earth.

This capability left US government scientists bewildered, according to a Financial Times report.

China’s achievement appeared “to defy the laws of physics”, an anonymous source was quoted as saying.

China must focus on human development over infrastructure, population expert says

https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/3273726/china-must-focus-human-development-over-infrastructure-population-expert-says?utm_source=rss_feed

China must prioritise investing in human development rather than infrastructure to ensure high-quality economic growth under Beijing’s agenda to promote “new productive forces”, according to an expert in Chinese demographics.

“In the stage of high-quality economic development, investing in people yields higher returns than investing in material production,” said He Dan, director of the China Population and Development Research Centre, a think tank affiliated with the National Health Commission.

“Therefore, it is crucial to prioritise investment in people, to support the optimisation of new productive forces resources by a robust social security system.”

The comments came as China has pinned its hopes on “new productive forces”, focusing on turning scientific research and technological advancements into new growth engines as former economic pillars such as real estate and exports can no longer be relied on to shore up the economy.

The country also faces a prolonged demographic crisis marked by plummeting birth rates and a rapidly ageing population – major obstacles to the already shaky expansion of the world’s second-largest economy, according to economists.

In the article published in the July issue of the commission’s Population and Health magazine, He wrote that the return on infrastructure investment has declined rapidly in recent years, with the investment return rate for local government financing vehicles dropping from 3.1 per cent in 2011 to 1.3 per cent in 2020.

Therefore, public spending should be prioritised in areas with higher social returns, such as actively investing in human development, to create new economic growth poles, He added.

Some key areas include improving social security, adjusting income-distribution mechanisms, increasing household income, and enhancing public services.

Last year, the country’s population dropped for the second year in a row, down to 1.4097 billion after a 2.08-million-person decline. Only 9.02 million births were reported in China in 2023, representing the lowest total since records started in 1949.

Even with demographers expecting a brief rebound in newborns over the next couple of years as the impact of the coronavirus pandemic eases, a raft of pronatalist policies being implemented, and it being the auspicious Year of the Dragon in China’s zodiac, the longer-term outlook foresees births continuing to decline.

There is a 50 per cent chance that, by 2100, China could lose more than half of its current population and see it return to a size comparable to the late 1950s, shrinking by 786 million people, according to the United Nations.

To strengthen its social security network, China should improve its support for childbirth and child-rearing systems and provide better and more equal public services, He said.

China state-backed banks named and shamed for manipulating prices as bond rally takes toll

https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/3273741/china-state-backed-banks-named-and-shamed-manipulating-prices-bond-rally-takes-toll?utm_source=rss_feed

China’s financial market watchdog has accused four state-backed rural banks in the eastern province of Jiangsu of manipulating market prices and transferring benefits in the secondary market for government bonds, amid a concerted effort by the central bank to cool China’s bond-market rally amid an economic slowdown.

The National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors (NAFMII), an affiliate of the People’s Bank of China, announced the start of a self-disciplinary investigation into four rural commercial banks in the province: Jiangsu Changshu Rural Commercial Bank, Jiangsu Jiangnan Rural Commercial Bank, Jiangsu Kunshan Rural Commercial Bank, and Jiangsu Suzhou Rural Commercial Bank.

Wednesday’s announcement came as investors have been clamouring for safe-haven trades – ultra-long government bonds, in most cases – as the stock market has come under pressure amid lower-than-expected economic growth in the second quarter and a protracted crisis in the property market.

The investigations led to discoveries of government-bond-transaction violations, and some of the most serious violations have been referred to the People’s Bank of China for administrative penalties, the NAFMII said in follow-up comments on Thursday, adding that they were investigating and processing other similar cases.

The Jiangsu branch of the People’s Bank of China has instructed local rural commercial banks to be cautious about holding long-term bonds, according to Bloomberg. During a period when state-owned banks are selling off long-term bonds, these rural banks are being advised not to significantly increase their bond holdings and to manage their position risks carefully.

The PBOC has been clear this year on its intentions to clamp down on the bond rally, which has been driven by short-term factors, including speculative ones, said Thomas Mathews, head of markets for the Asia-Pacific region at Capital Economics.

“The central bank certainly has a history, more than most others, of using all of the tools at its disposal to try to influence market prices to where it would prefer them to be.

“I’d be hesitant to characterise this specific development as part of that, but the overall approach by the central bank is very clear,” which includes selling the bonds it has borrowed, regulatory tools, and some recent guidance around the duration of bond funds.

China’s bond market is grappling with the central bank’s efforts to push up long-end yields and the country’s slowing economy.

The bond rally has persisted despite warnings and actions from the regulator – the Chinese central bank said in July that it had already signed agreements with several major financial institutions, that it had hundreds of billions of yuan worth of bonds at its disposal, and that it would sell them depending on market conditions.

The yield on China’s 10-year government bonds declined by 6.2 basis points in July for a second straight monthly fall, spurred by optimism that the country’s central bank would unveil a fresh bout of monetary easing.

As of Thursday, the 10-year government bond yield was 2.1228 per cent, up 3.23 basis points from the previous trading day, while the 30-year government bond yield was 2.3903 per cent, up 3.79 basis points.

Late last month, the central bank unexpectedly lowered both the loan prime rate and the medium-term policy rate.

“The PBOC will soon start borrowing government bonds, opening the door to sales aimed at arresting the decline in long-term yields, which the central bank sees as a growing financial stability risk,” Capital Economics said last month.

“But the forces pushing down yields seem unlikely to reverse any time soon and would require substantial intervention to counteract. Without wider monetary tightening, which doesn’t appear to be on the cards, the best the PBOC can probably hope to achieve is to engineer a short-term pause to the bond rally.”

Chinese sneakerheads’ favourite shopping app Dewu to cut 500 jobs as weak spending persists

https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3273695/chinese-sneakerheads-favourite-shopping-app-dewu-cut-500-jobs-weak-spending-persists?utm_source=rss_feed

Shanghai-based e-commerce app Dewu, a popular option among young Chinese consumers looking for niche brands, will trim its workforce by 5 per cent amid weak Chinese consumer spending, according to an internal letter to employees on Wednesday.

Dewu employees who received the letter, and declined to be named as they are not authorised to speak on the matter, said the job cuts will affect approximately 500 positions out of the total payroll of 10,000. Dewu – which started in 2015 as an online community sharing data about sports, shoes and fashion – has decided to cut jobs as it tries to suspend or reduce resources used for “low-yield” projects amid a grim market environment, according to the letter.

Dewu confirmed the lay-offs on Thursday in a statement to the Post. It said it will hold one-on-one talks with affected employees and provide severance packages.

China’s online shopping industry has become increasingly competitive, with tech giants chasing less yuan as consumers tighten their purse strings. Entrenched players including Alibaba Group Holding’s Tmall and Taobao, PDD Holdings’ Pinduoduo and JD.com are jostling for attention against newer players such as ByteDance’s Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Dewu, founded by the young Chinese billionaire Yang Bing, is not one of the top e-commerce apps in China in terms of turnover, but it has been influential in wooing China’s Gen Z consumers, who are more willing to pay premium prices for certain types of goods.

According to the company’s promotional materials in 2023, about 70 per cent of Dewu users were born after 1995, and about 70 per cent of the 260 million people in that demographic in China have used the app.

After it started allowing users and merchants to trade goods in 2017, Dewu quickly emerged as a platform for bidding wars. In particular, it became the go-to spot for China’s young sneakerheads to bid on limited edition shoes.

In 2021, prices for some shoes produced by Li Ning and Anta Sports surged eightfold on Dewu. That year, a Li Ning pair named after former National Basketball Association star Dwyane Wade sold for as much as 48,889 yuan (worth about US$7,500 at the time) on Dewu – 33 times its recommended retail price. A pair of Anta shoes with a special imprint of the Japanese cartoon character Doraemon that retailed for 499 yuan was selling for 3,999 yuan on the platform.

How much the company itself has benefited from hype cycles remains something of a mystery. As a private company, it is not required to disclose its finances.

Yang, the founder, was listed No 32 on the Hurun Global U40 list of self-made billionaires last year with a net worth of US$1.5 billion. Yang grabbed media attention in 2023 when he spent 158 million yuan to buy a mansion in Shanghai, local media outlet The Paper reported.

China mutes law professor on social media after cybersecurity ID plan criticism

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3273657/china-mutes-law-professor-social-media-after-cybersecurity-id-plan-criticism?utm_source=rss_feed

A prominent Chinese law professor has been silenced on social media after she complained of being attacked online over her vocal objection to plans for a national cybersecurity ID system.

The Weibo account of criminal law academic Lao Dongyan from Tsinghua University in Beijing has been muted because she “violated relevant rules” according to a notice on her front page. The ban is understood to be in effect for 90 days.

Weibo has also forbidden users from following Lao’s account, giving the same reason. Lao currently has nearly 800,000 followers on the platform. Her last post on Tuesday night was quickly removed.

In it, Lao said she was the target of online attacks which she compared to the big character posters – da zi bao in Chinese – which were a popular way to attack political opponents during the Cultural Revolution.

According to Lao, the attacks followed her objections to the digital ID plan released on July 25 by the Ministry of Public Security and the Cyberspace Administration of China for a 30-day public consultation period.

“This is the first time the authority’s people are circulating da zi bao about me. That brought the attack on me to a new level … As for the reason, [I think] it was obviously because I raised objections to a certain public consultation,” she wrote.

Lao has been a vocal critic on a number of issues, from China’s widespread use of facial recognition technology and its Covid-19 restrictions to gender issues.

In a long Weibo post on July 31, Lao likened the proposed cybersecurity system to the health code app introduced during the pandemic and said it would act like “a monitor for everyone’s online activities”.

She warned that accessing the internet or online services would effectively become “a privilege that requires permission to enjoy” and questioned the legal basis of the proposed regulation.

Lao – who also doubted the need for a standardised network identity, with more than a billion internet users in China already registered under the real-name cyber policies introduced in 2011 – quickly became a target for supporters of the plan.

Yeping, a WeChat account known for its nationalistic views and content, slammed Lao’s views in a post on Sunday that accused her of “provoking confrontation between the people and the government”.

The post, which has been read more than 100,000 times, also warned that “we will not condone them forever” – an apparent reference to Lao and others with similar views.

In another article posted on Monday, the same account called Lao a “traitor” and recounted her opposition to other controversial policies, especially the use of facial recognition technology.

The article also hailed the proposed cyber ID as a “secret key” and “bulletproof vest” for Chinese internet users.

Lao’s Weibo account was wiped clean in September 2022 – one month before the ruling Communist Party’s 20th National Congress. It is unclear how or why the account’s history disappeared, but Lao was able to post again after the meetings ended.

The wiped posts included Lao’s response to online comments about a brutal attack in the northern Chinese city of Tangshan in June 2022, when a group of men assaulted four women at a barbecue restaurant.

Lao slammed online commenters who said that “women should better protect themselves” and called for people to focus on how to punish the perpetrators and free women from such harassment.

She added that gender inequality is a key issue that needs to be addressed through the contributions of both men and women.

‘No more beauty duty’: China airline allows flight attendants to ditch high heels

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/gender-diversity/article/3273666/no-more-beauty-duty-china-airline-allows-flight-attendants-ditch-high-heels?utm_source=rss_feed

A domestic airline in China is making headlines by allowing women flight attendants to forgo high heels in an unprecedented move aimed at “reducing the burden” on staff.

On August 5, Air Travel, an airline based in Hunan province, central China, announced on its official WeChat account that it has abolished the requirement for flight attendants to wear shoes with high heels during flights.

The company said the decision to allow women staff to wear flat shoes was designed to balance professional image, cabin safety and employee health.

“Traditionally, high heels were part of the required uniform. However, extended wear can cause physical discomfort and, in certain situations, flat shoes enhance stability and safety. It reflects our commitment to both professional needs and passenger safety,” the airline said.

Staff told Hangzhou Daily that the initiative aimed to “reduce burden” on employees.

“Flight attendants are allowed to skip high heels during all of their duties, including boarding and using passenger lifts and jet bridges.”

The change has been welcomed by the women flight attendants.

Some have shared photos of their shoes, showing indentations left by their toes after long hours on their feet. Others have promoted anti-chafing foot patches designed for wearing high heels.

Li Yan, who has been working as a flight attendant for 12 years, wore flat shoes for the first time on her shift on August 3.

She flew from Changsha in Hunan province, central China, to Baoshan in Yunnan province in the southwest – and back, a round-trip of about five hours.

“It felt very relaxed wearing flat shoes for the entire shift. Previously, wearing high heels while climbing stairs or walking through jet bridges in rainy or snowy weather was inconvenient and sometimes unsafe.

“The heels could slip, and walking long distances to remote parking positions was also tiring,” she said.

Li Qiang, the Founder and Executive Director of China Labour Watch, a US-based non-profit organisation, told the Post: “In the past, wearing high heels was seen as fashionable, but now the situation has changed.

“Air Travel’s approach may give them a competitive advantage in recruiting female flight attendants, but whether it will inspire other airlines to follow suit remains to be seen,” he said.

The decision in China follows similar initiatives in other countries.

In June, photos featuring flight attendants from Super Air Jet in Indonesia, wearing trousers and flat shoes instead of the usual skirts and high heels, sparked widespread discussion and quickly went viral on mainland social media.

The footwear change has also gained support on mainland social media.

“It’s not just about a pair of shoes, it reflects whether a company’s policies are people-oriented,” one person said

“Please, no more beauty duty. This should have been done a long time ago. Forcing them to wear high heels is no different from ‘foot binding’,” wrote another.

South China Sea: Vietnamese navy frigate visits China amid flurry of drills in waterway

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3273688/south-china-sea-vietnamese-navy-frigate-visits-china-amid-flurry-drills-waterway?utm_source=rss_feed

A Vietnamese navy frigate arrived in southern China on Wednesday for a five-day visit amid mounting military posturing and tensions in the disputed South China Sea.

The Vietnam People’s Navy’s guided-missile frigate 015 Tran Hung Dao arrived at a naval port in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, on Wednesday, according to the Chinese military’s Southern Theatre Command.

Zhanjiang hosts the headquarters of the Southern Theatre Command Navy that oversees the South China Sea, the strategic and resource-rich waterway where Beijing and Hanoi both have contested claims.

According to the command, both sides will “organise ship tours, deck receptions, cultural exchanges, joint exercises and other activities”.

The visit aimed to “improve mutual understanding and trust between Chinese and Vietnamese navies and to further strengthen friendship between the two”, the command said in a statement.

The visit by the Vietnamese navy ship to China comes amid increased military activities in the disputed South China Sea.

The Philippines started two-day naval and air exercises with the United States, Canada and Australia on Wednesday, the first such drills. They were held at the same time the Chinese military conducted a joint sea and air patrol around the contested Scarborough Shoal and following the first joint exercise between the Philippines and Japan last week.

Vietnam’s port call to China has also occurred amid reports of two recent incidents in which the Chinese military sent drones close to Vietnam’s coastline and exclusive economic zone before returning to Hainan.

Despite a long-standing history of tension and maritime disputes in the South China Sea between China and Vietnam, the two countries have made efforts in recent years – including to improve communication, coordination and joint activities – to enhance their naval and coastguard cooperation to improve trust between the two militaries.

In late June, the Chinese and Vietnamese navies concluded a two-day joint patrol exercise in the Gulf of Tonkin in the northwestern portion of the South China Sea between Vietnam and China. Each country contributed two vessels to take part in the coordinated activities and conduct joint search and rescue and signal light drills.

Top leaders of the two countries, including newly named Vietnamese President and Communist Party General Secretary To Lam, have called for joint efforts to improve trust between the neighbours.

As one of the rival claimants in the South China Sea disputes and an outspoken critic of China’s expansive claims in the waters, Vietnam has adopted nuanced “bamboo diplomacy” – carefully balancing its relationships and navigating between China and the US – while also steadily pushing for close defence ties with the US and its allies in the region.

During a visit to Hanoi on Tuesday, Japanese Defence Minister Minoru Kihara announced that Japan would provide two Ground Self-Defence Force supply transport vehicles to Vietnam as the first project under an agreement on the transfer of defence equipment and technology that came into effect in 2021.

Shenzhen joins Chinese local governments taking unsold homes off developers’ hands

https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3273694/shenzhen-joins-chinese-local-governments-taking-unsold-homes-developers-hands?utm_source=rss_feed

Shenzhen has become the first tier-1 Chinese city to buy up unsold homes, joining several other local governments that heeded a call from authorities to help bail out the country’s beleaguered property sector by taking unsold properties off developers’ hands.

Shenzhen Public Housing Group, backed by the city’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, said it plans to purchase unsold homes from enterprises as backup affordable housing, according to a notice on its official WeChat account late on Wednesday.

Homes, flats and staff accommodations of up to 65 square metres in size will be considered under the scheme, but whole buildings will have priority. The scheme will continue until October 31, according to the notice.

The move comes almost three months after Chinese authorities announced a historic rescue package in May, including a 300 billion yuan (US$42 billion) relending fund for local state-owned enterprises to buy unsold homes for use as affordable housing.

Ten Chinese cities, including central municipality Chongqing, southern Yunnan province capital Kunming, and Dalian in northeastern Liaoning province, have introduced such schemes, according to property think tank China Index Academy. Shenzhen, China’s technology hub, is the first of the country’s four first-tier cities – Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are the others – to take such a step.

In Beijing last month, a property agent association launched a pilot programme, under advisement from the city’s housing bureau, to encourage homeowners to swap old homes for new ones. Under the scheme, homeowners can pre-order a new home, and the association will help them sell their current home. Cash from the sale of the old home goes to the new home’s developer as a down payment.

As of Tuesday, one deal has been completed and about 18 are expected to finish soon, according to the association.

“De-stocking has been a focus in the property sector, and the purchase schemes introduced by local governments have become one of the forceful tools to achieve the goal of clearing housing inventories,” said Xu Yuejin, an associate research director at the China Index Academy.

However, such schemes still face challenges, like the pricing of unsold homes and a mismatch between supply and demand, Xu said.

“For example, the cities that see strong demand for affordable housing, like the first-tier cities and core second-tier cities, usually have relatively less home inventory,” he said. “Developers are less likely to offer discounts to sell their inventories.”

The size and the scale of the relending fund is the other challenge, Xu said. Only 12.1 billion yuan of the 300 billion yuan remained as of the end of June, according to official data.

The entire fund will buy only 7.6 per cent of new homes, far less than the market needs for a meaningful revival, Xu said.

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How China’s Communist Party is building political schools, and influence, in Africa

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3273698/how-chinas-communist-party-building-political-schools-and-influence-africa?utm_source=rss_feed

Kenya’s ruling United Democratic Alliance is the latest African political party to benefit from China’s soft power push to promote its development model and ideology on the continent.

UDA officials visiting China in May clinched a deal with the Communist Party to build a leadership school for the Kenyan party in Nairobi. Chinese officials had previously held talks about setting up the school when they visited Kenya in March.

Beijing has also agreed to finance and build Nairobi’s new foreign ministry headquarters “as a visible marker of 60 years of diplomatic relations”, Korir Sing’Oei, Kenya’s principal secretary of foreign affairs, said in May.

Many African political parties have approached the Chinese Communist Party to build their schools and help strengthen party building, according to Paul Nantulya, a China specialist at the National Defence University’s Africa Centre for Strategic Studies in Washington.

He said those parties were from countries including Burundi, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Morocco and Uganda.

The Chinese Communist Party has already provided US$40 million to build the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School in Kibaha, named after Tanzania’s revered founding father, which opened in 2022. Beijing also supported the refurbishment of the Herbert Chitepo School of Ideology in Zimbabwe – the political training school of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front – that was completed last year.

In a report published by the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies on July 29, Nantulya said China seemed to be following the model it used in Ghana, where it has provided successive ruling parties with political leadership training since 2018.

Nantulya said China was expected to receive more than 50 African party delegations this year – double the number hosted in 2015.

He said the Communist Party had stepped up training of party and government officials in Africa. He pointed to the Nyerere School in Tanzania, which trains ruling party members from the Former Liberation Movements of Southern Africa coalition – from Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

Nantulya said although China had built or supported African party schools since the 1960s, the Nyerere School was the first to be modelled on the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Party School, which trains its top cadres and leaders.

He said the activities of China’s National Academy of Governance – the external name for the Central Party School – were less noticeable. Although it does not have bricks-and-mortar schools it conducts year-round training with governance academies in countries including Algeria, Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa.

But despite China’s economic growth, many Africans are not convinced by the country’s political model.

“Nearly 80 per cent reject one-party rule,” Nantulya said. “Yet, as many African scholars argue, China’s party and governance training has the potential to entrench single, dominant party models in Africa.”

He noted in the report that the Chinese Communist Party has ongoing relations with 110 African ruling and opposition parties, 35 parliaments and 59 politically oriented organisations including party think tanks. He said China had conducted exchanges, party building and training with every African ruling party except for eSwatini, which recognises Taiwan.

According to Lina Benabdallah, an associate professor in the politics and international affairs department at Wake Forest University in the US, Beijing wants to build leadership or party schools to reinforce ideological affinities where they exist between the Communist Party and African political parties.

“These leadership schools also create an opportunity for the Chinese governance model to become more influential abroad by helping develop curricula, train staff and so on,” Benabdallah said.

She said that for African nations, China’s willingness to financially endorse these schools was a lucrative opportunity.

“It remains to be seen whether these schools actually display an ideological alignment with China in content or whether they are in fact independent and just the building and the outside structure are China-influenced,” she said.

Yun Sun, co-director of the East Asia programme and director of the China programme at the Stimson Centre in Washington, said China trained African leaders in Africa, but also in China.

She said the goal was to consolidate friendly ties and promote the Chinese model of development.

For African political parties, according to Sun, the leadership schools offer a venue and connection with China that could lead to cooperative projects that might benefit them – regardless of whether they are in power or opposition.

She said they did not have to replicate the Chinese model.

“Ten years ago, the Chinese called Ethiopia the best student of the China model in Africa,” Sun said. “But I don’t think the Chinese still refer to the case of Ethiopia any more.”

John Calabrese, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said Chinese party schools had collaborated with Ethiopian institutions to provide training in political and economic governance, emphasising China’s development experience.

“They have provided ideological training and development model ‘insights’ to the African National Congress [in South Africa]. They have also had some training programmes for members of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front,” Calabrese said.

“These party-to-party relationships have deep roots, dating back to the national liberation struggles, which China supported politically while not yet having acquired the means to support materially, or at least only to a very limited extent.”

Benjamin Barton, an associate professor at the University of Not­tingham’s Malaysia campus, said building party schools was part of the Chinese Communist Party’s soft power efforts in Africa.

“The construction of these schools represents part of its commitment to fostering long-term relations with these sister parties. They also come in handy not just in promoting a positive image of China globally but they are important for Beijing in terms when it comes to debunking certain myths (or what Beijing sees as untruths) about the CCP or China writ large,” he said.

Barton said under the aegis of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, Beijing had placed a lot of emphasis on African youth leadership. He said that was a calculated move aimed at positively influencing the leaders of tomorrow on the continent – not just about China but about the benefits of China’s interpretation of socialism, Marxism and Leninism.

“The CCP is banking both on the leaders of today as well as the possible leaders of tomorrow,” he said.

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Swire Pacific, Wharf results dragged down by Hong Kong, China property markets

https://www.scmp.com/business/article/3273717/swire-pacific-wharf-results-dragged-down-hong-kong-china-property-markets?utm_source=rss_feed

Sluggish property markets in Hong Kong and mainland China are pulling down the bottom lines of the city’s largest companies, with both Swire Pacific and Wharf (Holdings) reporting less than stellar first-half results.

Swire Pacific reported a 7 per cent decline in first half profit to HK$3.91 billion (US$501 million), according to a filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Wharf said it swung to a loss of HK$2.63 billion in the first half from a profit of HK$696 million in the same period in 2023.

The subdued office rental market hit Swire Pacific’s property unit Swire Properties, where underlying profit fell 8 per cent year on year to HK$3.57 billion. Meanwhile, sluggish homes sales did the most damage to Wharf, as residential-segment revenue in mainland China fell by 25 per cent to HK$2.5 billion.

Swire Properties, one of Hong Kong’s largest commercial landlords, cited “oversupply and weak demand” as twin challenges besetting the city.

“Amid an uncertain economic landscape, [corporations] are exercising caution in their real estate decisions,” said Guy Bradley, Swire Pacific chairman.

Swire Properties’ gross rental income for its office portfolio dropped 7 per cent year on year in the first half to HK$2.57 billion, according to Tim Blackburn, the developer’s CEO. As of June, total occupancy of its offices stood at 89 per cent.

Excluding the developer’s newest buildings, the office portfolio was 93 per cent occupied, Blackburn added. Two Taikoo Place, completed in September 2022 is 62 per cent leased, and Six Pacific Place, finished in February 2024, is at 44 per cent occupancy, he said.

“With continued new office supplies coming to the market, coupled with weak demand, office rental remained under pressure,” Blackburn said. “Despite these challenges, our office portfolio has remained resilient.”

Meanwhile, gross income in Swire Properties’ Hong Kong retail segment fell 3 per cent to HK$1.19 billion. Occupancy has returned to 100 per cent, but mall retail sales were lacklustre, with Cityplaza in Taikoo Shing recording a 4.3 per cent slide, while Citygate Outlets in Tung Chung dropped 2.6 per cent.

Swire-controlled Cathay Pacific Airways reported on Wednesday that net profit shrank 15.3 per cent to HK$3.61 billion in the first six months, as airfares descended from abnormal heights in the year-earlier period.

“In the second half of 2024, we will continue to build on our strengths,” Bradley said. “Our businesses are well-positioned to cope with any immediate adversity and economic challenges, and our long-term focus on investing in our core markets remains unchanged.”

The conglomerate “will also continue to look for opportunities to invest” in the Greater Bay Area, Bradley said, after it signed an agreement with the Shenzhen government in June to cooperate in areas such as retail, conferences and exhibitions, and aviation. The bay area refers to Beijing’s push to link Hong Kong, Macau, and nine mainland cities in the Pearl River Delta into an integrated economic hub covering a total population of more than 86 million.

At Wharf, overall office property revenue declined by 4 per cent to HK$2.32 billion and hotel revenue slipped 2 per cent to HK$291 million in the first half. Logistics revenue fell 12 per cent to HK$1.07 billion due to “lower throughput in Hong Kong and unfavourable business mix in mainland China”, the company said in a filing.

Mainland office occupancy was depressed owing to “defection to lower grade properties as well as business downsizing and/or closure”, the company said. Rents were also soft, it added.

“The business outlook remains clouded by economic uncertainties and volatility,” Wharf said, citing US interest rates, global trade and geopolitical risks, and, in China, high leverage and inventory in the property sector, subdued consumer sentiment and an elevated savings rate.

“In Hong Kong, the strong local currency and tight financial conditions are hindering the economic recovery. The group will remain prudent in financial management and seize opportunities to drive business performance amid economic headwinds.”

What China watchers should know about where the country is headed

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3273373/what-china-watchers-should-know-about-where-country-headed?utm_source=rss_feed

Western media analysts often fail to grasp the significance of the reforms initiated at the third plenum of the Communist Party of China, which recently concluded in Beijing.

The Communist Party typically holds seven plenary sessions during each five-year term of its Central Committee, and the third is particularly important as major policy directions and reforms are often introduced.

The 1978 third plenum marked the beginning of China’s reform and opening up, a policy introduced by Deng Xiaoping that transformed China from one of the world’s poorest countries into the second-largest economy, measured by nominal gross domestic product (GDP).

The Communist Party’s third plenum in 2013 further deepened these reforms, ensuring China’s continued economic growth, perhaps setting the stage for it to one day become the world’s largest economy.

On July 18 this year, the third plenum concluded with a proposal for “further comprehensive deepening [of] reform”, a continuation of China’s pragmatic approach to development that Western analysts often underestimate.

Long-term reform is a challenge. In Western democracies, political candidates campaign on promises of change, but after one or two terms, little may actually change. Even if reforms are implemented, there is no guarantee that a successor won’t reverse them. China, however, approaches reform as a relay race, with each generation of leaders passing the baton to the next.

When President Xi Jinping took office as Communist Party general secretary in 2012, China was already the world’s second-largest economy, but significant challenges remain. Over the past 12 years China has dealt with six major areas ‒ poverty, isolation, pollution, corruption, hegemony and crisis prevention ‒ issues often discussed in Chinese political discourse.

First, poverty. By the end of 2020, China announced the eradication of extreme poverty, achieving this milestone a decade ahead of the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. From 2012 to 2020, tens of millions people were lifted out of extreme poverty.

Secondly, in response to the hi-tech blockades and trade restrictions imposed by the United States, China has focused on achieving technological independence. Between 2012 and 2023, China’s scientific research funding as a percentage of national income reached 2.64 per cent, making it the global leader in research investment. By 2023, there were 465,000 hi-tech enterprises in China, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. China’s chip self-sufficiency rate has increased to over 40 per cent.

Thirdly, China is leading the world’s largest emissions reduction initiative. In the past decade alone, China’s energy consumption per unit of GDP dropped by 26.8 per cent and carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP reportedly fell by more than 34 per cent.

The country’s new energy vehicle sales could surpass 10 million units this year. Meanwhile, China’s solar power industry is also a global leader, with capacity accounting for around 80 per cent of the world’s total.

Fourthly, tackling corruption is crucial for sustainable development. Between 2012 and 2022, China investigated nearly 5 million officials for corruption.

Fifthly, China has consistently opposed hegemonic behaviour, pledging never to use nuclear weapons first and adhering to peaceful development, as enshrined in its constitution. It has proposed the Belt and Road Initiative. Moreover, it is committed to equal cooperation with countries around the world, helping broker the normalisation of ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as the Palestinian factional unity agreement.

Lastly, to prevent crises, China has introduced and revised more than 20 laws related to national security, addressed property bubbles and cracked down on transnational fraud and cybercrime.

Of course, progress in these six areas cannot conceal the fact that there are still problems. These are precisely the targets for the next phase of national development. Just as the reforms of Deng Xiaoping’s era left issues for future leaders to address, the reforms of the past 12 years have set the groundwork for further comprehensive deepening.

This year’s third plenum passed a 22,000-word key document which outlines more than 300 reforms to be implemented over the next five years. This reflects China’s unwavering commitment to reform and opening up over the past 45 years.

My institution, the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, has published a report that provides insight into China’s trajectory over the next five years and beyond, which gives a clearer perspective on China’s future. By 2029, we expect more than 40 per cent of the world’s top 500 companies to be Chinese. China is expected to surpass the United States, potentially becoming the world’s largest economy by 2035.

Average life expectancy in China could reach almost 80 years old while basic medical and pension coverage will exceed 95 per cent. In 2029, the Chongyang Institute expects there will be more than 100 countries that either share mutual visa exemptions or have unilateral visa exemptions and visa-on-arrival arrangements with China.

About one-third of the country’s population ‒ over 400 million people – will have travelled abroad. Environmentally, China is likely to achieve its carbon peak goal ahead of schedule, leading global efforts in emission reductions.

In terms of space and aviation, China will become one of the countries with the most comprehensive space programmes in the world, with plans to send astronauts to the moon.

More importantly, the national governance capacity and system of the Communist Party will take another big step forward. By 2029, China will have hopefully modernised as a socialist country.

South China Sea: what can the Philippines do to counter Beijing’s island-building?

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3273722/south-china-sea-what-can-philippines-do-counter-beijings-island-building?utm_source=rss_feed

A senior Philippine Navy official has detailed China’s extensive militarisation of around 3,000 hectares of reclaimed land in the South China Sea, including bases built on artificial islands within Manila’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

Beijing’s build-up of military bases in the heavily disputed waterway over the last 13 years represents a major strategic challenge for the Philippines, analysts say, as the country lacks the capacity to counter such developments militarily.

They argue Manila must now rely on diplomatic and legal measures to push back against China’s expansionism.

Navy spokesman Commodore Roy Trinidad said in a press briefing on Tuesday that China had built bases on Gaven Reef, Zhubi Reef, Fiery Cross Reef, which are outside the Philippines’ EEZ; and on Mischief Reef and Johnson South Reef, within the EEZ.

Trinidad said such bases had everything from airstrips and seaports to fuel depots and resting facilities for troops, giving Beijing the ability to easily position warships and aircraft in the West Philippine Sea, Manila’s term for the part of the South China Sea that lies within its EEZ.

“It will be easy now to project their forces in the West Philippine Sea,” Trinidad said, noting that the Chinese vessels deployed to interrupt Manila’s rotation and resupply missions to an outpost on the nearby Second Thomas Shoal had come from those bases.

“If they didn’t have that staging area, they would have to come all the way from mainland China. That’s about 600 nautical miles going to the Philippines EEZ. It’s far. and their capability to stay longer at sea would be less,” he said.

Abdul Rahman Yaacob, a research fellow in the Southeast Asia Programme at the Lowy Institute based in Sydney, said from a political point of view, China’s fortification of bases in the South China Sea reinforced its claims to that territory.

“At the military level, the bases project China’s military power across the South China Sea and sustain their naval presence in those waters. Therefore, it challenges the claims of other claimant states,” he told This Week in Asia.

Don McLain Gill, a geopolitical analyst and lecturer at the Department of International Studies at De La Salle University, told This Week in Asia that the point of China’s militarisation was total access denial to deter other forces from entering the disputed waterways, including Western powers.

Gill said it would be difficult for the Philippines to challenge Beijing’s base-building activities militarily, meaning it must rely on other countermeasures.

“We need to have a clear approach to apply more pressure on China’s activities. It has to be a combination of different elements. We could further raise the environmental concerns in the West Philippine Sea and ensure that China is painted as expansionist,” Gill said.

China has been able to transform reefs in the South China Sea into artificial islands using a method that involves extracting coral from reefs, pulverising them and piling these up to create elevated artificial land. In May, the Philippines announced plans to file formal complaints over the extensive environmental damage caused by these activities.

Another option to deter China’s actions, Gill said, was for President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr to sign the Maritime Zone Act, which was passed in Congress on July 17. The law defines the Philippines’ maritime zones and entitlements within each area in line with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos), an international treaty that provides legal guidelines to define coastal states’ territorial waters.

Unclos was the basis of a 2016 UN arbitration court ruling upholding the Philippines’ territorial boundaries in the South China Sea. The court found that China’s historical claims to much of the maritime region were invalid, but Beijing has rejected the ruling as illegitimate and continued to assert it sovereignty over the disputed waterways.

However, even if the act was passed, Gill said it could not be used to simply evict Beijing from its bases.

“Frankly speaking, forcing China to let go of their bases there is difficult because they have already established them. What we are trying to do is to avoid more occurrences. Because China is continually expanding. They are expansionist. They will not stop,” Gill stressed.

“We have to understand that this is not an overnight thing for the Philippines, it will take a long time for us to establish a credible level of push back when it comes to China’s island building measures. Because, head-to-head, I do not think that we would be able to match the capacity that China continuously shows and unfolds in the greater South China Sea, including areas in the West Philippine Sea,” he added.

Lawyer Aldrin Alba, a legal expert at the Political Economic Elemental Researchers and Strategists think tank, said the bill’s enactment would put the Philippines on better legal footing with allied nations and the international community to ask for support from the UN in enforcing it.

“It will delineate the country’s geographical extent, providing a legal basis for the effective exercise of rights in said maritime areas,” Alba told This Week in Asia.

Gill said it would require a collective effort from allied countries just to prevent China from undertaking further militarisation efforts in the region.

“What we need to do is coordinate with our partners in applying more pressure, making it clear to China that they cannot have a free run in monopolising the South China Sea,” Gill said.

“We have to make sure that we are ready to position ourselves with our partners to ensure that we can slow down their continuous expansion. What we are trying to do is to defend what is left of the status quo,” he said.

Yaacob agreed, noting “Manila has also stepped up defence diplomacy and signed defence agreements with several countries”.

The Philippines has increased security ties with a number of other countries in recent months including Japan, which it signed a Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) with in July that enables the two nations to jointly train troops and provide mutual aid during natural disasters. It is seeking RAAs with Canada, France and New Zealand as well.

“The aim is likely to anchor as many external powers as possible in Southeast Asia to counterbalance China, as Asean (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) is unable to support the Philippines in its disputes with China in the South China Sea,” Yaacob said.

On Wednesday, the navies and air forces of the Philippines, United States, Canada and Australia held a two-day “maritime cooperative activity” to press for freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea, the same day China conducted its own military exercises in the disputed region.

However, Gill expressed doubt that such exercises would translate into allies helping Manila directly confront Beijing’s expansionism.

“They are joining us in maritime patrols but their political will is limited when it comes to being upfront with China.”

He said the recent agreement between Vietnam and the Philippines to hold their first joint maritime drills could prove more decisive, since Vietnam was another neighbouring country that also had overlapping territorial claims with Beijing in the South China Sea.

“Beijing’s main argument to external powers is to let Asean countries handle the dispute and not to interfere. In this regard, if we continue what we are doing with Vietnam, we will be able to create better confidence-building measures. And then it will be more difficult for China to expand.”

China looks to play greater role in shaping international law to protect its interests

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3273592/china-looks-play-greater-role-shaping-international-law-protect-its-interests?utm_source=rss_feed

China has pledged to step up its efforts to shape and influence international law in line with its own strategic interests.

The party committee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs argued in a recent article that legal frameworks are the “new battlegrounds for international competition”.

The struggle for global influence is now being waged on the terrain of “systems, rules, and laws”, and rules-based governance has emerged as a crucial component of China’s core competitiveness, according to the article, published in the Communist Party’s theoretical journal Qiushi.

“We aim to enhance participation in every stage of international rule-making, from setting, interpreting, and applying those rules, and to ensure that Chinese practices influence the evolution of international law,” it wrote.

“By doing so, we will more effectively integrate our ideas and interests into global regulations.”

The article singled out outer space, cyberspace, digital technology and artificial intelligence as emerging fields for China to shape global governance rules.

Zheng Zhihua, a research associate professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said Beijing’s quest for stepping up foreign-related legal work is also driven by the need to “strengthen its soft power” and “international discourse power”.

Zheng noted that Beijing views the existing international framework as imperfect because some countries are not properly represented in the rule-making process while the established Western powers retain a dominant role.

“Given this context, China believes it is imperative to advance the democratisation of international relations. This would allow the rules to become more equitable and better incorporate the interests and demands of the vast developing countries,” he said.

The article said: “China strives to promote the fair and universal interpretation and application of international law, oppose the selective application and double standards of some countries, and respect the right of parties to choose their dispute resolution methods.”

Beijing has long aimed to beef up legal tools to counter US sanctions and what it calls “long-arm jurisdiction” – its term for Washington applying its domestic laws internationally – and the urgency has only been heightened in recent years as the competition between the two countries heats up.

“China rejects the imposition of a single legal system on other countries and the use of so-called ‘rules-based’ rhetoric to foster confrontation and division, as well as the promotion of Western superiority,” the article said.

In the past four years, China has passed several laws to counter this and expand the reach of Chinese courts.

This is in line with previous comments by President Xi Jinping, who has called for a “sword and shield” approach that uses “legal tools in international struggles”.

Two years ago he said the priorities should include developing a legal system for the extraterritorial application of Chinese law and expanding the “security chain” that safeguards China’s overseas interests.

This year’s Foreign State Immunity Law will allow some cases to be brought against foreign countries in Chinese courts for the first time, while 2021’s Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law provides a framework for countering sanctions.

There have also been measures to protect foreign investments in China and codify foreign policy decision making, while last year’s amendments to the Civil Procedure Law grant domestic courts the power to investigate and collect evidence overseas and expand their jurisdiction over some civil cases.

Zheng said expanding the international reach of Chinese domestic law could increase its ability to punish foreign actors for what it sees as hostile behaviour.

He said it was a “defensive measure … rather than a proactive weapon to assert dominance in international affairs”, adding: “The intent is to defend against infringements of China’s core national interests, as opposed to initiating unilateral punitive measures.”

The Qiushi article also pointed to China’s involvement in recent advisory cases at the International Court of Justice and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.

February’s International Court of Justice submission – related to the conflict between Israel and Hamas – was only the second time it had taken part in an oral hearing at the court.

Last year’s submission to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, in a case about climate change, was its first such involvement with the body.

Zheng said this suggested China was “moving towards strengthening its judicial involvement and participation in these arenas”.

Where China’s top leaders discreetly go in summer: a brief history of Beidaihe

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3273601/where-chinas-top-leaders-discreetly-go-summer-brief-history-beidaihe?utm_source=rss_feed

Top leaders and experts in China gather every summer at the seaside resort of Beidaihe.

Mao Zedong started the summer retreat tradition of meetings as early as 1953. However, Chinese President Xi Jinping has weakened the political importance of the annual retreat since taking over.

China confirms the discovery of a major natural gas field in the South China Sea

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3273626/china-confirms-discovery-major-natural-gas-field-south-china-sea?utm_source=rss_feed

China has confirmed the discovery of a major gas field in the South China Sea, state media reported on Wednesday.

Called Lingshui 36-1, the field is estimated to contain more than 100 billion cubic metres of natural gas and is the world’s first “ultra-shallow gas field in ultra-deep waters”, China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The latest “major exploration breakthrough” was announced by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) in June, and the discovery was reviewed and registered by state authorities on Wednesday.

The report did not specify the exact location of the field, only saying it is in waters southeast of Hainan, China’s southernmost island province.

China claims almost the entirety of the South China Sea with a “nine-dash line”, while Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan all have overlapping claims. Disputes and tensions often rise over each other’s oil and gas exploration and development attempts in the contested waters.

The field adds to China’s detected geological reserves of natural gas in the resource-rich South China Sea and in basins offshore Hainan island and the Pearl River mouth, topping the trillion-cubic-metres level.

“Lingshui 36-1 gas field is located in western South China Sea, with an average water depth of around 1,500 meters,” CNOOC said in June.

“The main gas-bearing play is the Ledong Formation of Quaternary, with an average burial depth of 210 meters. The field has been tested to produce over 10 million cubic meters per day of open flow natural gas.”

The CNOOC statement also quoted Zhou Xinhuai, its president and chief executive, as saying that the “South China Sea has been a major region for the company to boost natural gas reserves and production. The successful testing of Lingshui 36-1 further expands the resource base for the development of a trillion-cubic-meters gas region in South China Sea”.

“The company will continue to step up exploration and development of hydrocarbon resources in the South China Sea and to enhance our capacity of energy supply.”

China is the world’s largest natural gas importer, with about US$64.3 billion spent on 120 million tonnes of liquefied and pipe gas in 2023. The discovery of major reserves would be a boost to the country’s energy security.

However, developing oil and gas in the South China Sea would likely face diplomatic and political risks from rival claimants. In 2014, CNOOC’s oil rig Ocean Oil-981’s operation in a disputed area near the Paracel Islands triggered widespread anti-China protests in Vietnam.

Beijing has also tried to stop unilateral oil and gas development in the South China Sea by other countries.

Chinese coastguard vessels have reportedly disrupted operations of Malaysia’s gas projects, and Chinese and Vietnamese vessels have had repeated confrontation over Hanoi’s oil drilling operations in the disputed Vanguard Bank in the past several years.

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China firm slaps zodiac ban on certain job applicants fearing bad luck for ‘dragon’ boss

https://www.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3273529/china-firm-slaps-zodiac-ban-certain-job-applicants-fearing-bad-luck-dragon-boss?utm_source=rss_feed

The hiring strategy of a company in China has gone viral after it explicitly banned candidates born in the Year of the Dog.

Those behind the employment policy believed that applicants born under the canine Chinese zodiac sign would bring bad luck to the boss of the firm who is a dragon.

China has 12 zodiac signs, each assigned to a year in a repeating 12-year cycle.

The belief is that two signs positioned opposite each other on the cycle are in conflict, such as the dragon and dog.

The company, Sanxing Transportation based in southern China’s Guangdong province, wanted to hire a clerk for a monthly salary of 3,000 to 4,000 yuan (US$420 - US$550), half the average salary in the province.

In its job description it specifically asked candidates born under the dog sign of the zodiac to “not apply for the job”.

On August 2, a member of staff told Hubei Television that the reason the company banned those applicants was because their boss was a “dragon”, and “dragons and dogs do not get along well”.

They said that less qualified applicants would be considered “as long as their zodiac sign is not the dog”.

Each zodiac sign corresponds to an “earthly branch”, and is assigned to one of the “five phases”, metal, wood, water, fire and earth.

It is said that the dragon has a water element while the dog has a fire element.

As a result, if a dragon works with a dog they will often disagree.

Superstitious beliefs also regard dog people as vindictive and capable of bringing bad luck to the career of dragon people.

When it comes to romance, the opposite is true.

It is believed that people born in the Year of the Dog would suffer more if they dated dragon zodiac people because dragon people tend to be less loyal and tolerant.

The belief is also mixed with the feng shui theories, which suggest that if dog and dragon zodiac people are colleagues they could hang lucky charms in the workplace to bring harmony.

On mainland social media, people denounced the company for being “too superstitious”.

“This is discrimination,” one person wrote on Weibo.

“I would not choose to work for a company like this,” said another.

A third said she had a similar experience: “My boss asked for my birthday and horoscope, and after learning that I’m a rooster zodiac person who was born early in the morning, they believed I would be a hard worker and hired me.”

A lawyer from Hubei Chisheng Law Firm, Wu Xingjian, said the company’s rule could amount to discrimination, but preferences based on zodiac signs were not illegal.

Trumpian treatment of China’s athletes hardly in keeping with Olympic spirit

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/china-opinion/article/3273523/trumpian-treatment-chinas-athletes-hardly-keeping-olympic-spirit?utm_source=rss_feed

If the Olympics are a proxy for geopolitics, they also typically are replete with paeans to the global spirit of sportsmanship and mutual respect. They are supposed to bring out the best in everyone – except, apparently, when the athletes in question are Chinese.

In some Western circles at least, the 2024 Paris Olympics have been open season for the vilification and disrespect of Chinese athletes. Athletes, coaches and fans seem to be taking cues from political leaders intent on bashing China. Through it all, China simply keeps on winning medals.

What stands out in Paris is the blatant anti-China discrimination within the athletic community itself. After Chinese swimmer Pan Zhanle won gold in the 100-metre freestyle final and clipped his world record by a seemingly impossible 0.4 seconds, Brett Hawke, a former Australian Olympic swimmer who is now a coach based in the US, questioned the result. “Listen,” Hawke said in an Instagram video. “I’m just going to be honest. I am angry at that swim, I’m angry for a number of reasons.” The strong implication was that Pan’s feat couldn’t have occurred without doping.

The aspersions stemmed from a report that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for a banned substance just before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Notably, Pan was not among those swimmers. Moreover, Pan has said he was tested for performance-enhancing drugs before and after his record swim.

Nevertheless, after Pan swam an extremely fast final leg in the men’s 4x100-metre medley relay to take China to gold, a commentator for a US broadcaster saw fit to mention that two of the swimmers on the team had tested positive for a banned substance three years earlier, although he also clarified that Pan had not tested positive.

Meanwhile, a video clip that surfaced online shows a Chinese swimming coach extending a congratulatory hand to French phenom Leon Marchand. The swimmer then appears to snub the coach and walk right by him. Marchand, who won four gold medals at the games, reportedly made up with the Chinese swimming coach in a later exchange.

The anti-China sentiment has extended to the tennis court as well. Here is how US tennis player Emma Navarro summarised what she said to Chinese tennis star Zheng Qinwen after losing to Zheng in their Olympic third round match: “I just told her I didn’t respect her as a competitor. I think she goes about things in a pretty cutthroat way.” Zheng went on to win China’s first gold medal in singles tennis.

These occurrences echo decades-old patterns, as I know from personal experience. As an elite (although hardly Olympics-calibre) high school basketball player in 1980s, I was an oddity as an Asian-American player. Our “place” was assumed to be in chemistry labs or calculus classes. Competitors and spectators shouted, “You people should be playing ping pong.” Even my coach nicknamed me “Chinaman”.

The Trump administration made experiences like mine a part of everyday political discourse. Now, anti-China rhetoric stands as something that Democrats and Republicans can agree on.

The former president referred to the Covid-19 virus as “kung flu” and argued that China has ripped off the US. I don’t know where Hawke and Navarro stand on public health and trade policy, but I do know that their attitude toward Chinese athletes is downright Trumpian.

The West extols a narrative that says China should not be allowed to disrupt the so-called rules-based international order. Apparently, that proverbial order extends to the Olympic Games as well.

Before China’s hi-tech industrial revolution, Beijing served the West’s interests by providing plenty of cheap components, low-tech products and natural resources. During that period, not many seemed concerned that China was the gold medallist when it came to coal consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

Now that China is either closing the gap or surpassing the West in areas such as solar power, chip manufacturing and design or rare metals extraction, the tone is different. US President Joe Biden hopes to contain and ostracise China through sanctions and threats to ban TikTok.

At the Olympics, so long as China won medals in traditionally Asian-centric or obscure competitions like table tennis, badminton, diving and shooting, the West didn’t feel threatened. Attitudes seemed to change when China began making advances in events like swimming and tennis.

Last week, a bipartisan group in US Congress threatened to hold back funds to the World Anti-Doping Agency for not properly disclosing the Chinese swimmers’ positive tests before the Tokyo Olympics. Expect a host of like-minded efforts over the coming months to complement other anti-China legislation currently in Congress.

Do these inflammatory tirades make a difference? They certainly don’t seem to have affected China’s results in Paris, where it trails only the US in the medal count.

A similar dynamic has played out in the economic realm. Take the case of Huawei. The corporate behemoth that has been heavily sanctioned and even blacklisted by the US has seen its mobile operating system become mainland China’s second-largest, surpassing Apple.

The ordeal of China’s Olympians is a microcosm of the nation’s resilience. Chinese athletes will probably remain a target for haters. But those same athletes are even more likely to ascend the podium in events once dominated by the West.

“The competition is over,” Pan Zhanle said after his final swim in Paris. “We are the champions.” He suggested that if anyone should be unsatisfied, it wasn’t China. Pan, like China as a whole, has earned the right to do a little trash-talking.

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[Sport] Behave yourselves, China tells its Olympic fans

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjdk5l94p1zo

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Panama arrests 15 for smuggling Chinese migrants through Darién Gap, a route to US border

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/americas/article/3273636/panama-arrests-15-smuggling-chinese-migrants-through-darien-gap?utm_source=rss_feed

Border police in Panama said on Wednesday that they had arrested 15 people who allegedly ran a smuggling ring to move Chinese migrants through the Darién Gap.

The dangerous, jungle-clad gap connects Colombia and Panama, and represents a major route for migrants to reach the US border.

In recent years, Chinese have become the fourth-largest group by nationality to use the crossing. Most of those crossing are Venezuelans.

More than 500,000 migrants crossed the Darién Gap in a record-breaking 2023.

So far this year, more than 212,000 migrants have crossed, though reports in July suggested the flow may have declined in recent weeks.

Panama’s National Border Service said 11 vehicles, two dozen mobile phones, a rifle and cash were seized in the raids on the migrant smuggling ring.

Panama’s president has vowed to crack down on the massive migrant flows, and border police have erected about 4.8km (three miles) of barbed wire to block some trails and funnel migrants to a single reception point.

Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino – who took office on July 1 – has promised to halt the rising flow of migrants entering his country from Colombia and reached an agreement for the US government to pay for repatriation flights.

How Hong Kong can fulfil its crucial role in China’s modernisation

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/hong-kong-opinion/article/3273521/how-hong-kong-can-fulfil-its-crucial-role-chinas-modernisation?utm_source=rss_feed

The third plenum of the Communist Party of China’s 20th Central Committee, which concluded on July 18, provided a clear long-term development plan for the country over the next five years and beyond. Comprehensive in scope, large in scale, broad and deep in reach and consequential in all respects, the plenum’s visionary grand design has promising implications for Hong Kong.

Reform is central to the plenum and road map, as it has been since setting the country on an impressive growth trajectory more than four decades ago. The word “reform” is mentioned more than 140 times in the resolution adopted by the Central Committee, alongside new strategies to achieve “high-quality development”.

The blueprint reaffirms the nation’s commitment to comprehensive reform and opening up. It provides a road map through economic and financial directives as well as outlining policies related to important social issues including people’s well-being, healthcare, ecological conservation, social governance, national security and party leadership. More than 300 reform measures have been stipulated for implementation in the next five years.

Hong Kong has all the desired qualities and strategic advantages needed to play an integral role in the deepening of the nation’s reforms and make greater contributions to its modernisation. This was highlighted in President Xi Jinping’s recent reply to Hong Kong entrepreneurs with roots in Ningbo who had written to him. It is a recognition of the contributions of Hong Kong’s business community, and also serves as a wider call for all in the city to contribute more to the country, which will require the engagement and participation of all sectors.

Hong Kong needs to go further as the nation embarks on a new phase of growth. We need to serve as both a superconnector and a super value-adder linking the mainland with the rest of the world to bring in talented people, know-how and capital.

The resolution adopted at the third plenum contains four articles specifically laying out tasks for the city. They are Articles 19, 27, 28 and 32, under the headings of “improving mechanisms for implementing the coordinated regional development strategy”, “optimising the layout for regional opening up”, “refining the mechanisms for high-quality cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative” and “building a united front”.

These play to Hong Kong’s strengths while consolidating the city’s status as an international centre of finance, shipping and trade, as well as a global hub of high-calibre talent as the country embarks on the next phase of reform and sustainable growth. Hong Kong can play a critical role by investing in new technologies, raising capital and enhancing education, academic research and even sports development.

Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu has pledged that Hong Kong will do its part to contribute to the nation’s modernisation. He summed up that pledge by saying, “Hong Kong should firmly grasp the enormous opportunities brought by the country’s further and comprehensive deepening of reforms in advancing Chinese modernisation. Hong Kong should continue to leverage its unique advantages of enjoying strong support of the motherland and being closely connected to the world and its important role in deepening reforms of the country, better integrating into the national development thereby.”

As a leading international financial centre, Hong Kong can offer the desired expertise in various areas outlined in the reform agenda. These range from fintech to connecting domestic and overseas financial markets. In particular, Hong Kong’s well-established financial system and international standing can bolster growth of offshore renminbi markets. The city has the world’s largest deposit pool of offshore yuan and a diverse array of mainland wealth management products.

In an era of rapid technological advancement, Hong Kong must further pursue industrial transformation and upgrading with “new quality productive forces” as a major driving force. The city’s acclaimed educational institutions can strengthen collaboration with internationally renowned universities and companies. Doing so would help achieve breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence and biotechnology, fostering technology transfer and commercialisation to encourage greater collaboration in the Greater Bay Area.

Hong Kong possesses a deep wealth of know-how and talent that could be deployed in promoting foreign trade, foreign investment, the Belt and Road Initiative and international arbitration. These areas are all emphasised in the blueprint and position the city to leverage the country’s pursuit of new productive forces to attract and support technology firms in the Greater Bay Area.

Hong Kong also needs to tap into growth areas such as Southeast Asia. The government is taking the lead in enhancing regional collaboration, as highlighted by the application for accession to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the recent delegation led by Lee to Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) members Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

The trip to the Asean states was a successful one, with 55 memorandums of understanding and agreements signed with the three countries. These cover a wide range of areas of cooperation, such as trade and economic partnership, investment, customs collaboration, education, cultural exchanges and tourism promotion. They will help strengthen Hong Kong’s network in Southeast Asia and attract support from the three countries for its bid to join the RCEP.

As the second-largest economy in the world, China has announced through the third plenum its strong determination to continuously improve its definition of “modernisation with Chinese characteristics”. Hong Kong, as China’s most international city with a proven “one country, two systems” framework, must take practical action to contribute to the nation’s reforms and opening up.

Eyeing US Midwest, Chinese state-owned firms seek new business amid tense ties

https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3273572/eyeing-us-midwest-chinese-state-owned-firms-seek-new-business-amid-tense-ties?utm_source=rss_feed

Two major state-owned companies in China are scoping out new business opportunities with the US Midwest but have concerns about political relations between the economic powers, according to the chair of a Chinese chamber of commerce.

Cofco Group, a Beijing-based food processor and shipper, wants to engage more with US agriculture but “hopes the geopolitical environment will be easier”, said Ni Pin, chair of the China General Chamber of Commerce chapter in Chicago.

He said the food processor has explored stepping up shipments of food from the US through its international network of ports.

And CRRC Corp, a train-car maker headquartered in Beijing, “would love to expand its footprint” in the US, where it already does work in Chicago and Boston, Ni told the Post. Its American subsidiary, CRRC Sifang Rolling Stock, opened a Chicago base six years ago.

“The USA has been talking about high-speed trains, and we wanted to attract their facility here,” Ni said. However, he said, the firm is wary about existing US congressional bills, though has not said which ones.

A delegation of the 200-member chamber met representatives from both of the state-owned companies in June, during a weeklong trip to China, Ni said.

Representatives of other Chinese firms that met the delegation expressed interest in investing in the Midwest, a region of about 69 million people that has long been reliant on agriculture and manufacturing.

The US-China trade war, launched in 2018, has affected more than US$380 billion worth of US farm and other exports, along with China-manufactured goods and services. US tariffs during the trade war have hit some US$550 billion in goods from China.

Since then, Washington has gone on to target Chinese hi-tech sectors under President Joe Biden’s “small yard, high wall” strategy.

Individual Chinese investors can help resolve broader concerns about the US, Ni said.

“We are not outsiders who should sit on the sidelines waiting for the environment to change,” he said. “In fact, we are all the stakeholders of a better US-China relationship, so each company should be its own ambassador to show the logic as to why this could benefit people from both sides.”

To do that, he said, those companies could show they are hiring more local people, paying a “fair tax to support the local economy” and “being good corporate citizens”.

Some of the Chinese businesspeople who met the chamber delegation in June plan to follow up with visits to potential US sites, Ni said.