Category: China

Another American tech company has pulled out of China:

Yahoo Inc. said Tuesday it has pulled out of China, citing an increasingly challenging operating environment.

The withdrawal was largely symbolic, as many of the company’s services were already blocked by China’s digital censorship. But recent government moves to expand its control over tech companies generally, including its domestic giants, may have tipped the scales for Yahoo.

“In recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment in China, Yahoo’s suite of services will no longer be accessible from mainland China as of November 1,” the company said in a statement. It said it “remains committed to the rights of our users and a free and open internet.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Before any blockade or invasion of Taiwan would happen, the CNAS think tanks thinks the Chinese would first seize the Pratas Islands. It makes sense because the Chinese could use the international response to this as a trial balloon for them to see if they could get away with a follow on blockade of Taiwan:

The United States has “few credible options” to respond if China were to seize a set of islands administered by Taiwan in the South China Sea, underscoring the need for Washington and Taipei to build deterrence “against limited Chinese aggression,” according to the results of a war game conducted recently by foreign policy experts in Washington and the Asia-Pacific region.

The scenario was examined by the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank, and detailed in a report published Tuesday. It supposes that Chinese forces invade the Pratas islands, capturing the 500 Taiwanese troops who are based there and establishing a military outpost.

It’s a theoretical dilemma for the Pentagon that “many China-watchers view as increasingly plausible” – and one that “reinforces the need for regular planning exercises between Taiwanese and U.S. personnel,” the report says.

The report comes at a moment of heightened tension between Washington and Beijing, with the United States opposing China’s military expansion in the region and China calling on the Pentagon to cut ties with Taiwan. The standoff has spotlighted the challenge U.S. commanders would face in responding to an incursion of the islands without provoking a full-blown war.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

A joint Japanese and Russian naval fleet sailed around the main island of Honshu, Japan in response to the international community sailing ships through the Strait of Taiwan. The big difference between this exercise and the international community’s freedom of navigation patrols is that no one from Japan is shrieking about the exercise like the Chinese government routinely does after freedom of navigation patrols. This shows how secure the Japanese government is unlike the CCP which has to shriek after every international military exercise or freedom of navigation patrol to drum up internal nationalism to legitimize their rule:

 A combined Russian Navy and People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) fleet concluded a sail in international waters east of Japan’s main island of Honshu and split off to their home ports on Saturday, all while being monitored by Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ships and aircraft during the voyage.

The Chinese ships were Type 055 destroyer Nanchang (101), Type 052D destroyer Kuming (172), Type 054 frigates Binzou (515) and Liuzhou (573) and the replenishment ship Dongpinghu (902). Russian ships were destroyers Admiral Tributs (564) and Admiral Panteleyev (548), corvettes Gromkiy (335) and Hero of the Russian Federation Aldar Tsydenzhapov (339) and the missile range instrumentation ship Marshal Krylov (331).

The combined fleet had entered the Tsugaru Strait on Oct. 18 and since then had been sailing off Honshu. The Joint Staff of the Japan Self-Defense Force issued a release and map on Saturday stating that the joint fleet had sailed through the Osumi Strait that day. Located between the Osumi Peninsula and Tanegashima Island, the strait connects the Sea of Japan with the Pacific Ocean. Following their sail through the Osumi Strait, the ships of the two countries separated at a location 130 kilometers, or about 81 miles, southeast of the Danjo Islands. 

USNI News

You can read more at the link.

“It’s the beginnings of a mass movement and that is what the government doesn’t want,” said a social studies professor at a Chinese university who did not wish to be named. 

Multiple crackdowns have swept the tech, education and showbiz sectors in recent months, as authorities increasingly target the rich and powerful in a push for greater socioeconomic equality.

But it is also partly to instill “healthy,” government-sanctioned societal values in young people, so they are less influenced by wayward celebrities.

“Chinese youth lack other types of idols,” said Fang Kecheng, a communications professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “It’s very hard for them to have other means of civic participation (such as activism).”

China’s broadcast regulator last month banned performers with “lapsed morals” and “incorrect political views,” as well as what it termed “sissy men” ― an androgynous aesthetic popularized by Korean boybands, and imitated by male Chinese idols like Xiao. 

Experts read the latter as a sign of Beijing’s increasing discomfort with alternative forms of masculinity at a time of falling birthrates and rising nationalism, as films with macho, military heroes are promoted by the state. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Anti-China sentiment continues to grow in South Korea, but with how intertwined the ROK’s economy is with China will their government be willing to do anything significant to counter China’s attempted hegemony over the Peninsula?:

However, a recent poll highlighted a major paradigm shift in the trend of South Korean public perception toward surrounding states, which may affect the presidential candidates’ foreign policy pledges. According to the poll by Hankook Research and South Korean online newspaper SisaIn, the South Korean public was least favorable toward of China; even North Korea and Japan were viewed more positively.

The participants were asked to give a favorability score to four countries – China, Japan, North Korea, and the United States – on a scale between 0 and 100. South Koreans gave the most negative rating to China with an average of 26.4, lower than North Korea at 28.6 and Japan at 28.8. The United States had the most favorable rating at 57.3. Furthermore, to the question of whether participants thought a particular country is “good” or “evil,” 58.1 percent labeled China as evil, whereas only 4.5 percent said it was good.

The increasing anti-China sentiment in South Korea is a remarkable trend for Seoul’s foreign policy. Previously, South Korean public opinion focused on North Korea and Japan as the country’s top potential threats. The same poll in late 2019 showed that Japan was the least favorably viewed country among South Koreans, with 21.0 favorability, while China rated 35.6. Although there were issues such as historical disputes centered on the former Korean kingdom Goguryeo and illegal Chinese fishing in South Korean waters, the hatred for China was relatively weak compared to concerns over the North Korean nuclear program and the rise of the far-right movement in Japan.

The Diplomat

You can read more at the link, but I will believe the significance of these polls when Koreans come out and protest against China like they did against the U.S. in the early 2000’s. The fact they don’t despite China’s wide unpopularity shows how intimidated Koreans are by the CCP.

If anything comes out of this prisoner swap, I hope it is the world takes notice that the Chinese government is willing to take foreign nationals hostage to free their criminals:

 China, the U.S. and Canada completed a high-stakes prisoner swap with joyous homecomings for two Canadians held by China and for an executive of Chinese global communications giant Huawei Technologies charged with fraud, potentially bringing closure to a 3-year feud that embroiled the three countries.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hugged diplomat Michael Kovrig and entrepreneur Michael Spavor on the tarmac after they landed in Calgary, Alberta early Saturday. The men were detained in China in Dec. 2018, shortly after Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies’ chief financial officer and the daughter of the company’s founder, on a U.S. extradition request.

Many countries labeled China’s action “hostage politics,” while China accused Ottawa of arbitrary detention. The two Canadians were jailed for more than 1,000 days.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but ROK Heads may remember that one of the exchanged hostages Michael Spavor was a Kim regime favorite for his North Korean travel operation. I would be surprised if he will try do any North Korean travel trips ever again after this.

It looks like China has been able to push off it Lehman Brothers moment to another day:

 China Evergrande agreed to settle interest payments on a domestic bond on Wednesday, while the Chinese central bank injected cash into the banking system, temporarily soothing fears of imminent contagion from the debt-laden property developer.

Evergrande (3333.HK), Asia’s biggest junk-bond issuer, is so entangled with China’s broader economy that its fate has kept global stock and bond markets on tenterhooks as late debt payments could trigger so-called cross-defaults.

Many financial institutions have exposure to Evergrande through direct loans and indirect holdings, while any defaults will also trigger sell-offs in the high-yield credit market.

In an effort to reassure investors, the People’s Bank of China’s injected 90 billion yuan to the banking system, signalling support for markets as they braced for what is expected to be one of China’s largest-ever debt restructurings.

Reuters

You can read more at the link, but trouble could still be coming in future days and weeks for Evergrande as they have other debt payment dates coming up.

It is amazing that anyone would have thought this type of research was a good idea:

Wuhan scientists were planning to release enhanced airborne coronaviruses into Chinese bat populations to inoculate them against diseases that could jump to humans, leaked grant proposals dating from 2018 show.

New documents show that just 18 months before the first Covid-19 cases appeared, researchers had submitted plans to release skin-penetrating nanoparticles containing “novel chimeric spike proteins” of bat coronaviruses into cave bats in Yunnan, China.

They also planned to create chimeric viruses, genetically enhanced to infect humans more easily, and requested $14million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) to fund the work.

Papers, confirmed as genuine by a former member of the Trump administration, show they were hoping to introduce “human-specific cleavage sites” to bat coronaviruses which would make it easier for the virus to enter human cells.

When Covid-19 was first genetically sequenced, scientists were puzzled about how the virus had evolved such a human-specific adaptation at the cleavage site on the spike protein, which is the reason it is so infectious.

The Telegraph

You can read more at the link, but this can be added to the mountain of circumstantial evidence of how COVID likely leaked from a Chinese lab.