Day: July 6, 2021

Russia strongly supports diplomatic efforts by the ASEAN regional bloc to end the post-coup crisis in Myanmar, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during talks in Jakarta with his Indonesian counterpart Retno Marsudi on Tuesday.

Moscow’s top diplomat also took a veiled shot at the Washington-led Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) on the Indo-Pacific, saying the four-member group was attempting to undermine the centrality or lead role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the region.

“We reiterated our strong support for the ASEAN five principles,” Lavrov said in a joint press statement after talks with Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi.

He was referring to a five-point consensus that Southeast Asian leaders hammered out during a special summit on Myanmar in late April.

“In our contacts with Myanmar leaders, military leaders, we promote the position of ASEAN which should be, in our view, considered as a basis for resolving this crisis and bringing the situation back to normalcy,” Lavrov said.

In a coup on Feb. 1, the Burmese military toppled the civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi. Since then, nearly 900 people have been killed by the military and police during daily anti-junta protests in the country, according to human rights groups.

The ASEAN consensus, reached during the summit in Jakarta on April 24, called for the appointment of a special envoy from the regional bloc to Myanmar, as well as an immediate end to the violence, among other points.

Retno, for her part, reiterated the importance of acting on the consensus.

“This requires the commitment of Myanmar military to cooperate with other ASEAN member countries to follow up on the five-point consensus,” she said.

More than two months since the summit, though, violence by Myanmar’s security forces continues and there is no sign of an ASEAN envoy, with critics saying the regional bloc squandered any momentum it had achieved in dealing with the crisis.

‘Positions of Russia and ASEAN coincide’

An ASEAN envoy’s appointment was “expected,” Lavrov told an Indonesian daily in an interview Tuesday, according to a transcript published online by the Russian foreign ministry.

An envoy from the bloc, coupled with Russia’s and ASEAN’s “coinciding” positions on how to approach the crisis in Myanmar – especially on the issue of imposing sanctions – would give additional impetus to joint efforts on Myanmar, he said.

“The positions of Russia and ASEAN also coincide when it comes to the rejection of unilateral sanctions, the rhetoric of threats and any attempts to interfere in Myanmar’s internal affairs,” Lavrov told Indonesian newspaper Rakyat Merdeka.

Sanctions are “destructive” and “can only increasingly polarize society and aggravate internal differences,” he said.

“We have a negative attitude to the continued attempts made by some states to use multilateral venues, including the U.N., to incite confrontation during the discussions of the developments in Myanmar.”

Last month, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution calling on Myanmar’s military to restore democratic rule, and urging member states to “prevent the flow of arms” to the country.

But ASEAN member-states Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand abstained from the vote, a sign that the regional bloc remained divided on the issue. Russia and China also abstained, with the former saying the resolution would not contribute to resolving the crisis in Myanmar.

Like Russia, China has also said it opposes sanctions on Myanmar and supports the ASEAN approach.

For international relations expert Dinna Prapto Raharja, Russian or Chinese support for ASEAN was unlikely to change things in Myanmar.

“Russia is a significant arms supplier to Myanmar. Russia has become one of China’s competitors in terms of providing weapons to the military junta in Myanmar,” Dinna told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

“In my opinion, the current situation is still deadlocked as far as leadership change in Myanmar is concerned, and as a result, uncertainty about the protection of civil society in Myanmar will persist.”

Another analyst said ASEAN was only concerned about regional stability.

“As long as there’s stability, and it has the support of external partners that under these circumstances ASEAN remains united, it is enough,” Gilang Kembara, an international relations researcher at the Jakarta-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, told BenarNews.

“The issue of who will lead Myanmar or who will be the special envoy takes a back seat.”

‘Dividing lines’

In emphasizing ASEAN’s centrality, Lavrov seemed to take aim at Washington.

He said there were attempts to create “dividing lines” that undercut ASEAN’s lead role in the region – an apparent reference to the U.S.-led Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) on the Indo-Pacific, an alliance which Beijing has branded as anti-China.

The Quad consists of the U.S., India, Japan, and Australia.

“We pointed out that there was no alternative to the integration principles of ASEAN,” Lavrov said.

“We also said that we saw attempts to create overlapping mechanisms and draw dividing lines. These activities involve non-regional players that don’t uphold the principles that ASEAN established in the past decades.”

Two weeks ago, Lavrov had said that the Quad countries were “not even hiding their goals” vis-à-vis ASEAN.

The Quad’s Indo-Pacific strategy “was designed to blatantly belittle the constructive and unifying role of ASEAN in the region in order to reformat it for the purpose of containing China and isolating Russia,” Lavrov said at the Moscow Conference on International Security on June 24.

However, the U.S., the European Union, and the Group of Seven Nations (G7) have consistently and repeatedly stressed the centrality of ASEAN in the region, including in the crisis in Myanmar.

Lavrov arrived in Indonesia on Monday as part of a Southeast Asian tour, which also took him to Brunei. After Jakarta, he was scheduled to visit Laos.

Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

Authorities in Hong Kong have arrested nine people, including high-school students as young as 15, on suspicion of allegedly “preparing” to make explosives.

“Five males and four females have been arrested by the national security police on suspicion of “organizing a terrorist attack” and “running an explosives laboratory,” Hong Kong’s police force said in a statement on its Facebook page.

The suspects included six secondary school students, and were part of a group called Returning Valiant, national security police senior superintendent Steve Li told journalists on Tuesday.

Police displayed a number of items they said were seized from a hostel room where the arrestees were allegedly “preparing” to make explosives, based on the presence of “chemicals that could be turned into TATP.”

Li claimed that the group planned to detonate explosives in cars and trash bins.

Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam called for the close “monitoring” of children and young people to prevent them from being “indoctrinated” through unsupervised use of the internet.

In comments that appeared to point to further internet censorship in a city that has large enjoyed unfettered access to the internet outside of China’s Great Firewall, Lam warned that “bomb threats” and other threats of violence were still present in “individualized behavior” even in the absence of street protests.

“[This] violence … will become a hidden danger for the city of Hong Kong,” Lam said.

“I … call on parents, principals, teachers, and even pastors to carefully observe the behavior of the young people around them,” she said. “If young people or people around them are found to be committing illegal activities, they must report them to the law enforcement agencies.”

Law widely criticized

China’s imposition of a national security law on Hong Kong from July 1, 2020 has been widely criticized by foreign governments and rights organizations as a means for the authorities to roll back human rights protections that were promised to the city’s seven million inhabitants under the terms of the 1997 handover.

The law criminalizes public dissent and publications critical of the government, and has led to an ever-widening crackdown on opposition lawmakers, rights activists, and journalists critical of Chinese and Hong Kong officials.

Defendants under the law are often denied bail, and cases brought under the law are heard by a panel of hand-picked judges, rather than by a jury, as was previously the norm in the Hong Kong legal system.

Meanwhile, a court in Hong Kong on Tuesday jailed an American lawyer for four months and two weeks after finding him guilty of “assaulting a police officer.”

Samuel Bickett, 37, a former Asia-Pacific compliance director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch was found guilty last month and denied bail.

Magistrate Arthur Lam described Bickett’s crime as a “serious threat to public order,” saying that Bickett’s actions might have incited others to violence.

Bickett has said the officer he allegedly assaulted was attacking people with a baton in a subway station, and wrote in a statement before his conviction that the verdict was “entirely unsupportable by both the law and the evidence in this case.”

Reported by Chan Yun Nam for RFA’s Cantonese Service, and by Jia Ao for the Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Officials in China have yet to receive instructions for the implementation of the country’s newly announced “three child” population policy.

The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) unveiled new plans at the end of May to boost flagging birth rates and reverse population aging, raising the official limit on the number of children per couple from two to three.

The move came five years after the CCP scrapped a historic policy limiting most couples to just one child, which gave rise to decades of human rights abuses, including forced late-term abortions and sterilizations, as well as widespread monitoring of women’s fertility by officials.

However, a family-planning official in the southwestern province of Guizhou said the policy has yet to be implemented on the ground, and that couples who give birth to a third child are still regarded as having breached the current, two-child limit.

“The situation right now is that the [three-child] policy has not yet been implemented,” an official who answered the phone at the Guizhou provincial government family planning bureau on Tuesday told RFA.

“The three-child policy hasn’t yet been implemented and has not yet been introduced,” the official said. “Third pregnancies are still being treated as excess births.”

“They only just discussed the matter in the last Politburo standing committee meeting, and it may be released, but it hasn’t been implemented yet,” the official said, referring to a May 31 meeting that discussed “Optimizing Fertility Policies to Promote Long-Term and Balanced Population Development.”

The draft of that document has since been passed to the National People’s Congress (NPC) standing committee for consideration, according to an internal memo from the Guizhou provincial health commission seen by RFA.

Until then, would-be third-time parents will still need a birth permit before having a third child, the Guizhou official said. No refunds will be issued for pregnancies happening after the announcement and before implementation, they said.

Anxiety over implementation

The delay in implementing the new policy has sparked considerable anxiety, as reflected in online comments from residents of Sichuan province, who had asked their local government in Jintang county, only to be told that the three-child policy has yet to be implemented.

“The specific date for the three-child reproductive permit has not yet been finalized,” the local authorities.

Authorities in Hunan province’s Linxiang municipality gave a similar response, according to online comments.

“Relevant laws and regulations have yet to be revised, and birth permits can only be issued on the basis of the previous regulations,” officials were quoted as saying.

Parents in Xuzhou city, Jiangsu province were also denied permission for a birth certificate for a third child.

State news agency Xinhua closed down its message function on its online news site at one point, after a deluge of comments on the issue.

Revenue from fines

Shandong-based rights activist Lu Xiumei told RFA that family planning bureaus are generally mostly interested in generating revenue through fines for excess births.

“If they give you the birth permit now, then what would be the point of their existence, those people in the family planning bureaus?” Lu said. “How are they going to make money then?”

“Without the money coming in, what is even the point of the family planning bureau?”

Zhang Jianping, a current affairs commentator in Yixing, Jiangsu, said the CCP shouldn’t be telling people how many children to have.

“When a society develops to a certain level and the economy develops to a certain level, fertility decline is a natural thing,” Zhang said. “Canada, Japan, and Taiwan are all encouraging fertility, but the results of human intervention are really not great.”

According to the “China Statistical Yearbook,” since 2007, the elderly dependency ratio in China has risen for 14 consecutive years. In Shandong, Chongqing, Liaoning, Jiangsu, and other places, the elderly dependency ratio has exceeded 20 percent.

The three-child policy was announced as CCP general secretary Xi Jinping chaired a meeting of the Politburo geared towards addressing the aging of the Chinese population.

Marriage, family values

The Politburo concluded that “education and guidance should be provided to promote marriage and family values among marriage-age young people,” adding that tax and housing incentives would also be in the pipeline for couples wanting to have children.

Among the support measures planned by the government include improvements to prenatal and postnatal care, a universal childcare service, and reduced education costs for families.

China’s fertility rate stood at around 1.3 children per woman in 2020, compared with the 2.1 children per woman needed for the population to replace itself.

But raising children in China is a costly business, with parents stretched to find money for even one child’s education. While state-run schools don’t charge tuition until the 10th year of compulsory education, they increasingly demand nominal payments of various kinds, as well as payments for food and extracurricular activities.

There are signs that the people who do most of the mental, physical, and emotional work of child-bearing and raising may not readily step up to solve the government’s population problems, however.

In a poll posted to the official Xinhua news agency account on the Weibo social media platform after the announcement, 29,000 out of 31,000 respondents said they wouldn’t consider having more children.

Reported by Qiao Long and Chingman for RFA’s Mandarin and Cantonese Services. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

China’s cabinet on Tuesday said it would crack down on overseas share-listings by its companies, just two days after the country’s Cyberspace Administration removed the Didi ride-hailing app from Chinese stores following its U.S.$4.4 billion initial public offering (IPO) in New York.

The removal of the app wiped billions from the value of Didi Global Inc shares on Tuesday in the first trading session since the app’s removal on Sunday.

Didi — which runs an Uber-like service with around 500 million users and 15 million drivers — went ahead with the listing despite being urged by Chinese regulators to delay the IPO, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Monday.

Officials were “wary of the ride-hailing company’s troves of data potentially falling into foreign hands” owing to public disclosure around the listing, the WSJ quoted sources as saying.

Didi was investigated by the Cyberspace Administration, and investigations are ongoing into other U.S.-listed Chinese companies including Full Truck Alliance and Kanzhun.

“After investigation and verification, the Didi app has been found to be in serious violation of laws and regulations on the collection and use of personal data,” the administration said in a statement on its website.

“[The administration] has notified app stores to remove the Didi app and … required Didi to take serious measures to rectify existing problems,” it said.

Meanwhile, the State Council said it would be “revising the regulations on strengthening the confidentiality and file management related to the issuance and listing of securities overseas.”

“Effective measures will be taken to deal with risks and emergencies of Chinese concept stock companies, and to promote the construction of relevant regulatory systems,” it said in a statement on its website.

The government will also take steps to apply its Securities Law overseas, the statement said.

Internet commentator Zhang Ning said U.S. listings are hugely popular among Chinese companies, as local markets have been lackluster.

“We have seen indexes fall from around 6,000 points about a decade ago to just over 2,000 points today,” Zhang said. “They are listing in the U.S. because the markets there are doing relatively well.”

But transportation industry analyst Wang Lun said the timing of the Cyberspace Administration’s action was strange.

“When this happened, my first reaction was that they had angered the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership with their listing in the U.S.,” Wang said.

“In the current [political] climate, companies taking their listings to the U.S. is a loss of face for Beijing,” he said, citing similar accusations leveled at other U.S.-listed companies.

The app’s removal came after Didi vice president Li Min said on July 4 that there was no possibility of Didi’s data reaching the U.S., as it is all stored on Chinese servers.

Reported by Qiao Long and Chingman for RFA’s Mandarin and Cantonese Services. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.