Day: August 6, 2021

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Friday ordered border authorities to set up quarantine centers to receive hundreds of Cambodian migrant workers, many infected with COVID-19, desperate to return home from Thailand, while neighboring Laos also struggled with an exodus of sick laborers from the kingdom.

Officials had sealed off crossings in eight Cambodian provinces on July 29 with orders to keep them closed until Aug. 12, amid a third outbreak of the COVID-19 virus caused by the highly contagious Delta variant that is also sweeping through neighboring Thailand.

In a directive Friday, Hun Sen ordered Cambodia’s Sub-Committee on Border Management to work with provincial and municipal authorities to set up quarantine facilities and provide medical treatment for those returning home, with workers later given transport back to their hometowns.

One worker stranded near the Boeung Trakoun border gate in Cambodia’s Banteay Meanchey province said that authorities had recently distributed plastic sheeting to around 400 workers for use as temporary shelters until they are cleared to go home.

“We are staying at a military base inside Cambodia now, but we don’t have a quarantine center to go to yet,” the worker told RFA’s Khmer Service, asking that his name not be used in order to protect his identity.

“Conditions are very difficult on the border,” the worker added. “To get across while the border was closed, we had to take a short cut through the forest. Some of us have babies, and the babies’ cries echoed all through the forest.”

“I had to run through the forest even though I was sick,” the worker said.

Around 200 workers are now stranded along the Thai border across from Banteay Meanchey province, provincial deputy police chief Oum Sophal told RFA on Thursday, adding that  provincial authorities are now working together with the Cambodian consulate in Thailand’s Sa Keo province to bring help to those in need.

“We visit Cambodian workers who are stranded and provide them with some food every day,” Oum Sophal said.

‘They are very miserable’

Hundreds of workers were left stranded on the Thai border when Cambodian authorities closed the crossings and barred them from returning home, Lueng Sophon—a worker with the local NGO Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights (CENTRAL)—told RFA on Thursday.

COVID-19 infections may be spreading even more quickly among them now because of the crowded conditions in which they’re living, he said.

“The workers who have made the decision to return to Cambodia really had no other option available to them,” he said, adding, “The Cambodian government should put more measures in place to help them and provide them with treatment, and not just let them wander along the border.”

“There they are living in tents, lack food, and face many difficulties, and they are very miserable,” he said.

Around two million Cambodians out of the country’s population of nearly 17 million work in Thailand, according to figures provided by CENTRAL. Thailand is the main destination for migrant workers from neighboring Southeast Asian countries who take relatively low-wage jobs in labor-intensive sectors including agriculture, construction, fishing, and manufacturing.

The Cambodian Embassy in Thailand has said that it cannot help migrant workers infected with COVID, and that it is the responsibility of their employers to provide them with adequate food and accommodation, sources told RFA in an earlier report.

Returns to Laos restricted

In neighboring Laos, authorities in Savannakhet province are now limiting the number of Lao workers allowed to cross the border from Thailand, citing fears of a further spread of COVID-19 and a lack of facilities to hold those returning home in quarantine, Lao sources say.

Around 200-300 or more have recently crossed into the province each day, but no more than 150 each day will now be allowed in, with the rest required to wait in Thailand until more space is made available, sources say. Authorities are now urging Lao workers to cross instead through border gates in other provinces such as Kham Mouane, Champassack, and Vientiane.

Of the nearly 4,000 Lao workers who returned from Thailand through Savannakhet during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Laos, around 2,000 were found to be infected and are now being treated in provincial hospitals, sources said.

Reported by RFA’s Khmer and Lao Services. Translated by Tin Zakaria and Sidney Khotpanya. Written in English by Richard Finney.

China’s new military commander in Xinjiang, confirmed on social media this week, is likely to support repressive mass surveillance and incarceration policies pioneered by the region’s hardline Communist Party boss when the two men served in Tibet, exile Tibetan and Uyghur sources said.

Lt. Gen. Wang Haijiang’s transfer to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region from Tibet comes five years after Chen Quanquo took over as XUAR Communist Party chief and locked up some 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a network of internment camps in the name of fighting terrorism and extremism.

The 58-year-old commander of the People’s Liberation Army’s Xinjiang Military Region will oversee some 70,000 troops in the high-altitude northwestern region that borders Afghanistan, Pakistan, and three Central Asian states. Analysts say instability in Afghanistan and other neighbors is used by Beijing as a cross-border security concern driving the repression in the XUAR.

Wang’s posting to Urumqi was officially announced Wednesday on the Xinjiang Military District’s WeChat social media account, but an April report in the official Beijing Youth Daily said he had been transferred to the XUAR earlier this year.

XUAR Communist Party Secretary Chen moved to Urumqi in August 2016 after five years as party boss in the Tibet Autonomous Region where he built up security measures and surveillance. Chen moved to suppress support for the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader whom Beijing accuses of being a separatist, and criminalized many ordinary religious and cultural activities.

“A system of intense security and forced assimilation that Chinese Communist Party official Chen Quanguo first developed in Tibet is now being used in Xinjiang, where Chen and his forces have locked up at least 1 million ethnic Uyghurs and Kazakhs in prison camps because of their ethnicity, culture and religion,” the International Campaign for Tibet said in a 2018 analysis of Chen’s record in Tibet.

When he moved to the XUAR, Chen ushered in a systematic crackdown on Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic Muslims, featuring intrusive surveillance measures, banning and punishment of cultural and religious practices, and the internment camps that have brought charges of genocide from Western capitals and legal experts.

“As we know that former Chinese Communist Party official Chen Quanguo, who first developed the system of intense security in Tibet, is appointed in Xinjiang now, where Chen is implementing the same routine and harsh policies that were executed in Tibet,” said Jamphel Monlam, a former Tibetan political prisoner now living in the United States.

Because Tibet and Xinjiang are two of the most politically sensitive regions in China, the appointment of military commanders are usually supervised directly by the central government, which selects soldiers who are hard-line authoritarians, he told RFA.

Ilshat Hassan, director of China affairs at the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress, said Chen and Wang know each other and support each other’s mission.

“Wang’s arrival only means he’ll be instrumental in supporting Chen Quanguo’s genocidal policies against the Uyghur people in East Turkestan,” he said, using the name for the XUAR that Uyghurs prefer. “His arrival will bring nothing new except for further disaster.”

Legislatures and governments of several Western democratic countries, including the U.S., have declared that China’s harsh policies against the Uyghurs and others in the XUAR constitute genocide or crimes against humanity.

Wang served in China’s brief 1979 border war with Vietnam and held previous posts as deputy commander of the Southern Xinjiang Military Region, and deputy commander and, recently, commander of 40,000 troops in the Tibet Military Region, according to state media reports.

In 2019, he was promoted to lieutenant general by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is also chairman of the Central Military Commission, the country’s national defense organization.

Xi’s push for a tough assimilationist approach to ethnic minorities in China also drives the heavy-handed campaigns Chen has imposed on the far-western regions, analysts say.

Reported by Kurban Niyaz for RFA’s Uyghur Service and by Tenzin Dickyi for RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Alim Seytoff and Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed grave concern Friday about what he described as China’s growing nuclear arsenal and told an annual regional security conference that the Asian superpower should also cease “provocative behavior” in the South China Sea.

America’s top diplomat raised these concerns during his first appearance in that role before the ASEAN Regional Forum, a virtual meeting that drew his counterparts from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and 10 of the bloc’s dialogue partners, including China, Russia, Japan, and other world powers.  

“The Secretary … noted deep concern with the rapid growth of the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China’s] nuclear arsenal which highlights how Beijing has sharply deviated from its decades-old nuclear strategy based on minimum deterrence,” the State Department said in a statement about Blinken’s participation at the meeting.

Blinken was referring to recent think-tank reports that said China was building more than 100 silos for nuclear missiles in its Gansu province and in eastern Xinjiang.

In June, however, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that Beijing kept its nuclear capabilities at a minimum level needed for national security. China does not compete with any other country in the size or scale of nuclear force, he told the Conference on Disarmament then.

South China Sea

Still, the findings of China’s increasing nuclear missile silos are especially worrisome for Southeast Asian nations with overlapping claims to Beijing’s in the South China Sea, analysts have said.

Beijing claims almost the entire waterway, large parts of which it has militarized. In addition, other claimants to the sea say China has stepped up the presence of its coastguard and huge fishing fleet in their exclusive economic zones, or EEZs.

China’s expansive claims include waters within the EEZs of Taiwan and ASEAN member-states Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. While Indonesia does not regard itself as party to the South China Sea dispute, Beijing claims historic rights to parts of that sea overlapping Indonesia’s EEZ as well.

Secretary Blinken told the ASEAN Regional Forum that China needed to adhere to international laws – in 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague dismissed Beijing’s expansive claims in the South China Sea.

“Secretary Blinken called on the PRC to abide by its obligations under the international law of the sea and cease its provocative behavior in the South China Sea,” State Department Ned Price said.

“Secretary Blinken also underscored the importance of democracy, transparency, and accountability in the Indo-Pacific.”

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang, however, separately told ASEAN’s top diplomats and the East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers’ Meeting earlier this week that countries outside the region were undermining stability in the South China Sea.

China insists on the peaceful settlement of disputes through consultations by the countries directly involved, he told ASEAN foreign ministers on Tuesday.

Mahendra Siregar, Indonesia’s deputy foreign minister, told the ASEAN Regional Forum that a pandemic was not the right time for anything that increases regional tensions.

“[Re]frain from power projections and provocative actions that increase tensions in the South China Sea, especially amid a pandemic,” he said.

The international community, he said, must support ASEAN’s role “and the resolution of all forms of disputes in the South China Sea” under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Vaccine diplomacy

Wang and Blinken both engaged with foreign ministers from ASEAN during various meetings this week, with the American diplomat marking his presence during all five days.

Both China and Washington are looking for Southeast Asian support on the South China Sea, and both touted their COVID-19 vaccine donations to the region.

Blinken said the U.S. has provided more than 23 million vaccine doses and over $158 million in health and humanitarian assistance to ASEAN members so far in response to the global pandemic.

“We will also be there to support the region to build back better from the economic damage wrought by the pandemic by helping drive a green recovery and ensure readiness for future outbreaks,” he said.

Wang said China had provided over 190 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Southeast Asia, the state-run China Daily newspaper reported. On Thursday, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged that Beijing this year would supply 2 billion doses of vaccine to other countries.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen, who also attended the ASEAN Regional Forum, said the South Asian nation “could initiate and adhere to a form of ‘vaccine diplomacy’ which ensures diversified sources of vaccines.”

“Due to the sudden sweep over of COVID-19 cases in neighboring countries, it is imperative that South Asian and Southeast Asian nations should receive their share of the vaccine without any strings attached,” he said.

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

China’s emergency response to power shortages and demand for more coal are raising questions about its ability to meet its climate change goals.

Summer heat waves and floods appear to have set back plans to reduce reliance on coal as China’s energy mainstay while the government battles back against soaring demand and rising prices with orders to produce more.

On July 18, the nation’s top economic planning agency ordered major power producers to increase their coal stockpiles to at least seven days’ worth of consumption by July 21, Reuters reported.

“We are in the peak power consumption period and must guarantee coal supply to power plants … and will not allow the shutdown of power generation units due to a lack of coal,” the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said.

The NDRC warning followed record highs in peak-load capacity and power generation on July 14 as regional and provincial power grids strained to keep pace with demand, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

More than 22 cities issued schedules for rotating power outages to prevent blackouts, S&P Global Platts news service said.

The modest size of the inventory requirement was a reflection of the low levels of coal supplies at eastern power plants. The NDRC took steps to reduce high prices with the announcement that it would release 10 million metric tons of coal from its limited reserves, which were reportedly down to 40 million tons.

The numbers are a small fraction of the 1.94 billion tons of coal that China produced in the first half of the year and the 4.04 billion tons that it consumed in 2020, according to official and industry data.

Coal production through June was up 6.4 percent as electricity output climbed 13.7 percent from a year earlier during the COVID-19 recovery period, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.

First-half coal consumption rose 10.7 percent, while electricity use jumped 16.2 percent, a National Energy Administration (NEA) official said on July 28.

In another move to boost coal, the NDRC said on July 19 that it plans to add 110 million tons of new production capacity in the second half of this year. Forty million tons of annual capacity were under review for approval while 70 million tons were already under construction, the agency said.

On Thursday, the NDRC authorized the restart of 15 shuttered mines for a year in northern provinces and Xinjiang to deliver about 44 million tons of coal, Bloomberg News reported. Last week, 38 mines in Inner Mongolia were ordered to reopen, it said.

Last year, China accounted for 54.3 percent of all the coal consumption in the world in energy equivalent terms, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy.

China’s sensitivity to the figures may account for the infrequency of its disclosures of consumption volumes and tonnage in reports by the China National Coal Association (CNCA) and state media.

In a rare report on July 20, the official English-language China Daily verified an earlier Reuters estimate of last year’s consumption tonnage, but not its calculation that usage rose 0.6 percent, marking the fourth year in a row of increases.

Instead, state media have highlighted more favorable numbers from plans to reduce coal’s share of China’s primary energy mix in percentage terms. Those measures predict progress in keeping with President Xi Jinping’s pledge last September to reach a peak in carbon emissions before 2030 and achieve “net zero” carbon neutrality before 2060.

At an industry conference in late June, state-owned energy companies said that coal’s share would drop from 56.8 percent of energy supplies last year to 44 percent in 2030 and just 8 percent by 2060 to meet Xi’s climate goals.

Future dependence

By 2025, the coal share of energy use will fall to 51 percent, according to the China Electric Power Planning & Engineering Institute. As renewable sources increase, generating capacity from non-fossil fuels is slated to exceed that of coal-fired power by the end of this year, the China Electricity Council (CEC) said.

But the China Daily report did not exclude the possibility that coal consumption will keep rising in physical tonnage terms as total energy use continues to grow.

Despite efforts to put the best face on the numbers, China faces criticism for its reliance on coal and doubts about whether it will achieve Xi’s climate goals.

“Coal is still involved in generating some 60 percent of the country’s power. But the government is wary of that figure rising any higher,” CNN Business reported on June 30. Attempts to limit consumption “have coincided with a thirst for energy caused by economic rejuvenation, along with extreme weather,” the news network said.

The concerns are likely to rise with calls for more coal capacity and stockpiling to address power shortages.

“China has many coal plants that are more than 40 years old. They don’t make money, they’re not efficient,” U.S. climate envoy John Kerry told Bloomberg Television on July 21. “We’re not pointing fingers. We’re stating facts — that China is now the largest emitter,” Kerry said.

The former U.S. secretary of state noted that China has set a 2060 deadline for carbon neutrality in contrast to the 2050 goal urged by other countries to limit global warming.

“It’s ‘OK’ that ‘China’s goal is different from that … as long as they are doing things that are possible,'” Bloomberg quoted Kerry as saying.

China’s pursuit of climate change targets also seems to be suffering from its continued drive for industrial output and economic growth, which has pushed power supplies to the limit at a time of peak seasonal demand.

The CEC expects electricity consumption to rise 6 percent in the second half from the year-earlier period, while the full-year forecast calls for growth of 10-11 percent, Reuters said.

Despite the troubling signs, China energy expert Philip Andrews-Speed at the National University of Singapore said that the 2030 goal for peak carbon emissions is achievable.

Reduction goals

Andrews-Speed argued that the planned addition of 110 million tons of “advanced coal production capacity” amounted to only 2.7 percent of last year’s consumption figure. On a net basis, the increase could be even less, if closures of outdated mining facilities are taken into account.

“What we don’t know is how much capacity they are closing this year,” said Andrews-Speed.

According to China Daily, over 1 billion tons of outdated capacity was eliminated in 2016-2020.

“If this rate of closure is continuing, then the addition to total capacity this year is marginal,” Andrews-Speed said.

In a July 30 statement, the NDRC encouraged qualified mines to expand with new capacity but it required them to shut down a “certain amount” of outdated capacity within three months of approval, Reuters said.

The surge in electricity demand and recent power outages can be explained by hot weather and the possible shortage of transmission capacity, Andrews-Speed said.

He also questioned the view that the government push for economic growth has been a major cause of the power problems, noting that economic growth rates have settled down to single digits after the record 18.3-percent spurt in the first quarter compared with the year-earlier COVID-19 slump.

“I still think that carbon emissions will peak by 2030. Carbon neutrality by 2060 is a more open issue,” Andrews- Speed said.

S&P Global Platts blamed the electricity problems on regulated rates that prevented power producers from charging consumers for their increased fuel costs, leading to losses and low utilization rates for both coal-fired and gas-fueled power plants.

“This means that despite the risk of blackouts and scorching temperatures in July, power companies were unable to fully ramp up electricity generation,” the news service said.

The report cited a power producer in southern China as saying that operating rates at its coal-fired plants were “around 70 percent” and only 50-60 percent for gas-fueled generators despite high demand during the heat wave.

The costs for coal and liquefied natural gas have risen far above the break-even point for power production.

“The break-even coal price for many coal-fired power plants is around 600-650 yuan (U.S. $92.13-99.81) per metric ton, but the coal price has far exceeded this level currently, which means that the more power they generate, the more losses they will incur,” an industry source said.

According to a manager of the Huaneng Group utility, the industry’s losses are widespread.

“Power plants do not have incentives to generate power at current prices,” the unidentified manager told Reuters on Aug. 2.

“If the prices continue to stay at this level, no one can survive,” the manager said.

Following a top-level Communist Party meeting on July 30, the Politburo released a statement indicating that a roadmap for achieving Xi’s climate goals would be released “soon,” according to Platts.

The statement said that “China’s carbon mitigation practices need to be coordinated across all provinces, sudden measures that are unrealistic should be avoided, and a measured approach is needed for handling energy-intensive and emission-intensive projects,” Platts reported.

China has stopped issuing new passports to its citizens and has imposed entry and exit controls on its population, citing the recent surge in the Delta variant of COVID-19, but commentators say the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using the pandemic as a pretext to curb freedom of movement.

Chinese nationals living in mainland China have told RFA in recent months that the authorities have gradually stopped issuing new passports and exit visas — a police-approved travel permit that adds another layer to a slew of hurdles Chinese nationals must clear in order to be allowed to leave.

The Chinese Entry and Exit Bureau recently confirmed publicly that the rules are in place, saying exit permits will only be issued for “essential” travel.

“We will be implementing a strict approvals systems with no permits for non-emergency or non-essential trips out of China, to ensure public safety during the pandemic,” spokesman Chen Jie told a news conference on July 30.

Some Chinese nationals living in the United States have been stranded in China after they combined a trip home with plans to renew their soon-to-expire passports at the same time, U.S.-based businessman Zhang Shengqi told RFA.

“My friend … found he couldn’t get [a passport] after he got back, and his wife [in the U.S.] just gave birth to a child,” Zhang said, suggesting that even returning to one’s place of work and family wasn’t being regarded as “essential.”

“My friend even has contacts in the area, but even they can’t get it done for him; nobody is issuing them, so he is stuck there and can’t get out,” he said. “It’s pretty inhumane when families can’t be together.”

Chinese nationals have also drawn a blank when trying to apply to renew passports at the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles, Zhang said.

“There are a few people here whose passports have now expired, yet [the consulate] are saying that none of these applications are urgent,” he said. “They are refusing to renew them.”

“They are planning to hire a lawyer and sue the LA consulate,” he said.

Pandemic used as a pretext

Current affairs commentator Fang Yuan said the pandemic probably isn’t the main reason for the new restrictions, however.

“I think we can look at these new entry and exit restrictions in the context of the crackdown on Chinese companies listing in the U.S.,” Fang said. “These choices are being made in line with the [Sino-U.S.] trade war.”

“These actions may cause some harm to [Chinese interests], but they are also hurting the other side,” he said.

U.S.-based legal scholar Teng Biao said Chinese nationals should be granted the freedom to enter and leave China at will, under the constitution, Chinese passport law, and immigration legislation.

“I think the Chinese Entry-Exit Bureau’s actions are in violation of laws protecting the basic rights of citizens,” Teng told RFA. “The pandemic is being used as a pretext.”

“They want to … clamp down on the movement of their citizens and prevent Western ideological imports from influencing them,” he said.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has announced it will extend compulsory Mandarin teaching to preschoolers across the country, ousting minority languages like Mongolian, Tibetan, and Uyghur — as well as regional Chinese languages like Sichuanese or Cantonese — as the medium of instruction for children of all ages across the country.

“In order to … implement general secretary Xi Jinping’s instructions on nationwide Mandarin-medium education (“start them when they’re babies”), we will further promote the use of Mandarin across the country,” an Aug. 2 directive from the ministry of education said.

“We will focus on strengthening Mandarin language learning among preschoolers, during the critical period for language acquisition,” the directive, published on an official government website, said.

Starting from the fall semester of 2021, kindergartens in ethnic minority and rural areas that aren’t already using Mandarin for childcare activities must begin to do so, the directive said.

It said the government was launching a nationwide “batch training” scheme for kindergarten teachers to ensure a sufficient supply of qualified staff to meet the new demand.

The move was aimed at “enabling pre-school children in ethnic minority and rural areas and rural areas to gradually acquire the ability to communicate at a basic level in Mandarin, and to lay the foundations for the compulsory education phase,” the directive said.

To help kindergartens implement the directive, teachers from other parts of China will be “paired” with teachers, and kindergartens with kindergartens, in ethnic minority and rural areas, the directive said.

These mentors should “guide grassroots teachers to change their ideas about education, and to follow the rules of language learning for preschool children,” the directive said.

Kindergartens in the target areas should “organize a variety of activities to get children to hear more Mandarin, speak more Mandarin, as well as wanting and daring to speak, and to give them the opportunity to speak Mandarin,” it said.

Class boycotts, protests

Plans to end the use of the Mongolian language in schools in China’s northern region of Inner Mongolia sparked weeks of class boycotts, street protests, and a region-wide crackdown by riot squads and state security police in the fall of 2020, in a process described by ethnic Mongolians as “cultural genocide.”

The government has also introduced similar changes to the national curriculum that will phase out Korean-language teaching from schools in northeast China, which is home to a population of roughly 2.3 million Koreans, the largest population outside of the Korean Peninsula, of whom just under two million are Chinese nationals of Korean ethnicity.

In the northwestern region of Xinjiang, at least one county in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) no longer offers Uyghur language instruction to students, officials told RFA in January 2021, despite being home to a mostly Uyghur population.

In June 2021, authorities in Sichuan province closed down private Tibetan schools offering classes taught in the Tibetan language, forcing students to go instead to government-run schools where they will be taught in Chinese, sources in the region told RFA.

The move is being pushed in the name of promoting uniformity in the use of textbooks and instructional materials, the sources say.

Parents of the affected children and other local Tibetans told RFA that keeping young Tibetans away from their culture and language would have severe negative consequences for the future, the source said.

Language rights have become a particular focus for Tibetan efforts to assert national identity in recent years, with informally organized language courses in the monasteries and towns typically deemed “illegal associations” and teachers subject to detention and arrest, sources say.

The “education for national unity” policy has been traced back to a September 2019 speech by ruling Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping, who told a conference on national unity: “The Chinese nation is one big family, and we will build the Chinese dream together.”

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.