Authorities in Hong Kong on Friday kept up their crackdown on the city’s civil society, with march organizers the Civil Human Rights Front the latest in the firing line under a draconian national security law imposed by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

According to the city’s police chief, the CHRF may be pursued under the national security law despite not having organized any protests or marches since it took effect on July 1, 2020.

“In recent years, [the CHRF] has organized a series of mass rallies, some of them are suspected of violating the national security law,” Siu was quoted as saying by the CCP-backed Ta Kung Pao newspaper.

“The force will investigate thoroughly.”

CHRF vice chairman Dickson Chau said he would continue to speak out on issues of interest to the group, following a street protest held Aug. 12 outside the CCP’s Central Liaison Office in Hong Kong, calling for the release of all political prisoners in mainland China.

The group read out the names of prominent political prisoners including New Citizens’ Movement leader Xu Zhiyong and rights attorney Ding Jiaxi.

Asked if he thought the protest was risky, Chau said no.

“I don’t think the Central Liaison Office is some kind of sacred and inviolable place,” he said. “We came to demonstrate, exercising our rights under the Basic Law, to talk about the appalling treatment of political prisoners in mainland China and Hong Kong.”

“Our numbers were also in line with current restrictions on public gatherings due to the pandemic, so I don’t see where the risks would lie,” Chau said.

Denunciations in CCP-backed Hong Kong media outlets are increasingly a precursor to investigation by the national security police, a department set up under the law to investigate suspected cases of “sedition, secession, subversion and terrorism.”

In practice, the law has been used to justify an ever-widening clampdown on peaceful protest, political opposition, and any public criticism of the authorities.

‘Malignant tumor’

Earlier this week, Hong Kong’s biggest teaching union, the Professional Teachers’ Union (PTU), announced it was disbanding after being described as a “malignant tumor” in need of eradication by CCP mouthpiece the People’s Daily.

A total of 47 former lawmakers and democracy activists are currently awaiting trial for “subversion” for taking part in a democratic primary to try to boost the number of seats held by pro-democracy candidates in the Legislative Council (LegCo). The primary was deemed an attempt to subvert the government.

According to the Ta Kung Pao, Siu said the CHRF, which organized the once-annual protest marches on July 1, the anniversary of the 1997 handover to Chinese rule, had never registered as an organization.

Police have already requested information from the CHRF, saying it was in breach of the Societies Ordinance.

No plans to disband

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong Journalists’ Association (HKJA) said it feared it could be next on the government’s blacklist of civil groups, along with the pro-democracy Confederation of Trade Unions (CTU).

HKJA chairman Ronson Chan said the HKJA has no plans to disband, and will ignore denunciatory comments in the pro-Beijing press.

“Most of what the Wen Wei Po and Ta Kung Pao report … isn’t true,” Chan said. “We aren’t in any kind of opposition, we all support the Basic Law, and we have never colluded with a foreign power.”

His comments came after Chan reported on his social media account that he was being followed by two unidentified men on Thursday evening, one of whom referred to him as “a prostitute.”

“After I parked my car at a shopping mall near my workplace yesterday, someone suddenly interacted with me,” Chan told RFA. “I thought he was watching me, but to be honest, this is just my personal feeling.”

“When I left the parking lot near the office to go home, I saw two old Japanese RVs of the same model … these are just fragments of a puzzle that lead me to believe that I’m being followed,” he said.

Current affairs commentator Johnny Lau said Beijing is likely testing the waters with its use of pro-CCP media in Hong Kong against civil organizations.

“Is every critical opinion published by the People’s Daily or Xinhua news agency the direct result of an official directive?” Lau said. “I think they send out these signals to see how the other side will react.”

“I think the authorities will take the next step based on the reaction of that organization.”

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Clouds are gathering over China’s economic growth prospects for the second half of the year as the effects of the COVID-19 crisis and climate change pile on.

While most forecasts have called for a strong economic rebound from the pandemic in 2021, recent adjustments have changed direction toward declining growth expectations after increases several months ago.

On July 27, the International Monetary Fund trimmed its China growth forecast for the year by 0.3 percentage points to 8.1 percent, reversing an upward adjustment of the same size in April.

At the same time, the IMF bumped up its outlook for next year’s gross domestic product by 0.1 percentage points to 5.7 percent, voicing confidence in the recovery of global markets with the spread of vaccinations and the reopening of economies as restrictions subside.

 “The downgrade for this year … is basically coming from the fact that fiscal support was somewhat smaller than we were expecting in China. And so, that’s behind the revision down,” IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath told reporters.

“In terms of the revision up, that comes from just better external demand,” she said.

Since last March, China’s government has left this year’s growth target at the more moderate level of “above 6 percent.”

But as the IMF revisions were released, China was faced with twin setbacks that raised more concerns for growth forecasts.

In Nanjing, the capital of China’s eastern Jiangsu province, officials were struggling to contain the most dangerous COVID outbreak since the epidemic lockdown 17 months ago.

On July 27, authorities reported 47 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, bringing the total of infections in the city to 155. The outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant was blamed on airport workers and inadequate cleaning of a plane arriving from Russia.

The flight originated in Moscow, according to The New York Times.

By July 30, the virus had spread rapidly to 13 cities in China, the BBC said.

Two days later, the Communist Party tabloid Global Times reported that the new wave of infections had reached at least 18 provinces and “dozens of cities.” The paper called the outbreak the “most serious since Wuhan.”

By Aug. 4, the infections had turned into a nationwide emergency with “massive travel restrictions,” shutdowns in high-risk areas and 327 confirmed cases receiving treatment in Jiangsu province alone, state media said.

The setback also marked the most serious loss of confidence in the recovery since the middle of last year.

Dubious methods

Health officials gave assurances that the spread could still be contained, but the Global Times cited concerns about “whether the current vaccines can successfully fend off the risks brought by the rampant Delta variant.”

“Some have raised doubts over whether the rigorous prevention measures adopted over the past year will still work,” the paper said.

Airport closures, local lockdowns and inter-provincial travel restrictions darkened the outlook for consumption-led growth.

While public health and welfare were the primary concerns, the Nanjing outbreak also illustrated the perils of economic forecasting in a crisis recovery year.

The IMF forecast revisions came just days after record downpours flooded central China’s Henan province, a major grain producing region, and other parts of the country since mid-July.

The rain was blamed for 302 deaths with 50 people missing and nearly 1.1 million hectares (2.7 million acres) of damaged crops in Henan, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Last year, Henan accounted for 9.7 percent of China’s grain production, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation said in a commentary for the official English-language China Daily.

The neighboring provinces of Shandong, Anhui and Hebei contributed an additional 19.8 percent of the nation’s grain output.

“So, if there is a sharp decline in the four provinces’ grain output, it would be difficult, even impossible, to make up for the gap in the global grain supply,” researcher Mei Xinyu said.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs hastened to give assurances that the national area of crop damage was still less than the country’s five-year average.

But the government has relied heavily on stable food prices to keep inflation under control after a surge in commodity costs threatened to slow the economy down.

In the wake of the floods and the COVID resurgence, the government’s planning agency issued a warning to the market against price increases.

“Illegal acts such as hoarding, price gouging and price collusion will be severely punished,” the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said in a circular on Aug. 6.

Until now, the government has had some success in halting the spread of high commodity prices from the factory gate to the retail market.

In May, the producer price index (PPI) hit a 12-year high of 9 percent before edging down to 8.8 percent in June and bouncing back up to 9 percent in July, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported.

The consumer price index (CPI) remained relatively tame with the help of low pork prices, reaching 1.3 percent in May before slipping to 1.1 percent in June and 1 percent in July.

But as flood warnings and damage in central and northern provinces continued into August, the impact on China’s economy remained unclear.

Data revealed

July trade figures continued to show growth as exports rose 19.3 percent and imports added 28.1 percent from a year before. But both fell short of economists’ expectations in a Reuters poll and also underperfomed the growth rates in June.

While growth rates remained high compared with 2020, the weakening “reflected the uncertainties and challenges for the world’s biggest trading nation,” the Global Times said.

The paper cited factors including the Delta variant, severe weather, the strengthening of the yuan and the diminishing base effect of 2020 comparisons.

The government has shown greater concern with the results of the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI), released by the NBS at the end of last month.

The readings for July showed significant cooling of production and demand, both above and below the 50-point mark that separates expansion from contraction.

The headline PMI for manufacturing fell to 50.4 from 50.9 in June, dropping below the forecast of 50.8 in a Wall Street Journal poll of economists.

The subindex for production remained in expansion territory with a reading of 51.0, but that was down from 51.9 in June.

A private PMI survey for manufacturing by Caixin Media also fell to its lowest level in 15 months with a score of 50.3 in July, also dropping from 51.3 in June.

The NBS official PMI score for new export orders raised the deepest concerns, falling below the 50-point mark for the third month in a row.

“The most alarming signal is the new export order index, which is at (the) lowest level since July last year,” said Zhiwei Zhang, chief economist of Pinpoint Asset Management, quoted by Reuters.

The July reading of 47.7 dipped from 48.1 in June, touching the lowest level since June 2020. The subindex for import orders also strayed into contraction with a reading of 49.4, raising doubts about the strength of domestic demand.

The negative numbers for orders are forward-looking indicators that may carry more weight for forecasts than the damage estimates from floods or the uncertainties of the COVID recurrences.

State media took encouragement from continued expansionary readings in the service sector. A subindex measure of July’s service activity in the NBS report rose to 52.5 from 52.3 a month before, The Wall Street Journal said.

But new orders reported by service providers remained in contraction with an increased score of 49.7, up from 49.5 in June. On balance, the signs appeared to be pointing toward slower growth.

Despite earlier and rosier press statements, China’s party and government leaders seemed to be well aware of the economic concerns for the second half of the year.

After an economic policy meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping on July 30, the Politburo of the party’s Central Committee issued a statement including an unusually candid assessment of the challenges ahead.

“The meeting highlighted an increasingly complex and challenging external environment, with the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to evolve and the domestic recovery remaining unsteady and unbalanced,” the statement cited by China Daily said.

Private tutoring companies in China are already laying off thousands of staff following a ban on out-of-school tutoring by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

VIPKID, an English tutoring agency backed by Tencent, announced last weekend it would end online classes taught by overseas-based teachers, some 70,000 of whom are based in the United States.

Ed tech firms Gaotu, TAL and New Oriental have all said they will make “adjustments” in the wake of the policy change, with Gaotu announcing around 10,000 layoffs this week.

Meanwhile, Italy-based Wall Street English will file for the bankruptcy of its Chinese business next week, Chinese state media reported.

The company had already slashed the number of its schools in the wake of the pandemic from 71 to less than 30, with around 1,000 employees still on the payroll, the Global Times newspaper said.

“Some consumers have been complaining on social media platforms about problems on the company’s refund of tuition fees and most of them now are unable to contact customer service or sales representatives,” the paper said.

The Beijing News confirmed the report on Thursday, citing an employee as saying: “It’s true. There has been no official notification yet, and we are expecting one tomorrow or the day after.”

An industry insider surnamed Gu said the company had already been in trouble.

“Wall Street English was already in financial trouble, not just because of [this] policy from the central government,” Gu said. “The rectification campaign to reduce the burden [on schoolchildren] has made them give up hope,” she said.

“The impact of this [policy] will be the end of the market and bankruptcies. I have never encountered anything like this before, so I have no idea what a listed company is supposed to do,” Gu said.

Non-profit organizations

She told RFA that education and tutoring companies in Beijing now have to register as non-government and non-profit organizations by the end of the year.

Estimates in state media suggest that some 10 million people are currently employed in China’s once-lucrative tutoring industry.

But the CCP banned after-school and vacation tutoring last month in some major cities, in a bid to reduce the financial burden on households of having a child, hoping to persuade more couples to have up to three children to boost flagging birth rates.

U.S.-based political commentator Guo Baosheng said the “reform” of the tutoring sector was based on ideology, rather than any genuine desire to reform part of the private sector.

“The current policy is aiming for a comprehensive crackdown on the education and tutoring industry, mostly to boost birth rates,” Guo said. “But there is another aim, which is to lock out Western culture.

“When you teach English, you also have to come into contact with Western literature, business practices and even politics,” he said. “Also, a lot of foreign teachers work as English teachers, and the CCP wants to get rid of them all.”

“It’s all in the service of political stability for the regime,” Guo said.

Tutoring organizations are now banned from offering subject-based tutoring on national statutory holidays, rest days, or winter and summer vacations, in a pilot scheme affecting Beijing, Shanghai and seven other regions that will likely be rolled out nationwide.

No new subject-based off-campus training institutions are being approved for students in compulsory education, while existing subject-based training institutions will be registered as non-profit institutions.

‘Chicken baby” syndrome

Subject-based tutoring institutions are banned from listing on stock markets or raising funds.

Instead, schools are to strengthen after-school services, and funding for such operations must be plowed back into meeting costs, the CCP central committee said in a July 30 directive.

The move comes amid growing concern in China over a phenomenon dubbed the “chicken baby” syndrome, referring to parents dosing their children up with chicken-based food supplements to boost stamina for all of the extra hours of study they expect of them.

More than 75 percent of students in primary and secondary education attended after-school tutoring in 2016, the most recent industry figures showed, and the need to hothouse children privately to get them into the best schools was criticized by CCP leader Xi Jinping in March as a barrier to boosting birth rates.

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 additional payments of various kinds, as well as parental contributions for food and extracurricular activities.

On June 15, the Ministry of Education set up a new department to monitor off-campus education and training provision, to implement “reforms to the off-campus education and training sector.”

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

TOKYO – Japan’s defense minister on Friday visited a Tokyo shrine viewed by China and both Koreas as a symbol of Japanese wartime aggression to pray for the war dead just days before the nation marks the 76th anniversary of its World War II defeat.

Victims of Japanese actions during the first half of the 20th century, especially the Koreas and China, see the shrine as a symbol of Japanese militarism because it honors convicted war criminals among about 2.5 million war dead.

“It is only natural in every country to pay respects to the spirits of the war dead,” said Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi, the younger brother of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, known for his denials of wartime atrocities.

“I expressed my reverence and paid tribute to those who fought for the country and lost their lives in the last war,” Kishi said after offering prayers. “I also renewed my war-renouncing pledge and resolve to protect the lives and peaceful livelihood of the people.”

He is the first serving defense minister to visit Yasukuni since Tomomi Inada, an Abe protégé, visited in December 2016.

Abe stayed away from the shrine for seven years after a 2013 visit triggered outrage from China and the Koreas, but has regularly visited since he resigned as prime minister last year.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga donated a religious ornament during Yasukuni’s spring festival in April but avoided visiting the shrine.

Economy and fiscal policy minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, in charge of pandemic measures, visited the shrine separately on Friday.

Kishi and Nishimura said they chose to visit the shrine to avoid crowds and pray quietly ahead of the Aug. 15 anniversary.

South Korea and China criticize offerings or visits by Japanese leaders to the shrine, urging them to face up to and reflect on Japan’s wartime aggression.

Many South Koreans hold strong resentment toward Japan for its 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. Relations between Seoul and Tokyo have sunk to their lowest levels in recent years due to disputes over compensation for Korean wartime forced labor and sexual abuse of so-called “comfort women” by the Japanese military.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said it summoned the deputy chief of mission at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul to protest Kishi’s visit to Yasukuni, a site it described as beautifying “Japan’s past colonial rule and war of aggression and honors war criminals.” Seoul’s Defense Ministry released a statement saying Kishi’s visit was “deplorable” and expressed its “serious concern and regret.”

 

Source: Voice of America

Zczc

Philippine Court Tosses Libel Case Against Journalist Maria Ressa

 

MANILA – A Philippine court has dismissed a libel case against Maria Ressa, one of several lawsuits filed against the journalist who says she has been targeted because of her news site’s critical reports on President Rodrigo Duterte.

The plight of Ressa, who was named Time Magazine Person of the Year in 2018 for fighting media intimidation, has raised international concern about the harassment of journalists in the Philippines, a country once seen as a standard bearer for press freedom in Asia.

The cyber-libel case was filed by a college professor against Ressa and a reporter at her news site, Rappler, in October. It involved a story alleging that the professor gave students better grades in exchange for money, an accusation he denied.

Ressa, a dual U.S.-Filipino citizen, and Rappler face several other legal cases, including alleged tax offenses and violation of foreign ownership rules in media.

Theodore Te, Ressa’s lawyer, said Thursday the court dismissed the cyber-libel case this week after the professor said he was no longer interested in pursuing it.

It is the second cyber-libel case against Ressa to be thrown out by a court after the complainant withdrew.

In June of last year, however, Ressa was convicted in a cyber libel case filed by businessman Wilfredo Keng over a 2012 article that linked a businessman to illegal activities. Ressa faces up to six years in jail but has appealed the ruling.

“It’s a temporary relief, but the ongoing campaign of harassment and intimidation against me and Rappler continues,” Ressa said in a statement after the case was dismissed.

“These ridiculous cases remind us all of the importance of independent journalism holding power to account.”

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque has repeatedly said Duterte supports freedom of speech even as the leader has publicly lashed out at Rappler, calling it a “fake news outlet” sponsored by American spies.

 

Source: Voice of America