Day: September 17, 2021

Myanmar military forces killed at least 24 civilians in attacks this month on three villages in the country’s central Magway region, murdering eight after taking them alive as prisoners, sources in the region said, with rights groups calling the killings war crimes.

Those killed in the assaults Sept. 9 and 10 on Myin-thar, Mway Le, and Yay Shin villages in Gangaw township included elderly men in their 70s and high school students under the age of 18, family members and resistance fighters told RFA.

Gyo Byu, a member of the local People’s Defense Force unit set up to fight government troops in the wake of the Feb. 1 military coup that overthrew the elected government, said the elderly men who were killed were found tied to chairs and shot in the head, while the young men were shot dead after being captured.

Gyo Byu had helped to bury the bodies after they were found, he said.

One resident of Myin-thar, where 19 were killed on Sept. 9 alone, said that her 15-year-old brother and other high school students were among those killed in the massacre.

“My brother was not even 16 yet. He had just finished the 8^th grade,” the woman said, adding that some of the other young boys who were killed had recently graduated from 10^th grade, some passing their classes with honors.

“The kids had formed a local security force because we had heard the soldiers set fire to houses when they leave a village.”

“It was raining hard when the armed clash took place, and their Tumee hunting rifles didn’t fire, and that’s why our young heroes had to give up their lives,” she said, referring to the antique rifles now used by villagers desperate to defend themselves against government forces.

“We can’t even flee our homes in peace, since we can’t go back to recover their bodies. When the mothers return, they won’t be able to find their sons,” she said.

Ten of those killed in Myin-thar on Sept. 9 were found lying in a group in a nearby field, one villager said, speaking to RFA like other villagers on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“At least 11 houses were set on fire that day, and 19 people were killed, a few of them during the initial shelling in the attack,” the source said. “Ten bodies were later found in a group in the sesame fields. The rest died near their homes.”

“Witnesses said that two or three of these died right away, and that when the rest turned back to get them they were arrested by the soldiers, and it seems they were then shot at close range. It was very gruesome,” he said.

Three more people from Myin-thar and Mway Le village were killed that day, and on Sept. 10 two residents of Yay Shin village were also killed, making a total of 24 civilians killed during the two days of attacks.

Sources have told RFA that Myanmar troops have repeatedly raided villages in the Magway region since the beginning of September, destroying homes and arresting and killing villagers. Young people are often accused of being dissidents or People’s Defense Force members, and are sometimes tortured and killed under questioning.

Elderly villagers are also not spared, residents say.

Calls seeking comment from Myanmar military spokesman Zaw Min Tun received no replies this week.

‘Unacceptable anywhere’

The killings of civilians reported in Magway should be considered war crimes, said Aung Myo Min, Minister for Human Rights in the shadow National Unity Government (NUG) set up in opposition to rule by the military.

“Any crime against civilians is a crime under the law and a violation of human rights,” Aung Myo Min said. “These people were not killed while fighting or running. They were tortured and killed, and some were shot in the head.”

Another victim was found killed after his genitals were mutilated, he said.

“These were not casualties of war but intentional atrocities—which are unacceptable anywhere, and for anyone.”

Kyee Myint, a veteran Myanmar lawyer, said that the killing of civilians and captives taken in battle by Myanmar forces in Magway and other parts of the country should be reported to the UN Commission on Human Rights.

“Prisoners of war should not be killed,” he said.

“These incidents are happening now because opposition groups are only speaking big words and are unable to provide any assistance—material or financial—or to protect the young people who are taking up arms on their behalf,” he said.

Myanmar’s People’s Defense Forces do not constitute formed armies, said Brad Adams, Asia director at New York-based Human Rights Watch. “So we do not see these [killings] as war crimes. Instead, we see them as human rights abuses.”

“Some people seem to think that a war crime is worse than an extrajudicial killing. It’s not any worse, it’s just a term that people recognize,” he said.

War crimes take place in situations of armed conflict, though, said Matthew Smith of the rights group Fortify Rights.

“[These] allegations of torture or murder are consistent with what we’ve documented in the military crackdown since Feb. 1, and they’re also consistent with the military’s longstanding behavior in the areas of armed conflict for many, many years.”

“It’s the military’s ongoing impunity that allows these types of atrocities to continue,” he said.

In the seven months since the Feb. 1 coup, security forces have killed 1,108 civilians and arrested at least 6,591, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP)—many during crackdowns on anti-junta protests.

Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Kyaw Min Htun. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Ship-tracking data obtained by BenarNews on Friday show the Chinese survey vessel Haiyang Dizhi 10 continues operating in Tuna Block in the Indonesian exclusive economic zone (EEZ), almost a week after a flagship U.S. aircraft carrier sailed within 50 nautical miles of it.

An Indonesian naval ship, the Kapitan Patimura-class corvette KRI Teuku Umar (385) was seen near the Haiyang Dizhi. The corvette is believed to have been dispatched to the area earlier this week.

Ship-tracking records also showed the Chinese coastguard ship 4303 was nearby on Thursday evening.

The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson passed by the Haiyang Dizhi 10 on Sept. 11, as the American warship sailed through the southern part of the South China Sea, a move analysts say was intended to send a message to the Chinese vessel.

On Monday, the Indonesian navy deployed the KRI Bontang (907) to the same area. Ship-tracking records show it was closely following the Haiyang Dizhi’s movements in the Tuna Block, an important oil and gas field in the North Natuna Sea.

The KRI Bontang (907) has since withdrawn to Natuna Island.

The Indonesian navy said Friday that it has deployed five vessels to secure the Natuna Sea, with three or four vessels taking turns at sea. Ship-tracking data and witness accounts reported in Indonesian media indicate several Chinese coastguard vessels have also been in the area this week.

The events attracted great attention from the media and the Indonesian public, and prompted the Indonesian navy, as well as the Maritime Security Agency, also known as Bakamla, to speak out.

The Indonesian government has been under immense domestic pressure to protect natural resources.

Both agencies seemed having played down the presence of the Chinese ships. Commander of the Indonesian navy’s 2nd Fleet, Rear Adm. Arsyad Abdullah, said in a virtual press conference on Friday:

“Four KRIs (Indonesian vessels) are in the North Natuna Sea … We want to give confidence to fishermen or sea users in North Natuna Sea, and the sea is under control because of the presence of the KRIs there.”

“In addition to the KRIs, operations in the North Natuna Sea also involved Indonesian Navy aircraft to carry out routine maritime air patrols in the area,” Arsyad said.

The Haiyang Dizhi has been operating there since late August, about 90 -100 nautical miles north of Indonesia’s Natuna Islands. Ship-tracking records show its back-and-forth pattern typical of a maritime survey.

Chinese ships have been accused of harassing neighboring countries’ oil exploration activities but China always insists they are operating within China’s jurisdiction.

Although Indonesia does not regard itself as a party to the territorial disputes in the South China Sea, the northern part of the Natuna Sea overlaps with the so-called “nine-dash line” that China uses to demarcate its sweeping claims in the South China Sea – a position not recognized by international law.

Tria Dianti in Jakarta contributed to this report by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

China’s top policy, legislative and advisory bodies were closely involved in the creation of the “Re-Education Internment Campaign” in Xinjiang that has sent some 1.8 million Uyghurs to detention camps and drawn genocide accusations against Beijing, according to a new report by a leading expert on the camp system.

German researcher Adrian Zenz — whose previous work has documented the existence and scope of the four-year-old internment camp system, as well as the motivation behind it — draws on previously unanalyzed central government and state media reports to connect the program to highest rungs of power in Beijing.

Documents on the drafting and approval of legislation in 2017 to set up the Uyghur internment campaign in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region demonstrate “that the framing of Xinjiang’s de-extremification through re-education campaign was undertaken with the direct knowledge of leading figures in China’s most powerful policy, legislative and advisory bodies,” the report says.

The “XUAR De-Extremification Regulation” was spearheaded by three important party-state bodies: Central Committee Xinjiang Work Coordination Small Group, the Legislative Affairs Commission of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress in Beijing, and the State Administration for Religious Affairs, Zenz writes.

Two of the three institutions are directly under the third- and fourth-ranked members of the Chinese Communist Party’s top decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee, men who are below only CCP chief and state President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, says the report, published online Tuesday by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington think tank.

A 2019 speech by XUAR Governor Shohrat Zakir declaring the re-education campaign a success following the release of some inmates and credits Xi for “injecting strong impetus into Xinjiang Work,” the report notes.

“General Secretary Xi Jinping personally went to Xinjiang to inspect and guide the work, presided over many meetings to study Xinjiang Work, delivered a series of important speeches, and issued a series of important instructions,” Zakir is quoted in official documents as saying.

‘Xi’s inner circle’

“This effectively implicates Xi’s inner circle of power in the atrocities committed in Xinjiang,” Zenz writes in the report, titled “Evidence of the Chinese Central Government’s Knowledge of and Involvement in Xinjiang’s Re-Education Internment Campaign.”

“Such a direct link between the legal regulations underpinning and justifying the re-education campaign and the central government is uncommon and has until now escaped wider notice outside of China,” writes Zenz, a senior fellow in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington.

Zenz says the documents showing “specific and immediate involvement of central government institutions” may inspire a re-examination of the role of Chen Quanguo, the Communist Party chief in Xinjiang, who is considered the architect of the crackdown on Uyghurs. Before he took the top post in Xinjiang in August 2016, Chen implemented heavy-handed surveillance and jailing policies in Tibet.

“Given Chen’s extensive expertise in previously working to suppress a major restive ethnic group in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), researchers including this author previously speculated that Chen may have both authored and implemented the re-education internment drive,” Zenz writes.

Chen, he notes, became the highest-ranking Chinese official to be sanctioned by the U.S. government in connection with rights abuses against Uyghurs and other minorities in the XUAR, “but other central government figures have escaped such designations.”

Zenz presented his latest report at the second session of the Uyghur Tribunal in London last weekend, a panel investigating whether China’s treatment of its ethnic Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims constitutes genocide. The panel, which has no authority to enforce its determination expected in December, was repeatedly attacked in Chinese state media.

The new report is the latest of a series of his studies of Chinese measures to control and assimilate the 12 million Uyghurs of the XUAR. Based on a close reading of government documents and academic and policy debate, Zenz’s research has formed the basis of genocide accusations against Beijing laid by several Western governments and legislatures, including the United States.

His previous studies examine China’s internment camps in the XUAR, the forced sterilization of detained Uyghur women, efforts to reduce population growth in the region thorough birth control and population transfer policies, and the Chinese government’s “population optimization strategy” to dilute the Uyghur majority in southern Xinjiang by raising the proportion of Han Chinese.

‘Wall of the Disappeared’

Chinese officials and state media have vilified Zenz for his research, calling him an “anti-China swindler” and a “fake academic with a bankrupt reputation,” and accusing him of “fabricating Xinjiang-related lies to smear and attack China.”

The government had no immediate response to Zenz’s newest report. But on Sept. 9, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a regular press conference that the researcher had “hurled the absurd accusations of ‘forced sterilization’ and ‘genocide’ in Xinjiang in his so-called reports” without “being unable to present any solid evidence.”

In March, Zenz was one of 10 Europeans and four entities hit with travel and other sanctions by China in response to European Union penalties imposes on XUAR officials for abuses of Uyghurs.

During a speech at the two-day Central Conference on Ethnic Affairs in Beijing in late August that prompted fears of more harsh policies, Xi called for ethnic minority groups to put the interests of the nation first.

“[We] should hold the ground of ideology. [We] should actively and steadily address the ideological issues that involve ethnic factors, and continue to eradicate poisonous thoughts of ethnic separatism and religious extremism,” Xi was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency.

China has justified the use of re-education camps in the XUAR as a means of preventing religious extremism and terrorism among the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples.

On Thursday, a U.S.-funded exhibition titled “Uyghur Voices: Human Rights Exhibition” opened outside the U.N. in Geneva, highlighting the human rights violations allegedly committed by the Chinese government against Uyghurs and others in the XUAR.

The exhibition focuses on the internment camps, gender-based violence, forced labor, and family separation and features a “Wall of the Disappeared” with images of Uyghurs who are missing and believed to be held in the camps.

The exhibition will later move to Brussels and Berlin, according to the World Uyghur Congress, a Germany-based Uyghur advocacy group that has partnered with the U.S. missions and embassies in the three cities to organize the events

“China has been attempting to cover up the Uyghur genocide in East Turkestan by all possible means, one of which is to have exhibitions at the UN,” said WUC president Dolkun Isa.

“We at the World Uyghur Congress aim to counter China’s propaganda and disinformation campaign at the U.N. by hosting our own exhibitions with facts and truth of Chinese atrocities,” said Isa, whose mother died at 78 in a Xinjiang internment camp in May 2018 after serving a year for “religious extremism.”

Reported and translated by Alim Seytoff for RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Countries bordering the South China Sea who are wary of great power rivalries are reacting slowly and cautiously to the announcement of a trilateral defense pact between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.

The AUKUS pact, hailed by leaders from the three powers as “historic,” is thought to be designed to counter China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific, especially in the South China Sea where China holds sweeping claims that are disputed by its neighbors.

The pact will also see the US and UK give Australia the technology to build nuclear-powered submarines.

The pact has been denounced by China, which claims it will stoke an arms race, and other critics speculate it may provoke a new Cold War. Tensions have been building up in the region over territorial disputes, as China develops its military might. 

Southeast Asian countries have responded cautiously to AUKUS – an abbreviation of the three participating nations – amid concerns of a new, intense strategic rivalry in the Indo-Pacific.

“Many regional countries do not want to be drawn into U.S.-China rivalry,” Rizal Sukma, a senior researcher at the Jakarta-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and former Indonesia ambassador to Britain, told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

AUKUS was announced early Asia time on Thursday. China wasted no time in registering its disapproval. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian called the pact “extremely irresponsible” and said it would backfire on the three powers involved.

He said they had “seriously undermined regional peace and stability, intensified the arms race, and undermined international non-proliferation efforts.”

Among the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Singapore reacted positively, but other governments were more guarded.

Arms race concerns

The Indonesian Foreign Ministry said Friday it “is watching with caution” the Australian government’s decision to acquire nuclear-powered submarines. Indonesia is one of Australia’s closest neighbors and even though the country is not a territorial claimant in the South China Sea, its exclusive economic zone overlaps China’s claims.

Indonesia is “very concerned about the continued arms race and projection of military power in the region”, a ministry statement said.

Jakarta “encourages Australia and other related parties to continue promoting dialogue in resolving differences peacefully” and urges other parties in the region to adhere to international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Indonesia was among the first nations in the Indo-Pacific to be informed of the new AUKUS deal and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison reportedly said he’d seek to speak to President Joko Widodo “soon.”

Philippines Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana has also held a phone conversation with his Australian counterpart Peter Dutton on Friday, in which Dutton “underscored that Australia wants to be seen as a neighbor that promotes regional peace”, according to the Philippine Department of Defense.

Lorenzana told Dutton that his country “would like to maintain good bilateral defense relations with all other countries in the region”, suggesting that officially Manila doesn’t want to be seen as taking sides.

A lack of a solid regional security structure means that Southeast Asian countries risk being sidelined on their own strategic chessboard. ASEAN, established 54 years ago, has become lacklustre and “more irrelevant,” according to Sukma who said he doubted that the grouping “has the capacity to be a place where great powers’ interests can be managed.”

Most Southeast Asian governments including Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam have yet to comment on AUKUS – hinting at the prevailing strategic uncertainty in the region.

Singapore, however, was upbeat.

Its Ministry of Foreign Affairs quoted Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong who said in a phone call with Australian premier Morrison that he hoped the new deal would “contribute constructively to the peace and stability of the region and complement the regional architecture.”

 ‘China reaps what it sows’

Lee’s statement suggests that there may be much more support in the region for having a deterrent, military presence than openly claimed.

“No one country in the region wants to be under the domination of China and the U.S. presence is thus a necessity,” said Kasit Piromya, Thailand’s former minister of foreign affairs.

In the last 40 years, China has become the second-largest economy in the world and makes gains in technological advancement.  However, “the current Chinese leadership has become revisionist with assertive and aggressive ambition,” argued Kasit.

In his opinion, “the ball is more in the Chinese court whether China wants to keep on continuing to dominate the region or to take stock of the limitation of power and the resources to back up the power.”

“The United States has more allies while China only has a marriage of convenience with Russia,” he said.

Apart from the new tripartite alliance, the U.S is also part of an Indo-Pacific security grouping known as the Quad, together with Australia, India and Japan. President Joe Biden will be hosting a summit of the Quad leaders in Washington, D.C., next week.

“The U.S.-led alliances are playing an important role in countering and containing China’s assertiveness”, said Nguyen Ngoc Truong, a former Vietnamese ambassador and well-known political affairs analyst.

Vietnam has been making effort to balance the relationships with both China and the U.S. with the country’s leaders always insisting that they would not side with any country against China.

Yet Vietnam and China are embroiled for years in a tense territorial dispute in the South China Sea and AUKUS should bring “a new confidence to countries contesting China’s excessive claims,” according to the former Vietnamese diplomat.

“Beijing may become even more aggressive. But China reaps what it sows.”

Ahmad Syamsuddin and Tria Dianti in Jakarta and Jason Gutierrez in Manila contributed to this report by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.

Hong Kong newspapers backed by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) stepped up their denunciations of independent trade unions in the city on Friday, amid an ever-widening crackdown on civil society under the national security law.

The Beijing-backed Wen Wei Po and Ta Kung Pao newspapers on Friday reported that Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Confederation of Trade Unions (CTU) would be the next civil society group to disband following denunciations by CCP media.

“Our information indicates that the CTU will soon disband,” the report said. “The executive committee met on Sept. 16 to pass the resolution, but it still needs to be formally approved at a general meeting on Oct. 3.”

The report accused the CTU of prompting a “tsunami” of new union registrations during the 2019 protest movement, and of “promoting anti-Chinese sentiment and unrest.”

“They have deviated utterly from the purpose of a trade union under the law, steal from industry, and divide society,” the paper said, naming veteran labor activist Lee Cheuk-ying, who is currently serving a 14-month jail term for his role in the 2019 protest movement.

It also singled out Winnie Yu, the founder and chairwoman of the Hospital Authority Employees Alliance, a labor union representing Hospital Authority staff.

Political denunciations in CCP-backed media are increasingly being used to target civil society groups and NGOs in Hong Kong.

The denunciations usually focus on accusations that a given organization has done something that could be in breach of a draconian national security law imposed on Hong Kong by the CCP from July 1, 2020.

Several groups disband

Several organizations, including protest march organizers the Civil Human Rights Front, the Professional Teachers’ Union, and Wall-fare, a prison support group for those in custody because of the 2019 protest movement, have disbanded following similar articles, or after being criticized by Hong Kong’s leaders.

The Hospital Authority Employees Alliance said it had recently received a letter from the Registry of Trade Unions alleging that its funds were used for “political purposes.”

The group’s questioning of the effectiveness of Chinese-made COVID-19 jabs and the government’s LeaveHomeSafe app, and its setting up of street booths were also listed as matters requiring explanation, government broadcaster RTHK reported.

“Our alliance’s legal status and the past activities we organized, including the strike to fight for reasonable rights, should be protected by international covenants and the Basic Law,” it quoted acting chairman David Chan as saying.

He declined to comment when asked if the alliance has any plans to disband, RTHK reported.

Meanwhile, another labor NGO, the Asia Monitor Resource Centre, said an article published in the CCP-backed Ta Kung Pao newspaper was inaccurate.

“For decades, we [have been] a civil society organization independent of any local or international organizations,” it said. “We are not a subsidiary unit of any of the organizations as wrongly described in the Ta Kung Pao article.”

The group said it plans to shut down its Hong Kong operations by the end of September and relocate elsewhere in the region.

“The pressure on our operation has intensified significantly,” the group said in a statement on its website. “Therefore, we feel that we are left with no choice but to cease operating in Hong Kong by the end of September.”

Pattern becoming clear

Chung Kim-wah, deputy chief executive of the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute (PORI), said the pattern of denunciation leading to investigation by the authorities is becoming increasingly clear in Hong Kong.

“We have seen so many similar occurrences, in which the Ta Kung Pao or the Wen Wei Po post articles listing [alleged] crimes, sometimes photos, and even stalking some people,” Chung told RFA.

“Maybe the first thing the secretary for security does when he gets to work in the morning is look at the Wen Wei Po or Ta Kung Pao to see which groups they are targeting, and make a list,” he said.

“It looks as if the [pro-CCP] media are running Hong Kong now.”

Set up in 1990, the CTU sprang from the work of the Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee (HKCIC), a church-backed grassroots labor group active during the 1970s and 1980s.

A coalition of independent and politically unaffiliated union organizations, its membership consisted largely of white-collar unions organizing the civil service and professional or service employees in the public and subvented sectors, including the now-disbanded Professional Teachers’ Union (PTU) and the Hong Kong Social Workers General Union.

Both former leaders Lau Chin-shek, a founding member of the Democratic Party, and Lee Cheuk-yan went on to be elected to the city’s Legislative Council (LegCo).

The CTU was involved in a number of mass protest movements, including the July 1, 2003 march to oppose national security legislation, which was eventually imposed on the city by the CCP on July 1, 2020.

It was also instrumental in founding Hong Kong’s Labour Party in 2005.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

With the fate of the world’s environment hanging in the balance, China has tried to raise the stakes even higher by making demands in exchange for climate cooperation with the United States.

The developing standoff over commitments to limit global warming led to a 90-minute phone call last week between President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping in an attempt to clear the air.

But the outcome for climate policy remained unsettled as China continued to link broader issues of U.S.-China relations to environmental affairs.

The phone talks between the two leaders followed stormy negotiations between John Kerry, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, and Chinese officials, leading to a high-level impasse.

During the second of two recent visits to China, Kerry ran into a virtual stone wall when he met by video link with Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Sept. 1.

Kerry’s trip and face-to-face talks with Chinese officials in the northern port city of Tianjin were aimed at promoting cooperation on carbon emissions in the runup to a critical U.N.-sponsored climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland in November.

Despite bilateral tensions, the calls for cooperation stemmed from a realization that international attempts to avert the worst effects of global warming will fall short without greater efforts by the world’s two largest sources of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

According to the latest available figures from the Global Carbon Atlas, China’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels accounted for 27.9 percent of the world total in 2019, while U.S. emissions stood at 14.5 percent.

Last September, President Xi pledged that China would reach a peak in its emissions before 2030 and achieve “net- zero” neutrality before 2060.

In April, President Biden set the U.S. target for emissions reductions at 50-52 percent below 2005 levels in 2030 with net-zero neutrality “no later than 2050.” Climate advocates hope that both countries will agree to do more.

In the days before Kerry’s visit, Chinese officials spoke repeatedly in favor of tension reduction and closer cooperation on a range of issues despite bilateral differences.

“In fact, the need for China-U.S. cooperation is not decreasing, but increasing. Our two countries should not be enemies, but partners,” said China’s ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, in a Washington speech on Aug. 31, one day before Kerry’s meeting with Wang.

A few days before that, a Ministry of Commerce spokesperson cited the mutual benefits of trade in an online briefing for the bilateral comprehensive economic dialogue.

In the first seven months of the year, China’s imports of U.S. goods jumped 50.4 percent from a year earlier, while China’s exports to the United States climbed 36.9 percent, said Gao Feng, according to the official English-language China Daily.

“China always emphasizes the two sides should work together to create conditions for the expansion of China-U.S. trade cooperation,” Gao said.

The tone of such statements made Wang’s confrontational message on climate cooperation something of a surprise.

Climate cooperation

According to a Foreign Ministry statement, Wang warned Kerry that “deteriorating U.S.-China relations could undermine cooperation between the two on climate change,” the Associated Press reported.

“Wang told Kerry … that such cooperation cannot be separated from the broader relationship and called on the U.S. to take steps to improve ties,” the AP said.

In the statement posted on the Foreign Ministry website, Wang told Kerry that Washington “should pay attention and actively respond” to the “two lists” and “three bottom lines” that Beijing defined as requirements for improved relations.

The statement implied that climate cooperation would be conditioned on resolving the entire range of U.S.-China disagreements, including decades-old foreign policy differences that have nothing to do with climate change.

“The United States hopes to transform cooperation into an ‘oasis’ in Sino-U.S. relations, but if the ‘oasis’ is surrounded by ‘deserts,’ the ‘oasis’ will sooner or later be deserted,” Wang said.

In July, China gave U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman the two lists, one of which covered “errors” for Washington to address, while the other raised issues regarded as “important” to China, CNBC reported.

The lists included a demand that Washington should end its attempts to extradite Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou from Canada to face charges of violating U.S. export rules, as well as visa restrictions on Chinese students and Communist Party members, curbs on Chinese companies and other issues, CNBC and China’s Global Times said.

The “three bottom lines” outlined by Wang also included a broad range of policy issues.

First, the United States “must not challenge, slander or even attempt to subvert the path and system of socialism with Chinese characteristics,” said the document given to Sherman, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Second, Washington “must not attempt to obstruct or interrupt China’s development process.” As part of the demand, China called for the removal of all unilateral U.S. sanctions and bans on technology trade.

Third, Wang insisted that the United States must not “infringe upon China’s state sovereignty” or damage its “territorial integrity,” referring to U.S. penalties for rights abuses in Tibet, Hong Kong and Xinjiang. China’s sovereignty claims also extend to Taiwan and the South China Sea.

Taken together, the demands for sweeping changes in U.S. policies toward China put the prospects for a climate change agreement on thin ice.

After two days of talks with China’s special climate envoy Xie Zhenhua, Kerry pushed back against Beijing’s attempts to establish linkage between climate agreements and a wish list of grievances over unrelated disputes.

“My response to them was, look, climate is not ideological, not partisan and not a geostrategic weapon,” the former secretary of state told reporters, according to Reuters.

Tension increase

Climate policy experts have acknowledged that the high stakes for an agreement on emissions targets may raise tensions on other issues.

“Kerry and Xie have been able to carve out a channel for ongoing communication on climate change, which is extremely valuable right now,” Joanna Lewis, a Georgetown University associate professor, told The New York Times.

“Yet it is increasingly difficult to fully insulate climate change from the broader tensions,” Lewis said.

But if China sticks to its demands, the effect would essentially hold the climate hostage to an insurmountably long list of policy differences.

China also added to the conditions for cooperation with demands that the United States must stop calling for a World Health Organization investigation into origins of the COVID- 19 pandemic, charging that it was nothing more than a smear campaign against Beijing.

In a phone call with Secretary of State Antony Blinken reported by Xinhua on Aug. 29, Wang called on the United States to “stop undermining China’s sovereignty, security and development interests.”

In the weeks before the Tianjin meetings, Kerry pressed China long and hard to stop building coal-fired power plants, arguing that the projects will frustrate plans to meet climate goals.

But China pushed back, arguing that its plans to supply its energy needs are also a matter of sovereignty and its own affair.

“China already has its own plans and road map for achieving its climate goals,” the South China Morning Post said, quoting “a person familiar with the two countries’ negotiations.”

“China would not accept Washington telling it what to do and when,” the source said.

The outcome of the Biden-Xi phone talks seems to be a softening of tone in the demands from Beijing, which could allow climate talks to go ahead.

“Relevant departments of the two countries, on the basis of respecting each other’s core concerns and properly managing differences, may continue their engagement and dialogue, and advance coordination and cooperation on climate change, COVID-19 response and economic recovery as well as on major international and regional issues,” a Xinhua commentary said.

But it remained to be seen whether there will be any change in the substance of China’s demands or its climate pledges.

The Chinese warnings may still represent red lines, leading to an impasse and failure to reach new agreements in time for the U.N. conference of parties, known as COP26, in November.

An alternate reading is that China’s far-reaching conditions for a new climate deal are a measure of the difficulty of meeting more stringent emissions goals.

Either way, the next two months are likely to be a period of intense diplomatic activity and recalculation of the critical interests in U.S.-China ties.

Adding to the uncertainty are questions about whether the COP26 meeting will be held in November at all.

In the past week, a broad coalition of climate groups called for postponing the conference. In a statement, the Climate Action Network voiced concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine requirements would raise costs for poorer countries and “makw it impossible for many representatives to attend.”

Kerry battled back against postponement, citing the risk that any delay could allow some nations to “backtrack” on their climate commitments, The New York Times reported.

“We don’t have time to mess around with reconvening,” Kerry said.