Day: January 4, 2022

The Chinese government has begun a large-scale propaganda campaign in its far-western Xinjiang region directed at Western countries led by the United States over their condemnation of Beijing’s human rights violations and genocidal policies targeting the Uyghur minority.

In mid-December, authorities began mobilizing instructors and students from universities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, home to about 12 million mostly Muslim Uyghurs, to participate in the propaganda efforts, according to China’s state-run media. They included faculty and students from Xinjiang University, Xinjiang Medical University, Xinjiang Normal University, and Kashgar University.

Authorities are trying to make sure that charges of genocide and the use of forced Uyghur labor in Xinjiang are rejected in meetings and discussions at the universities, the media reports said. Western countries, under the direction of the U.S., and international human rights organizations have been branded “anti-China forces” and attacked.

Instructors and students who have provided testimony have said in their speeches that the U.S. has led other Western powers in fabricating false accusations of genocide and forced labor, according to the media reports. They also say that peoples of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang enjoy equal work opportunities under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and are living “happily.”

The U.S. and legislatures of some European nations have declared that China’s abuses against the Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang amount to genocide and crimes against humanity. They have also imposed targeted sanctions on those deemed responsible for the repression.

This propaganda campaign targeting Western democratic countries led by the U.S. has grown stronger following these designations, said analysts and Uyghur rights advocates.

The recent passage of the U.S. Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act with near-unanimous support from lawmakers has forced the Chinese government to undertake the large-scale propaganda campaign in an attempt to claim innocence, they said.

The impact of propaganda

The Chinese government’s goal is to confuse the international community by publicizing that it has the support of the Chinese people for its policies toward Uyghurs,” said Hu Ping, a China analyst based in the U.S.

“Even more to the point, this is about them trying to convince people domestically that their policies are right,” he said.

“In the eyes of the Chinese government, if they can force intellectuals and cultural leaders from among Uyghurs in Xinjiang to do propaganda like this, the impact of the propaganda to convince will be even greater than propaganda done by Han or by Communist leaders,” said Hu.

Forcing intellectuals, particularly professors and students, to testify against the U.S. whenever the Chinese government is on the defensive is a propaganda tactic held over from the Mao Zedong era, he said.

During the decade following Mao’s death in 1976, China’s notion that the U.S. was an enemy lessened as a relatively open environment took shape. But Beijing’s anti-American propaganda began anew following the violent suppression of student protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, he said.

China’s criticism of Western democratic countries has grown in the era of increased assertiveness and authoritarianism under Xi Jinping, who has served as president since 2012, gathering steam with mounting accusations of genocidal policies in Xinjiang, Hu said. As a result, propaganda about the “American enemy,” with its roots in Chinese nationalism, has reached new heights in China.

But Hu believes that the latest propaganda campaign using professors and students at universities in Xinjiang will backfire.

“Given that the outside world has a good understanding of the latest developments in Xinjiang, it will be impossible for scholars and cultural figures to play the roles expected of them by the Chinese government,” he said.

China’s credibility is ‘zero’

Because Western democratic countries, including the U.S. and United Kingdom, have taken tangible measures against China in response to its repression of the Uyghurs, the Chinese government is now increasing its propaganda attacks against them, said Rushan Abbas, executive director of the U.S.-based Campaign for Uyghurs.

An independent Uyghur Tribunal in London found in December China committed genocide against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang region and that Xi Jinping shared primary responsibility for the atrocities. The people’s tribunal, which had no state backing, based its findings on testimony from dozens of witnesses, including formerly jailed Uyghurs and legal and academic experts on China’s actions in Xinjiang. Beijing angrily denounced the panel and its determination.

The recent passage of the U.S. Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act with wide support from lawmakers made the Chinese government deeply uncomfortable, Abbas said. For this reason, it has further increased propaganda about the U.S. as the enemy and made universities in Xinjiang the front lines in its propaganda war.

“By targeting of intellectuals and students in universities in the region and undertaking propaganda with them, by brainwashing them, by pressuring them into speaking, the Chinese government is attempting to hide what is really happening in the Uyghur region — its crimes such as genocide and using Uyghurs as slaves,” she said.

“By forcing Uyghur elites, intellectuals, and students to speak, it is working hard to increase the convincibility of its own lies, its own false propaganda.”

China’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang have become “absolutely irrefutable,” Abbas added.

The Chinese government is trying to damage the image of the U.S. and other Western countries in the eyes of the public by forcing Uyghur intellectuals, particularly university professors and students, to speak out against them, said Memet Tohti, director of the legal committee at the World Uyghur Congress.

“People are now being mobilized to do propaganda for China,” he said. “They’re forcing people to give testimony in line with the political propaganda of the central government of China. They’re responding to the political and legislative developments connected to Uyghurs in the United States and the West.”

But these activities, like earlier propaganda campaigns by China, will ultimately end with no results, Tohti added.

“No matter what the Chinese government does to force Uyghur intellectuals to speak out, no matter what other methods it attempts to use, the most important thing is that the Chinese government’s credibility in the world has now fallen to zero,” he said.

‘No matter what they do, they will not be able to raise their credibility, so there is no value in this.”

Translated by RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Increased military exercises and sharp rhetoric have fueled fears of a superpower conflict in the disputed South China Sea, but at least one scholar is making waves with a different narrative — that the fears of war are overblown.

John Quiggin, professor of economics at the University of Queensland, Australia, argues that an inflated evaluation of the strategic importance of the disputed waterway may be stoking tensions. He says that those tensions are impeding diplomacy and collaboration on more critical international concerns like climate change.

He made his case in a recent article published by the Lowy Institute, an independent think tank in Australia, highlighting what he described as “five myths about the South China Sea.”

The “myths” are: The South China Sea is a vital shipping route, potentially threatened by China; the South China Sea is home to immensely valuable resources; China has the military and naval capacity to invade Taiwan; it is crucially important to maintain freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea; and China is willing to fight a nuclear war to defend its claims in the South China Sea.

Speaking to RFA from Brisbane, Quiggin said that globally the most prevalent myth about the South China Sea is that “it is a vital shipping lane and China might, in some ways, disrupt it.”

“The whole idea of South China Sea as a vital shipping lane is economically nonsensical,” he said, adding: “It’s certainly convenient to have the fastest and cheapest route but there’s always a long way around.”

It’s commonly believed that up to a third of the world trade is shipped through the South China Sea each year, worth between $3 trillion and $5 trillion. The Straits of Malacca are the shortest and cheapest route between the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

But there are other alternatives and the economic cost of disruption would just be “a small amount,” said Quiggin, drawing a parallel with the Suez Canal’s closure in mid-20^th century due to Arab-Israeli wars.

Similarly, the professor played down the importance of the oil and gas reserves in the disputed waters of the South China Sea, saying the quantities are “smaller than they seem.”

In his opinion, it is unlikely that substantial volumes of oil and gas will ever be extracted as we approach the end of the carbon fuels era and “these resources are of more value as diplomatic bargaining chips” rather than commodities.

The article provoked interest, but also disagreement, among South China Sea experts and researchers.

They included Greg Poling, a maritime expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington D.C. He disagreed with the premise that the most likely casus belli, or act that provokes war, between the United States and China would be an attempt by China to take control of shipping routes and disputed territory in the South China Sea.

“The shipping importance and resource disputes are indeed overstated, but neither are the fundamental concern,” Poling told RFA in an e-mail.

“The most likely casus belli is a use of force by China against either U.S. or allied vessels/personnel during operations by the latter to exercise their rights,” he added.

Western nations, including the U.S., have stepped up military drills in the South China Sea in the past year. Those nations have become more critical of China’s sweeping sovereignty claims amid concerns that Beijing’s stance poses a threat to freedom of navigation.

‘Myth about Taiwan’

Quiggin further dismissed fears about what is widely viewed as the most serious flashpoint for conflict in the region – Taiwan.

He called the claim that Beijing plans to invade Taiwan soon a “laughable idea” and “a seaborne invasion of Taiwan would be massively more difficult than the D-Day landings” as China simply doesn’t have enough capacity including landing craft. D-Day refers to the Allied seaborne landings in Normandy, France, in World War II.

Quiggin said “while everyone who seriously looks into the prospect recognizes it, no-one wants to admit it.”

“Taiwan doesn’t want to say that ‘we’re safe, we don’t need any help’. China certainly is not going admit that they can’t invade Taiwan. So it suits everybody to go home with this myth,” Quiggin said.

China considers Taiwan a breakaway province and vows to unite it with the mainland, by force if necessary. Chinese military activity in the Taiwan Strait has intensified in recent months, with hundreds of military aircraft sorties into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in what observers see as an intimidation campaign.

The Australian scholar was also critical of what he called “the U.S. doctrine of Freedom of Navigation Operations” for naval ships in the South China Sea, saying it was more symbolic than substantive.”

“It’s again the U.S. unwilling to concede a point which is essentially symbolic, because when you look at the balance of forces, it will be very difficult to sustain the freedom of navigation if China really decided to take military action against it,” he said.

“There are serious sources of conflict between China and the democratic world in important areas like climate change, where co-operation is urgently needed. Focusing on secondary and symbolic issues like disputes over South China Sea reduces the prospect for resolving more important conflicts,” Quiggin concluded.

Villagers in southern Laos’ Saravane province are refusing to hand over community land to a planned Chinese banana farm, saying if they lose their land they will have no way to feed their families, Lao sources say.

The farm for which the Chinese firm — identified by the Lao name Jayching — is seeking permission from provincial authorities, would take over 100 hectares of rice field now farmed by 40 families in the province’s Viengkham village.

Villager residents say they fear that government authorities will soon grant the firm a concession for the land despite the impact on those living there, one villager told RFA’s Lao Service this week.

“If party, state or other high-level authorities take this land away, we villagers will have no way to earn a living. We will refuse to give up our land even if we die. We have no other place to go,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Residents of a nearby village targeted earlier by the Chinese company had also resisted encroachment, but had seen their land taken anyway, a source in the second village said, also speaking on condition his name not be used.

“We had already planted rice and corn on our land, but when the Chinese company got the land, they destroyed all of our crops,” he said.

Locally operated Chinese banana farms pollute rivers and other water sources with chemicals and pesticides, making workers and villagers sick, he said. And in some areas, villagers can’t use water from the river for cooking or drinking.

Viengkham villagers told RFA that provincial and district authorities had urged them after a Dec. 30 visit to hand over their land to the Chinese firm, saying they were told the land will be divided into two zones, only one for the Chinese company’s commercial use.

“Villagers can grow rice in an agricultural zone, but in the commercial zone the Chinese company can grow bananas for export,” one source said. 

Villagers doubt the deal will hold, though, noting that land already taken in a village nearby, where villagers paid taxes but held no title to the land, had been seized by authorities and given to the Chinese company with little compensation paid.

Banana farming for the Chinese market is a major source of employment in rural Laos, with hundreds of hectares of planted land employing Lao villagers and other workers in nurseries, planting, and harvesting, researchers say. But illnesses and deaths have long been reported among Lao workers exposed to chemicals on foreign-operated banana farms.

From January to September 2021, the value of exports to China and Thailand from Chinese banana farms in Laos totaled nearly $200 million, a value greater than from any other crop grown for export from the country, according to an Oct. 14, 2021 report in the Vientiane Times.

 Reported by RFA’s Lao Service. Translated by Sidney Khotpanya. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Residents of the northern Chinese city of Xi’an who were taken from their homes by the busload in a middle-of-the-night relocation operation have hit out at the conditions they were expected to stay in, as part of a compulsory “isolation” program aimed at eradicating COVID-19 in the city.

“The isolation facility was too disgusting, so we’re walking home again,” one resident says in a video clip posted to Tik Tok on Jan. 3. The clip showed dozens of people dressed in winter clothes and wheeling luggage along an urban boulevard by night.

“Resistance is the only option,” one Twitter user commented on the footage.

Another video clip posted to Twitter showed a run-down dormitory building with four military-style bunk beds in austere conditions in a building staffed by workers clad in full PPE.

In a video clip that went viral on social media, a woman berates a PPE-clad staff member at an isolation facility for the authorities’ failure to pick up the phone or to provide sanitary supplies for women, following the middle-of-the-night relocation.

Video shot from a tall building by a Xi’an resident showed columns of dark green buses filing along a city street, past roadblocks manned by dozens of workers in full PPE.

The mass forced relocation of citizens came as Shaanxi provincial ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secretary Liu Guozhong announced an “all-out assault” in a bid to eradicate COVID-19 cases in Xi’an, where the outbreak continues despite mass citywide testing and harsh lockdown restrictions that have last nearly two weeks.

“Not a single individual or household can be missed … Screening must be completed in a timely manner, and in sufficient quantity,” Liu said.

“It is necessary to make sufficient preparations for relocation for isolation … and to solve the staffing and vehicle shortages to make these transfers [of people],” he said in comments reported by the official Shaanxi Daily newspaper.

“This so-called zero-COVID policy really means that they are trying to shift the problem outside the city, to the suburbs, where they can’t be seen,” a Xi’an resident surnamed Fang told RFA on Tuesday.

“In these relocation facilities in the suburbs, there are four bunk-beds to every room, and the students who are supposed to be delivering food are themselves so hungry they can’t stop crying,” Fang said.

“They didn’t get fed until the news got out.”

‘An utter mess of everything’

A retired Xi’an official surnamed Liu said the local authorities had totally failed in their implementation of the lockdown and isolation process.

“These so-called leaders have made an utter mess of everything,” Liu said. “Wuhan had it hard enough, but at least they came through it OK.”

“Not Xi’an, where the restrictions have been harsh to an insane degree,” she said. “There are four bunk-beds to a room in the isolation facilities, with one cover.”

“How is that isolation? These are mass dormitories, and it’ll be a miracle if they don’t lead to further infections,” Liu said. “They have no clue.”

The lockdown has already been met with a public chorus of dissatisfaction, as local people have been prevented from leaving their homes to buy groceries and basic necessities, or turned away from hospitals for medical treatment because they come from a high or medium-risk area.

Xi’an officials said on Jan. 3 they had shipped more than 3,400 tonnes of vegetables and foodstuffs into the city from surrounding areas, handing out packages to more than half a million people.

Eighth wave of tests

Meanwhile, city authorities said they were carrying out an eighth wave of COVID-19 PCR testing late on Jan. 3, as local residents complained that they were unable to update their health codes via the app, which is used to control who may move around.

“The city’s PCR emergency platform is currently busy and we are unable to log you in due to excessive traffic right now,” a text sent to one resident said. “We are currently carrying out emergency repairs.”

“All the staff did a PCR test today, which should mean they were cleared [on the health code app],” Wang said. “But when it got to 8.00 p.m., everyone tried to log on and it crashed.”

Among those suffering during the Xi’an lockdown was a disabled former shooting prodigy and Maoist internet commentator with the nickname Sniper, who received a barrage of abuse from social media users after he tried to raise funds via his Alipay account to pay for medicines during lockdown.

Online comments hit out at the man, who was a key abuser of writer Fang Fang, after she published her “Lockdown Diary” about her experiences in the early days of the pandemic in Wuhan.

“Just die soon, and don’t discredit your country,” one comment read, in a snarky reference to his trolling of Fang, while others published his cell phone number, which was deluged in further abusive text messages and calls.

Maoist leftist Chen Hongtao said public anger was largely driven by a recognition that what Fang Fang was writing in her diary was true.

“He didn’t understand what causes this kind of social disaster, and the personal suffering involved [until now],” Chen told RFA. “That’s why this happened to him.”

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

After a North Korean army officer threatened his superior with a weapon and another attempted suicide when higher-ranking officers ignored his pleas for help, the country’s politburo is taking steps to stem what leaders fear may be a rising trend of insubordination within the military.

In the last three months of 2021, as many as 10 soldiers have violently confronted their superiors nationwide, a military official from the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA Dec. 20.

“At the end of November, a company-level officer of the 45^th Division under the 9^th Corps asked several times to his superior battalion to let him help solve a family issue and take care of his own personal health issue, but when he was ignored, he confronted his superior with a weapon while he was drunk,” said the source, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

“Even earlier this month, in a unit under the 3^rd Corps, a company-level officer had a personal problem and appealed to a superior to help solve it,” the source said. “But when the senior officer ignored it, the company-level officer attempted to kill himself with a communication cable around his neck. This incident is embarrassing for the senior unit commanders.”

In North Korea, every able-bodied man is required to join the military for at least seven years. Officers can serve as long as 30 years.

Sources blamed the apparent rise in examples of insubordination — as well as a corresponding increase in incidents of superior officers brutally hazing enlisted personnel — on the stresses presented by a worsening North Korean economy due in part to COVID restrictions that have largely shut off trade with China.

After the incident in the 3^rd Corps, the General Political Bureau, or politburo, ordered the higher-ranking officers to pay more attention to the problems of their subordinates, the source said.

“They fear that such incidents could demoralize the soldiers and spread into political incidents which could threaten the entire military hierarchy,” the source said. “The bureau ordered that they resolve conflicts by actively helping the lower-level officers having difficulties in their lives, especially since the new year is coming soon.”

Another aspect of the directive is to identify problem officers who could cause conflict within their units, the source said.

“The officers in charge of these problematic officers were ordered to routinely visit the subordinate units … and resolve any difficulties in a timely matter so that any political accidents can be prevented,” the source said.

In one case, the lower ranking officer exposed corruption among his superiors when they ignored his request for leave, an officer in the 8th Corps, stationed in the northwestern province of North Pyongan, told RFA.

“A company commander of a unit under the corps requested a leave of absence for his engagement ceremony, but the battalion commander and the political advisor ignored the request because it was during the winter military training period,” the second source told RFA.

“So, the company commander deserted for six days. When he was punished by the party, he publicly complained about their corruption,” the second source said.

The second source said that part of the directive from the General Political Bureau requires the senior officers to hold daily meetings with their subordinate officers to assess their loyalty.

“The low-level officers, however, claim that they are having a hard time living during such a time of economic hardship caused by the coronavirus, and that this problem will not simply be solved through ideological meetings.”

Hazing getting worse

In addition to incidents of insubordination, hazing among the enlisted ranks and their immediate superiors is now “getting serious,” another source said. In one case, a soldier almost froze to death after being beaten by his superiors.

“Recently a soldier from a unit under the 9^th Corps, who had deserted several times from the unit, was badly beaten by several officers,” another military source from North Hamgyong province said.

“They imprisoned him in an iron barrel and left him out in the cold winter weather for several hours, almost killing him. It was reported to the General Political Bureau, and they began an investigation into military hazing,” said the third source, who declined to be named.

For their treatment of the enlisted man, the officers were demoted, and the investigation revealed that hazing is occurring most often in smaller units in remote locations as opposed to more centrally located larger units.

“In mid-October, at the 108th training camp in South Hamgyong Province, the commander of a security platoon questioned a platoon soldier for leaving his place of work while on duty at the guard post, and there was an incident where the commander hit the soldier with a rifle butt and inflicted serious injuries,” the third source said.

“In addition to the instructions to prepare measures to prevent hazing, the General Political Bureau made a study guide on the subject and distributed it to the units under its jurisdiction,” the third source said.

In North Pyongan, authorities are organizing teams consisting of officers from the secretariat to visit units across the country as part of the investigation, a fourth military source there told RFA.

“Countless orders to eradicate hazing have been issued, but it still happens often among the soldiers,” the fourth source said.

“Beatings in the military have become more severe these days, and the problem is directly related to poor living conditions for soldiers as the government is providing them with less and less each year.”

Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

A court in Hong Kong on Tuesday handed down a jail term of 15 months’ imprisonment to one of the organizers of a now-banned vigil marking the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, as newly chosen lawmakers took their oath in a Legislative Council (LegCo) stacked with supporters of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Chow Hang-tung, a 36-year-old rights lawyer, was handed the sentence by magistrate Amy Chan, and responded by reading out the names of the victims of the massacre from the dock.

The court found Chow guilty of “inciting others to take part in an illegal assembly” on the basis of two social media posts she made ahead of the June 4, 1989 massacre anniversary in 2021, calling on people to light candles in honor of massacre victims.

“The message this verdict sends is that lighting a candle is a crime, that using words can be a crime,” Chow told the court. “The only way to defend freedom of speech is to continue to express ourselves.”

“The real crime is using laws to cover up for murderers and to erase the victims in the name of the state,” she said, to applause from the public gallery.

Magistrate Chan then ordered police to take down the ID card numbers of anyone who had applauded.

“The law never allows anyone to exercise their freedom by unlawful means,” Chan told the court, saying Chow had shown no remorse and was “self-righteous” in attitude.

Chow was already behind bars awaiting trial along with other senior members of the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Democratic Patriotic Movements of China, which led the vigils for more than three decades, the only public commemorations of the 1989 bloodshed to take place on Chinese soil.

The 32-year-old Alliance stands accused of acting as the agent of a foreign power, with Chow, Albert Ho, and Lee Cheuk-yan all held on suspicion of “incitement to subvert state power,” and the group’s assets frozen.

The group was among several prominent civil society groups to disband following investigation by national security police under the national security law that took effect from July 1, 2020.

The annual Tiananmen vigils the Alliance hosted on June 4 often attracted more than 100,000 people, but the gatherings have been banned since 2020, with the authorities citing coronavirus restrictions.

‘Hostility, hatred’

China’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office has accused the organization of inciting hostility and hatred against the CCP and the central government.

The law forms part of Beijing’s claims that recent waves of popular protest for greater democracy and against the erosion of Hong Kong’s promised freedoms were instigated by hostile foreign powers intent on undermining CCP rule and destroying social stability in Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, dozens of new lawmakers elected under rules that effectively excluded pro-democracy voices were sworn in under the national emblem of China, and after singing the national anthem, the first time the patriotic hymn has been used in an oath-taking ceremony.

Ninety LegCo members were sworn in as pro-China media welcomed a “new era” for the legislature, welcoming a “new atmosphere” of scant opposition to the government.

“Having both national and regional emblems [in the LegCo chamber] is more solemn,” LegCo president Andrew Leung told reporters. “As president, I am more confident with the national emblem there.”

Control by Beijing

Current affairs commentator To Yiu-ming said this LegCo was essentially chosen by the CCP.

“They are all from different sectors, but they are all basically fellow travelers,” To said. “Now, Beijing has peace of mind, because it controls LegCo completely.”

He said the fact that some lawmakers took their oaths in Mandarin, rather than Hong Kong’s lingua franca, Cantonese, further reflects the shift in power in LegCo.

“This means that in future, Beijing will allow people who don’t speak Cantonese to sit in LegCo,” To said. “Just as in the British colonial era, [some] didn’t understand Cantonese and took their oaths in English.”

“The reason is the same; it shows that the focus of power in LegCo has completely shifted … to center on the CCP,” he said.

A recent public opinion poll by the Hong Kong Institute of Public Opinion (PORI) showed falling interest in politics among the wider population, with only 26 percent of people saying they were concerned about political matters.

Former Yau Tsim Mong District Councillor Owan Li said the result was likely the result of learned helplessness amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent under the national security law.

“They can’t feel invested in their political system, or in social issues and current affairs, or even participate in it, so it’s better to do something that is within their control,” Li told RFA.

“They just think, OK, I won’t care, forget it: if I make enough money, I can emigrate.”

A recent opinion poll by the Democratic Party found that around 58 percent of people no longer like living in Hong Kong, while one percent had plans to emigrate within the next three years.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.