Day: March 9, 2022

Thailand has agreed in principle to buy more electricity from Laos after the two Southeast Asian neighbors signed an agreement that expands energy cooperation between the two Mekong River neighbors.

The memorandum of understanding, signed by both countries’ respective ministers of energy March 4, promotes clean energy, and creates more opportunities to invest in Laos’ energy sector, an official of the Lao Ministry of Energy and Mines told RFA’s Lao Service Monday.

Laos has staked its future on power generation in a controversial bid to become “The Battery of Southeast Asia,” exporting electricity from more than 50 large and small-scale dams on the Mekong River and its tributaries.

Selling the excess energy has been a problem for heavily indebted Laos, which has agreements to buy the power from the dams at a fixed rate, but sells it at market rates, which has been lower due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Though the agreement paves the way for Thailand to purchase more power from Laos, prices still must be negotiated.

“The next step will be for each dam developer to negotiate prices and a power purchase agreement directly with the buyer, Thailand,” the Lao energy official said on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

The energy official also said that Laos plans to build even more dams including at least five more on the Mekong River mainstream. Though he acknowledged that selling energy from the dams has been difficult recently as neighboring countries have their own power surpluses. Thailand, however, remains Laos’ largest market.

Laos’ state-run power company Électricité du Laos (EDL) is optimistic about the deal, an EDL official told RFA.

“Data shows that the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand is the most reliable buyer of our power,” the EDL official said.

Environmentalist opposition

Thai environmental advocacy groups criticized the agreement, saying that it would promote more degradation of the Mekong River’s ecology and impact riparian communities.

“It’s not fair. The Thai government claims that the economy will recover after the COVID-19 pandemic and electric vehicles will be on their way, so they are saying they will need more power. But that’s just what they claim,” Witoon Permpongsacharoen from the Mekong River Energy and Ecology Network in Thailand told RFA.

“Laos on the other hand isn’t listening to any criticism. Its government always believes that building dams is the only way that they can develop the country, but that’s not always true,” Permpongsacharoen said.

He pointed out that Thailand has a 41 percent surplus of power, and it doesn’t need more from Laos.

“The Thai government made this decision only for the interest of the Thai investors. They don’t care about the environmental and social impact of this deal. They don’t care that the dams are going to make climate change worse and create more methane in our air,” he said.

The move only helps dam developers, a member of the Love Chiang Khong Group, a Thai riparian activist organization told RFA.

“We in this group have been aggressively opposed to all these dams. It’s clear that the investors who are going to build dams in Laos do not care about the people,” said the activist, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

“We’re going to continue to fight against these dams and for the people, not to mention all the aquatic species and wildlife in the Mekong region,” the activist said.

According to a report published by the Lao Ministry of Energy and Mines, Laos has contracts to sell power to most of its neighbors, with Thailand on the hook for 10,500 megawatts. Laos is projected to be able to produce as high as 28,000 megawatts by 2030.

Laos has built dozens of hydropower dams on the Mekong River and its tributaries in pursuit of its controversial economic plans.

Though the Lao government sees power generation as a means to boost the country’s economy, the projects have faced criticism because of their environmental impact, displacement of villagers and questionable financial arrangements.

Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Australia is to build a new submarine base on the east coast of the country to support its new nuclear-powered submarines, the Australian prime minister says.

Last September, the Australian government announced a plan to acquire at least eight nuclear submarines as part of the newly-established trilateral security arrangement between Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. (AUKUS).

At that time, China criticized the AUKUS deal, describing it as “extremely irresponsible” and “intensifying the arms race.”

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in a joint statement with Minister of Defense Peter Dutton late on Monday that the future east coast submarine base “would enhance Australia’s strategic deterrent capability in the Pacific Ocean.”

Australia already runs a submarine base in Fleet Base West in Garden island, off the Western Australia coast, home of its navy’s six Collins-class submarines.

“Fleet Base West will remain home to our current and future submarines, given its strategic importance on the Indian Ocean,” said Morrison.

The Australian government has identified three locations for the new submarine base on the east coast: Brisbane, Newcastle, and Port Kembla.

It is estimated that more than AU$10 billion (US$7.3 billion) will be needed for facility and infrastructure development, including the new submarine base, according to the Australian Ministry of Defense.

The eight planned nuclear submarines would cost AU$70 billion (US$ 51.2 billion) at an “absolute minimum” and could be as much as AU$171 billion (US$125 billion), according to a report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, or ASPI, Canberra-based think  tank.

Morrison said that under the AUKUS partnership, Australia “will have access to the best technology in the world to support our efforts to deter threats against our national interest in the Indo-Pacific.”

AUKUS, set up to address regional security concerns, is widely viewed as an effort to counter China’s influence.

Quad ‘not set up to focus on Europe’

In an address to the Lowy Institute, another Australian think tank, also on Monday, Morrison said, “Australia faces it’s most difficult and dangerous security environment in 80 years.” He was referring to the ongoing crisis in Europe and the broader challenge to the world order that “will inevitably stretch to the Indo-Pacific.”

Australia is also a member of another strategic grouping that hedges against a rising China – the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) – together with the U.S., India and Japan.

Scott Morrison and three other Quad leaders held a virtual meeting last Thursday to discuss the implications of the war in Europe specifically for the Indo-Pacific.

With India refusing to condemn Russia’s aggression, there have been concerns about a rift within the Quad.

Morrison said that “there are powerful actors in our region who are watching closely, looking for signs of weakness and division within the West,” implying the need to refocus and strengthen the partnership.

He said that the Quad “wasn’t set up to focus on Europe” but “to focus on strategic issues, on humanitarian issues, economic development issues in the Indo-Pacific.”

Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst on defense and security at ASPI, said the meeting last week “marked the limits of the Quad’s ability to coordinate on key issues of concern outside of an Indo-Pacific context.”

“It does highlight that the Quad won’t necessarily be a global actor in its own right,” he said.

Tibetan children returning to their schools after winter break are now entering classes taught only in Chinese, as authorities push forward with policies that critics say are aimed at weakening students’ connection to their native language and culture.

Teachers are also being given workshops on how to start teaching children in the Chinese language, a Tibetan source living in the region told RFA this week.

“The intention behind these changes is to brainwash the students,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“For example, in Tibet’s capital Lhasa, all the subjects in schools are now being taught in Chinese. I once asked the students in some of these schools what they thought about this, and most of them replied that they preferred being taught in Tibetan,” he said.

Textbooks have now all been translated into Chinese in the Golog (in Chinese, Guoluo) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of northwestern China’s Qinghai province, the source said.  “And except for classes on the Tibetan language itself, all other subjects like math, science and the fine arts are all being taught in Chinese.”

Some of these texts had already been translated by the beginning of the last academic year, another source from Tibet said in a written message received by RFA. “But now the emphasis on teaching in Chinese has increased in all Tibetan schools, and the political ideology of Chinese president Xi Jinping is now a key theme for instruction.”

Chinese authorities are suppressing public discussion of these changes in order to prevent protests by parents and others concerned at their impact on younger Tibetans’ connection to their national culture and identity, the source added.

Monasteries in Qinghai have already been banned from teaching language classes to young Tibetans during their holidays from school, and authorities in the province and in neighboring Sichuan have also closed down private schools offering instruction in Tibetan, forcing students into government-run schools where they are taught exclusively in Chinese, sources say.

“These changes and new policies began to be introduced in Tibetan schools a long time ago, but the Chinese government is now being highly secretive about them,” said Pema Gyal, a researcher at London-based Tibet Watch.

“The Chinese Communist Party has enforced various political reeducation campaigns and other education drives in Tibet, but none of these accomplished what they were intended to, so now they are going to try brainwashing Tibetans from a very young age,” he said.

Government efforts to supplant local language education with teaching in Chinese have raised anger not only among Tibetans, but also in the Turkic-language-speaking Uyghur community of Xinjiang and in northern China’s Inner Mongolia.

Plans to end the use of the Mongolian language in ethnic Mongolian schools 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.”

Formerly an independent nation, Tibet was invaded and incorporated into China by force 70 years ago.

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 deemed “illegal associations” and teachers subject to detention and arrest, sources say.

Reported by RFA’s Tibetan Service. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Richard Finney.

Authorities in Hong Kong scrambled to try to control soaring COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday, as plans for compulsory mass testing of seven million people appear to have been put on hold.

The city reported 195 new COVID-19-linked deaths in the last 24 hours on Wednesday, with an additional 25,991 new cases confirmed during the past 24 hours.

“As of 0.00am, March 9, a total of 2,656 deaths related to COVID-19 during the fifth wave (since Dec. 31, 2021) was recorded … Hong Kong has so far recorded a total of 2 869 deaths related to COVID-19,” the city’s Centre for Health Protection (CHP) said in a statement.

“There is a continuous increase in the number of cases involving mutant strains that carry higher transmissibility,” a CHP spokesman said. “With the higher transmissibility and risk of infection of the Omicron mutant strain, the CHP strongly appeals to the community to continue to comply with the social distancing measures, avoid going out and refrain from participating in unnecessary or crowded activities or gatherings (particularly religious or cross-family activities and gatherings).”

The high death rate is likely linked to relatively low levels of vaccination in the city, which has only offered its residents Chinese-made vaccines to date, amid growing calls for imported vaccines to be on offer as well.

Former public doctors’ union leader Arisina Ma, now based in the U.K., said the Hong Kong government had mostly offered inactivated vaccines for COVID-19, for which immunity had waned considerably in recent month.

She said the high death rate in Hong Kong is definitely due to low uptake of vaccinations.

“I know some people were worried that mRNA vaccination could affect their genes, but there are two other vaccines on the market that are recombinant protein vaccines, made by Novavax and Medigen of Taiwan, yet the Hong Kong government has never imported them,” Ma said. “These vaccines can be stored between six and eight degrees C, yet they just insist on sticking with those two [Chinese-made] vaccines.”

“How are they going to break through public reluctance if they don’t offer a different vaccine?”

Preparing beds

Tony Ko, chief executive of the Hospital Authority, said the authorities are switching over large numbers of hospital beds to designated COVID-19 wards.

“Our target is to convert about 50 percent of all our inpatient beds at general hospitals to be able to accommodate COVID patients,” Ko told a news conference on Wednesday. “The other major initiative is to arrange some hospitals to be designated hospitals.”

North Lantau and Tin Shui Wai hospitals have already been converted to COVID treatment centers, while Queen Elizabeth Hospital will soon follow suit, Ko said.

The government is also rushing to build facilities for COVID-19 patients, Reuters cited drone footage as showing, after a temporary bridge was laid linking the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen to Hong Kong.

“Drone footage over the rural Hong Kong district of Lok Ma Chau close to the border with China showed … dozens of makeshift tents and a steady stream of trucks taking materials across the new bridge were also visible as building at the site ramps up to construct a temporary hospital with 1,000 beds and quarantine facilities for 10,000 people,” the agency reported.

A top Chinese health official warned on Tuesday that the city’s health system was at risk and the situation had to be turned around as soon as possible, urging the government to stick to the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s zero-COVID strategy.

In an interview with state news agency Xinhua, Liang Wannian, who heads the mainland Chinese COVID-19 taskforce in Hong Kong, said the government should first focus on “reducing transmission, reducing severe cases and reducing deaths,” before worrying about a promised mass compulsory testing program.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.