Day: March 25, 2022

China has accused the U.S. of intensifying spying activities in the disputed South China Sea after the U.S. Navy deployed three of its ocean surveillance vessels in the region.

An aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, also entered the South China Sea on Friday, ahead of the large-scale Philippines-U.S. joint military exercise Balikatan 22.

Data provided by the ship-tracking website MarineTraffic show the ocean survey ship USNS Bowditch is currently operating in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), 60 nautical miles east of Danang and about 90 nautical miles south of China’s Hainan Island.

At the same time, another ocean surveillance vessel, the USNS Effective, is in waters northwest of the Philippines, 250 nautical miles from Scarborough Shoal, which China calls Huangyan Island.

The third ocean surveillance ship, USNS Loyal, is in the sea east of Taiwan.

China’s state-run Global Times said they are “spy ships” that carry out reconnaissance in support of anti-submarine warfare against China. They have been in the area since March 17, it said.

“The U.S. Navy has frequently sent spy vessels near China in recent years, but it is unusual to see so many of them present at the same time,” Global Times said.

Amid the raging war in Ukraine, the deployment of the ships may serve as an indication of the U.S. commitment in the Indo-Pacific.

‘Spy ships’

The USNS Bowditch is a Pathfinder-class survey ship that has often been deployed in the South China Sea. The USNS Effective and USNS Loyal are both Victorious-class ocean surveillance ships.

The ships measure water conditions and deploy underwater drones that take very detailed measurements of water temperature, salinity, the acoustic environment and the water’s chemical make-up. They also conduct very detailed surveys of the ocean bottom. 

“The ships’ data can be used to detect submarines and identify ships’ noises, so from China’s perspective they are spy ships,” said Carl Schuster, a retired U.S. Navy captain and former director of operations at the U.S. Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.

“China’s survey ships do similar operations so in many ways, China’s description of the American ships provides an insight into how China uses its survey ships,” he said.

MarineTraffic also shows that a Chinese survey vessel has just been deployed.

China’s homegrown third-generation, spacecraft-tracking ship Yuanwang-5 is currently in waters east of Taiwan, some 255 nautical miles from the island.

It’s unclear where the ship, described by the Chinese military as “a backbone in China’s maritime tracking and measuring network,” is heading.

China has four Yuanwang-class tracking ships in active operation, including Yuanwang-5 which entered service in 2007.

Some security analysts, like Paul Buchanan at the Auckland, New Zealand-based 36th Parallel Assessments risk consultancy, say the Yuanwang-class ships are “dual-platform spy ships.”

Buchanan has previously been quoted by the NZ Herald as saying the ships are used for intelligence collection and tracking satellites. He said 60 to 70 per cent of their work is looking for other people’s signals and 30 per cent is the satellite work. Buchanan also said the U.S. and China use their signals collection ships partly to track rival submarines.

In another development, the American expeditionary mobile base USS Miguel Keith entered the South China Sea on March 21, the Beijing-based South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI), a think tank, said.

This is the first time the USS Miguel Keith entered the South China Sea since its deployment to the West Pacific in October 2021, the SCSPI said.

The 90,000-ton ship that can serve as a strategic platform and command center is the second-biggest ship type in the U.S. Navy after aircraft carriers.

It is unclear if the USS Miguel Keith will join the Balikatan 22 joint exercise between the U.S. and Philippine armies taking place from March 28 to April 8 across the Luzon Strait.

With over 5,000 U.S. military personnel and 3,800 Filipino soldiers, the U.S. Embassy in Manila said that Balikatan 22 will be “one of the largest-ever iterations of the Philippine-led annual exercise” which this year coincides with the 75th anniversary of U.S.-Philippine security cooperation.

Cambodia’s information minister has told government press officers not to discriminate against members of the media, saying that they need to give comments on a timely basis, though independent reporters contend that the spokespeople refuse to respond when asked tough questions.

Minister of Information Khieu Kanahrith told officials at a workshop on Tuesday to step up their communication with journalists and not treat them as enemies, but rather cooperate and provide comments so the press can report accurate information.

He also said government spokespersons who work for state institutes must disseminate information regularly to avoid the publication of fake news.

“Spokesmen must respond in a timely manner in order to disseminate the information widely to the public and people at the grassroots level,” said Khieu Kanahrith, who has served in his current position since July 2004.

The veteran politician previous held the lower rank of secretary of state of the Information Ministry from 1994 to 2004, though it was widely acknowledged that he was the most powerful figure in the ministry. He also served as a member of parliament for Kandal and Kampong Cham provinces and Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh. Since September 2018, he has again served as an MP from Kampong Cham.

Though Cambodia is a constitutional monarchy with a charter proclaiming it a liberal, multiparty democracy, the government of autocratic Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Cambodian People’s Party have weakened the independent media, along with political opponents and civil society groups, to remain in power.

Media professionals, including former Radio Free Asia journalists Uon Chhin and Yeang Sothearin, faced false charges in the run-up to the country’s 2018 general election as part of a government crackdown. Independent news outlets and radio stations were banned, while journalists at other news organizations were purged.

Independent journalists say that government spokespeople welcome only positive and easy questions from the reporters while ignoring tough questions.

Freelancer Min Pov told RFA on Thursday that some government officials don’t share information with independent reporters and at times have resorted to suing the journalists.

He said that it is difficult to get responses from spokespeople when he writes investigative pieces, especially when it involves something negative about the government of Hun Sen, who has ruled the country for more than 35 years.

“So far, there are only a few government officials who talk to us,” Min Pov said. “When they do, it means that they are giving information to the public.”

They ‘don’t take phone calls’

Nop Vy, founder and executive director of the Cambodian Journalists Alliance (Cambo-JA), the first independent membership-based network of journalists and media professionals in the country, told RFA on Thursday that government press officers are biased giving pro-government reporters easy access, while ignoring independent media.

He urged government spokespeople to cooperate and provide information to all reporters to ensure that society is fully informed about their government.

“So far, some ministry spokesmen have refused to talk or they don’t respond or don’t take phone calls,” Nop Vy said. “They are spokesmen, but they choose not to speak with reporters about sensitive information involving the government.”

Ministry of Justice spokesman Chin Malin refuses to speak with reporters and only posts comments on his personal Facebook account.

Hun Manet, the son of Hun Sen and a prime minister candidate in the 2023 general elections, said at a recent public gathering that he doesn’t speak with reporters over the phone and asked that they not waste minutes on their cell phones by trying to reach him.

Khieu Sopheak and National Police spokesman Chhay Kim Khoeun have refused to talk to RFA reporters, saying that the U.S. government-funded news organization is biased. RFA closed its bureau in Cambodia in 2017 amid a crackdown on media and civil society.

RFA could not reach Information Ministry spokesman Meas Sophorn for comment on Thursday, but government spokesman Phay Siphan said training is being provided to communications officials to ensure they cooperate with reporters in a timely fashion.

The government also is drafting a law to promote open access to information, he said.

“We are creating a mechanism,” Phay Siphan said. “So far, we have been doing press conferences from the commune level to the ministries and have been responding to matters that people want to know about.”

Journalists in Cambodia also face harassment from other authorities, including police, while doing their jobs.

The Cambodian Center for Independent Media and the Overseas Press Club of Cambodia in February condemned the intimidation and threat of arrest of a foreign journalist reporting on labor strike activities in Phnom Penh, saying it was the latest documented violation of press freedom in Cambodia.

“When authorities arbitrarily use their power and infringe on the freedom of the press, society suffers from a lack of freely available news and information,” the groups said in a statement issued Feb. 10. “We call for an end to any such arbitrary abuse of power, as well as harassment and threats against our colleagues. We call for independent investigations into any such violations.”

Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders ranked Cambodia 144 out of 180 countries in its 2021 World Press Freedom Index.

Reported by RFA’s Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

China has ordered schools to support the Russian invasion of Ukraine, supported what analysts termed a “bizarre” motion from Russia in the United Nations Security Council, while at the same time suspending talks on potential energy investments in Russia by state-owned Sinopec.

“In order to improve the comprehensive analysis and research capabilities of ideological and political teachers on current affairs hot topics, so they can accurately take a principled stance and calibrate the situation in Ukraine and effectively guide students … Zhejiang University’s School of Marxism will hold a collective lesson preparation seminar,” a March 24 directive from the university’s propaganda department said.

The seminar was aimed at “full-time and part-time teachers of ideological and political courses,” said the notice.

Meanwhile, a similar document was posted and signed by the provincial education department in the eastern province Shandong, including such topics as “political corruption in Ukraine,” “how Nazis killed 14,000 people in Ukraine and eastern Russia,” and “how the United States started the Russia-Ukraine tragedy.”

The topics were largely in line with both Russian and Chinese state media output on the war, which is being blamed on eastward expansion by NATO, rather than on the Russian decision to invade, and which includes allegations that the U.S. was researching biological weapons in a network of laboratories across Ukraine. Washington has dismissed the reports as disinformation.

The Shandong document gave the following summary of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official line on the war in Ukraine.

“Since 2014 [the Ukraine government] implemented a series of irrational foreign policies, incited hatred of Russia, started producing weapons of mass destruction, and sought to join NATO,” the document said.

Teachers are also expected to espouse — and teach — the view that “five eastward expansions of NATO has compressed Russia’s strategic space and backed the country into a corner.”

“The United States has provided Ukraine with U.S.$2.7 billion in militarized aid … which has intensified tensions between Russia and Ukraine,” the Shandong document said. “The U.S. provoked Russia into launching a war.”

“Putin threw one punch to avoid a hundred more,” it said.

Following a meeting between Russian president Vladimir Putin and CCP general secretary Xi Jinping in February, the bilateral relationship was described by China’s vice foreign minister Le Yucheng as “constantly rising to new levels, with no upper limit.”

Bogus Russian motion

China’ ideological campaign at home came as Beijing voted for a draft resolution by Russia tabled at the United Nations Security Council calling attention to the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine but failing to mention its role as the invading power. The motion was defeated after receiving only two votes: Russia’s and China’s.

Analysts said the motion was an attempt by Russia to absolve itself of responsibility for the war, while China said there was a need to form a consensus on humanitarian grounds despite political differences.

“Russia’s move was aimed at shedding its moral responsibility and to ask for the rest of the world to endorse its invasion of Ukraine,” Shih told RFA. “What’s bizarre is that it turns the situation into a war between two parties who don’t want ordinary people to suffer the destruction brought by war, so are calling on others to help out the refugees and ordinary people.”

“It will be harder to confront Russia if it plays the role of rescuer,” he said.

Shih said the presence of Russia, which holds the power of veto on the security council, would make it impossible for the U.N. to send peacekeeping forces into Ukraine.

“[Also], if other countries carry out humanitarian aid on its behalf, that will help Russia towards a military defeat of Ukraine,” Shih said. “So nobody was going to agree to that.”

One the other hand, Russia was able to veto motions by France and other countries condemning the invasion. “It won’t recognize itself as the aggressor here,” he said.

Beijing’s goodwill towards the Kremlin only seems to extend so far, however.

China’s state-run Sinopec Group has suspended talks for a major petrochemical investment and a gas marketing venture in Russia,  Reuters reported on Friday.

“The move by Asia’s biggest oil refiner to hit the brakes on a potentially half-billion-dollar investment in a gas chemical plant and a venture to market Russian gas in China highlights the risks, even to Russia’s most important diplomatic partner, of unexpectedly heavy Western-led sanctions,” the agency reported.

Taking Russia backwards

Beijing has repeatedly opposed international sanctions against Russia and refused to term Russia’s war as an invasion or its actions in Ukraine.

But the CCP is keen to protect its own economy from their economic impact nonetheless.

The report came after U.S. President Joe Biden said on Thursday that China knows its economic future is tied to the West, after warnings from Washington that Beijing could regret siding with Russia.

Chinese political commentator Chen Pokong said Xi is planning to seek a third term in office at the CCP Party Congress later this year, comparing his extension of time in power to that of Putin.

“Putin’s extended re-elections, indefinite re-elections and long-term rule have taught the rest of the world a painful lesson and taken Russian backwards and brought war and danger to the rest of the world,” Chen wrote in a commentary aired on RFA.

“Any leader who is obsessed with power and seeks to rule for a long time or for life, regardless of their excuse, will, without exception, bring harm and disaster to their country and people, and quite possibly on the whole of humanity,” he said.

“Deep down in their hearts, dictators only care about their own power, fame and fortune, and not about the safety or well-being of the people, let alone the interests of humanity,” Chen wrote.

Chieh Chung, a research fellow at the National Policy Foundation on the democratic island of Taiwan, said the big question was whether China would provide military assistance to Russia.

“I don’t think Russia lacks conventional ammunition; their problem now is that they can’t warehouse these materials and send them to the front line,” Chieh told RFA.

“If China wants to give Russia military assistance, it won’t be in the form of major weapon’s systems,” he said, adding that much of China’s weaponry is homegrown and incompatible with Russian systems, as well as being easily identifiable.

Electronic components or parts are more likely, as they can’t easily be categorized into purely military or civilian in nature.

Former Soviet-era military officer Aqil Rustamzade has predicted that the Russian military will soon run out of electronic components, leaving it potentially unable even to hit any targets within weeks.

Taiwan has now placed an export ban, in line with international sanctions, on its GPS systems that are currently being used by the Russian army, and which Russia can’t produce by itself, he said, predicting that stocks are likely to run out soon.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Nearly a quarter of Hong Kong residents have plans to leave the city for good, amid ongoing concerns over a lack of personal freedoms and a deteriorating political environment, a leading public opinion research institute said on Friday.

Twenty-four percent of respondents to a March 21-24 survey of 6,723 Hong Kong permanent residents aged 12 or over by Hong Kong’s Public Opinion Research Institute (PORI) said they were definitely emigrating, while a further 21 percent said they were either preparing or were planning but not yet ready to leave.

Three percent said they could leave at any time.

“This time we found that 24 percent are either preparing, ready, or have made plans [to leave permanently],” PORI’s deputy CEO Chung Kim-Wah told a news conference. “Speaking frankly, [that’s] definitely not a small number.”

“Given that 24 percent plan to leave, that’s 1.87 million people out of a population of 7.5 million,” he said. “The most important factor is politics, more so than the pandemic.”

Just over one-third of those who planned to emigrate cited diminishing personal freedoms in recent years, with 16 percent citing fears for their family’s future, PORI researchers told a news conference.

Some 17 percent of those with plans to emigrate said they weren’t supporters of former pro-democracy parties or opposition politics, a rise of five percentage points since the last survey in August 2021.

Another reason cited was lack of confidence in the city’s economic future, and a lack of confidence in the political environment in mainland China under the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Strong political push-factor

Chung said the survey points to ongoing “social disintegration” in Hong Kong, with political factors the biggest consideration for those planning to leave for good.

“The economic pull factor is weaker than it was, and the politics-related push factor is stronger than before,” Chung told journalists.

Chung said he has witnessed three waves of emigration in Hong Kong.

“I have never seen the political push-factor as strong as it is this time,” he said, noting that more than 70 percent of respondents had cited fears for their personal freedoms or safety as reasons for leaving, with just 30 percent citing economic damage due to COVID-19 restrictions.

He said more than half of respondents said they had “no confidence” in Hong Kong’s political environment or in their future level of personal freedom.

Independent scholar Benson Wong, who spoke via video link from the U.K., said it was significant that even growing numbers of pro-government people were also planning to leave.

He said the non-democratic respondents had also said they expect more from that political camp to leave in future.

Daily departures

Hong Kong’s population fell by 1.2 percent in the 12 months to August 2021, amid an ongoing exodus of people in the wake of a draconian national security law imposed on the city by Beijing from July 1, 2020.

Government statistics showed the city’s population fell by just over 87,000, to 7,394,700, as hundreds, sometimes thousands, of net departures continue to be recorded every day. The previous year’s figures also showed a decline of 1.2 percent.

Net departures have regularly reached 2,000 ahead of key visa deadlines for the United Kingdom, with net arrivals rarely reported since the national security law criminalized public criticism of the government, political opposition and other forms of activism.

The exodus has hit the city’s healthcare sector, with the Hospital Authority (HA) reporting the loss of 4.6 percent of doctors and 6.5 percent of nurses in public hospitals, and large numbers of mainland Chinese medical personnel being drafted in to help beleaguered public hospitals with the current COVID-19 wave.

Families and emigration consultants have also told RFA that the government’s introduction of compulsory CCP-backed “civic and social development” curriculum, alongside “national security education,” in Hong Kong’s schools was the key factor in their decision to leave.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Funeral observances for a popular Tibetan lama were blocked early this year by Chinese police who barred devotees from attending and deleted images of the religious leader that were shared online, RFA has learned.

Choktrul Dawa Rinpoche, 86, died on Jan. 30 at his residence in the Tibetan capital Lhasa and immediately entered a state called thukdam, in which an accomplished meditator’s consciousness is believed to remain in the body for a period of time, a source in Tibet told RFA this week.

“But the Chinese government tried to keep Rinpoche’s demise as secret as possible, and warned people not to share news of his death online,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“Also, pictures and videos of Rinpoche already published online were quickly deleted by the Chinese government,” he added.

A senior teacher at the Ganden Dargyeling monastery in Nagchu (in Chinese, Naqu) county in the Tibet Autonomous Region, Choktrul Dawa Rinpoche was sentenced in 2010 to seven years in prison for discussing affairs at his monastery with Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, now living in exile in India.

“And following his release, he was kept under constant scrutiny by Chinese authorities for the rest of his life,” the source said.

When Rinpoche’s thukdam ended on Jan. 13, Chinese security officers were sent to guard his residence and barred devotees from paying their respects, only allowing residents of Lhasa to enter the house, according to the source.

“Then, after numerous appeals from Rinpoche’s students, the Chinese government allowed his body to be moved from Lhasa to the Ganden Dargyeling monastery in Nagchu on Jan. 18. However, only two vehicles were allowed to escort him there.”

“And later only a few Tibetans were permitted to pay their respects, which led to a brief commotion between the Tibetan devotees and the Chinese police,” the source said. Only monks from Rinpoche’s own monastery were permitted to attend his cremation on Jan. 25, and were searched for cell phones before the ceremony to ensure no photos were taken, he added.

Born in Nagchu in 1937, Choktrul Dawa Rinpoche had earlier served five years in prison after being sentenced in 1960 for opposing China’s occupation of Tibet, and was jailed again for seven years during China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).

Tibet was invaded and incorporated into China by force 70 years ago, and Tibetans living in Tibet frequently complain of discrimination and human rights abuses by Chinese authorities and policies they say are aimed at eradicating their national and cultural identity.

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