Day: November 4, 2022

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz briefly addressed human rights while in Beijing on Friday for a meeting with Chinese leaders, but Uyghur and other rights groups said he didn’t go far enough.

Meeting with Communist Party leader after Xi Jinping, who last month began his third five-year term in office, Scholz urged China to stand up for the international order and put pressure on Russia to end its war against Ukraine, according to a report by Politico Europe.

At a joint press conference Friday with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Scholz told reporters that he was concerned about China closing off sectors of its international economy to foreign competition and not respecting intellectual property, the report said.

Scholz also called on China to respect human rights, saying Beijing could not escape the international ramifications of its treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang by calling it an internal matter.

“Human rights are interference in international affairs,” he said, according to Germany’s Suddeutsche Zeitung.

Later Friday, the Group of Seven foreign ministers, which includes Germany and the United States, issued a statement in Münster, Germany, that touched on China’s human rights record. 

“We will continue to raise our concerns with China on its reported human rights violations and abuses, including in Xinjiang and Tibet,” the statement said. “We reiterate our concerns over the continued erosion of Hong Kong’s rights, freedoms and autonomy, and call on China to act in accordance with its international commitments and legal obligations.”

Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, expressed dismay that Scholz touched only briefly on the topic of human rights, and that his accompanying delegation included only business representatives and no human rights experts.

“It is extremely disappointing to state that the genocide of the Uyghurs is due to a different understanding of human rights,” Isa said in the statement. “Germany must now act together with its international partners to hold the Chinese government accountable.”  

The World Uyghur Congress as well as Tibet Initiative Germany, Freiheit für Hongkong e.V. and the Society for Threatened Peoples criticized Scholz’s entire trip to China, saying that reporters at the news conference were not given an opportunity to ask questions.

Earlier this week, 70 human rights organizations issued an open letter urging Scholz to reconsider his trip to China amid growing human rights concerns. They noted that an accompanying delegation of several top German executives implied that Berlin was increasing its economic dependence on an authoritarian government at the expense of democratic principles, including upholding human rights.  

“The invitation of a German trade delegation to join your visit will be viewed as an indication that Germany is ready to deepen trade and economic links, at the cost of human rights and international law,” they wrote in the memo, published by Germany-based World Uyghur Congress. 

In calling for Scholz to reconsider his visit, the groups said: “This would send the clearest signal that Germany, as one of the leading members of the European Union, will not offer its tacit endorsement to the ongoing oppression of Uyghurs, Hong Kongers, Tibetans, and other groups within and outside the PRC’s borders,” using the initials for the People’s Republic of China, the country’s formal name.

The United States and several Western parliaments have said China’s mistreatment of the Uyghurs, including mass arbitrary detentions, torture and forced labor, amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity. 

A damning report issued by the U.N.’s human rights chief in late August documented widespread rights abuses in Xinjiang and said the repression “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”

Later on Monday, when a reporter at a regular news conference asked Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian if the two leaders discussed issues related to human rights and the rights of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, he said China had issued a readout about the meeting. But the document made no mention of the Uyghurs, Xinjiang or human rights.

Vietnamese lawyer Ngo Anh Tuan spoke to RFA about a Nov. 1 meeting with U.S. officials in the run-up to the 26th U.S.-Vietnam Human Rights Dialogue. 

On Nov. 1, Vietnamese rights lawyer Ngo Anh Tuan attended a meeting between representatives from the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, the U.S. Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City and family members of several jailed political dissidents at the eve of the 26th U.S.-Vietnam Human Rights Dialogue held on Nov. 2. Radio Free Asia spoke to him about the meeting on Nov. 3. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. 

RFA: What were your recommendations for the U.S. government at the meeting regarding human rights in Vietnam?

Ngo Anh Tuan:  The meeting was held on the eve of the annual U.S.-Vietnam Human Rights Dialogue. I came to the meeting at their [the U.S. government’s] invitation and was the only lawyer there. I can’t repeat what I said verbatim but here are the key things that I raised:

Firstly, Vietnam should hold dialogues with political dissidents and utilize their knowledge and talents for the country’s development. President Ho Chi Minh did this after establishing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which had been seen as an appropriate policy. Unfortunately, they [the current Vietnamese government] don’t do it now.

Secondly, [Vietnam] has to amend or remove the harsh provisions relating to freedom of speech in its current Penal Code as they contradict Vietnam’s 2013 Constitution and human rights treaties to which Vietnam is a signatory.

Thirdly, [Vietnam] must immediately stop using its Departments of Information and Communications (DOICs) to assess people’s thoughts and ideologies and accuse them [instead of] investigation and procuracy agencies and judges. As long as these practices aren’t eliminated, DOIC assessors should be summoned to trials to clarify what they have assessed and respond to defense lawyers. Currently, DOIC assessors avoid attending hearings. While the current law stipulates that all the evidence to accuse a defendant must be clarified at the trial, I’ve never seen any judiciary assessors at any trials that I have attended.

RFA: Were there any lawyers giving similar recommendations? What are your expectations for the implementation of these recommendations?

Ngo Anh Tuan:  I did not ask how many lawyers they had invited but I was the only lawyer at the meeting.

I don’t expect all of my recommendations will be implemented right away as it would be too ambitious for a dialogue like this. It would also be challenging to realize the easiest thing in my first recommendation. Some minor issues can be done at the moment.

RFA: Suppose they could only implement one of the three recommendations, which one would you like to prioritize?

Ngo Anh Tuan: We want all of them to be implemented. However, what I think they can do now is the third one, i.e., the assessment of people’s thoughts and ideologies. I believe people from investigative agencies, the procuracy and the courts realize this legal flaw. If assessors are allowed to [freely] make accusations, they will be able to easily charge people for so many things. It is unacceptable that they [the assessors] examine the ideological side and then conclude the objective side of a crime. By doing so, they have made accusations before [the judicial system]. This goes against all legal principles of both Vietnam and the world.

Lawyers have raised this issue many times with them and I think they also want a change. However, they won’t be able to do so if the current regulations are not amended.

RFA: Lawyers often encounter unpleasant or even illegal acts from authorities. Why didn’t you raise this issue in your recommendations?

Ngo Anh Tuan:  I think the oppression against lawyers is not that serious but the disrespect for lawyers is a matter of fact. However, we [lawyers] put clients’ interests before ours. If we face difficulties, we still can fight against them while our clients are in much more disadvantaged situations. Our clients and ordinary people out there are much more vulnerable and disadvantaged than us. It is more appropriate for the Vietnam Bar Federation or provincial bar associations to speak up for lawyers’ rights. I choose to speak up for people’s rights as people’s interests should outweigh lawyers’.

RFA:  You have said that freedom and democracy won’t come without effort and we have to create them and create opportunities for people around us instead of waiting for others to bring freedom and democracy to us. Could you elaborate on this?

Ngo Anh Tuan:  I believe most intellectuals are knowledgeable enough to realize this but they may think this is someone else’s job, not theirs. They also understand that we need to join hands to make the country a better place but they also think it’s OK if that does not include their hands. A Vietnamese saying goes: “Lead the charge if it’s a party. Follow others if it’s a march across waters.” They would think: As the pioneers have raised their hand, we can stand behind them and will raise our hand when success is almost there.

Politics is not something super. It affects everyone, including us and our family members. For example, an inappropriate administrative decision creates difficulties for ordinary people, including us. Familiar things like land and salary issues are also politics. Society will be better if everyone speaks up against injustice and wrongdoings. Everyone can make contributions but many chose to forgo their rights. If everyone thinks we don’t need to speak up since the person next to us will do it, society, of course, will be at a standstill.

RFA:  Do you hope that human rights in Vietnam will be improved after each human rights dialogue between the U.S. and Vietnam?

Ngo Anh Tuan: In this meeting, an officer asked me if they [the U.S. government] could help in any way. I bluntly asked back: Why did you ask that question? Can you really help?

I also attended a similar meeting with the EU’s representatives before their human rights dialogue with Vietnam which seems to not have borne many fruits. Meanwhile, Ms. Erin Barclay, a senior official from the U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, was very enthusiastic. She said that the U.S. government shared my thoughts and that she would make every effort regardless of whether the issue is small or big. She said she hoped that Vietnam would make progress and that positive changes would come.

RFA: Thank you very much.

The $52 billion in recent subsidies for America’s microchip sector are necessary for U.S. national security, President Joe Biden said on Friday, recalling a visit he made to a Lockheed Martin facility that he said could not source the chips it needed to make key weapons.

The speech came as industry leaders told a trade event that American and Chinese chipmakers were both still assessing the likely impacts of the spate of recent U.S. policies impacting the chip industry, with Beijing likely weighing retaliatory measures.

Speaking in San Diego, California, Biden said the subsidies, part of the $280-billion CHIPS Act signed into law Aug. 9, were needed to restore U.S. capacity to fabricate chips that he said “power more and more of what we need,” including smartphones, cars and hospital equipment.

“America invented the computer chip, and led the industry for decades. Then something happened,” Biden said. “American companies went overseas for cheaper labor; American manufacturing got hollowed out.”

The United States couldn’t afford to rely on foreign supply chains, he said, due to the risks posed by pandemics or by “political decisions made in China, Taiwan or other places.” Such a reliance was already being exposed by U.S. efforts to arm Ukraine in its fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the country, Biden added.

“This is also a national security issue,” he said. 

“Earlier this year, I went down to a Lockheed factory in Alabama. They make Javelin missiles. Guess what? They were having trouble supplying Javelin missiles to Ukraine, because they didn’t have the chips. We didn’t have the chips to help [Ukrainians] defend themselves against Putin.”

Changing industry

The $52 billion in subsidies under the CHIPS Act have been paired with a series of export controls meant to cut China off from U.S. technologies.

Announced Oct. 13 by the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security, the rules require licenses to export chip-making technology to 28 listed Chinese entities. They target Beijing’s ability “to obtain advanced computing chips, develop and maintain supercomputers, and manufacture advanced semiconductors,” the new rules say.

The slow drip of new rules against a backdrop of massive subsidies has upended a global industry that is now worth more than $600 billion a year, according to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics.

At an event hosted by the Washington International Trade Association earlier on Friday, Jimmy Goodrich, vice president of global policy at the Semiconductor Industry Association, said the U.S. chip industry was still taking stock of the likely impact of all the new rules and subsidies.

“It’s really been a very busy, chaotic few weeks for the private sector to try to understand the scope of the rules, but also to understand how they’re going to move forward in the short, medium and long term,” Goodrich said, noting the policies arrived amid a cyclical industry downturn.

“Some private sector firms have announced forecasts next year where they might see a decline in revenue by $1 billion to $2.5 billion per company, so this is a significant set of rules in terms of commercial impact,” he said. “And of course, firms in China are struggling.”

Exacerbating concerns among American chipmakers has been the unilateral nature of the export controls, with some firms worried about a vacuum forming in the Chinese market that could be filled by producers in Europe and Asia.

A U.S. official said last month that he is confident a multilateral deal will soon be struck, but Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told firms on Thursday that it could take nine months.

Melissa Duffy, a partner for trade and national security at the Silicon Valley law firm Fenwick & West, said while many expect the United States to bring major chip makers like the Netherlands and Japan into an export control deal, the U.S. can act unilaterally in the meantime.

“The Commerce Department has expanded its jurisdiction with this rule to capture more things that are made outside the United States,” Duffy said at the Washington International Trade Association event, adding that many European and Asian chip firms rely on U.S. technology.

“So something that could be made in Europe – for instance, in the Netherlands – or made in Japan or South Korea that may not have any U.S. content in it … could still be subject to these rules if the products are based on U.S.-origin technology or software,” she said.

Threat of blowback

The question of China’s response also remains. So far, Beijing has slammed the U.S. export controls as being part of a “Cold War” mentality, but has otherwise refrained from introducing retaliatory measures.

Paul Trio, the director of international standards at SEMI, a global industry association representing electronics makers, told the event that Beijing was likely weighing its response until after next week, with key elections in the United States in Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping expected to meet on the sidelines of the G-20 meeting in Bali.

“The Chinese response is going to wait until after the U.S. midterms, and then after the Biden-Xi summit, before we can see something a little more public and maybe a little stronger,” Trio said, suggesting Beijing could limit exports of rare earths, magnets or electric vehicle components. 

“Any action there would have a lot of downside for Chinese companies and for China, too,” he said. “They’re considering all these things, but there’s a whole host of other things they can do, like regulatory changes or investigating U.S. companies, to send a clear message on this.”

More than four years after a huge dam collapsed in southern Laos, sweeping away homes and flooding villages, about 100 families are still waiting for the houses and full compensation that authorities promised them. 

Instead, they’re living in small, temporary shelters that many describe as inadequate and unstable. They say officials tell them the houses, promised for September, will be ready in December, but they’re not holding their breath.

“The handover of our homes has been postponed,” said one villager who, like other sources, requested anonymity for safety reasons. “It’s now already November, and we’re still waiting for our new homes.”

The July 23, 2018, collapse of the saddle dam at the Xe Pian-Xe Namnoy hydropower plant in Attapeu province killed 71 people and displaced more than 14,400.

Authorities pledged to build new homes for them, pay compensation and provide one to two hectares of arable land so farmers could make a living by growing rice and vegetables. Some 700 houses have been built, and many residents have been resettled, but about 100 families are still waiting, displaced villagers said.

The Lao government, which continues to plan and build hydropower dams at blistering speed despite grappling with crushing debt, has yet to rectify the problem, villagers said.

Based on the latest relief and recovery plan, Lao authorities are scheduled to complete the construction of all new permanent homes this year. The Xe Pian-Xe Namnoy Power Co. is financing the entire project at a cost of 828 billion kip, or roughly U.S.$50 million.

Another villager recalled that authorities said they would finish building all new homes and hand them over to their owners in October, but all residents of Tamayod village and Samong-Tai village are still in limbo.

“The homes have not been completed yet,” he said. “They still live in the metal shelters as usual.

Around the fourth anniversary of the disaster, Laotians affected by the flooding told RFA that while four years have been a sufficient amount of time to rebuild the saddle dam, survivors have been unable to rebuild their lives, given the lack of suitable temporary accommodations and delayed or reduced payments.

In August, other survivors told RFA that they were still struggling to scratch out a living because much of the farmland that was underwater remained unusable. 

Attapeu’s provincial governor told Lao media in early September that since the disaster, officials had completed “the most important work” by improving the living conditions of the survivors.

Work on building the remaining permanent houses is slow due to a lack of manpower, said another Laotian who lost a home during the disaster. 

“From my observation, the construction of the permanent homes is too slow and has been delayed because only a few people are working on it,” he said. “I go looking at my [new] home often, and it’s not yet finished.”

“They said that all new homes will be completed in December this year,” the source added.

The villager went on to say that government officials have not paid the sixth and final round of compensation to those affected by the dam collapse.

“They said we’ll get paid sometime in December, but I think our chances of getting it next month are very slim,” he said.

An Attapeu province official acknowledged that the construction of the remaining permanent houses has been delayed.

“We will have to postpone the handover of the homes from October to December [because of] a shortage of workers,” he told RFA Thursday.  “The workers say they’re having trouble getting paid.”

Authorities will pay the final round of compensation to affected villagers in December, he said, adding that officials are working on the matter with the Xe Pian-Xe Namnoy Power Company.

“If the company agrees with the new assessment [of the property losses], then the survivors will get compensated for the last time in the upcoming month,” the official said. “If not, we’ll have to do a new assessment. First of all, we’re speeding up the construction of the homes, then we’ll pay the compensation.”

Translated by Max Avary for RFA Lao. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Images taken from videos obtained by RFA Uyghur Service, show a new, prefabricated quarantine facility in Xinjiang in China’s west. Official figures released by the government indicate only a couple of dozen new, symptomatic cases each day in the region, which has a population of nearly 26 million.

But the construction of the facility, along with a slew of videos from the region posted on social media, suggest a broader outbreak.

In the video below, for example, an animated Ma Zhijun, the Chinese Communist Party secretary in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, orders officials to send people who test positive for the virus and anyone they had contact with into quarantine.

“Tonight the venues that have water, electricity and heat are all fine,” Ma Zhijun says in the video, which was posted to Twitter and YouTube on Oct. 20. “There’s not any limitation on the conditions.”

He says he was acting on behalf of Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Ma Xingrui, who at the time was in Beijing for China’s 20^th party congress, an event that was closely watched around the world. An outbreak may have embarrassed President Xi Jinping who continued to promote his zero-COVID policy as he was granted a precedent-breaking third term as party leader.

RFA was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the videos. 

Furtively shot clips have also surfaced online offering additional evidence of a rushed response to contain an outbreak.

The video below shows a quick scan of a dirty floor in what a woman’s voice describes as a middle school that had been turned into a makeshift quarantine facility.

“It has been three days already,” she says. “They have not given us any nuclei test. They bring food, shut the door and leave. Look at this filthy restroom.”

The following 15-second clip — uploaded onto Chinese social media app Duoyin after the clip of the secretary leaked — suggests rough quarantine conditions weren’t isolated. It shows at least nine people lying on the floor of what appears to be a bathroom.

The video was harvested online by Zumret Dawut, a Uyghur exile in the United States and activist who was imprisoned in a camp in Xinjiang, before it was removed from the app.

A fourth video obtained by RFA shows a man passing his camera over a large room in what he says is a local energy company’s building. He estimates there are as many as 1,000 people, which the clip shows are packed closely together on cots.

“No medicine is given out here,” he says.

China’s strategy for containing COVID has led to complaints of harsh treatment across the country, including in Shanghai, where after weeks of being confined to their homes, residents in April shouted out of their windows and banged pots in protest.

Last month, demonstrations in Tibet of Han Chinese migrants and native Tibetans over a lockdown resulted in Chinese authorities allowing the migrants to return to their homes. RFA reported that Chinese authorities detained around 200 Lhasa residents in the wake of the protest in the Tibetan regional capital.

In Xinjiang, Chinese officials imposed strict lockdowns in August and September. RFA reported that 600 Uyghurs from a village in Ghulja in the northern part of Xinjiang were detained after they protested a lockdown that, according to some locals, had resulted in the deaths from starvation of as many as a dozen residents.

Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in the region have also been subjected to a years-long crackdown as part of a broad “anti-terrorism” campaign. A U.N. report in August said China’s effort to Sinicize the region has included human rights abuses and potential crimes against humanity. China denounced the report, which it said was the result of pressure from western governments.

Prior to the September protest, state-run Xinjiang TV had warned residents that they would be arrested for separatism, a charge often used to detain Uyghurs, if they “spread rumors” about a COVID outbreak in the area.

In a major departure from the market-oriented economic policy of the past 40 years, the Chinese Communist Party is moving to take greater control of technology and telecoms companies, with a return to the era of “joint ventures” between the state and private sector.

China’s market regulatory body approved a new joint venture between the investment arm of state-owned telecoms giant China Unicom and tech giant Tencent, the agency said in an announcement on its official website last week.

The joint venture was “based on the strategic needs of the company’s comprehensive advancement into the digital economy,” according to statements filed by China Unicom to the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges.

Tencent brings to the deal a massive amount of data gleaned from its WeChat super app that provides social media, payments and messaging services to 1.4 billion people in China and beyond.

However, Unicom Innovation Venture Capital will hold a 48% stake compared with Tencent subsidiary Shenzhen Tencent Industry Venture Capital’s 42% stake, the state-run Global Times newspaper reported.

Meanwhile, the Shanghai subsidiary of China Mobile signed a strategic cooperation agreement on Nov. 1 with e-commerce giant JD.com’s subsidiary JD Technology.

The goal of that joint venture is smart city technology, digital governance, big data and communications, Shanghai Securities News reported.

Sources familiar with the private sector in China said further similar deals are expected by year’s end, with major private tech firms assigned a state-owned “partner,” meaning the state will effectively take control of at least some of their assets.

The move follows a regulatory crackdown on privately owned tech giants in recent years. 

In July 2021, state-owned assets spokesman Peng Huagang said his agency would press ahead with “mergers” between private sector and state-owned companies, with takeovers implemented both by paid acquisitions and uncompensated nationalization, as well as share transfers. 

Accelerating nationalization

Hangzhou-based scholar Chang Yu said the nationalization process now appears to be accelerating in the wake of the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th National Congress last month. 

“Everyone knows that this public-private ‘partnership’ only works in one direction,” Chang told RFA. “Even before the party congress, the government was moving against [what they termed] the disorderly expansion of capital, and stopped allowing private companies to expand.”

“Now the party congress is over, they can speed up that process and take more drastic steps.”

Beijing-based commentator Wu Qiang said the moves are another indicator that Chinese leader Xi Jinping is taking China away from the market reforms introduced by late supreme leader Deng Xiaoping in 1979, and in the direction of a state-controlled economy similar to that of the Mao era.

“This heralds an era of a planned economy as mentioned in [Xi Jinping’s] report to the 20th party congress,” Wu told RFA. “This will place private capital, particularly Tencent and JD.com, under the control of the government in Beijing.”

“Looking at the shareholding structure, it seems to be a hybrid kind of joint venture driven by ideology,” he said.

Wu said it was made clear during the party congress that nobody should be lobbying to protect or endorse major private companies.

“The last protections and lobbying [attempts] for these huge online platforms have been removed,” he said.

Current affairs commentator Ma Ju said the purpose of the joint ventures was to ensure state control of resources and technology.

“The aim of the cooperation agreements between China Unicom and Tencent and China Mobile and JD.com is [state] control over the flow of information and materials,” Ma told RFA. “For [the Chinese Communist Party], anything relating to the internet is a matter of national security.”

“They are controlling these companies in exactly the way they did back in 1953, through public-private ‘partnerships,’” he said.

Political commentator Jiang Feng said some private companies could eventually be eliminated.

“Private enterprises encourage a market economy, which goes against totalitarian rule, so they must be restricted or even eliminated,” he told RFA’s Asia Wants to Talk chat show.

“They are laying the groundwork for a command economy.”

China’s wealthy looking for an out

Reports are emerging that China’s wealthiest people are getting the message, with home electronics magnate Huang Guangyu and his wife selling off their shares in their private retail empire GOME, cashing out to the tune of H.K. $960 million (U.S. $122.3 million) and reducing the size of their stake from 51.5% to 42.8% across the course of this year.

Nanjing-based retailer Xu Jing said many wealthy business owners are highly pessimistic about their future in China, and will leave if they can.

“Wanting to leave and being allowed to leave aren’t necessarily the same thing … because [entrepreneurs may now be] on a government [border] control list because they have a lot of debt,” Xu said. “Particularly real estate bosses.”

Changsha-based real estate insider Tian Hui gave a similar account. “Business is not good now; earnings are low, yet expenditures are ongoing,” he said. “Returns are too slow, and there are bank loans [to pay back].”

“[The wealthy] have been selling off famous artworks and properties ever since 2019, and they are taking the money to the United States to buy land and build properties there,” he said.

Scholar Ma Hong said in a joking reference to a 1980s Chinese rock anthem by Cui Jian, “Rock and Roll on the New Long March.” 

“These rich people and bigwigs are all heading out on the new Long March, because now the government is promoting socialism in the new era,” Ma said.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.