Day: March 16, 2023

Police raided a karaoke bar in the notorious Golden Triangle area of northern Laos, finding that the majority of the club’s patrons – 198 people – were either high on drugs or tested positive for illegal narcotics.

Twenty-nine of the 198 people were Chinese, according to the Bokeo province public security website.

The 198KTV karaoke bar where the March 11 raid took place is known as a center of drug use and trafficking, according to a local resident, who like other sources in this report requested anonymity for safety reasons. 

There are several small entertainment venues in the town of Tonpheung, located in Bokeo province just outside of the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, or SEZ, the resident told Radio Free Asia. 

“Most of them belong to the Chinese. The big night clubs are in the Golden Triangle SEZ – of course, they belong to the Chinese also,” the resident said. “Most bar patrons are also Chinese; only a few Laotians because they don’t have much money.”

Police talked to owners and operators of karaoke bars, coffee shops and restaurants in the town on March 2 and were told that an average of five people were being rushed to the hospital for drug overdoses each night.

“We also received complaints about street fights, loud noise and late closures,” a police officer told RFA.

Reeducated and released

On Monday, those arrested in the March 11 raid were released after police officers and Women’s Union and Lao Youth Federation officials reeducated them about the dangers of drugs, drug trafficking and smuggling.

Another resident of Tonpheung complained to RFA that the police didn’t do more to punish those arrested. They should have at least fined or jailed them – and the arrested Chinese should have been deported, the resident said.

The SEZ is a gambling and tourism hub catering to Chinese citizens that has been described as a de-facto Chinese colony. It has become a haven for criminal activities including prostitution, scamming and drug trafficking.

“Oh, drugs are everywhere, not only in that night club,” a retail store owner near the SEZ told RFA. “Most of the users or bar-goers are young. Many of them are workers at the casino in the Golden Triangle SEZ.”

Sex service is also available at all night clubs, the same retailer said. Most of the providers are Lao women and most of their clients are Chinese men, he said.

The SEZ was established in 2007. The zones are business areas that are exempt from most national-level economic regulations, and often receive tax breaks and are governed by different labor laws. 

The Golden Triangle – which the SEZ takes its name from – encompasses a larger area in northern Laos along the Mekong River that also includes parts of Thailand and Myanmar. It got its name five decades ago for its central role in heroin production and trafficking in Laos, Thailand and Myanmar.

Translated by Max Avary. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

China has yet to shut down its much-criticized overseas police stations in Germany, despite Berlin’s insistence they are a violation of German sovereignty, according to a German newspaper and publicly available parliamentary records.

Parliamentary State Secretary Rita Schwarzeluehr-Sutter said in a written reply to a question from lawmaker Joana Cotar that China currently has two “overseas police stations” on German soil, neither of which is covered by existing bilateral agreements on diplomatic institutions.

Rather, they are “informal outposts of local Chinese police units from typical emigrant regions of China, such as the coastal provinces Fujian, Jiangsu and Zhejiang,” Schwarzeluehr-Sutter said in a written reply to a lawmaker’s question carried in publicly available federal government archives highlighted in a March 15 report by the Handelsblatt newspaper.

“[They] are not managed by Chinese police officers, but by Chinese-born so-called ‘community leaders’ who have German citizenship,” the March 2 written reply said.

“These are people who have good contacts with the diplomatic missions of the People’s Republic of China and who enjoy the trust of the Chinese security authorities. They are also involved in Chinese United Front organizations,” Schwarzeluehr-Sutter wrote in a reference to the Chinese Communist Party’s outreach and influence arm.

China has denied that it runs overseas police operations, claiming that the “service stations” are purely for the administrative convenience of its nationals overseas.

But it has shut down a number of them after a September 2022 report from the Spain-based Safeguard Defenders group listed dozens of such operations, sparking investigations and orders to shut down from governments around the world.

Spying on the Chinese diaspora

The Interior Ministry said the police stations do offer administrative services, but also engage in espionage among members of the Chinese diaspora, including influential figures, as well as the “propagation of ideological and political guidelines, with responsible community leaders acting as ‘propagandists’.”

Foreign Ministry official Andreas Michaelis said in a written reply to a parliamentary question in December that the federal government had “made it clear to the Embassy that it would not tolerate violations of its sovereignty, and remains in contact with the Chinese side,” the Handelsblatt reported.

German Green Member of the European Parliament Reinhard Bütikofer called via his Twitter account for a pause on the next bilateral summit between Germany and China.

“The German government can no longer tolerate the Chinese violation of German sovereignty by operating illegal ‘police stations’,” Bütikofer tweeted. “As long as such institutions exist, the preparation of the next GER-CN Summit will have to wait.”

The federal Foreign Ministry requested that China shut down the offices in a note verbale on Nov. 3, 2022, the Handelsblatt reported.

It said the Chinese Embassy had replied saying that there were “no relevant activities” going on at the service stations.

According to the article, which cited China expert Mareike Ohlberg, the persecution and intimidation of Chinese people in Germany has also taken place “by phone or text directly from China.”

Harassed and intimidated

Politicians from both major parties told the paper that there should be zero tolerance for the service stations, and called on the foreign ministry to escalate the matter diplomatically, it said.

Aniessa Andresen, chairman of the advocacy group Hongkonger in Deutschland, said some of the group’s members had received threatening messages from people believed to be working for the Chinese state security services.

She said group members had also been photographed at protests across Germany, threatened with being “reported,” as well as being stalked, harassed and intimidated.

Andresen said the Chinese government is blatantly violating international law, and the German government’s lackluster response had encouraged the persecution of Chinese dissidents living in what should be a free country.

She said the unofficial police activity was a threat to national security, and called for the immediate shutdown of all overseas police stations or service stations on German soil.

Ray Wong of the German campaign group Freiheit für Hongkong agreed.

“What this shows us is that China thinks Germany is weak, and won’t dare to do anything even if they don’t shut down the two police stations, for fear of countermeasures from China,” Wong said.

“Germany should stand firm on this, and be prepared to take necessary measures to force China to respect its sovereignty, and to protect the personal freedom of Hong Kongers, and of all anti-communists [in Germany],” he said.

Confident about opening up

The furor over Chinese police stations in Germany came as Chinese leader Xi Jinping called for better ties with political parties overseas, as a complement to diplomacy with foreign states.

Conducting dialogues with other countries’ political parties and organizations shows that the Chinese Communist Party is confident about opening up, communication and exchanges with the rest of the world, Xi was quoted as saying by the Global Times newspaper.

It also demonstrates the party’s sincere desire to have all political groups around the world gain a better understanding of the Chinese Communist Party’s ideology, and its determination to promote world peace and development, the paper paraphrased him as saying.

“As the ruling party of China, the [CCP] is ready to take responsibility and play a greater role in the international arena,” the paper quoted international relations expert Li Haidong as saying.

But academic Li Xinjiang said there was scant room for acceptance of the way Western democracies work in China’s plan, which is more about exporting Beijing’s model of totalitarian rule around the world.

“There is a global trend right now in which we are seeing barbaric, totalitarian regimes on the rise, not on the decline,” Li told Radio Free Asia. 

“This is because China acts as a model and a kind of big brother, who takes the lead.”

He said the emergence of more authoritarian governments in southeast Asia had Chinese influence behind it.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

After finishing with the Philippines, Chinese maritime militia and fishing boats apparently swarmed inside Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the South China Sea, according to a Vietnamese research organization citing vessel-tracking data.

A 2,600-ton Chinese survey vessel, the Haiyang Dizhi Si Hao, had lingered inside Hanoi’s EEZ as well, signaling “a possible operation” there, the South China Sea Chronicle Initiative also reported. 

According to the SCSCI, the number of Chinese vessels in the economic zone increased measurably in the first two weeks of March, almost tripling the number observed at the end of February. An EEZ gives a state exclusive access to natural resources in the waters and in the seabed.

The data was collected using automatic identification system (AIS) signals transmitted by the ships.

“The Chinese vessels have also been operating deep inside Vietnam’s EEZ, up to just 60 nautical miles (111km) from the Quang Ngai coast,” Van Pham, SCSCI’s manager, told Radio Free Asia, referring to a province in central Vietnam.

The fishing and militia vessels often are accompanied by the China Coast Guard.

Chinese survey vessel

Meanwhile on Wednesday, the Chinese research and survey ship, also known as the Haiyang Dizhi 4, spent hours in Vietnamese-controlled waters before entering an area of overlapping claims in the South China Sea. 

Vietnam, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and China all claim parts of the strategic waterway, but the area claimed by Beijing is by far the largest. 

China and neighboring countries have been at loggerheads over Beijing’s oil and gas exploration in the sea.

According to the ship tracker Marine Traffic, the Haiyang Dizhi 4 was in Vietnam’s EEZ for more than 17 hours on March 15.

“It looks like the ship was conducting an operation here,” the SCSCI alleged.

The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry was not immediately available for comment.

Hanoi has repeatedly complained about the activities of Chinese survey vessels in its EEZ, calling them “a violation of Vietnam’s sovereignty.”

In 2019, a protest broke out in front of the Chinese embassy in Hanoi over the Haiyang Dizhi 8, a survey ship which had operated for months in Vietnam-controlled waters.

The next year, the same ship was involved in a month-long standoff with a Malaysian oil exploration vessel.

The biggest confrontation to date between Vietnam and China over oil and gas exploration in the South China Sea was in 2014, when China moved a drilling platform – the Hai Yang Shi You 981 – into Vietnamese waters.

The incident involved dozens of law enforcement ships from both sides and led to anti-China protests in Vietnam. 

In the end, China withdrew the oil rig after two and a half months.

Gray zone operations

China has been conducting so-called “gray zone” operations, with nontraditional forces such as maritime militia being used to achieve security and economic objectives.

Another claimant in the South China Sea, the Philippines, recently accused Chinese maritime militia ships of swarming inside its EEZ. 

In the latest development, China’s maritime militia ships off the Philippines-controlled Thitu island were scattering after swarming there earlier this month, according to Ray Powell, Project Myoushu (South China Sea) lead at Stanford University in California.

On March 4, the Philippine Coast Guard said over 40 suspected Chinese maritime militia vessels were spotted within 4.5 to 8 nautical miles off the shores of the island, which is known in the Philippines as Pag-asa.

“By periodically dispersing its forces, China’s militia fleet seems intent on making it more difficult for Philippine law enforcement agencies to track and document its swarm tactics,” Powell told RFA.

China’s maritime militia is mostly organized by the country’s large fishing companies.

Research by Andrew Erickson and Conor Kennedy in 2016 found that the only estimate of the size of the Chinese maritime militia was from a source published in 1978, which put the number of personnel at 750,000 on approximately 140,000 vessels. This number has likely grown substantially since.

In its 2010 Defense White Paper, China stated that it had eight million militia members nationwide, including maritime militia.

Edited by Imran Vittachi.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin accused the Biden administration of targeting foreign-owned companies with unfair standards after it called for the Chinese owners of the popular social media platform TikTok to sell their stake or face a ban on the app.

Wang said no evidence has been presented that TikTok threatens U.S. national security. His comments follow reports that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a multi-agency federal taskforce that reviews the national security implications of foreign investments, had appealed to TikTok for the ownership divestiture.   

The dispute also comes as a growing chorus of U.S. leaders and lawmakers say they want the popular app banned to prevent Beijing using it to track American citizens and propagandize to them. 

“The U.S. should stop spreading disinformation about data security, stop suppressing the relevant company, and provide an open, fair and non-discriminatory environment for foreign businesses to invest and operate in the U.S.,” Wang said at a press conference on Thursday.

“Data security issues should not be used as a tool for some countries to overstretch the concept of national security, abuse state power, and unjustifiably suppress other countries’ enterprises,” he said.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that CFIUS, which is led by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and has been investigating the Beijing-based TikTok owner ByteDance since it purchased the American-owned service musical.ly in 2017, told TikTok it could be banned if ByteDance does not sell its controlling stake to U.S.-based owners.

Growing bipartisanship

Former U.S. President Donald Trump previously signed an order to ban TikTok in 2020, but TikTok appealed and the order was blocked by a federal judge, who ruled Trump had overstepped his powers. 

Proponents of a ban have since focussed on CFIUS’s efforts, which have been criticized for tardiness, and, increasingly, on Congress. 

The burgeoning movement to ban TikTok, which is currently the fifth-most downloaded free app on the Apple’s App Store and the third-most popular in the Google Play App Store, has in turn become a rare area of bipartisan policy agreement in the U.S. Congress this year.

Just last week, senators from both parties introduced a bill that would explicitly allow the executive branch to ban any foreign-owned technology deemed a threat to national security, with the White House issuing a statement in support of the bill as it was being announced.

Led by Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, the group of lawmakers stressed the bill was not aimed solely at TikTok – but also had trouble speaking about anything other than the Chinese-owned app at a press conference.

“I’ve long been concerned about how every social media company uses the data it collects on users,” Sen. John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota and a co-sponsor, said at the time. “But I’m particularly concerned about TikTok’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party, which repeatedly – repeatedly – spies on American citizens.”

Congressional hearing

TikTok did not respond to a request for comment from Radio Free Asia.

But amid such threats from lawmakers, spokespeople for TikTok have regularly referred back to its cooperation in the CFIUS investigation as evidence of its cooperation with U.S. authorities on the issue of privacy. 

They have said TikTok has made a number of proposals to CFIUS to silo its data on U.S. users from its Chinese-owned parent, including allowing audits of its technology. But U.S. lawmakers like Warner and Thune have rejected the trustworthiness of any such proposal.

“The Chinese Communist Party has proven over the last few years that it is willing to lie about just about everything,” Thune said last week.

TiKTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is set to testify next Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican from Washington. 

McMorris Rogers said in a press release earlier this year that she believes thar TikTok has “knowingly allowed the ability for the Chinese Communist Party to access American user data” and called for Shou to “provide complete and honest answers for people” in her testimony.

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

The United Nations refugee agency said Wednesday that conditions in Myanmar’s Rakhine state were not favorable for the safe return of 1,000 Rohingya from Bangladesh whom Myanmar wants to repatriate under a China-mediated program.

A delegation from Myanmar arrived in the Bangladeshi border town of Teknaf on Wednesday to begin interviewing Rohingya in an effort to clear their return to Rakhine, from where they fled following a brutal 2017 military crackdown.

U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said it was not involved in this so-called pilot project.

“In UNHCR’s assessment, conditions in Rakhine State are currently not conducive to the sustainable return of Rohingya refugees, UNHCR spokeswoman Regina De La Portilla said in an email to BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated news service. “The process is being coordinated by authorities of the two countries.”

Rakhine, a state in western Myanmar bordering Bangladesh, was the site of months of intense fighting between Burmese junta forces and Arakan Army rebels. It is also the state where most of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya lived before the 2017 military crackdown.

The Myanmar military and the Arakan Army in November announced a ceasefire, but news reports have said returnees face a high risk of being hurt or killed by landmines and many areas of the state are in a shambles with no access to food and shelter.

UNHCR maintained that every refugee has a right to return to his or her home country “and some may choose to do so even under current conditions.”

Still, it added that any return to Myanmar “should be voluntary, in safety and dignity, and allow for sustainable reintegration in Myanmar.

“No refugee should be forced to return against his or her will,” UNHCR said.

Cox’s Bazar, a southeastern district in Bangladesh, houses about 1 million Rohingya, including about 740,000 who fled since August 2017.

Along with the U.N., activists and refugees themselves have expressed skepticism about the pilot project proposed in 2020, but has seemingly gained momentum in recent months.

On Wednesday, the 17-member Myanmar delegation which arrived in Teknaf, interviewed 90 Rohingya men and women listed for repatriation by Bangladesh. The purpose was to verify their identities and determine whether they lived in Rakhine state before fleeing to Bangladesh. The Myanmar delegation is scheduled to be in Teknaf for seven days.

Rohingya Khaled Hossain said he and his wife, Imtiaz, were questioned for three hours and asked to provide residency records.

“We handed them old records and photos. We want to go back to our country of origin. But we will only return when we will be given our civil rights and recognition as Rohingya community,” Hossain told BenarNews.

“We want the same citizenship status as Mogh [Rakhine Buddhists], Burmese and other communities. Apart from that, they must assure our security through the U.N. After that, we decide whether to return or not,” he said.

Khaled’s wife, Imtiaz, said four family members were interviewed.

“Maybe they’ll bring us back to Myanmar. But we seek peace,” she told BenarNews.

“We’d be willing to return to Myanmar if they provided the opportunity to live like the rest of the population. Otherwise, how do we return?”

‘China-pressure’

No Bangladesh or Myanmar junta official who spoke to BenarNews or Radio Free Asia (RFA), an affiliated news service, mentioned what the returnees’ citizenship status would be.

The Rohingya, whose ethnicity is not recognized by the government, have faced decades of discrimination in Myanmar and are effectively stateless, denied citizenship.

Myanmar authorities previously denied Rohingya freedom of movement, access to jobs, health care and education. Successive administrations have refused to call them “Rohingya” and instead use the term “Bengali.”

The 2017 atrocities against the Rohingya were committed during the tenure of the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi, who in December 2019 defended the military against allegations of genocide at the International Court of Justice.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner and one-time democracy icon languishes in prison – toppled by the same military in its 2021 coup.

Now, the Myanmar military is responding to China’s diplomatic coercion in promoting the pilot repatriation project, Nay San Lwin, an activist and co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition told RFA.

“The junta is implementing the repatriation program just to look good in the international community, as there was some China-pressure as well,” he said.

The returnees will likely end up staying in the centers for years, he said.

The project envisages bringing returnees through two reentry centers in Ngar Khu Ya and Hla Pho Khaung in Rakhine, according to a report last month in the junta-controlled state newspaper Myanmar Alinn.

Myanmar military officials gave tours of the centers to the heads of embassies from China, Bangladesh, India and eight ASEAN countries on March 8, Hla Thein, the junta’s attorney general and spokesman for Rakhine state, told RFA.

The returnees would receive assistance through education, livelihood and health programs at the two centers, he said, adding they would be accepted based on five points. The points include requiring a returnee to come back of his or her own volition.

China has mediated repatriation discussions between Bangladesh and Myanmar officials.

‘True good will’?

In addition to safety and Rohingya citizenship issues, there are other problems in repatriation, noted Bangladesh Foreign Minister A. K. Abdul Momen.

“The Chinese government had built new houses in some protected areas there for Rohingya. [But] They want to go to their original homes,” Momen told BenarNews.

“[T]he Myanmar authorities say their homesteads have been occupied by the Arakan Army. The places are unsafe. They cannot guarantee their return to their original homesteads,” said the minister, adding Bangladesh would not forcefully send refugees to Rakhine.

Additionally, the junta needs to say how many weeks or months returnees would have to stay in one of the two centers and where they would be sent afterward, said Khin Maung, director of the Rohingya Youth Association who lives in Cox’s Bazar.

“We are not sure if the military junta is implementing the repatriation program out of its true good will. A lot of things depend on that answer,” he told RFA.

Former Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Md. Touhid Hossain told BenarNews on Monday that the pilot project wasn’t a workable idea.

“A sustainable repatriation can only be achieved when the 1.1 million refugees would voluntarily return to Myanmar,” he said

“Settling the Rohingya crisis lies in Myanmar. The responsibility to improve the situation in Rakhine also goes on them. If they do so, the Rohingya would voluntarily return to their homeland.”

Abdur Rahman in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, and Kamran Reza Chowdhury in Dhaka contributed to this report. BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news service.

China rapidly accelerated plans for new coal power plants in the second half of last year, derailing the overall progress made in the global efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a group of environmental analysts said this week.

In a bid to increase its energy security, Beijing approved the highest new coal capacity in eight years, increasing coal power project by 45%, or 77 gigawatts (GW), climate change think-tank E3G said in a report released on March 14.

It means China’s total pre-construction pipeline is 250 GW. The world’s largest carbon emitter currently has another 115 coal power projects under construction.

“The second half of 2022 saw the largest-ever increase in pre-construction capacity in China… The scale of China’s renewed coal boom has reversed some of the gains made globally,” the group said in its report.

“As of July 2022, global new coal proposals had fallen by 75% since the Paris Agreement in 2015. This was reduced to 72% by the end of 2022.”

Coal is the most polluting fossil fuel and the single largest source of global carbon emissions. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), it supplies just over a third of global electricity generation.

E3G said China alone accounts for 72% of the world’s future projects, up from 66% in July 2022. The next five largest countries – India, Indonesia, Laos, Mongolia and Turkey – accounted for 18%, while 27 countries made up the last 10%.

“Almost every country and region in the world has stopped planning new coal power stations, and many have now canceled all remaining projects,” said Leo Roberts, a program lead at E3G.

“This is a huge step towards keeping global heating below 1.5°c. Unfortunately, a renewed coal boom in China is sending it off on a diverging pathway from the rest of the world, at potentially massive cost to the climate and China itself.”

In Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Laos fare poorly

Apart from China, only seven new coal projects were proposed worldwide in the last six months of 2022, including six reactivated projects in India and one new “industrial coal” project in Indonesia.

Jakarta canceled or shelved several coal projects last year while agreeing to a U.S.$20 billion dollar financing package for its Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) with G7 countries to transition from coal to clean power. 

Vietnam, also a recipient of JETP, saw more than four-fifths, or 7 GW, of its planned coal capacity shelved or canceled since July, E3G said. It currently has six projects under construction.

Southeast Asia, seen as a coal power hub outside China, has experienced a shift away from such new projects in recent years.

“Total planned capacity in the region has contracted by 86% since 2015, including a 5% decline in the second half of 2022,” E3G noted. 

According to No New Coal Progress Tracker, Indonesia has seven coal power projects in the pipeline and 19 under construction. Similarly, Laos has seven in the pipeline, but none under construction, with a total capacity under consideration of 7 GW. 

Neighboring Cambodia and Thailand have one proposed coal project each in the pipeline. The Philippines introduced a moratorium on new permits to pre-construction coal power plants in 2020. It still has two in the pipeline and one under construction. 

Malaysia announced an end to new coal in its national energy plan in 2021, while Myanmar has no new coal power project planned. 

As of January, 65 nations had made a clear commitment to “No New Coal,” while 33 others have no new projects under consideration. China and 32 other countries, including Australia and Japan, have active planned projects for new coal power plants.

China loses its leadership role in climate action

In 2015, countries committed to taking action to restrict the rise in global temperature to no more than 1.5°C from pre-industrial levels. According to the IEA, achieving this objective would require a halt to constructing new unabated coal-fired power plants.

China’s proposed new coal capacity declined by 88% over 2015-2018 following Beijing’s successful introduction of controls to restrict runaway permits by provinces. By January 2019, pre-construction capacity had fallen to 76 GW, just 21% share of the global total.

Coal supplies more than half of China’s total energy consumption, even though it is also the world’s leader in renewables, with the largest manufacturing and consumption of solar panels, wind turbines and hydropower dams. 

During the 2021 Climate Summit, President Xi Jinping committed to “strictly control coal-fired power generation projects, and strictly limit the increase in coal consumption” and phasing them down by 2030 to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2060.

However, since the power shortages in 2021 and last year’s record heatwave, energy security concerns have haunted Beijing, forcing them to increase reliance on coal. The country imported 290 million metric tons of coal, according to Xinhua news agency.

Last week, outgoing Premier Li Keqiang said in his final National People’s Congress report that China “must unleash the role of coal as the main energy source, increase coal production capacity… and ensure a normal supply of energy.”

“China’s coal relapse has seen it lose its leadership position,” E3G said. 

“The coal resurgence across the country is a direct challenge to President Xi’s promise to rein in coal,” said Byford Tsang, a senior policy adviser at E3G.

“Ending the coal plant building spree should be a priority for China’s new cabinet. Doing so will save China from a costly detour on its energy transition and position China as a front-runner on climate.”