Day: March 20, 2023

Laos has imposed price controls on 23 basic necessities such as pork, rice and natural gas to try to rein in inflation that has surged above 40 percent – controls authorities aim to enforce through fines or even jail time.

But the price limits are making it hard for some merchants to make money.

One pork trader in the capital, Vientiane, told Radio Free Asia that the mandated government price of 75,000 kip (U.S.$4.42) per kilogram isn’t enough. 

“For me, I must sell at 80,000 kip (U.S.$4.72) or 85,000 kip (U.S.$5.01) per kilogram,” said the trader, who like others requested anonymity for security reasons. “I only make a small profit. Sometimes I even lose money.”

Authorities are planning to send inspectors to markets to check prices, Vice Minister of Industry and Trade Bountheung Duangsavanh said at a March 7 government meeting.

If retailers sell their products at higher prices than those set by the government, they’ll be re-educated and fined 3 million kip (U.S.$177) to 10 million kip (U.S.$590), a trade official in the resort town of Luang Prabang said.

Or they could face jail time from six months to two years, according to the law.

“We often inspect the prices at the markets; the traders who break the order, will be charged accordingly,” the official said. “We’re doing this to prevent price gouging.” 

The prices are set based on current market rates, the official said.

“We’re realistic. We, the government, adjust prices according to the price of fuel and on exchange rates,” the official said. “We’re not controlling the price of everything, just the 23 items.”

A list of 23 items with prices that will be controlled and fixed by the government, which also includes beef, fish, chicken and cement, was published late last month by the Lao Ministry of Industry and Trade. 

The move was a response to rising worldwide inflation that has hit Laos especially hard. Government figures showed the rate in Laos surged 41.3% in February, despite measures like import restrictions and the closure of private money exchangers.

Soaring inflation has been driven by a depreciation in the Lao currency – the kip – and declines in foreign investment.

‘It’s never worked’

But one Vientiane resident was skeptical that setting prices and inspecting markets will solve the issue. Prices keep rising anyway. 

A bag of rice, for example, is now 600,000 kip (U.S.$35.38), up from 300,000 kip (U.S.$17.69) a year ago, the resident said.

“The government can’t control the prices; they keep going up,” the resident said. “The government has tried to control prices many times before. It’s never worked.”

Another Vientiane pork trader suggested that the government try to control prices at the source by getting farmers to reduce their prices.

“The authorities from the Ministry of Industry and Trade ask us why we’re selling at higher prices, I tell them to ask the farmers,” the trader said.

A Vientiane pig farm owner pointed to the cost of animal feed from Thailand, which is now twice as much as it was a year ago. Transportation costs are also high, the exchange rate with the Thai baht has become less favorable and there are taxes as well, the farm owner said.

Laos will continue to have issues with imports, an economist in the country said. Because of the mountainous terrain, there is only so much agricultural land and Laos will have to continue to bring in even basic necessities from outside the country.

“We want to produce more in this country, but we can’t,” he said.

Vietnamese customs authorities on Monday confiscated seven tons of ivory illegally shipped from Angola in what is believed to be the largest seizure of wildlife products in Vietnam in years, state media reported.

The seizure took place after customs officers and local police found the elephant tusks in a 20-foot shipping container shipped en route to Vietnam via Singapore at Nam Hai Dinh Vu Port in Haiphong, a city in northeastern Vietnam, according to a report in state-run Bao Chinh Phu newspaper.  

The containers were declared to be carrying peanuts.

Vietnam is a member of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna, or CITES, which bans international trade in ivory. 

Nevertheless, wildlife trafficking remains rampant with the smuggling of ivory, pangolin scales, rhino horns and tiger parts, used for charms, decorations and traditional medicine throughout the region and in China. 

Most of the ivory illegally smuggled into Southeast Asia ends up in the hands of Chinese customers due to lax enforcement, though Beijing banned the sale of elephant ivory at the end of 2017.

Authorities at the same port seized 7.5 tons of elephant ivory and pangolin scales hidden in steel barrels in a shipping container in June 2019, according to Vietnamese media. The shipment was headed to a logistics company in Haiphong, but no one claimed it. 

Translated by An Nguyen for RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

Tin Myint’s husband, Aung Myo Thant, risked his life to defect from Myanmar’s navy and join the country’s non-violent Civil Disobedience Movement, or CDM, in opposition to the junta shortly after the military seized power in a coup.

The couple moved with their four children to a remote border area under the control of the armed opposition and now receives a monthly stipend arranged by the shadow National Unity Government. 

But, like many of the estimated 12,000 security personnel who left their posts to join the non-violent anti-junta movement, they are now facing hardship and struggling to survive, Tin Myint told RFA’s Burmese Service in an interview.

“We are trying to cover all expenses, including food, with a monthly allowance of 200,000 kyats (around U.S.$100) at the moment,” she said. “But it’s very difficult to make ends meet as we have many children.”

Tin Myint said her family endures “a lot of inconvenience” but said that they are committed to “this righteous path of joining the people’s CDM movement.”

“We are trying to live a balanced life as much as we can,” she said.

More than two years since the Feb. 1, 2021 coup, some 3,200 military officers and 9,000 policemen from across Myanmar have joined the CDM, according to the NUG’s Ministry of Defense. Like Aung Myo Thant and his family, most are sheltering along the country’s border in remote areas administered by ethnic armies.

All CDM members, including former soldiers and police, receive financial assistance from the NUG’s Pyi Thu Yin Khwin, or “People’s Embrace,” committee to support the work they do for the opposition.

NUG payments ‘not enough’

However, the meager allowance means that most are facing difficulties earning a living of one kind or another, according to former Captain Lin Htet Aung, a spokesman for the committee, which is made up of ex-police and military CDM personnel.

“We get help from NUG’s Pyi Thu Yin Khwin committee, but I have to say that it’s not enough,” he said.

“Those who are sheltering in the border areas are facing various hardships. Although some organizations have arranged safehouses for them, it depends a lot on the country on the other side of the border.”

Lin Htet Aung said he was surprised to find that the international community has not done more to assist CDM members like him in their fight against the military regime.

“As the people sheltering in the border areas are facing various hardships, it would be good if we could get help from the NUG and revolutionary organizations, as well as foreign countries,” he said.

Okkar, the general secretary of the Pyi Thu Yin Khwin, told RFA that his committee gives what it can and noted that it does more than just provide financial assistance to CDM members.

“We really appreciate their will and sacrifice for the people of Myanmar and we are so proud of them,” he said.

“We provide them with not just financial, but emotional support as well. We also provide some programs to help them live a life as regularly as before. We provide various forms of support to them, including emergency support.”

Draining manpower

According to a recent commentary published in the Irrawaddy online news journal, while the military has typically provided stable employment and decent pay in Myanmar, worsening inflation and economic turmoil under the junta means that the average monthly salary for a captain is only 300,000 kyats (U.S.$170), or “chicken feed compared to living costs today.”

The commentary, written by a former army major who joined the CDM in June 2021, said that “many commissioned officers can’t survive on their salaries and have to ask for financial support from their parents and relatives” as “very few officers can support their family with the surplus from their salaries.”

It claimed that “manpower is draining significantly from the military now,” in part due to thousands having defected to the CDM, although it noted that as many as 1,000 soldiers deserted the military annually, even before the coup.

But Naing Htoo Aung, the permanent secretary of the Nug’s defense department, told RFA that not only are security personnel hurting the junta by leaving their posts, they are bolstering the CDM by “engaging in as many anti-junta sectors as they can.”

“Some of them who have joined the CDM movement participate in fighting against the junta forces, facilitate training, work in the production of weapons, give analysis and advice to the military strategy section or join groups such as the Pyi Thu Yin Khwin committee to bring in more CDM employees,” he said.

Observers say the exodus began in earnest in April 2022, when the NUG began to offer rewards to military personnel who defected to the CDM. The shadow government has offered up to 1 billion kyats (U.S.$475,000) to defectors who “liberate” military equipment to anti-junta forces or can prove they have disabled fighter jets, helicopters, gunboats, or other infrastructure.

‘We now have a chance’

Tin Myint’s husband Aung Myo Thant, who left work for the junta’s Maw Ya Waddy Navy Base in Tanintharyi region’s Kan Pauk township to join the CDM in October 2021, told RFA that despite the difficulties, he does not regret his decision.

He said he is happy to have learned about “the world outside of the navy circle” and now works masonry and carpentry jobs after having picked up the skills in the villages near where he lives.

“Once I left the navy, I got no salary at all and I had no food,” he said. “We now have a chance to survive with the food and shelter provided by the ethnic groups of this liberated area.”

“I am satisfied if I can provide enough food for my family for each day,” he added.

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Matthew Reed.

The strange men started showing up at Su Yutong’s Berlin apartment in early June. For weeks, one or two would arrive each day.

Su grew up in China but since 2010 has lived in Germany, where she works as a journalist, including for Radio Free Asia. Her visitors, though, thought they were visiting a prostitute. 

“Almost every day different people rang my doorbell,” Su said. “They say they are here for an Asian woman, looking for sex.” 

The fake escort ads were just part of the abuse Su says she’s experienced over the past 10 months. Bomb threats tied to reservations under Su’s name at hotels in Berlin, Houston and Hong Kong that she didn’t make prompted calls from local police. 

A fake Twitter account with her name and the word “bitch” was created. She’s been threatened with doctored nude photographs and forged receipts from adult stores. She said hackers tried to access her social media and bank accounts.

In November, German police told her to leave her apartment after she received rape and death threats, apparently from one particularly aggressive harasser over Telegram. For a time, she said she felt a wave of nausea around strange men in public, though more out of embarrassment than fear, she said.

“I don’t know what other things they will do to harass and threaten me, but it has  … really affected my life,” Su said. 

A target for harassment

Su says she’s been a target of abuse since leaving China in 2010 to live in exile in Germany and continue her work as a reporter. The name-calling and threats and other harassing behaviors picked up, though, after she attended an event to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in June. 

She has filed several complaints with the German police. One official initially told Su her case seemed like the work of a particular individual, a singular stalker.  

But there is evidence of a broader conspiracy, and Su fears her harassers could have links to the Chinese government — an anxiety shared by other reporters of Chinese descent who have also faced abuse.

Last fall, Su told her editors at RFA about what she was facing. RFA decided to publish her story along with other accounts to show what it can be like to report on China at a time when its officials are intent on protecting the country’s image and extending its global reach.

German police are investigating Su’s case but have refused to comment further.

A request for comment from the Chinese Embassy in Germany from RFA has not been answered.

A price to pay

Globally, harassment of women in the media is commonplace. 

Almost 70% of female journalists have experienced some form of abuse in relation to their work, according to a survey by the International Women’s Media Foundation and Trollbusters, a group that monitors online harassment. 

A report released in 2022 by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a Canberra-based think tank, said the harassment of female journalists of Asian descent who report critically on China can be particularly aggressive — and appears to be increasing. 

The sheer volume of vitriol targeting reporters given China’s size and the nationalistic fervor of many of its citizens can set the abuse apart. Compounding their anxiety is a fear that the intimidation is sanctioned, if not coordinated, by the Chinese Communist Party itself. 

“When, for example, an American female journalist gets trolled, it’s probably coming from right-wing crazies or some fringe corner of society,” said Vicky Xu, a journalist in Australia, whose reporting on abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang brought a flood of death threats. “The kind of role and voice they have is very, very limited.

“The harassment of Chinese journalists like myself is mainstream. It’s a mainstream position that is encouraged by the state.”

State-backed trolling?

The ASPI report listed journalists covering China for The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The New Yorker and The New York Times as victims. At least some of the offending posts are likely linked to the Chinese government, ASPI concluded. Accounts that had promoted CCP policies pivoted to harass the journalists, the report found.

Posts include graphic online depictions of sexual assault, homophobia and racist imagery and life-threatening intimidation,  said Albert Zhang, a co-author of the report.

The people who harassed Su told her they supported the Chinese government and warned her against speaking or reporting critically on Beijing. Whether the harassers in Su’s case are overzealous supporters of the CCP acting on their own or are part of an official operation isn’t entirely clear.

But the intent behind this kind of harassment is the same: “to silence the view of these women and also serve as a deterrence against others reporting critically on China,” Zhang said.

‘Psychological torture’

As a reporter and researcher at ASPI, Xu helped expose how the supply chains of major companies, including Apple, Nike and Adidas, may have benefitted from forced Uyghur labor in Xinjiang.

For her work, Xu said she was called a slut, a traitor and a demon on Twitter.

A 2021 report in the Global Times, a CCP mouthpiece, called her a “morally low person” and suggested she was putting Chinese nationals living in Australia at risk by contributing to anti-Chinese sentiment.

She had to close her LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter accounts after they were bombarded with threats, shutting her off from an important outlet for journalists. 

It all felt like “psychological torture,” Xu told RFA. An outgoing, part-time stand-up comic, Xu began to isolate herself, keeping away from friends and family. She said that her health suffered for months. 

“People congratulate me and they say that this work is really important, and that I changed or inspired legislation,” Xu said. “But the flip side of that is the Chinese government also noted the success and influence of that report, and they made me pay a price.”

Sexism strains

China watchers say that reporters from China can be viewed as threats for their ability to see behind the veil of secrecy the CCP tries to maintain through its own heavily censored media. They speak the language, know the country’s history and have sources in China to help them understand what goes on behind the scenes. 

Male journalists who report on China face abuse too, but the women say that the strains of sexism that go unchecked in Chinese society and online culture in general make them more frequent targets.

“I tweet, but I never go on Twitter, because there is just too much crap,” said Yaqiu Wang, a senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch who has written about harassment against critics of the CCP.

Wang said she can expect hundreds of nasty comments for every Twitter post she writes that references China but doesn’t bother to read them. 

“I don’t want to read 200 comments about people saying that I’m a traitor.”

Harassers – in the flesh, on the phone

When Su attended the June 4 Berlin commemoration of the Tiananmen Square massacre as a reporter, she said a middle-aged Chinese man walked up to the protesters and began taking pictures. 

Two days later, at around 5 a.m., she received a Telegram message of a doctored photograph made to look like a naked picture of her with the caption, “Who’s this?” 

The person who sent the message said Chinese exiles shouldn’t amplify China’s shortcomings.

An organizer of the event told RFA that she was also contacted by the same account. Both she and Su blocked the number on Telegram. Su has no idea how the person got her number.

A day or two later, random men started appearing at Su’s apartment. 

She did not answer the door, but in exchanges with them in German, they indicated they were looking for sex, and believed her to be a sex worker.

A friend of Su’s who RFA spoke with witnessed one encounter in August. The man ran when Su threatened to call the police.

Bomb threats and fake ads

In October, Su reported for RFA on a harassment case involving Wang Jingyu, a young dissident who was living in exile in the Netherlands. 

After the report, Su told RFA that another man started to harass her, including by reserving hotel rooms and then later calling in bomb threats under her name. He threatened both Su and Wang over texts and video messages and told them that he supported the CCP. 

RFA is not naming him because his identity cannot be confirmed and efforts to reach him were unsuccessful. 

The man showed Su and Wang a receipt of an electronic money transfer that he purported to be from a Chinese handler and told Su that this person had directed him to post the doctored adverts about her as a sex worker on internet sites in German – the adverts that presumably brought the random men to her door. 

The harasser later sent Su forged documents, including a receipt for sex toys, that he threatened to post on a Twitter account in an effort to publicly shame her. 

“I am actually very conservative. I have never been to nightclubs,” Su said. “I can never imagine myself getting related to prostitution and sex services,” she added, noting how important her Christian faith is to her. “This is fatal to me.”

A directive to move

She and Wang reported the harassment to police. After that, the abuse grew worse.

In November, the harasser threatened to rape and murder Su, at which point the German police told her to vacate her apartment. 

She is now staying with a friend.

Police declined to comment to RFA, other than confirming that “an investigation into suspected threats is being conducted by the Berlin police under the case number you provided.” 

Dirty messages

Sheng Xue, an author and journalist who fled China after Tiananmen and now lives in Canada, said she’s faced harassment similar to Su. Sheng worked at RFA for 17 years but is now a freelance journalist and writer.

In 2014, she said online ads offering sex were posted with her name and cell phone number in cities across North America. She would get calls at her home from New York and San Francisco.

The harassment isn’t constant, she said, but ebbs and flows with important dates and events, including the anniversary of Tiananmen Square or the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. 

Last September, with the approach of Chinese National Day, Sheng said she received hundreds of comments on Twitter, many of which were accompanied by nude photographs doctored with her image.

“They always use this kind of very dirty message,” she said. 

Return to society

Xu, the journalist in Australia, said a pornographic video falsely purported to depict her surfaced online, as did a fake documentary about her sex life.

More recently, she has also faced efforts to physically intimidate her. In October, Xu said she noticed a man standing outside her apartment, watching her. 

“When I tried to film him, like really up close, he didn’t look at me. He didn’t flinch. He just walked away,” Xu said. 

She said she kept isolated behind a number of security safeguards she set up in response to the threats. 

But Xu has since re-emerged into society and feels revived by her relationships with friends and family. She’s also taken inspiration from the women who led the recent “white paper” protests that pushed China to rescind its restrictive zero-COVID policies, although many have since been arrested.

Xu is learning to live with the strange men who sometimes follow her, is adept at spotting hacking attempts, and carries on when her public speeches are interrupted by “CCP fanatics.”

“I don’t feel safe, but I’m not going to stop what I do because I don’t feel safe,” she said.

More harassment, and a response

It’s been weeks since Su has heard from the harasser who forced her out of her apartment. A Facebook page set up in his name stopped being active after Feb 9.

But Su said she continues to get abuse. 

On Feb. 11 and 12, she received a flurry of calls concerning hotel bookings and/or bomb threats made in her name in Hong Kong, Macau, Istanbul, New York, Houston and Los Angeles. 

Su told RFA that hotel employees told her that the reservations included deposits, indicating the perpetrators had some measure of financial resources. A screengrab from her phone reviewed by RFA shows unknown calls throughout the night.

The day before, Su said a stranger texted and offered to pay her cash to stop her “activities.” 

“I told him to f— off and blocked him,” she said.

Cheng-Chi Kreim contributed to this report. 

Human rights are a “central interest” of the Biden administration’s foreign policy “but not the only one,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday as he launched the annual U.S. country reports on human rights, which slammed China and Myanmar for abuses.

This year’s reports again denounce Beijing for “genocide and crimes against humanity” against ethnic Uyghurs in China, and accuse Myanmar of using “violence to brutalize civilians and consolidate its control,” including killing nearly 3,000 people and imprisoning 17,000.

But it also delves into human rights abuses in close U.S. allies like Israel, which is accused of a spate of rights abuses including “arbitrary killings” of Palestinians and Saudi Arabia, which is accused of “extrajudicial killings,” “enforced disappearances” and torture.

Speaking at the State Department to launch the reports, which are mandated by Congress and offer analysis of the rights situation in all 193 U.N. member states, the top U.S. diplomat was asked why the reports’ findings don’t always influence American foreign policy. 

“We’re not pulling our punches with anyone,” he replied. “Sometimes we do it more publicly; sometimes we do it more privately. We’re trying to determine in each instance how we can hopefully be most effective in advancing human rights and advancing human dignity.”

Blinken said that his job was to focus on “all our interests.”

“At the same time, as we’re working in different ways with different countries, we have a multiplicity of interests that we’re working on,” he said. “Human rights is a central interest of ours; it’s not the only one.”

Genocide and crimes against humanity

The reports identify grave human rights abuses across Asia, including in North Korea, Cambodia and Vietnam, which are each accused of crimes including arbitrary killings, torture and political persecution, to varying degrees of severity. But its most serious criticism in the region is reserved for the governments of China and Myanmar.

The report again accuses the Chinese government of conducting a genocide against the mostly Muslim Uyghur population, most of whom live in the far-western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

The crimes, the report says, included “arbitrary imprisonment” or detainment of more than 1 million civilians, “forced sterilization” and abortions, “more restrictive enforcement” of China’s birth control policies, rape, torture and forced labor, as well as “draconian restrictions” on the freedoms of expression, movement and religion. 

Myanmar, which is listed under the name Burma, is again accused of carrying out genocide and crimes against humanity, with the report saying the human rights situation has worsened since the 2021 coup.

“Deposed State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint, and other leading members of the deposed civilian government and National League for Democracy party remained in detention,” the report says, noting that “armed opposition efforts” had “continued to disrupt the regime’s ability to exert full administrative control.”

“The regime responded,” it says, with “the continued arrest of political opponents, the reported use of extensive lethal violence against unarmed persons, torture, sexual violence, and other abuses.”

Rohingya

Myanmar has also engaged in “punishment of family members for alleged offenses by a relative,” recruitment of child soldiers, arbitrary killings of civilians and restrictions on religion, particularly against the mostly Muslim Rohingya on the Bangladesh border, the report says.

“Limitations on freedom of movement for Rohingya in Rakhine State were unchanged. Rohingya may not move freely; they must obtain travel authorization to leave their township,” it says, defying “the pre-coup rule that Rohingya traveling without documentation could return to their homes without facing immigration charges.”

Up to 600,000 Rohingya remain in Rakhine, it says, even after “the genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and forced displacement of more than 740,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh in 2017,” but are not regarded as a “national ethnic group” so remain stateless.

Inward reflection

Blinken said he recognized that the United States was itself not perfect on human rights. But he said the difference was that the U.S. system of government accepted such criticism and actively tried to correct identified problems.

“While this report looks outward, to countries around the world, well, you know, the United States faces its own set of challenges on human rights,” he said. “Our willingness to confront our challenges openly, to acknowledge our own shortcomings – not to sweep them under the rug or pretend they don’t exist – that is what distinguishes us.”

Blinken’s message was mirrored by Erin Barclay, acting assistant secretary of state for the bureau of democracy, human rights and labor, when asked at the morning State Department launch event about a rival report on human rights and democracy in the United States, which was released by China’s foreign ministry on Monday.

At his regular press briefing on Monday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin also accused the United States of engaging in “power politics and the law of the jungle” by applying human rights-based economic sanctions on other countries, which he claimed was “gravely violating other countries’ human rights.”

American officials “always welcome critique of the human rights situation in our country,” Barclay replied, “as long as it is credible and fact-based.”

“We don’t sweep our problems under the rug,” she said. “We are ready to shine a light on them and work to improve them in our own country.”

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s ongoing visit to Russia forms part of a bid by Beijing to rebrand China’s international image and reshape the international community along authoritarian lines, commentators told Radio Free Asia in recent interviews and broadcasts.

Xi will have an “in-depth exchange of views” with Putin on major international and regional issues of mutual interest, with a view to boosting strategic coordination and practical cooperation, China’s foreign ministry said of the current trip, during which the two leaders will sign a declaration that their relationship is entering “a new era,” a reference to a favored Xi buzzword.

The trip comes as Xi emerges victorious from a lengthy power struggle for sole control of the levers of party, military and state, which saw him approved for an indefinite third term in office as party leader at the party congress in October 2022 and at the annual National People’s Congress session in Beijing earlier this month.

Xi is now free to steer Chinese diplomacy into his new era, which he says will be “a shared future for humanity,” a phrase analysts say means Beijing will be looking to forge stronger alliances with other authoritarian regimes to counter “U.S. hegemony” and export China’s model of party-state governance around the world.

New role as mediator

Tuvia Gering, a non-resident fellow at the Global China Hub of the Atlantic Council, said China’s foreign policy in recent decades has typically focused on following other countries’ lead, or facilitating international arrangements, rather than projecting it as a global power for other nations to follow.

“In the mediation of regional conflicts, China tends to play the role of follower [or] facilitator rather than leader,” Gering said. “This time it is surprising that China not only leads but also successfully mediates international disputes without the presence of the United States.”

He was referring to Xi Jinping’s visit to Saudi Arabia last December where he met with all Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, swiftly followed by a visit to Beijing by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, followed by a March 10 trilateral statement from Saudi Arabia, Iran and China announcing that Riyadh and Tehran would resume diplomatic relations.

“This is a clear success for Beijing — its first in the troubled Middle East region — and it could be followed by others,” columnist Marco Carnelos wrote in the March 17 edition of Middle East Eye.

Given that China is planning an unprecedented high-level meeting between Arab monarchs and Iranian officials in Beijing later this year, Carnelos wrote, “it would be difficult to imagine a bigger slap in the face to U.S. Middle Eastern diplomacy.”

China’s English-language nationalist tabloid, the Global Times, said the agreement was “another proof that unipolarity no longer exists and that we are already in a de facto multipolar world order.”

“The Middle East and the world are not only in a post-America order, but also in a post-West order,” the paper said.

But while the agreement seems like a public relations coup for Beijing, Gering said Saudi and Iran already had plenty of motivation to reach an agreement on their own, and the resumption of ties had followed years of low-level dialogue between the two governments.

He said brokering the final deal was a “low-risk” strategy for China, which had simply picked the right moment to intervene, and dismissed Beijing’s 12-point peace plan for Ukraine as “ridiculous.”

“Just like in the Middle East, China actually doesn’t want to replace the United States because it doesn’t want to get its hands dirty,” Gerin said. “In such conflicts, [China] first considers whether it can benefit from them with very low risk as it did with the Iran-Saudi Agreement.”

Aspiring global actor and standard-setter

Moritz Rudolf, fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, said he believes China is also trying to become a serious global actor and standard-setter, however.

“As the U.S. enters the presidential election season, I think we wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot more engagement with China in just the next two years,” Rudolf said.

“From the Chinese perspective, their foreign policy direction appears to be looking towards the global south, with attempts to build coalitions with those countries and to use them in the pursuit of long-term goals, such as changing the international order,” he said.

“To me, there appears to be a real strategic goal to shape the global order through the use of the law.”

The use of international treaties, laws and other binding agreements to further Beijing’s policy goals will have a powerful side-effect, Rudolf predicted.

“Once China becomes a global actor, its legal system will also extend,” he said. “This is one of those issues that can fundamentally change how the world functions.”

“It’s an incremental process, and at some point, you wake up and realize that the global order has changed. The rules have become more Chinese, and the global order has become more Chinese as well,” he warned.

Veteran political commentator and former 1989 Tiananmen protest leader Wang Dan agreed, citing the Middle East agreement and Xi’s “global civilization initiative.”

“All of this shows us that Xi Jinping wants to become a world leader, and spread his ideology around the world,” Wang wrote in a recent commentary for RFA Mandarin, citing the Saudi-Iran agreement.

“But all of this is the stuff that is visible on the surface,” he added. “What the rest of the world also needs to look at is the way that Xi Jinping is targeting … [U.S. interests] in more secretive ways [around the world].”

Gering said further international posturing will likely follow from Beijing.

“I think we’re going to see China get more involved in the world stage,” he said. “Whenever there are opportunities [like the Iran-Saudi agreement] they will jump on it.”

Exporting arms

According to Wang, one key indicator that China is exporting influence and power alongside the rhetoric lies in recent international arms sales data.

Central Command’s General Michael Kurilla told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 16 that China’s ability to move quickly on military sales in the Middle East and South Asia could have dire consequences, pointing to an 80% increase in Chinese military sales to the region over the past decade.

According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the U.S. was the world’s top weapons exporter from 2018 to 2022, accounting for 40% of all arms exports. China ranked fourth, accounting for just over 5% of sales.

And China tripled its sales of weapons to sub-Saharan Africa between 2017 and 2020, with most of the weapons going to five nations that have signed up to Beijing’s Belt and Road infrastructure program.

Meanwhile, Russian entities received around 1,000 assault rifles, 12 tons of body armor, and drone parts from Chinese companies that could be used on the battlefield, since the war in Ukraine began in early 2022, Politico Europe reported last week.

“These goods weren’t handed over to Russia directly at the border, but arrived in Russia after passing through Turkey,” Wang wrote.

“China is of course doing this to evade supervision and sanctions from the international community, but Turkey and [other countries] are willing to cooperate actively, which shows us that China has made deep deployments in a traditional sphere of influence of the United States, actively wooing allies and queering the United States’ pitch,” he said.

“These new developments are very dangerous signals, not just for the United States, but for the whole world.” Wang warned.

“If Xi Jinping has made up his mind, in order to fight for world hegemony, for China’s global expansion, and to solve once and for all the containment from the United States on the Taiwan issue, he will not hesitate to combine the forces of Russia, Iran and North Korea to confront and clash with the United States head-on, or even upgrade the cold war into a hot war,” he said.

“This could pose a serious threat to world peace.”

Growing backlash following Ukraine invasion

For David Plášek, analyst at the European Values Center for Security Policy, there is also a growing backlash against communist and formerly communist countries, which he says stems directly from the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“Everyone [in Europe] knows that China is standing behind Russia,” Plášek said. “The Ukrainian war has greatly shocked Europeans. People’s feelings are very personal, with Ukrainian refugees pouring into every small town in Eastern European countries.”

He said the current situation has eroded public support for Russia in Eastern Europe.

“After the war, I would say less than 10% remain,” he said of Putin’s supporters. “The political landscape is undergoing enormous changes, which also affects people’s views on China.”

“In Eastern European countries such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Lithuania, people used to talk about China’s investments and job opportunities as important, but after a series of events, they have become aware of the danger of the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. 

“China is aggressive in diplomacy, and Xi Jinping even reminds people of figures like Mao Zedong and Stalin,” he said.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.