Day: April 28, 2023

A slew of recent visits by top Chinese officials to Myanmar appears to be part of a bid by Beijing to counter U.S. influence on the nation, but rebel leaders warned that propping up the junta is a miscalculation, as there will be no stability while it remains in power.

In the nearly 27 months since the military carried out a coup d’etat, China has been Myanmar’s staunchest ally.

While most Western nations shunned junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing in the aftermath of the takeover and a violent crackdown on his opponents, Beijing stood by the general in Naypyidaw. While foreign investment has fled the embattled nation, Chinese investors have flocked there. And despite international sanctions leveled at the regime, trade between the two neighbors continues unabated.

Support notwithstanding, Chinese officials have made multiple visits to Myanmar since the start of the year in what some analysts say is an influence peddling campaign by Beijing following U.S. President Joe Biden’s signing in late December of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, which will assist the country’s democratic forces.

“China has increased its dealings with the military junta,” a China affairs expert told Radio Free Asia, speaking on condition of anonymity citing security concerns. “It seems to me that China is worried about the United States’ NDAA and Burma Act. That’s why it has tried to maintain its influence by having more dealings with the military leaders.”

Among the provisions in the NDAA are programs designed to support those fighting the better-equipped military for democracy in Myanmar – including the country’s shadow National Unity Government, anti-junta People’s Defense Force paramilitary group, and various ethnic armies – with technology and non-lethal assistance.

Slate of high-profile visits

In the latest high profile visit, Peng Xiubin, the director of the International Liaison Department of the Communist Party of China, traveled to Naypyidaw on April 16 and secretly met with former junta leader Than Shwe, who ruled Myanmar from 1992 to 2011, and Thein Sein, the president of the country’s quasi-civilian government from 2011 to 2016. 

Reports circulated that following Peng’s visit, Min Aung Hlaing met with the two former leaders to discuss the political situation in Myanmar.

Peng’s trip followed visits in February and March by Deng Xijun, China’s special envoy for Asian Affairs, who met with the junta chief on both occasions. Only two months earlier, the Chinese envoy convened a meeting with several ethnic armies from northern Myanmar across the border in southwestern China’s Yunnan province.

Thein Tun Oo, the executive director of the Thayninga Institute for Strategic Studies, which is made up of former military officers, described the uptick in meetings between the junta and Chinese officials as a bid by Beijing to “balance U.S. influence” in the region.

“The U.S is no longer the only country influencing the world,” he said. “Among such changes in world politics, Myanmar and China – which share a very long border – need to cooperate more closely. The bottom line is that China-Myanmar relations will continue to develop based on this.”

RFA emailed the Chinese Embassy in Yangon to inquire about the frequency of visits by top Chinese government officials to Naypyidaw in recent months and Beijing’s position on the political situation in Myanmar, but received no reply.

At the Chinese government’s regular press briefing held in Beijing on March 17, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin called Myanmar a “good neighbor,” adding that Beijing is closely following the situation there and hopes for a resolution through dialogue and consultation among all stakeholders.

Interests tied to peace

Chinese affairs expert Hla Kyaw Zaw told RFA that China will only be able to realize its interests in Myanmar if the country is at peace.

“China can only continue its investments and projects … if Myanmar is at peace,” he said. “The reason why China wants Myanmar to be peaceful is for its own economic interests.”

Among the China-backed megaprojects in Myanmar are the New Yangon City urban planning project, the Mee Lin Gyaing Energy Project in Ayeyarwady region, the Letpadaung Copper Mine in Sagaing region, and the Kyauk Phyu deep sea port and special economic zone in Rakhine state.

According to ISP-Myanmar, an independent research group, there are 35 China-Myanmar economic corridor projects underway in Myanmar that include railways, roads, special economic zones, sea ports and urban planning projects.

Than Soe Naing, a political analyst, agreed that Beijing’s relations with the junta hinge on the furtherance of its strategic interests.

“I see China cooperating with the military junta only to continue to maintain, implement and expand its economic interests in Myanmar, such as the strategic Kyauk Phyu deep sea port project, which is a bid by Beijing to obtain access to the Indian Ocean,” he said.

Than Soe Naing noted that China is trying to “divide the [ethnic armies] in northern Myanmar from the anti-junta resistance groups … under the pretext of peacemaking.”

But he said that China is actually working to exploit Myanmar’s internal conflict by attempting to “hold all the keys to the situation.”

No stability with junta

Kyaw Zaw, spokesman for the National Unity Government’s presidential office, warned China that there will only be stability in Myanmar if the forces of democracy succeed in their fight against the junta. He said only with stability in Myanmar will China realize its economic goals in the country.

“As long as there is a junta, Myanmar will not be at peace,” he said. “The junta will only terrorize the country with more violence and continue to torture the people. That’s why the country will remain destabilized under [the junta].”

A lack of stability in Myanmar will also impact the development, security, and economy of its neighbors, Kyaw Zaw added.

According to ISP-Myanmar, the value of foreign investment in Myanmar totaled more than U.S. $4 billion from February 2021 to April 2022, more than two-thirds of which was Chinese.

Translated by Myo Min Aung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.

A Cambodian court on Friday gave additional charges to a detained opposition leader, a move that will likely prevent him from campaigning ahead of July’s general elections.

Sporting a shaggy white goatee he grew while in detention, Thach Setha stepped out of the prison van wearing orange prison garb. The 69-year-old smiled and waved to reporters and supporters as he entered the Phnom Penh Municipal court to finish his bail hearing.

In July, he was charged with writing false checks. On Friday, Thach Setha, vice president of Cambodia’s main opposition Candlelight Party, was charged with “incitement to provoke social chaos” over remarks he made in a speech last year while visiting Japan, his lawyers told Radio Free Asia.

NGOs said the charges are politically motivated and accused the court of deliberately attempting to keep Thach Setha detained so that he is unable to campaign in the runup to the election if not missing it altogether. 

It’s the latest example of the Cambodian government targeting political opposition to the country’s strongman leader Hun Sen and his ruling Cambodian People’s Party, ahead of the July 23 election.

If convicted, the new charge can imprison Thach Setha between six months to two years.

The additional charges will undoubtedly force Thach Setha to remain in prison longer, as they constitute a more serious crime than the previous charges, said Ros Sotha, executive director of the Cambodian Human Rights Action Coalition.

He urged the ruling party to allow free and fair elections, saying, “I would like the politicians to consider their people. they have been suffering for many months already.”

The case against Thach Setha is politically motivated, Y Soksan, a senior officer in the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association, told RFA. He said that Thach Setha has attempted to repay the checks that bounced but the recipients are refusing so that his detention can be prolonged.

“The case should be resolved, but instead it will be dragged out,” said Y Soksan

Thach Setha’s wife Thach Sokborany told RFA that she hopes  the court will release her husband on bail so that he can be treated for various health issues including diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure.

“I ask the court to have clemency on him. He has a heart condition,” she said.  “Please have clemency … so he can reunite with his family.”

Translated by Samean Yun. Edited by Eugene Whong.

“Evan,” a Chinese grad student at Columbia University in New York, looks around a campus coffee shop anxiously as he explains why he’s helping form a group to challenge the orthodoxy of his government back home. 

“We can do something we can’t do in China,” he says, a black Yankees cap pulled low.  

But as Evan’s demeanor suggests, doing “something” carries risks even here, 7,000 miles from Beijing. He speaks more forcefully about the motivation behind the Columbia White Paper Society when there aren’t as many Asian students – potential Beijing sympathizers – close by.

“We can form a community and feel a sense of solidarity,” Evan, a budding sociologist, says. “And then we can see, maybe there are more things we can do.” (Evan is a pseudonym he chose to protect himself against reprisals when he returns to China.)

A political coming out

The group takes its name from protests in China that sprang up last fall out of frustration of zero-COVID restrictions and anger at a fire in Xinjiang that killed 10 people. Many of the people who held up blank white papers to signify their government’s censorship are now in jail – including, Evan says, two of his friends. 

He and his classmates don’t face that threat in the U.S. But they must consider consequences that American students don’t as they embark on what some activists call a “political coming out” – a period when Chinese students hone their worldviews beyond their country’s “Great Firewall” of censorship and the more universal self-centeredness of adolescence.

Openly criticizing China’s government can be a “very dangerous situation,” says “Shawn,” a self-possessed sophomore who is also in the group. Overseas Chinese students who have spoken against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have been harassed by more nationalistic peers, and security officials have visited family members back home. 

Such cases of “transnational repression” of CCP critics are widespread, the U.S. government and human rights groups like Freedom House have said. Recently, the Justice Department charged 44 people, including 34 Chinese national police officers, with harassing dissidents in the United States. Two men were also arrested for allegedly running an unauthorized police station in Manhattan from which they harassed dissidents.

Given the stakes, the Columbia students are proceeding cautiously as they try to keep alive a movement they joined in the fall in support of China’s protests under the CCP’s watchful and expansive eye.

Struck unconscious

More than 290,000 Chinese students studied in the United States in the 2021-22 school year, according to a survey by the Institute for International Education. China sends more of its kids to the U.S. for college than any other country.

Many of those who come join the Chinese Students Scholars Association, or CSSA, to help them adjust to life in an unfamiliar place. 

But some chapters reportedly receive funding from Beijing, so students who want to take advantage of their new political freedoms feel like they have to find other venues to express them. China denies it targets overseas critics of its government.

A number of recent examples show the risks of speaking out. A student at Indiana’s Purdue University who posted a letter praising Tiananmen Square protesters last year was harassed on campus and his parents were visited by security officials in China. 

In Boston, police arrested one Chinese student for threatening another who had posted fliers in support of democracy in China.

At Columbia, one of Shawn’s friends was struck unconscious by an unknown assailant at a Nov. 28 demonstration. Shawn (also a pseudonym) said she didn’t think the attacker, apparently a Chinese man, was a student. 

Other, less serious forms of harassment seem more common but still serve as a reminder to students that they can’t act with impunity. Attendees at a screening of a Tibet documentary shown in the fall noticed a man who appeared Chinese taking photographs through the window, Evan said. 

Sveta Lee, a White Paper Society member who is helping to form a Students for a Free Tibet chapter at Columbia, said posters she placed around campus were ripped off of bulletin boards or vandalized with words “Tibet is an indispensable part of China” scrawled over them.

Lee was familiar with China’s transnational reach long before college. Shortly after moving from her home in northeastern China to Belarus in 2011 for high school, she was detained overnight for taking part in a protest against that country’s long-time strongman, Alexander Lukashenko. 

Two Chinese students picked her up the next day and “told me to refrain myself from participating in events like this in the future if I didn’t want to get in trouble,” Lee says.

A careful recruitment

Now a permanent U.S. resident along with her mom, Lee is freer to express herself, which she does with a flash of blue hair on her head and a tattoo of the year of a Tibetan uprising on her arm. 

But the students who are staying in the U.S. on temporary visas are understandably nervous about aggressively promoting their activities. 

They talk on Signal, the message encryption app, take care not to associate their names with the group, and before entering political discussions search for clues to indicate friend or foe. (Evan says he’s particularly wary of engineering students because they believe in technology’s power to fix any issue.)

Their biggest fear is doing something that gets their families in trouble. Most said their parents either don’t know about their activities or don’t support them. 

Political discussions were rare back home, they said.

Evan learned the risks of being too outspokenly political from his father, who faced tanks on Tiananmen Square in 1989 and had a hard time getting a job for a decade after as punishment. To a younger Evan, the stories sounded cool enough to recount to his elementary school classmates. 

“I was so stupid,” he says. “My dad scolded me for it.”

Shawn, who wears long black bangs that frame her face and round John Lennon sunglasses favored by college activists everywhere, shared her father’s political views growing up. An executive at a developmental bank, he is a proud participant in China’s incredible economic growth, which the World Bank has called the “fastest sustained expansion by a major economy in history.” 

Its revival had brought nearly 800 million of its citizens out of poverty by 2022.

“I thought China was a great place and had a lot of natural enemies because of our ideology and jealousy over our development within such a short time,” Shawn says. 

Political discussions with friends were limited to foreign affairs or World War II, when China was invaded by Japan, she said. But at Columbia, she learned more about other sides to the story of China’s ascent as she met people like Uyghurs and Hong Kongers who spoke of suffering under the CCP’s heavy hand. 

When a friend passed on a video of the “bridge man” stringing a banner across an overpass in Beijing demanding an end to zero-COVID policies and Xi Jinping’s tenure, Shawn said she felt a new urge to act. 

“I realized that people who were in much more dangerous and risky situations compared to me could do such a brave act,” she said. “I was so much more privileged compared to someone like him.”

Movie screenings and karaoke

For now, the White Paper Society isn’t much bigger than the Dead Poet’s Society, the fictionalized group of prep school kids who challenged strict administrators and distant parents by breaking curfew to read poetry in the 1989 Robin Williams film.

But the students hope to build support over time through their Instagram account and in events they are able to plan in between their hours of study and social activities like board game nights. 

The first event, on Feb. 16, was a screening of the HBO film, In the Same Breath, about China’s response to the COVID outbreak in Wuhan.

A discussion paper handed out at the event asked attendees to talk about their own COVID experiences and what they viewed as the future of the social movement in China.

The next event may be karaoke, with participants invited to sing protest songs, Shawn said. Her intention is to bring different groups together – Han Chinese, Uyghurs, Hong Kongers, Tibetans – to learn from one another’s experiences in a way that doesn’t engender conflict.

None of the students have any expectation that their efforts will trigger a mass social movement that topples Xi Jinping, although opposition to his third term and restrictive policies is a motivating force. 

But they say they are surprised by the encouragement they’ve received in quiet discussions with fellow students, even if that support is yet to be reflected in official numbers or Instagram followers, which for the White Paper Society number only around 60 so far.

“I talk to my colleagues and to my classmates, and I thought that so many of them were pro-government and they’re unaware of what’s happening in China, but that’s not the case,” says Evan, who would like to study the treatment of rural migrant workers as an academic in his home country.

“They are from a higher social class in China, so their perspectives are quite limited,” Evan says. “But most of them are unsatisfied with everything happening in China.” 

The sentiment reflects a view shared by his peers back home, he said, but one even less easily expressed.

The sister of a businessman who is serving a life sentence has again been arrested and beaten for publicly protesting for her brother’s release in front of the high court in Tibet’s capital, Lhasa.

Gonpo Kyi and her husband were removed by Chinese police from the area in front of the court on Monday, according to a source who spoke to Radio Free Asia. Police covered her with a large black banner as they took her away, the source said.

Kyi and her husband were arrested on Wednesday and detained for two nights at Lhasa’s detention center, where they were both beaten and tortured, another source said.

“They have been released but the Chinese police have warned them to stop protesting or else they will land themselves in prison,” the second source told RFA. 

Kyi’s brother, Dorjee Tashi, was arrested in July 2008 following mass Tibetan protests against Chinese rule that spring and branded a “secessionist” for alleged covert support to the protesters and for political connections with the Tibetan community in exile, which he later denied. 

Though the political allegations against him were dropped, Tashi was indicted for loan fraud and sentenced to life in Drapchi Prison in Lhasa on what rights groups and supporters say were politically motivated charges.

Previously beaten

Last month, Kyi went to the prison to plead for his release. When she refused police demands to stop, she was detained overnight and tortured, sources said.

Kyi also staged a peaceful protest at the courthouse in December 2022 and held sit-ins outside another courthouse in the capital in June 2022.

“The Chinese authorities are planning to imprison us but we are also ready to go to prison to protect my brother even if it costs our lives,” she told Radio Free Asia on Friday.

She and her husband “have the right and entitlement to appeal” for Tashi’s release under the law, she said.

Before his arrest, Tashi was a member of the Chinese Communist Party and a successful businessman who owned a luxury hotel chain and real estate companies in Tibet, according to International Campaign for Tibet, a rights group. 

He was praised for his philanthropic activities that contributed to poverty alleviation and economic development in the region.
Translated by Tenzin Dickyi for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

The images on the 38-second video show only a knocked-over traffic cone, a parked car and some concrete paving – but the bursts of high-pitched screams from just off-camera are believed to have come from abducted Vietnamese blogger Thai Van Duong.

Thai vanished from the streets just north of Bangkok, in Thailand’s Pathum Thani province, on April 13. Activists went to the area several days later to search for clues, attempt to track down security video and interview witnesses who saw what they believed to be Thai’s kidnapping.

It was closed-circuit video from just down the street that captured Thai’s panicked shrieks, and it may be the best available depiction of the kidnapping, according to Vietnamese-American human rights activist Grace Bui. 

One witness who was interviewed, who hadn’t seen the video, did an almost exact imitation of the screams – testimony that helped the activists confirm it was Thai’s cries in the video, Bui said.

“One guy told us that there were two white cars that blocked Thai Van Duong’s motorcycle – one in front and one in the back,” Bui said. “They stopped his motorcycle, and people jumped out and took him inside the car. And [the guy] mimicked the scream of Thai Van Duong exactly what we heard from the video.” 

Thai, 41, fled to Thailand in 2019 fearing political persecution for his many posts and videos that criticized the Vietnamese government and leaders of the Communist Party on Facebook and YouTube. He had been applying for refugee status with the United Nations refugee agency’s office in Bangkok.

Friends realized he was missing on April 13 after calls to his mobile phone that afternoon went unanswered. On April 16, police in Vietnam’s Ha Tinh province said he had entered the country via trails on its border with Laos. 

But Thai’s friends insist that he was likely kidnapped by Vietnamese security forces and brought back to Vietnam, where the government continues to arrest, convict and imprison dissidents and activists. 

Facebook livestream in the park

Those friends – including Bui – have sought to retrace Thai’s steps on the day he disappeared. They’ve spoken to neighbors, people at a coffee shop and a friend he met in a park, and they’ve asked store owners and local authorities to hand over security video.

One video from his rented home north of Bangkok shows him casually getting on a motorbike outside his house at about 3:30 p.m. Other videos show him driving along nearby streets, then turning right at 3:39 p.m. outside his neighborhood’s gate.

Footage from a coffee shop at Rajamangala University of Technology Thanyaburi shows him standing at the front register buying coffee. Another video shows him driving through the university’s gate.

At 5:47 p.m., Thai appeared in a video live-streamed on Facebook. He talked about U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s visit to Hanoi and the recent trial in Vietnam of another blogger. 

“The Vietnamese Communist Party always propagates that ‘words go hand in hand with works’ – but they never do so,” he said. “On the day they welcome the U.S. secretary of state, they put Nguyen Lan Thang on trial.” 

Thang was sentenced to six years in prison and two years of probation on April 12. He was a long-time contributor to RFA’s Vietnamese service and participated in many roundtable discussions with the BBC, which contained contents prosecutors said sabotaged or smeared the Vietnamese government.

Charging Thang under Article 117 of Vietnam’s criminal code – often used by authorities to suppress free speech on social media – contradicted the government’s claim that it values freedom, democracy, human rights and freedom of speech, Thai said in his livestream.

“Why is answering foreign media bad?” he said. “It is not bad to answer foreign media, and doesn’t have anything to do with ‘toppling the government.’”

‘Vanished at that time’ 

The video with the screams came from a security camera on Soi Lamphu Road and had a timestamp of 6:07 p.m. Several local people told Bui and other Vietnamese activists the same thing – that a person riding a motorbike was blocked by two cars, physically subdued and then taken away.

“Both Duong and his motorcycle vanished at that time,” said Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch.

Robertson went along with Bui and the other Vietnamese activists when they went to the street to look for witnesses.

Thai is being held in Ha Tinh province’s Huong Son district. Despite heavy news coverage of his arrest, police have not provided an update about his status.

Thailand for many decades has served as an informal safe haven for political refugees in the region. Robertson told RFA last week that he fears that Thai’s case is yet another example showing that a so-called “swap mart” exists between Thailand and repressive neighboring countries like Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. 

“It is very unlikely that Vietnam government agents could have just come into Thailand and snatched a dissident without some local Thai officials knowing about this, and agreeing to look the other way,” he said. 

A missing persons complaint has been made to the Thayanaburi police station, which oversees the area where Thai was abducted, but police haven’t done much to follow up, Robertson said.

“A man was abducted in a community area in what can only be called a brazen, rights-abusing action, and the Thai authorities should get to the bottom of this matter and report what they find,” he said.

Translated by Anna Chau. Edited by Matt Reed and Tara McKelvey.

Reversing years of expensive work, Chinese bulldozers are tearing up parks and gardens in the “green belt” around the southwestern city of Chengdu to create more farmland as Beijing pushes ahead with a food security strategy that some are calling  “New Great Leap Forward.”

Before the pandemic, authorities had started to plow billions of dollars into the signature project, touted in state media as a sign of a greener future for China.

The green belt was home to the Tianfu Greenway around the city of nearly 10 million, and linked parks, gardens and “ecological zones,” in a move some said would “envelop Chengdu in one massive garden.”

But now, authorities led by “agricultural management” enforcement officials, are bulldozing much of the green belt in a bid to replace it with 100,000 mu (around 40,000 hectares) of farmland in the next three years.

”Restoration of farmland has begun near the … Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone,” an article on local news site Good Morning Tianfu reported on Friday. “It may seem a pity that the park encircling the city will be turned back into agricultural fields, food is the foundation of this country’s existence.”

“The government has made it clear that only grain and vegetables can now be grown on farmland, and that … previous farmland must be reclaimed,” it said. “This is the latest red line, and anyone who crosses it will fall from power.”

Planning for a crisis?

A local resident who gave only the surname Tong for fear of reprisals said the campaign to reclaim land for farming purposes is happening across China, not just in Chengdu.

“Maybe it’s to do with tensions in the Taiwan Strait or crisis planning for political and national security,” Tong said. “But they are preparing.”

“They want to make sure they have enough agricultural land, and they are stepping up investigations and cracking down via the agricultural management teams, through administrative channels,” he said.

Beijing-based political journalist Gao Yu said the project only opened to regular users last year.

“Now they’re bringing out the bulldozers again, to turn the park into fields,” she said. “So much money was invested, all of it taxpayers’ money.”

Gao drew a parallel with the mass agricultural mobilization of the Great Leap Forward, when then supreme leader Mao Zedong sent officials into villages to order farmers around, and to set up backyard steel furnaces in a bid to catch up with developed countries.

“It’s like the Great Leap Forward and the steelmaking campaign, which didn’t make any [viable] steel in the end,” Gao said. “Instead, what happened was that tens of millions of farmers starved to death.”

Wasted taxes

The ruling Chinese Communist Party-backed news site The Paper quoted an employee at the Chengdu Tianfu Greenway Construction Investment Group as confirming the move, saying the land must all be converted to agricultural use by the end of this year.

He denied that green belt land was being demolished to create farmland, however, saying that city planning officials had said it had been agricultural land all along. But The Paper cited district ecological protection regulations from Jan. 1, 2013, as “clearly prohibiting the use of such ecological land for agricultural purposes.”

Online comments estimated that it would take 442 years to earn back the 34.1 billion yuan originally spent on the greenway project, which was to have eventually encompassed the entire city, with returns on crops and produce that could be grown there.

“Twenty years ago, it was all about turning farmland into forests, and Chengdu invested 34.1 billion yuan to build the world’s largest park all around the city,” one comment read. “Now they are turning forests back into farmland, and tens of billions of yuan of taxpayers’ hard-earned cash has been wasted.”

“They only care about politics, not economics,” another comment read.

Heavy-handed enforcement of new agricultural zoning rules has prompted a wave of online complaints about “agricultural management” officials in recent weeks.

A farmer in the southeastern province of Fujian who gave only the surname Yang said they bulldozed fields of daffodils he had been growing without the consent of those who had planted them.

Another farmer made a video complaining that they had changed the status of his bamboo crop and forced him to cut it down.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.