Day: June 8, 2023

A student at the Jiangxi Vocational Technical College of Industry Trade in the southeastern Chinese city of Nanchang was shocked to find the head of a rat in the rice he was served at the school cafeteria. But it was the response of school authorities that raised millions of eyebrows on Weibo, China’s Twitter. The creature in the rice was a duck, not a rat, the school said, warning students not to discuss the incident online. But the head in the picture had rodent teeth, and the dispute drew more than 310 million views online. Many netizens reached back 2,200 years to highlight a Qin Dynasty idiom, “calling a deer a horse,” which describes the deliberate pushing of a falsehood.

A rise in “dangerous maneuvers” by China’s military risks “a crisis or conflict” in the South China Sea or Taiwan Strait, the U.S. assistant secretary of defense responsible for the region said Thursday.

The Pentagon has in the past two weeks released footage of two incidents of near-accidents involving Chinese vessels. 

The first, from May 26, shows a Chinese jet veering suddenly in front of a U.S. reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea. The second, from June 2, shows a similar maneuver from a Chinese warship.

It’s part of a “steep rise” in “aggressive, unprofessional, risky, unsafe behavior” that has also included the release of flares and chaff – clusters of metal pieces – at U.S.-allied aircraft, said Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs.

“It’s dangerous, it’s risky, and it tempts an incident that could lead to some kind of crisis or conflict,” Ratner said at an event at the Center for a New American Security, adding that it was made worse by a breakdown in communications between the two militaries.

“It’s happening in the context of [China’s military] being unwilling to engage with the United States in military-to-military communications – not just crisis communications, but dialogue as well,” he said.

American defense officials have complained about their Chinese counterparts’ refusal to speak on the phone since U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken nixed a February trip to Beijing after an alleged Chinese spy balloon was discovered over the United States.

China’s new defense minister, Li Shangfu, also declined an invitation to meet with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin when they were in Singapore last weekend for the annual Shangri-La Dialogue.

“We think that’s really problematic,” Ratner said.

Cold thaw 

Ratner’s comments come amid strained efforts by U.S. diplomats to re-engage with China after nearly a year of rising tensions that began with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August visit to Taiwan.

The relationship has been further strained by the spy balloon, Blinken’s canceled Beijing trip, an unofficial visit to the United States by Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and U.S. efforts to cut China’s technology sector off from high-end American microchips.

Meanwhile, there has also been no shortage of warnings from U.S. generals of an imminent invasion of Taiwan by China as early as later this year, and Republican and Democratic lawmakers have seized on China policy as a rare area of bipartisan unity.

However, two senior U.S. officials were in Beijing on Monday in an attempt to pave the way for a new Blinken visit to Beijing, and there have been reports the U.S. secretary of state will make the trip within weeks. President Joe Biden has also predicted a thaw.

But such efforts to move toward a thaw in relations are being complicated by the rise in near-accidents between the two militaries, which Chinese officials have blamed on the U.S. side.

Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told Radio Free Asia last month that the “provocative and dangerous moves” by American military vessels in their “close-in reconnaissance on China” was the ultimate cause of the recent near-accidents.

Ratner told the CNAS conference any suggestion that the U.S. military was even partly to blame in the incidents “makes me want to tear my hair out” given the aggressive maneuvers from China.

“We’re going to continue to fly, sail and operate safely and responsibly, in accordance with international law, as we have been doing,” he said Thursday. “This is a major problem.”

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

Southeast Asian nations will hold their first joint military exercises in the South China Sea, ASEAN chair Indonesia said Thursday, amid rising tensions between Beijing and Washington in the disputed waterway and Taiwan Strait.

The non-combat drills will take place near Indonesia’s Natuna Islands in September as a show of unity among the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Indonesian military officials said.

“All [ASEAN countries] have confirmed that they will attend,” Julius Widjojono, a spokesman for Indonesia’s armed forces, told BenarNews, adding the drill would be an annual event. However, there had been no confirmation from Myanmar on whether it would take part, Julius said. Strife-torn Myanmar is persona non grata at major ASEAN meetings.

China claims nearly the entire South China Sea, including waters within the exclusive economic zones of Taiwan and ASEAN member-states Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. While Indonesia does not regard itself as a party to the South China Sea dispute, Beijing claims historic rights to parts of that sea overlapping Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone in and around the Natunas.

Indonesia’s military commander Adm. Yudo Margono, who proposed the ASEAN drill during a meeting of the bloc’s defense forces chiefs on Wednesday in Bali, said the exercises would enhance regional stability.

“Indonesia will continue to promote a safe, peaceful and stable region free from any threats and disturbances that threaten the sovereignty of the states,” Yudo said in a statement Wednesday.

“A safe sea will automatically boost our countries’ economy.”

‘Strong message to the major powers’

The ASEAN drill, dubbed ASEAN Solidity Exercise, or Asec01N, will involve army, navy and air force units from the member-states, and Timor Leste, an observer state. The exercises will focus on maritime security and search-and-rescue operations.

Khairul Fahmi, a military and security analyst at the Jakarta-based Institute for Security and Strategic Studies, said the exercise was a good initiative by Indonesia.

“This is a concrete form of defense diplomacy to build trust, reduce concerns and misunderstandings between countries, especially ASEAN. Plus, there will be many challenges and threats to Indonesia’s national interests,” Fahmi said.

He said Indonesia’s initiative also affirmed its sovereign rights in the North Natuna Sea, which China claims as part of its historical rights marked by a nine-dash line that overlaps with other countries’ exclusive economic zones.

“This is part of ASEAN’s efforts to jointly play a more strategic role in maintaining regional stability,” Fahmi said.

“At the same time, it sends a strong message to the major powers that have interests in the region, especially in the North Natuna Sea, not to ignore ASEAN.”

China has built military installations on some of the islands and reefs it controls in the South China Sea. In 2016, an international tribunal ruled that China’s claims had no legal basis under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), but Beijing rejected the ruling and continues to assert its presence.

Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia have accused China of disrupting their oil and gas exploration activities with frequent incursions by Chinese coast guard and maritime militia ships, leading to confrontations. ASEAN and China have been negotiating a code of conduct for years to manage disputes peacefully, but progress has been glacial.

The United States, which is not a claimant but is in a defense treaty with the Philippines, has challenged China’s claims by conducting “freedom of navigation” operations in the waterway.

While officials from some ASEAN states have expressed worry about the possibility of war breaking out between the superpowers over Taiwan, Washington and Manila earlier this year struck a deal to give U.S. forces expanded access to military bases in the Philippines – a move that angered China.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news organization.

A court in the northern Chinese province of Shaanxi has jailed prominent rights lawyer Chang Weiping for three-and-a-half years after he attended a gathering of dissidents in the southeastern city of Xiamen in December 2019.

The Feng County People’s Court handed down the sentence to Chang – whose lawyers say he has suffered torture in incommunicado detention – after finding him guilty of “incitement to subvert state power” at a secret trial.

The sentence came eight weeks after authorities in Shandong province handed down a 14-year sentence to prominent dissident Xu Zhiyong and a 12-year term to rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi, who also attended the Xiamen gathering, on the same charges, prompting an international outcry.

Subversion charges are frequently used by the ruling Chinese Communist Party to target peaceful critics of the regime.

Chang’s wife Chen Zijuan dismissed the case against her husband as “absurd.”

“His sentence of three-and-a-half years … may appear more lenient than those of Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi, but the whole case against him was ridiculous from start to finish,” Chen said.

“Even a day in prison would have been too much.”

De facto travel ban

Before his trial, Chang had been held for a long time under “residential surveillance at a designated location,” which rights groups say is associated with a higher risk of torture and mistreatment in detention.

Lawyers representing Chang, Xu and Ding have all reported that they were tortured during their time in pretrial detention.

“He has been locked up in the detention center for a very long time already, and I’m very concerned about his health,” Chen said, adding that her husband has also been sentenced to two-and-a-half years’ “deprivation of political rights,” which she said was a de facto travel ban.

“The point of the so-called deprivation of political rights is to stop him from leaving the country,” she said. 

“Judging from past practice … even if political prisoners are released after serving their sentences … they are unlikely to have true freedom but be under surveillance, and they won’t have the freedom to leave the country,” Chen said.

She added that Chang is still considering whether or not to appeal, according to his lawyer.

Rights attorney Liu Shihui said any appeal would just be a question of “going through the motions,” however.

“Everyone knows that the sentence is never changed in these sorts of cases involving prisoners of conscience,” Liu said. “It’s a form of political persecution.”

“They have delayed this case for more than three years before pronouncing sentence … and everyone knows that life in those detention centers is hell on earth, and a year seems like a whole lifetime,” he said.

‘No legal basis at all’

U.S.-based rights activist and legal scholar Teng Biao said Chang had gotten off relatively lightly compared with Xu and Ding, whom the authorities seem to regard as the main “culprits’ behind the Xiamen dinner gathering.

“They probably think Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi were the ringleaders in the Xiamen case, but from a legal point of view, neither Xu, Ding nor Chang or anyone else [accused] in this case have committed any crime,” Teng said.

“Arresting them and sending them to prison for subversion of state power is pure political persecution and a gross violation of their civil rights and freedoms, and has no legal basis at all, regardless of how lenient the sentence may be,” he said.

Chang, who was only allowed to meet with a lawyer after nearly a year in detention, was strapped immobile into a “tiger chair” torture device for six days straight, and deprived of food and sleep, his lawyer said in September 2021.

Ding’s lawyers say he was restrained in a “tiger chair” between April 1 and April 8, 2020, and interrogated for 21 hours a day, subjected to sleep deprivation and limited food and water.

Xu has told his lawyer that he was subjected to similar treatment in the “tiger chair” while detained in Shandong’s Yantai city.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Matt Reed.