Day: June 13, 2023

Nothing can stop U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Beijing this time. Not the Chinese military’s “unsafe” moves in the South China Sea. Not a war of words over Chinese fentanyl exports. And not even the revelations of a multibillion-dollar Chinese spy base in Cuba.

In a dramatic about-face over the weekend, the Biden administration reversed its denials of a Wall Street Journal report about the spy base to instead say it was not even news: The spy base, it said, had in fact been known to U.S. intelligence since the Trump administration.

That only raised more questions about the initial denials.

John Kirby, spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, on Monday flat-out denied that the repudiation of the story last week was intended to not derail Blinken’s coming trip to China, as the spy-balloon saga did with his late trip cancellation in February.

Kirby told reporters at the White House on Monday that the denials were due to the verb forms used in last week’s reports. The headlines should have used the past tense, he said, not the present.

Still, he denied that the White House had been caught in hamfisted cover-up of untimely news, and queried the reason for the leak.

“It’s shameful that somebody – or somebodies – somehow think it’s okay to put this kind of information in the public bloodstream,” Kirby said. “We were as forthcoming as we should have been and could have been in the moment, and remain that way right now.”

We need to talk

Blinken’s trip is yet to be officially announced by the State Department, but media reports suggest he will arrive in Beijing on Sunday and meet top officials from China’s government during an event on Monday.

The visit comes after almost a year of strained relations between Washington and Beijing, which began with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan in August and has since been punctuated by an near unending list of disputes between the two major world powers, including tech export bans and the rise in near-accidents at sea. 

Amid those complaints, some have queried why the White House is trying so hard now for a thaw, having even “held back human rights-related sanctions, export controls and other sensitive actions to try to limit damage to the U.S.-China relationship,” per one report.

It’s all part of the precarious high-wire act of managing the extensive economic ties and military tensions in what President Joe Biden has called “the most important relationship” that the United States has.

“The Biden administration is trying to walk a fine line,” Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, told Radio Free Asia, noting that the White House’s main aim was to build a “balancing coalition to keep China from gaining hegemony in Asia.”

“But they also want to cooperate with Beijing in other areas and avoid a complete economic or political rupture” that would damage both sides, he said. “A thaw with Beijing will also reassure our Asian allies, who are sometimes spooked when the risk of war seems too high.”

Both of those latter aims, Walt explained, require dialogue, which China has shut off since Blinken’s nixed February trip. But that also means the U.S. side stands to gain more from resumed talks.

“For the United States, restarting regular dialogue and clarifying some points of agreement would be enough,” he said. “China faces a tougher task: ‘success’ probably means getting the United States to back away from some of its recent measures, and that is unlikely to happen.”

To thaw or not to thaw

Some, including Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, don’t even see Blinken’s trip amid mounting tensions as the pursuit of a thaw.

“Rather, it is seeking to responsibly manage competition with China, which is impossible to do in the absence of dialogue,” Glaser told RFA. “Blinken likely hopes to restore mechanisms of dialogue that have been suspended, especially the military dialogues, and to reinvigorate cooperation on global issues.”

“I expect he will cover the full range of issues in the relationship, including human rights, actions against Chinese companies, the war in Ukraine, as well as North Korea, Iran, and Taiwan,” she said.

There are also more practical reasons to re-engage in talks, especially as American defense officials continue to warn about the risks of a war. 

While the United States and China may be locked in a “strategic competition” to influence world politics in their favor, they are also economically intertwined in a way the United States and Soviet Union never were during the Cold War, said Richard Harknett, director of the University of Cincinnat’s School of Public and International Affairs.

“Competition is not inevitably conflict, and neither country’s interests are advanced through direct conflict/war,” Harknett told RFA. “Just talking at high levels is an advancement as it reduces the chances for misperceptions to lead to unintended incidents.” 

He said that could only be achieved by restoring dialogue to create “some basic rules of the road” that benefit both sides long-term.

“This is establishing ground rules for the next decades,” he said.

Biden-Xi

In the shorter term, said Kharis Templeman, the director of the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region at Stanford University, bilateral dialogue is also “useful for clarifying U.S. interests and capabilities” to Beijing, even if most issues “won’t be resolved simply by talking.”

That will put the United States in a better position in its competition with China, he said, and could help avoid a conflict. Beyond that, it “doesn’t cost much to send Blinken to Beijing,” Templeman argued.

“It’s also useful because the U.S. side can learn more about the CCP leadership,” he added, referring to the Chinese Communist Party, and there is value in seeing “who’s advising Xi Jinping, how Xi spends his time, what issues they want to talk about and avoid, and so forth.” 

“The primary way that hot conflicts happen is via misperception of the other side’s interests, commitments and capabilities,” he said. 

In the end, the many points of dispute between the United States and China might also be seen as more of a reason for a meeting between their top diplomats than an impediment to it, said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor at the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra.

“It is precisely because of the growing list of issues affecting bilateral relations that there is increased urgency for dialogue to address these disputes and stabilize relations,” Thayer said, and to break a cycle of “both putting the blame on the other for the failure of dialogue.”

Besides allowing both sides to “take stock of the main irritants in bilateral relations and how they can be managed,” the trip could lay the groundwork for another face-to-face at the ASEAN summit in Jakarta in September or G-20 Summit in New Delhi in December, he added.

“It is likely both China and the United States will find it in their interest to schedule a meeting between Xi and Biden before the end of the year, when the regional diplomatic calendar of events provides a convenient opportunity for them to meet,” Thayer said.

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

Indonesia’s first high-speed rail is on track to start limited operations in two months’ time, the consortium building the China-funded project announced Tuesday after a media report said its launch could be delayed again.

PT KCIC, the consortium of Indonesian and Chinese companies, said the Jakarta-Bandung rail service was expected to start operating for free for a limited number of passengers on Aug. 18, but it did not say when commercial operations would begin.

“This marks a historic milestone for Indonesia’s railways as we will soon operate high-speed trains,” company spokesman Emir Monti said in a statement, according to a report by BenarNews, which is affiliated with Radio Free Asia.

The Reuters news agency, citing an internal document, reported last week that the Transportation Ministry and three consultants had advised the consortium against launching the service commercially in August because of an incomplete station and other issues.

Monti of KCIC said the company was preparing for the certification process with the Transportation Ministry and other relevant parties.

“We will comply and follow fully the regulations set by the Transportation Ministry,” Monti said in the statement.

The project is already four years behind schedule and US$1.2 billion over budget.  It now costs $7.2 billion, up from an initially estimated $6 billion (89 trillion rupiah).

It has faced several delays due to land acquisition, funding and technical issues. A work train – not a high-speed one – derailed on Dec. 18, killing two workers and injuring four others.

Meanwhile, Luhut Pandjaitan, Indonesia’s minister of maritime affairs and investment, told lawmakers during a parliamentary hearing on Friday that the train would be ready for a speed test of up to 300 kilometers per hour later this month, and invited them to join the test ride.

“Don’t listen to rumors out there. It’s going well,” he said of the project.

The Jakarta-Bandung rail project is the most high-profile of China’s Belt and Road Initiative projects in Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy. It has been touted by Indonesia and China as a symbol of the close ties between the two countries.

The project is also a showcase of China’s ambitions to export its high-speed rail technology and expand its influence in the region. China has been competing with Japan, which has a long history of building bullet trains, for rail projects in Southeast Asia.

The Belt and Road Initiative is China’s $1 trillion-plus program to finance and build infrastructure across the globe.

The new rail line is expected to reduce the travel time between Jakarta and Bandung to 34-45 minutes from 2.5 hours by regular train. The project has faced several delays and controversies, including criticism of its environmental impact, since it was launched in 2016.

The train service is expected to run at a speed of 350 kph (217 mph) along the 142-km (88-mile) route.

China’s interest rate on loans

Meanwhile, Luhut, who is also Indonesia’s top official for cooperation with China, said the country would make all-out efforts to put the rail project into operation on schedule, according to a statement on China’s foreign ministry website.

Luhut made the remarks on Friday during a phone call with Wang Yi, director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, the statement said.

“The joint commissioning and testing of the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway, a flagship project of Belt and Road cooperation, has started, marking an important step towards the inauguration of the whole line,” the statement said. 

“The railway will inject new impetus into Indonesia’s accelerated development.”  

China has played hardball over the funding of cost overrun. 

Beijing has insisted on keeping the interest rate for the project loan, including the cost overrun, at 3.4%, despite Indonesia’s request to lower it to 2%, Luhut had said in April.

Luhut said the government was also negotiating with China on the loan tenure and the grace period for repayment. The tenure could range from 30 to 40 years, while the grace period could be 10 to 15 years.

On Friday, he told lawmakers that the negotiation was “in [the] final stages.”

Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo had promised not to use state funds for the project, but the government decided in 2021 to fund $200 million of the cost overrun through a capital injection.

The Indonesian government had last year proposed that the China Development Bank, which is financing the project, shoulder 75 percent of the cost overrun, with the consortium of Indonesian and Chinese companies covering 25 percent.

An AidData study from 2021 noted that Indonesia owes $17.28 billion in “hidden debt” to China. Nearly 70 percent of China’s overseas lending is directed to state-owned companies and private-sector institutions, meaning the debts, for the most part, do not appear on government balance sheets, said the U.S.-based international development research lab.

Separately, KCIC’s human resources director Adhi Priyanto confirmed a media report that said the consortium asked the government in January to allow more foreigners to work on the rail service.

The Jakarta Post on Tuesday, citing a company document, reported that the Transportation Ministry backed more foreign workers for safety reasons, especially in the first year of operations. 

The Manpower Ministry said in May it would relax eligibility requirements if needed, the newspaper said, citing the same document.

Adhi said China would run the Jakarta-Bandung rail service for safety reasons in the first year of operations and then transfer half of the jobs to Indonesian workers in the second year.

“From the third year on, it will be all Indonesian,” Adhi was quoted as saying. 

He noted the arrangement was better than an earlier proposal that maintained Chinese operations for the first five years.

BenarNews is an online news organization affiliated to Radio Free Asia.

Women gang raped, children stabbed and killed, men shot and burned to death.

The criminal complaint of genocide by Myanmar’s armed forces against the Muslim Rohingya minority includes detailed accounts of stomach-churning atrocities.

Argentina accepted the case under the principle of “universal jurisdiction,” in which crimes that are especially abhorrent can be taken by any country.

Hearings at a federal court in Buenos Aires, set to end Tuesday, include in-person testimony from Rohingya witnesses – a historic first. For security reasons the case is being held behind closed doors.

“The net is closing in around Myanmar’s military leaders. This trial shows that they cannot hide from justice anywhere in the world,” said Tun Khin, head of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, or BROUK, the London-based advocacy group that brought the case.

The case centers on abuses committed in Myanmar between 2012 and 2018. Those named include military junta leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, radical Buhddist cleric Ashin Wirathu, and ousted civilian leader Aung Sang Suu Kyi.

Tomas Ojea Qintana, who was United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar between 2008 and 2014, is representing BROUK in court.

Much of the case is based on Ojea Quintana’s own work in the region, the work of his successor Yanghee Lee, and reports submitted in 2018 and 2019 by a United Nations “Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar.”

Easy Target

The Rohingya live in the impoverished western state of Rakhine, which borders the Bay of Bengal and Bangladesh. They shared the region with other groups, mainly the Buddhist ethnic Rakhine.

According to the criminal complaint, the “genocidal final plan” against the Rohingya was born in 2012, when a nominally elected military government, seeking support from the country’s Buddhist majority, began to promote hatred towards Myanmar’s Muslims and especially the Rohingya.

The Rohingya, who had faced various forms of discrimination for decades, were an easy target.

 

“In a coordinated manner among all state entities, the use of the name Rohingya began to be forbidden,” replaced by the generic term “Bengalis,” the complaint reads.

A campaign, fueled by radical Buddhist priests, then spread the idea that the tiny Muslim minority was plotting “to take over the country and convert it to Islam.”

Two waves of violence broke out in October 2012 in Rakhine State, affecting 12 townships. Further violence broke out in the town of Thandwe in 2013. At the time authorities dismissed the incidents as “intercommunal unrest.”

The attacks against the Rohingya and another Muslim ethnic group, the Kaman, were really part of a months-long plan “to instigate violence and amplify tensions” fueled by “various Rakhine organizations, radical Buddhist monk organizations, and several officials and influential figures,” the complaint reads.

Security forces “were at least complicit, often failing to intervene to stop the violence, or actively participated.”

‘Genocidal plan’

Witnesses in the towns of Sittwe and Kyaukpyu said police and soldiers stopped people from extinguishing fires set by Rakhine mobs, while witnesses at Maungdaw “described security forces shooting indiscriminately at Rohingya and conducting mass arrests.”

Some 140,000 people were displaced, mostly fleeing to Bangladesh.

Following the November 2015 elections which ushered in Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government, “the genocidal plan was perfected,” the complaint states.

“In a cruel twist of history” this allowed for “the worst atrocities to be committed under the authority of those who had fought with their lives for democratic freedoms, human rights and peace,” it says.

Violence escalated dramatically in August 2017 when the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army – a small, poorly armed resistance group – attacked security forces across northern Rakhine state, killing 12 people.

The military response, “launched within hours, was immediate, brutal and grossly disproportionate,” encompassing hundreds of villages in so-called “clearance operations.” Within a year nearly 725,000 Rohingya had fled to Bangladesh, with an estimated 10,000 people killed.

“Rape and other forms of sexual violence were perpetrated on a massive scale. Large scale gang rape was perpetrated by Tatmadaw soldiers in at least 10 village tracts” in Rakhine state, the complaint said.

Massacres

People were shot dead indiscriminately by soldiers, while others were burned to death in their homes. Rakhine men often joined the soldiers wielding long knives and machetes.

“Sometimes up to 40 women and girls were raped or gang-raped together,” often in public and in front of their families “to maximize humiliation.” Men and boys were not spared “genital mutilation and sexualized torture,” the document reads.

Of the approximately 500,000 Rohingya children currently in Bangladesh, “many fled alone after their parents were killed or after being separated from their families.”

In a particularly heinous incident on August 30, 2017, soldiers and armed ethnic Rakhine stormed the village of Min Gyi and attacked Rohingya who had taken refuge there.

Soldiers opened fire on people trying to flee. Villagers who surrendered were rounded up, and women and children were separated from the men.

The men were slaughtered and their bodies dumped into three pits, doused gasoline and set ablaze.

Women and girls were taken into rooms where they were robbed, raped and stabbed. Children and infants were killed or stabbed.

“All interviewees identified Tatmadaw soldiers as the main perpetrators,” the complaint says, adding that ethnic Rakhine “and members of other ethnic minorities participated.”

At least 750 people died in that attack.

Downplayed

Aung San Suu Kyi, then head of Myanmar’s civilian government, downplayed the violence when presented with evidence, describing it as “fake news” and “an iceberg of misinformation.”

Two other international court cases are attempting to hold Myanmar’s authorities accountable.

In 2019 the International Criminal Court began looking into abuses against Rohingya on the border with Bangladesh. Myanmar is not a member of the ICC, but Bangladesh is, so this probe is limited in scope.

And in November 2020 The Gambia filed a case focusing on Myanmar’s responsibility as a state for the Rohingya genocide at the UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice.

“Argentina is on the other side of the world from Myanmar but even here the Burmese military cannot escape justice,” plaintiff Tun Kihn said.

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

Tibetan students who took China’s annual college entrance exam over the weekend had to do so completely in Mandarin, likely putting many at a disadvantage, residents in Tibet told Radio Free Asia.

The exams, held from June 7-9 across China, will go a long way toward determining the fates of more than 13 million students. 

In previous years, ethnic minorities, including Tibetans, had been allowed to take the test in their native languages, but this year marks the first that the test was given only in Mandarin. Also, ethnic minorities no longer get five extra minutes to complete the test as they had in the past.

The Mandarin-only policy for the test is concurrent with other controversial educational policies meant to establish Mandarin as the medium of instruction within Tibetan schools–which Tibetan activists say is part of Beijing’s plan to eliminate Tibetan culture and Sinicize the region. 

 “In 2022, the Chinese government imposed the Model 2 Education System under which Mandarin was made the primary medium of instruction in all the primary and secondary schools across Golog, Kardze and Qinghai,” a Tibetan resident of Tibet told RFA’s Tibetan Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“Now beginning this year, the Chinese government has imposed Mandarin as the medium for college entrance exams.”

Opponents to the Model 2 Education system argue that the policy will destroy Tibetan language and culture, and it has no basis in law.

“Due to the sudden shift on the Chinese government’s education reforms, Tibetan students are not as well prepared and proficient enough in Mandarin to compete with [Mandarin native speaker]students who have always been learning in Mandarin,” the resident said. “This is a disadvantage for Tibetan students over [native Mandarin speaking] students who score more easily and get admission in college. Hence, many Tibetan students will not get into good colleges.”   

Removing the  extra time for ethnic minority students is also problematic, another resident, who declined to be named, told RFA.

“[They] used to get five extra minutes, but now with the reforms, these extra minutes are revoked,” the second resident said. “These reforms have made it near impossible for Tibetan students to score well to get into college, and without a proper degree, it is impossible to get a decent job.”

The trend could be dangerous for the entire Tibetan community, the second resident said.

“We will see an incredible increase in the number of Tibetan students who cannot attend college and pursue a higher education.”

China’s educational reforms are a contradiction of its law on Regional National Autonomy, Pema Gyal, a researcher at the London-based Tibet Watch advocacy and monitoring group.

“The law states that minority schools should, if possible, use textbooks printed in their own languages, and lessons should be taught in those languages, and this contradicts with what the government is doing right now,” said Pema Gyal. “This is an attempt to Sinicize the education system in Tibet and therefore so many Tibetan students are not able to pursue higher education.” 

Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Edited by Eugene Whong.