Day: July 4, 2023

Concerns are growing that China could start using the Interpol “red notice” arrest warrant system to target anyone overseas, of any nationality, who says or does something the ruling Communist Party doesn’t like, using Hong Kong’s three-year-old national security law.

Dozens of rights groups on Tuesday called on governments to suspend any remaining extradition treaties with China and Hong Kong after the city’s government issued arrest warrants and bounties for eight prominent figures in the overseas democracy movement on Monday, vowing to pursue them for the rest of their lives.

“We urge governments to suspend the remaining extradition treaties that exist between democracies and the Hong Kong and Chinese governments and work towards coordinating an Interpol early warning system to protect Hong Kongers and other dissidents abroad,” an open letter dated July 4 and signed by more than 50 Hong Kong-linked civil society groups around the world said.

“Hong Kong activists in exile must be protected in their peaceful fight for basic human rights, freedoms and democracy,” said the letter, which was signed by dozens of local Hong Kong exile groups from around the world, as well as by Human Rights in China and the World Uyghur Congress.

Hong Kong’s national security law, according to its own Article 38, applies anywhere in the world, to people of all nationalities.

The warrants came days after the Beijing-backed Ta Kung Pao newspaper said Interpol red notices could be used to pursue people “who do not have permanent resident status of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and commit crimes against Hong Kong outside Hong Kong.” 

“If the Hong Kong [government] wants to extradite foreign criminals back to Hong Kong for trial, [it] must formally notify the relevant countries and request that local law enforcement agencies arrest the fugitives and send them back to Hong Kong for trial,” the paper said.

While Interpol’s red notice system isn’t designed for political arrests, China has built close ties and influence with the international body in recent years, with its former security minister Meng Hongwei rising to become president prior to his sudden arrest and prosecution in 2019, and another former top Chinese cop elected to the board in 2021.

And there are signs that Hong Kong’s national security police are already starting to target overseas citizens carrying out activities seen as hostile to China on foreign soil.

Hong Kong police in March wrote to the London-based rights group Hong Kong Watch ordering it to take down its website.

And people of Chinese descent who are citizens of other countries have already been targeted by Beijing for “national security” related charges.

Call to ignore

To address a growing sense of insecurity among overseas rights advocates concerned with Hong Kong, the letter called on authorities in the United Kingdom, United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Europe to reiterate that the Hong Kong National Security Law does not apply in their jurisdictions, and to reaffirm that the Hong Kong arrest warrants won’t be recognized.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said the “unlawful activities” the eight are accused of should all be protected under human rights guarantees in Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law.

“In recent years, the Chinese government has expanded efforts to control information and intimidate activists around the world by manipulation of bodies such as Interpol,” it said in a statement, adding that more than 100,000 Hong Kongers have fled the city since the crackdown on dissent began.

“The Hong Kong government’s charges and bounties against eight Hong Kong people in exile reflects the growing importance of the diaspora’s political activism,” Maya Wang, associate director in the group’s Asia division, said in a statement.

“Foreign governments should not only publicly reject cooperating with National Security Law cases, but should take concrete actions to hold top Beijing and Hong Kong officials accountable,” she said.

Hong Kong’s Chief Executive John Lee told reporters on Tuesday that the only way for the activists to “end their destiny of being an abscondee who will be pursued for life is to surrender” and urged them “to give themselves up as soon as possible”.

The Communist Party-backed Wen Wei Po newspaper cited Yiu Chi Shing, who represents Hong Kong on the standing committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, as saying that those who have fled overseas will continue to oppose the government from wherever they are.

“Anyone who crosses the red lines in the national security law will be punished, no matter how far away,” Yiu told the paper.

The rights groups warned that Monday’s arrest warrants represent a significant escalation in “long-arm” law enforcement by authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong.

Extradition

While the U.S., U.K. and several other countries suspended their extradition agreements with Hong Kong after the national security law criminalized public dissent and criticism of the authorities from July 1, 2020, several countries still have extradition arrangements in force, including the Philippines, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa and Sri Lanka.

South Korea, Malaysia, India and Indonesia could also still allow extradition to Hong Kong, according to a Wikipedia article on the topic.

Meanwhile, several European countries have extradition agreements in place with China, including Belgium, Italy and France, while others have sent fugitives to China at the request of its police.

However, a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in October 2022 could mean an end to extraditions to China among 46 signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights.

“The eight [on the wanted list] should be safe for now, but if they were to travel overseas and arrive in a country that has an extradition agreement with either mainland China or Hong Kong, then they could be arrested on request,” researcher Wang Hsin-li of Taiwan’s Association of Strategic Foresight said.

But he said he doesn’t believe that the government in China or Hong Kong cares much about the international outcry in response to the warrants, which have included growing calls for Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee to be barred from entering the United States to attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco in November.

“They’re pretty indifferent to international calls for sanctions,” Wang said. “Their thinking now is that national security trumps everything else.”

UK ‘strongly objects’

Lawyer and current affairs commentator Sang Pu agreed that officials could start using Interpol red notices, adding that the purpose of such international pressure seems to be to stop people from speaking up or protesting against the Chinese Communist Party overseas.

“This wasn’t aimed at those eight in particular, but at many more like them who are engaged in human rights advocacy and community building work,” Sang said of the Hong Kong warrants.

“There are many people like that in Taiwan, Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia.”

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverley said his government “strongly objects” to the national security law.

“The decision to issue arrest warrants for 8 activists, some of whom are in the UK, is a further example of the authoritarian reach of China’s extraterritorial law,” Cleverley said via Twitter, echoing earlier objections from the State Department.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said such criticisms were “flagrant slander,” and said the eight activists were “acting as pawns for anti-China forces overseas.”

“Relevant countries need to respect China’s sovereignty and the rule of law in Hong Kong, stop lending support for anti-China elements destabilizing Hong Kong, and stop providing a safe haven for fugitives,” she told a regular news conference in Beijing.

British Security Minister Tom Tugendhat said the warrants were “trying to interfere with our internal affairs.”

“Nathan Law and his fellow pro-democracy activists are under our protection, and enjoy our full support,” he said via Twitter in response to the arrest warrants.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

Radio Free Asia sat down for a chat with Raymond Powell, a 35-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force who retired in 2021 and now runs Project Myoushu. Part of Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, the project seeks to develop tools to counter Beijing’s “gray zone” tactics in the South China Sea. 

The following has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

—

Radio Free Asia: Project Myoushu is about China’s “gray zone tactics” in the South China Sea. Can we start by defining that?

Raymond Powell: We are talking about activities of a state actor – in this case, we’re talking about China – that can’t be directly attributed to them, or which fall in a nebulous legal area where they can act without being directly seen, or noticed, or publicly held accountable.

What makes the South China Sea a hotbed of gray zone activity is that most of what happens there happens outside the public eye. If China, for example, harasses a Filipino fisherman, or points a laser at a Philippine Coast Guard ship, they can attempt to say “That didn’t actually happen, you’re making that up. How do you know it was us?” So what the Philippines has been doing with releasing photos and videos of incidents has been trying to illuminate this gray zone. 

Our hypothesis is that if you illuminate gray zone activity, you do two things: You build resilience into your own society against that activity, so that people begin to expect and give you room to push back. And then, also, in the long-term, you hope to deter that activity because now, the gray zone actor – China – is paying a reputational cost.

RFA: Beijing has claimed the South China Sea for a very long time. When did we first see gray zone tactics emerge?

Powell: It’s very hard to put a date on it. I would say that the real sea change in gray zone activities probably can be traced back to the Scarborough Shoal Incident in 2012 – where they essentially took the shoal from the Philippines – and then their island-building campaign, where we saw them turn reefs and rocks into islands and military bases and station Navy and Coast Guard militia ships at those places. They began patrolling around those places in a way that expanded the assertion of their sovereignty. So again it’s hard to put a date on it.

To back up for a second, when I first started looking at the South China Sea in the 1980s, it was very much about “features.” It was about this rock, or this reef, or this island. Everything was centered on who had had actual possession of a particular feature. Obviously, there were overlapping claims, but the thing that mattered was the features. 

Now that China has these bases, it is able to project power outwards in a way that it’s very much more about the water, and who has a presence there. It’s about who has an actual military or paramilitary force that is able to push forward into the exclusive economic zones of its neighbors and take possession of things, either physically by rafting a whole bunch of malicious ships together or just by patrolling. 

Even patrolling is a gray zone activity, because patrolling by a Chinese Coast Guard ship among Malaysia’s oil and gas activities is an assertion of jurisdiction. It’s saying “We have sovereign rights over your exclusive economic zone, because it falls within our nine-dash line.”

RFA: I’m curious to hear you’ve been looking into the South China Sea since the 1980s. What did it look like then in terms of China’s presence and how has it changed over the last 40 years?

Powell: Because it was mostly about “features,” China’s presence was not actually that noticeable. They had fewer features than, say, the Vietnamese. There was one major clash in 1988 over South Johnson Reef, in which a Chinese ship opened fire on 60 or so Vietnamese sailors who were standing on the reef – actually in the water – but it was very much about who had possession of which feature. 

There was not a lot of patrolling happening back then. China simply didn’t have the assets to control all of that water. So that has really changed in the last 15 years, where they have vastly expanded their maritime militia, in particular and their Coast Guard. The Coast Guard and the maritime militia have become their instruments of power projection for the South China Sea. Their maritime militia’s activities are very much gray-zone because they’re very deniable. 

They can say, “Well, they’re fishing ships.” But they don’t fish. They exist to patrol or simply to lay claim by sheer presence in an area.

RFA: What about the spate of near-accidents that we’ve seen in the last few years, and particularly in the past few months?

Powell: A similar thing occurred in 2018 with the USS Decatur, which was in the South China Sea doing a freedom of navigation operation. It was similar in that the Chinese ship attempted to cut off the United States ship, and in both cases they came very close to doing so. More recently, we saw a Philippine Coast Guard vessel that was outside of Second Thomas Shoal also nearly collide with a Chinese ship. 

What is different now – in particular when you’re talking about the Philippines – is that the Philippines is releasing the photos and the video of the incidents. I think that is actually a quite effective deterrent measure, because part of China’s model for gray zone activity is that it’s just meant to be a message for the Philippine government, but now it’s exposed for the world and they have to recalculate its value.

RFA: What is the message that they’re trying to send to the Philippines, and to the United States when it happens with U.S. ships and planes? How does publicizing it alter the calculus?

Powell: When it’s a gray zone activity, generally speaking, the message is to the government of the country involved, and the message is: “You don’t want to escalate this. You want to have your relationship with China be as uncomplicated as possible. So now that you know we’re the jurisdiction here, keep this between us.”

What publicizing the incidents does is impose a reputational cost on China for doing those kinds of things. For many governments, the temptation is to go along, be quiet and not publicize anything, because you want everything to go back to normal. The problem is that the creeping normal is becoming less and less and less favorable for the region and for the other Southeast Asian countries. 

So the more you normalize the gray zone activity, the more they simply become expected, and eventually you will normalize yourself right out of all of your own legal and internationally lawful rights to your own exclusive economic zone. That is the tactic they call “salami slicing” – you take a slice of salami, another slice and another slice. 

So every time they sail through your waters and do a survey or a petrol, or they harass your oil and gas operations, or they stop your fisherfolk from fishing, and you acquiesce, it brings into normalcy the fact that you are no longer in charge of your own waters.

RFA: It’s changing “the facts on the ground.”

Powell: Right. So bringing it back to the U.S., one of the things that China does not like at all is U.S. freedom of navigation operations. The entire reason the freedom of navigation operations exist – and have existed for over four decades – is for this exact circumstance. 

Because if you allow a country to say “I’m going to draw a circle around this thing right here, which does not have a status under international law, but I’m going to say it belongs to me and nobody is allowed in here without my consent,” and we say, “Okay, the facts on the ground have now changed, even if the legal status has not,” then we have acquiesced. We’ve said that we will not go where you tell us not to go. 

The problem with that is it doesn’t have a logical stopping point. So the reason that freedom of navigation operations exist is that we simply say we will go wherever international law allows us. If the law allows us to go, say, in a straight line through this area, or to do maneuvers in that area, we will do exactly that, simply as an assertion of our rights.

RFA: So when China says it’s provocative, that’s the point?

Powell: I used to have diplomatic friends on the Chinese side say, “But why do you have to go through these very sensitive areas? The South China Sea is so big, you can easily go to other areas.” But you can’t just say something is sensitive to you and make a circle around it, and deny other people their right to go there. Eventually what will happen is that international law has no meaning, and might simply makes right. 

A freedom of navigation operation is a specific thing that is meant to counter excessive maritime claims. It’s very narrowly defined. The thing to remember is it’s not unique to the South China Sea or to China. We do freedom of navigation operations against excessive claims in the Mediterranean Sea, and against allies who have excessive claims. Some of them may write a protest letter to the embassy. We will file it and it goes unremarked on. Only China reacts the way that they do.

RFA: Do you think that part of the submarine sale to Australia under the AUKUS deal, in spite of the massive backlogs at U.S. shipyards, is meant to expand who’s doing these operations?

Powell: It’s very hard for a country to just start doing them.

RFA: But Australia does do freedom of navigation operations, even if not as frequently as the United States.

Powell: This is a technical question. Under the U.S. definition of a freedom of navigation operation, there are certain classifications. So, for example, Australia does not go within 12 nautical miles of a Chinese-held feature in the South China Sea. We do. Australia does not go through the Paracel Islands, around which China draws what we call straight baselines and says “You can’t go in here.” We do.

Oftentimes, my Australian friends would say, “Well, we do them, we just don’t go within 12 nautical miles.” But those are the ones that meet the technical definition of what our program calls “freedom of navigation operations.” So when my Australian friends would say “We do them,” I say that we’re using different definitions of the term. 

Australia has operations in the South China Sea, which they will say asserts their freedom to navigate the South China Sea. They will not, though, go the next step of going within 12 nautical miles of a feature. I understand why – because the first time that they do, everyone will notice and will want to know who they did it against. And if they do it against China, then China will treat it very much as a provocation. 

RFA: It sounds like you’re saying the “salami slicing” is working, if Australia is unable to go near these Chinese-held features?

Powell: Yes, you can say that China has – to every country in the world except for the United States – successfully been able to draw a 12 nautical mile circle around a number of claims, and say that nobody else can come close to them. They’ve sliced the salami that far.

RFA: How do you see this developing by 2030? What discussions will be taking place in Washington about the South China Sea?

Powell: If everything sort of stays on its current trajectory, the danger is that China consolidates its claims simply by increasing the number and frequency of its patrols, and essentially pushes its claim all the way to the edges of the nine-dash line, so that it becomes the effective sheriff, if you will, or the effective constabulary for the entire nine-dash line.

In some ways, they’ve already done that in many places. For example, the Philippines cannot fish at Scarborough Shoal except for in the way specifically allowed by China. China has not yet been able to entirely push that into, for example, hydrocarbon fields like Vietnam’s Vanguard Bank, or Malaysia’s of Luconia Shoals. But it has stopped any new exploitation there, if ever somebody wants to survey a new area.

There are a couple of flashpoints. One is that the Philippines is running out of natural gas from its existing gas fields, and it believes that it has exploitable natural gas at Reed Bank, which is within the nine-dash line. At some point, there will be an increasingly acute need to address that in some way that doesn’t violate the Philippines’ sovereignty.

Another is that the Philippines has a ship, the BRP Sierra Madre, which they ran aground in 1999 at Second Thomas Shoal. It effectively serves as their outpost there and asserts the Philippines’ claim over the shoal, which is in their exclusive economic zone. That ship is getting very old and increasingly rusted and brittle, and China has been very effective in not allowing repairs. At some point, that ship could easily begin to break up, or to slide off the shoal, which could provoke a crisis: What would the Philippines and its U.S. ally do about that? 

RFA: Everything you’re saying is leading me to think that there’s two possible conclusions: Either China does take control over the nine-dash line area of South China Sea, or there will be some kind of conflict with the U.S. military. Is there a third option?

Powell: Even under President Xi Jinping, it is not in China’s national interests to be in a constant state of tension and conflict with every country, everywhere, all the time, over everything. 

At some point it has to decide which battles it really wants to fight. So it’s in the interests of each country along its periphery to see if they can push back to the point where China realizes it’s not in its interests to have constant tension and there is instead a settlement somewhere short of yielding sovereignty over the entire nine-dash line.

RFA: That sounds like a far way off.

Powell: Every country needs to be thinking in the long-term. 

In the short term – and this goes back to the point of our program – countries like the Philippines can use transparency into gray-zone tactics as their friend. There is something to be gained, because it forces China to recalculate the cost/benefit of pushing that hard.

There’s an old saying that is attributed to Vladimir Lenin: “Probe with the bayonet. If you meet steel, withdraw. If you meet mush, press forward.” You need to have some steel in there, so that they know how hard they can push before you will start pushing back.

Japan’s plans to discharge treated nuclear wastewater stored at the Fukushima Daiichi power station into the Pacific Ocean are consistent with relevant international safety standards, the safety review by the U.N.’s atomic watchdog has concluded. 

The discharges of the treated water would have a negligible radiological impact on people and the environment, said the report formally presented by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo on Tuesday.

“Japan will continue to provide explanations to the Japanese people and to the international community in a sincere manner based on scientific evidence and with a high level of transparency,” Kishida said as he met with Grossi.

TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operates the Fukushima nuclear power plant located on Hakura Beach in Japan, is set to initiate the release of approximately 400,000 cubic meters of treated wastewater from the plant into the Pacific this summer.

Over 1.3 million cubic meters of wastewater – enough to fill more than 500 Olympic-size swimming pools – is currently contained in numerous water storage tanks at the facility. It was used to cool the nuclear reactors damaged in a 2011 earthquake and tsunami. 

TEPCO says that the controlled discharge of the treated wastewater adheres to a meticulous nuclear purification process utilizing a pumping and filtration system called ALPS (Advanced Liquid Processing System), designed according to the safety standards prescribed by the IAEA.

In the report’s foreword, Grossi said that the “controlled, gradual discharges of the treated water to the sea, as currently planned and assessed by TEPCO, would have a negligible radiological impact on people and the environment.”

China strongly objects

The plan, conceived in 2021, has been a source of concern about possible environmental and health risks for nearby countries such as South Korea, China and Pacific Island nations. Local Japanese fishing unions have also opposed it.

The Chinese Embassy in Japan said Tuesday the IAEA’s report could not be a pass for the nuclear-contaminated water to be released. It called on Japan to immediately suspend the plan, seriously negotiate with the international community, and jointly explore scientific, safe, transparent and acceptable handling methods.

In a press conference, Ambassador Wu Jianghao claimed that there was no precedent for discharging such water produced by nuclear accidents into the sea. He said it was different from other countries discharging wastewater because “what they are discharging is cooling water, not polluted water that has been in contact with the molten core of the accident.”

Fukushima’s nuclear-polluted water contains more than 60 types of radionuclides, many of which have no effective treatment technology at this stage, Wu said, claiming the effectiveness and sustainability of the Japanese processing system lacks sufficient authoritative verification.

However, IAEA and Japanese officials have said that ALPS will reduce 62 of the 63 radioactive substances currently in the wastewater to amounts that will have a negligible environmental impact. 

Wu said that Japan does not respect science because it announced in 2021 that it would start releasing the wastewater, “long before the IAEA completed its assessment and released its final report.” 

He also said IAEA is “not an appropriate agency to assess the long-term impact of nuclear-contaminated water on the marine environment and biological health.”

IAEA will monitor the discharge

The decision has also divided the scientific community. However, the IAEA’s report aligns with many international independent scientists who say the worries are based on misinformation. 

The wastewater release will take between 30 and 40 years to complete. The IAEA said it would continue its safety review during the discharge phase, with a continuous on-site presence and live online monitoring from the facility.

The agency said the stored water has been treated through ALPS to remove almost all radioactivity, aside from tritium, which will be diluted with the water to bring it below regulatory standards before the release.

“The IAEA will continue to provide transparency to the international community, making it possible for all stakeholders to rely on verified fact and science to inform their understanding of this matter throughout the process,” Grossi said.

He plans to arrive at the Fukushima plant on Wednesday. The following day he heads to South Korea to explain the report’s findings. He is also expected to visit some Pacific Island countries to ease their concerns over the plan.

The report represents the culmination of nearly two years of effort by a specialized task force comprising leading experts from the agency, guided by internationally acclaimed nuclear safety advisors from eleven nations. 

The experts assessed Japan’s proposals in light of the IAEA Safety Standards, which are recognized as the benchmark for safeguarding individuals and the environment and promoting a consistent and elevated level of safety globally.

Edited by Mike Firn.

El Niño conditions are underway in the tropical Pacific, which will likely result in record-high temperatures in many parts of the world, along with severe droughts, the World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday.

“El Niño conditions have developed in the tropical Pacific for the first time in seven years, setting the stage for a likely surge in global temperatures and disruptive weather and climate patterns,” the organization said.

It is expected to be at least of moderate strength, said the specialized United Nations agency that looks into weather and atmospheric science.

El Niño, a naturally occurring weather pattern characterized by hot ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, can significantly affect weather and storm patterns worldwide. It currently takes place in a climate changed by human activities.

There is “a 90% probability” of the El Niño event continuing during the second half of 2023, according to the World Meteorological Organization’s new forecast update, which combines forecasts and expert guidance from around the world.

“The onset of El Niño will greatly increase the likelihood of breaking temperature records and triggering more extreme heat in many parts of the world and in the ocean,” Petteri Taalas, the organization’s secretary-general, said. 

He said the announcement signals governments worldwide should prepare to limit the impacts on health, ecosystems, and economies. 

“Early warnings and anticipatory action of extreme weather events associated with this major climate phenomenon are vital to save lives and livelihoods,” Taalas said.

The U.S. National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration has predicted a 56% chance that this year’s El Niño will be a strong event, with an 84% chance of at least a moderate event. 

Scientists have found that the frequency and ferocity of such extreme events will increase this century due to rising global temperatures.

El Nino could bring record temperatures

El Niño occurs on average every two to seven years, and episodes typically last nine to 12 months. The region has seen the cooling influence of La Niña for several years, conditions which ended in March this year. 

Scientists say the past eight years have been the eight warmest on record globally, with 2016 being the hottest on record. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says that is primarily due to the “double whammy” of “an exceptionally strong El Niño” event and human-induced warming from greenhouse gasses.

According to a May report by the WMO, it is predicted that within the next five years and the entire five-year span, there will be a new record for the warmest temperatures ever recorded, surpassing the 2016 record.

Additionally, the report states that there is a 66% probability that the average global near-surface temperature for at least one year between 2023 and 2027 will exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

“This is not to say that in the next five years we would exceed the 1.5°C level specified in the Paris Agreement because that agreement refers to long-term warming over many years,” said Chris Hewitt, the WMO’s director of climate service.

“However, it is yet another wake-up call, or an early warning, that we are not yet going in the right direction to limit the warming to within the targets set in Paris in 2015 designed to substantially reduce the impacts of climate change.”

The WMO said Tuesday that the effect on global temperatures usually plays out in the year after its development and will likely be most apparent in 2024.

Last year, the average global temperature, which has not crossed the 1.5 C threshold set by the Paris climate agreement, was about 1.15 C above the 1850-1900 average.

Asia could see severe drought 

In most of Asia and Australia, El Nino would mean warmer, drier weather conditions and could cause severe drought, as well as fuel typhoons, the WMO said.

On June 30, the ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre (ASMC) said that El Niño conditions are expected to be established in the region during July and August. 

“Once established, these conditions are likely to strengthen gradually over the second half of 2023,” it said. 

“The typical impact of El Niño on Southeast Asia is drier-than-average rainfall conditions, including for much of the Maritime Continent during June to August. Warmer temperature conditions typically follow drier periods.”

The ASMC also said an increased risk of elevated hotspot activity and smoke haze could be expected over the fire-prone areas of the southern ASEAN region during extended periods of dry weather.

Last month, according to the state-affiliated Global Times newspaper, the China Meteorological Administration said that El Niño is expected to bring more extreme weather to China.

Zhou Bing, head of the administration’s meteorological service, told reporters that there are suggestions, dating back to 1850, that the return of El Niño could lead to record high temperatures in 2023 or 2024.

Zhou said that even if El Niño becomes a moderate event, it could surpass the record for the warmest global weather in 2016. 

During El Niño years, there are typically higher temperatures in mostly northern, eastern, and central regions, leading to extreme drought in certain areas, according to data from the National Climate Center. Similarly, more rainfall in southern China and a warmer winter are also expected. 

In recent weeks, parts of China have been experiencing record-breaking heat, while others have seen heavy rainfall and flooding. 

Edited by Mike Firn.