Day: February 15, 2024

China’s Xi Jinping was once a “humble” leader who has “totally changed” since taking control of the country in the style of Mao Zedong, according to the memoir of Hideo Tarumi, a former Japanese ambassador to Beijing who left his post in December amid deteriorating bilateral ties.

In the memoir published by the literary magazine Bungeishunjū just two months after he left his post, Tarumi describes meeting Xi during a visit to Japan when he was vice president under Hu Jintao in 2009.

Tarumi’s job on the night was to greet each guest personally, and he noticed that Xi showed no sign of impatience while waiting to be greeted, despite the fact that Tarumi was running late, and took a while to get to him.

The encounter was to leave Tarumi with the impression of a “humble” official, he wrote, adding that Xi has “totally changed” since taking power in 2012.

“Xi Jinping’s aura has totally changed,” Tarumi wrote, adding that he is now surrounded by far more security guards than his predecessor Hu Jintao, making it hard to approach him.

He said Xi has now steered China away from the decades of economic reform launched by late supreme leader Deng Xiaoping in 1979, and along a path that is closer to that chosen by Mao Zedong.

“Xi Jinping’s actions prove that he chose … to use a high degree of centralization to maintain the legitimacy of Chinese Communist Party rule,” Tarumi wrote, adding that the centralization of power in Xi’s hands now means that the formerly powerful Politburo Standing Committee is now subordinate to Xi Jinping.

He said Xi had “sacrificed the economy to achieve national security goals,” or regime stability.

‘Contradictory’

But he said the amendment of the Counterespionage Law last year and the loosening of immigration controls are also tied in with economic development.

“It’s a contradictory thing, and the ambassadors of Europe and the United States are also confused about it,” Tarumi wrote of the two moves.

The reform era ushered in by Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping saw people freed up to make money as fast as they liked, and the start of a burgeoning private sector and decades of export-led economic growth, while political ideology and authoritarian rule took a back seat. 

In August, top Chinese economist Hu Xingdou published a 10-point plan calling for a return to those policies, and a move away from Beijing’s aggressive “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy under Xi.

Yet Xi, who is serving a third and indefinite term in office after abolishing presidential term limits in 2018, is widely seen to be moving in the opposite direction to Deng. He’s cracking down on private sector wealth and power and boosting the state-owned economy while eroding the freedoms enjoyed by the country’s middle classes.

Face-off

Tarumi was feted as a “China hand” by the nationalistic Global Times newspaper when he took up his post in 2020 and has since gained a reputation as a fearless challenger of Wolf Warrior diplomacy.

In the book, he also describes being hauled in by foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying and lectured after then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took part in a regional strategic forum on Taiwan, which China claims as its territory despite never having ruled the democratic island.

Tarumi went reluctantly after instructing his staff to “ignore” Hua’s summons – and after the foreign ministry threatened to cut him off from all future meetings.

Hua berated him with Japanese militarism leading to “the slaughter of many Taiwanese.” But Tarumi, who had served in Japan’s economic and trade office in Taiwan, retorted that he knew more about Taiwan than she did, and that Japan’s 50-year rule over Taiwan was due to the ceding of the island under the Treaty of Shimonoseki in the wake of the First Sino-Japanese War.

Hua appeared at a loss for words at this, and replied only: “Some people say Japanese militarism started in the 19th century. These new interpretations are unacceptable,” according to Tarumi’s memoir.

A few months later, Tarumi faced an even bigger problem.

One of his diplomats was detained by police after having lunch with Dong Yuyu, deputy head of editorials at the Communist Party’s Guangming Daily newspaper, who was arrested for spying on Feb. 21, 2022.

“Foreign personnel engaged in activities inconsistent with their status in China,” Hua told a regular news briefing at the time. “The relevant Chinese authorities conducted investigations and inquiries into this matter.”

According to Tarumi, the Japanese diplomat had presented his passport and work permits, informing the police that his detention had violated the Vienna Convention because it breached his diplomatic immunity.

Tarumi made an immediate protest to the foreign ministry, meeting with assistant foreign minister Wu Jianghao, who told him that the meeting was “irregular.”

Tarumi replied that Wu had misrepresented the meeting and objected strongly, with the support of the ambassadors of 13 other countries, according to his account. Eventually, the Japanese diplomat was released.

A Beijing-based journalist who declined to be named said China intensified its surveillance of Japanese diplomatic missions following the incident, barring them from taking part in exchange activities as they normally would, and isolating them in their embassy and consulates.

Listening devices

Tarumi’s memoir appears to confirm this claim, adding that a number of dinner invitations sent to prominent Chinese intellectuals were declined after the incident, while listening devices were placed at Japanese restaurants frequented by embassy staff.

Pretty much nobody turned up for the emperor’s birthday celebrations, while police prevented Tarumi from holding an exhibition of his landscape photographs taken while in China.

Police blocked the venue, preventing anyone from getting in, and removing Tarumi’s photos from their frames, Tarumi wrote, adding that the aim was “to make me feel uncomfortable.”

A senior international editor at a Japanese media organization who gave only the pseudonym Sato said they were shocked at the level of detail provided in Tarumi’s memoir, adding that the former ambassador had been extremely cautious about talking to journalists while still in post.

“I think Hideo Tarumi said too much,” Sato said. “The relationship between China and Japan is not very good right now, but it’s also a very important relationship.”

“However, I do believe he is coming from a place of wanting a good relationship between China and Japan,” Sato said, adding that former Japanese ambassadors are generally allowed to comment on current affairs after leaving office, as long as they don’t reveal any state secrets.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

At least 300 Tibetans staged a protest in a Tibetan-populated area of Sichuan province on Wednesday against the building of a hydropower dam on the Drichu River that will displace residents of at least two villages and force six monasteries, Tibetans with knowledge of the situation told Radio Free Asia. 

The demonstrators gathered outside the Dege County Town Hall in Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture to demand that local authorities halt construction of the 2,240-megawatt dam.

Such protests – video of which was obtained by Radio Free Asia – are rare in China, particularly among Tibetans, due to strict controls on public gatherings and extensive surveillance through the widespread use of technology to monitor activity and communication.

“Halt the dam project,” protesters can be heard shouting in the video, as Chinese county officials told protesters they have no say in the matter and urged them to stop shouting.

The massive project is expected to force an unknown number of Tibetans in the upper district of Wangbuding township near the river to relocate, said two sources, one of whom lives inside Tibet, while the other lives in exile. They spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity, citing safety concerns. 

The Drichu River, called the Jinsha River in Chinese, runs through more than 10 provinces in Tibetan-inhabited areas and China. It is located onn the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, one of the most important waterways in China and the third-longest river in the world. 

Long-term plan

Some of China’s largest hydropower projects have been built on rivers that originate in the Tibet Autonomous Region and extend into Tibetan-populated areas of Chinese provinces. Tibetan activists argue that they disrupt natural flows of water and silt that are vital for making farmland fertile, play havoc with local ecosystems, and displace nearby residents.

“The Chinese government has been planning for the past decade to dam the Drichu River near Wangbuding in Dege County with the aim of building a large hydroelectric plant,” said the Tibetan living in exile. “Now the project has formally begun, which means that both the villages and six monasteries in the upper district of Wangbuding area will have to be relocated.”

Dege County Police did not immediately respond to RFA’s request for comment.

“In Tibet, there are many Tibetan villages and towns along the Drichu River, but the Chinese government, without paying any heed to the local people’s needs or to the environmental hazards, has built several dams already and they plan to build many more,” said Zamlha Tempa Gyaltsen, deputy director of the Tibet Policy Institute, the Tibetan government-in-exile’s policy and research arm.

“This is further proof of their complete lack of concern for the welfare and environment of Tibet,” he said.

Following the protests, Chinese authorities increased security measures and have been trying to identify protest organizers and participants, two sources inside Tibet said. 

The Chinese government laid out plans in 2013 to build the dam on the Drichu River in upper Dege county to supply power to China. Construction on the project, which will be the largest hydroelectric dam on the river’s upper reaches, began in December 2016. 

So far, workers have completed building more than 100 meters (328 feet) of the maximum dam height of 217 meters (712 meters), China’s state-controlled Global Times reported in December 2023.

The entire project is expected to be completed in 2026.

Translated by Tenzin Pema for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

Young people in Myanmar’s commercial capital are lining up outside the Thai embassy to apply for visas and looking for other ways to leave the country following an announcement from the junta regime that it will call up conscripts for mandatory military service.

Starting in April, about 5,000 people each month will be enrolled into the military to perform “national defense duties,” junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun said in an interview with BBC Burmese.

Zaw Min Tun told several junta-affiliated newspapers on Thursday that as many as 50,000 men will be recruited this year into the military, which has suffered numerous battlefield defeats and large-scale surrenders in recent months.

In Yangon, young people have already started heading for the Thai border, which is about 420 km (260 miles) away, several residents told Radio Free Asia.

About 50 people – most of them young – had already formed a queue in front of the Thai embassy at 5:30 a.m. on Thursday, one Yangon resident, who didn’t want to be named for security reasons, said to RFA. 

Additionally, young people riding on city buses are talking to each other about entering the Buddhist monkhood to avoid military service if they get out of the country, the Yangon resident said.

They all seemed deeply worried, he added.

Because of the recent rush of visa applicants, the Thai embassy said in a statement on Wednesday that only 400 applicants would be accepted per day. 

Also, the Buddhist University in Thailand’s city of Chiang Mai, which has an affordable tuition fee, announced Wednesday that it is no longer accepting applicants from Myanmar because it had already received too many applications.

‘They have lost their way’

An poor job market and the turmoil of the ongoing civil war had already made it very difficult for young people to build a life for themselves in the country, a young man who also lives in Yangon told RFA. 

Now, with the enforcement of the conscription law, young people know for certain that they don’t have a future in Myanmar, the young man said.

“All of them are preparing to leave the country because there are no jobs for them,” he said. “Now, with the implementation of this conscription law, they have lost their way.”

The young man said he had been searching for jobs in Japan, but is now focusing on finding work in neighboring Thailand.

“I heard that the junta is blocking workers from going abroad,” he said. “I also heard that [they block] new job offers by foreign countries. It’s hard to leave the country.”

Sai Kyi Zin Soe, a political commentator, said that targeting young people – who typically have the highest productivity among all age groups – will damage the country’s economy and cause widespread resentment. 

“It is natural for many people who have their own goals in life to avoid armed conflicts,” he said. “They are educated young people. They can learn things. We see the targeting of this age group for use in conflict – to gain political advantage – as a very bad move.”

State-level committees

Zaw Min Tun’s comments on Thursday about conscription followed a Feb. 10 announcement from junta leader Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing that a military service law enacted in 2010 by a previous military regime would go into effect immediately. 

Enforcement of the law comes as anti-junta forces and ethnic armies have scored significant victories against the military in Myanmar’s civil war, which escalated in October 2023 when the rebel groups joined together and launched new offensives, causing significant casualties.

Under Min Aung Hlaing’s directive, Burmese men aged 18-35 and women aged 18-27 could face up to five years in prison if they refuse to serve for two years. 

Doctors, engineers and technicians – aged 18-45 for men and 18-35 for women – must also serve, but up to five years.

In the initial rounds, fewer women will be recruited, Zaw Min Tun told state media.

The junta will appoint a central committee and regional- and state-level committees to oversee the conscription, according to Zaw Min Tun. But because the junta would have to provide salaries, food and other items, the military won’t need more than 50,000 recruits, he said.

“I want to emphasize that we will not call up everyone who is eligible for military service,” he said.

The CIA World Factbook estimated that last year Myanmar’s military had somewhere between 150,000 and 400,000 personnel. 

The Washington-based U.S. Institute of Peace has suggested that 21,000 service personnel have been lost through casualties, desertions and defections since the February 2021 military coup d’etat, leaving an effective force of about 150,000.

Translated by Htin Aung Kyaw. Edited by Matt Reed.

A deal by Congress to find funding for promised aid to three Micronesian allies of the United States “simply must be done” in order to stop Beijing from growing its influence in the strategically located countries, a senior White House official said Thursday.

Efforts to counter Chinese influence in longtime American allies Palau, Micronesia and Marshall Islands have been frustrated by the inability of Congress to fund economic assistance packages pledged to countries, which hold “compacts of free association” with the United States.

The deals, often simply referred to as COFA, give the U.S. military access to their vast maritime territory in the Pacific in exchange for funds and the right for citizens to work and live in America. 

A new 20-year COFA deal worth $7 billion in total was signed in October but Congress has not yet found the funds. Notably, the money was not included in a massive aid bill in the Senate this week.

Leaders of the nations last week wrote a joint letter to U.S. President Joe Biden warning that “competitive political actors” may be exploiting the delays in funding due to the “uncertainty among our peoples.”

Speaking at an event at the United States Institute of Peace, Mira Rapp-Hooper, the senior director for East Asia and Oceania on Biden’s National Security Council, said getting the funds flowing to Palau, Micronesia and Marshall Islands “really matters” for U.S. strategy.

“Getting COFA funded is really second-to-none in terms of our strategic tasks we have to take on this year, and it just simply must be done,” Rapp-Hooper said, calling the funds “a reinvestment” in America’s “deep and continuing historical ties” to the three countries.

Contested access to the region

Rapp-Hooper’s comments at the event – which marked two years since the release of Biden’s Indo-Pacific Strategy – were echoed by two colleagues from the Departments of State and Defense.

“Securing COFA funding is one of the most important things that the administration can do this year in terms of our Indo-Pacific strategy,” said Ely Ratner, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, emphasizing the strategic centrality of Micronesia.

The territory covered by the three archipelagic countries stretches over a vast swathe of the Pacific Ocean from just west of Hawaii to the Philippines. The area is wider than the continental United States.

“This is really strategic territory in terms of having a short access in the region,” Ratner said. “It’s also the fact that citizens in the COFA territories are participating in the U.S. military at very high rates.”

“Look, this is something that matters,” he said. “This is an opportunity for Congress and the administration to work together this year.”

“We just have to get it done,” he added.

Camille Dawson, deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said that she agreed “100%” with the comments.

Congressional efforts

Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii, last week unsuccessfully attempted to make an amendment to the Senate’s aid bill to include the promised funding for the COFA states, saying in a speech on the Senate floor that it was a mistake to leave the money out.

“At a time of rising tensions in the Pacific, these compacts are a critical component of our ability to operate in the Pacific, especially as we work to counter China’s growing influence in this region,” Hirono said.

The chairs of four Senate committees – foreign relations, armed services, energy and natural resources – had all expressed support for finding the funds, she noted, but it was still left out of the bill.

“They understand how critical these agreements are to our posture and readiness in the Pacific and, frankly, the harmful message it would send if we do not get these Compacts agreed to,” she said.

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

A Buddhist monk in a Tibetan-populated area of Sichuan province was arrested last July for possessing a photo of the Dalai Lama and since then his whereabouts have remained unknown, two sources from inside Tibet told Radio Free Asia.

Chinese authorities arrested Tenzin Khenrap, 29, in July 2023 on a charge of having a portrait of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader on his mobile phone, along with other books and documents published outside Tibet.

Khenrap, whose pen name is Dhong Rangchak, is from Nyagchu county in Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.

China regards the Dalai Lama and Tibetans who live in exile abroad as separatists, and being caught with a picture of the spiritual leader or having contact with Tibetans abroad is considered an act of separatism and a punishable offense.

Authorities in China maintain a tight lockdown on the flow of information in and out of the country’s Tibetan regions, and it can often take weeks or months to learn of arrests and other incidents inside Tibet.

After his arrest, authorities detained Khenrap in Sichuan province, known as Kham in Tibetan, but his current location and circumstances are unknown, said the sources who requested anonymity, citing safety reasons. 

Authorities also revoked access to his social media accounts, they added. 

Chinese authorities have not allowed Khenrap’s immediate family members to meet with him since his arrest or provided information on where he is being detained, one of the sources said. 

“Khenrap’s mother remains very worried about her son, and her health has deteriorated since his arrest last year,” said the source.

The monk, who speaks fluent Tibetan and Mandarin, is known for intensely following developments about Tibetans’ struggle against Chinese-government repression and for writing articles online, the same source said. 

Khenrap was a student at several monasteries in Sichuan province, including Lithang Gonchen, Sershul, and Nalendra, which was the single largest monastery founded by popular Tibetan religious teacher and activist Tulku Tenzin Delek and which served as the primary institution for his increasing network of branch monasteries, monks and activists, the two sources said. 

Tulku Tenzin Delek was 65 when he died under mysterious circumstances on July 12, 2015, while serving a life sentence following what rights groups and supporters called a wrongful conviction on a charge of bombing a public square in Sichuan’s provincial capital of Chengdu in April 2002. 

Widely respected among Tibetans for his efforts to protect Tibetan culture and the environment, he was initially sentenced to death, but his term was later commuted to life imprisonment. 

Chinese authorities maintain a tight grip on Tibet, restricting Tibetans’ political activities and peaceful expression of cultural and religious identity. Tibetans frequently complain of discrimination and human rights abuses by authorities and policies they say are aimed at eradicating their national and cultural identity. 

In Feb. 2023, Chinese authorities arrested Tsultrim, a Tibetan from Tsaruma township in Ngaba’s Kyungchu county, after they discovered pictures of the Dalai Lama on his mobile phone. 

He was detained until April, after which he was sentenced to two years in prison by the People’s Court of Ngaba, a Tibetan region in southwestern China’s Sichuan province, also known as Aba in Chinese.

Translated by Tenzin Pema for RFA Tibetan. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

Aung Aung, a Burmese fisherman who’s labored for 14 years in waters off southern Thailand, faces an uncertain future thanks to a potential legal overhaul of the Thai fishing industry.

With new laws on the horizon, the 33-year-old says he’s concerned that they might be used to leave fishermen at sea for months at a time – something he’s experienced. 

Up until three or four years ago, “when our boats were full of fish, we had to transfer the loads to the transporting boat, and workers had to stay at sea without a need to go ashore,” Aung Aung said.

“In those periods, we faced several challenges, such as shortage of food and medicine, lack of medical attention, and stress and depression if we stayed long in the sea,” he said.

Thailand, once infamous for the enslavement of migrant workers aboard its fishing vessels, sought to reform its image with the Royal Ordinance on Fisheries in 2015, aimed at clamping down on unregulated fishing and brutal treatment of workers on fishing vessels.

Yet, the newly-elected Pheu Thai administration’s initiative to soften these stringent measures has sparked fears of undoing the strides made in protecting workers’ rights.

Since last February, the new government has proposed three drafts attempting to amend the country’s fishing labor laws, arguing that vessel owners and businesses find current laws unfairly strict and damaging to their profits.

The latest draft, proposed in December, would allow vessels to transfer both crew and catch to other vessels while still at sea “in emergencies,” and with some restrictions – a practice that labor activists still strongly oppose for its role in keeping trafficked fishermen at sea for long periods of time.

‘More precarious’

Fishers Rights Network President Ye Thwe, who is also Burmese fisherman based in Ranong, said the new bill could undermine other labor protection policies Thailand has already ratified.

“With reduced oversight, migrant fishers will be in a more precarious position that significantly increases our vulnerability to longer hours, lower wages, and substandard living conditions, exacerbating the already dire situation we face,” he said.

But Mongkol Sukcharoenkana, National Fisheries Association of Thailand president, has a different view. 

“The at-sea labor transfer is designed for emergency cases, such as crewmen getting sick or an accident onboard. There should be a way out for when there are labor problems, which we can report to the [Port-In Port-Out] center,” he said, adding that a few “rotten apples,” in the past created regulations that punish everyone.

“We also want to be able to swap [crew] between two vessels under the same operator for flexibility but we’re not sure if it can happen,” he said.

In fact, the association suggested in October a return to day-rate cash payments, abolishing the current electronic payment system. 

Fishermen can only work 22 days a month by law, so it’s unfair to pay them for a full month, Sukcharoenkana told Radio Free Asia. 

But the cash payments system was void of any regulation or scrutiny, said Dominic Thomson, Southeast Asia regional director at the Environmental Justice Foundation.

 

“It is a very worrying situation for us because we’ve seen how bad the industry can be if it’s just left to its own devices,” said Thomson.

“We’ve seen how transformative regulation and the reforming process can be to the Thai fishing sector. And we’ve seen history is about to repeat itself if the commercial sector gets their way.”

Migrant workers from Myanmar make up a large share of Thailand’s agriculture, manufacturing, and hospitality sectors, and comprise roughly 70% of the workers in the fishing industry.

Thailand’s Cabinet voted on Jan. 30 to amend the country’s fishing laws, with legislators expecting parliament to review the updated draft in the next two months. 

Exploited

Even with 2015 protections in place, fishermen and activists say the industry still needs greater oversight so that the workers are not exploited. 

A Jan. 25 report found over 99% of surveyed fishermen are not being paid through their bank accounts now, despite being legally required to. The surveys, given in-person by Fishers’ Rights Network organizers, included responses from over 1,000 fishermen across 15 ports in Thailand across a seven-week period in late 2023. 

Additionally, more than 83% did not have access to their identification documents, including bank cards and books, which are kept by their bosses.

Apart from that, fishermen often suffer from food and supply shortages despite the regulations in place. Aung Aung estimates some 70% of trawlers run out of food on board only halfway through the month-long assignment.

“If you are assigned for a month at sea, many [boat] owners do not provide any more than a 15-day supply of food. No more than that,” he said. 

“After the 15th day, you have no food left. Sometimes you did not catch enough fish in the seas and you stayed longer [at sea], but you had no food, not even salt. You have to boil yellow tunas to eat.”

Edited by Taejun Kang and Malcolm Foster.