Day: March 13, 2024

Over the past year or so, young Chinese “refuseniks” have been swearing off marriage, children and mortgages – rejecting traditional milestones on the path to adulthood – amid apparent despair over their futures, the economic outlook and politics.

But recent social media posts show that they’ve added several more “don’ts” to the list. They include not donating blood, not giving to charity, not playing the lottery, not investing money, including in property, and even not helping an elderly person — largely because they’re afraid they might get exploited or trapped.

The list, dubbed the “10 Don’ts” of young people, has been circulating on social media.

“This generation of young people have no hope, so they don’t bother working hard any more,” said a university graduate who gave only the surname Wang for fear of reprisals. “They might as well just lie down in the hope of a stress-free life.”

The attitude is particularly problematic for the ruling Communist Party as it tries to encourage people to use the internet to share “positive” content, particularly about the economy, rather than complaining about how hard their lives are.

Author and political essayist Yu Jie said the refusal to marry and have kids is linked to young people’s disillusionment with the Chinese government and the way it manipulates them to believe they are the future of the nation, when actually they are merely its tools.

“No young person today believes in the lies of Mao Zedong or his successor Xi Jinping,” Yu wrote in a commentary for RFA Mandarin. 

Motivated by fear

Many Chinese don’t want to donate blood because they fear the data could be used to force them into donating organs for the elite, said a resident of the eastern province of Shandong who gave only the surname Lu for fear of reprisals. 

People worry that if they get into an accident, their organs will be taken without their consent if information about their blood type is available to the authorities, she said.

“The reason they won’t donate to charity is that they can barely support themselves, and that they need donations themselves,” Lu said, summarizing some of the many comments on the topic that were no longer visible on Weibo on Tuesday.

The resistance to  investing in property is linked to overpricing and the fear of becoming a “mortgage slave,” current affairs commentator Tianluke told RFA Mandarin, using his pen-name “Pilgrim” for fear of reprisals.

“The economic situation in China is very bad right now,” Tianluke said. “A lot of people have been laid off, and there are a lot of graduates who are unemployed.”

And some people are afraid of helping an elderly person in trouble in case they get accused of causing the problem they’re trying to address. It’s a “manifestation of the collapse of trust … in Chinese society,” he said. 

Yu, the essayist who wrote a Dec. 29 column for RFA Mandarin, said the various “don’ts” are all about avoiding the various “traps” set by the Communist Party – meaning people getting caught up in a system that exploits them for the benefit of the privileged political and financial elite. 

“Things such as donating money to charity, donating blood, and helping the elderly are all good deeds that are taken for granted in civilized countries,” he wrote. “But in China, they are all taken advantage of.”

“The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer,” Yu wrote. “That’s why young Chinese people warn each other to avoid these traps to avoid disaster.”

‘Kids have no future’

Meanwhile, censors have deleted an article that questions the value of hothousing children through the highly competitive education system — a defining behavior of the country’s middle class.

The article, titled “Middle-class kids have no future,” was unavailable “due to violations of regulations” on Tuesday, though copies were still visible outside China’s Great Firewall of internet censorship.

The blog post tells the tale of a successful Shanghai parent whose son didn’t want to study any more, because he wasn’t naturally good at passing exams, and didn’t see the point. He started delivering food in the evenings instead, to earn some money.

In a follow-up post in which he reports that the article has been taken down, the blogger argues that only gifted kids should compete for spots at top schools, because the rest are effectively only there as “cannon fodder” for the competitive system.

“It’s the middle-class trap, isn’t it?” commented X user @passi0nateGirl under RFA’s X post about the article. “Nowadays, the middle class can wind up back in poverty due to sickness, unemployment, a property crash, badly performing stocks, or a company partner running away.”

Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

The governor of a northern Cambodia province has promised to allocate 1,000 hectares of land between 100 families following last week’s violent clash with police over a decade-long land dispute.

Preah Vihear Provincial Gov. Kim Rithy told hundreds of villagers gathered in Kuleaen district on Tuesday that he will redesignate some of the land previously granted to Phnom Penh-based company Seila Damex in 2011.

“Your land is your land but state land is state land,” he said during the meeting, according to a video posted on Facebook. “But we must respect each other. I encourage you to live legally. We will protect your rights but don’t take state land.”

Such land disputes are common in Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries as authorities give land away to developers and corporate plantations.

Seila Damex has government-approved plans to develop 9,000 hectares of land in Kuleaen district into a rubber plantation. 

Some 300 families are affected by the proposed development. Local residents have relied on the land to grow crops and fruit trees, one villager told RFA earlier this week. 

Hundreds of police officers and members of several other security forces clashed with local residents on March 6. 

Several homes were burned down and about 40 villagers were arrested after police used tear gas to disperse about 130 land dispute protesters who tried to stop the destruction of homes. 

Some of the villagers have since been released. But on Tuesday, the provincial court ordered more than two dozen protesters to be held in pre-trial detention on charges of illegal encroachment on forest land.

Kim Rithy didn’t say on Tuesday whether the villagers who protested on March 6 would be eligible for some of the 1,000 hectares of land. He has previously threatened to punish villagers who stayed on the land concession.

RFA’s efforts to reach Kim Rithy for comment on Wednesday weren’t immediately successful.

Am Sam Ath of human rights group Licadho said authorities should conduct a study to determine who is most in need of the land. 

“NGOs don’t take sides but we want to see a suitable solution between authorities and villagers, especially those villagers who don’t have houses and land to live,” he said. 

Translated by Yun Samean. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

The Philippines and United States need to revisit their longtime mutual defense pact to address Beijing’s increasing use of so-called gray-zone activities – or acts of aggression short of an armed attack – in the disputed South China Sea, experts said.

Under the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT), the two allies are compelled to come to each other’s defense in the event of “an armed external attack,” but the term is ambiguous and needs to be more clearly defined, according to analysts interviewed by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated news outlet.

Article V of the treaty “needs to be more clearly discussed and interpreted” by both countries, said Don McLain Gill, a geopolitical analyst based in Manila.

The article states that the MDT covers “an armed attack on the metropolitan territory of either of the parties, or on the island territories under its jurisdiction in the Pacific Ocean, its armed forces, public vessels or aircraft in the Pacific.”

In recent years, China has intensified its harassment and intimidation of Philippine government ships and other vessels in the West Philippine Sea, Manila’s name for waters of the South China Sea that lie within its exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

“There needs to be a firmer operational definition of an ‘armed attack,’ because without doing so, China will continue to exploit such terminological ambiguities,” Gill told BenarNews. 

“It’s still an ambiguous term. Should firearms be used to trigger the MDT? If so, it does not address the casualties on our side.”

He was responding to questions about a March 5 incident where four Philippine Navy sailors sustained minor injuries while aboard a military-contracted civilian vessel, when blasts from Chinese water cannons shattered their boat’s windshield.

The dramatic moment, which was caught on video, occurred as China Coast Guard (CCG) ships tried to block the Philippine boat, the Unaizah May 4, from carrying out a resupply mission to Ayungin Shoal (Second Thomas Shoal).  

“The focus must also be on the potential harm to human life China’s unfriendly acts may cause,” Gill said.

The incident last week marked the first time that injuries were reported in any of the tense incidents at sea that have become more frequent lately, as Chinese ships try to block Philippine ships and boats from delivering supplies to the BRP Sierra Madre, a rusty World War II-era ship that serves as Manila’s outpost in Ayungin Shoal.

While such close encounters at sea between Philippine and Chinese coast guard ships increased in 2023, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin cited the MDT in warning that Washington would help defend Manila in case of an armed attack “anywhere in the South China Sea,” including on Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) vessels.

In the immediate aftermath of the March 5 incident, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. dismissed calls that Manila move to have the treaty invoked over it. 

While “his administration viewed the incident and such “dangerous maneuvers” by China with “great alarm,” there was no need at this time to take that step on the MDT, he said. 

Five months after he took office in 2022, as he talked about the possibility of a stronger U.S. military presence in the Philippines, Marcos said that the mutual defense treaty with the United States was “continuously under negotiations and under evolution.”

In 2023, as tensions also simmered between China and the U.S. over Taiwan, the Marcos administration agreed to give American forces greater access to military bases in his country. Late last year, the U.S. and the Philippines also launched joint patrols around the archipelago.

Sherwin Ona, a political science professor at De La Salle University in Manila, said he agreed with Marcos and noted that the boat that came under attack was a civilian vessel.

In his view, Beijing is aware of the language in the treaty that does not clearly define a red line, and is exploiting that by carrying out gray-zone tactics in the contested waterway.  

“The framing of conflict is so far within the gray-zone approach of the People’s Republic of China. I think Beijing is conscious of this and will avoid a full-scale naval confrontation with the Philippines and the U.S.,” Ona told BenarNews.

Wider definition of ‘armed attack’

Analyst Gill, however, said that if the definition of armed attack is merely limited to military confrontation, this allows China to carry on with its aggressive actions at sea.

“If armed attack will only mean a direct military confrontation, then that opens up more pathways for China to inflict harm on Filipinos at sea,” Gill said.

“Given last week’s incident, one may ask that if China’s belligerent activities in the Philippines’ EEZ may eventually critically injure or kill members of the Philippine crew, should Article V be implemented?” he said.

Antonio Carpio, a South China Sea analyst and a former Supreme Court justice, said the Philippines could approach the U.S. to talk about a possible expansion of definitions of wording in the treaty.

“‘Armed attack’ means use of lethal weapons like cannon, missiles or guns. We can discuss with the U.S. to define ‘armed attack’ to include use of laser beams that are permanently blind since such use is already outlawed by an international convention,” Carpio said in a message to BenarNews.

Last year, a CCG vessel pointed a military-grade laser at a Philippine Coast Guard ship, temporarily blinding the Filipino crew.

‘Option of last resort’

But Rommel Ong, a retired Philippine Navy rear admiral, believes the two countries will not include such acts of aggression in the MDT.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen. The Philippines and the U.S. are both trying to avoid invoking the MDT for minor incidents,” Ong told BenarNews.

“That’s the option of last resort. The actions of China are still within the bounds of non-kinetic. It’s just that we’re not used to conflicts at sea,” he said.

He mentioned the cod wars between the United Kingdom and Iceland during the 1950s to 1970s over rights to fish in Icelandic waters. Both European countries engaged in gray-zone tactics by ramming and blocking each other’s ships.

“MDT is like a nuclear bomb. Its effectiveness is in its deterrent value. But once you use it, it loses its value.”

With these limitations, the Philippines appears to have no option but to resort to joint patrols with the U.S. and other like-minded allies, analyst Ona said. 

He added that the Philippines must fast-track military and coast guard modernization programs and continue its transparency program, whereby they publicize cases of Chinese intimidation and incursions in the West Philippine Sea.

Marcos has repeatedly called on foreign nations to support the landmark international arbitration ruling in 2016 that sided with Manila and invalidated Beijing’s sweeping claims in the South China Sea.

During an official visit to Germany this week, Marcos noted that 60% of world trade passed through the vital waterway.

“It’s not solely the interest of the Philippines, or of ASEAN, or of the Indo-Pacific region but the entire world. That is why it’s in all our interest to keep it as a safe passage for all international commerce that goes on in the South China Sea,” Marcos said during a joint press conference on Tuesday with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Marcos has relied on international allies and partners, striking deals on defense cooperation even with non-traditional allies to counter Chinese aggression. Aside from the U.S. and Germany, Japan, Australia, France, the United Kingdom, and India have expressed support for Manila over the South China Sea dispute.

Jeoffrey Maitem in Cotabato City, southern Philippines, contributed to this report.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated news outlet.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed new legislation that could force TikTok’s Chinese parent company to divest in the social media app to prevent it being banned in America.

Lawmakers backing the new bill say that forcing ByteDance to sell its controlling stake in the app, which has 170 million monthly American users, is the only way to ensure Beijing cannot use it for propaganda. 

TikTok, though, has denied any interference from Beijing.

The legislation still needs to pass the Senate, but U.S. President Joe Biden last week said he will sign it into law if it does land on his desk. A similar bill was last year championed by a bipartisan group of senators, suggesting that it could face little resistance in that chamber.

The bill passed the House in a 352-65 vote, less than a week after it was introduced and was approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee in a 50-0 vote. The fast-tracking meant the bill needed a two-thirds majority to pass, which it easily achieved.

Beijing has long denied interfering in TikTok’s operations and has in turn accused the lawmakers backing the legislation of being motivated primarily by anti-China paranoia and protectionism.

There was no evidence TikTok’s Chinese ownership was a threat to U.S. national security and that it would “come back to bite the United States” by damaging the country’s reputation, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a press briefing.

“This kind of bullying behavior that cannot win in fair competition disrupts companies’ normal business activity, damages the confidence of international investors in the investment environment, and damages the normal international economic and trade order,” Wang said. 

Senate hurdles

In a statement, TikTok called the bill’s fast passage the product of a “secret” process and said it was “jammed through” the House.

“We are hopeful that the Senate will consider the facts, listen to their constituents, and realize the impact on the economy, 7 million small businesses, and 170 million Americans who use our service,” it said.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said his chamber would consider the bill in due time, while Senate Commerce Committee Chair Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington state, said she wants to ensure any bill signed into law “could hold up in court.”

But the legislation already has some high-profile backers.

Two of the advocates of last year’s similar Senate bill – Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia who also serves as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida – said they “look forward to working together to get this bill passed through the Senate and signed into law.”

Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Republican from Wisconsin who led the bill in the House, has said Chinese ownership of the app, which is the fourth-most download on Apple and Google’s app stores, is akin to a Soviet-run company owning the New York Times in the 1960s.

Gallagher and other lawmakers note TikTok is legally required to expose American user data to Beijing upon request, and say it could be forced to alter its algorithms to promote Chinese propaganda.

“The Chinese Communist Party, and its leader Xi Jinping, have their hands deep in the inner workings of the company with devastating consequences for our personal freedoms,” he said last week.

That analysis has been mirrored by FBI Director Christopher Wray and other leaders of U.S. intelligence agencies, who say the app’s widespread use means it could be used to distribute misinformation to millions of Americans and could even sway election results. 

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

Academic freedom in Hong Kong continues to fall in the wake of a draconian national security law imposed by Beijing in the summer of 2020, amid a shift away from the study of politically sensitive topics in higher education, according to a recent report.

“[The] National Security Law enacted in Beijing in the summer of 2020 has put unprecedented pressure on academic freedom in the special administrative region,” the Academic Freedom Index report found, based on assessments for the whole of 2023.

Hong Kong now ranks in the bottom 20% of countries and territories for academic freedom — it has its own index separate from the rest of China, which ranks in the bottom 10%, according to the report, which is produced annually by researchers at Germany’s FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg University.

The city now scores 0.24 on a scale of 0-1 on the question “To what extent is academic freedom respected?” and 1.36 out of a possible 4 on the question “Is there academic freedom and freedom of cultural expression related to political issues?”

Last year, its scores for “institutional autonomy” and “campus integrity” fell, indicating more political interference in decision-making and more security measures on campuses, the report found.

Curriculum changes

The falling scores came as authorities at Hong Kong’s City University announced changes to the school’s political studies major, including renaming of the Department of Public Policy, in what commentators said was a further sign of shrinking academic freedom amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent in the wake of the 2019 protests.

The university’s Bachelor of Social Sciences in Public Policy and Politics will be renamed the Bachelor of Social Sciences in Public Affairs and Management from the start of the next academic year, according to the website of City U’s Public and International Affairs department, formerly the Public Policy Department.

The move follows reports of the restructuring of the department of Government and Public Administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, which will be merged with other departments and downgraded into a program, according to the Hong Kong Free Press.

The ruling Chinese Communist Party announced last year that it would step up “patriotic education” in schools, universities and religious institutions across the country, including in Hong Kong, in a move likely designed to quash internal political challenges to Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rule.

The City U course, which once offered a Humanities and Social Sciences stream, a Politics stream and a Public Management stream, will stop offering the Politics stream from next September, according to a comparison between the current website and a version of the site archived in March 2022.

“Seminars on Hong Kong Government and Politics” and “Labour and the State in China” are no longer on offer, with students offered new courses including “Rethinking the Value of Democracy” and “Introduction to Confucian Political Philosophy.”

While the old major aimed to “equip students with the theoretical, conceptual, and analytical tools to understand comprehensively public policy, public management, and political developments in Hong Kong, China, and the contemporary global world,” the new course focuses more on employability.

Steering clear of political past

The content of some of the curriculum also appears to steer well clear of Hong Kong’s recent political past. Films about the 2019 protest movement or the political changes that followed are notably absent from its documentary-based class titled “Social Change and Governance Challenges: A Critical Appreciation through Film,” for example.

As well as a university-mandated course on the National Security Law, the new major will address such questions as “How do particular public policies emerge?” and “Who makes the decisions and why?” according to the website.

Currently, students are offered a course titled “Democracy and Democratization,” which encourages them to consider “controversial questions like whether democracy is a universal value, whether it can promote human rights, whether there is an inherent conflict between the Confucian ethos and democracy.” 

The ruling Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping often uses references to China’s “Confucian” past to argue that the country isn’t suitable for a democratic system with universal suffrage and the separation of powers.

“Students are required to critically evaluate the democratization process in some of the East Asian societies: Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, China, Hong Kong and so on,” the course introduction reads.

The departmental website didn’t say whether the same class would be listed next semester.

But a first-year student on the program who gave only the nickname Christine for fear of reprisals said she had been told that much of the political content won’t be on offer next academic year.

“They are claiming that the name has changed but the content remains the same, but actually we have seen that a number of political classes have been deleted,” she said. “There used to be a lot of elective subjects, and now there are only 19.”

“I think they are slowly changing this major, and downgrading the status of political science in universities,” Christine said.

She said she had signed up for the course to learn more about Hong Kong politics, and why there are no more pro-democracy members of the city’s Legislative Council.

“But that hasn’t been mentioned at all on the course,” she said. “All we do is read history and look at examples from overseas, as well as different philosophers.”

‘Stigmatized’ study

Political commentator Benson Wong, who is a former assistant professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Hong Kong Baptist University, said academic departments typically change their names when they want to reposition their research or teaching direction.

He said the study of politics has become “stigmatized” since the imposition of the 2020 National Security Law criminalized criticism of the government.

“The study of political developments, or mass movements … has died a death due to recent changes in Hong Kong’s political environment,” he said.

“Are there any institutions currently offering courses focusing on political or social movements?” Wong said, implying that none are. “About the Cultural Revolution [1966-1976] or the June 4, 1989 [Tiananmen massacre]?”

Wong said that academic departments can no longer teach certain courses deemed “politically risky.”

“This could affect the way a whole generation of Hong Kongers develops,” he said.

City U responded to complaints from its students that they hadn’t been informed about the changes beforehand with a statement claiming that “the decision was made after extensive consultation” that had included a curriculum committee that included students, faculty and external contributors, the Ming Pao newspaper reported on March 4.

Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie.