China’s state-owned developer vows to cut debt as financial woes rise

China’s troubled state-owned property giant Vanke Group says it will cut debt by 100 billion yuan (US$13.8 billion) in the next two years, as sales plunged and profit nearly halved in 2023 amid a deepening crisis in the sector.

But Zhu Jiusheng, Vanke’s chief executive officer, pointed out in an earnings press conference on Friday that the company’s fundamental capabilities, without giving specifics, have not changed, despite the short-term “challenges and pressure.”

The recent downgrade of its credit rating by global rating agency Moody’s to “junk”, in fact dealt “relatively limited impact,” he said, according to Chinese state-owned media reports. 

Conversely, Vanke’s long-term partnership with 26 banks has established “our allies in risk prevention.”

Still, with or without allies, Vanke reported a 11 percentage point increase to a net debt ratio of 55% last year. Furthermore, 73% of its assets are financed by creditors, albeit a 3.7 percentage point decline from 2022, making the company highly leveraged. A below 50% level is usually considered healthy. 

The State Council, or China’s cabinet, also asked 12 banks to provide a financing lifeline of as much as 80 billion yuan to Vanke two weeks ago. 

This bucked the broader policy to let insolvent developers take their own downward course, which has compounded a spiraling crisis in the sector, once a major economic growth driver.

Analysts attributed Beijing’s rare intervention to Vanke’s state-held background – its largest shareholder is the Shenzhen Metro Group. But the move is in line with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s policy of advancing state enterprises and a retreat of the private sector. 

Other distressed and privately-owned real estate firms Evergrande Group and Country Garden Holdings have been left to their own devices. 

The Hong Kong High Court issued a liquidation order in January for Evergrande, which has been drowned in more than US$300 billion in debt.  

A similar fate looms for Country Garden which received a liquidation petition from one of its creditors in Hong Kong. Its total liabilities are close to US$200 billion.

Country Garden said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Thursday that it  missed the deadline to release its 2023 annual results. 

Hong Kong-listed companies are required to disclose their financial results three months after the end of the financial year and Thursday was the deadline, ahead of the Easter weekend holiday in  the city. Evergrande has not disclosed its results either.

Meanwhile, from Vanke’s view point, Zhu said bankers are concerned about three factors – where the capital was deployed in the past financial year, which projects to finance, and adequacy of cash flow.

“Once these three questions are answered, the financing channels and banks’ supportive attitude become affirmative and the strength of their support will be adequate,” he added.

According to Zhu, Vanke has secured 16.9 billion yuan in additional funding for 42 projects across 22 Chinese cities under Beijing’s “white list” of approved projects that financial institutions should back. 

Edited by Taejun Kang and Mike Firn.

Rohingya activists call for more control of aid money

Rohingya Muslim activists representing fellow refugees forced out of Myanmar and into “prison-like” camps in Bangladesh said in Washington on Thursday that foreign aid to the camps would go further if some of it was given directly to refugee-run groups.

But a representative of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, said little money was left over after aid cuts that currently see the refugees provided with only $10 worth of food a month.

About 90% of the 1.2 million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh struggled to have “acceptable food consumption” late last year, according to the World Food Programme, when their monthly ration of food was bumped up from about $8 to about $10 per person. 

Speaking at an event on Capitol Hill to mark two years since the United States labelled Myanmar’s atrocities in 2017 against the Rohingya a “genocide,” the activists said aid was not always spent in ways most helpful for the Rohingya refugees living in Cox’s Bazar.

“There are ways to do it effectively,” said Yasmin Ullah, a Canada-based rights activist born in Myanmar’s Rakhine state and the director of the Rohingya Maiyafuinor Collaborative Network.

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Yasmin Ullah of the Rohingya community is interviewed outside the International Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Jan. 23, 2020. (Peter Dejong/AP)

The activist said her group had raised $20,000 through crowdfunding to be disbursed by refugee-run groups in the camp to improve livelihoods there. But she noted global aid flows were far larger.

“We know our issues. We know how and where to put this money. We can run with $10,000 farther than any other humanitarian groups can,” she said. “We are asking for aid to be utilized and to directly go to refugee-led initiatives and refugee-led organizations.”

Unsolved problems

Aid for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh has dwindled, with less than two-thirds of the approximately $850 million in annual aid requested by aid agencies in the country being fulfilled, a U.N. report said.

Lucky Karim, a Rohingya refugee who resettled in the U.S. state of Illinois in 2022 and now works with the International Campaign for the Rohingya, said that any international aid sent to help people in the camps “means a lot to us as refugees” and was appreciated.

But she questioned why the hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into the camps each year were not improving conditions.

“It’s not about how many years the U.S. has been supporting Rohingya,” Karim said. “What are you guys able to solve?”

“Did you solve the labor issue? Did you solve the sexual and domestic and the other violence in the camps? Did you solve the human trafficking issue? Did you figure out the security risks at the camp? Did you figure out and identify the gangs and the nonstate actors in the camp at night?” she said. “Those are the only questions we have.”

Requests for more help, she added, were “not just about increasing funding,” with many Rohingyas understanding funds are limited. 

“When it comes to the funding issue, when I talked to USAID, for example, they’re like, ‘Oh no Lucky, we have other places in war, like Gaza, for example, and Ukraine, for example,’” Karim recounted, noting there were “many other cases coming up every few years.”

Like Ullah, she said some aid could be spent more effectively.

“The amount of funding you’re sending to Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar and elsewhere should go to the right people at the right time to the needed situations,” she said. “How do you ensure it without Rohingya’s involvement in the decision making process?”

Limited funds

Peter Young, the USAID director for South and Central Asia, told the event that the United States had sent more than $1.9 billion in aid to support Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh since the 2017 genocide.

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Brothers Mohammed Akter, 8, and Mohammed Harun, 10, pose for a photograph on the floor of their burned shelter after a fire damaged thousands of shelters at the Balukhali refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, March 25, 2021. (Mohammad Ponir Hossain/Reuters)

But he acknowledged the global aid being made available “is not sufficient to meet the needs of people” in the refugee camps. What was once a $12 monthly food ration to the refugees, he explained, was cut to just $8 last year before the eventual bump back to $10.

At the end of the day, he said, aid groups were left grappling with the fact they have few funds left after disbursing those meager rations.

“We certainly agree with – as Lucky said – the importance of working with and through the Rohingya community,” Young said. “We do make sure our projects that are implemented there are staffed by Rohingya there [or] developed in consultation with community leaders.”

“At the same time, if you do the math, $10 a month for a million people consumes our entire budget pretty quickly,” he said. “So the bandwidth that we have to do other programming besides food is limited.”

One of the first priorities for the refugee camps outside of food would be “durable shelters,” Young said, due to both the propensity of the camps to be hit by devastating disasters and the “understanding that there will be a lot of people there for some time into the future.”

But for the Rohingya activists, that’s only a start.

Karim, the Illinois-based refugee, said little will change in the camps until Rohingyas are given some decision-making powers – and “not just coming to D.C. every six months” for forums on Capitol Hill.

“You take a bunch of notes, you leave us, you forget us,” the activist said. “We want a specific seat at the table.”

Edited by Malcolm Foster.

Desperate farmers in North Korea steal insulating plastic film from each other

It’s planting season in North Korea, and farmers are stealing plastic film from each other so that they can protect their rice seedlings from frost as they worry about meeting their quotas, residents told Radio Free Asia.

The plastic film and other farm supplies such as fertilizer are in short supply as imports from China have not picked up after the shutdown in trade during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In rural areas of our country, where farming material shortages are chronic, the number of thieves of plastic film from farms increases every spring,” a resident from the northwestern province of North Pyongan told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

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North Korean farm workers transplant rice seedlings at Tongbong Cooperative Farm, May 29, 2013 near Hamhung, North Korea. (AP)

The rice seedlings, often laboriously planted by hand due to a scarcity of machinery, can die if they go just one cold night without the protective cover, he said. During the day, the plastic sheets are removed so that the plants can absorb the warmth and sunshine.

Theft of crops and farming equipment is a common problem in North Korea so the government usually stations guards near fields. 

Beefed up security

But because plastic film theft can ruin an entire field, authorities are doubling the number of guards, the source said.

Police were looking for the plastic film thieves, but it is unlikely that they will be caught because it’s virtually impossible to tell if a plastic cover has been stolen from somewhere else, he said.

RFA’s sources estimate that the government has only been able to supply about a third of the fuel, fertilizer and plastic film that the farmers need.  Some farms have the plastic film and others don’t. 

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Two North Korean boys row their boat on the Pothong River where rice is planted June 19, 2017, in Pyongyang. (Wong Maye-E/AP)

Each farming security guard, most of whom were in their 60s, has been replaced by two younger ones, a resident of nearby South Pyongan province told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

The first source said he noticed the same thing: That an influx of younger guards have replaced fewer, older guards.

“The sudden increase in security personnel on the farms is due to the fact that recently three seedbeds had the plastic film stolen in the middle of the night,” he said. 

Even with the enhanced security, some thieves stole the plastic film from a seedbed in the vicinity, the second source, from South Pyongan, said. 

“So the guard removed the plastic film from the seedbed of another work unit that night and placed it on the seedbed where its plastic film had been stolen.”

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Farmers on the Chongsan-ri cooperative farm plant rice May 12, 2020, in Nampho, North Korea. (Cha Song Ho/AP)

The thieves are not to blame though, he said.

“Ultimately, the reality of this country, … is a product of the self-reliance policy emphasized by the authorities,” he said, referring to the cash-strapped government’s mantra that state enterprises should procure what they need on their own. 

Translated by Leejin J. Chung. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.

 

16 Indians rescued from scam operations in Laos

Sixteen Indian nationals who said they were lured in Mumbai to work as online scammers in Laos were rescued this week from the Chinese-run Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone, an official with knowledge of the situation told Radio Free Asia on Friday.

The zone, which sits along the Mekong River in northwestern Bokeo province, is a gambling and tourism hub catering to Chinese tourists and has been described as a de-facto Chinese colony. 

It has become a haven for cyber scams, prostitution, money laundering, drug trafficking, and human and wildlife trafficking by organized criminal networks.

The Indians had been told by recruiters in Mumbai that they would get jobs related to cryptocurrency in Thailand’s Chiang Rai province, said the official, who like others in this report, did not want to be identified so he could speak freely. 

But when they arrived, the Chinese bosses loaded them on a boat that crossed the Mekong River to Bokeo province, where the Indians said they were forced to work as online scammers or fake call center workers in the zone.

Their plight came to light after one of the Indians managed to escape and return to India, where he filed a complaint with Mumbai police on March 24, The Laotian Times reported.

One Lao official said that they had received a tip-off email from someone who knew about their predicament, and “took action right away to help these youngsters.”

Hurt and abused

An official involved in anti-human trafficking efforts said the Chinese running the operations physically abused some of the Indians, denied them food, and locked them up if they didn’t generate revenue. 

“The Chinese bosses physically hurt the Indian nationals with hammers and sticks,” he told RFA. “They simply had to work for free or without getting paid.”

Anti-human trafficking agents in India arrested two people believed to be in charge of agents who recruited up to 40 young Indian nationals so they could be sent to Laos to work as online scammers, said the official.

The Indian Embassy in Laos posted on its website an advisory for Indian youths to beware of fake job offers from Laos. (India Ministry of External Affairs)
The Indian Embassy in Laos posted on its website an advisory for Indian youths to beware of fake job offers from Laos. (India Ministry of External Affairs)

Other Indians in the zone who find themselves in the same predicament contact Lao government officers daily for help, said a second official involved in anti-human trafficking activities.

Since the beginning of the year, about 30 Indians have contacted a Lao anti-human trafficking office, which can help them find a safe temporary place to stay and send them home once authorities receive a tip about them, he said.

Some information comes from India’s Ministry of External Affairs asking for help to get Indian nationals out of the zone, the second official said.

It is unknown how many Indians are still working in the zone, he added.

South Korean and Malaysian nationals have also fallen victim to traffickers who hand them over to Chinese in the zone to engage in cyber fraud, said the official with knowledge of the situation.

The Embassy of India in Vientiane issued a recent notice on its website that it was aware that Indian nations were being lured for employment in Thailand or Laos as “digital sales and marketing executives” and “customer support services” by dubious companies involved in call-center scams and cryptocurrency fraud in the Golden Triangle SEZ.

Translated by Phouvong for RFA Lao. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcom Foster.

Rising theft of cables and bolts along the Laos-China railway

The new Laos-China railway is hiring more security guards at train stations after a rise in thefts of electrical cables, bolts and other equipment along the route, two employees of a private security company told Radio Free Asia.

The cables and bolts are sold to scrap metal businesses by people looking for an easy way to raise cash, a villager who lives close to the railway told RFA.

It’s widely believed that many of the thieves are addicted to drugs, the villager said. But even with extra security guards and soldiers watching the rail line and station, the thieves still find a way, he said.

“I always hear from a village chief that it is prohibited for people – especially teenagers – to hangout near the Laos-China railway,” he said. 

Last year, police arrested 71 people along the railway route on theft charges – an increase from the 52 arrests made in 2022, authorities said.

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A cargo train makes its way down the Laos-China railway in Vang Vieng district, Vientiane province, September 2023. (RFA)

The US$6 billion railway connecting Vientiane with Kunming in China’s Yunnan province opened in December 2021. It passes through 10 stations in Laos – including the major tourist draw of Luang Prabang – and was aimed at boosting the economy through tourism, freight transport and agriculture trade.

Some villagers have benefited from economic development along the route, but the project has been criticized for displacing several thousand farmers from their land. 

Diligent team players needed

The thefts have created a demand for more security guards at each station, a security service company employee said.

“Our employees are deployed in each railway station and it seems like there is a high need to have more guards in each of the stations,” the employee said.

Another security service employee said they are actively seeking applicants and plan to send the new recruits to each of the 10 stations.

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An empty stretch of the Laos-China railway is seen in Vang Vieng district, Vientiane province, September 2023. (RFA)

Guards will be expected to work either 4 p.m. to midnight or from midnight until 8 a.m., a railway worker at Boten station near the Chinese border said.

“It doesn’t require a high education background,” the railway worker said. “Anyone applying for the security job just needs to be diligent and have no problems working in a team.”

Additionally, scrap metal operators are being more careful about what they purchase for fear they also could face criminal charges or heavy fines, the operator of a scrap metal business told RFA. It’s illegal to buy scrap metal that has been stolen from state-owned entities or properties. 

Attempts to contact the Department of Railway Police and the Ministry of Public Security to ask for more details on the thefts were unsuccessful.

Translated by Phouvong. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.

In isolated South China Sea territory, Filipino fisherman see ‘dwindling catch’

Filipino fisherman Larry Hugo worked fast to launch his small boat from Pag-asa, a small island which the Philippines occupies in the disputed Spratly archipelago in the South China Sea, before the sun set in the horizon. 

Pag-asa, internationally known as Thitu Island and also claimed by China, Taiwan and Vietnam, sits far out at sea from the main Philippine islands and is inhabited by nearly 300 Filipinos.   

Hugo has lived here for the past 15 years. The catch used to be enough to sustain his family until lately, when the presence of Chinese coast guard and militia ships all but forced him and other fishermen to venture closer to shore, he said. 

The 45-year-old, who hails from the town of Roxas on Palawan island, is just one of many locals who refuse to give in to despair. Hugo recently spent half a day at sea and returned home with a small catch.

“Yesterday, I went out for fishing but I only got around four kilos (8.8 pounds) of small fish, just enough to cover my gasoline and food for two days,” he told BenarNews.

“Yearly, our catch declines because of the illegal fishing by the Chinese and the Vietnamese. Some of them were using dynamite and cyanide,” Hugo told BenarNews in Filipino outside a small grocery store where he hangs out with friends. 

Earlier this month, BenarNews journalists spent four days on Pag-asa. It is one of about nine islands and atolls occupied by Manila in the Spratlys. The island hosts a small community and is equipped with a runway and a school. 

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Children walk home from their school on Pag-asa (Thitu) Island, March 21, 2024. [Mark Navales/BenarNews]

Pag-asa, the largest of the islands in the Spratly chain, is officially part of the Philippine province of Palawan. Pag-asa is about 300 miles (483 km) from Puerto Princesa, the capital of Palawan island in the western Philippines. 

In recent years, more Chinese ships have traveled into waters around Pag-asa and made their presence felt, according to locals. 

Along with Scarborough Shoal to the north, Pag-asa has been at the center of news headlines involving China, which claims large swathes of the South China Sea based on historical grounds.  

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A woman washes clothes outside her home on Pag-Asa, March 20, 2023. [Jeoffrey Maitem/BenarNews]

BenarNews reporters who joined a Philippine mission earlier in March to survey the island and its surrounding areas saw a Chinese fishing fleet, escorted by Chinese militia and coast guard ships as they deployed huge lights to attract fish to their nets. 

The Philippines has accused China of illegally harvesting corals and of using dynamite to fish, an allegation Chinese officials have denied. Vietnamese officials also have denied the claim. 

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Pag-Asa Island as seen from a satellite, April 4, 2022. [Credit: CSIS/AMTI/MAXAR Technologies]

Jonathan Anticamara, professor at the Institute of Biology, College of Science, University of the Philippines-Diliman, said it was the first time marine research had been conducted in Sandy Cay, a sandbar located a few nautical miles from Pag-asa. The researchers’ mission was to identify the corals, fish and invertebrates present in the feature.

“The main goal of this research I think, which is very interesting for the Filipinos, is that these are offshore reefs that belong to the Philippines and the Filipinos do not know so much about these reefs,” Anticamara said.

“So we need to know what’s going on with these reefs. So that’s why we need to go underwater and we need to see what’s in there,” he said.

The visit by the Filipino marine research expedition to Sandy Cay angered China, which complained that this had infringed on Chinese “territorial sovereignty.”

“Thirty-four individuals from the Philippines ignored China’s warning and illegally landed on Tiexian Reef,” China Coast Guard spokesman Gan Yu said in a statement, using the Chinese name for Sandy Cay. 

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A pair of Filipino fishermen push their boat ashore on Pag-asa (Thitu) Island, March 20, 2023. [Mark Navales/BenarNews]

In September 2023, Philippine officials blamed Chinese maritime militia ships for massive destruction of coral reefs, particularly in the seabed of Rozul Reef and Escoda Shoal, both features near Palawan island. 

Hugo said he and other fishermen have complained about “dwindling catch.” 

“We only get a few fish here now compared to before. These illegal fishermen from China and Vietnam are destroying the fish sanctuaries,” he said. 

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A Philippine Coast Guard ship is seen from the shore of Pag-asa (Thitu) Island in the South China Sea, March 20, 2024. [Jeoffrey Maitem/BenarNews]

With no regular direct ships or commercial airline carrying people to and from the island, it has been impossible for Hugo and other residents to quickly cross to the main Philippine islands in cases of emergencies. 

Since he moved to Pag-asa in 2009, Hugo said he had managed to leave it on rare occasions to visit his relatives on Palawan island. 

“We just have to live with it. No regular aircraft of the Philippine Air Force was coming because of the bad condition of the runway. It was not concrete and was slippery when it rains,” he said.

That could be changing. 

“But now it’s different. We have a good runway and the air force flies four times a week. People will just have to list their names for manifest and there will be prioritization depending on the importance of travel,” he said. 

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Pag-Asa Island as seen from a satellite, April 4, 2022. [Credit: CSIS/AMTI/MAXAR Technologies]

In January, Palawan Gov. Victorino Dennis Socrates traveled to Pag-asa, where he promised that the government would undertake efforts to boost “the country’s sovereignty in the region,” local media reported.

“To all our fellow countrymen across the Philippines, our claim to Kalayaan may just be words, but you being here, proving and shouting through your character, way of life and physical presence, truly affirms that Kalayaan is indeed part of the Philippines and Palawan,” Socrates said, according to Inquirer.net.

Pag-asa lies within the Kalayaan Islands, which are part of the Spratly chain.

“I believe the government is encouraging more people to come and settle here, not only in Pag-asa but in the outlying islands,” the governor said.

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Ricel Galvan, a former fisherman, is seen inside the compound of his house on Pag-asa Island in the South China Sea, March 21, 2024. [Mark Navales/BenarNews]

Despite the promises, constant harassment from the Chinese has made it difficult for fishermen, said Ricel Galvan, 37, who took a job with the school’s maintenance staff.

In 2018, residents were free to catch fish, but now the Chinese prevent them, he said. 

“We were told by local officials to just lie low and choose a location far from the Chinese,” he told BenarNews. 

To support his wife, Aileen, 34, who has been studying in Palawan to become a teacher and their children, aged 10 and 11, Galvan said he accepted a contract from the local government of Kalayaan to work as a support staff in the island. 

At the same time, he maintains a small store selling supplies to his neighbors.  

“Life here is very hard. Worst is the transportation. We can’t just get off the island if we want to,” he said. “We have no commercial transportation. We need to keep an eye and wait for the availability of government vessels.”

“It’s sad but life must go on. We just have to sacrifice a little,” he said. 

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.