South China Sea, TikTok ban bill, Scholz in China, and Blinken's upcoming visit
South China Sea, TikTok ban bill, Scholz in China, and Blinken's upcoming visit
+ Chinese swimmers tested positive before Tokyo Olympics
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THROUGH THE LENS
XINJIANG
House Reps urge crack down on companies benefiting from Chinese forced labor
Axios
The U.S. has sought to crack down on companies believed to be complicit in the Chinese government's human rights abuses towards Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in Xinjiang province.
Now, the leaders of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party are calling for the U.S. to get allies on board as well.
POLITICS & SOCIETY
Xi Jinping tightens grip on China’s military with new information warfare unit
Financial Times
China has established a new information warfare department under the direct command of its top military body as it begins its largest restructuring of the armed forces in more than eight years.
The shift of information warfare to the direct command of the Central Military Commission — the top Communist party and state organ that controls the People’s Liberation Army — would hand Chinese leader Xi Jinping even more direct control over the military, analysts said.
The Information Support Force will aim to “speed up military modernisation and effectively implement the mission of the people’s armed forces in the new era”, Xi said at a ceremony in Beijing on Friday.
It will be removed from the Strategic Support Force, which was set up eight years ago as a new PLA branch combining information, cyber and space warfare departments under Xi’s previous military restructuring, according to a statement from the PLA Daily military news service.
The space and cyber forces would also be brought under a new command structure, it said, de facto abolishing the Strategic Support Force. Under the SSF, the information forces had been in charge of collecting technical intelligence and providing intelligence support to regional military chiefs.
China’s Punishment for People With Bad Debts: No Fast Trains or Nice Hotels
WSJ
People across China are being weighed down by their debts and a system that penalizes them for not paying the money back. Beijing is cracking down on delinquent debtors by seizing their salaries or restricting them from getting government jobs, as well as curbing their access to high-speed trains and air travel. Many are forbidden from buying expensive insurance policies and told they aren’t allowed to go on vacation or stay in nice hotels. Authorities can detain them if they don’t comply.
The number of people on a publicly available government delinquency blacklist has jumped by nearly 50% since late 2019 to 8.3 million today. Courts can put people on the blacklist when they don’t fulfill judgments against them to pay money back or are deemed to be not cooperating with legal proceedings.
Unlike in the U.S., China doesn’t allow most people—including those who had a run of bad luck—to declare bankruptcy to write off bad debts and move on with their lives, a policy some Chinese scholars are criticizing as unfair.
Household debt has surged by 50% in the past five years to around $11 trillion today. While that is lower than the $17.5 trillion Americans owe, it is a huge sum in a country where people earn far less.
How to think about China
Jane Perlez, foreign correspondent and former Beijing bureau chief for The New York Times, first visited China as a university student and has been a gifted explainer of its inner workings and outer strivings ever since.
Here’s some of what we got to ask her: What is the Chinese leadership seeking in the world? Why is it interfering in the U.S. election? What do Chinese people want — is continued prosperity enough, or is there a clamor for democracy coming? Why are some Chinese members of Gen Z refusing the culture of overwork in favor of what they call “lying flat”? Should the rise of China and its success make us recalibrate our assumptions about what is possible under authoritarianism versus under democracy?
HONG KONG & MACAO
China says Hong Kong must 'tightly hold' national security line to safeguard development
Reuters
China's top official on Hong Kong affairs said the city should "tightly hold" onto the bottom line of national security to safeguard development, in a speech coming weeks after the enactment of sweeping new security laws.
"To move towards governance and prosperity, we need to tightly hold onto the bottom line of national security in order to safeguard the high quality development of Hong Kong," said the director of Beijing's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, Xia Baolong, in a speech to mark an annual national security day.
Hong Kong in March enacted a new national security law, also known as article 23, that updates or introduces new laws to prohibit treason, sabotage, sedition, the theft of state secrets and espionage, with jail terms of up to life imprisonment.
Sinking fortunes: Hong Kong falls out of world’s top 10 busiest ports ranking for the first time as volumes slump
SCMP
Hong Kong, once the world’s busiest port, failed for the first time to rank among the world’s top 10 ports in 2023, reflecting the city’s struggles to reverse a long-term decline in shipping volumes.
It was knocked to 11th place by Dubai’s Jebel Ali port, according to data from shipping data provider Alphaliner on the world’s 30 busiest container terminals.
Shanghai retained the top spot, a position it has held since 2010 when it overtook now second-placed Singapore. In total, six of the top 10 spots were held by mainland Chinese cities – Ningbo, Qingdao, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Tianjin and Shanghai – with Busan in South Korea, Los Angeles in the US, and Dubai rounding out the list.
The drop is bruising for Hong Kong, which was the world’s top container port for most of the period from 1987 to 2004. The city has posted seven straight years of declining shipment volumes because of steep competition from its mainland counterparts, according to Alphaliner.
Bitcoin ETFs (BTC) in Hong Kong Likely Not Available for Chinese Investors
CoinDesk
Investors in mainland China likely won't be allowed to buy into the newly approved Hong Kong-listed spot bitcoin ETFs, analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence reported, weakening excitement over the funds even further.
The report isn't a huge surprise given that China has one of the globe's most restrictive stances on crypto after having banned the trading and mining of tokens in the country in 2021.
Hong Kong regulators supposedly approved the launch of ETFs on Monday, opening the gates for new money being poured into bitcoin. Issuers include ChinaAMC, Harvest Global and Bosera International. The approval was announced by the issuers themselves, not the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), Hong Kong's securities regulator, who has maintained radio silence.
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