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!important;}}Plus: The full-court press against Xinjiang criticism and
increasing incursions near Taiwan
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| March 31, 2021 | View in browser |
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| SPONSORED BY COURSE CORRECTION |
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| By James PalmerWelcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.The highlights this
week: A new law reduces the number of directly elected representatives in Hong
Kong’s legislature, Beijing’s propaganda network doubles down on its efforts to
silence criticism of atrocities in Xinjiang, and Chinese provocations near
Taiwan keep growing.Have feedback? Hit reply to let me know your thoughts.
More Legislative Changes in Hong Kong
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On Tuesday, China’s government endorsed changes to Hong Kong’s legislature that
will reduce the proportion of directly elected representatives from 35 of 70
seats to just 20 of 90 seats. The decision isn’t surprising, but it is another
blow to the last remaining democratic elements in Hong Kong’s government and to
a city that once dreamed of political freedom.Under the new law, pro-Beijing
businesses and professional groups will still choose 30 seats—the so-called
functional constituencies—while a government-appointed election committee will
choose 40 seats. On top of that, the same election committee will screen all
candidates, making even the 20 directly elected seats likely to be packed with
“patriotic” officials, as the government calls backers of Beijing’s harsh
policies in Hong Kong.Hong Kong’s current Legislative Council has
rubber-stamped the changes. The body lost its effective opposition last
November when pro-democracy members resigned en masse in protest of the
expulsion of some of their colleagues under the new national security law. Even
holding primaries for pro-democracy parties is now considered a violation of
the law.Hastily established before the last British administration left Hong
Kong in 1997, the city’s democracy was always imperfect, but Hong Kongers
valued it nevertheless. Fierce election campaigns often produced striking
rebukes to Beijing, such as the 2019 local elections that the opposition swept.
The shock caused by that loss and by the city’s youth-led protest movement was
so strong that Beijing appears determined never to suffer such embarrassment
again.Hong Kongers’ despondency and mistrust of their government now appear
high, although crackdowns on independent polling make it hard to determine just
how the public feels.One consequence of the loss of confidence in government:
Hong Kongers express among the highest levels of vaccine skepticism in the
world, with just 39 percent saying they would be willing to take a shot from
the government. That reflects a perception that China is forcing the Sinovac
and Sinopharm vaccines on Hong Kongers, a feeling that increased after
distribution of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in Hong Kong was halted over
supposed safety issues.SPONSORED
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Reparations, free speech, COVID-19 policies — the world’s biggest issues are
often the most polarizing. In each episode of Doha Debates’ podcast Course
Correction, host Nelufar Hedayat challenges her views through discussions with
people she disagrees with.
Follow and listen wherever you get your podcasts. |
What We’re FollowingXinjiang denialism. China’s propaganda network has spent
this week on an aggressive full-court press against criticism of state
atrocities in Xinjiang after the sanctions issued against European politicians,
think tanks, and academics last week. So-called “wolf warrior” rhetoric has
reached a new high, with Chinese diplomats throwing around insults in a bid for
attention at home, such as the consul in Brazil who called Canadian Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau a “spendthrift.”Harassment of foreign media has also
increased, leading to the departure of two more journalists from China: the
BBC’s John Sudworth and the Irish RTE’s Yvonne Murray, a married couple, who
moved to Taiwan after threats from the authorities. The tone of state media
articles targeting journalists is now vicious—even by Chinese government
standards. Vicky Xu, a Chinese Australian analyst who has produced work on
Xinjiang for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a think tank, has been
a particular focus of misogynistic vitriol.One problem facing China is that it
lacks any credible global intellectual support for its atrocity denialism,
unlike the Soviet Union’s Western apologists. That has led to Beijing’s
promotion of fringe figures: For example, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
spokesperson Hua Chunying this week declared the Schiller Institute—the German
branch of the LaRouchite conspiracy movement— “true scholars.”Taiwan under
threat. Twenty Chinese planes intruded into Taiwan’s air defense identification
zone last Friday, the largest incursion yet. The maneuver signals growing
provocation around Taiwan ahead of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the
Chinese Communist Party on July 23. The intrusions have become so common that
Taiwanese airplanes have stopped scrambling in response. The United States has
responded by loosening restrictions to make it easier for U.S. officials to
meet with their Taiwanese counterparts.While there are serious concerns about
who would prevail in a hypothetical invasion, it’s important to remember that
any Chinese attack on Taiwan would likely be telegraphed well in advance. The
size of forces needed, and the Taiwanese-Chinese intelligence penetration of
each other’s militaries, means strategic surprise is probably out of the
question.WHO pushes back. After a year of criticism for the World Health
Organization’s acquiescence to China throughout the coronavirus pandemic, WHO
Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus rebuked Beijing on Tuesday for
failing to allow proper access or data as part of WHO’s investigation into the
origins of the virus. This week, WHO issued a report restating the likelihood
of zoonotic transfer rather than a laboratory leak.Tedros’s comments
effectively undermine the report, following statements from investigation team
leader Peter Ben Embarek that they had been under political pressure while in
China. Robert Redfield, the former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention under the Trump administration, has voiced support for the lab
leak theory, but the supposed intelligence confirming it has yet to materialize.
Tech and Business Ethnic surveillance. Video firms such as Dahua and Hikvision
are playing a direct role in creating the standards for police cameras that
track individuals by ethnicity, with information on skin and hair color
programmed into the systems as well as a special category that singles out
Uyghurs and Tibetans, reporting by IPVM and Reuters has found. China’s military
has also put special emphasis on artificial intelligence facial recognition,
with more funding dedicated to it than any other projects.Although there is
clearly intense pressure to monitor China’s own ethnic minorities, as well as
foreigners, there’s also the possibility of selling this technology to
governments worldwide that see minorities as security threats or already use
Chinese-made surveillance systems. Paper mills threaten science. Nature
magazine has tracked more than 370 papers retracted from academic publications
since January 2020—all of them from authors at Chinese hospitals. This is a
recurring problem. The demand to publish or perish is acute in China, and
academic standards are low. A raft of Chinese companies specialize in placing
papers, often using fake data or poor experimental methods, in Western
journals.The Chinese government and university authorities have tried repeated
crackdowns against the paper mills, but they also defended government-favored
pseudosciences such as traditional Chinese medicine. Tech stocks plunge. After
regulators signaled tightening and with fallout from Archegos Capital
Management’s $20 billion moves hitting global markets, Chinese technology
stocks had one of their worst-ever months. The price drops still only knocked
them back to where they were at the start of 2021, but with the government
potentially planning a cull of powerful tech firms and U.S. authorities revving
up to impose more limits, it might be best not to heed suggestions to buy at
the bottom.
City Brief
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Hohhot, Inner Mongolia: 2.8 million peopleThe history of the city of Hohhot is
evident in its name: It’s short and crunchy in Mongolian and clumsy and long in
Chinese, in which it’s rendered Huhehaote. From its founding in 1557, beyond
Chinese borders, it was a trading town between Mongolians and Chinese. Han
merchants were encouraged to settle there by both the local Mongolian khan and
the Ming Empire.The Mongolian name means “blue town,” reflecting a sacred color
in a sky-dominated steppe. Like the rest of Inner Mongolia, Hohhot saw deepened
conflicts between Han settlers and Mongolian natives from the mid-19th century
onward, as attempts by the Qing government to restrict settlement collapsed.
The original Mongolian population is outnumbered 6 to 1 by Han Chinese, making
the city less susceptible to the wave of ethnic repression sweeping Inner
Mongolia—but not immune.Today, Hohhot is the capital of the Inner Mongolia
autonomous region and an industrial city, its population swollen by post-World
War II settlement. It’s also an ecological disaster. The city has grown far
beyond what local water sources can support, and the taps constantly run dry
since rainfall can be as little as 2 inches per year. Urban managers have long
struggled to keep the city alive, using wastewater recycling and household
water limits.That’s it for this week.For more from Foreign Policy, subscribe
here or sign up for our other newsletters. You can find older editions of China
Brief here. If you have tips, comments, questions, or corrections, you can
reply to this email.Photos: Anthony Wallace/AFP via Getty Images, STR/AFP via
Getty Images Correction: Yang Jiechi is a top diplomat in China. Last week’s
newsletter misstated his current title. |
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