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Post by Blitz on Nov 20, 2022 13:59:58 GMT -5
Why Xi Jinping will not enjoy his third term Xi has a devoted mass base but alienating so many elites is risky and his support could quickly dissolve if the economy keeps faltering By WILLIAM H. OVERHOLT - NOVEMBER 19, 2022 asiatimes.com/2022/11/why-xi-jinping-will-not-enjoy-his-third-term/Chinese President Xi Jinping on a large screen during a cultural performance as part of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China on June 28, 2021. Photo: AFP / Noel Celis Bill Overholt was the first person I am aware of to raise the possibility that on any metric – purchasing power parity, whatever – the Chinese economy would come to match in scale the US economy. That was in the very early 1990s, at which point it was generally regarded as a bizarre and unlikely observation. He proved to be right about that and he has over the years proven to be right about many other things. He brings a unique combination of a business perspective, a political perspective and an economic perspective. His preoccupation for the last year or so has been China’s economic prospects or lack thereof. – Former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence H Summers introducing William Overholt at last week’s Harvard seminar where the following remarks were delivered. Dr Overholt’s remarks: Let me begin by summarizing my theme: Xi Jinping is not going to enjoy his third term. Let’s start by looking at China’s long-run economic prospects. There are some very common views on that. The most common view, particularly in the national security community, is that China has demonstrated an exceptional ability to grow and, therefore, even if it slows some, it’s certainly going to continue to grow faster than the United States and eventually will tower over it. As former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has often pointed out, we Americans tend to exaggerate the present and future prowess of anyone seen as a rival. We did it with the Soviets and we did it with the Japanese. We’re doing it again. There is an opposite argument that autocracies cannot sustain economic growth and therefore China can’t. Autocracies, we are told, cannot promote officials based on merit, cannot do long-range plans, and in general cannot sustain growth. This argument is a triumph of modern political economy. It combines conceptual incoherence, two logical fallacies and a regression on an invalid database to come to a false conclusion that we like to hear. It’s not helpful to understanding China. So, what are the prospects for the Chinese economy? Slow, slow, slow after 2030. I’m not talking here about the current property and Covid slowdown, which has precipitated a stampede of new pessimists. China will cope and partially bounce back – but, later, the real problems begin. China’s rapid growth has been based largely on three drivers: property, infrastructure and urbanization. By the end of this decade, those drivers will be mostly exhausted. The property bubble is popping and is being managed partly by inflating an infrastructure bubble. Two worsening drags on the economy exacerbate the problem of exhausted drivers. China will continue to need to service the debts that financed the property and infrastructure bubbles. Above all, an aging population is becoming a huge economic burden and that burden falls on a declining workforce. A weakened private sector provides 90% of urban employment, 100% of net job creation, over half of all exports and, according to Vice Premier Liu He, 70% of innovation. Under Xi Jinping private sector investment and credit have drastically declined. While the big private companies are taking market share from the big state enterprises, the private sector as a whole is being squeezed. The big banks cannot do creditworthy lending to local private companies and Xi Jinping’s excessive reform of shadow banking eliminated too many of the institutions that could do such lending. Internet financial companies like Ant Financial provided a potential solution, but the government feared their control of data and their disintermediation of the banks. So the government has grabbed control of the data and assumes the big state banks can use it efficiently; more likely this will be like a merger of Twitter and Tesla. Alibaba founder Jack Ma’s Ant Financial was cause for fear in Xi’s view. Image: Facebook Xi Jinping is not trying to curtail the private sector but he is trying to strengthen the state sector. This forces one to ask whether China will experience Japanification, which is stagnation that results from domination of the economy by a group of large conglomerates in cahoots with a government that thinks it can drive the economy forward by subsidizing and protecting those companies. China’s companies are much more competitive and dynamic than Japan’s. However, the Japanese experience does have two ominous implications for China. First, as happened in Japan, Beijing’s industrial policies, designed to achieve dominance in every modern industrial sector, are likely to have some very expensive successes and even more very expensive failures. Second, as China adopts its own industrial standards different from those of the West, it risks isolating itself the way Japan isolated its cell phone companies and thereby handed the global market to Apple and Samsung. Services are and will be the dominant sector of China’s economy. Services have exceeded half of the economy since 2015. But the modern services sector – finance, accounting, law, journalism, much of education – has been highly protected. Unlike manufacturing, whose efficiency has been hardened by intense international competition, much of the vital service sector remains stodgy, politicized and corrupt. Modern financial and legal systems are vital for entrepreneurship and efficiency. For future Chinese growth this is an opportunity as well as a drag, but, except for a slow financial opening, policy is looking inward. It’s a drag. The breadth of Chinese growth owes much to governmental and Communist Party entrepreneurship. Early in the reform era, the leadership basically sought to turn its vast bureaucracy into Drexel Burnham with Chinese characteristics. They deprived local government of adequate fiscal resources but allowed them to start businesses. They gave officials at all levels strict goals but pointedly didn’t ask questions about how they achieved those goals. Overnight town and village enterprises employed 110 million people. Up and down the bureaucracy entrepreneurship flourished. Teachers gave each student half a dozen eggs and taught them how to raise chickens in order to support the school. The Institute of Marxism-Leninism became a consulting firm. Everybody grew, at the cost of universal rule-breaking and risky financial management. Xi Jinping’s highly politicized crackdown on corruption terminates this era. From the bottom of the bureaucracy to the top, everybody is afraid of being accused of corruption. If you act decisively on anything, a change in the political wind can knock you down permanently. When there are so many rules, and so many political requirements, any decision makes you vulnerable. In New York City, when the subway workers want to shut the system down in protest, they declare a “work to rule” – an industrial action in which everyone is supposed to observe working rules and hours precisely so as to lower output and efficiency. Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese bureaucracy has gone from Drexel Burnham with Chinese characteristics to a work to rule. This affects everything. Possibly the least of China’s problems is the activation of party committees in every firm, public and private, as the ultimate arbiters of strategic business decisions. We don’t know how this will work out across China. Likely the outcomes will be different in different regions and different sectors. We do know that, in many of the large companies in Beijing, the agenda of the party secretary is quite different from that of the CEO. Across China, this rule may mean a little sand in the gears or a lot of sand in the gears, but it is sand in the gears. Finally, foreign investors are going to be far more careful about what and how much they put in China. Foreign direct investment has proved vital to China’s economic success. When China joined the World Trade Organization its superior openness to foreign automobile companies – an openness unimaginable to Japan and South Korea – saved the American car industry. Foxconn employees operate on the assembly line at the Foxconn factory in Longhua, Shenzhen, China. Image: AFP Foreign businesses rushed to China and they defended China against protectionist attacks. But now, if Huawei or CATL (the battery manufacturer) is given full access to the US and European markets while foreigners are held to a small share of the Chinese market, the Chinese giants will utterly destroy their foreign competition. Not through superior business but through unfair access. China now needs foreigners less than it once did, but it still needs them. Quite aside from Western national security actions, the resulting determination of foreign businesses to diversify their supply chains will have some negative effect on Chinese growth. China will have economic wins. It is the world leader in every form of green energy and its exceptional success in reducing the carbon content of its energy use contrasts sharply with the pathetic record of the United States. China will set the standard for good trains and, given the current US administration’s protectionism, the US will continue to have no Asian-class trains. China’s space program is, and will continue to be, world-class. Beijing’s focus on digitization and artificial intelligence in industry will generate some gains. I forecast that Biden’s recent semiconductor decisions will circuitously lead China to triumphant success in semiconductors while US protectionism degrades its own semiconductor industry. But the overall Chinese future will be slow growth. And meanwhile, aside from overall growth, China is also experiencing an unsettling budget transition. At the turn of the century, GDP was growing very fast and government revenues were growing twice as fast. The Chinese economy was monetizing and tax collection was improving. Extraordinary revenue growth created a bull market mentality. When Xi Jinping first took power, it seemed the Chinese government could do anything and everything – eliminate poverty, fund social services for an aging population, build the world’s greatest infrastructure, grow a military to compete with the US, commit a trillion dollars or more to the Belt and Road Initiative and buy the world’s great ports and its great technology companies. Now economic growth is slower and revenue growth has to converge with GDP growth. The transition from bull-market mentality to sobriety is difficult. Sobriety hit hard in 2022. The emergent sobriety coincides with a new politics. What is that new politics? The conventional wisdom is that Xi Jinping is China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong and can do just about anything. That’s nonsense. I’ll begin with the context. Leaders’ greatest task throughout modern Chinese history has been to create stability out of chaos. Mao Zedong unified the country and Chinese opinion reveres him for that despite privation, starvation and millions of deaths. Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong are both loved by the Chinese Communist Party. Photo: Wallpapersafari.com Into the 1990s, though, Beijing still confronted basic challenges of stability and unity. During that decade, under Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji, the government first became capable of vital government functions like controlling the money supply, suppressing inflation, replacing provincial leaders as needed and reassigning military commanders at will. These achievements culminated one of world history’s most difficult tasks. However, the early 21st century brought retrogression. Under Hu Jintao (2003-2012) ministers often defied the prime minister and private sector leaders often derided the prime minister’s edicts. Local leaders flouted central government directives. Spectacular corruption undermined party legitimacy. Private companies dominated growth, new employment, and innovation, and some were becoming politically assertive. Demonstrations rose by an order of magnitude and an embarrassed government stopped publishing the statistics. Marxism was becoming a boring class required of resentful students. Party membership was largely opportunistic. Vice ministers were being sent to Harvard and Oxford and were returning with contaminated thoughts. Reform dynamism vanished. Communist Party leadership seemed to the leaders of that party to be at risk. Faced with this, Hu Jintao, crippled by diabetes and committed to collective leadership, vacillated. This backsliding reflected a weak party leader and the corrupt family of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. But, more fundamentally, Chinese society had passed a threshold of social complexity. Economic success turned a simple economy into an immensely complex one, and each segment had education, resources, organizational skills, political interests and expanding cosmopolitan connections to the outside world. This was the point in social development when China’s developmental dictatorship predecessors in South Korea and Taiwan had acknowledged social changes and responded with more market-oriented economics and more market-driven politics. Xi made an opposite choice. Xi Jinping’s mandate was to resolve the crisis of complexity: ensure order, restore central control, reignite economic reform and save the party. This immense assignment seemed disproportionate to Xi’s limited domestic political base, which peers expected would render him controllable. Until very late in the selection process, he had a formidable opponent, Bo Xilai, party secretary of Chongqing, whose charisma and similar leadership strategy – anti-corruption campaign, Maoist slogans, populist songs, successful infrastructure development, attentiveness to the rural poor – had cultivated a more extensive popular and elite base than Xi’s. After Bo fell, much of the party still preferred Li Keqiang, who became prime minister only to be crushed like other rivals. Despite a narrow political base, Xi did not vacillate. Corruption had to be conquered, potential challengers routed, civil society atomized, government and economy centralized, party control rendered absolute, Marxism reimposed, regrettable history erased, nationalism inflamed and foreign ideas filtered. The threat was omnipresent: corruption everywhere, civil society and cosmopolitan ideas everywhere, personal vulnerabilities raw. So Xi sought personal control of everything. His multiple titles put him in charge of the party, the government, the military and eight powerful “leading small groups” that manage everything from “comprehensive deepening of reform” to economic and financial management, internet security and informatization, military reform, and national security coordination. With remarkable efficacy, he banished all potential challengers. He broke established norms such as the two-term limit and the requirement to groom successors. He wrote himself into China’s constitution. Numerous titles and totally suppressed opposition do not, however, evidence confident, absolute power. Xi is accountable to the Communist Party, whereas Putin’s party is an entourage supporting his accumulation of power and money. For another perspective, imagine a US conglomerate CEO who appoints himself managing director of every important business unit; he would be perceived as insecure and unskilled at delegation. In contrast, preeminent leader Deng Xiaoping could have destroyed his ideological opponent Deng Liqun and his market reform opponent Chen Yun, but he had the confidence and wisdom not to do so. Indeed, Deng’s leadership team (the “eight immortals”) comprised immensely powerful figures with conflicting ideas and momentous power scheming. US President Jimmy Carter, in 1979, receives Deng Xiaoping. Photo: Wikipedia Likewise, China’s success under Jiang Zemin resulted from Jiang’s wise balancing of personalities as different as reformist Zhu Rongji and conservative Li Peng. The ultimate confident leader of modern Chinese history was Deng Xiaoping in his later years, leading China with one title: honorary chairman of the Chinese Bridge Players Society. To assert central, and specifically party, authority, to attack corruption, and to acquire the clout to impose his will on the economy, Xi took on every elite group at once. The anti-corruption campaign jailed over 100,000 officials of the party, the government, the military and business, including top generals and the Politburo Standing Committee member managing security. State enterprise leaders lost half their compensation. Private sector credit and investment collapsed. Giant conglomerates disintegrated. Tech sector executives and investors lost $2 trillion in the recent regulatory crackdown. Clean energy leaders personally lost $140 billion. Provincial and local leaders have found their jurisdictions in a financial squeeze and their personal incomes slashed. Simultaneously they lost their innovative freedom of action. Central and local officials, formerly notable for their innovative energy, are demoralized, fearful and immobilized. Wealthy and middle-class parents seek to get their money and children out of the country, forcing Xi to enhance capital controls and restrict officials from having family and property abroad. The crackdown on companies hurt the bankers and Xi’s reforms decimated the enormously important shadow banking sector. To demolish any potential civil-society resistance, Xi has repressed teachers, tutors, lawyers, journalists, feminists, homosexuals, Christians, Muslims, Falun Gong, NGOs. Many enemies. Xi’s anti-corruption campaign is enormously popular with the masses. Likewise, his assertion of Chinese global leadership and his blaming of problems on America was as seductive in China as Trump’s similar blaming of Muslims and foreigners was popular in America. Cracking down on what he saw as the spoiled, pampered people of Hong Kong and the separatists and terrorists of Xinjiang also garnered mass support. The elite honors Xi for saving the Communist Party but is very skeptical about his retrograde economics and politics. Xi’s political strategy contrasts with that of Turkey’s founding leader, Kemal Ataturk, who, facing many groups that needed reform, sequentially amassed powerful coalitions, then confronted resistant groups one at a time. Xi has a devoted mass base comprising the overwhelming majority of the population, but alienating so much of the elite is risky and the mass base could start to dissolve if the economy continues to falter. Xi’s control of propaganda, the security apparatus, the party, and economic management ensure that he can maintain mass support and, for now, suppress overt manifestations of elite discontent. He will almost certainly be able to maintain this stability through his third term. Nonetheless, his actual policies and power are at risk. Successful pushback limits further crackdown on internet platforms. The umbrella phrase for his social goals, “Common Prosperity,” barely made it into important recent policy documents. The Belt and Road Initiative is downplayed. Propaganda organs intensely spread pro-Russian propaganda, but from May the majority of WeChat users have been pro-Ukraine. Xi spent so much of his first decade in the top job consolidating power that he had to rush to notch important accomplishments in year ten. But year ten has not been a good year. Xi’s protectionism deprived Chinese of access to effective vaccines and necessitated lockdowns of hundreds of millions of people. With the lockdowns and bursting property bubble as catalysts, the once-triumphal mood in China changed drastically. Chinese President Xi Jinping waves to residents who are quarantined at home and sends regards to them at a community in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province, March 10, 2020. Photo: Xinhua / Pang Xinglei For years consensus opinion held that China was rising, the United States declining and that the superior wisdom of technocratic Chinese leaders ensures constant success. The atmosphere resembled the earlier American triumphalism of George W Bush and Dick Cheney – until financial crisis and failing wars imposed American sobriety. Something like the resultant sobriety has now flooded China. China’s 2013 excitement over a new era of reform, when the market was going to be the primary determinant of the economy, political unity was going to be reinvigorated and corruption was going to be banished, has become grim doubling down on Covid policy, Russia policy, infrastructure overinvestment and propping up the housing market by inflating the infrastructure bubble. Xi’s signature foreign policy of Belt and Road now has a gastric belt. Xi’s signature domestic goal of “Common Prosperity” would require a property tax, an inheritance tax, highly progressive income taxes and abandonment of hukou household registration controls on internal migration – but resistance is intense. The country has been trying unsuccessfully for 11 years to experiment with a desperately needed property tax. “Common Prosperity” may be stuck with campaign symbolism – decapitating the wealthy leadership of major private companies, extracting large charitable contributions, nationalizing their data, and hampering their stock market listings – rather than actually reducing inequality. Notwithstanding a fierce campaign against corruption, Xi’s hierarchical polity and more statist economy will nurture corruption as a wet log nurtures mushrooms. New policies will have to pass through layer after layer of officials resentful of reduced pay and authority and fearful of taking initiative. Xi will not be a lame duck but he will be a slow duck swimming through mud. While all Chinese leaders want China to be a rich and powerful global leader, Xi’s domestic and foreign policies are not the inexorable culmination of a decades-long Chinese strategy. Quite the opposite. His extreme repression is a sharp break from the trend of his reform-era predecessors. His Hong Kong and Xinjiang policies are a sharp break. His economic policies reverse key predecessors’ moves promoting openness, market orientation and diverse competition. Each post-1949 Chinese leader has remedied his predecessor’s errors. Xi Jinping’s overruling of the by-then traditional change of generations hampers that adaptability but does not eliminate the possibility of change. Because Xi’s core political policies seek to push back the tides of increasing social diversity and the globalization of knowledge, repression must either relax or worsen, not remain the same, a choice that could divide China’s elite. We could see change five years hence and we could see a mammoth succession struggle. While confronting some current policies, Western foreign policy leaders need to be prepared for sharply different future Chinas rather than ossifying today’s relationship. While one can confidently predict the slowing of China’s growth, a slower China does not ensure superior US growth. That would require US stability and competent management. While we can hope for continuation of the US history of resilience, the years of Trump and Biden are sobering. William H Overholt is a senior research fellow at the John F Kennedy School of Government’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard University. The author of multiple books about China, Overholt has held RAND’s Distinguished Chair of Asia Pacific Policy and served as president of the Fung Global Institute. This article is derived from a speech delivered to a seminar on his home campus and edited for clarity. Asia Times is publishing the speech with great pride and kind permission.
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Post by Blitz on Nov 23, 2022 10:18:49 GMT -5
Beijing sees record Covid cases as China outbreak spirals Mon, November 21, 2022 at 10:33 PM·2 min read news.yahoo.com/beijing-sees-record-covid-cases-033302289.html China's capital Beijing posted a record number of new Covid cases on Tuesday, with the city hunkering down under a tightening chokehold of restrictions that have sent schools online, closed many restaurants and forced employees to work from home. More than 28,000 new infections were reported nationwide -- nearing the record high since the pandemic began -- with Guangdong province and the city of Chongqing logging over 16,000 and 6,300 cases respectively, health authorities said. New cases in Beijing have also jumped in recent days, more than doubling from 621 on Sunday to Tuesday's 1,438 -- a pandemic record for the city. The last major economy still welded to a zero-tolerance Covid policy, China enforced snap lockdowns, mass testing and quarantines to control outbreaks to great success in the earlier stages of the pandemic. But the latest spiralling outbreak is testing the limits of that playbook, with officials keen to avoid citywide lockdowns like Shanghai's two-month ordeal in April, which marred the finance hub's economy and international image. Three elderly Beijing residents with underlying diseases died from Covid over the weekend, authorities said, marking China's first Covid deaths since May. While the capital has so far avoided a blanket shutdown, there have been widely enforced snap lockdowns of individual buildings and long PCR testing queues due to the requirement for a 24-hour negative test for entry to most public spaces. Over the weekend, authorities advised residents to stay and home and not travel between districts. And on Monday required travellers to the city to test more times after they arrive. Many tourist attractions, gyms and parks have been closed, with large-scale events such as concerts cancelled. China declared its most significant easing of coronavirus measures to date on November 11, billed as an "optimisation" to limit the economic and social impact of zero-Covid measures. Among the steps was a reduction of compulsory quarantine times for international arrivals. Multiple Chinese cities cancelled mass Covid testing last week but some later reinstated them, underlining the difficulty of controlling the fast-spreading Omicron variant. Shijiazhuang, which had previously cancelled mass testing, began a partial lockdown Monday after cases surged, while several districts of southern epicentre Guangzhou also locked down the same day. The limited relaxation has not marked a reversal of zero-Covid, which has left China internationally isolated, wreaked havoc on the economy, and sparked protests in a country where dissent is routinely crushed. ######## For the greater good... workers beaten. And now this... Violent Protests Erupt at Apple’s Main iPhone Plant in China Bloomberg News - Wed, November 23, 2022 at 4:38 AM·5 min read www.yahoo.com/now/violent-protests-erupt-apple-biggest-034805561.html(Bloomberg) -- Hundreds of workers at Apple Inc.’s main iPhone-making plant in China clashed with security personnel, as tensions boiled over after almost a month under tough restrictions intended to quash a Covid outbreak. Workers at the Foxconn Technology Group plant streamed out of dormitories in the early hours of Wednesday, jostling and pushing past the white-clad guards they vastly outnumbered, according to videos sent by a witness to portions of the protest. Several white-suited people pummeled a person lying on the ground with sticks in another clip. Onlookers yelled “fight, fight!” as throngs of people forced their way past barricades. At one point, several surrounded an occupied police car and began rocking the vehicle while screaming incoherently. The protest started overnight over unpaid wages and fears of spreading infection, according to the witness, asking to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions. Several workers were injured and anti-riot police arrived on the scene Wednesday to restore order, the person added. In one video, irate workers surrounded a silent, downcast manager in a conference room to voice grievances and question their Covid test results. It wasn’t clear when the meeting took place. “I’m really scared about this place, we all could be Covid positive now,” a male worker said. “You are sending us to death,” another person said. The Zhengzhou campus was operating normally as of Wednesday evening, a Foxconn spokesperson said. The violence had erupted after a portion of recently arrived employees raised complaints about “work subsidies” -- bonuses or payments on top of usual wages, Foxconn said in a statement. But the company stressed that it handles all such compensation in strict accordance with its contractual obligations. “With regards to the violence, we are continuing to communicate with workers and the government, to avoid a recurrence,” the company said without elaborating. The rare instances of violence at the plant in the central city of Zhengzhou reflects a build-up of tensions since the lockdown began in October. Many among the vast workforce of more than 200,000 at “iPhone City” have been plunged into isolation, forced to subsist on spartan meals and scrounge for medication. Many eventually fled the plant on foot last month. Foxconn and the local government appeared to have gotten the situation under control in recent weeks, promising unusually high wages to attract new staff and promising better working conditions. Wednesday morning’s protests suggest that is no longer the case. It underscores how Xi Jinping’s Covid Zero policy, which relies on swift lockdowns to stamp out the disease wherever it pops up, is increasingly weighing on the economy and throwing swathes of the global supply chain into disarray. Beijing recently issued new directives ordering officials to minimize disruption and use more targeted Covid controls, but surging outbreaks in major cities have forced local authorities to reach for strict curbs again. “It’s really a mess,” said Barry Naughton, a professor at the University of California San Diego who specializes in Chinese economics. “They’ve created a situation where the local decision makers are under intolerable pressure.” The offshore yuan fell after Bloomberg’s report, extending losses and making it the worst performer in Asia on Wednesday. The Chinese currency “is underperforming its other Asian FX peers on reports of protests at Foxconn’s plant in Zhengzhou that supplies Apple products,” Stephen Innes, managing partner at SPI Asset Management wrote in a note. “However, a broader, more optimistic interpretation is that China is hitting the limits of ‘Covid zero’ and the authorities’ efforts to loosen restrictions will continue.” Violence has erupted sporadically across China over Covid restrictions. In May, hundreds of workers clashed with security personnel at Quanta Computer Inc.’s factory in Shanghai after they were barred for months from contact with the outside world, while protests have emerged in locked-down areas of Guangdong, the southern manufacturing hub. Read more: IPhone Pro Output Estimates Cut by Morgan Stanley After Lockdown The Foxconn situation serves up another reminder of the dangers for Apple of relying on a vast production machine centered on China at a time of unpredictable policy and uncertain trade relations. Zhengzhou is the site of Apple’s most critical production, churning out an estimated four in five of its latest-generation handsets and the vast majority of the highest-end iPhone 14 Pro units. Apple warned this month that shipments of its newest premium iPhones will be lower than previously expected -- just ahead of the peak holiday season shopping. The sprawling compound has operated for weeks within a “closed loop,” or a self-contained bubble that limits contact with the outside world. That is keeping some production going. Apple and Foxconn have said they’re working to replace staff who’ve left and resume full production as soon as possible. The protests took place just hours after Henan party chief Lou Yangsheng visited the area where Foxconn plants were located and held a video chat with select employees. He asked managers to aid staff and ensure a “warm, relaxed and stable” living and working environment, according to the official Henan Daily. Lou’s visit underscored the unusual amount of effort that provincial officials had devoted in recent weeks toward the nation’s biggest private-sector employer, from reportedly helping in recruitment to exhorting retirees to work at Foxconn. Naughton, the professor, said Beijing is putting intense pressure on local officials to realize contradictory goals. “The tension is that Beijing wants both Covid Zero and full economic growth,” he said. “It’s kind of impossible.” --With assistance from Rachel Chang, Wenjin Lv and Jing Li.
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Post by Blitz on Nov 29, 2022 8:11:31 GMT -5
Tanks on the streets of major cities in China... Can't be a true great leader in China until you have a revolt and have to roll tanks. All hail comrade-emperor Xi !!! And now this... RED TERROR Tanks roll onto China’s streets in chilling echo of Tiananmen massacre as Xi cracks down on ‘White Paper’ protests Tariq Tahir - Published: 4:43 ET, Nov 29 2022 www.the-sun.com/news/6791505/tanks-streets-china-xi-crushing-lockdown-protests/
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Post by Blitz on Nov 29, 2022 8:16:56 GMT -5
‘NO TURNING BACK’ President Xi will be ousted in coup as he faces ‘Covid revolution’ bigger than Tiananmen uprising, warns ex-diplomat Imogen Braddick - Published: 5:05 ET, Nov 28 2022 www.the-sun.com/news/6782626/chinese-protests-biggest-uprising-tiananmen-square/XI Jinping will be ousted in a coup as he faces an unprecedented uprising more significant than Tiananmen Square, a former diplomat has warned. Furious anti-lockdown demonstrators poured into the streets in eight cities across China, confronting riot cops and calling for the Chinese dictator to "step down" in a rare act of defiance. Protesters and cops have clashed during widespread unrest across ChinaCredit: AFP Police officers detain people during a protest against the zero-Covid lockdownsCredit: Reuters Hundreds gathered on the streets of Shanghai after a deadly fire in UrumqiCredit: AFP From Shanghai to Beijing, fury spilled out onto the streets after ten people died in a fire in a tower block in Urumqi on Thursday - a tragedy blamed on the city's strict Covid lockdown measures. Protesters in Urumqi were seen confronting officials, smashing down barriers and yelling "end the Covid lockdown" amid claims blocked fire exits trapped people in the blazing building. As the rage spread across the country, brave demonstrators called for the downfall of Xi and the Communist Party that has ruled China with an iron fist for 73 years - criticism punishable by years in prison. For the first time in 30 years, protesters flooded the grounds of two universities in Beijing while crowds in Shanghai chanted "down with the Chinese Communist Party".
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Post by Blitz on Nov 30, 2022 7:46:52 GMT -5
Xi’s Zero-Covid Policy Sparks Largest Protests Since 1989 By The Jamestown Foundation - Nov 29, 2022, 3:00 PM CST oilprice.com/Geopolitics/International/Xis-Zero-Covid-Policy-Sparks-Largest-Protests-Since-1989.html- CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid policy is fueling mass protests across China. - The protests may be the largest since the student movement of 1989. - Protesters are demanding not only an end to Xi’s signature “zero tolerance” COVID regime but also calling for the introduction of universal values banned by the party. The apparent failure by Beijing to determine new ways to handle the COVID-19 pandemic, given what many consider the largest mass protests since the student movement of 1989, has exposed the limited abilities of the new Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership to handle unexpected events despite its extensive security and surveillance apparatus. CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping, who gained near-total control of the party apparatus at the 20th Party Congress late last month, is nowhere to be seen after tens of thousands of students on at least 50 campuses in a dozen-odd cities staged protests against the three-year-long pandemic-related lockdowns on Sunday, November 27. Crowds on the streets of cities including Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Chengdu and Urumqi also held impromptu demonstrations (Chinese New York Times, November 28; Deutsche Welle Chinese, November 28). The protestors demanded not only an end to Xi’s signature “zero tolerance” COVID regime but also called for the introduction of universal values banned by the party, such as personal liberty, freedom of expression and the rule of law. Some demonstrators even shouted incendiary slogans such as “CCP, step down” (?, Gongchandang xiatai) and “Xi Jinping, step down” (?, Xi Jinping xiatai) (Liberty Times, November 28). Many held aloft pieces of white paper, which simultaneously symbolized press censorship in China and the fact that their protests had nothing to do with “color revolutions” supposedly spread by “hostile foreign forces” (Radio French International, November 27; Voice of America, November 27). Breaking Point? The acts of dissent that erupted spontaneously over the weekend in reaction to the horrendous fire that broke out in a high-rise apartment building last Thursday, November 24, in Urumqi, the heavily guarded capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR), where a seamless lockdown had been underway for over 100 days. Up to 40 Uighurs and Han Chinese reportedly died in a fire, which turned particularly serious because the building was allegedly sealed off due to lockdown measures. As a result, residents were trapped inside the building and could not escape. Due to pandemic-related barricades in nearby streets, fire engines reportedly took a long time to arrive at the scene. The official death toll was ten, but numerous social media posts claimed up to 40 casualties from the fire (HK01.com, November 27; Radio French International, November 26). Earlier confrontations between locked-down residents and the police had taken place in Guangdong, Hubei, and Henan Provinces, including protests in Zhengzhou, Henan at the Taiwan-owned Foxconn Factory, which is the world’s largest assembler of iPhones (Deutche Welle Chinese, November 23; China News, November 23). The protesters, however, realized that while they had vented their long-suppressed views about the party-state’s handling of the pandemic, their crusade might not lead to major political changes. “We are still a long way from democracy,” the BBC quoted a Beijing demonstrator as saying in a video on the latest developments. “We do not have a program of action. But at least we have ensured that people in many places in China have come out to air their views” (BBC Chinese Video, November 28). Xi’s Dilemma So far, neither General Secretary Xi nor any of the other six newly selected members of the Politburo Standing Committee have appeared in the media or addressed the public on the possibility of shifting away from strict mass lockdowns and adopting a more flexible epidemic prevention approach. On November 11, the State Council announced a “20-point liberalization” package, limiting the extent and intensity of lockdowns, particularly in non-infected districts in urban areas. However, this dispensation was largely ignored by local officials who feared losing their jobs for being found insufficiently zealous in enforcing stringent zero-COVID measures (PRC National Health Commission (NHC), November 26; Gov.cn, November 12). Xi and his advisors face an acute dilemma. While a continuation of the harsh, three-year-long zero-COVID regime would precipitate more protests, the number of daily new cases surged past 40,000 as of Sunday and any relaxation could further accelerate the spread of the virus (NHC, November 28). So far, the only Politburo member who has spoken out on the situation is Xinjiang Party Secretary Ma Xingrui, who has doubled down on the necessity of following Beijing’s instructions “with bigger work efforts and speedier action” (People’s Daily, November 26). The People’s Daily and other official media have given no hints of any potential changes to existing measures. Sources known to China Brief said the party’s Central Military Commission had deployed more People’s Armed Police and soldiers to big cities as well as to Xinjiang and Tibet. However, police and military personnel have been ordered to act with restraint on a selective basis and to minimize the number of arrests of residents or students. On November 27, the Vice-Party Secretary of Tsinghua University Guo Yong met with the protestors and promised that nobody would be punished. Moreover, free railway tickets have been offered to students who want to return home early for the Lunar New Year holiday (Ming Pao, November 28). Numerous doctors and medical professionals have suggested various methods the Chinese government could take to alleviate its current public health predicament. Many have laid the blame on China’s home-made Covid vaccine, which is deemed to be much less effective than mRNA shots developed in the U.S. and the U.K. Ironically, beginning last month, foreigners living in China have been given the choice of domestically manufactured or foreign-made vaccines (South China Morning Post [SCMP], November 4; BBC Chinese, July 13, 2021). Moreover, authorities have been slow in publishing figures for COVID-stricken patients who have either died or gone to hospital intensive care units. Many netizens have blamed CCP leadership for being afraid that the low death figures resulting from the less potent Omicron variants would be used by “anti-government elements” to advocate the “do nothing” approach to the epidemic now adopted by most Western and Asian countries. A conspiracy theory has also taken hold that local-level officials have been given instructions that fangcang (or “mobile cabin”) make-shift quarantine hospitals that various cities have built to isolate infected patients will remain in operation for up to five more years or longer, meaning that no end to Beijing’s harsh zero-COVID measures is imminent (Qz.com, May 11). One point of view even holds that maintaining the whole architecture of the zero-COVID apparatus, including vaccine manufacturing and frequent nucleic acid tests, has become a multi-billion-yuan business and that corrupt local cadres are primed to benefit financially from the continuation of the policy (New York Times Chinese, February 21). At the same time, however, the Xi leadership, which is exceedingly nervous about GDP growth rates, must weigh the heavy economic toll that the lockdown policy has exacted on the economy. China’s economy officially expanded by a mere 3.9 percent in this year’s third quarter, while unofficial estimates put the figure as low as 2 percent to 3 percent (National Bureau of Statistics, October 24; Jingdaily, October 27). Conclusion At this stage, the Xi administration probably realizes that the longer the pandemic persists, it will continue to drag down consumer spending and disrupt logistical supply chains. As a result, multinational corporations will also increasingly hesitate to start or increase production in China or source from Chinese firms. Furthermore, the economy’s lackluster performance so far this year has proven that relying principally on injections of government stimulus through infrastructure spending is no longer a panacea for growth (SCMP, June 7). Xi will probably not swallow his pride and make massive purchases of more effective U.S. or European-made vaccines. Yet, the claims of the CCP’s propaganda machinery that the China model is inherently much better than the Western model in solving public health problems have been exposed as an embarrassing overstretch. And although it is unlikely that the pandemic-related protests might last for more than a fortnight or so, the fact that so many citizens and students dared to risk being arrested by freely expressing their convictions could translate into pressure on the party to make changes not only in COVID-related measures but to other aspects of the system as well. By the Jamestown Foundation
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Post by Blitz on Dec 15, 2022 8:53:12 GMT -5
Mongolia unrest looking eerily like a color revolution Geopolitical stakes are high as turmoil potentially threatens route of Russia-China Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline By M.K. BHADRAKUMAR - DECEMBER 15, 2022 asiatimes.com/2022/12/mongolia-unrest-looking-eerily-like-a-color-revolution/Police officers stand guard outside the Government Palace as protesters take part in a demonstration against soaring inflation and government corruption on Sukhbaatar Square, in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia December 5, 2022. Image: Twitter Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a TV interview in Moscow on Sunday, when asked about where the relationship between Russia and the West is moving, “Well, we are not moving. We have already arrived at a station named ‘Confrontation,’ and we have to be reserved, strong, to have underlying strength because we will have to live in the environment of this confrontation.” There are no peace talks and no end in sight to the conflict in Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin said recently that Moscow’s near-total loss of trust in the West would make an eventual settlement over Ukraine much harder to reach, and warned of a protracted war. In such an apocalyptic scenario, Russia’s immediate neighborhood is turning into severely contested zones of superpower confrontation, as the US and the European Union try to encircle Russia with a ring of unfriendly states. Such confrontation can take different forms. In the Transcaucasian region, Western efforts aim to replace Russia as the arbiter between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The EU has presented itself as an alternative to Russian mediation and peacekeeping. Moscow viewed such attempts rather complacently initially but has lately begun worrying that the ground beneath its feet is shifting in Transcaucasia. The Western ploy is incrementally to elbow out the Russian peacekeeping force deployed to the region after the renewed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan last year over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Moscow plays both sides in the conflict and, quite obviously, the trapeze act is very delicate and taxing. Thus, in the period since Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine began on February 24, the EU has succeeded in establishing a “monitoring mission” in Armenia and is advancing its plan to establish an OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) mission to the region, which will challenge Russia’s monopoly in peacekeeping on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border. Kazakhstan was already experiencing protests in January, before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Now protesters are calling on their government to take a stronger pro-Ukraine stance. Photo: Esetok / WikiCommons Another active theater of contestation is Kazakhstan, where the West is constantly working to erode that country’s close relations with Russia. Kazakhstan’s multi-vector foreign policy aimed at attracting Western investment has created pro-Western interest groups among the country’s elites. Kazakhstan’s nationality question also creates sensitivity in its relations with Russia. Kazakhstan is a high-stakes game for the West, as it borders China, too. In comparison, the covert Western role in fueling the recent clashes between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan as well as in encouraging Dushanbe to provide a “transit corridor” for the anti-Taliban rebels in the Panjshir Valley poses a direct challenge to Russia in the security sphere. But much to the disappointment of the US, as tensions between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan flared last September and soldiers from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan exchanged gunfire along several points of the countries’ undemarcated border, Moscow and Beijing chose to remain on the sidelines. To be sure, the conflict was among the most serious interstate military escalations in Central Asia’s history since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The conflict posed a big embarrassment to Moscow and Russia-led regional security organisations in Central Asia. If the Western role in the Kyrgyz-Tajik conflict was a covert one, that is not the case with its increasingly proactive moves to build up the Panjshiris in Afghanistan as a “moderate” resistance movement to overthrow the Taliban government in Kabul, which enjoys cordial relations with Russia. The Panjshiris enjoyed the patronage of French intelligence during the anti-Soviet struggle in the 1980s, and the old links have been revived. French President Emmanuel Macron has taken a hands-on role to cultivate his Tajik counterpart Emomali Rahmon. Quite obviously, both in the case of the Kyrgyz-Tajik hostilities and in the specter of another round of civil war in Afghanistan haunting the region, Russia’s security interests come under profound challenge. Russia remains the dominant presence in Central Asia and at the leadership level, Moscow wields much influence in Bishkek and Dushanbe. But the intra-regional strife and instability provide fertile ground for Western manipulation of the ruling elites. However, the latest wave of unrest in Mongolia carries ominous signs of a color revolution. As in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, social media are active in stirring up protests. The protests began last week against the “coal mafia,” which has allegedly been profiteering from doing business with Chinese companies. But various conspiracy theories are spreading on Twitter, including that there would be an internal power struggle among the ruling party elites. The Oyu Tolgoi mining site in Mongolia. Image: Facebook The government responded promptly, with the cabinet deciding to put in the public domain for scrutiny nine contracts related to the state mining company at the heart of the affair and announcing that all future business deals on coal export will be with public knowledge. The government further announced that a parliamentary committee would probe the scandal. Several hundred protesters gathered in the freezing cold at Ulaanbaatar’s Sukhbaatar Square last weekend and marched to the presidential residence, with some people attempting to force their way inside the building, chanting and singing while stamping their feet to stay warm – eerily similar to the coup in Kiev in 2014. Indeed, what lends enchantment to the view, from the geopolitical perspective, is that China is the destination of most of landlocked Mongolia’s exports of coal, cashmere, livestock and other resources. The attempt at transforming the protests into a color revolution proper is still a work in progress. According to The Associated Press, “Economic conditions have deteriorated in the country of roughly 3.3 million as inflation has soared to 15.2%, which has been exacerbated due in part to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” Coincidence or not, the protests in Ulaanbaatar followed the state visit by Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh to Beijing last month. This was the second meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Khurelsukh in two months. Beijing understands that it is also in the crosshairs of the West’s diplomacy in Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan. All four of these countries fall in the first circle of Chinese interests in one way or another. They give “strategic depth” to China; the economic ties with these resource-rich countries are not only hugely beneficial but also growing rapidly; they are irreplaceable partners from the angle of connectivity and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI); and regional security and stability are common concerns. The paradox is, despite the convergence of interests and strong political and economic interests, and although their core interests are involved, it is becoming increasingly uncertain whether Russia or China can deliver on regional security guarantees. Moscow is under Western sanctions and Beijing remains extremely wary of confronting the US or the EU – although Mongolia is one country in Asia where the core interests of Russia and China overlap. The US and EU are calculating that this is the best opportunity to consolidate and expand their influence in Russia’s Transcaucasian, Caspian and Central Asian backyard. Clearly, the Western powers are wading into the regional tensions and the probability of Russian and Chinese opposition to it falling short cannot be ruled out. The geopolitical stakes are high. Mongolia is the transit country for the proposed Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline channeling up to 50 billion cubic meters of gas from the Yamal Peninsula in the Russian Arctic to eastern China, and the construction work is due to start in 2024. Similarly, China, Mongolia and Russia have extended the Outline of the Development Plan on Establishing the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor by five years, which will unleash great economic potential and upgrade Mongolia’s role as a transit hub. A section of the Power of Siberia pipeline connecting Russia and China. Image: Twitter China-Mongolia cooperation on the construction of transportation routes and corridors has been greatly boosted in recent years, which has strengthened the logistics between China and Mongolia and greatly increased their transport capacity for bulk commodities, especially mineral products. The two countries are looking to dock multiple new railway lines with Chinese ports. The US and the EU will do their utmost to wean Mongolia away from the Sino-Russian orbit, no matter what it takes. Interestingly, a NATO military delegation from Brussels traveled to Ulaanbaatar early this month and held two days of talks with Mongolian military leaders. Mongolia presents a combustible mix where all the key elements of the United States’ confrontation with Russia and China are present, ranging from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s mission creep to the Asia-Pacific to the BRI and Russia’s energy exports and of course the vast deposits of rare earths in the steppe. This article was produced in partnership by Indian Punchline and Globetrotter, which provided it to Asia Times.
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Post by Blitz on Dec 15, 2022 8:58:18 GMT -5
Comrade emperor Xi is juggling a lot of hot potatoes. Will he soon look more like a court jester? China stealing a march on Russia in Central Asia Region’s balance of power is changing with China in a leading role and a much-diminished Russia fading away By ALESSANDRO ARDUINO - DECEMBER 15, 2022 asiatimes.com/2022/12/china-stealing-a-march-on-russia-in-central-asia/Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Beijing’s influence in Eurasia has been expanding. But while the reduced role of Moscow on the world stage is offering an unprecedented opportunity for Chinese advancement, it is yet to be seen if Beijing is ready to manage the growing level of uncertainty in Central Asia. According to the 2022 European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) report, Covid-19’s negative effects on the social and economic fabric of the five Central Asian countries — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — have been contained. These economies are showing strong resilience, with the EBRD expecting the region’s GDP to grow by 4.3% in 2022 and 4.8% in 2023. At the same time, security uncertainties weigh against Beijing expanding its economic engagement in the region. In January 2022, protests engulfed Kazakhstan and the overall security situation in South and Central Asia, which Beijing considers the near abroad, worsened. In 2021, the Taliban returned to power in what is now the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The worsening humanitarian crisis affecting Afghanistan’s local population is exacerbated by the risk of terrorist organizations using the country as a springboard for violent actions in Central Asia. The threat posed by the Islamic State in Khorasan, which explicitly incites attacks on Chinese targets, is a case in point. The crisis in China’s near abroad is a bad omen for its Belt and Road (BRI) global connectivity plans. It is not by chance that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first state visit outside China since the pandemic was to Kazakhstan, followed by a hop to the Uzbek city of Samarkand for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit. Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs the Shanghai Cooperation Organization online summit in Sochi, on November 10, 2020. Photo: AFP / Alexey Nikolsky / Sputnik Born in 2001 as a conference of China, Russia and former Central Asian states, the SCO has become a prominent platform to promote Beijing’s vision for a multipolar world order and counter Western influence in Asia and the Middle East. In 2013, when Xi launched the BRI at Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan was a different country and Central Asia a different region. During the September 2022 state visit to Astana, it was not the still-influential former president Nursultan Nazarbayev who welcomed Xi, but President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Kazakhstan’s politics has been in recovery mode since the bloody January 2022 riots. The region’s balance of power has also changed, with China having the opportunity to play a leading role in place of a much-diminished Russia. Kazakhstan’s ethnic Russian minority has been seen as a potential pretext for Russian interference since independence from the Soviet Union. It is little surprise that Xi, during his meeting with Tokayev, reiterated offers of economic and security cooperation, and stressed China’s support for its neighbor’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity. At the same time, Beijing is not providing the five Central Asian countries with a security umbrella they can confidently rely upon. Tajik President Rahmon’s unprecedented outburst while addressing Putin at the Central Asia-Russia summit in Astana, bemoaning his lack of respect for Central Asian nations, leaves little doubt about the perception of a regional power shift, yet Beijing is not stepping in as the region’s security guarantor. Supporting the status quo and fighting the “three evils” of terrorism, separatism and extremism is still on Beijing’s agenda. During Xi’s opening speech of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on October 16, the role of the SCO was presented as paramount for the region’s stability. No other inklings on Beijing’s plans for Central Asia are apparent. With Washington shifting its focus to the Indo-Pacific and the ongoing war in Ukraine, Central Asia is looking eastward for support. In this respect, Beijing is still expanding the region’s connectivity. There is a renewed railway project that will link Kyrgyzstan with Uzbekistan. Another railway connection — to Iran and the Caucasus — will provide access to sea lanes for landlocked Central Asian countries. Beijing’s expansion of its security footprint is limited to bilateral cooperation aimed at promoting border control and security. This is especially so with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan — two states with porous borders exploited by extremist groups and transnational criminal organizations whose smuggling activities involve narcotics, arms and people. Tajikistan and other Central Asian nations are on the fence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Image: Facebook / Eurasianet Beyond the SCO annual security exercises, Beijing endorses joint border patrols and military training programs linked to military equipment transfers. The role of Chinese private security companies (PSCs) in protecting Chinese personnel and infrastructure along the BRI deserves special attention. From Pakistan to Central Asia, Chinese PSCs are expanding their presence as a security alternative when Beijing is unwilling to deploy the People’s Liberation Army outside national borders. Today’s Great Game is no longer the 19th-century chess match between British and Tsarist empires, but a game of weiqi (also known as Go). In Go, it is not necessary to kill the adversary’s king to win — instead, a player takes their time to encircle their opponent and choke any further movements. Dr Alessandro Arduino is the Principal Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore and an Associate Lecturer at Lau China Institute, King’s College London. This article, republished with permission, was first published by East Asia Forum, which is based out of the Crawford School of Public Policy within the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University.
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Post by Blitz on Dec 18, 2022 11:53:50 GMT -5
China’s waning influence in Southeast Europe 17 December 2022 - Author: Igor Rogelja, UCL www.eastasiaforum.org/2022/12/17/chinas-waning-influence-in-southeast-europe/When the Peljesac Bridge in southern Croatia opened on 26 July 2022, it was the second time a Chinese construction company, the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC), had built a sizable bridge in Southeast Europe. It was also the second time that Li Keqiang, China’s now-former premier, attended an opening ceremony for a Chinese-constructed bridge in Southeast Europe. A general view shows the construction site of the Peljesac bridge in Komarna, Croatia, 28 July 2021. Picture taken July 28, 2021. (Photo: Reuters/Ivo Cagalj). While the opening of the Pupin bridge in Belgrade featured hundreds of Chinese flags and a visit by the premier, the 2022 opening of the Peljesac bridge was quite different. During the lavish inauguration of the bridge, Li addressed the crowd via livestream with a speech extolling the friendship and cooperation between China and Croatia. Local media dismissed the talk as long and tedious. No Chinese flags were seen among the Croatian nationalist imagery. One reason these two events were so different is the COVID-19 pandemic. China’s zero-COVID policy has made overseas trips a rarity for Chinese leaders and citizens alike. Chinese construction sites in the region have faced staff shortages caused by COVID-19 restrictions. Even as European societies have slowly opened up, strict rules adopted by Chinese companies have separated the lives of Chinese employees from their local colleagues — even more than before. Local Chinese managers of Gorenje, a Slovenian electronics manufacturer acquired by Hisense, were reprimanded by their superiors for COVID-19 outbreaks in the company. Chinese employees were advised not to socialise with their Slovenian counterparts to prevent infections. It’s hard to build ‘people-to-people’ links, as Chinese Communist Party foreign policy calls for, when the barriers to interaction only get higher. While China and its state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have not left Southeast Europe, a period of naive optimism and excitement is drawing to a close. Many headlining projects have stalled. It’s not just old projects fading out — few new projects have been announced in recent years. Partly, this reflects shifts away from coal, which once made up most Chinese-funded projects in Southeast Europe. Even so, few ‘green’ projects involving China have been announced in the region, leaving an infrastructural gap that may not be filled with Chinese loans or contractors. COVID-19 is not the only barrier standing between China and Southeast Europe. The European Union’s (EU) new guidelines on excluding ‘third country’ (Chinese) bidders from public tenders were first applied in Southeast Europe. In 2020, the Slovenian procurement commission excluded all bids by Chinese SOEs to build a new US$1.2 billion rail line. China is excluded because it is not party to the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Government Procurement. The European Commission seems to be flexing its regulatory muscle with new guidelines for member states. Such rules are getting stricter too. In March 2022, the European Parliament and national governments agreed on an International Procurement Instrument after a decade of negotiations. The instrument demands market access reciprocity and makes it possible for member states to consider the social, environmental or security implications of allowing a third country bidder to participate in large public tenders. The Commission specifically mentioned the Peljesac bridge as an example of the problem — while European companies seldom win public tenders in China, a Chinese SOE won a US$355 million contract almost entirely funded by the EU. Another hotly debated measure is the ‘anti-coercion instrument’ that would allow the EU to respond to third countries that exert economic pressure on individual member states, as happened in the case of China’s sanctions on Lithuania over its relations with Taiwan. The EU’s hawkishness on China affects the ‘waiting room’ of the Balkans as well. Montenegro’s humiliating experience of being refused an EU bail-out for its Chinese loan troubles sent a strong message to the region, especially to bigger EU candidate countries like Serbia. Serbia remains China’s only real friend in the region. Although distracted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Serbia continues to balance between ‘the West and the rest’ in its foreign policy. But even in Serbia, China’s image has recently taken a hit. An increase in local protests and civil society monitoring of Chinese investments has raised the political cost of cosying up to these far-away investors. Working conditions at the building site of a major tire factory became a national talking point in 2021. Conditions became so bad that the Serbian president and prime minister got involved to reassure the public that the government respects workers’ rights. In the country’s east, a slow-burning conflict between local environmental activists and Chinese mining giant Zijin has escalated of late. Protesters occupied a local hill in Majdanpek that is earmarked for demolition, while local journalists have investigated Zijin’s treatment of Chinese miners. China became a player in Southeast Europe because of its SOEs and no-questions-asked loans. In return, China wanted its SOEs to work on big construction projects in the region and build up portfolios that would allow them to bid for projects in EU states — something the CRBC managed to do with the Peljesac bridge. The route to such bids appears closed for now. Even if geopolitical tensions subside, European governments are getting serious about curtailing the social and environmental failures that plague many Chinese-funded projects. It will only get harder for China’s state-owned giants to win tenders, acquire European companies or invest in building local production plants. China’s domestic political context also matters. As seen at the 20th party congress and with the current wave of protest, China’s leaders are firmly focused on domestic prosperity and social order. Long-term Chinese investments will remain an integral part of Southeast European societies, but China’s political influence in the region should not be taken for granted. Igor Rogelja is Lecturer in Global Politics at University College London.
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Post by Blitz on Dec 24, 2022 11:52:26 GMT -5
US sanctions bite as Huawei runs out of phone chipsets Chinese telecom giant’s chipset market share falls to zero while analysts splash cold water on proposed ‘stacked’ chip solution By JEFF PAO - DECEMBER 24, 2022 asiatimes.com/2022/12/us-sanctions-bite-as-huawei-runs-out-of-phone-chipsets/Huawei has faced a chip shortage problem in recent years. Image: Twitter HiSilicon, a fabless semiconductor unit of China’s Huawei Technologies, has used up all its smartphone chipset inventory with no clear source of new supplies as Taiwanese fabs are no longer allowed to produce chips for it under US sanctions. The Shenzhen-based firm has seen its global smartphone chipset market share fall to zero in the third quarter from 0.4% in the second quarter, meaning that it has depleted all of its inventory, according to Counterpoint Research, a hardware consultancy firm. Without high-end processors, Huawei can no longer produce 5G-capable phones but still make 4G models for African and Latin American markets by sourcing lower-end chips not covered by US sanctions from Qualcomm and Tsinghua Unigroup’s UNISOC, analysts said. Huawei has previously suggested that it could use new technology that stacks two chips together to replenish its high-end chips. Some columnists speculated that Huawei could have successfully applied a new chip stacking technology, first suggested by the company’s rotating chairman Guo Ping in late 2020, that combines two chips into a faster one. That would be similar to what TSMC has done for Apple by stacking two M1 Max chips into a M1 Ultra chip. Other writers, however, commented that Huawei would not likely be able to obtain 5G chips or parts in the short run and that while a stacked processor might be faster, it would not be suitable for use in smartphones due to its bulky size and high energy consumption. In May 2019, the US Commerce Department put Huawei and its 70 affiliates on its so-called Entity List on national security grounds. In response to the restrictions, Huawei started using inventory chips plus self-developed Kirin chipsets to maintain its smartphone output. It also boosted the output of Honor, its smartphone brand at that time. On September 15, 2020, Taiwan’s TSMC stopped producing Kirin chips, resulting in a countdown for HiSilicon’s chip inventory. In November 2020, Huawei had to dispose of its entire stake in Honor in November 2020 so that the unit could obtain foreign-made chips. In the fourth quarter of 2020, Huawei slowed its smartphone production as its market share was being squeezed by rivals including Oppo and Vivo. A customer tries out a Huawei smartphone at the company’s flagship store in Taipei. Photo: Facebook via CNA Richard Yu, chief executive of Huawei Technologies Consumer Business Group, said in late May this year that Huawei’s businesses had been severely hit by the US sanctions. The company’s net margin fell to 5% in the first six months of this year from 9.8% a year ago, he acknowledged. “Based on our checks and sell-thru data, Huawei has finished the inventory for the HiSilicon chipsets,” Counterpoint said in a report on December 15. “It is also not possible for the brand to obtain newer chipsets from TSMC, Samsung, etc because of the trade ban.” HiSilicon’s smartphone application processor (AP) global market share peaked at 16% in the second quarter of 2020, but had fallen to 3% and 1% in the same period of 2021 and 2022, respectively. As of the third quarter of this year, Mediatek, Qualcomm and Apple were the top three smartphone chipset makers, followed by China’s UNISOC with a 10% market share. A Caixin article published in April 2020 said UNISOC had hired several senior executives from Huawei despite its parent Unigroup’s worsening financial situation. Another article published in August last year said UNISOC hired many former Huawei executives in hope of achieving technological breakthroughs and alleviating the “ka bozi” or “strangulation” problems caused by US sanctions. UNISOC said in January this year that its revenue grew 78% year-on-year to 11.7 billion yuan, thanks to strong growth in its chip design services. The company was described by Taiwanese media as a “fish that escaped the net,” in reference to the company’s ability to elude US sanctions. On November 29, UNISOC launched its latest 5G smartphone processor known as T820, which uses 6-nanometer (nm) chips. Huawei was one of the top players in China’s 5G phones market. Photo: AFP /Nicolas Asfouri A Jiangsu-based technology writer said the T820 had a competitive advantage in the mid-and high-end smartphone markets, although it was less advanced than the 4nm chip designed by Mediatek and Qualcomm. However, he added that Huawei would not be able to use the T820 chip, which was built with US-made ARM architecture. Last year, UNISOC launched two chips called T616 and T606, which were reportedly tailor-made for Huawei to produce 4G phones. Over the past two months, Huawei executive Yu has on several occasions stressed that the company would make a strong return to smartphone markets in 2023, though without elaborating on its plan for doing so without a clear source of 5G chips and equipment. Read: Huawei’s profits collapse as US sanctions bite: asiatimes.com/2022/08/huaweis-profits-collapse-as-us-sanctions-bite/Huawei’s profits collapse as US sanctions bite Founder Ren tells employees marginal businesses will be ‘shrunken and closed’ and ‘chill’ will be felt by everyone as company fights to survive By JEFF PAO - AUGUST 27, 2022
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Post by Blitz on Dec 24, 2022 12:01:15 GMT -5
Excerpt: US, China and the art of the chip war US bans accelerating China’s techno-nationalism and chip self-sufficiency and may boost not undermine its military-industrial complex By ROBYN KLINGER-VIDRA And YU-CHING KUO - DECEMBER 24, 2022 asiatimes.com/2022/12/us-china-and-the-art-of-the-chip-war/The US-China chip war has entered a new, debilitating phase. Image: Screengrab / News Video US and Chinese policymakers are inflicting incisive blows on each other. The Biden administration is less bombastic in speech than its predecessor while being louder in its policy actions. Yet restrictions that aim to slow China’s rise to the technological frontier of semiconductor technology may unintentionally help it marshal investment and effective business strategies. Former US president Donald Trump ramped up the trade war with China. Trump’s policy was quickly labeled a failed attempt to get ahead in the race for technology supremacy — especially in semiconductors — since it was divorced from economic reality.
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Post by Blitz on Dec 26, 2022 8:52:25 GMT -5
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Post by Blitz on Dec 26, 2022 9:38:48 GMT -5
Xi is a pesky neighbor. Seems he doesn't play well with others. And now this... India’s rocket force takes off with China in its sights Recent border clashes with China, a missile capability gap, and failing deterrence posture may have prompted the move By GABRIEL HONRADA - DECEMBER 26, 2022 asiatimes.com/2022/12/indias-rocket-force-takes-off-with-china-in-its-sights/India test-fires its Agni-V ICBM on January 18, 2018. Photo: The Times of India via Indian Defense Ministry India may have taken steps to build a rocket force amid growing border tensions with China and possibly a failing strategic deterrent posture. Last week, Swarajya reported that India was building multi-purpose storage tunnels in border states to store short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) and might soon be acquiring the Pralay tactical ballistic missile. The source notes that these tunnels would keep India’s missile arsenal safe from pre-emptive attack and allow it to mount a quick counterstrike. It also says the Pralay missile could be used against Chinese troop concentrations along the disputed Line of Actual Control (LAC) between the two countries. Further, last week India Today reported that the Indian Ministry of Defense had approved the purchase of 120 Pralay missiles as part of building the Indian Rocket Force (IRF), with these missiles to be deployed in border states. “The project to create a rocket force has received a boost as the proposal to buy around 120 Pralay ballistic missiles has been cleared by a high-level Defense Ministry meeting,” an unnamed government official was quoted as saying. The Economic Times describes the Pralay as a solid-fuel quasi-ballistic surface-to-surface missile with a range of 150 to 500 kilometers, difficult to intercept, and able to change direction in midair. It says the Pralay can take out long-range enemy air defense systems, high-value targets, and weapons such as heavy artillery. The source says the Pralay fills India’s tactical ballistic-missile gap, noting that China and Pakistan already have such weapons. It also mentions that Pralay was first developed in 2015 and was successfully tested on December 21 and 22, 2021. In addition, The Times of India reported this month that India conducted night tests of its nuclear-capable Agni-V missile amid fresh border tensions with China. The source claims that the Agni-V is one of India’s most formidable missiles, sporting a 5,000-kilometer range capable of hitting the northernmost parts of China. Clashes reported These developments come after fresh border clashes between China and India in the Himalayas. Last week, The Indian Express reported that on December 9, 70 to 80 Indian troops repelled an incursion by 300 Chinese soldiers after a few hours of hand-to-hand fighting at Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh, at the LAC, with soldiers from both sides sustaining some injuries. The source says such incursions show that China is unilaterally attempting to change the border status quo. It also mentions previous forays, such as the 2020 Galwan clashes, which left 20 Indian soldiers dead, and a similar incident in 2016 where 250 Chinese soldiers crossed the area, but no clashes were reported. The idea of creating an Indian rocket force has been discussed in the country’s defense circles. However, in a November 2021 article in The Diplomat, Saurav Jha wrote that the military asymmetry between China and India was the primary driver for the latter to establish a rocket force. Specifically, Jha cited former Indian Army chief of staff General Manoj Mukund Naravane, who said future military conflicts would follow a “reverse linearity” conduct of operations, with rear facilities such as command and control posts, logistics hubs, airfields, and communication nodes taking the first salvo from precision standoff weapons. Naravane, as cited by Jha, then said the second salvo of autonomous drones would aim to overwhelm and destroy air defenses, artillery pieces, missile bases, and tank formations, while rocket and gun artillery attacks finished off troops at forward-deployed localities. Naravane also mentioned lessons learned from the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, noting that concentrating forces increases vulnerability to long-range precision fires, thus the need to concentrate fire rather than platforms. Given Naravane’s ideas, Jha wrote that the Indian Army might not be able to rely on air support in the opening phase of a future conflict and that precision standoff weapons would be vital to enabling offensive and defensive air operations. He also said establishing the IRF would signal that the country’s use of surface-to-surface missiles with mass and precision in a limited war in “non-contact” warfare in a joint force environment. Yet another reason for India’s plans to establish a rocket force is that its deterrence posture against China is failing. In a Foreign Policy article this month, Sushant Singh wrote that India’s economic entanglement with China, lack of diplomatic reaction to China’s incursions in the Himalayas, participation in China-led multilateral summits, and participation in China-led military exercises may show India’s inability to act decisively against China. Singh also said India’s desire to be part of the Global South and have a seat at the Global North’s table has constrained its freedom of maneuver to deal with its long-standing disputes with China. He said this foreign-policy prism has precluded India from committing to the US-led Quad alliance. Still, the recent border clashes with China may force India to take more decisive steps. Regarding IRF requirements, a November 2021 article in India Defense Research Wing (IDRW) says it will require 50,000 to 70,000 personnel and three or four ballistic-missile brigades independently deployed in the country’s eastern and western regions. File photo of the Prithvi missile. Photo: AFP / HO / Indian Ministry of Defense However, the source also mentions that India has a low rate of ballistic-missile production, with the 1980s-vintage Prithvi SRBM being its mainstay and being designed to deliver nuclear warheads rather than for tactical use. The source says India has yet to adopt road-mobile tactical ballistic missiles fully, with only limited Shaurya and Prahaar missiles. Establishing the IRF will require vast numbers of these missiles. It also says that while India has the Brahmos supersonic cruise and hypersonic missiles in the works, these weapons are too expensive to deploy in large numbers. In addition, the jury is split when it comes to establishing an Indian rocket force. In a 2020 article for the Center for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS), Bimal Monga discusses the benefits and risks of establishing such a force. In terms of benefits, Monga says a rocket force would deter China from threatening India using conventional missiles, provide India with an option to inflict severe damage on an adversary, increase the cost of aggression against India, suppress Chinese airbases and missile launch sites, enable engagement of time-sensitive targets, provide a quick-response counter-strike, and send a strong message to an adversary. Monga also discusses the risks of establishing a ballistic-missile force. He notes that India lacks a well-formulated policy regarding the use of conventional missiles, the difficulty of distinguishing a conventional from a nuclear missile attack, the inability to reassure potential adversaries that conventional missiles will not threaten their nuclear forces, lack of destructive power to be a credible strategic deterrent, huge expenses involved in building a missile arsenal, and the potential to spark a missile arms race with China and Pakistan.
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Post by Blitz on Dec 26, 2022 9:46:17 GMT -5
China, Japan up military ante on the Nansei Islands China cranks up attack drills around strategic islands in apparent response to Japan’s intent to double its defense spending By GABRIEL HONRADA - DECEMBER 25, 2022 asiatimes.com/2022/12/china-japan-up-military-ante-on-the-nansei-islands/China's Liaoning aircraft carrier-led battlegroup. Photo China PLA China has stepped up its naval and air drills around the Nansei/Ryukyu Islands, ratcheting tensions alongside a rapidly re-arming Japan. Japan News recently reported that a Chinese carrier battlegroup spearheaded by the Liaoning has been conducting naval drills simulating an attack on the Nansei/Ryukyu Islands since December 16, with the exercises set to end on December 26. The Chinese Communist Party-run Global Times identifies the ships as the Type 055 cruiser Lhasa, the Type 052D destroyer Kaifeng, the Type 903A replenishment ship Taihu, and the hull number 796 electronic reconnaissance vessel. Japan News notes that the Type 055 and Type 052D are capable of land attacks and that the Liaoning’s air wing has started nighttime take-off and landing drills. The report cites the Japanese Ministry of Defense saying that China’s carrier battle group entered the Western Pacific on December 16, passing through Okinawa and the Miyako Strait. The following day, the vessels were spotted 260 kilometers west-southwest of Okidaito Island, with Japan reportedly last spotting them 450 kilometers off Kitadaito Island. The source says ship-borne aircraft can reach the Nansei/Ryukyu Islands in five to 10 minutes from the last known location. It also mentions that China will rehearse long-range missile strikes on the Nansei/Ryukyu Islands, on which Japan plans to base long-range cruise missiles, and that 130 shipborne helicopter and aircraft landings have already been conducted. These exercises come after Japan unveiled a record-breaking US$55 billion defense budget for 2023, a 20% increase from the previous year, in response to rising China and North Korea security concerns. Reports indicated that Japan’s budget increase is part of its new National Security Strategy that aims to bring defense spending up to 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2027, matching NATO standards and turning Japan into the third-largest military spender worldwide after the US and China. Just right: Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) soldiers position the PAC-3 missile unit. Photo: Reuters/Issei Kato Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) soldiers position the PAC-3 missile unit. Photo: Agencies It also mentions that Japan’s new strategy and increased defense spending aim to provide a “counterstrike capability” against China, Russia and North Korea. The Financial Times reported last week that Japan would spend $313 billion over the next five years to purchase US-made Tomahawk cruise missiles, upgrade its anti-ship missiles, develop hypersonic weapons, upgrade its Patriot missile radars, create a 20,000-strong cyber team and procure critical supplies such as ammunition and fuel. The Nansei/Ryukyu Islands hold significant strategic military value for both China and Japan. In a September 2021 article for the peer-reviewed Journal of Territorial and Maritime Studies, David Scott mentions that small islands like the Nansei/Ryukyu have a “suction effect” on great powers as they can serve as logistics staging points, protective barriers, forward operating bases and geographical markers to extend maritime claims. In an October 2013 OPRI Center for Island Studies article, Akimoto Kazumine notes that during the Cold War the Nansei/Ryukyu Islands acted as a containment line for the US and Japan against Soviet naval forces. Today, Kazumine says that the modernizing People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) is rapidly expanding its activities on the high seas, but first must pass through the Nansei/Ryukyu Islands to reach the Western Pacific and through the disputed South China Sea to reach the Indian Ocean. With the Nansei/Ryukyu Island’s strategic value in mind, China and Japan view these features through the respective lenses of their military strategies. First, Scott notes that China wants to break through the so-called First Island Chain, which spans the Kuril and Nansei Islands in Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and northern Borneo. China has multiple reasons why it wants to break out of the First Island Chain. Asia Times has previously noted that the limited range of China’s JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) may force its nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) to sail into the Western Pacific to hit targets in the US mainland. However, China may be eliminating this limitation by developing the newer JL-3 SLBM, which can hit targets in the US mainland from protected bastions in the South China Sea. Besides getting its SSBNs within missile firing range to hit the US mainland, China may need to cross several island chokepoints to enforce a Taiwan blockade. If China were to outflank and blockade Taiwan, PLA-N warships would have to pass through the Nansei/Ryukyu Islands and Bashi Channel. The Nansei/Ryukyu Islands circled on a Google-generated map. Source: Google However, these naval maneuvers could leave PLA-N warships vulnerable while transiting these maritime chokepoints. US and Japanese forces can detect, track and engage PLA-N forces from Japan, and US forces stationed in Guam can check PLA-N maneuvers south of Taiwan. In addition, James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara write in a 2010 article for the think tank Jamestown Foundation that China may seek to wrest control of the Nansei/Ryukyu Islands in an island-hopping operation reminiscent of World War II in the Pacific. Holmes and Yoshihara note that if China had the Nansei/Rykyu Islands under its control, then it would be able to deploy anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) platforms on the occupied islands and thus enable the PLA to mount a Defense in Depth (DiD) against US and Japanese forces. From Japan’s perspective, Scott writes that Japan aims to build an “island wall” in the Nansei/Ryukyu Islands to check China’s naval maneuvers. Asia Times has previously reported that Japan plans to deploy 1,000 long-range missiles on its fighter jets, warships and launchers based in the Nansei Islands. Apart from deterring China’s naval maneuvers, these missiles are part of Japan’s plans to acquire counterstrike capabilities aimed at China and North Korea’s extensive missile arsenals. In addition, Asia Times has previously reported on US plans to build a “missile wall” in the First Island Chain, having developed the Typhon land-based missile launcher capable of firing SM-6 Standard interceptors and Tomahawk cruise missiles and the OpFires hypersonic missile. The US can deploy these missile platforms to Japan if the need arises. However, counterstrike capabilities may be a fig leaf cover for “pre-emptive strike”, as it makes little sense for Japan to base its strategic deterrent on conventional missiles against nuclear-armed adversaries. Japan may thus be caught in a conundrum that while it develops offensive capabilities and slowly abandons its post-World War II pacifist orientation, it still relies on the US nuclear umbrella for strategic deterrence.
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Post by Blitz on Dec 26, 2022 9:53:13 GMT -5
Australia Developing New Defense Strategy in Response to China, Says Deputy Prime Minister By: John Grady - July 12, 2022 news.usni.org/2022/07/12/australia-developing-new-defense-strategy-in-response-to-china-says-deputy-prime-ministerShip's Company of HMAS Canberra prepare to pass lines as the ship sails into Townsville, Queensland on June 2, 2022. Royal Australian Navy Photo Australia is developing long-range strike weapons, remains intent on building a nuclear-powered submarine force and is ramping up its area access denial capabilities in cooperation with the United States as it watches China “trying to shape the world around us,” its deputy prime minister said. Richard Marles, who also serves as defense minister, said Canberra’s defense posture and force structure reviews for the government that took office this spring are expected to be delivered early next year. While not formal national security white papers, they will answer key questions of “where we’re at” and “where we need to go,” he said. “We worry about the use of force” by China in the South China Sea and also by Russia in its invasion of Ukraine as direct attacks on the established rules of order that prizes dialogue over military action, Marles said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Monday. In this changed security environment great powers like Beijing and Moscow expect weaker neighbors to act as vassals or be considered as enemies, he added. Allies such as Australia and the United States “cannot afford to stand still” as these threats grows, he said. “We see as a prudent response,” especially to the massive build-up of Chinese forces and its advances in hypersonics, cyber and space. “It is completely changing the security environment in the Indo-Pacific,” Marles said. Australia wants to see more American involvement, including troop, ship and aircraft presence, like the recent flight of American B-2 bombers from their Missouri base to demonstrate alliance solidarity, he said. Marles said the force structure review includes ways for Australia to work with the United States. He added Canberra sees as its duty in “sharing the burden of [being] a strategic force” with the United States in the Indo-Pacific. Other allies and partners he mentioned as vital to preserving a “global rules-based order” for security and economic development in the Pacific included New Zealand, Japan, India, France and South Korea. On tensions between China and Taiwan, he said, “we want to ensure there is no change in the status quo.” Although Australia maintains a “one China policy,” he added, “robustly defending the rules-base order” will be its focus in the dispute over Taiwan’s future. Marles dismissed the idea that alliances such as ANZUS [Australia, New Zealand and Australia] and NATO were “Cold War relics.” Instead, the pacts allow nations “to pool their resources” to combine their strengths and extend their capabilities to defend themselves. Their value can be seen in the response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and NATO’s support for Kyiv. He also noted Australia’s shipment of aid to Ukraine and backing tougher economic sanctions on the Kremlin . The agreement between the United States, United Kingdom and Australia [AUKUS] is at the center of Canberra’s move to becoming a strong regional strategic force, Marles said. “We intend to re-pay” the confidence Washington and London showed in working out this security sharing arrangement of high technology and building the infrastructure, training workers and sailors to field, operate and maintain a nuclear-powered submarine force, he said. After “repeated false starts,” Marles said Australia was “behind the eight-ball” in modernizing its submarine fleet. “It will be a huge national project to pull this off,” Marles said. It also includes accounting for the long-term costs in the budget. An assessment of where the different parts of AUKUS stand will also be completed early next year, Marles said. Although it will be a challenge, Australia will meet it, he said. The larger goal in AUKUS is to “move beyond interoperability” to interchangeability in integrating defense technologies under the agreement. Marles said Australia “wants to be a trusted second source” for guided munitions and weapons “to maintain that competitive edge against potential adversaries. In answer to a question about the impact of a new security accord between the Solomon Islands and China, Marles said although it was “of a different character” than other arrangements Beijing has made with Pacific Island nations, it was “not inevitable” that it would lead to a military base being built there. The lessons for Australia particularly and the United States from this changed arrangement is: “we need to remind ourselves the Pacific matters” and “we don’t have exclusive rights to friendship.” Marles said it should also be a reminder for Canberra, Washington and others to look to these island states’ needs for development, especially now as sea level rises. He added it also offers an opportunity to help them enforce their exclusive economic zone rights by inviting “ship-riders’ aboard U.S. Coast Guard cutters as a way to meet their needs. This way, the island nations can cut down on illegal fishing and smuggling without raising costs to the United States since the cutters already on patrol in those waters. “We have got to put in the effort,” Marles said.
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Post by Blitz on Jan 4, 2023 10:42:33 GMT -5
You're not a true emperor in China until your policies cause millions of deaths. And now this... Families filmed 'burning corpses of Covid victims on streets' as China's cases explode China's Covid cases have surged with grieving families being told to wait for days, if not weeks, to cremate the deceased. Some have resorted to building makeshift pyres By Tiffany Lo - 4 JAN 2023 www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/families-filmed-burning-corpses-covid-28872582Excerpt: Grim videos have emerged showing mourners in China burning "corpses" in the streets after bodies piled up in funeral homes in the latest Covid surge. Since the country scrapped its extreme restrictions to remain "virus-free" last month, the rate of Covid-19 infection has spiralled out of control. Hospitals and funeral homes are now overflowing with dying patients and decomposing bodies.
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Post by Blitz on Jan 6, 2023 9:21:32 GMT -5
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Post by Blitz on Jan 7, 2023 9:16:15 GMT -5
Unfortunately, strength is the only form diplomacy that Xi fully understands. I'm glad Australia remembers the problems weakness caused during WW2. HIMARS are the big punchs in the face that are knocking Poo-tin out and causing defeat after defeat in Ukraine. And now this... Australia to point America’s HIMARS at China Purchase agreement is part of wider US-led strategy of building a ‘missile wall’ to deter China’s expansion in the Pacific By GABRIEL HONRADA - JANUARY 7, 2023 asiatimes.com/2023/01/australia-to-point-americas-himars-at-china/US Marines conduct a fire mission with a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System during an Expeditionary Advance Base Operation exercise at the Northern Training Area in Okinawa, Japan, on June 18, 2020. Photo: US Marine Corps / Corporal Donovan Massieperez Australia continues to stock up on long-range missiles in pursuit of an independent strategic deterrent amid deteriorating relations with and rising threats from China. This week, ABC News reported that Australia had finalized the purchase of 20 US High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to be delivered to the Australian Army by 2026 while signing a separate purchase agreement for Norwegian Naval Strike Missiles (NSM) to replace aging Harpoon missiles on its Hobart-class destroyers and Anzac-class frigates in 2024. The source notes that actual costs are secret due to security concerns but according to reports are believed to be anywhere between US$1-2 billion. According to Australian Defense Industry Minister Pat Conroy, the HIMARS will give the Australian Army an unprecedented long-range strike capability against targets 300 kilometers away. Australia is part of a joint program with the US to develop a precision strike missile that can hit targets farther than 499 kilometers away. In terms of improving the capabilities of Australia’s warships, CNN reported this week that the maneuverable and sea-skimming NSM would double the range of Australia’s warships to 185 kilometers. CNN also notes that Australia could deploy HIMARS in Southeast Asia or the Pacific, as the US Marine Corps has been exercising with the system under the presumption that it may need to be deployed somewhere in the region in the event of hostilities including a potential clash over Taiwan or in the South China Sea. This missile sale aligns with US efforts to create a “missile wall” in the Pacific. Asia Times has reported on US missile projects such as the Typhon, OpFires and Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) projects, which may be deployed in the First and Second Island Chains to deter China’s expansion into the Pacific. The High Mobility Artillery Rocket System is on its way to Australia. Image: Asia Times Stock The US sale of HIMARS to Australia may also align with its efforts to enable Australia to support implementing an anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) bubble in the region. The developments are the latest in Australia’s efforts to build its long-range strike arsenal. Asia Times reported earlier on Australia’s US$235 million purchase of 80 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile – Extended Range (JASSM-ER) missiles with a range of 935 kilometers that can be launched from its F-35s or F/A-18 jets. Furthermore, Australia has also embarked on a program to produce missiles domestically, partnering domestic firms with US defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. Moreover, Australia, the US and the UK have announced plans to work on hypersonic missiles, with Australia showcasing a new type of hypersonic missile engine that could be 3D-printed using special alloys with extreme resistance to heat, corrosion and high pressure. In a May 2022 article for The Strategist, Graeme Dunk makes a case for Australia to have its own missile production capability. Dunk notes that in a conflict scenario the US will need all the missiles it can manufacture, leaving little to spare for Australia. He also mentions that stockpiled missiles have a limited shelf life measured in years and that stockpiling by buying US stocks is an unsustainable option. Australian Defense Magazine reported in October 2022 that Australia was planning to manufacture HIMARS rockets and rocket boosters for the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM). The report notes that while producing energetics such as rocket motors and warheads is the most complex challenge in missile production, Australia is more than capable of manufacturing critical missile guidance systems. However, the report notes that would depend on which technology the US is willing to release. A December 2022 report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute outlines the rationale for Australia’s push to acquire long-range strike capabilities. It mentions that Australia needs to re-implement its concept of “deterrence by denial”, which means having long-range strike capabilities to convince potential adversaries like China that taking military action is not worth the risk. Asia Times has reported on China’s new long-range strike and expeditionary capabilities, including air-launched hypersonic missiles, the H-20 intercontinental strategic bomber, the Type 055 cruiser and the Type 003 aircraft carrier. Although Australia’s alliance with the US remains the cornerstone of its strategic security, the report notes that Canberra’s worst-case scenario would be a potential adversary setting up a nearby presence from where it could target Australia or isolate it from its allies. Asia Times has reported on the possibility that China may use corruption, bribery and debt to establish a military base on the strategically-situated Solomon Islands, which would potentially allow China to isolate Australia from the US. For now, however, this possibility is still remote. In 2019, the Solomon Islands government rejected China Sam Group’s attempt to lease Tulagi Island, which has a deep-water harbor suited for military purposes. A map of the South Pacific islands showing the Solomon Islands’ proximity to Australia. Source: Wikimedia Commons At the same time, there is a strong case against Australia’s efforts to create a strategic missile deterrent. In a 2019 United States Studies Center article, Ashely Townsend and other writers argue that Australia cannot independently deter China. Still, they wrote Australia can complicate China’s efforts at coercion by supporting US deterrence efforts, building domestic and regional resilience, and encouraging collective action in the Pacific and Southeast Asia. Australia’s indigenous missile deterrent may also need help in target acquisition. In a November 2022 article for The Strategist, Daniel Molesworth writes that while Australia has spent billions of US dollars on HIMARS and other missiles, without dedicated surveillance and target acquisition capabilities provided by drones such as the MQ-9B Sky Guardian, Australia could not expect to launch effective long-range fires. Molesworth mentions that without such capabilities, Australia’s long-range missile arsenal would end up being an unjustifiable expense that misses its desired deterrent mark.
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Post by Blitz on Jan 9, 2023 7:25:14 GMT -5
Xi's policiy shifts are nothing short of eye wateringly fast. Xi must have had quite an interesting meeting with the elite members of the Central Committee. They must have given Xi an offer/ultimatum he couldn't refuse. For Xi to just drop zero-Covid and lockdowns like the history of Tiananmen Square from text books is one of the fastest shifts I've seen out of China. And now taking steps to make amends with Australia, a country he demonized for buying more and more USA weapons like nuclear subs to combat Xi's South China policies, is all an amazing shift. Maybe Poo-tin's war problems are echoing down the halls of the Central Committee. And now this... China Eases Ban On Australian Coal Imports By Tsvetana Paraskova - Jan 09, 2023, 4:30 AM CST oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/China-Eases-Ban-On-Australian-Coal-Imports.htmlChina has allowed several large coal importers to resume purchases of Australian coal, easing an unofficial ban that has lasted more than two years, as Beijing looks to strengthen energy security after ditching the ‘zero Covid’ policy. China enacted an unofficial ban on Australian coal in October 2020 after Australia backed a call for an international inquiry into the way China handled the initial COVID outbreak in early 2020. China's decision to allow four big importers to restart imports of coal from Australia is a sign of a thawing in relations between the two nations and sparked hope that trade between the two could return to normal. Last week, China’s National Development and Reform Commission discussed the idea to allow four large Chinese coal importers to make new purchases of Australian coal this year. These are China Baowu Steel Group Corp, China Datang Corporation, China Huaneng Group Co, and China Energy Investment Corporation. China Energy Investment Corp has already placed an order for purchasing coal from Australia, and the first cargo could load as early as this month, according to Reuters. Moreover, the surge in Covid cases after the end of the restrictions has resulted in lower coal supply from China’s key coal-producing centers Shanxi and Inner Mongolia, traders told Reuters. With demand for winter heating rising, China now looks to avoid another coal crunch. China has put more emphasis on energy security since the autumn of 2021 when power shortages crippled its industry. In 2022, China said it would continue to maximize the use of coal in the coming years as it caters to its energy security, despite pledges to contribute to global efforts to reduce emissions. In recent months, China has significantly boosted its coal production, following government orders. China’s daily coal production hit a record high in November 2022 as demand for heating jumped, beating the previous record set in September 2022. By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Post by Blitz on Jan 11, 2023 12:12:06 GMT -5
Xi must have found the PRC's Central Committee has some teeth and can bite back. Will Xi muzzel them or did Xi get muzzeled? And now this... Beijing seen muzzling its ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy There are signs Chinese want to hold their rhetorical fire due to coming political events in the US and Taiwan By JEFF PAO - JANUARY 11, 2023 asiatimes.com/2023/01/beijing-seen-muzzling-its-wolf-warrior-diplomacy/Action flick Wolf Warrior II is one of China’s most commercially successful films ever. Publicity still courtesy Wolf Warrior II/The H Collective/Well Go USA Entertainment Over the past decade, Beijing adopted a harsher tone in its diplomatic speeches as bilateral relations between the US and China worsened due to trade and Taiwan matters. Things got so tense that news media, borrowing a term from a pair of Chinese action movies, began to report that the Chinese were following a “wolf warrior” strategy. For a while, many Chinese proudly wore the evocative term as a badge of honor. Now, though, personnel changes in the foreign ministry and a softened tone in diplomatic speeches can be seen as signs of a wish in Beijing to tone things down. To hear some Chinese commentators tell it, the move of hawkish diplomat Zhao Lijian from foreign ministry spokesman to a lower-profile position could signal what might be termed – if we stick to the wildlife theme – at least a bit of domestication of China’s “wolf-warrior” diplomatic strategy. Those who discern change think that Beijing wants to respond carefully to events on the short-term horizon such as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to China in the first quarter of this year, the possible passage of a Taiwan Policy Act by the US Congress and the Taiwanese presidential election in January 2024. Some could see hints of change last June when China still had its zero Covid policy in place. Wu Hongbo, the special representative of the Chinese government on European Affairs, told European business leaders that his country had made mistakes regarding its Covid policies due to “wolf warrior” diplomacy. Another sign that some in power thought softening the antagonistic approach was the better part of valor came around that time when Beijing’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong met representatives of various chambers of commerce in a closed-door meeting to seek their views on how to revive the financial hub’s local business environment. It’s within that context that commentators are interpreting an announcement on Monday that Zhao Lijian had been appointed deputy chief of the foreign ministry’s Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs. Zhao Lijian, former spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Photo: fmprc.gov.cn Zhao had not been seen in the ministry’s regular media briefing since his last appearance on December 2, 2022. Some netizens thought he had contracted the coronavirus. But close observers pointed to some uncharacteristic behavior a few days before his final appearance. They said Zhao’s reaction during a media briefing on November 28 was odd. Zhao stayed silent for 30 seconds after being asked by a foreign journalist about Beijing’s stance on Chinese people’s protests against the zero-Covid policy. He asked the journalist to repeat the question and he again stopped for 20 seconds before giving an answer. Although the 50-year-old foreign affairs official was not demoted, he was horizontally transferred to a position that will give him much less media attention. Wang Juntao, a US-based Chinese dissident and democracy activist, said there could be different reasons for the change in Zhao’s position. Wang said it could be because Zhao’s wife showed off her trip to Germany on social media while Shanghai was being locked down between March and May last year. But Wang also said the move could signal that Beijing might be fine-tuning its “wolf warrior” policy. A key date is November 14, 2022, when US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a face-to-face meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali. Biden told Xi that the US and China had to work together to address transnational challenges – such as climate change, global macroeconomic stability including debt relief, health security and global food security. Xi told Biden that the Taiwan matter was the most important red line that the US should not cross. Not exactly buddy-buddy, but there were no fisticuffs. Chinese state media said the Xi-Biden meeting represented a good starting point for China and the US to resume pragmatic cooperation. The standing committee of the National People’s Congress announced on December 30 that the then-ambassador to the US Qin Gang would replace Wang Yi as the foreign minister. On January 1, Wang’s title became director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs. Wang Yi (left) and his replacement, Foreign Minister Qin Gang. Photo: Wikimedia Commons On January 4, Qin published in The Washington Post an article titled, “The planet’s future depends on a stable China-US relationship.” “The world is wide enough for China and the US to both develop and prosper. The successes of our two countries are shared opportunities, not winner-take-all challenges,” he wrote. “We must not allow prejudice or misperception to ignite confrontation or conflict between two great peoples.” Chinese President Xi Jinping in his New Year speech used a softer tone when commenting on Taiwan matters. “The complete reunification of our motherland is an aspiration shared by people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait,” Xi said. “I sincerely hope that all the sons and daughters of the Chinese nation will join forces to create a brighter future for our nation.” Guo Chungrung, deputy editor-in-chief at the United Daily News, said that, normally, personnel changes would be announced after the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress in March. He said Qin’s position change was announced earlier because Blinken would visit China in January or February. Besides, Guo said, it would be good for Beijing to appoint its diplomats earlier as the Republicans had regained control in the US House of Representatives while Taiwan would have its presidential election in January 2024. Lin Pao-hua, a political commentator, told Taiwanese news website RWNews that Xi changed his tone as he tried to ease tensions with the US and avoid provoking Taiwanese voters before Taiwan’s presidential election. Alex Tsai, a Taiwanese politician and a member of the Kuomintang, said the recent speeches of Qin and Wang showed that Beijing wanted to manage conflicts with Washington for the moment but the longer-term situation would depend on whether the US Congress passes the Taiwan Policy Act. Last September, the US Senate approved the legislation, which if enacted will see Washington allocate billions of dollars to fortify Taiwan’s defenses against a potential Chinese invasion. To be presented to Biden for his signature and become law, the act needs approval from the House of Representatives, which began a new term January 3.
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Post by Blitz on Jan 12, 2023 9:05:39 GMT -5
I think somebody in China pointed out that comrade emperor Xi's policies have done almost nothing but lower China's GDP since he took power. tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp-growthAnd now this... China: the strong bullish case for 2023 Policy pivots toward strong growth orientation that could lift GDP back in the 7-8% range this year and beyond By UWE PARPART - JANUARY 12, 2023 asiatimes.com/2023/01/china-the-strong-bullish-case-for-2023/China markets are poised for a bull run in 2023. Image: Twitter / VCG HONG KONG – Several global investment houses have recently upgraded their 2023 growth forecasts for China from the 4% range to well above 5%. We believe that’s much too conservative. An “explosive growth spurt” (in the words of a most experienced Hong Kong-based China investor) in the 7-8% range is highly likely as the current Covid wave recedes. The basic premise for this, as we have written and reiterated on several occasions since just prior to the China Communist Party’s 20th Congress, is that – contrary to the biased and ill-informed “reporting” of the Western press – General Secretary Xi Jinping’s third term will not be characterized by further tightening of centralized controls of the economy and suppression of private-sector initiative by a tight-knit group of handpicked Xi loyalists, but rather by the very opposite. This could and should have become clear to any unblinkered observer the moment Shanghai party chief Li Qiang walked out in the number two position behind Xi at the introduction of the new Politburo Standing Committee upon the conclusion of the party congress. Li, whose political career started in Wenzhou, a proud bastion of free enterprise in Zhejiang province, opened the new STAR market of the Shanghai Stock Exchange and helped Elon Musk build the Tesla Gigafactory in Shanghai in record time during his Shanghai tenure, to mention just two of his hallmark initiatives. Yes, Li is a Xi loyalist: He served under Xi in Zhejiang. But why would Xi pick a loyalist of Li’s pedigree to become his prime minister in charge of the economy if he wanted to pursue policies of the opposite direction? It’s a self-contradictory “analysis” only the hapless inhabitants of the Washington-attuned echo chambers could produce. Li Qiang is now China’s No 2, an appointment that shows Xi’s dedication to a high-tech-led future for China. Image: Screengrab / NDTV Since Li’s designation to take over as premier at the 14th National People’s Congress this March, all relevant Politburo and government agencies have uniquely pointed in the direction of a strongly growth-oriented, high technology-led, consumption-driven and monetary policy-supported economy. Bloomberg quotes former Bocom International head of research Hong Hao, an outspoken China bear, as noting that there had been “policy pivots in just about every single sector.” This, of course, includes first and foremost the radical decision to totally scrap the “zero-Covid” policy of the past three years. Significantly, Li had opposed the drastic April 2022 Shanghai lockdown, prompting Beijing to deploy the Iron Lady, vice-premier and politburo member Sun Chunlan, to Shanghai to get it done. That, in turn, prompted many Western observers to rule out Li as an incoming Politburo Standing committee member. Alas, Sun has since retired from the Politburo and Li is about to take up his position at the head of government. As we reported on November 29, even just prior to the 20th Congress, the decision had been reached to abandon zero-Covid and henceforward treat the disease as endemic rather than a pandemic plague. To be sure, multi-city protests expedited the policy pivot. But clearly, Xi had concluded that zero-Covid was not compatible with necessary economic growth acceleration and decided on a radical move to cut the Gordian knot. It was and remains a high-risk decision. But there was no practicable choice and the opportunity to go for herd immunity was seized with the more infective, but less virulent, omicron Covid variant. As for the multiple faster-growth policy pivots, we shall only list the most relevant and impactful ones here: Guo Shuqing, Communist Party chief at the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), told Xinhua news agency on January 7 that the crackdown on fintech operations and platforms of the 14 main internet companies is “basically” over. “Next, we’ll promote the healthy development of internet platforms… We’ll encourage them to come out strong in leading economic growth, creating more jobs, and competing globally,” Guo said. – Perhaps not by accident, Alibaba’s Jack Ma announced on the same day that he was ceding control of Ant Financial, the fintech Alibaba affiliate. The PBoC has said that it will do whatever it takes (the famous Draghi vow) to lend monetary policy support to healing the property market and the overall growth of consumption and investment. After peaking at 2.8% YoY in September 2022, China’s inflation rate dropped to 1.6% in November – meaning deflation is now more of a threat. There’s ample room for monetary easing from the current prime loan rate of 3.65%. Liu He, the retiring economic czar, has been put in charge of fixing the property market. He, more than anyone, has the credentials and political support to do so. More affordable energy is needed to power the economic recovery. China has filled its reserves with cheap Russian oil. It has now lifted the two-year ban on the import of Australian coal as well. January 8 saw the reopening of the Hong Kong-mainland China border. Aside from the pure joy of family reunions after three years, cross-border flows of people and goods are critical to the recovery of the Hong Kong and Guangdong province economies, China’s most productive along with Shanghai. China has plenty of room for monetary easing. Photo: Facebook Overall, two developments stand out: First, the Central Economic Work Conference of December 2022, which set out economic policy for 2023, called for monetary policy support for growth acceleration. It also issued an explicit call for the rapid development of the digital economy and support for the role of online platform enterprises in economic growth. Second, Chinese households accumulated over RMB2 trillion (US$295 billion) in excess savings in 2022, which is expected to give a strong boost to consumption. Lifting of policy restrictions and pent-up savings are powerful growth drivers. By appointing Li to replace outgoing wet squib Li Keqiang, President Xi has set an unmistakable signal for his priorities in his third term. ///////////////////////
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Post by Blitz on Jan 13, 2023 9:22:33 GMT -5
U.S. and Japan's new defense strategy sends stark warning to China Courtney Subramanian, Tracy Wilkinson - Fri, January 13, 2023 at 7:00 AM EST·6 min read news.yahoo.com/u-japans-defense-strategy-sends-120010279.htmlJapanese Ground-Self Defense Force (JGDDF) Type 90 tank drives maneuvers near a target during an annual exercise at the Minami Eniwa Camp Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2021, in Eniwa, Japan's northern island of Hokkaido. Dozens of tanks are rolling over the next two weeks on Hokkaido, a main military stronghold for a country with perhaps the world's most little known yet powerful army. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) A tank maneuvers near a target during an annual exercise at the Minami Eniwa Camp on Dec. 7, 2021, in Eniwa on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido. (Eugene Hoshiko / Associated Press) President Biden will welcome Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the White House on Friday, a meeting intended to signal a more confrontational approach to China as Tokyo's defense turns south toward the Taiwan Strait. Kishida is pushing for a larger defense role for Japan in the Indo-Pacific region as his country and the U.S. face down threats on multiple fronts: a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a nuclear-armed North Korea and Russia's continued assault on Ukraine. Before Kishida's visit, the U.S. and Japan agreed on Wednesday to upgrade their security cooperation by equipping Tokyo with long-range missiles and refitting a U.S. Marine unit in Japan to confront Beijing's military buildup in the region — the latest move by the administration to achieve Washington's long-held desire to focus more on the East and South Asia. "Japan is doubling down on both itself and the United States. Tokyo is building some more independent capabilities, but it is also deepening the U.S.-Japan alliance. That should be a clear sign to China," said Zachary Cooper, a senior fellow who studies U.S. defense strategy in Asia at the American Enterprise Institute. The agenda "is being driven from Tokyo, rather than Washington, which is incredibly important as a sign of sustainability and a healthy alliance relationship." The sit-down is the leaders' first since Kishida announced historic reforms to his country's national security strategy in December, shifting Japan away from its pacifist stance in the wake of World War II and toward closer cooperation with Biden's quest to constrain China. Kishida's government vowed to double his country's defense spending to 2% of its gross domestic product by 2027, up from about 1%. Based on current GDP, the move would make Japan's military budget the third largest in the world, behind the U.S. and China. The new strategy also calls for acquiring long-range missile systems that would enable Tokyo to reach targets in China and North Korea in response to a potential attack. The Ukraine conflict has magnified global anxiety about a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan and motivated Kishida's push to reform Japan's defense approach, said Chris Johnstone, the Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Biden National Security Council official. Kishida's White House visit will cap a weeklong tour of some of his country's most important Western allies — France, Italy, the United Kingdom and Canada — as he lays the diplomatic groundwork to host the Group of 7 summit in his hometown of Hiroshima in May. With Hiroshima — which was devastated by an American nuclear bomb in August 1945 — as a backdrop, Kishida is expected to spotlight nuclear disarmament as Russian President Vladimir Putin threatens nuclear retaliation in Ukraine. Kishida, who has repeatedly sounded the alarm that "today's Ukraine could be tomorrow's Asia," is shoring up Western support for Tokyo's security standoff with China and North Korea, mirroring Biden's work to build a pro-Ukraine alliance. "Part of Kishida's mission in visiting these countries at the beginning of the year is to try to get the G-7 countries to expand their focus on the China challenge and what's needed to confront it," Johnstone said. The specter of a war over Taiwan took on new urgency in August when China fired ballistic missiles that landed inside Japan's exclusive eonomic zone off the coast of the island. The military exercises were in response to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-San Francisco) trip to Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory and has threatened to take by force. Washington and Tokyo are also concerned about an uptick in North Korea's missile launches. Pyongyang launched more than 90 ballistic and other missiles last year and has continued to conduct such tests this year. Much like Biden, Kishida has defied expectations on the world stage despite grappling with political struggles at home. Biden, hampered by inflation and low approval ratings, held together a reinvigorated NATO alliance, compelling European countries to boost their defense spending and limit their reliance on Russian oil and gas. Kishida has been beset by political scandal in his Cabinet and public outrage over the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The Cabinet's approval rating slipped to 33% in January, a dip of 3 percentage points from last month and the lowest since the prime minister took office in October 2021, according to a survey conducted by public broadcaster NHK. But Kishida, who hails from the dovish, progressive wing of the Liberal Democratic Party, appears to have succeeded where the hawkish Abe was unable to, Cooper said. "Many expected that Kishida wouldn't push these sorts of big changes, but he's getting them done despite his current domestic political struggles, which is surprising many observers," Cooper said. "He's following Shinzo Abe's playbook of being far more proactive on the world stage." Biden's approach to the Indo-Pacific has been to not only strengthen alliances but also empower allies through economic and defense initiatives, Johnstone said. The president has prioritized the Quad, an alliance that consists of the U.S., Australia, Japan and India, and vowed to expand Washington's cooperation with South Korea on defense, supply chain resilience and space exploration. Last year, he launched a security alliance with the U.K. and Australia, known as AUKUS, to help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines. The United States and Japan have agreed to substantially build up and modernize a military alliance meant to counter what both countries call “unprecedented” aggression from China, as well as bellicose actions from the region’s other big players, North Korea and Russia. Though Biden and experts caution a Chinese attack on Taiwan is not inevitable, simulated war games conducted by a prominent Washington think tank concluded that "Japan is the linchpin" in any military conflict with China in the defense of the self-governing island. The U.S. will help Japan develop “counterstrike capability,” or offensive weapons to attack enemy positions, and will refit its own Marine deployment in Japan to include advanced intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said Wednesday. The unit on the island of Okinawa will also be equipped with “anti-ship” capabilities in anticipation of attacks from China over the Taiwan Straits, Austin said. Austin and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken held talks with their Japanese counterparts, Yasukazu Hamada and Yoshimasa Hayashi, ahead of Kishida's visit. The two countries also agreed to conduct research and exploration together on the moon and in outer space, signaling a new realm of possible confrontation with China or other powers. “We’re constantly expanding the horizons of our cooperation — beyond even our planet,” Blinken said. In a statement released Wednesday night, the two countries made clear their belief that China poses a threat. “China’s foreign policy seeks to reshape the international order to its benefit and to employ China’s growing political, economic, military, and technological power to that end,” the statement said. “This behavior is of serious concern to the Alliance and the entire international community, and represents the greatest strategic challenge in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.” This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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Post by Blitz on Jan 13, 2023 11:43:29 GMT -5
China’s demand surge is Xi’s reform opportunity 5% or higher growth will give Xi scope to get back under the hood and raise China Inc’s competitive and innovative game By WILLIAM PESEK - JANUARY 13, 2023 asiatimes.com/2023/01/chinas-demand-surge-is-xis-reform-opportunity/Unleashed pent-up Chinese demand could drive the global economy in 2023. Image: Screengrab / NDTV China’s Covid reopening is spurring an econometric arms race of sorts as analysts scramble to raise their growth forecasts for Asia’s top trade power. If 2022 was the year of red ink, the 12 months ahead will see an explosive growth spurt the likes of which economists have never seen before. ”We expect [Chinese] consumption to be a major growth driver in 2023,” says analyst Zerlina Zeng at CreditSights. “We expect consumer spending to pick up, driven by pent-up demand and the savings that Chinese households have accumulated in the past three years.” Zeng notes that this “expected macro recovery” from the second quarter on “should support employment, which in turn will boost consumption, creating a positive feedback loop.” From there, Zeng says, “expect better consumer and business sentiment to support online retail, advertising spending, cloud, enterprise IT solutions and payment activities, which are positive for China tech credits. We also expect demand for petroleum products, natural gas, chemical goods, power and base metals to gradually recover, which underpins our constructive view for the Chinese industrial credits.” But China’s coming rebound is also a big window of opportunity for Xi Jinping to relocate his reformist energy. In 2012, the Communist Party leader took power pledging to give market forces a “decisive” role in policymaking. In more recent years, he spent more time appearing to curtail private-sector development than raising productivity. As at 5% or higher growth returns, Xi has scope to get back under the hood to raise China Inc’s competitive and innovative game. It’s a promising sign, says Diana Choyleva at Enodo Economics, that “to avoid alarming foreign investors, the propaganda machinery has largely stopped mentioning Mao-era slogans such as ‘self-sufficiency’ or ‘common prosperity’ in recent weeks.” Choyleva adds that, “emboldened by his resounding victory at the 20th Party Congress, Xi Jinping decided to take a huge gamble. He wants China back in action by spring. The hope is that after the pandemic peaks, factories will reopen fully and economic activity will return to normal while the population would have gained natural immunity.’’ Equally important, though, is what Xi does with the window of opportunity afforded by this resurgence. President Xi Jinping. Photo: Facebook Mattie Bekink, a China director at the Economist Intelligence Unit, notes that the “big question” for the “third Xi Jinping administration” is whether officials “will undertake the economic reforms and structural reforms necessary to ensure China’s long-term competitiveness or some of the lingering and pressing short-term issues like the property sector and the transition out of zero-Covid.” Yet given the “society that China wants for the future,” Bekink says, “it’s very clear that growth and development is a top priority but balanced with concerns about national security and social fairness. So, I do expect that we will see further policy shifts that are aligned with that longer-term vision for China.” The coming boom will jolt global growth near and far. Morgan Stanley recently raised its 2023 China GDP forecast to 5.7% from 4.8%. “While the re-opening is likely to be a bumpy affair amid surging Covid-19 cases and increasingly stretched health systems, our economists expect growth momentum across Asia to gather steam, led by China,” says Herald van der Linde, HSBC’s head of Asia-Pacific equity strategy. Eduardo Santander, chief executive of the European Travel Commission, says “there’s a lot of pent-up demand from the Chinese to travel.” This will create myriad logistical challenges. “The problem,” Santander explains, “is how agile are we going to be in accommodating them by issuing visas and creating extra flight connectivity.” It will be a good dilemma to have, though, as a European energy crisis and resulting inflation slam household and business demand – and with the US widely expected to slide into recession as 2023 unfolds. Economist Ernan Cui at Gavekal Research points out that China’s “abrupt abandonment of Covid restrictions has led to a massive wave of the disease across the country that has overwhelmed the public health system.” Covid patients try to get admitted to a hospital in Beijing in December 2022. Photo: Screenshot, Weibo However, she adds, “there are signs that the wave of infections has either already peaked or is now peaking across much of the country, including in rural areas. This points to an early resumption of normal life.” Though “consumers remain cautious,” Cui says, “experience of local outbreaks suggests economic activity will largely resume within weeks of the wave’s peak. This sets China up for a reopening boom following the lunar new year holiday in late January. There’s considerable pent-up demand, and households are sitting on record amounts of cash.” Significantly, Cui adds, government policy is now clearly focused on supporting growth. This bodes well for a revival of property sales and – with the government offering support to cash-strapped developers – housing construction and related heavy industries. To some extent, this boost will be offset by moderating infrastructure investment and weaker export demand. Nevertheless, there are decent odds that Chinese gross domestic product will expand by 5% or more in 2023. “All this points to a continuation of the bull run in Chinese equities that began in November,” Cui says. “With foreigners largely out of the market, trading will be propelled by momentum-driven local investors. And this time, in contrast to previous momentum-driven rallies, the authorities may not be so quick to pull the plug, hoping that a buoyant stock market and economy will dull memories of the human cost of reopening.” Goldman Sachs analyst Kinger Lau reckons Chinese stocks could rally another 15% in the weeks and months ahead. “China looks well positioned across the growth, policy, and inflation cycles in a global context in 2023,” Lau says. “The prevailing market backdrop leads us to believe that the downside risk of maintaining underweight or shorting Chinese stocks is meaningfully higher than going long.” There are risks here, of course. As the Global Polarity Monitor newsletter published by Asia Times predicts, the inflationary implications for the US, Europe, Japan and beyond are not being sufficiently reflected in asset prices. “We think the commodity market has not fully internalized the ‘explosive’ growth that we believe is in store for China in the coming months,” argue newsletter editors David Woo, David Goldman and Uwe Parpart. What’s more, they argue, China might grow in the 7% to 8% range once the current Covid infection wave recedes. More importantly, though, is that the rebound seems likely to accompany the arrival of presumed incoming premier, Li Qiang. The outgoing Number 2 Li Keqiang never seemed to have Xi’s full confidence – or enough policymaking space – to recalibrate growth engines or big picture economic incentives. Li Qiang does have his baggage, not least of which was a chaotic Shanghai-area Covid-19 response. Yet investors attuned to Li’s background are intrigued by a number of data points. Li got his start in politics in Zhejiang province, which is famed for free enterprise. He championed the opening of the STAR market of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. He was pivotal to Elon Musk getting Tesla’s “Gigafactory” expeditiously approved and built. As Guo Shuqing, party secretary of the People’s Bank of China, signaled recently, “normal” is returning to the nation’s tech sector after two-plus years of Xi’s team clamping down on Alibaba Group, Baidu, ByteDance, Didi, JD.com, Tencent and others. Guo has been telegraphing a big pivot to a “new phase” of financial opening and reform. “In the future,” Guo says, “the pace of the opening of Chinese finance will not relent.” This dovetails with news that Alibaba founder Jack Ma is ceding control of fintech unit Ant Group. It may top off Ant’s efforts since late 2020 to placate Chinese leader Xi’s regulator after they shelved the group’s $37 billion initial public offering. Jack Ma. Photo: AFP / Philippe Lopez It’s good news, too, that tailwinds might be appearing in time for Li to hit the ground running on structural reforms. “The second half of 2023 is set to be more favorable,” says Harry Murphy Cruise at Moody’s Analytics. “As case numbers retreat and disruptions ease, we can expect a surge in household spending and new investment to drive a reopening bounce.” China’s revival won’t necessarily be smooth or state-of-the-art. Cruise adds that “there is more to China’s woes than Covid-19. Following officials’ intervention to deleverage the property sector, home construction and sales have fallen sharply. Given the sector’s importance, weakness there is permeating through the economy. On top of that, a weaker global economy is causing demand for what China sells to the world to dry up.” At the same time, “the rapid deceleration in exports also means China needs to tap into domestic markets for growth over the foreseeable future,” says economist Hao Zhou at Guotai Junan Securities. “With the easing of Covid restrictions, consumption is likely to see meaningful and sustainable recovery” this year. Even so, a strong GDP rebound could coincide with the arrival of a reform-minded economic team willing to think out of the box and take risks. That could be an important tailwind all its own.
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Post by Blitz on Jan 15, 2023 7:55:38 GMT -5
In China, Xi Jinping Faces a Difficult Year on Several Fronts The pivot away from ‘zero Covid’ could have profound health, social, political and economic impacts By Chun Han Wong - Jan. 14, 2023 www.wsj.com/articles/china-xi-jinping-difficult-2023-11673627314Chinese leader Xi Jinping went from cementing his supremacy last fall to battling a public-health and economic crisis into the new year—fallout from an abrupt pivot from “zero Covid” that could cast a shadow over China for months to come. Mr. Xi secured a norm-breaking third term as Communist Party chief in October, and stacked the leadership with allies who sang their leader’s praises and trumpeted his vision of a thriving China. That rosiness dissolved amid intensifying economic pain and a wave of public protests against Mr. Xi’s zero-tolerance Covid strategy of lockdowns and border controls, followed by a haphazard dismantling of pandemic protocols that threatens to further batter the world’s second-largest economy. Some analysts describe China’s tumultuous exit from zero-Covid policies as largely self-inflicted pain, exacerbated by Mr. Xi’s domineering style. The repercussions could be profound for Mr. Xi, who had touted his pandemic strategy as an example of the Communist Party’s superior governance. “This is likely to be a year of turbulence for Xi Jinping,” says Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. The party’s energies are set to be consumed managing the economic and social impact from the end of zero Covid, as well as restoring public trust, Mr. Wu says, adding that the paramount leader’s prestige is at stake. “Xi claims all the credit but deserves all the blame, too.” Seeking ‘reasonable’ growth Chinese leaders have struck a stoic tone. They promised to deliver “reasonable” economic growth in 2023, calling on officials to stimulate domestic demand while signaling plans to further ease regulations that have triggered a downward spiral in the property market and hampered private business investments. Mr. Xi also brooked no criticism of his top-down methods. At a Politburo meeting in December, Mr. Xi insisted on “absolute loyalty” to his leadership “under any circumstance,” while appearing to blame local officials for faulty implementation of his policies. Travelers in Hong Kong going through border control on Jan. 8 as the border with mainland China reopened amid eased Covid restrictions. PHOTO: LAM YIK/BLOOMBERG NEWS “We have now entered a new phase of pandemic controls, where tough challenges remain,” Mr. Xi said in a televised New Year message. “Let’s make extra efforts to pull through, for perseverance is triumph, unity is victory.” Many economists expect a fraught year ahead for China, citing the risk of surging Covid-19 infections disrupting supply chains and overwhelming the healthcare system. Though some analysts forecast a rebound in commerce and consumption after fresh outbreaks subside, possibly in the spring, it remains to be seen how firm this recovery will be. “The transition to living with Covid will be a bumpy one, not least because of the abrupt change in policy itself, which leaves many people unprepared (and unvaccinated) and the medical system inadequately geared for the surge in cases,” Bert Hofman, director of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore, wrote in a recent newsletter. Tentative consumers Chinese consumers appeared tentative as 2022 drew to a close. Domestic trips edged up 0.4% over the New Year holiday weekend compared with the same period a year earlier, while tourist spending ticked up 4%. Movie box-office receipts fell more than 45% year-over-year. Beijing also faces an uphill battle in rebuilding confidence among businesses, which increasingly regard Mr. Xi’s government as capricious in setting policy, says Jörg Wuttke, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China. In a 2022 survey of its members, the EU Chamber reported that 60% of respondents reported increased difficulties in doing business in China, compared with 47% in the previous year, in part due to the opaque regulatory environment and the increased politicization of business. “We associate China with a very well-planned, well-organized government, and all of a sudden we see it capitulate in the face of Omicron,” Mr. Wuttke says. “That takes away a lot of trust in the government’s abilities.” The onus therefore falls upon the Xi administration to restore public confidence, economists and business groups say. “Chinese citizens know who is in charge,” says Andrew Collier, managing director of Orient Capital Research in Hong Kong. “The huge death toll, coupled with the collapsing property market, are going to test the people’s trust in Beijing in 2023.” Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Xi. China’s support of Moscow during the war in Ukraine has strained relations with the West. PHOTO: ALEXEI DRUZHININ/ASSOCIATED PRESS International tensions On the diplomatic front, Beijing’s transition to a postpandemic future has raised hopes that a revival of cross-border interactions could help mitigate geopolitical tensions with the West. Mr. Xi himself has already re-emerged from a self-imposed absence from the international stage by attending a number of multilateral summits in the latter months of 2022. China’s ties with Western governments remain fraught over Beijing’s support for Moscow throughout the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Tensions with the U.S. still simmer even as Mr. Xi and President Biden, who met in November, pledged to restore dialogue and a measure of stability in a fractious relationship. “Like Washington, Beijing seeks greater stability in the near term while investing in efforts to deter and counter perceived threats,” says Jessica Chen Weiss, a Cornell University professor who studies Chinese foreign policy. Tensions aren’t likely to subside, she says, “without reciprocal actions to lower the temperature,” while the campaigning ahead of the 2024 presidential elections in the U.S. and the island democracy of Taiwan could add complications. Beijing, which claims Taiwan as its territory, continues to regard with deep suspicion U.S. efforts to strengthen cooperation with the island. Since then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August visit to Taipei, which China condemned, the People’s Liberation Army has conducted an array of combat drills that showcased capabilities to cut off Taiwan. Nonetheless, the Biden administration has pledged to continue providing arms and training to help Taipei defend itself. Notwithstanding recent setbacks, Mr. Xi seems set to double down on his priorities, says Mr. Wu, the Singapore-based academic. “In difficult times like these, he often emphasizes the need for greater ‘fighting spirit,’ and insists that they must overcome any challenges.” Mr. Wong is a reporter in the China bureau of The Wall Street Journal.
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Post by Blitz on Jan 17, 2023 6:56:08 GMT -5
Without effective jabs, Covid will help cure China's elderly demographic. And now this... China’s Population Shrinks for First Time Since 1960s in Seismic Shift Story by Bloomberg News • 6h ago www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/chinas-population-shrinks-for-first-time-since-1960s-in-seismic-shift/ar-AA16qbje(Bloomberg) -- China’s population started shrinking in 2022 for the first time in six decades, the latest milestone in a worsening demographic crisis for the world’s second-largest economy. The country had 1.41 billion people at the end of last year, 850,000 fewer than the end of 2021, according to data released by the National Statistics Bureau on Tuesday. That marks the first drop since 1961, the final year of the Great Famine under former leader Mao Zedong, and coincided with figures showing China’s economy expanded last year at the second-slowest pace since the 1970s. Some 9.56 million babies were born in 2022, down from 10.62 million a year earlier, the lowest level since at least 1950, despite efforts by the government to encourage families to have more children. A total of 10.41 million people died, a slight increase from around 10 million recorded in recent years. China suffered a surge in Covid-related deaths starting last month after abruptly dropping its zero-tolerance approach to the virus in early December. More Covid-related deaths will likely come this year as fatalities usually lag infections by weeks and infections are still spreading across the country. That outbreak could further push up the number of deaths this year. More Deaths, Fewer Births | China's population shrank last year as births have fallen again and deaths keep rising as nation ages The decline in newborns was the main cause of the population contraction, according to Kang Yi, head of the National Statistics Bureau. Related video: China braces for slow economic rebound ahead of GPD report (CBS News) Shanghai and Beijing residents react to China's population decline AFP/AFP “That’s mainly a result of drop in people’s willingness to have babies, the delay in marriage and pregnancy, as well as a fall in number of women of child-bearing age,” Kang told reporters after a press briefing Tuesday. Kang said the drop — while the beginning of a new trend — was “not something to be over-concerned about.” The supply of the country’s labor force is still greater than the demand, he added. “The population will likely trend down from here in coming years,” said Zhang Zhiwei, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management Ltd. “This is very important, with implications for potential growth and domestic demand.” The population drop-off came much faster than previously expected, and could act as a brake on economic growth by slowing demand for goods such as new houses. Due to the decline, the Chinese economy may struggle to overtake the US in size and the nation could lose its status as the world’s most populous country to India this year. As recently as 2019, the United Nations was forecasting that China’s population would peak in 2031 and then decline, but last year the UN had revised that estimate to see a peak at the start of 2022. The labor force is already shrinking, long-term demand for houses will fall likely further, and the government may also struggle to pay for its underfunded national pension system. The country is following in the footsteps of other nations in East Asia such as Japan or South Korea, which have seen their birth rates plummet and populations age and start to shrink as they’ve become wealthier and developed. China’s birth rate, or the number of newborns per 1,000 people, declined to 6.77 last year, the lowest level since at least 1978. The data released by the National Statistics Bureau show 62% of the population were of working-age, which China defines as people aged 16 to 59, down from around 70% a decade ago, highlighting the challenges the country faces as its population ages. --With assistance from Yujing Liu, Philip Glamann and James Mayger.
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Post by Blitz on Jan 17, 2023 9:18:08 GMT -5
Given China publishes data points that aligns more with propaganda than actual facts, I've got the under. The link has an interctive GDP chart that goes back to 1970. And now this... China reports 3% GDP growth for 2022 as December retail sales, industrial production beat estimates PUBLISHED MON, JAN 16 2023 - Evelyn Cheng www.cnbc.com/2023/01/17/china-reports-3percent-gdp-growth-for-2022.htmlKEY POINTS - China reported 3% GDP growth for 2022, better than the 2.8% forecast in a Reuters poll. - Retail sales in December declined by 1.8% from a year ago, less than the expected 8.6% plunge predicted by a Reuters’ poll. - Industrial production rose by 3.6% in 2022. The figure rose by 1.3% in December, well above the 0.2% predicted by the Reuters’ poll. Travelers wearing protective gear at Jinan West Railway Station in Jinan, Shandong province, China, on Sunday, Jan. 15, 2023. There are growing concerns that this months Lunar New Year holiday will see the virus sweep through smaller cities and rural areas as hundreds of thousands of people travel home, with many finally able to reunite with family after three years. Source: Bloomberg Chinese officials expect about twice the number of Lunar New Year trips this year as last year since many people can return to their hometowns without any Covid restrictions. Pictured here is the Jinan West Railway Station on Jan. 15, 2023. Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images BEIJING — China reported GDP growth for 2022 that beat expectations as December retail sales came in far better than projected. GDP grew by 3% in 2022, the National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday. That was better than the 2.8% forecast in a Reuters’ poll. The GDP growth number did miss the official target of around 5.5% set in March. In 2021, China’s growth had rebounded by 8.4% from just 2.2% growth in 2020. Fourth-quarter GDP rose by 2.9%, beating expectations from the Reuters’ poll of 1.8% growth. Kang Yi, director of the National Bureau of Statistics, cast China’s 3% growth as “relatively fast” in light of unexpected situations and in contrast to Germany, the U.S. and Japan. However, he said the global trade situation was not optimistic, and that the world economy may face stagflation. “Businesses still face many difficulties in production and operation, scientific and technological innovation is not strong enough, and people still have considerable difficulties in employment,” Kang said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC. “We still need to make strenuous efforts to promote overall economic improvement.” Kang said he expected real estate would not drag down growth in 2023 as much as it did in 2022. He also said he expects consumer prices will overall be stable in 2023 and that there’s no basis for a major increase. Looking ahead to this year, JLL’s Bruce Pang expects support for the property market and the ability of people to move freely will help retail sales recover to 8% growth by the fourth quarter. Retail sales drop far less than expected Retail sales fell by 0.2% for the year. But retail sales in December declined by 1.8% from a year ago, less than the expected 8.6% plunge predicted by a Reuters’ poll. Within retail sales, those of catering fell by 6.3% in 2022. Sales of apparel, cosmetics and jewelry all declined for the year. Medicine was one of the bright spots, after sales surged by nearly 40% in December from a year ago. Online retail sales of physical goods rose by 17.2% in December from a year ago, according to CNBC calculations of official data accessed through Wind. Those online sales accounted for 27.2% of total retail sales. In 2022, the metropolis of Shanghai locked down for about two months in an attempt to control a Covid outbreak. China’s stringent zero-Covid policy restricted travel and business activity across the country. Authorities abruptly relaxed most controls in early December, amid a surge in local infections. While far more people plan to travel around the upcoming Lunar New Year, analysts expect Chinese consumer sentiment will take a few months to recover. Industrial production rose by 3.6% in 2022. The figure rose by 1.3% in December, well above the 0.2% predicted by the Reuters’ poll. Fixed asset investment for 2022 rose by 5.1%, slightly above the 5% expected by Reuters. Infrastructure investment on a year-to-date basis grew faster in December than in November, while investment into manufacturing slowed its growth. Real estate investment fell by 10% in 2022, a steeper drop than recorded for the year through November. The unemployment rate in cities was 5.5.% as of December, while that of younger people ages 16 to 24 remained far higher at 16.7%. “The foundation of (the) domestic economic recovery is not solid as the international situation is still complicated and severe while the domestic triple pressure of demand contraction, supply shock and weakening expectations is still looming,” the statistics bureau said in a release. Read more about China from CNBC Pro Hedge funds are aggressively buying Chinese stocks, betting on a deeper, but shorter Covid setback Morgan Stanley names its top pick in Chinese tech — and gives it over 70% upside China’s reopening has gotten Wall Street excited. Here’s how the pros are playing it Last year, locals’ penchant to save soared to record highs. Uncertainty about future income remained high. Youth unemployment hit a record high of nearly 20% in July. Retail sales also started to decline year-on-year in October. China’s other major growth drivers have tapered off. Real estate remained in a slump, despite authorities’ easing financing restrictions for developers and homebuyers. Exports started to fall in October on a year-over-year basis — the first decline since May 2020, according to Wind Information. In December, exports and imports both fell, albeit by slightly less than analysts expected. Economists anticipate a drop in demand for Chinese goods from an economic slowdown in the EU and U.S. China’s leaders are set to announce the full-year GDP growth target in March at an annual parliamentary meeting. It will be the first such gathering since Chinese President Xi Jinping consolidated his power in October at a national congress of the Communist Party of China.
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