Thread: The View, from China

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

They all

Who are this group? Some identification would be useful to substantiate your opinion.

Most normal people, but obviously not you oh woe

Originally Posted by sabang

^^ Yes, it would be- Covid first hit December 2019. GDP growth 2020 was a 'mere' 2.3%.

But during a year when a crippling pandemic plunged major world economies into recession, China has clearly come out on top. The expansion also beat expectations. The International Monetary Fund, for example, predicted that China's economy would grow 1.9% in 2020. It's the only major world economy the IMF expected to grow at all.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/17/economy/china-gdp-2020-intl-hnk/index.html

…… and the rest of the world knows how they did it. Stealing the ideas and intellectual property of other nations, and using the mass of cheap labour to produce very poor facsimiles of original patented works. Chinese produced goods have always been a metaphor indicating cheap shoddy workmanship.

Not content with that, the Chinese have used the brand names that moved to China to produce better quality fakes, especially for the domestic market, (Nike, Addidas etc).
Not content with that, the Chinese high street is dominated by fake trade mark corporations using obvious attempts to usurp brands made famous by others hard work.

China is responsible for around 80% of world wide copies of stolen brand name fakes. In 2017 that was the equivalent of some 461 billion dollars of value lost to international brands, despite the introduction of IP rights legislation.

Did the Chinese benefit from the arrival of a virus on a global scale? The jury is still out on that one, but their response to Covid-19 has proven to be less than stellar.
Can they be trusted as a world economic power while such trickery is exposed, and their responses are worryingly flawed, just like their attempt to take advantage of global brand names?

The Asian habit of walking away from loss of face is less than comforting in Chinese hands.

Among this enormous sample group known as normal people, it is quite possible to approve of Uncle Xi and the job he is doing as General Secretary of the CPC, but still disapprove of his draconian 'Zero Covid' policy and the disruption it is causing.

^ Sour grapes swish. That's all. On a societal and governmental level, rather than learning to complain (the poms sure don't need lessons) I suggest we learn how to compete.

Originally Posted by OhOh

Who are this group? Some identification would be useful to substantiate your opinion.

All the ones that aren't snivelling Mr. Shithole sycophants like you hoohoo.

Originally Posted by sabang

Among this enormous sample group known as normal people, it is quite possible to approve of Uncle Xi and the job he is doing as General Secretary of the CPC, but still disapprove of his draconian 'Zero Covid' policy and the disruption it is causing.

^ Sour grapes swish. That's all. On a societal and governmental level, rather than learning to complain (the poms sure don't need lessons) I suggest we learn how to compete.

Talking of snivelling sycophants, oh look it's sabang.

Taipei, Taiwan – As Shanghai’s strict lockdown grinds towards its second month, expatriate residents are heading for the exits, a trend that in the long term could threaten the city’s status as a global business hub.

The government’s draconian restrictions have prompted rare rebukes from foreign business groups and resulted in the United States ordering all non-emergency staff at its consulate to evacuate.

The British Chamber of Commerce has estimated that international schools are on track to lose 40 percent of their staff by the time the upcoming school year gets under way.

In an online survey targeted at expats earlier this month, 85 percent of the almost 1,000 respondents said they were considering leaving China due to their experience of the lockdown.

“This has been a long time coming,” Alex Duncan, founder of Shanghai-based marketing startup KAWO, told Al Jazeera. “There has been a huge exodus growing since COVID first began. But this lockdown forced those who’d been considering leaving for a while to make a final decision.”

The trend suggests Shanghai could be following the trajectory of Hong Kong, which has experienced an exodus of foreign residents and businesses amid sharply deteriorating rights and freedoms and a draconian “dynamic zero-COVID” strategy that has cut the city off from the world for more than two years.

With the heaviest concentration of foreign business activity of any city in China, Shanghai’s fate could prove even more decisive to investor confidence and the overall business environment in the world’s second-largest economy.

“Hong Kong was also once a gateway into China for foreign companies, but as China developed… Shanghai became a stronger base for business operations and over 700 foreign companies have regional headquarters in Shanghai today,” Kenneth Jarrett, senior adviser on China at Albright Stonebridge Group, told Al Jazeera.

“The foreign business community plays a major role,” Jarrett added. “Foreign companies account for 20 percent of Shanghai’s employment, 50 percent of its R&D, and 67 percent of the trade value of imports and exports, per government statistics.”

Bill Russo, the founder of Automobility, a consultancy focusing on China’s automotive industry, described Shanghai as “irreplaceable” for the foreign business community.

“There is nowhere else in China that comes even close for foreigners in terms of a favourable business environment to operate in,” Russo told Al Jazeera, saying China had given a new lease of life to the global automotive market in recent decades.

Russo said he and many other entrepreneurs felt fortunate to have been a part of China’s once-in-a-lifetime economic miracle but the country was losing its lustre.
“China had that going for it, and we need to give it credit, but I’m sad to say I’m not sure if it does any more,” he said.

Longer-term trend

The pandemic is accelerating a longer-term trend. The number of foreigners in Shanghai fell more than 20 percent from 208,000 in 2011 to about 163,000 in 2021. The drop has been even more extreme in Beijing, where the number of foreign residents declined 40 percent since 2010 to about 63,000 last year.

Russo said he was surprised when he drew stares from locals during his last visit to the capital, something that rarely happened when he lived in Beijing between 2004 and 2013.

“You’ve become exotic again,” he said, asking if a similar change could happen in Shanghai.

Jarrett, the adviser at Albright Stonebridge Group, said that while there is reason to be concerned, it remains premature to declare an exodus from Shanghai.

“China is a market of strategic importance and one (most foreign multinationals) have a long-term commitment to,” he said. “We might see an accelerated effort to localize further the ranks of senior management.”

Money flows look to be localizing too. China has experienced an unprecedented outflow of foreign capital in recent weeks. A survey by the American Chamber of Commerce concluded most US firms in China have essentially frozen investment plans for 2022.

“This is not only impacting the inflow of foreign capital into China, but we’re also seeing more Chinese startups turn away from international markets, where they had gone before, to raise capital domestically,” said Russo.

The reshoring of Chinese capital coincides with a growing preference among VC firms for homegrown entrepreneurs.

“There is a pervasive feeling that we (foreign entrepreneurs) no longer bring a unique advantage,” said Duncan, the start-up founder. “That only locals can really succeed in China now.”

Duncan said this shift follows the maturing of China’s domestic market, which now needs less input from international investment than in its heady years of rapid growth. This mirrors the changing character of Shanghai’s service sector, too.

“You certainly wouldn’t set up a business targeting expats these days,” he said.

Growing anger and frustration within the foreign business community has done little to shift policy. Despite mounting social and economic costs, Chinese President Xi Jinping has repeatedly defended the “zero-COVID” approach, telling an economic forum last week that the priority must be to “defend people’s lives and health”.

“The issue is to make sure what’s happening now doesn’t become permanent,” Ker Gibbs, who was president of AmCham Shanghai from 2019 to 2021, told Al Jazeera.
“Chinese authorities seem to have made their decision on how to manage COVID, and there’s little we can do to influence that.”

“I tried hard to get them to view COVID as a shared global problem… COVID doesn’t see borders, and neither do vaccines…” Gibbs added. “China should have approved a high efficacy mRNA vaccine a year ago, without regard for where it came from. Now they’re stuck.”

Jarrett said the best hope business groups have is being able to convince authorities to tweak, rather than abandon, the controversial policy in order to minimise the economic disruption. On Monday, authorities said they plan to shift to more targeted enforcement of restrictions in smaller zones around confirmed cases.

“Thus, you’ll see that the chambers (of commerce) are offering specific suggestions about logistical obstacles and the movement of people as well as providing the government with a reality check on those measures in place that may not be working as intended,” he said.

Duncan said that there did not appear to be a consistent position within the government on the need to retain foreign businesses and talent.

“The Shanghai Foreign Investment Bureau is not happy with the situation and still wants to keep Shanghai open and remain a vibrant, multicultural global centre on par with say New York or Paris,” he said, but they are “are up against more restrictive agencies, like immigration”.

Russo, a New Yorker, said Shanghai had lost the allure that once reminded him of his native city.

“If anything is tragic about the last couple of months, it is that the pearl has lost its shine,” he said.

“People are going to places where they have the best chance of living life as it was before, they are trying to go back to normal. We’re not sure what it will be like on the other side and we’re not there yet… but if this is (China’s) new normal, many more will leave.”

‘Pearl has lost its shine’: Shanghai expats eye the exit (msn.com)

Originally Posted by sabang

Among this enormous sample group known as normal people, it is quite possible to approve of Uncle Xi and the job he is doing as General Secretary of the CPC, but still disapprove of his draconian 'Zero Covid' policy and the disruption it is causing.

^ Sour grapes swish. That's all. On a societal and governmental level, rather than learning to complain (the poms sure don't need lessons) I suggest we learn how to compete.

So nice that you can claim membership of that group of normal people, when the reality is, you are just another ignorant irrelevance.
Ignore PRC flaws if you wish, along with the democracy envisioned by the country you choose to live in.

Nice dose of armchair politics you have there. You’re funny.

^^ Maybe they caught the back pedaling bug from HK? Or was it you.

More ad hom, childish irrelevance from the usual suspects. How surprising none of you has even had a decent job, or career- believe me it shines through. The Politics of Envy.

He even whines like a chinky.

Originally Posted by sabang

More ad hom, childish irrelevance from the usual suspects. How surprising none of you has even had a decent job, or career- believe me it shines through. The Politics of Envy.

We only have your word for the stellar career you claim to have enjoyed in HK, about 16 years ago. Perhaps things have changed in your absence. Such a long time ago …..

Hoohoo's favourite sort of post: Chinky whining.

The Chinese government is not only mistreating Uyghurs within China's borders, it is hunting them down abroad — with help from countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates — to clamp down on criticism of Beijing’s repression of Muslim minorities.

The scale of the Chinese Ministry of State Security’s efforts to harass, detain and extradite Uyghurs from around the world, and the cooperation it is getting from governments in the Middle East and North Africa, is described in unprecedented detail in a new report, “Great Wall of Steel,” by the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States.

More than 5,500 Uyghurs outside of China have been targeted by Beijing, hit with cyberattacks and threats to family members who remain in China, and more than 1,500 Uyghurs have been detained or forced to return to China to face imprisonment and torture in police custody, according to the report.

“It is the first major study to place the Xinjiang humanitarian crisis in a global context, showing the international dimension of Beijing’s campaign to suppress the Uyghurs,” said the report’s author, Bradley Jardine, a Schwartzman fellow at the Wilson Center and director of research at the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs.

The forced repatriations to China are ongoing.

On April 13, Saudi Arabia deported a Uyghur woman and her 13-year-old daughter to China, where they risk being detained in the vast web of “re-education camps” in western China’s Xinjiang Province. The girl’s father and another Uyghur, a Muslim scholar, continue to be detained in the kingdom. It is unclear if any of them were formally charged.

Anthropologist Adrian Zenz, who has studied and documented Beijing’s systematic repression of Uyghurs, says Beijing is using economic might and gifts of infrastructure projects — its global Belt and Road initiative — to pressure countries, including those with majority Muslim populations that might be sympathetic to the Uyghurs’ plight.

“The Chinese are quite scared of what Muslim populations think of their treatment of the Uyghurs and have exerted particular effort in influencing government and popular opinion in those countries,” said Zenz, who is a senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit based in Washington.

Camps for Uyghurs

Chinese authorities in Xinjiang began rounding up women and men in 2017 — largely Muslims from the Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz ethnic minorities — and detaining them in camps designed to rid them of terrorist or extremist leanings.

From 1 million to 2 million Uyghurs and members of other minorities from Xinjiang are believed to be held in the camps, where they are forced to study Marxism, renounce their religion, work in factories and face abuse, according to human rights groups and first-hand accounts. Beijing says these “re-education camps” provide vocational training and are necessary to fight extremism. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment on this article.

According to the report, what scholars call “transnational repression,” ranging from online harassment to detention and extradition, has taken place in 44 countries, and Uyghurs have been threatened and intimidated in United States, Japan and across the European Union. More than 1,500 detentions and forced returns to China have occurred since 1997, more than 1,300 of them since 2014.

The report breaks down the repression into three distinct stages. From 1997 to 2007, 89 Uyghurs were detained or deported by local security services primarily in South and Central Asia. In the second phase, from 2008 to 2013, 126 Uyghurs were targeted primarily in Southeast Asia. And in the ongoing third phase, from 2014 to present, 1,364 Uyghurs have been detained, extradited or rendered from 18 countries concentrated in the Middle East and North Africa.

The report is based on a database built by Jardine in partnership with the Uyghur Human Rights Project and the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs called "China’s Transnational Repression of Uyghurs Dataset." Researchers culled news reports and government documents and conducted interviews with Uyghurs to compile the comprehensive list of documented instances of persecution outside of China. Reporting by Jardine and NBC News indicates that the scale is likely more extensive than is officially reported.

The database includes 424 cases of Uyghurs forcibly returned to China, most since 2014, when the Chinese Communist Party launched its own “War on Terror.”

China’s secret service has relied on foreign governments in many cases and Interpol in some cases to help repatriate Uyghurs they wish to control, according to the report.

“This changes the Uyghur story by making clear that China is not only mistreating Uyghurs within China’s borders, but is also pursuing them internationally, through both legal and illegal channels, on a large scale,” said Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute. “China is pursuing, harassing, and detaining Chinese Uyghurs around the world and returning them to China for punishment whenever possible.”

Many of the Uyghurs in the database have been detained and sent back to China without being charged with a crime, while others have faced accusations ranging from missing passports and visas to terrorism. Some were accused of making or associating with individuals who have made political statements critical of Beijing’s repressive policies in Xinjiang, while others were deported merely for having studied religion abroad. The database includes 60 documented cases of Uyghurs accused of promoting or partaking in separatism or terrorism or being linked to an extremist group.

In Morocco, a Uyghur human rights activist and journalist critical of China’s policies remains imprisoned following an Interpol red notice against him issued at Beijing’s request. While Interpol later withdrew its notice citing its bylaws forbidding persecution on political, religious or ethnic grounds, a Moroccan court approved an extradition request by China in 2021.

In a statement to NBC News, an Interpol spokesperson said that a “specialized task force” reviews every red notice request to ensure compliance with the organization’s rules, taking into account information available at the time of publication, and can re-examine any notice if new information emerges, as it did in the Morocco case. “[Interpol’s] General Secretariat is constantly reviewing, assessing and updating its procedures to ensure the greatest level of integrity in the system, and trust in its work,” the spokesperson said.

Saudi Arabia, which appears on China’s list of “suspicious” countries for Uyghurs to travel to, has increasingly cooperated with Beijing. Saudi authorities have deported at least six Uyghurs to China in the last four years who were either making pilgrimages to Mecca or living in the country legally, according to the report.

“This is complete callousness [on the part of Saudi Arabia] knowing what will happen to these Uyghurs when they get to China,” Zenz said. “The Chinese government wants to cleanse Uyghurs worldwide so that there are no pockets of Uyghurness outside of China’s borders that are not in line with Beijing’s narrative.”

In 2017 Egyptian police rounded up Uyghur students at a university in Cairo and deported them to China and elsewhere in the Middle East. Some escaped to Dubai only to face detention there, according to the report.

“I have learned from interviews with Uyghur sources in the UAE that Chinese police coordinated the Egypt crackdowns with Dubai. Uyghur students who attempted to flee to the UAE from Egypt were picked up as a part of this coordination,” Jardine wrote in the report.

In a statement emailed to NBC News, a government spokesperson said the UAE government “categorically rejects” the allegations, calling them “baseless.”

“The UAE follows all recognized global norms and procedures established by international organizations such as Interpol in the detainment, interrogation, and transfer of fugitives sought by foreign governments.”

In 2020, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE joined 42 other countries in signing a letter supporting China’s campaign of mass detention in the Xinjiang region.

The embassies of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Morocco did not respond to requests for comment.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/c...ries-rcna24987

China-SE Asia trade up as production resumes

By ZHONG NAN | China Daily | Updated: 2022-04-28 07:26

"With many Southeast Asian countries resuming factory production as well as imports of more industrial intermediates from China, both shipping costs and trade volume between the two sides have risen significantly this year, exporters and forwarders said on Wednesday."March usually is the peak season for global clients to purchase summer accessories. However, we received many additional orders from Southeast Asia in the second half of this month," said Zhang Shengxian, an exporter of jewelry accessories based at Yiwu International Trade Market in Zhejiang province.

"The goods orders placed by our Southeast Asian clients have a distinct characteristic－demand for a short production and delivery cycle. We are desperately trying to catch up," Zhang said.

While shipping costs for a container shipped from ports in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, to ports on the west coast of the United States have dropped from the peak of $15,000 in the second half of 2021 to around $8,000 this month, it still costs a high $1,800 to ship such a box from Ningbo-Zhoushan Port in Zhejiang province to Port of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.

The corresponding figure for shipping to Haiphong Port in Vietnam is even higher, said Ye Jian, vice-president of Ningbo Port Southeast Logistics Group Co Ltd in Zhejiang province.
The forwarder said that starting from the second half of March, shipment volume boomed on the routes connecting Ningbo-Zhoushan Port to ports in Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam. This caused freight rates to rebound gradually.

Before COVID-19, the average freight rate from China to Southeast Asia was between $300 and $400 per twenty-foot equivalent unit or TEU container. It had, however, risen tenfold to nearly $4,000 per box in mid-2021. Owing to sufficient shipping capacity, the price dropped to between $1,200 and $1,300 in January this year, data from the Beijing-based China Container Industry Association showed.

Because of the relatively short distance, it normally takes three or four days for a container ship to complete a voyage. Many shipping lines prefer to deploy small and medium-sized container vessels on the routes connecting China with member economies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Thanks to the complementary trade structure, ASEAN members' resumption of production has notably stimulated exports of China's industrial intermediates and commodities, including processing equipment and their components, textile yarn, motorcycles, clothing, refined oil, wires and cables, as well as other manufacturing parts.

Yu Genlai, head of the statistics unit of Haishu Customs, a branch of Ningbo Customs, said the city exported 5.8 billion yuan ($885 million) worth of goods to Southeast Asian countries in March, up 11.5 percent year-on-year.

During the same month, Ningbo's exports of high-tech products to the region increased by 80.1 percent year-on-year. Shipments of mechanical and electrical products, textiles, clothing and plastic products have all achieved double-digit growth, Customs data showed.

High complementarity in the industrial and supply chains, free trade deals at the regional level, and a new international land-sea trade corridor will continue to boost the close trade relations between China and ASEAN members in the coming years, said Zhang Jianping, director-general of the China Center for Regional Economic Cooperation in Beijing.

Trade between China and ASEAN grew by 8.4 percent year-on-year to 1.35 trillion yuan in the first quarter of this year. The region has reemerged as China's largest trading partner in March after the European Union surpassed it in the first two months of this year, data from China's General Administration of Customs showed. Ocean shipping activities between the two sides have been busy.

Cargo value generated by the China-Vietnam cross-border freight train services has more than tripled since the beginning of the year. This highlights wider trade between China and Vietnam and a stable supply chain for Southeast Asia as well, further enriched by the implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement since Jan 1.

The Pingxiang Railway Port－the only cross-border railway port in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region－saw trade value reach 6.32 billion yuan in the first quarter of this year, up 240.7 percent year-on-year, data from Nanning Customs showed."

China-SE Asia trade up as production resumes - Chinadaily.com.cn

Iran defines relations with China

While welcoming Beijing’s defense minister, Tehran called for a strategic partnership to create order and stability

27 Apr, 2022 20:20

"Iran sees its relations with China as part of an effort by like-minded powers to confront US unilateralism and create stability and order, President Ebrahim Raisi told Beijing's visiting Defense Minister Wei Fenghe on Wednesday.Raisi said that the successful implementation of the 25-year strategic cooperation agreement between the two countries, signed in 2021, was a priority for Tehran, according to state media.
“Confronting unilateralism and creating stability and order is possible through the cooperation of independent and like-minded powers,” Raisi was quoted as saying by the IRNA news agency. He added that the current “regional and global developments show more than ever the value of Iran-China strategic cooperation.”

Wei said his visit was aimed at “improving the strategic defense cooperation” between Tehran and Beijing, which would have a “remarkable” impact on fighting terrorism and defusing unilateralism, “particularly in the current critical and tense situation.”

Wei also met with Iranian Defense Minister General Mohammed Reza Ashtiani and reportedly invited him to visit China. In their meeting, Ashtiani stressed “the need to counter American hegemony in the world by strengthening multilateralism,” according to a statement by the Iranian Defense Ministry.
Ashtiani also criticized the US military presence in the Middle East and elsewhere, saying that “wherever the US has had military presence, it has created waves of insecurity, instability, rifts, pessimism, war, destruction and displacement,” according to IRNA.
Major General Mohammed Bagheri, the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, also met with the Chinese visitor, and offered some details on the shape of their cooperation going forward.

“We agreed to expand bilateral cooperation in joint military drills, exchange of strategies, training issues and other common fields between the two countries’ armed forces so that we can provide better security for the two countries,” Bagheri told reporters in Tehran on Wednesday.
The 2021 strategic cooperation treaty has paved the way to military cooperation between Iran and China, but also a variety of economic activities ranging from oil trade to transportation and agriculture.

Iran has been under unilateral US sanctions since 2018, when the Trump administration reneged on the 2015 nuclear deal. China is one of the signatories of the original pact, along with the UK, France, Germany, and Russia. The current US government has said it wants to restore the agreement, but the talks have gone nowhere due to Washington’s refusal to lift the sanctions against Tehran. "

DDOS-GUARD

I love it. This will come back and bite the chinkies in the arse.

Originally Posted by sabang

Interesting stuff (for those interested in this stuff)-



The case study of CPEC reveals how provincial officials in China and counterparts abroad are the real drivers for the BRI.

Yes, one hands over the cake tins and the other ones receive the cake tins.

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin’s Regular Press Conference on April 28, 2022

"AFP:

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss yesterday criticized China for not condemning Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, saying that China’s failure to play by global rules would cut short its rise as a superpower. Do you have any comment? Is China concerned that refusing to condemn Russia will affect its relations with the UK and Europe?

Wang Wenbin:

You brought up British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss’s relevant remarks. I noted that she mentioned rules. International rules should be the norms governing international relations that are based on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, rather than rules defined by a certain clique or bloc. 

Ms. Truss also mentioned NATO. Since the Cold War was long over, NATO, as a product of the Cold War and the world’s largest military alliance, should have made necessary adjustments in accordance with the changing times. However, NATO has long clung to the old security concept, engaged in bloc confrontation and become a tool for certain countries to seek hegemony. NATO claims to be a defensive organization, but in fact it is constantly creating confrontation and disturbances. NATO demands that other countries abide by the basic norms of international relations, yet has wantonly waged wars and dropped bombs in sovereign states, killing and displacing innocent civilians. NATO, a military organization in the North Atlantic, has in recent years come to the Asia-Pacific region to throw its weight around and stir up conflicts. The impact of NATO’s eastward expansion on the long-term peace and stability of Europe is worth reflecting upon. NATO has messed up Europe. Is it now trying to mess up the Asia-Pacific and even the world? 

As for China’s position on the Ukraine issue, it is consistent and clear. We always make independent judgments based on the merits of each matter."

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin’s Regular Press Conference on April 28, 2022

The speech being discussed above:

Britain’s Truss tells China its rise depends on playing by the rules

EURACTIV.com with Reuters

28 Apr 2022

Britain’s Truss tells China its rise depends on playing by the rules – EURACTIV.com

Got the the ol' chinkies whinging again, get in there Liz.

Sharp work from the mortuary workers.