Eternal Chinese

China-backed buyout fund founder charged in U.S. insider trading case

By Liana B. Baker
China's fifth column: Canyon Bridge Capital Partners

SAN FRANCISCO -- The founder of a private equity firm with Chinese state backing has been charged with insider trading related to the attempted acquisition of Lattice Semiconductor Corp, U.S. authorities said on Monday.
The charges against Benjamin Chow represent a major blow to the buyout firm he created just last year, Canyon Bridge Capital Partners, with capital from China Reform Holdings, a Chinese state-back fund. 

The indictment comes as Chow’s fund Canyon Bridge seeks to close its 550 million pound ($737 million) acquisition of British chipmaker Imagination Technologies Group Plc, after its $1.3 billion takeover of Lattice was blocked by U.S. President Donald Trump last month over national security concerns.
The Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Monday that Chow had conspired to commit securities fraud by sending material nonpublic information regarding the Lattice deal to an unnamed friend and former colleague.
A separate indictment by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in February against that former colleague of Chow identified him as Michael Yin, a former Hong Kong-based private equity executive who had become a hedge fund manager.
Chow, a U.S. citizen born in China, is accused in the new indictment of tipping off Yin, who reaped $5 million of profit thanks to knowledge that the deal was in the works. 

Yin and China Reform Holdings could not be reached for comment.
Chow, 46, passed along information to Yin at in-person coffee meetings in Beijing, voice messages and text exchanges ahead of the announcement of Canyon Bridge’s deal to buy Lattice.
A Canyon Bridge spokesman said in a statement that it was aware of the indictment and that it is focused on completing its planned acquisition of Imagination. 

The fund added that it is not itself subject to any investigation.
Imagination did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Lattice declined to comment.
The indictment also said that Chow lied to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in response to inquiries in April about possible insider trading.
The charges against Chow carry a potential prison sentence and maximum fines of $5 million.
Canyon Bridge's funding can be traced back to China's State Council, the top decision-making body of the government, Reuters has previously reported. 

Canyon Bridge has been trying this year to attract investors from outside China. 

The indictment against its founder could represent a hurdle to these efforts.
Another Canyon Bridge partner, Ray Bingham, has also faced problems. 

The tech veteran joined Canyon Bridge last year but had to leave the boards of several tech companies, including Oracle Corp ORCL.O, due to concerns about his involvement with a firm with links to the Chinese state. 

Bingham could not be reached for comment Monday.

Sina Delenda Est

China has flown bomber jets in the vicinity of Guam and practiced attacks on the island.

• Chinese military activities are causing the United States to worry about the country as the primary threat 
• Chinese bombers have also flown near Hawaii.

By Stacey Yuen

A Chinese Xi'an H-6M bomber aircraft is displayed at an exhibition in Guangdong, China, on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2014.

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii -- China has practiced bombing runs targeting the U.S. territory of Guam, one of a host of activities making U.S. forces here consider Beijing the most worrisome potential threat in the Pacific, even as North Korea pursues a nuclear warhead.
Beyond the well-publicized military build up on man-made islands in the South China Sea, China has built up its fleet of fighters to the extent that it operates a daily, aggressive campaign to contest airspace over the East China Sea, South China Sea and beyond, U.S. military officials here in the region said.

China has also taken several other non-military steps that are viewed as attempts to make it much more difficult for the U.S. to operate there and defend allies in the future.
The officials described the escalatory behaviors by China in a briefing they provided to reporters traveling with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford.
The officials said despite increased threats by North Korea as it pursues its nuclear weapons program, a conflict with North Korea is still viewed as “a fight we can win,” they said. 

With China, they said they “worry about the way things are going.”
China “is very much the long-term challenge in the region,” said Dunford, who was not part of the briefing. 

“When we look at the capabilities China is developing, we’ve got to make sure we maintain the ability to meet our alliance commitments in the Pacific.”
Over the last year Japan has scrambled 900 sorties to intercept Chinese fighters challenging Japan’s Air Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ. 

In 2013 China announced borders for its own ADIZ, borders which overlapped Japan’s zone and included Japan's Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. 

Since then, increased interactions between Japanese and Chinese aircraft ultimately resulted in Japan relocating two fighter squadrons to Naha Air Base on Okinawa to more easily meet the incursions, the officials said.
“We now have, on a daily basis, armed Chinese Flankers and Japanese aircraft” coming in close proximity of each other, the officials said.
Intercepts between the U.S. and China are also increasing, the officials said.
“It’s very common for PRC aircraft to intercept U.S. aircraft,” these days, the officials said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
Chinese aircraft are also testing U.S. air defense identification zones, the officials said.
Chinese H-6K “Badger” bombers upgraded with 1,000 mile range air launched cruise missiles are testing U.S. defense zones around Guam, the officials said.
The Badgers run frequent flights to get within range of the U.S. territory, they said.
“The PRC is practicing attacks on Guam,” the officials said.
Those bombers are also flying around Hawaii, they said.
The vast majority of the flights occur without an incident, for example, a report of unsafe flying. 

The officials said they follow U.S. Pacific Command guidance on how to respond in those events, so they do not further escalate.
Military-to-military relationships between the U.S. and China remain open, if guarded, the officials said. 

Both Chinese and U.S. officials meet twice a year at the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement conference, where the incursions are discussed along with other security topics.
The expanded Chinese fighter and bombers runs are just one part of the country’s effort to “win without fighting” to gradually normalize the gains China has made in the South China Sea, the officials said.
There are other pressures. 

For example, the officials said they estimate the People’s Liberation Army Navy has placed as many as 150,000 Chinese commercial fishing vessels under its direction, even though they are not official Chinese navy. 

The Chinese fishing vessels make coordinated attacks on Vietnamese fishermen, the officials said, ramming and sinking boats near the Paracel Islands. 

China took the territory from Vietnam in the 1970s and has militarized some of the islands. 

The area remains a traditional fishing area for the Vietnamese,
Taken together, China’s activities suggest it is preparing to defend expanded boundaries, the U.S. officials worry.
“I think they will be ready to enforce it when they decide to declare the Nine-Dash line as theirs,” one of the officials said, referring to the territorial line China has identified that would notionally put the entire South China Sea under Chinese control if enforced.
If unchallenged, the U.S. officials worry that China could slowly force countries away from what they describe as the “rules based order” -- essentially the standing international treaties and norms -- in the region and make them shift their security alliances to Beijing for their own economic survival.
Dunford said the U.S. would not allow that to happen.
“We view ourselves as a Pacific power,” Dunford said.
“There are some who try to create a narrative that we are not in the Pacific to stay,” he said. 

“Our message is that we are a Pacific power. We intend to stay in the Pacific. Our future economic prosperity is inextricably linked to our security and political relationships in the region.”
U.S. forces in the region are rethinking what a Pacific war would look like.
“If we find ourselves in conflict out there we will be under air attack,” the official said.
One concept they shared is “Agile Combat Employment” -- dispersing the U.S. advanced fighters concentrated at air bases in Japan and scattering them to 10-15 undeveloped and highly expeditionary airstrips on islands in the region. 

The dispersion would require the rapid dissemination of logistics support to keep those aircraft operating at their remote locations. 

The Air Force has already been practicing how to disperse the fuel, most recently in their Arctic Ace exercise, the officials said.
The idea would be that the aircraft would be so dispersed that it would make it difficult for China to prioritize what it would attack.
President Donald Trump will visit the Pacific region later this week, making stops in Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. 

Dunford said he expected that some of the security and economic concerns generated by the increased incursions and economic pressures by China would likely come up.
“If people want to view that as a focus on China they can. But it’s based on a rules-based international order,” Dunford said. 

“It’s focused on our ability to advance our national interests. We’re not going to compromise in that regard.”

Taiwan president arrives in Hawaii despite Chinese objections

Reuters

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen gives a speech during the National Day celebrations in Taipei, Taiwan, October 10, 2017.

HONOLULU -- Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen landed in Honolulu on Saturday en route to the island’s diplomatic allies among Pacific nations and set off for a visit to a Pearl Harbor memorial, despite strong objections to the visit from China.
China regards self-ruled Taiwan as sovereign territory and regularly calls it the most sensitive and important issue between it and the United States, complaining to Washington about transit stops by Taiwanese presidents.
China has not renounced the possible use of force to bring the island under its control.
Tsai, who China believes is seeking formal independence for Taiwan, left on Saturday on a week-long trip to three Pacific island allies -- Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands and the Marshall Islands -- via Honolulu and the U.S. territory of Guam.
For her part, Tsai says she wants to maintain peace with China but will defend Taiwan’s democracy and security.
Earlier this week, the U.S. State Department said Tsai’s transits through U.S. soil would be “private and unofficial” and were based on long-standing U.S. practice consistent with “our unofficial relations with Taiwan”.
It noted there was “no change to the U.S. one-China policy” which recognizes that Beijing takes the view that there is only one China, and Taiwan is part of it.
Tsai, accompanied by her entourage and members of the media, left on a short boat ride for the USS Arizona Memorial, which is built over the remains of the battleship sunk in Pearl Harbor in the Second World War, on Saturday afternoon.
The memorial, where Tsai was expected to lay a wreath, now forms a centerpiece of the World War Two Valor in the Pacific National Monument, a site administered by the National Park Service.
Donald Trump is due to visit China in less than two weeks. 

He angered Beijing last December by taking a telephone call from Tsai shortly after he won the presidential election.
The trip to the United States is Tsai’s second this year. 

In January she stopped over in Houston and San Francisco on her way to and from Latin America, visiting the headquarters of Twitter, which is blocked in China.
China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since 1949, when Mao Zedong’s Communist forces won the Chinese civil war and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled to the island.

Chinese Fifth Column

China’s secret magic weapon for worldwide influence
By James Kynge, Lucy Hornby & Jamil Anderlini

Chinese fifth column: An Australian Security Intelligence Organisation investigation sparks fears the Chinese Communist Party is influencing the Australian political system as questions are raised over foreign political donations.
Sun Chunlan, head of the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee in Beijing on March 15, 2015.

On the Google map of Beijing there is an empty quarter, an urban block next to the Communist party's leadership compound in which few of the buildings are named.

At street level, the aura of anonymity is confirmed. 

Uniformed guards stand by grand entrances checking official cars as they come and go. 

But there are no identifying signs; the sole information divulged is on brass plaques that bear the street name and building numbers.
The largest of these nameless compounds is 135 Fuyou Street, the offices of the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist party, known as United Front for short. 

This is the headquarters of China's push for global "soft power", a multi-faceted but largely confidential mission that Xi Jinping, China's president who on Wednesday was confirmed in place until at least 2022, has elevated into one of the paramount objectives of his administration.
The building, which stretches for some 200m at street level, signifies the scale of China's ambition. Winning "hearts and minds" at home and abroad through United Front work is crucial to realising the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese people", Xi has said. 

Yet the type of power exercised by the cadres who work behind the neoclassical façade of 135 Fuyou Street is often anything but soft.
A Financial Times investigation into United Front operations in several countries shows a movement directed from the pinnacle of Chinese power to charm, co-opt or attack well-defined groups and individuals. 

Its broad aims are to win support for China's political agenda, accumulate influence overseas and gather key information.
United Front declined interview requests for this article and its website yields only sparse insights. However, a teaching manual for its cadres, obtained by the Financial Times, sets out at length and in detail the organisation's global mission in language that is intended both to beguile and intimidate.
It exhorts cadres to be gracious and inclusive as they try to "unite all forces that can be united" around the world. 

But it also instructs them to be ruthless by building an "iron Great Wall" against "enemy forces abroad" who are intent on splitting China's territory or hobbling its development.
"Enemy forces abroad do not want to see China rise and many of them see our country as a threat and rival, so they use a thousand ploys and a hundred strategies to frustrate and repress us," according to the book, titled the "China United Front Course Book".
"The United Front . . . is a big magic weapon which can rid us of 10,000 problems in order to seize victory," adds another passage in the book, which identifies its authors and editorial board as top-level United Front officials.
In a rare news conference this month, Zhang Yijiong, the executive vice-minister of United Front, said: "If the Chinese people want to be powerful and realise the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, then under the leadership of the Communist Party we need to fully and better understand the use of this 'magic weapon'." 

Sun Chunlan, the head of United Front, this week retained her position in the newly selected politburo.
The organisation's structure exhibits the extraordinary breadth of its remit. 

Its nine bureaux cover almost all of the areas in which the Communist party perceives threats to its power. 

The third bureau, for instance, is responsible for work in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and among about 60m overseas Chinese in more than 180 countries. 

The second bureau handles religion. 

The seventh and ninth are responsible respectively for Tibet and Xinjiang — two restive frontier areas that are home to Tibetan and Uighur minority nationalities.
Merriden Varrall, director at the Lowy Institute, an Australian think-tank, says that under Xi there has been a distinct toughening in China's soft power focus. 

The former emphasis on reassuring others that China's rise will be peaceful is giving way to a more forceful line. 

"There has been a definite shift in emphasis since Xi Jinping took over," says Ms Varrall. 

"There is still a sense that reassuring others is important, but there is also a sense that China must dictate how it's perceived and that the world is biased against China."
The hard edge of United Front is evident in its current struggle over the future reincarnation of the 14th Dalai Lama, the 82-year-old exiled Tibetan spiritual leader who Beijing castigates as a separatist bent on prising Tibet from Chinese control.
Tradition dictates that after a Dalai Lama dies, the high priesthood of Tibetan Lamaism searches for his reincarnation using a series of portents that lead them to his reborn soul in a child. 

The leaders of Tibetan Buddhism live in exile with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, northern India, raising the prospect that a reincarnation may be found somewhere beyond China's borders.
Beijing is alarmed. 

The last thing it wants is for the man it has called a "splittist" and a "wolf in monk's clothing" to be reincarnated in territory it does not control. 

United Front is charged with crafting a solution. 

The plan so far, officials said, is for the Communist party — which is officially atheist — to oversee a reincarnation search themselves within Chinese territory. 

Partly to this end, it has helped create a database of more than 1,300 officially approved "living Buddhas" inside Tibet who will be called on when the time comes to endorse Beijing's choice.
"The reincarnation of all living Buddhas has to be approved by the Chinese central government," says Renqingluobu, an ethnic Tibetan official and a leader of the Association for International Culture Exchange of Tibet, a United Front affiliate.
"If [the Dalai Lama] decides to find the reincarnation in a certain place outside of Tibet, then Tibetans will wonder what sort of reincarnation is this and the masses will think that religion must be false, empty and imaginary after all," said Mr Renqingluobu on a recent visit to London.

The hard edge of United Front is evident in its current struggle over the future reincarnation of the 14th Dalai Lama.

The Tibetan government-in-exile criticises the "preposterous" plan, adding in a statement from Dharamsala: "If the Chinese truly believe that the 14th Dalai Lama [the current one] is a 'leading separatist who is bent on destroying the unity of the motherland', what is the point of looking for another one?"
Venturing into the realm of the metaphysical may appear counter-intuitive for atheist United Front operatives, but all of China's religious organisations come under the auspices of United Front work. 

These include the Buddhist Association of China, the Chinese Taoist Association, the Islamic Association of China, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and the Three-Self (Protestant) Patriotic Movement.
This portfolio means that United Front also leads China's delicate talks to repair fractious relations with the Vatican.

The main sticking point is Beijing's insistence that all religions in China must regard the Communist party as their highest authority — a position which in Catholicism is occupied by the Pope.
The two sides have been manoeuvring, mostly in secret, for more than a decade to find common ground. 

There have been signs of progress in recent years, with both sides agreeing to recognise the appointment of five new Chinese bishops in 2015 and 2016.
Nevertheless, officially at least, United Front remains resistant. 

"We must absolutely not allow any foreign religious group or individual to interfere in our country's religions," the United Front book says.
For Beijing, growing social diversity after nearly four decades of economic reform has emphasised United Front's value in maintaining loyalty and support beyond the mainstream Communist faithful. Successive leaders have lauded United Front but none more so than Xi, who made several moves in 2014 and 2015 to upgrade the status and power of the organisation.
Xi has expanded the scope of United Front work, adding the ninth bureau for work in Xinjiang, meaning that the organisation now oversees China's fierce struggle against separatism in the region. He also decreed the establishment of a Leading Small Group dedicated to United Front activity, signifying a direct line of command from the politburo to United Front.
But perhaps Xi's most important step to date has been to designate United Front as a movement for the "whole party". 

This has meant a sharp increase since 2015 in the number of United Front assignees to posts at the top levels of party and state. 

Another consequence has been that all Chinese embassies now include staff formally tasked with United Front work.
This has given a boost to United Front efforts to woo overseas Chinese. 

Chinese Fifth Column

Even though more than 80 per cent of around 60m overseas Chinese have taken on the citizenship of more than 180 host countries, they are still regarded as fertile ground by Beijing. 

"The unity of Chinese at home requires the unity of the sons and daughters of Chinese abroad," says the teaching manual.
It recommends a number of ways in which United Front operatives should win support from overseas Chinese. 

Some are emotional, stressing "flesh and blood" ties to the motherland. 

Others are ideological, focusing on a common participation in the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese people". 

But mainly they are material, providing funding or other resources to overseas Chinese groups and individuals deemed valuable to Beijing's cause.
One UK-based Chinese academic who has attended several United Front events describes how the experience begins with an invitation to a banquet or reception, usually from one of a host of "friendship associations" that work under the United Front banner, to celebrate dates in the Chinese calendar. 

Patriotic speeches set the mood as outstanding students — particularly scientists — are wooed to return to China with "sweeteners" in the form of scholarships and stipends, she adds. 

These stipends are funded by a number of United Front subsidiary organisations such as the China Overseas-Educated Scholars Development Foundation, according to foundation documents.
The largesse, however, may come with obligations. 

In Australia, the Chinese Students and Scholars Association acts to serve the political ends of the local Chinese embassy, according to Alex Joske and Wu Lebao, students at Australian National University. 

In one example, when Li Keqiang visited Canberra this year, the CSSA fielded hundreds of Chinese students to drown out anti-China protesters on the street, Mr Joske and Mr Wu wrote in a blog.
To be clear, by no means do all Chinese students in Australia or elsewhere in the west see themselves as agents for soft power. 

However, Chinese and Australian academics have noted that pro-Beijing militancy is on the rise.
Feng Chongyi, professor at the University of Technology Sydney, says the influence exerted by Beijing over Chinese associations in Australia has grown appreciably since the late 1990s. 

"My assessment is that they control almost all the community associations and the majority of the Chinese-language media, and now they are entering the university sector," says Prof Feng.
Away from such grassroots operations, a bigger prize is political influence in the west. 

The teaching manual notes approvingly the success of overseas Chinese candidates in elections in Toronto, Canada. 

In 2003, six were elected from 25 candidates but by 2006 the number jumped to 10 elected from among 44 candidates, it says.
"We should aim to work with those individuals and groups that are at a relatively high level, operate within the mainstream of society and have prospects for advancement," it says.
At times, however, the quest for political influence can go awry. 

New Zealand's national intelligence agency has investigated a China-born member of parliament, Jian Yang, in connection with a decade and a half he spent at leading Chinese military colleges.

Jian Yang, the most famous Chinese mole in New Zealand

A United Front operative since 1994, Mr Yang spent more than 10 years training and teaching at elite facilities including China's top linguistics academy for military intelligence officers, the Financial Times learnt. 

Between 2014 and 2016 he served on the New Zealand government's select committee for foreign affairs, defence and trade.
Anne-Marie Brady, a professor at New Zealand's University of Canterbury, has said China's growing political influence should be taken seriously. 

Noting that Canberra is planning to introduce a law against foreign interference activities, she also called for Wellington to launch a commission to investigate Chinese political lobbying.
In 2010 the director of Canada's national intelligence agency warned that several Canadian provincial cabinet ministers and government employees were "agents of influence" for China. 

In recent months, Australia has said it is concerned about Chinese intelligence operations and covert campaigns influencing the country's politics.
But over time, such setbacks may prove temporary hiccups in the projection of China's brand of hard-boiled soft power around the world.
"In the beginning the Chinese government talked about culture — Peking opera, acrobatics — as soft power," says Li Xiguang, a head of Tsinghua University's International Center for Communication Studies. 

"When Xi Jinping came to power, he was totally different from previous leaders. He said China should have full self-confidence in our culture, development road, political system and theory."
Xi's elevation of United Front's importance and power suggests that Beijing may be unwilling to tone down its efforts.

Bookseller Gui Minhai 'half free' after being detained in China for two years

Hong Kong publisher who specialised in books about China’s political elite vanished from Thailand in 2015
By Tom Phillips in Beijing

Earlier this week Chinese authorities claimed Gui had been released on 17 October although his daughter disputed that claim. 

A Swedish bookseller who spent more than two years in custody after his abduction by Chinese agents is now “half free”, a friend has claimed, amid suspicions he is still being held under guard by security officials in eastern China.
Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong-based publisher who specialised in books about China’s political elite, mysteriously vanished from his Thai holiday home in October 2015. 

He later reappeared in mainland China where he was imprisoned on charges relating to a deadly drunk-driving incident more than a decade earlier.
Gui’s disappearance – and that of four other booksellers, including one British citizen – was seen as part of a wider crackdown on Communist party opponents that has gripped China since Xi Jinping took power in 2012.
Details of Gui’s two-year detention have remained murky but he is understood to have been held for at least part of that time in the eastern port city of Ningbo. 

Earlier this week Chinese authorities claimed he had been released on 17 October, although Gui’s daughter, Angela, disputed that claim on Tuesday, telling the Guardian he had yet to contact her and appeared still to be in “some sort of custody”.
On Friday, after several days of uncertainty about Gui’s whereabouts, reports emerged that appeared to confirm his partial release.
Bei Ling, a Boston-based dissident writer and friend, said Gui was in Ningbo and living in rented accomodation. 

He said Gui held a 40-minute phone conversation with his daughter on Thursday night. 

However, Bei told the Hong Kong Free Press website that his friend was only “half free”.
Angela Gui told the Hong Kong broadcaster RTHK there were “many things that need to be clarified” about her father’s situation and declined to comment further. 

“She said she had received a phone call, but did not confirm it was from her father,” RTHK reported.
A spokesperson for Sweden’s foreign ministry said: “We have received reports from the Chinese authorities that Gui Minhai has been released and we’re doing our best to obtain more information.”
Activists suspect that rather than completely freeing Gui, Chinese authorities have moved him from a detention centre into what they call China’s “non-release release” system. 

Under this Kafka-esque system, regime opponents are nominally freed but in fact continue to live under the watch and guard of security agents.
“Non-release release” has been the fate of a number of those targeted as part of Xi’s campaign against human rights lawyers, which has seen some of the country’s leading civil rights attorneys spirited into secret detention before “reappearing” in a different form of captivity.
Bei told Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post Gui had informed relatives he wanted to travel to Germany: “But for now, he is not sure if the Chinese authorities will allow him to leave China.
“He will only enjoy true freedom if he is allowed to leave China. If he cannot leave China, he could end up just like Liu Xia,” Bei added, referring to the wife of the late Nobel laureate who has also been living under the watch of security agents since her husband’s death in July.

Speaking on Tuesday, the bookseller’s daughter said she was deeply concerned about his wellbeing: “He has allegedly been released but it looks like he is still in some sort of custody... the fact that nobody can contact him and nobody knows where he is, legally constitutes an enforced disappearance, again.”

Exactly what happened to Gui and his bookselling colleagues and why they were targeted remains a mystery. 

However, in June last year, one of the other abducted men, Lam Wing-kee, claimed he had been kidnapped by Chinese special forces as part of a coordinated effort to silence criticism of China’s leadership.
Patrick Poon, a Hong Kong-based activist for Amnesty International who is following the case, said: “Definitely he is still under surveillance otherwise the whole thing wouldn’t be so mysterious.”
“We still need to see whether the authorities will allow him to go [to Germany] and it seems to me that he will still be under surveillance for some time before he is allowed to go.”
Poon said it was also unclear whether Chinese authorities had placed conditions on Gui’s release such as “not disclosing what happened to him during his time in detention [or] requiring him not to talk about his case when he leaves China”.

Donald Trump is a moron

Why Trump’s Fawning Over China’s Xi Jinping Won’t Work
By John Cassidy

Acouple of weeks ago, The Economist put a drawing of Xi Jinping on its cover under a headline that said “The world’s most powerful man.” 

In an editorial in the same issue, the editors acknowledged that China is still no match for the United States economically or militarily. 

They noted, however, that America’s President, Donald Trump, “is weaker at home and less effective abroad than any of his recent predecessors, not least because he scorns the values and alliances that underpin American influence.” 

Xi, by contrast, “walks with swagger abroad,” the editorial continued. 

“His grip on China is tighter than any leader’s since Mao.”
Trump isn’t known to be a regular reader of The Economist, and he would no doubt dispute the magazine’s assessment of his own standing—but he appears to share its expansive view of Xi’s power and influence. 

On Wednesday, the Chinese Communist Party, at its Nineteenth Party Congress, reëlected Xi as its General Secretary and agreed to incorporate the lengthy speech he delivered as part of the official Party doctrine, an honor last accorded to Mao. 

Afterward, Trump tweeted, “Spoke to President Xi of China to congratulate him on his extraordinary elevation. Also discussed NoKo & trade, two very important subjects!”
Also on Wednesday, in an interview with Lou Dobbs, of the Fox Business Channel, Trump said, about Xi, “He’s a powerful man, I happen to think he’s a very good person... People say we have the best relationship of any President—President, because he’s called President also. Now, some people might call him the king of China. But he’s called President.” 

Trump also said he was looking forward to visiting China in a couple of weeks, as part of an Asia trip, and he said he hoped the visit would be “historic and positive.”
Commentators criticized Trump for lauding an authoritarian leader who has cracked down on dissidents and political opponents. 

That criticism is well taken: Trump’s affinity for “strongmen” is evidently undiminished, a year after his election as President. 

But, as the Economist editorial also noted, it’s not unheard of for U.S. Presidents to talk in glowing terms about their Chinese counterparts. 

Jimmy Carter described Deng Xiaoping, who put China on the road to economic reform, as “smart, tough, intelligent, frank, courageous, personable, self-assured, friendly.” 

Bill Clinton called Jiang Zemin, who served as China’s President from 1993 to 2003, a “visionary” and “a man of extraordinary intellect.”
The common ground between Carter, Clinton, and Trump is that they all wanted to elicit cooperation from the sometimes mysterious-seeming Chinese government. 

But Trump’s need is much greater than that of his predecessors. 

Having ratcheted up the rhetoric in his nuclear standoff with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, he desperately needs Xi to help him find a way to declare victory, or, at least, to save face. 

Trump and his advisers, however, are overestimating Xi’s willingness to help them.
When you listen to people close to the President talk, they sometimes make it sound as if North Korea is merely a puppet state of China, and that the government in Beijing might even be encouraging Kim’s nuclear ambitions. 

“We’re at economic war with China,” Steve Bannon told The American Prospect’s Bob Kuttner in August. 

“It’s in all their literature. They’re not shy about saying what they’re doing. One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and it’s gonna be them if we go down this path. On Korea, they’re just tapping us along. It’s just a sideshow.”
Bannon is no longer in the White House, of course. 

And the Trump advisers who deal directly with foreign policy speak in more measured ways. 

But they, too, appear to be placing a good deal of faith in Trump’s rapport with Xi, and Xi’s ability to cajole North Korea into giving up its nuclear program. 

“Trump and Xi have probably one of the closest relationships the President has with a head of state,” Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, told CNN’s Jake Tapper earlier this month. 

“As you’re aware, they’ve had two major face-to-face meetings—the summit in Mar-a-Lago, a very comprehensive bilateral in Hamburg. The President speaks to Xi on the telephone frequently. I think they’ve had eight—seven or eight calls... So rest assured that the Chinese are not confused in any way what the American policy towards North Korea or what our actions and efforts are directed at.”

But how much influence over Kim does China really have? 

Trump is being “over optimistic and unrealistic in assuming that Beijing will deliver a solution to the North Korean conundrum,” John Nilsson-Wright, a political scientist at Cambridge University and the author of “The Politics and International Relations of Modern Korea,” from 2016, wrote in the New Statesman recently. 

Although China provides North Korea with most of its food and energy, Kim has “shown no instinct to play the deferential role of a good Confucian young brother to his older neighbor,” Nilsson-Wright noted. 

In August, China called on North Korea to halt its missile tests. 

A few weeks later, on September 3rd, Kim’s forces launched another ballistic missile toward Japan just as Xi was hosting an international summit in the city of Xiamen.
In the wake of that missile launch, China agreed to support new U.N. sanctions against North Korea, and said it would stop exporting some petroleum products to the country. 

But inside China there is a good deal of skepticism about whether sanctions will have the desired effect. 

Even if China cut all its economic ties to North Korea, Kim “would still not abandon nuclear weapons,” Shen Dingli, a professor of international relations at Fudan University, told The Atlantic’s Uri Friedman. 

“China does not trust that it is able to stop North Korea. Therefore, China is unwilling to do everything it can to stop North Korea.”
Despite Xi’s elevation by the Party Congress, the Trump Administration may also be overestimating the amount of freedom he has to maneuver on this issue. 

China and North Korea have had a mutual-defense pact since 1961, which commits each country to support the other in the event of an attack by a third party—such as a preemptive strike by the United States. 

Moreover, China’s military has long feared that any U.S. attack on North Korea would be a prelude to a unification of the country, with U.S. troops and missiles moving up to the Chinese border. 

If Xi were seen to countenance any approach that might lead in that direction, he could encounter significant opposition within the Party and the military.
In view of all this, it seems unlikely that Xi will go much beyond his current stance: supporting economic sanctions and calling on the United States to enter direct talks with North Korea on the basis of Pyonyang agreeing to freeze its missile program and Washington agreeing to halt its military exercises in South Korea. 

The Trump Administration has refused to negotiate unless Kim first expresses willingness to roll back his nuclear program. 

Of course, he has said he will never do that. 

Having watched what happened to Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi after he gave up his nukes, the Chinese may think this is a logical stance on Kim’s part.
So the stalemate continues, and so does the brinkmanship. 

On Wednesday, a North Korean official told CNN that the United States should take “literally” his government’s threat to test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean. 

Trump is leaving for Asia next week. 

After two days in Japan, he will go to South Korea and address the National Assembly. 

According to the White House press office, he will “celebrate the enduring alliance and friendship between the United States and the Republic of Korea, and call on the international community to join together in maximizing pressure on North Korea.” 

Then Trump will fly to China for three days, where he will meet Xi. 

Expectations for the meeting should be tempered.

The Trudeau government overlooks China’s dangerous duplicities just to land a trade deal

Broad public ignorance of Chinese truths is an important means to achieving Ottawa’s desired ends.
By Shuvaloy Majumdar

Most of what Canadians read and hear about modern China occupies a narrow space between calculated dishonesty and aggressive deception.
A Chinese economy still overwhelmingly run through politicized structures is portrayed as a hub of free enterprise. 

A state ruled by a despotic clique is sold as a forward-thinking global leader. 

A regime bent on deploying technology to control its populace and wage cyber warfare abroad, is featured as a bastion of technological marvels. 

A country that holds little genuine affinity for Canada, beyond what will serve its own interests, is presented as a loyal, unambiguous friend.
That China is a different nation today than it was 40, 30, or even 10 years ago is undeniable. 

But the unqualified praise for the lessons Beijing belatedly learned since the 1980s must not be used to conceal how China remains captive to a deeply regressive governing ideology — a mixture of Communism, chauvinism, mercantilism, and colonialism.
Indeed, in many ways the defining story of the last few years has been the steady eclipse of Beijing’s much-vaunted agenda of “reform” by a resurgent and unapologetic pursuit of geopolitical self-interest explicitly at odds with that of its supposed Western partners.
The rise of Xi Jinping, an ultra-establishment hardliner, has been particularly revealing. 

His short reign has already made clear that the People’s Republic will be animated by solidified one-party rule, entrenchment of a neo-Communist command economy, and consolidation of a vast empire of interests abroad. 

Persistently troubling trends show no sign of slowing, including the increasing “weaponization” of Chinese commerce to elicit geopolitical submission, rigid alliances with rogue states, self-serving distortions of international law, and an aggressive defence of the so-called “Chinese model” of development unburdened by “foreign” notions of democracy and human rights.
With China’s industrialization, forays into globalization and technological innovation, the country’s economic interests have never been more globally engaged, and today they correlate directly to its more formidable military and strategic ambitions. 

China is no longer willing to hide its strength and bide its time, as the architect of its state capitalist model Deng Xiaoping had recommended long ago. 

Instead, Xi is shifting China’s posture from strategic patience toward seizing the strategic advantage — by rapidly developing China’s digital, economic, political and military arteries around the world, with Beijing as the heart of a rising and reinvigorated Middle Kingdom.
The Trudeau government is not the first in Canadian history to view China’s strength and size with reckless excitement, but it is certainly the first to channel this enthusiasm into a policy goal as substantive as free trade. 

Free trade with China, which Ottawa pursues with a dogged determination they’ve been unable to muster for much else, is marketed as a panacea to alleviate virtually everything that ails modern Canada, from sluggish economic growth to traditional insecurities of “American dependence.”
In the pursuit of these dreams, much will be sacrificed. 

Whatever other criticisms one can offer, the government’s project cannot be dismissed as naive. 

The men and women staffing the senior levels of government fully grasp the realities of the Chinese regime and its motives. 

They pursue their project not from ignorance but in spite of this knowledge.
It is clear, however, that broad public ignorance of Chinese truths is an important means to achieving Ottawa’s desired ends. 

Only then can the tough questions be dodged and appropriate skepticism dismissed. 

Global Affairs Canada, partisan journalists, and taxpayer-funded think tanks thus produce a relentless deluge of spin, half-truths, and happy talk about our Chinese friends, while condemning even the mildest voices of concern as paranoid, “red baiting,” or even racist. 

The result is an intellectual atmosphere in which honest dialogue is chilled, constrained, and stagnant.
An honest guide is needed to the unflattering truths of a country whose reputation Canada’s present leaders insist on shielding as they tighten bilateral ties. 

China is a nation whose guiding spirit is not the thoughtful pragmatism of a promising superpower, but the calculated cynicism of an insecure state. 

Collectively, we should be reminded to see China as it actually is, and not as some may wish it to be.

Rogue Nation: Where is Bookseller China ‘Released’?

The Chinese government has a history of lying about the condition of its political prisoners. 
www.hrw.org

Gui Minhai, the Swedish bookseller who was forcibly disappeared by the Chinese government in October 2015. 

Two years after Swedish national Gui Minhai vanished in Thailand on October 17, 2015, his whereabouts remain a mystery. 

Last week the Chinese government—which abducted Gui outside its borders and has detained him in China—told Swedish diplomats that Gui has been “released” after serving his sentence for an alleged traffic offense. 

Yet the Swedish authorities have not seen him, nor has his family. 

Gui may indeed have been freed – but until he is accounted for he remains forcibly disappeared.
Days after Gui’s “release,” a man claiming to be Gui called the Swedish Consulate in Shanghai, saying he would get in touch with them later because he wished to be with his sick mother. 

But Gui’s daughter says her grandmother is not ill, nor has she seen him.
Gui Minhai is the last of the five booksellers from Hong Kong Mighty Current Media who were abducted and detained in 2015 still missing. 

 One bookseller, Lam Wing-kee, revealed after his release that he was secretly detained and interrogated about the workings of the store, which sold books on the private lives of China’s top leaders.
The Chinese government has a history of lying about the condition of its political prisoners.

It claims that Liu Xia, the wife of late Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, is free, when the available information indicates otherwise. 

Twenty years after it took into custody the 6-year-old Panchen Lama—Tibet’s second most important religious figure—Beijing insists that he is “living a normal life.” 

Yet nobody else has seen or heard from him.
Sweden’s foreign minister, Margot Wallström, tweeted this week that she welcomed the news of Gui’s release. 

But until Swedish authorities can fully ascertain that Gui has been unconditionally released—­that means a private visit—they should assume he remains disappeared and raise the matter directly with senior Chinese officials and in international forums.
This case has implications beyond one person’s freedom. 

The Chinese government has not only violated Gui Minhai’s fundamental human rights – it has done so across international borders. 

This should be a matter of grave concern not only for Sweden, but for all countries that care about the security of their citizens.

Charting China's great purge under Xi

BBC News

Not since the days of Mao Zedong (right) has a campaign on the scale of Xi's been seen

Since becoming China's leader in 2012, Xi Jinping has overseen a vast and ruthless anti-corruption drive in which more than a million officials have been disciplined.
A BBC study has found that more than 170 ministers and deputy minister-level officials have been sacked and many jailed under Xi, accused of charges such as corruption, misconduct and violation of party discipline.
It has been described by some as a massive internal purge of opponents, on a scale not seen since the days of Mao Zedong, in whose Cultural Revolution many top officials were purged.

How extensive is the campaign?
The most noticeable departure from tradition has been the breaking with many unwritten party conventions since Mao's time. 

The prosecution of so many national-level officials has been notable -- in recent decades prominent figures would usually have been quietly retired.
But in the last five years, 35 members (full and alternate) of the Chinese Communist Party's powerful Central Committee have been disciplined. 

That is as many as in all the years between 1949 and 2012.

Who has been targeted?
Based on official data, a staggering 1.34 million officials at high and low levels -- the so-called "tigers and flies" -- have been brought down by corruption and disciplinary charges during Xi's first five years in office.
No walk of life has been spared -- those felled range from village chiefs and factory managers to government ministers and generals.
The great purge goes right to the very top of government -- the biggest scalp so far was once the third most senior leader in China, Zhou Yongkang. 

He had been in charge of the vast internal security apparatus until he retired.
Sun Zhengcai, who was sacked as Chongqing party secretary, was only the fourth sitting politburo member ever to be expelled from the Communist Party. 

Promoted before Xi Jinping took office, Sun, 54, was the politburo's youngest member and had been tipped for the very top.

Zhou Yongkang is the most senior official felled so far. 

Until he retired in 2012 he was the third most powerful politician in China. 

In 2015 he was jailed for life for bribery, abuse of power and disclosing state secrets.
Abruptly removed from his post in July, Sun Zhengcai is the most senior serving official to be caught by Xi's purge. 

Only the fourth sitting politburo member to ever be expelled from the Party.
Xu Caihou was among highest-ranking military until he retired in 2013. 

He was investigated as part of a "cash for ranks" probe and ultimately expelled from the party and prosecuted. 

He died of cancer in 2015.
Guo Boxiong served alongside Xu. 

In July 2016 he became the highest-ranking military official prosecuted since the end of the revolution in 1949. 

He was sentenced to life in prison for bribery.
Ling Jihua was a trusted adviser of Hu Jintao but was swiftly demoted under Xi. 

After a scandal that began when his son died "in a state of undress" in a Ferrari crash, he was jailed for life for bribery in 2016.
Nearly 70% of the party's ruling Central Committee members will be replaced with new faces at the current congress although in the majority of cases alleged corruption or other transgressions will not be the reason -- age will be.
An unwritten party rule currently sets the retirement age at 65 for Central Committee members.

Has the army been spared?
No area has been more radically restructured under Xi than the military, which he swiftly set about comprehensively reorganising and modernising.
More than 60 generals have been investigated and sacked in the drive to introduce a Western-style joint command and promote young officers to top positions.
Even as the delegates started to gather in Beijing for the current party congress, the pace of the campaign showed no signs of slowing down. 

Two top generals, Fang Fenghui and Zhang Yang, disappeared from public view as recently as last month, and a series of new high-level investigations have been announced.

What is Xi's goal?
The five-yearly congress in Beijing is expected to see Xi remain as party chief and bring in a new leadership team, helping to entrench his already considerable power.
If things go to plan for Xi, he should be able to get many of his loyalists into key positions. 

Since he took office a number of his allies have been promoted. 

Here are some of the biggest gainers.
Li Zhanshu was party chief in a county neighbouring Xi's early in their careers. 

In 2015 he visited Moscow as Xi's "special representative". 

Has played a leading role in maintaining strong relations with Russia.
Chen Min'er is one of the "New Zhijiang Army", the group of now senior CPC figures who worked under Xi when he was party secretary in Zhejiang. 

Chen replaced the disgraced Sun Zhengcai in Chongqing.
Another of the so-called "New Zhijiang Army" is Cai Qi. 

Before being summoned to the capital his popular blog had more than 10m social media followers.
Said to be Xi's top foreign policy aide, Wang Huning has been labelled "China's Kissinger" by a leading South Korean newspaper. 

He also advised former presidents Hu and Jiang.
Xi described his key economic adviser Liu He as "very important to me" when introducing him to President Obama's National Security Adviser in 2013. 

Liu has an MA in public administration from Harvard.
Who ends up in the party's Politburo Standing Committee, China's top decision-making body which currently has seven seats, will show exactly how powerful he has become. 

Its members -- and those of the 25-seat Politburo -- will be revealed on 25 October once the congress ends.
But analysts say Xi, along with anti-corruption chief Wang Qishan, a key ally, has used the clean-up campaign to help shape who China's new leaders will be.
The country's Communist Party has for decades ruled by consensus, but analysts say Xi is rewriting party rules and concentrating power in his own hands.
Critics accuse him of encouraging a cult of personality. 

They point to the fact that most of the top officials who have been disciplined have been supporters of his opponents, or former presidents Jiang Zemin or Hu Jintao.
Xi's supporters say the anti-corruption drive is needed to restore the ruling party's credibility as the president pursues his dream of a more prosperous and powerful China which will soon overtake the US as the world's largest economy.

Chinese Aggressions

A Chinese Space Station Could Fall on Your Head at Any Moment. Get Used to It.
By Leon Vanstone

China has lost control of Tiangong-1.

Tiangong-1 is China’s first space station. 

Launched in 2011, it was originally planned for a controlled crash on Earth in 2013, but its mission was extended to 2016 when eventually telemetry was cut. 

That year amateur astronomers began to speculate that the Chinese had lost control of the station. China eventually acknowledged this, announcing that the station would re-enter the atmosphere “in the latter half of 2017.”
If that sounds a little speculative to you, that’s because it is.
And therein lies the problem: The Chinese currently have no control of a 8.5-ton object moving at 20,000 miles per hour that is going to break up into pieces and crash into unknown spots on this planet.
This sort of thing has happened before. 

Infamously, radioactive fragments from Russian nuclear satellite Kosmos 954 crashed in northern Canada in 1978. 

The same thing is likely to happen with Tiangong-1, Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astrophysicist, told The Guardian: “Yes there’s a chance it will do damage, it might take out someone’s car, there will be a rain of a few pieces of metal, it might go through someone’s roof, like if a flap fell off a plane.”
Of course, it’s impossible to really know how dangerous Tiangong-1 could be. 

Donald Trump is a moron

Trump called for Guo Wengui’s deportation after casino owner Steve Wynn brought letter from Beijing government
By Julian Borger in Washington

Billionaire Guo Wengui, whom Chinese security agents have tried to restrain from publishing accusatory tweets against the Beijing government. 

Donald Trump called for the deportation of a Chinese dissident living in the US, after receiving a request from Beijing hand-delivered by a casino owner with business interests in China, according to a US report.
The Wall Street Journal described a Chinese government attempt to put pressure on Guo Wengui, a real estate tycoon living in exile in New York, to halt his allegations of corruption in high places in China.

Guo Wengui tweeted this picture of himself with former senior Trump aide Steve Bannon.

A group of officials from China’s ministry of state security, who entered the US on visas that did not allow them to conduct official business, visited Guo in his New York apartment in May, and used veiled threats in an attempt to persuade Guo to stop his accusatory tweets, which have a wide following in China, and return home. 

Guo shrugged off the pressure and made a recording of his conversation with the officials, part of which he posted online.
After that visit, FBI agents confronted the Chinese officials at New York’s Pennsylvania Station. 

The Chinese visitors first claimed to be cultural diplomats and then admitted they were security officials. 

The agents warned them they were violating the terms of their visa and told them to leave the country.
However, two days later, just before leaving the country, the Chinese officials paid a second visit to Guo, triggering a debate within the administration over whether they should be arrested. 

FBI agents were posted at John F Kennedy airport ready to carry out the arrests before the officials boarded their flight, but they were not made, after the state department argued it could trigger a diplomatic crisis.
Guo has filed an application for political asylum in the US, which is pending. 

But according to the Journal’s account, Trump called for Guo’s deportation in a discussion on policy towards China, describing him as a “criminal” at an Oval Office policy meeting in June, on the basis of a letter from Beijing accusing him of serious crimes.
The report said the letter had been hand-delivered to him at a private dinner by Steve Wynn, a Las Vegas casino magnate and Republican National Committee finance chairman with interests in the Chinese gambling enclave of Macau, for which Wynn relies on Beijing for licensing.
The marketing director for Wynn Resorts Ltd, Michael Weaver, told the Journal in a written statement: “[T]hat report regarding Mr Wynn is false. Beyond that, he doesn’t have any comment.”
Weaver did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian on what part of the story was false and whether Wynn had ever delivered a letter from the Chinese government to Trump.
The Journal report said that aides tried to persuade Trump out of going ahead with Guo’s deportation, noting he was a member of the president’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. 

The aides later ensured that the deportation would not go ahead.
There was no immediate response from the White House or the state department to a request to comment on the report. 

A state department representative told the Journal: “Decisions on these kinds of matters are based on interagency consensus.”
A justice department representative said: “It is a criminal offense for an individual, other than a diplomatic or consular officer or attache, to act in the United States as an agent of a foreign power without prior notification to the attorney general.”

Hong Kong bookseller released by China is missing -- daughter

BBC News

Angela Gui said she was still waiting to hear from her father a week after his release

Sweden says its citizen Gui Minhai, one of the five jailed "Hong Kong booksellers", has been released from prison in China.
But Mr Gui's daughter, Angela, said no-one had seen him or spoken to him a week after his supposed release.
Mr Gui's Hong Kong publishing house sold books about the personal lives of China's political elite.
He disappeared in Thailand in October 2015 before mysteriously turning up in detention in mainland China.
Mr Gui was officially in prison after confessing to a fatal road accident which allegedly took place in 2003. 

His daughter says the confession was forced.
The four other members of the publishing company detained in China were previously released. Three remained silent about their detention.
But one, Lam Wing-kee, who has no family on mainland China, said the confessions shown on Chinese television were forced, read from a script written by Chinese officials.
He also alleged one of the men, Lee Bo, had been abducted from Hong Kong against his will.
Allegations that Mr Lee and Mr Gui were abducted across international borders in an extrajudicial process sparked international concern.
Chinese officials say he and the four other men detained all went to China voluntarily.

'No idea where'
On Tuesday, after Mr Gui's release was announced, his daughter Angela Gui said: "I still do not know where my father is."
A spokeswoman for the Swedish foreign ministry confirmed that information about Mr Gui's release had come from the Chinese authorities and said Sweden was seeking clarification.
No other official details were available.
Ms Gui, who lives in the UK, released a statement saying the Swedish embassy had been told, in advance that her father would be released on 17 October.
She said that when Swedish officials arrived on the morning of his release, they were told by prison officials that he had already left at midnight.
"They were also told that he was 'free to travel' and that they had no idea where he was," she added.
"Neither I nor any member of my family nor any of his friends have been contacted. It is still very unclear where he is. I am deeply concerned for his wellbeing."

Chinese Peril

Mattis to make call for Asean unity against China at meeting of defence ministers

The Straits Times

US Defence Secretary James Mattis will meet his counterparts from Japan and South Korea on Oct 23 to discuss North Korea. He is due to visit Thailand and South Korea as well on his eight-day tour.

CLARK FREEPORT, PHILIPPINES - US Defence Secretary James Mattis is expected to make a call for South-east Asian unity against China during a meeting of defence ministers in the Philippines on Monday (Oct 23), the Associated Press reported.
The Asean bloc has been divided as the US and China vie for influence in the region, with the tensions magnified by a dispute over China's island-building activities in the South China Sea.
US influence has taken a hit from President Donald Trump's decision to cancel the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact championed by his predecessor, Mr Barack Obama, appearing to give Mr Obama's "pivot to Asia" short shrift.
"(Asean gives) voice to those who want relations between states to be based on respect, and not on predatory economics or on the size of militaries," General Mattis told reporters ahead of his meetings in the Philippines, though he did not mention China by name. 

"The United States remains unambiguously committed to supporting Asean."
The US sees a united Asean as a bulwark against China, which pursues individual bilateral relations with members at the expense of the bloc. 

It also wants Asean to squeeze North Korea amid a crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.
Gen Mattis' comments echoed US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's call for a India as a populous, democratic counterweight to China, inviting it to take a leading security role in the Indo-Pacific region. 

The US has made India a major defence partner, offering it top-flight weapons systems. 

Gen Mattis will meet Indian Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during his trip to the country this week.
On Monday, Gen Mattis was to hold an informal meeting with Asean members, who have been divided on taking a strong joint position over the South China Sea, making no mention of a 2016 ruling in The Hague that found no legal basis for China's expansive territorial claims.
Cambodia and Laos have taken sides with China in the dispute, while US allies Thailand, Vietnam and recently the Philippines have opposed Beijing. 

But under Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines relationship with China has warmed even as US ties soured.
Gen Mattis will meet his counterparts from Japan and South Korea on Monday to discuss North Korea. 

He is due to visit Thailand and South Korea as well on his eight-day tour.

China ‘compulsorily doped’ athletes in 1980s and 90s

China's systematic doping in all sports: More than 10,000 athletes were affected, says former China Olympic doctor
By Sean Ingle

The controversial China track coach Ma Junren monitoring training on the Tibetan plateau in 2000. 

A former doctor for the Chinese Olympic team has revealed that more than 10,000 of the country’s athletes were involved in a systematic doping programme across all sports – and that every one of China’s medals in major tournaments in the 1980s and 90s came from performance‑enhancing drugs.
Xue Yinxian, a 79-year-old Chinese whistleblower who is seeking political asylum in Germany, also claimed that athletes aged as young as 11 were introduced to the compulsory doping scheme – which existed in football, athletics, swimming, volleyball, basketball, table tennis, diving, gymnastics and weightlifting – and that anyone who spoke against the system now sits in jail.
“In the 1980s and 90s, Chinese athletes on the national teams made extensive use of doping substances,” Xue told the German broadcaster ARD.
“Medals were tainted by doping – gold, silver and bronze. There must have been more than 10,000 people involved. People believed only in doping, anyone who took doping substances was seen to be defending the country. All international medals [won by Chinese athletes in that time] should be taken back.”
However, there is no chance of medals being retrospectively stripped because the statute of limitations has long passed.
Xue worked as a doctor with several national Chinese teams from the 1970s, but fled from China with her son after first speaking out against doping in 2012 and says she no longer felt safe in her home city, Beijing. 

She claimed she first became aware of the problem when a coach came to her concerned about the physical changes in male athletes, aged between 13 and 14, due to substances handed out by officials.
“At first, the youth-age group teams used the substances – the youngest were 11 years old,” she said. “If you refused to dope, you had to leave the team. I couldn’t do anything about it.”
She said she was dismissed from working with the national team for refusing to treat a gymnast with a banned substance at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, but kept working in lower-level Chinese sport.
“Anyone against doping damaged the country and anyone who endangered the country now sits in prison,” she told ARD. 

“They warned me against talking about doping substances. They urged me to back down. I said I couldn’t do that. They wanted to silence me … both of my sons lost their jobs.”
Athletes were repeatedly tested until they came back negative – and were then sent to international competitions. 

The call sign “Grandma is home” was applied to those athletes, she said, who no longer had traces of doping substances in their body.
ARD reporters tried to contact the Chinese Olympic Committee and China’s sports ministry for a response to the claims, but never received a reply, according to the broadcaster. 

China has long been linked with accusations of doping – although never before on this scale. 

In February athletes linked to the controversial track coach Ma Junren, whose athletes broke 66 national and world records, said they had been forced to take performance-enhancing drugs.
In a letter published by Tencent Sports they wrote: “We are humans, not animals. For many years, [we were] forced to take a large dose of illegal drugs – it was true.” 

The Necessary War

North Korea Could Start a War Between US and China

By Robert Farley
Two U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor stealth jet fighters fly near Andersen Air Force Base in this handout photo dated August 4, 2010. China is still years away from being able to field a stealth aircraft, despite the disclosure of images indicating that it appears to have a working prototype, Pentagon officials said on Wednesday. A U.S. intelligence official estimated in May that the J-20 could rival the F-22 Raptor within eight years. The Raptor is the premier U.S. fighter, with cutting-edge "fifth-generation" features, including shapes, materials and propulsion systems designed to make it appear as small as a swallow on enemy radar screens. 

War on the Korean Peninsula could cause humanitarian disaster on a scale that the world has never seen. 

But the scenario might grow even worse. 

The last time that the United States fought North Korea, the People’s Republic of China intervened with destructive effect. 

The war lasted for three years, with heavy casualties on both sides. 

While both China and the United States have worked hard to prevent a recurrence of this catastrophe, the two great powers remain at odds over the fate of North Korea, a disagreement that might yet lead to war.

How it Happened Before:
The United States and China were not supposed to go to war in 1950. 

The war resulted primarily from U.S. miscalculation of Chinese intentions and capabilities; U.S. forces failed to detect the movement of significant People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces into Korea, failed to pay sufficient attention to Chinese signals, and lacked a good understanding of Communist China’s nascent diplomatic efforts. 

Chinese intervention was an operational surprise that should not have been, successful in throwing U.S. forces out of North Korea and restoring something close to the antebellum status quo. 

The first Korean War did not work out well for either country, although both the United States and China successfully maintained the independence of their respective proxies.

How it Could Happen Again:
War in Korea could resume for any number of reasons; even a collapse of the North Korean regime could start a race for Pyongyang that produced great power conflict. 

Over the past year, however, tensions have grown over the extent and progress of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. 

The United States sees these (and North Korean bombasticity) as a threat, and the North Koreans see U.S. threat-mongering as the potential prelude to war. 

This leaves both sides with ample incentive to launch a preemptive war against the other. 

Thus, war between the U.S. and the DPRK could plausibly begin with either a North Korean attack on South Korea or Japan, or a U.S. attack on North Korea.
China is unlikely to view U.S. response to a North Korean attack as legitimate cause for war, unless that response crosses certain red lines. 

These red lines could be similar to those that the PRC laid down in 1950, although both Chinese fear of the United States and Chinese affection for North Korea have declined over time. 

Similarly, the United States probably will not see any upside in pre-empting Beijing’s response by directly attacking China. 

Still, Beijing has little interest in seeing U.S. forces along the Yalu River. 

If China believes that the United States foolishly blundered into a war, or pushed North Korea into a pre-emptive war through brinksmanship, then Beijing’s attitude could become more belligerent. Moreover, China might view a U.S. attack on North Korea as an indicator of incorrigible aggression, evidence that the United States truly is a “rogue nation” as likely as not to attack China at some point in the future.
As a prelude to intervention, China would begin to signal its disfavor by elaborately visible military preparations, as well as diplomatic condemnations. 

The Trump administration undoubtedly runs some of the same risks of misinterpreting Chinese statements as the Truman administration did in 1950. 

The US could properly read these signals as indications of China’s willingness to commit, or it could misread them as bluster. 

At the same time, if Beijing was serious, it would begin quietly redeploying long-range assets away from Korea, into relatively safe locations in China’s interior. 

The PLA faces the dilemma of needing to reduce the chance of war, while at the same time maximizing its chance of victory.

How it Could Play Out:
If war starts with a Chinese response to a perceived U.S. provocation, the PRC will initially confine its activities to the Korean Peninsula. 

Beijing will want to send a message of seriousness to Washington without opening up a wider war, in the hopes that the Trump administration will restrain itself from further aggression. 

Chinese ballistic missiles and cruise missiles (launched from air and land platforms located as deep as possible within China, in order to avoid offering easy targets to the US) will strike US and South Korean military installations, including airbases, communications centers, and logistics facilities. 

If U.S. and ROK forces have advanced into North Korea, China will likely focus on forward deployed assets, although the PLA will not want to waste valuable munitions on conventional forces along the front.
This strategy essentially worked in 1950; the United States refrained from attacks against the Chinese mainland, did not mobilize Japan militarily, did not “Unleash Chiang” from his Formosan stronghold, and did not use nuclear weapons. 

Instead, the combatants waged war in conventional means up and down the peninsula, a matchup which did not equalize the playing field but did give the PLA its best hope of victory.
But if China and the United States did become engaged in active combat operations against one another in Korea, it is unlikely that the fight would stay confined. 

The U.S. military would face an enormous temptation to directly airbases, missile installations, and staging areas in China, while attacks US bases across the region would undoubtedly tempt China. Changes in military technology have altered the nature of distance in warfare; Chinese and American missile sites can hit targets in Korea from vast distances, and commanders would be tempted to attack enemy staging and launch areas in depth. 

Moreover, the huge Chinese reconnaissance-strike complex, laid out over a vast expanse of space, air, sea, and land, would immediately become the subject of US attentions. 

In particular, the U.S. might see fit to convey its own seriousness by launching attacks against major Chinese naval vessels, including aircraft carriers, destroyers, and nuclear submarines.

Parting Thoughts:
War between the United States and China in Korea is not impossible.

Therefore, we have to think about it. 

While the first Korean War represented a failure of strategic planning, Washington and Beijing nevertheless managed to confine the conflict, and limit the extent of escalation. 

Whether they would be able to do so in 2017, after dramatic changes in the geopolitical situation, is a different question entirely.

If war does happen, policymakers on both sides need to work hard to limit the extent of destruction.

Chinese propaganda faces stiff competition from celebrities

By Yi-Ling Liu

In this Saturday, Oct. 21, 2017 photo, Chinese women walk past advertisement featuring teen idol Lu Han, also known as China’s Justin Bieber in Beijing, China. China works to stifle celebrities as it seeks to dictate the values the nation’s youth should embrace. It’s part of the most ambitious effort in years to shape the country’s booming entertainment industry. Instead of selfish, rich stars, the state is promoting performers who are all about patriotism, purity and other values that support the party’s legitimacy, whether in movies about revolutionary heroes or through rap music.

HONG KONG — When the propaganda film, “The Founding of an Army,” hit theaters in China recently, the reaction wasn’t quite what the ruling Communist Party might have hoped for.
Instead of inspiring an outpouring of nationalism and self-sacrifice for the state, it was roundly mocked for trying to lure a younger audience by casting teen idols as revolutionary party leaders.
Viewers more used to seeing the idols play love interests in light-hearted soap operas responded to the film by projecting “modern-day romantic narratives on the founding fathers of the nation,” said Hung Huang, a well-known social commentator based in Beijing. 

“It was hilarious.”
While China’s resurgent Communist Party once pushed its policies on an unquestioning public, it now struggles to compete for attention with the country’s booming entertainment industry and the celebrity culture it has spawned.
“Chinese people are increasingly ignoring party propaganda and are much more interested in movie stars, who represent a new lifestyle and more exciting aspirations,” said Willy Lam, an expert on Chinese politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Xi Jinping, who will cement his authority with his expected endorsement to a second five-year term at this week’s national party congress, has placed a priority on stamping out too much Western influence in Chinese society in part so the party can dictate the values the youth should embrace.
Authorities have responded by taking aim at everything from gossip websites to soap opera story lines to celebrity salaries. 

Instead of selfish, rich stars, the state is promoting performers who are all about patriotism, purity and other values that support the party’s legitimacy.
The results have at best been mixed and at worst ham-fisted and out of touch.
One problem is that the party’s values often clash with what young Chinese want to watch.

Among the more popular shows watched by Chinese youth are those that center on palace intrigue, martial arts fantasies, high school romances or single, independent women.
“While the government could once dictate to young people what they should value and how they should lead their lives, they find themselves completely without the tools to do that now,” she said.
In the 1970s, the state was able to promote people seen as paragons of youthful devotion and selflessness, but Hung said that no longer works because young Chinese — like their counterparts in the West — now prefer to follow celebrity gossip and have the tools with which to do so.
Just this month, teen idol Lu Han, also known as China’s Justin Bieber, announced he had a girlfriend, triggering a flood of shares, responses and 4 million “likes” within a few hours that briefly crashed the country’s popular Weibo microblog service.
A recent commentary in The Global Times, a party newspaper with a nationalistic stance, railed against such celebrity worship, saying China had now surpassed the West in that regard.
“It’s unfair that these stars accrue such glory, unimaginable to those who have made a decisive contribution to the country,” the commentary said.
That was likely a reason the government-backed China Alliance of Radio, Film and Television moved last month to cap the pay of actors, whose salaries had hit historic highs as young Chinese and a burgeoning middle class increasingly spend on movie tickets and goods.
In another move earlier this year, authorities closed 60 popular celebrity gossip and social media accounts and called on internet giants such as Tencent and Baidu to “actively propagate core socialist values, and create an ever-healthier environment for the mainstream public opinion.”
The tension between popular culture and state propaganda isn’t new in China. 

In the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping’s lieutenants railed against spiritual pollution. 

But it has gained new traction since Xi came to power in 2012 and officials began a wide-ranging crackdown on perceived societal ills from corruption to dissent to — now — entertainment.
“Xi Jinping has been advocating a revision to traditional, Confucian moral standards,” Lam said. “The definition of what is vulgar or morally problematic has been inflated and expanded so that it has become all-encompassing.”
Shows about the pursuit of great wealth and luxury that used to be tolerated under Xi’s predecessor, aren’t anymore.
The government has demanded that broadcasters “resist celebrity worship” and limit the air time dedicated to film and TV stars.
“The party does not want these entertainment programs to compete with news programs and ‘morality shows,’” said Jian Xu, a Chinese media research fellow at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia.
One example of a state-approved show is “Touching China,” which honors people who have “touched the nation with their tenacity, bravery and wisdom.”
The government has also tried to shape some celebrities into party-sanctioned role models.
Thanks to their wholesome image and uplifting, patriotic lyrics, the TFboys, China’s first home-grown boy band, have risen to fame because of “political opportunities” they’ve been given, Xu said. The band is pursued by adoring fans and has performed twice on the coveted Lunar New Year gala hosted by state broadcaster China Central Television; it has also been promoted by the Communist Youth League.
Stars deviating from the party’s image of purity and moral acceptability, however, have been punished. 

In a high-profile drug crackdown in 2014, authorities publicly chastised a succession of celebrities caught using drugs, including Jackie Chan’s son, Jaycee Chan, and singer Li Daimo, forcing them to apologize on state television.
Beijing may struggle to win over young Chinese, but it won’t stop its carrot-and-stick approach to regulating the industry.
“The government’s method of punishment and praise is very obvious: If you work with me, you will reap the benefits, if you don’t, you won’t. If you’re a good boy, you get candy, if you don’t, you won’t,” Xu said.