Tough South China Sea talks ahead as Vietnam seeks to curb China's actions

Reuters

An aerial view of China occupied Subi Reef at Spratly Islands in disputed South China Sea on Apr 21, 2017. 

HONG KONG -- Tough negotiations lie ahead over a new pact between China and Southeast Asian nations aimed at easing tensions in the South China Sea, as Vietnam pushes for provisions likely to prove unpalatable to Beijing, documents reviewed by Reuters suggest.
Hanoi wants the pact to outlaw many of the actions China has carried out across the hotly disputed waterway in recent years, including artificial island building, blockades and offensive weaponry such as missile deployments, according to a negotiating draft of the ASEAN Code of Conduct (COC) seen by Reuters.
The draft also shows Hanoi is pushing for a ban on any new Air Defence Identification Zone -- something Beijing unilaterally announced over the East China Sea in 2013. 

Chinese officials have not ruled out a similar move, in which all aircraft are supposed to identify themselves to Chinese authorities, over the South China Sea.
Hanoi is also demanding states clarify their maritime claims in the vital trade route according to international law – an apparent attempt to shatter the controversial "nine-dash line" by which China claims and patrols much of the South China Sea, the draft shows.
"Going forward, there will be some very testy exchanges between the Vietnamese and China in particular over the text of this agreement," said Singapore-based Ian Storey, a veteran South China Sea expert, who has seen the draft.
"Vietnam is including those points or activities that they want forbidden by the Code of Conduct precisely because China has been carrying these out for the last 10 years."
Le Thi Thu Hang, a spokeswoman at the Vietnam Foreign Ministry, said negotiations on the Code of Conduct had made some progress recently, with Vietnam actively participating and other countries showing "their constructive and cooperative spirit".
"Vietnam wishes related countries to continue their efforts and make a positive contribution to the negotiation process in order to achieve a substantive and effective COC in accordance with international law, especially the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, contributing to the maintenance of peace, stability and security in the East Sea (South China Sea) in particular and in the region in general," she said.
Singapore’s Foreign Ministry, the chair of the 10-nation ASEAN bloc for 2018, did not respond to a request for comment.
“We cannot comment right now but Thailand certainly supports discussion on the single negotiating draft,” said Busadee Santipitaks, a spokeswoman for Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which takes over as ASEAN chair in the new year.

CHINA SEEKS BAN ON OUTSIDER DRILLS
The draft also confirms earlier reports that China wants military drills with outside powers in the South China Sea to be blocked unless all signatories agree.
In addition, Beijing wants to exclude foreign oil firms by limiting joint development deals to China and South East Asia. 

Experts expect both elements to be strongly resisted by some ASEAN countries.
"That is unacceptable," one Southeast Asian diplomat told Reuters, referring specifically to the suggested ban on military drills with countries outside the region.
In a statement sent to Reuters, China's Foreign Ministry said negotiations on the code were confidential, and it could not comment on their content.
The next round of working level talks is expected to take place in Myanmar in the first quarter of next year, the Southeast Asian diplomat said.
In August, Chinese and ASEAN officials hailed the initial negotiating text as a milestone and a breakthrough when it was endorsed by the foreign ministers of ASEAN and China.
It will be negotiated over the coming year by senior ASEAN and Chinese officials and has not yet been released publicly.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang last month called for the pact to be sealed by 2021, a timetable some envoys and analysts are sceptical can be reached.
"There's a lot of tough work ahead - that figure seems to have just been plucked from the air," one senior Asian diplomat said.

DEAD LETTER
The code builds on an earlier declaration on the South China Sea signed between ASEAN and China in 2002.
That document did not prevent the vital international trade route emerging as a regional flashpoint amid China's military rise and its extensive programme of island building on disputed reefs since 2014.
The United States and other regional powers including Japan and India are not part of the negotiations, but take a strong interest in the waterway that links Northeast Asia with the Middle East and Europe.
Several countries, including Japan, India, Britain and Australia, have joined the United States in gradually increasing naval deployments through the South China Sea. 

They are often shadowed by Chinese naval ships.
Carl Thayer, an expert on Vietnam's military and diplomacy at Australia's Defence Force Academy, said Hanoi was expected to prove a tough negotiator but would need support among other ASEAN members to hold a firm line against China.
The Philippines successfully challenged Beijing's South China Sea claims in an international arbitration case in 2016, but has reversed policy under Rodrigo Duterte, who has avoided confronting China as he seeks to secure billions of dollars of loans and investments for his infrastructure programme.
The 19-page draft remains vague in key areas including its precise geographic scope, whether it will be legally binding and how disputes will be resolved.
Bonnie Glaser, a regional security expert at the Centre for International and Strategic Studies in Washington, said she believed China's more controversial proposals would prove unacceptable to several key ASEAN members, as well the United States and its allies.
"People I have spoken to in the US government say that it is clearest evidence yet that China wants to push the US out of the region," she said.

China's disappeared: Some of the people who vanished at the hands of the Chinese state in 2018

Canadian citizens, a famous actress, a security insider and a student Marxist disappeared in China this year
The Associated Press
Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig briefly disappeared this month before it was revealed they were taken into custody by Chinese officials. The two men's detention followed the arrest and detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou by Canadian authorities. 

It's not uncommon for individuals who speak out against the government to disappear in China, but the scope of the "disappeared" has expanded since Xi Jinping came to power in 2013.
Not only dissidents and activists, but also high-level officials, Marxists, foreigners and even a movie star — people who never publicly opposed the ruling Communist Party — have been whisked away by police to unknown destinations.
The widening dragnet throws into stark relief the lengths to which Xi's administration is willing to go to maintain its control and authority.
Here's a look at some of the people who went missing in 2018 at the hands of the Chinese state:

Canadian citizens
China threatened "grave consequences" if Canada did not release high-tech executive Meng Wanzhou, shortly after the Huawei chief financial officer was detained in Vancouver earlier this month for extradition to the U.S.
The apparent consequences materialized within days, when two Canadian men went missing in China. 

Both turned up in the hands of state security on suspicion of endangering "national security", a nebulous category of crimes that has been levied against foreigners in recent years.
Former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig was taken by authorities from a Beijing street late in the evening, a person familiar with his case said. 

He is allowed one consular visit a month and has not been granted access to a lawyer, as is standard for state security cases.

Kovrig, an adviser with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, remains in detention in China.

Also detained is Michael Spavor, who organizes tours to North Korea from the border city of Dandong. 

China has not said whether their detentions are related to Meng's, but a similar scenario unfolded in the past.
A Canadian couple was detained in 2014 on national security grounds shortly after Canada arrested Su Bin, a Chinese man wanted for industrial espionage in the U.S.
Like Spavor, Kevin and Julia Garratt lived in Dandong, where they ran a popular coffee shop for nearly a decade. 

They also worked with a Christian charity that provided food to North Korean refugees.
While Julia Garratt was released on bail, her husband was held for more than two years before he was deported in September 2016 — about two months after Su pleaded guilty in the U.S.

Tax-evading actress
Fan Bingbing was living the dream. 

Since a breakthrough role at the age of 17, Fan has headlined dozens of movies and TV series, and parlayed her success into modelling, fashion design and other ventures that have made her one of the highest-paid celebrities in the world.
All this made her a potent icon of China's economic success, until authorities reminded Fan — and her legion of admirers — that even she was not untouchable.
For about four months, Fan vanished from public view. 

Her Weibo social media account, which has more than 63 million followers, fell silent. 

Her management office in Beijing was vacated. 

Her birthday on Sept. 16 came and went with only a handful of greetings from entertainment notables.
When she finally resurfaced, it was to apologize.
"I sincerely apologize to society, to the friends who love and care for me, to the people, and to the country's tax bureau," Fan said in a letter posted on Weibo on Oct. 3.
Chinese actress Fan Bingbing poses for photographers upon arrival at the opening of the Cannes film festival in southern France in May. One of China's highest paid celebrities, Fan disappeared from public view for four months before apologizing for tax-evasion. 

Fan later admitted to tax evasion. 

State news agency Xinhua reported that she and the companies she represents had been ordered to pay taxes and penalties totaling 900 million yuan ($130 million US).
"Without the party and the country's great policies, without the people's loving care, there would be no Fan Bingbing," she wrote, a cautionary tale for other Chinese celebrities.
Xinhua concurred in a commentary on her case: "Everyone is equal before the law, there are no `superstars' or `big shots.' No one can despise the law and hope to be lucky."

Security insider
Unlike most swallowed up by China's opaque security apparatus, Meng Hongwei knew exactly what to expect.
Meng — no relation to the Huawei executive — is a vice minister of public security who was also head of Interpol, the France-based organization that facilitates police cooperation across borders.
When he was appointed to the top post, human rights groups expressed concern that China would use Interpol as a tool to rein in political enemies around the world.
Instead, he was captured by the same security forces he represented.
Former Interpol president Meng Hongwei delivers his opening address at the Interpol World congress in Singapore in July 2017. 

In September, Meng became the latest high-ranking official caught in Xi's banner anti-corruption campaign. 

The initiative is a major reason for the Chinese leader's broad popularity, but he has been accused of using it to eliminate political rivals.
Xi pledged to confront both high-level "tigers" and low-level "flies" in his crackdown on graft — a promise he has fulfilled by ensnaring prominent officials.
Meng was missing for weeks before Chinese authorities said he was being investigated for taking bribes and other crimes. 

A Chinese delegation later delivered a resignation letter from Meng to Interpol headquarters.
His wife Grace Meng told the AP that she does not believe the charges against her husband. 

The last message he sent her was an emoji of a knife.

Daring photographer
Lu Guang made his mark photographing the everyday lives of HIV patients in central China. 

They were poor villagers who had contracted the virus after selling their own blood to eke out a living — at a going rate of $7 a pint, they told Lu.
A former factory worker, Lu traversed China's vast reaches to capture reality at its margins. 

He explored environmental degradation, industrial pollution and other gritty topics generally avoided by Chinese journalists, who risk punishment if they pursue stories considered to be sensitive or overly critical.
His work won him major accolades such as the World Press Photo prize, but his prominence likely also put him on the government's radar.
This November, Lu was travelling through East Turkestan, the far west colony that has deployed a vast security network in the name of fighting terrorism. 

He was participating in an exchange with other photographers, after which he was to meet a friend in nearby Sichuan province. 

He never showed up.
More than a month after he disappeared, his family was notified that he had been arrested in East Turkestan, according to his wife Xu Xiaoli. 

She declined to elaborate on the nature of the charges.

Marxist student
In the past, the political activists jailed in China were primarily those who fought for democracy and an end to one-party rule. 

They posed a direct ideological threat to the Communist Party.
This year, the party locked in on a surprising new target: young Marxists.
About 50 students and recent graduates of the country's most prestigious universities convened in August in Shenzhen, an electronics manufacturing hub, to rally for factory workers attempting to form a union
Among them was Yue Xin, a 20-something fresh out of Peking University. 

Earlier this year, she made headlines by calling for the elite school to release the results of its investigation into a decades-old rape case.
This time, she was one of the most vocal leaders of the labour rights group, appearing in photographs with her fist up in a Marxist salute and wearing a T-shirt that said "Unity is strength" — the name of a patriotic Chinese communist song.
Yue, a passionate student of Marx and Mao Zedong, espoused the same values as the party. 

She wrote an open letter to Xi and the party's central leadership saying all the students wanted was justice for Jasic Technology labourers.
Her letter quoted Xi's own remarks: "We must adhere to the guiding position of Marxism." 

Yue called Marx "our mentor" and likened the ideas of him and Mao to spiritual sustenance.
Nonetheless, she ended up among those rounded up in a raid on the apartment the activists were staying at in Shenzhen. 

While most have been released, Yue remains unaccounted for.
She has been missing for four months.

President Trump vs. Evil Empire

Religious freedom is a growing theme of President Donald Trump’s confrontation with Beijing, and it's resonating with Christian leaders.

By NAHAL TOOSI

Vice President Mike Pence infuriated Beijing when he gave a speech in October warning that China had become a dangerous rival to the United States. 

While he focused on familiar issues such as China’s trade policies and cyber espionage, Pence also denounced the country’s “avowedly atheist Communist Party.”
Citing a crackdown on organized religion in the country, Pence noted that Chinese authorities “are tearing down crosses, burning Bibles and imprisoning believers.”
“For China’s Christians,” Pence said, “these are desperate times.”
Pence’s remarks, which also addressed the repression of Chinese Buddhists and Muslims, illustrated how religious freedom is a growing theme of President Donald Trump’s confrontation with Beijing, which some foreign policy insiders warn could develop into a new Cold War.
It is a subject that resonates in the U.S. heartland, some Christian leaders say — parts of which, including rural areas, are disproportionately at risk of fallout from Trump’s trade fight with the Asian giant.
The issue has gained new resonance with Beijing’s arrest this month of a prominent Christian pastor and more than 100 members of his congregation.
The arrests have drawn close coverage from evangelical outlets such as Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), whose website published an open letter by the jailed pastor, Wang Yi, declaring his “anger and disgust at the persecution of the church by this Communist regime.”
Days after the arrests, Trump’s ambassador for international religious freedom, former Republican Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, decried the crackdown and said that in the weeks since Pence’s speech, religious freedom concerns “have only grown.”
While China’s religious persecution draws less media attention than issues like soybean tariffs and cyber espionage, it is closely tracked by conservative Christian activists and outlets like CBN, where a typical headline recently reported: “Chinese Government Destroys Christian Church, Bills Pastor for Demolition.”
In September, Providence Magazine, which covers U.S. foreign policy from a Christian perspective, wrote that in 2018 China’s religious repression has reached “a sustained intensity not seen since the Cultural Revolution.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly criticized China on such grounds.
In a report on international religious freedom released earlier this year, the State Department noted that throughout China there were reports of “deaths in detention of religious adherents as well as reports the government physically abused, detained, arrested, tortured, sentenced to prison, or harassed adherents of both registered and unregistered religious groups for activities related to their religious beliefs and practices.“
Religious activists note that Pence, Brownback, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other top Trump aides are people of faith with genuine concerns about religious freedom. 

But even they acknowledge the subject happens to be a potent political message for religious conservatives and may help rally them behind Trump’s confrontational China policy.
Some religious leaders even hear an echo of history: Cold War-era denunciations of godless Soviet communism by past U.S. presidents, notably Ronald Reagan.

“In the great heartland of America, where there tend to be higher levels of people who care about faith, reminding people that a regime — whether then the Soviet Union or today’s communist China — rejects God and has an official policy of atheism is helpful in getting them to understand why our government is taking certain actions in the foreign policy area,” said Gary Bauer, a longtime conservative Christian leader whom President Trump appointed to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
“Evil empire” was the famous label then-President Reagan applied to the Soviet Union in 1983. 

Less remembered is the fact that Reagan was addressing the National Association of Evangelicals.
Reagan vowed at the time that the Soviets “must be made to understand: … We will never abandon our belief in God.”
President Trump himself rarely addresses religious freedom or human rights, and when it comes to China he focuses mainly on Beijing’s trade practices. 

But his administration — backed by an evangelical base that stood for President Trump in 2016 and continues to support him enthusiastically — has strongly emphasized international religious freedom.

Earlier this year, for instance, the State Department hosted a first-ever gathering of foreign ministers devoted to the subject. (China was not invited and was targeted in a joint statement signed by a handful of countries, including the U.S.)
“This administration is putting this in the matrix of all of our policy,” said Tony Perkins, another prominent Christian conservative who serves on the religious freedom commission and is close to the White House. 

“It’s more than just the throwaway line.”
Pompeo, a former Republican congressman from Kansas, has also assailed Beijing for religious persecution, including at a September speech at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, an event affiliated with the Perkins-led Family Research Council.
During an appearance, Pompeo decried “an intense new government crackdown on Christians in China, which includes heinous actions like closing churches, burning Bibles, and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith.”
Like Pence, Pompeo also dwelled on the plight of China’s Muslim population, particularly ethnic Uighurs from the Chinese colony of East Turkestan. 

A State Department official recently testified before lawmakers that up to 2 million Muslims are now confined to concentration camps in China.
“Their religious beliefs are decimated,” Pompeo told Values Voter Summit attendees.
The Chinese government, which often casts Uighur Muslims as potential "terrorists", says the camps are designed to teach vocational and life skills. 

But the State Department official, Scott Busby, said the goal is “forcing detainees to renounce Islam and embrace the Chinese Communist Party.”
While evangelical groups active in Washington tend to focus primarily on the persecution of Christians in China and elsewhere, some make sure to point out that they care about religious freedom for all faith groups, including Muslims. 

In a past interview with POLITICO, Brownback stressed that he also wants to protect people’s right to have “no religion at all.”
The Trump administration may unveil a set of human rights-related sanctions targeting officials in a range of countries in the coming weeks. 

Some China observers are hopeful the list will include Chen Quanguo, a top Communist Party official said to have orchestrated the anti-Muslim crackdown and to have had a role in repressing Tibetan Buddhists.
“It’s a critical moment,” said Bob Fu, a U.S.-based pastor and founder of ChinaAid, a group that advocates for religious freedom in China.
Brownback did not offer comment for this story, and a spokesman for Pompeo did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

A White House spokesperson said of Pence that “religious freedom throughout the world is a top priority for the vice president and the administration as a whole.”
Bauer predicted that evangelicals and other voters in the U.S. heartland will continue to support President Trump even if he expands his trade war with China. 

The administration, cognizant of the potential pain for its supporters, has taken some steps to cushion the blow, such as offering farming subsidies.
By retaliating against particular U.S. industries, such as soybean farmers, China is trying to pressure the administration. 

“I think China will fail in this effort and support for the Trump-Pence policies will remain strong,“ Bauer said.
When it comes to pleasing the religious right, the Trump administration has been willing to make some dicey moves.
This past summer, to the shock of the foreign policy establishment, Trump imposed economic sanctions on two Cabinet officials in Turkey — an important U.S. ally and fellow NATO member — due to the questionable imprisonment of an American pastor, Andrew Brunson.

Brunson, whose cause was championed by evangelicals, was eventually freed and the sanctions lifted.
How far the administration will push Beijing on religious freedom could come down to the president himself and what China is willing to do to assuage his concerns on trade.
Trump, after all, has been willing to drop talk of human rights issues when it seems he’s making progress on other fronts — that's what has happened in his dealings with North Korea.
The Chinese in particular are highly sensitive to their global image, and, like the Soviet Union, China cannot be ignored.

The world must stand against China’s war on religion

By Chris Smith

Muslim protesters outside China's embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Dec. 21. 

Mihrigul Tursun said she pleaded with God to end her life as her Chinese jailers increased the electrical currents coursing through her body. 

Tursun, a Muslim Uighur whose escape led her to the United States in September, broke down weeping at a Nov. 28 congressional hearing as she recounted her experience in one of China’s infamous political “ re-education centers. ”
It is an appalling story but one that is all too familiar as existential threats to religious freedom rise in Xi Jinping’s China. 

The world can’t ignore what’s happening there. 

We must all stand up and oppose these human rights violations.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party has undertaken the most comprehensive attempt to manipulate and control — or destroy — religious communities since Mao Zedong made the eradication of religion a goal of his disastrous Cultural Revolution half a century ago. 

Now Xi, apparently fearing the power of independent religious belief as a challenge the Communist Party’s legitimacy, is trying to radically transform religion into the party’s servant, employing a draconian policy known as sinicization.
Under sinicization, all religions and believers must comport with and aggressively promote communist ideology — or else.
To drive home the point, religious believers of every persuasion are harassed, arrested, jailed or tortured. 

Only the compliant are left relatively unscathed.
Bibles are burned, churches destroyed, crosses set ablaze atop church steeples and now, under Xi, religious leaders are required to install facial-recognition cameras in their places of worship. 

New regulations expand restrictions on religious expression online and prohibit those under age 18 from attending services.
Government officials are also rewriting religious texts — including the Bible — that remove content unwanted by the atheist Communist Party, and have launched a five-year sinicization plan for Chinese Protestant Christians.
These efforts have taken a staggering human toll. 

In recent months, more than 1 million Uighurs and other Muslims in the East Turkestan colony have been detained, tortured and forced to renounce their faith. 

The U.S. government is investigating recent reports that ethnic minorities in internment camps are being forced to produce goods bound for the United States.
Yet, despite this anti-religion campaign, the Vatican has shown a disturbing lack of alarm concerning these threats and, instead, appears to be seeking a form of accommodation. 

In September, Vatican officials signed a “provisional agreement” that essentially ceded to the Chinese government the power to choose — subject to papal review — every candidate for bishop in China, which has an estimated 10 million to 12 million Catholics.
Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, a retired bishop of Hong Kong, in September called the deal “a complete surrender” by the Vatican and an “incredible betrayal” of the faith.
At a congressional hearing I chaired in September, Tom Farr, president of the Religious Freedom Institute, testified that the government-controlled body charged with carrying out the policy, the Catholic Patriotic Association, had drafted an implementation document containing the following passage: “The Church will regard promotion and education on core values of socialism as a basic requirement for adhering to the Sinicization of Catholicism. It will guide clerics and Catholics to foster and maintain correct views on history and the nation.”
One can hope that Beijing has made concessions to the church that have yet to be revealed. 

Initial reports are less than promising. 

Since the agreement was reached, underground priests have been detained, Marian shrines destroyed, pilgrimage sites closed, youth programs shuttered, and priests required to attend reeducation sessions in at least one province.
The Vatican should reconsider its arrangement with the Chinese government. 

But what can be done more generally in response to Xi’s war on religion? 

The United States and several European countries have condemned it, but any nation that values freedom of religion should unite in denouncing China’s treatment of Muslim Uighurs, Christians, Tibetan Buddhists and Falun Gong practitioners. 

In particular, Muslim-majority countries, strangely muted regarding the persecution of Muslim Uighurs, must protest these abuses even at the risk of endangering the benefits from China’s “Belt and Road”infrastructure projects.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and I have urged the Trump administration to use Global Magnitsky Act sanctions to target Chinese officials responsible for egregious human rights abuses. 

We have sought expanded export controls for police surveillance products and sanctions against businesses profiting from the forced labor or detention of Uighurs. 

We have also introduced the bipartisan Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2018 to provide the administration with new tools to comprehensively address the abuse.
The United States must lead the way in letting the Chinese Communist Party know that taking a hammer and sickle to the cross and enslaving more than 1 million Uighurs in an effort to erase their religion and culture are destructive, shameful acts that will not be tolerated by the community of nations.

China vs. Islam

Poet fears for his people as China 'Sinicizes' religion

By SAM MCNEILL

In this Sept. 28, 2018, photo, Muslim Chinese poet Cui Haoxin dons an Islamic hat in his home in the city of Jinan in the eastern province of Shandong, China. Cui is an outspoken critic of the government's policies towards Muslims at home and abroad, writing poetry and tweeting about alleged abuses against Islamic traditions. 

JINAN, China – Cui Haoxin is too young to remember the days of his people's oppression under Mao Zedong.
The 39-year-old poet was born after the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, when the Hui — China's second-largest Muslim ethnic group — were among the masses tormented by the Red Guard.
In the years since, the Hui (pronounced HWAY) generally have been supportive of the government and mostly spared the kind of persecution endured by China's largest Muslim group, the Uighur.
There are signs, though, that that is changing.

Cui fears both that history may be repeating itself and for his own safety as he tries to hold the ruling Communist Party accountable.
In August, town officials in the Hui region of Ningxia issued a demolition order for the landmark Grand Mosque in Weizhou, though they later backed off in the face of protests.
More recently, authorities in nearby Gansu province ordered closed a school that taught Arabic, the language of the Quran and other Islamic religious texts. 

The school had employed and served mainly Hui since 1984. 

And a Communist Party official from Ningxia visited East Turkestan, center of Uighur oppression, to "study and investigate how East Turkestan fights 'terrorism' and legally manages religious affairs."
China under Xi Jinping is clamping down hard on minorities, tightening control over a wide spectrum of religious and political activity. 

In many places, a campaign to "Sinicize" religion has prompted authorities to seize Bibles, remove the "halal" designation from food products, demolish churches and strip mosques of loudspeakers and Islamic crescents and domes.
Cui has spoken out against government intrusions. 

He is working on a novel with a nightmarish plot: believers are brutalized by demons in a Cultural Revolution in Hell. 

"The Muslims resisted and tried to protect the mosque," he said, describing the work. 

"They failed."
He worries that violence lies ahead.
"One has dignity. For a person, it is his or her bottom-line." he said. 

"If the persecution is too unbearable, if something happens, as I said, there could be a disaster."
___
Cui speaks eloquently about his people, who claim descent from Persian and Arab traders who came to China 1,300 years ago.
The 10 million Hui living across China generally speak Mandarin — Cui is a former teacher of the standard Chinese dialect — and follow many Chinese cultural practices. 

They enjoy relative freedom of worship compared to the Uighurs, some of whom call the Hui "tawuz," which means watermelon in the Uighur's Turkic language.
"Green or Islamic on the outside, and red or Communist on the inside," writes University of Toronto professor Isabelle Cote in a study on Uighur attacks on Hui in East Turkestan from 2009 to 2013. Farther back, Hui served Chinese emperors as shock troops repressing Uighur rebellions.
In Beijing, Arabic signs mark Hui bakeries, teahouses, halal restaurants and a thousand-year old mosque bustling with activity in the historically Islamic neighborhood of Niujie.
Ma Changli, who has run a butcher shop in the enclave for the past five years, said police help provide security for Friday prayers at the mosque.
"Our country has always been pretty supportive to our worship," the 39-year-old butcher said, standing in front of an Islamic inscription and hanging lamb and beef racks.
While the Hui face prejudice from the Han Chinese majority, they are proud to be Chinese and have a "positive outlook for the future," said David Stroup, a University of Oklahoma professor who met Hui across China in 2016.
Many saw an opportunity in China's Belt and Road Initiative, a $1 trillion trade and infrastructure initiative that runs across several Muslim-majority nations in central Asia and Africa, he said. 

They aspired to become middlemen on a revived Silk Road linking China with Islamic nations.
"It was going to be an opportunity for the Hui to play an important role as ambassadors to the Islamic world," Stroup said.
It came as a shock, he said, when new regulations targeted the practices of Hui alongside those of other religious groups earlier this year. 

Stroup said the shift has dampened optimism in a community that saw language and religion as links to trading partners in the Muslim world.
___
Tension bubbled up in August in Weizhou, a dusty Muslim-majority town in China's northwestern "Quran Belt."
The town's pride and joy is a gleaming white mosque with four minarets and nine domes tipped with crescent moons that dwarfs a surrounding warren of brick and concrete homes.
Officials issued a demolition order for the Grand Mosque, alleging it had been "illegally expanded" and adding that 1.07 million yuan ($154,765) from foreign sources had been received by four local mosques — financing that would be illegal under Chinese law.
Hundreds of Hui flocked to the mosque's courtyard for a rarity in China: a political protest. 

City authorities detained AP journalists and prevented them from conducting interviews at the mosque.
The protesters' success was even rarer. 

The mosque remained unscathed, if draped in a banner reading in Chinese: "Stick to directives of Sinicized religion."
Weeks later, a top Communist propaganda official in Ningxia blamed the incident on "an oversimplified administrative decision" by local authorities.
"It originally should not have happened," Bai Shangcheng, director-general of the regional Communist Party department that oversees religious groups, said at a news conference in Beijing.
Dissent simmered quietly in the Hui community after the mosque incident, according to Cui, who circumvented China's internet censorship to tweet about the protest and feed video to a Turkish television station.
In late November, the Communist Party-run Global Times reported that Ningxia had signed an anti-'terrorism' cooperation agreement with East Turkestan during a visit by Ningxia Communist Party head Zhang Yunsheng.
China has set up a vast security apparatus in East Turkestan with pervasive police checkpoints and surveillance cameras. 

By some estimates, more than 1 million Uighurs and Kazakhs have been detained in internment camps in a crackdown on 'extremism'. 

Two former camp detainees have told the AP that some Hui have been swept up in the clampdown too.
The order to close the Arabic language school came early this month, the Global Times reported. 

An unnamed expert in Beijing told the newspaper that teaching Arabic arouses public concern if it crosses over into preaching religious content.
The article quoted China's education law: "The State separates education from religion."
___
Cui is one of the few Chinese citizens disturbed enough — and brave enough — to criticize the Communist Party openly. 

For that, he has experienced censorship, detention, and "home visits" by police.
He spoke to The Associated Press at his home in Jinan, a city in eastern China where his family traces its roots back five centuries. 

Skyscrapers dwarf old mosques and boisterous halal restaurants with gold domes, Arabic script and crescents.
He doesn't drink alcohol or eat pork, but neither does he pray five times a day.
His bedside table is stacked with poetry and novels, not religious books.
Hanging in the living room is a framed red embroidery by his mother of the Islamic profession of faith in yellow Arabic stitching.
It was underneath this tapestry that police entered his home earlier this year to demand he stop criticizing the government online.
Cui posts attacks on Beijing's policies related to Muslims in China and abroad, such as the government's support of Myanmar despite widespread criticism of its treatment of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority.
A few months later, on Nov. 27, police brought him to the local Public Security Bureau for a few hours of questioning.
A recent Human Rights Watch report said that China started in November "targeting Twitter users in China as part of a nationwide crackdown on social media."
Cui refused to stop or delete his tweets.
Sixty years ago, Communist Party cadres descended on the historically Hui city of Linxia to excise "superstitions" in the city in a "struggle against the privileges of feudalism and religion," according to a 2016 book by Matthew Erie, an Oxford University professor of modern China studies.
Red Guards lit bonfires with wood from demolished mosques and tombs, Erie writes in "China and Islam: The Prophet, the Party, and Law."
They forced Muslims to wear signs reading "enemies of the state."
Cui fears the current crackdown on religion will return China to those days of blood.
At a teahouse in Jinan, as steam from his jasmine tea mixes with the scent from a tray of sweets, he recites from his poem "Letter from Prison:"

"It seems like I can see the bulldozer running wild in the Thousand and One Nights.

The angel upon my shoulder urges me: 'Tell the truth under the grey sky.'"

China is finding new ways to hurt U.S. businesses

Tougher regulations, surprise inspections and other bureaucratic moves are hampering U.S. exports amid the trade war.

By MEGAN CASSELLA
Disparate American goods such as oranges, logs, calf skins and even Lincoln vehicles have encountered heightened customs reviews at Chinese ports this year.

As the trade war escalated between the United States and China this spring, American cherry exporters in Washington state unexpectedly found their customs processing slowed at the Chinese border.
Unannounced, increased inspections began in late May and in early June. 

The extra time the inspections took backed up shipments into mainland China, leading to some shipments rotting on the docks and forcing exporters to divert their produce so it could be sold before it spoiled.
Then, almost as suddenly as they were put in place, the increased inspections stopped, said Keith Hu, director of international operations at the Northwest Cherry Growers.
“They were able to find issues with cherries, even though there was nothing abnormal, nothing different from years prior,” Hu said. 

“Shipments were held up. Some for a day, some for three days, some for five days.”
As President Donald Trump has escalated trade tensions throughout 2018, extra scrutiny and inexplicable shipment rejections have come to symbolize the pitfalls, beyond tariffs, that American firms doing business in China have faced.
Data on such disruptions is hard to come by. 

But more than one in four businesses that responded to a recent U.S.-China Business Council survey said they have been subject to increased scrutiny from Chinese regulators as a result of the increasing trade tensions.
Those companies also ranked political risk associated with the U.S.-China relationship as their top challenge for the first time since the survey began 10 years ago.
Disparate American goods such as oranges, logs, calf skins and even Lincoln vehicles have encountered heightened customs reviews at Chinese ports this year. 

Multinational companies already accustomed to the sometimes difficult environment have reported an uptick in the number of hurdles they must jump through in order to do business in the increasingly lucrative market.
The cherry growers group — which represents 2,500 growers in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah and Washington state — relies heavily on getting fresh fruit to consumers in China during the three-month window when nine varieties of cherries are ripe.
The growers ended up rerouting some sea shipments to Hong Kong or Taiwan and away from China, where the country’s large and growing middle class has embraced the fruit in recent years. 

Air shipments to China, which were normally cleared by customs in half a day, also dried up. 

The trade group estimated in November that tariffs and other barriers have cost the industry $89 million in lost sales this year.
Chinese officials rarely tie such actions directly to any international tensions, and they often go unnoticed outside the industries that are affected by them, trade experts said. 

But they are part of a well-worn playbook for the Chinese government, which has used these and other non-tariff barriers for years during political squabbles.
President Trump, a self-proclaimed “Tariff Man,” has used those taxes as the ultimate punishment when it comes to fighting a trade war against Beijing. 

So far, he has imposed tariffs on about half of all Chinese imports. 

He has also threatened to slap tariffs on the remaining U.S. $267 billion in Chinese goods.
The total value of products that China imports from the U.S. represents just one-fourth of what it exports, so Beijing cannot match U.S. tariffs dollar for dollar. 

But China has many other weapons in its arsenal to make doing business painful and costly.
U.S. companies’ complaints include delays in getting licenses approved and increased regulatory requirements that have seemed to grow worse in tandem with the worsening trade relationship between the two countries.
“These are subtle types of steps. It is very hard to be definitively responsive to them,” Mark D. Herlach, a partner with the law firm Eversheds Sutherland in Washington, said. 

“It’s a hard thing to prove.”
Chinese customs authorities announced in May they were strengthening their reviews and quarantines of American apples and logs over concerns about introducing harmful organisms to China.

The initial harvest of oranges at Porterville Citrus located on the Eastern edge of Tulare County moves onto a packing line. 

Joel Nelsen, president of the trade group California Citrus Mutual, said that while the customs slowdowns this year were concerning, more worrying were retaliatory tariffs by the Chinese government that increased citrus import prices by 40 percent.
“We did around 5.5 million cartons of oranges last year and another 1 million of lemons,” Nelsen said. 

“China was a growing market for us. They paid a good price for a quality product.”

Nelsen said it was difficult to find new buyers for the shipments and so orange farmers had to rely on the domestic U.S. market to absorb the extra fruit.
The hot-and-cold war between the world’s two largest economies has hit small businesses particularly hard.
A family-owned company in New England had a routine shipment of calf skins to China rejected this summer because the official count for the container of some 800 hides was off by a handful.
The shipment of calf skins was left idling at a port in southeastern China for more than a month before it was ultimately sent back to the U.S.. 

That resulted in a nearly U.S.$50,000 loss for the company, which requested anonymity for fear of further retaliation from the Chinese government.
“Everything has been going on with this trade with no hiccups for years and then all of a sudden we started running into some issues,” said Stephen Sothmann, the president of the U.S. Hide, Skin and Leather Association. 

“This seemed absolutely out of left field.”
China’s erratic regulatory system also makes it difficult to establish what is related to the trade war and what counts as business as usual in the country’s Darwinian business world. 

Moreover, discerning a top-down directive from the actions of an overzealous or corrupt local official can be nearly impossible.
Earlier this year, California-based manufacturer Beach House was suddenly told that supplies of fabrics and plastics it uses to make children’s playhouses in two manufacturing facilities in the Chinese cities Dongguan and Ningbo would now cost between 10 percent and 30 percent more.
The company’s suppliers said that changes to environmental regulations meant the factories making these components needed to be upgraded, Itai Leffler, the company’s group business development manager, said.
The company was given no notice, nor did any government officials ever explain whether environmental regulations had officially changed, he said.
“It always feels questionable,” Leffler said. 

“We just got told that the material costs were up and that there was a crackdown. If we didn’t pay, we were told there would be a penalty.”
China's Ministry of Commerce did not reply to requests for comment about whether China was deploying non-tariff barriers against U.S. companies.
Roy Liu, a trade lawyer in the Washington practice of law firm Hogan Lovells, said there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of increased targeting of U.S. firms, including companies being pressured to admit Chinese Communist Party cells into the workplace, but “we can’t say conclusively there is a concerted effort to broadly punish U.S. companies for doing business in China.”
The uncertainty caused by the trade war also has made some local Chinese officials reluctant to meet with American executives, according to Jason Wright, founder of Hong Kong-based business intelligence firm Argo Associates.
“That’s partly just because local officials might [not] be sure of the overall situation, they may be very reluctant to step out and approve significant projects,” Wright said.
While Beijing has not been shy in the past about issuing strict and obvious economic punishments against countries with which it was locked in disputes, the Chinese government appears to be more hesitant in the current environment to antagonize the U.S..
For example, the customs delays on fruits and other produce this spring disappeared within about three weeks, after high-level meetings between the two countries.
“There’s a significant concern about, once you pull the trigger on that type of policy approach, it has a very, very big chilling effect on U.S. investor confidence and broader foreign investor confidence in China,” said Eric Altbach, a senior vice president at the Albright Stonebridge Group who previously worked on China affairs at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. 

“The Chinese government view that as negative for their interest.”
Some see the tougher inspections and other actions as one-offs. 

Beyond a few American “poster children” being hit earlier this year, non-tariff barriers have not been a big deal for many American companies in China, William Zarit, the chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, said.
“We’re not seeing much in terms of the qualitative retaliation,” Zarit said. 

Chinese authorities “understand that foreign investment is in their interest.”
In a recent AmCham survey, some 47 percent of the 430 businesses that responded said they had seen no increase at all in non-tariff barriers.
About 27 percent said they had experienced increased inspections in recent months, while 23 percent said they had experienced slower customs clearance, according to the survey. It was conducted between Aug. 29 and Sept. 5, before the U.S. imposed a 10 percent tariff on $200 billion in Chinese imports.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the issue. 

A Commerce official said the agency tracks non-tariff-related issues and works with companies to resolve them, without offering further detail.
But the Trump administration has acknowledged that China has engaged in some punitive actions beyond tariffs. 

Vice President Mike Pence, for one, said in October that senior Chinese officials had targeted U.S. business leaders to lobby the Trump administration to soften its trade actions by “leveraging their desire to maintain their operations in China.”
Pence pointed to an example in which Beijing “threatened to deny a business license for a major U.S. corporation,” which he did not name, unless it spoke out against the administration’s trade policies.

History as prologue
Following a meeting between Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and President Trump at the G-20 leaders’ summit in Buenos Aires this month, the two countries declared a 90-day truce to negotiate, but tensions have remained high.
Since then, Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, was arrested in Canada on the request of the U.S., raising questions about whether her detention was politically motivated to pressure Beijing. 

That has led to concerns that China may retaliate by targeting American executives. 

Three Canadian citizens have been detained in China in what has widely been regarded as direct retaliation for Meng’s arrest.
Further muddying the waters, President Trump said he would be willing to intervene in the Huawei case if it meant securing a trade deal.
Compared to China’s actions during other recent trade disputes, the measures taken against U.S. firms to date appear minor.
During a diplomatic showdown with Japan in 2010, the Chinese government placed a temporary ban on exports of rare earth minerals to its neighbor.
Two years later, sales of Toyotas and Hondas plummeted in China, after state-run media instigated a boycott of Japanese goods in another territorial dispute. 

Japanese businesses, including sushi restaurants, were attacked as thousands of Chinese people took to the streets to protest.
In addition to actions by government officials, foreign companies can face sabotage from private sector competitors, said Josh Gardner, the chief executive of Kung Fu Data, a Beijing-based company that runs e-commerce operations for international firms in China.
In one recent example, Gardner said a retail client was hit by local competitors lobbying tax officials to “fine and hamper” the company.
“That was just ‘Friday’,” he said. 

“Everything that happens in China stays in China; people don’t talk about it because they don’t want to deal with the repercussions.”

EVIL COMPANY: BRITAIN VOICES GRAVE CONCERNS OVER CHINA'S HUAWEI

The Chinese technology giant has defended its ambitions in the face of global fears that it serves as a Trojan horse for Beijing's security apparatus.

AFP

The defence secretary has become the first cabinet minister to speak out against the telecoms giant Huawei amid fears of Chinese spying.

LONDON - British Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has warned of his "very deep concerns" about Chinese technology giant Huawei being involved in the use of 5G on Britain's mobile network, The Times reported Thursday.
"I have grave, very deep concerns about Huawei providing the 5G network in Britain. It's something we'd have to look at very closely," Williamson was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
"We've got to look at what partners such as Australia and the US are doing in order to ensure that they have the maximum security of that 5G network," he said.
"We've got to recognise the fact, as has been recently exposed, that the Chinese state does act in a malign way," he said.
Williamson's comments echo similar warnings from MI6 spy agency chief Alex Younger who earlier this year said Britain would have to make "some decisions" about the involvement of firms such as Huawei.
Britain's government earlier this year announced the West Midlands region in central England would become the first large-scale testing area for 5G.
Fifth-generation mobile networks, or 5G, will have faster transmission speeds and could enable a far wider use of self-driving vehicles and internet-powered household objects.
It is expected to be rolled out in Asia and the United States from 2020.
Huawei has defended its ambitions in the face of global fears that the Chinese telecom giant serves as a Trojan horse for Beijing's security apparatus.
The company has been under fire this year with Washington leading efforts to blacklist Huawei internationally and securing the arrest of the company's chief financial officer in Canada.
Countries like the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Britain have pulled back from using its products while concerns grow in Japan, France, Germany, and even the Czech Republic over security issues.

President Trump could declare a national emergency barring US companies from using equipment made by China's Huawei and ZTE

• President Donald Trump is considering an executive order in the new year to declare a national emergency that would bar U.S. companies from using telecommunications equipment made by China's Huawei and ZTE.
• The two companies work at the behest of the Chinese government and their equipment is used to spy on Americans.
• It would be the latest step by the Trump administration to cut Huawei and ZTE, two of China's biggest network equipment companies, out of the U.S. market.
• The issue has new urgency as U.S. wireless carriers look for partners as they prepare to adopt next generation 5G wireless networks.

By David Shepardson and Diane Bartz

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump is considering an executive order in the new year to declare a national emergency that would bar U.S. companies from using telecommunications equipment made by China's Huawei and ZTE, three sources familiar with the situation told Reuters.
It would be the latest step by the Trump administration to cut Huawei and ZTE, two of China's biggest network equipment companies, out of the U.S. market.

The two companies work at the behest of the Chinese government and their equipment could be used to spy on Americans.
The executive order, which has been under consideration for more than eight months, could be issued as early as January and would direct the Commerce Department to block U.S. companies from buying equipment from foreign telecommunications makers that pose significant national security risks, sources from the telecoms industry and the administration said.
While the order is unlikely to name Huawei or ZTE, a source said it is expected that Commerce officials would interpret it as authorization to limit the spread of equipment made by the two companies. 

The sources said the text for the order has not been finalized.
The executive order would invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a law that gives the president the authority to regulate commerce in response to a national emergency that threatens the United States.
The issue has new urgency as U.S. wireless carriers look for partners as they prepare to adopt next generation 5G wireless networks.
The order follows the passage of a defense policy bill in August that barred the U.S. government itself from using Huawei and ZTE equipment.
Huawei and ZTE did not return requests for comment. 

The White House also did not return a request for comment.
The Wall Street Journal first reported in early May that the order was under consideration, but it was never issued.

A security guard keeps watch at the entrance of the Huawei global headquarters in Shenzhen in China's southern Guangdong province on December 18, 2018.

Chinese are using the American countryside to encircle and finally capture the cities

Rural operators in the United States are among the biggest customers of Huawei and ZTE, and fear the executive order would also require them to rip out existing Chinese-made equipment without compensation. 

Industry officials are divided on whether the administration could legally compel operators to do that.
While the big U.S. wireless companies have cut ties with Huawei in particular, small rural carriers have relied on Huawei and ZTE switches and other equipment because they tend to be less expensive.
The company is so central to small carriers that William Levy, vice president for sales of Huawei Tech USA, is on the board of directors of the Rural Wireless Association.
The RWA represents carriers with fewer than 100,000 subscribers. 

It estimates that 25 percent of its members had Huawei or ZTE equipment in their networks, it said in a filing to the Federal Communications Commission earlier this month.
The RWA is concerned that an executive order could force its members to remove ZTE and Huawei equipment and also bar future purchases, said Caressa Bennet, RWA general counsel.
It would cost $800 million to $1 billion for all RWA members to replace their Huawei and ZTE equipment, Bennet said.
Separately, the FCC in April granted initial approval to a regulation that bars giving federal funding to help pay for telecommunication infrastructure to companies that purchase equipment from firms deemed threats to U.S. national security, which analysts have said is aimed at Huawei and ZTE.
The FCC is also considering whether to require carriers to remove and replace equipment from firms deemed a national security risk.
In March, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said "hidden 'back doors' to our networks in routers, switches — and virtually any other type of telecommunications equipment - can provide an avenue for hostile governments to inject viruses, launch denial-of-service attacks, steal data, and more."
In the December filing, Pine Belt Communications in Alabama estimated it would cost $7 million to $13 million to replace its Chinese-made equipment, while Sagebrush in Montana said replacement would cost $57 million and take two years.

Beijing's crackdown on religion clouds holiday season for China's faithful

By Joshua Berlinger

Hong Kong -- It's a Christmas battle for the hearts and souls of the Chinese people.
Despite being officially atheist and having a long and antagonistic relationship with religion, the ruling Communist Party is presiding over a boom of Christianity in China.
There are an estimated 72 million to 92 million Christians in the country -- the second-largest faith group after Chinese Buddhists, according to US-based NGO Freedom House.
Some experts claim that China could even become the world's largest Christian country in less than two decades.
Yet on December 9, authorities detained more than 100 Protestant worshipers from the Early Rain Covenant Church in the city of Chengdu.
The church's pastor, Wang Yi, was arrested on allegations of "inciting subversion of state power," according to US-based Christian advocacy group ChinaAid.

Neither China's National Religious Affairs Administration nor local authorities in Chengdu responded to CNN's requests for comment on the case.

Then US President George W. Bush meets with Christian activist Wang Yi (middle) in 2006.

The arrests cap a year-long crackdown on religion in China. 

Dozens of predominantly Protestant Christian churches ruled to have been built or run illegally have been torn down across the country throughout 2018.
Elsewhere, in the western region of East Turkestan, a growing campaign of repression against the predominantly Muslim Uyghur ethnic group has provoked international condemnation.
Analysts and civil rights advocates say Beijing is intensifying its campaign against worshipers seen as an ideological threat to the party's monopoly on power.
"We are now entering a new era of repression toward two of China's five religions, which is different than what we've seen over the past 40 years," said Ian Johnson, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and author of "The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao."

Religion with Chinese characteristics
China is officially an atheist state, and religious practice is under tight government supervision and surveillance.
There are only five state-recognized faiths: Chinese Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism and Taoism.
Worship and religious activity are supervised by state-sanctioned organizations. 

The government appoints major religious leaders and decides where places of worship can be built.
Detention of 100 Christians raises concerns about religious crackdown in China

Worshipers must "uphold the principle that religions in China must be Chinese in orientation and provide active guidance to religions so that they can adapt themselves to the socialist society," according to a government white paper on religious freedoms published earlier this year.
The reason for these restrictions, Beijing claims, is that "foreign religions" such as Catholicism and Protestantism have "long been controlled and utilized by colonialists and imperialists."
China's fractious relationship with organized religion has a long history. 

In the mid-1800s, charismatic cult leader Hong Xiuquan declared himself the brother of Jesus Christ and launched a civil war against the ruling Qing dynasty.
At its height, his Taiping Heavenly Kingdom controlled huge swaths of China before it was eventually defeated by Imperial forces.

A demolished house church is seen in the city of Zhengzhou in central China's Henan province in June.

Local spiritual and religious movements have also been subject to brutal crackdowns.
In 1999, China banned and moved to eradicate the Falun Gong spiritual movement, a faith combining traditional marital arts practices with new-age beliefs. 

At its height, the Falun Gong claimed millions of followers -- and its influence worried the government.
Restrictions on worship help Communists mold religious institutions to their liking, or co-opt them altogether.
Christianity and Islam, Johnson said, are seen as particularly threatening because the party views them as having "strong foreign ties." 

"(That's) even though both religions have long roots in China and are very much localized," he added.

'Country of particular concern'
Outrage grew worldwide in 2018 over the treatment of Muslim-majority Uyghurs in East Turkestan, with hundreds of thousands have been imprisoned in massive concentration camps.
The clampdown on Uyghurs led the US State Department to designate China a "country of particular concern" regarding religious freedom. 

It comes after Chinese officials banned Uyghurs from growing long beards, wearing veils in public places and home schooling their children in 2017.
UN wants access to China's East Turkestan 're-education camps'

"My particular concern now for China is they've increased these actions of persecution against the faith community," Sam Brownback, Washington's ambassador at large for international religious freedom, said earlier this month. 

"China isn't backing away from the religious persecution; it seems to be expanding. This is obviously very troubling."
Former detainees have reported torture and brainwashing inside the detention centers, including forcing inmates to repeat Communist Party propaganda praising Xi Jinping.

A person wearing a white mask with tears of blood takes part in a protest march of ethnic Uyghurs asking for the European Union to call upon China to respect human rights in the Chinese East Turkestan colony in April.

In an interview with Reuters in November, China's ambassador to the US, Cui Tiankai, said the camps were trying to turn the Muslim-majority inmates into "normal people."
Chinese authorities have refused to grant international monitoring groups and diplomats access to East Turkestan.
While other communist regimes have also been hostile to religion, Johnson said the crackdown on Christianity and Islam was less about the faiths' practices and beliefs and more about the China's ability to control them.
"Under Xi Jinping, the government has further tightened control over Christianity in its broad efforts to 'Sinicize' religion or 'adopt Chinese characteristics' -- in other words, to ensure that religious groups support the government and the Communist Party," Human Rights Watch said in a statement calling for the release of Wang Yi, the Chengdu pastor, and his fellow believers.


China, Vatican deal a 'betrayal'
While some Christians worship legally in government-approved churches, many others attend unregistered underground services.
State-sanctioned Catholic churches are run by bishops chosen and ordained by Beijing, not the Vatican. 

These churches do not recognize the Pope as the ultimate authority in Catholicism, nor does the Holy See recognize Chinese-selected bishops as legitimate.
Opposition grows to controversial deal between Beijing and the Vatican

After decades of chilly relations, the two sides reached a landmark provisional agreement in September that would see them jointly approve China's bishops, a deal that could help lead to the restoration of diplomatic ties between Beijing and the Holy See.
It has drawn swift opposition in Catholic circles. 

Cardinal Joseph Zen, the former bishop of Hong Kong, called it an "incredible betrayal" of the Catholic faith in an interview with Reuters.
Republican US Sen. Marco Rubio, himself a Catholic, asked how the Vatican could justify ceding religious authority to a secular government.
"They are giving a government (an atheist one) influence in choosing bishops which (the Church says) are regarded as transmitters of the apostolic line. How does secular (and atheist) interference in that decision not break that line?" Rubio said on Twitter.
It remains unclear how the Vatican deal will affect Protestant churches like Early Rain, but critics believe it comes from the same playbook as the arrests in Chengdu -- it's all about control.
"This goes back to a broader effort by the government to crack down on anything that can be construed as civil society -- in other words, groups like religious organizations, or NGOs, that are outside government control," Johnson said.

Ideological soulmates: How a China skeptic sold Trump on a trade war

Robert Lighthizer went to the White House in 2017 to lay out his rationale for confronting Beijing. Now, he is in charge of executing it.

By ANDREW RESTUCCIA and MEGAN CASSELLA

Robert Lighthizer thought it was time for a history lesson.
It was mid-2017, and President Donald Trump — who had campaigned on a vow to bully China into changing its trade practices — had so far taken little concrete action against the Asian power since taking office earlier that year.
So Lighthizer, the United States trade representative and a decades-long skeptic of Beijing, commandeered one of the White House’s weekly trade policy meetings, delivering a meticulous presentation to his colleagues about the decades-long failure of U.S. policy toward Beijing.
Surrounded by Cabinet secretaries and senior advisers to the president, Lighthizer stood at the end of a long table in the Roosevelt Room and ticked through the economic dialogues with the Chinese that past presidents hoped would fundamentally change the trade dynamic between the two economic superpowers — but ultimately, in his view, yielded little progress.
Then, a few weeks later, Lighthizer took the exact same message to Trump in the Oval Office.
Though Lighthizer didn’t outline a detailed policy proposal during his presentations, the implication was clear, according to a person with knowledge of the episode: After years of talk, the United States needed to take a much more aggressive approach to combating China’s trade practices, which unfairly advantaged Chinese firms at the expense of American workers.
The message resonated with a president who was already inclined to take a hard line on China.
Trump signed an executive order late that summer giving Lighthizer the authority to “consider all available options” and explore ways to confront Beijing over its handling of technology and intellectual property.
And in January, Trump slapped the first in a series of hefty tariffs on China, launching a trade war that he vows will force the country to change its behavior.
For Lighthizer, a veteran Washington trade attorney who at 71 years old now oversees the president’s expansive trade ambitions, Trump’s decision to challenge China capped a career spent trying to convince Washington elites of Beijing’s underhanded economic intentions.
And it cemented a bond with Trump that even prompted the president to briefly consider Lighthizer to be his next chief of staff.
Now, nearly a year and a half after he went to the White House to lay out his rationale for confronting Beijing, Lighthizer is in charge of executing it.
Earlier this month, Trump tapped the trade representative to lead his administration’s latest — and most crucial — round of negotiations with China.
Failure could drive the two countries even deeper into a trade war, further destabilizing the world economy and possibly rupturing ties between two superpowers already at odds over Beijing’s military activity in the South China Sea, its aggressive investment practices in developing countries and its alleged rampant theft of American intellectual property. 
Politically, Trump has also made the negotiations with China one of his top policy priorities, meaning his 2020 reelection chances could hinge in part on the outcome of the Lighthizer-led discussions.
In other words, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Despite their starkly different personalities and approaches, Lighthizer and Trump are — in the words of one former senior administration official — “ideological soulmates” on trade. 

Despite their starkly different personalities and approaches, Trump and Lighthizer are — in the words of one former senior administration official — “ideological soulmates” on trade.
They are both deeply skeptical of multilateral institutions like the World Trade Organization, favor bilateral agreements over massive trade deals and are eager to use punitive measures like tariffs and trade restrictions to get their way.
But on a more personal level, the two men appear to have little in common.
Lighthizer grew up in Ashtabula, Ohio, in the heart of the Rust Belt and a world away from Trump’s childhood home of New York City.
He’s an avid history buff and hunter, who keeps a replica of a Revolutionary War-era ship in his office and used to have a mounted elk head on the wall in his living room — a jarring contrast to Trump’s gold-plated apartments.
And Lighthizer has long been meticulous about health and fitness, at one point getting into the habit of drinking scalding cups of hot water in the mornings, rather than coffee or tea.
Trump, meanwhile, rarely exercises and is known for eating fast food, swilling Diet Cokes and ordering his steaks well-done.
Still, Trump has grown to like and trust Lighthizer, according to White House officials.
The president believes Lighthizer is an expert negotiator, a high compliment from a man who considers himself to be the ultimate dealmaker and once wrote that he’d name himself trade representative if he ever became president.
“You’ve got the art of the deal — and with him you’ve got the art of the trade deal,” said Larry Kudlow, Trump’s top White House economic adviser, of Lighthizer.
Trump tends to favor people who fall neatly into archetypes.
He often describes favored advisers as “straight out of central casting.”
Lighthizer, White House officials noted, looks the part of a grizzled veteran of trade negotiations and that’s helped him win Trump’s trust.
As he faces mounting outside criticism for his trade policies, the president has started privately referencing the 1888 presidential election, in which tariffs became a decisive issue, according to an administration official.
When Democratic President Grover Cleveland called for lowering tariffs, his challenger, Republican Benjamin Harrison, pounced, arguing that maintaining high tariffs was the key to economic prosperity.
In the end, the public sided with Harrison and Cleveland lost the presidency.
The episode has become a parable for Trump that bolsters his position that tariffs are a political winner.
While it’s unclear who put the 1888 presidential election on Trump’s radar, some in the White House suspect it was the history-loving Lighthizer, who has long touted the utility of tariffs.
Unlike other Trump advisers, Lighthizer has largely avoided getting drawn into the behind-the-scenes fights that so often spill into public view in this administration.
Current and former administration officials said he’s worked to stay on Trump’s good side.
He is deeply skeptical of reporters and avoids doing interviews unless the White House encourages him to do them.
A USTR spokesman did not respond to repeated requests for an interview with Lighthizer for this story.
“He knows there’s an audience of one and he never steps off script. Everything that he says is said knowing that Trump is watching,” said a Washington trade lawyer, who declined to speak on the record because he didn’t want to anger Lighthizer.
Lighthizer can also be short-tempered, and he’s been known to lose his patience during negotiations, throwing out arcane references to trade law to outsmart his opponents.
One former White House official described him as a “grumpy old man.”
Still, his success in renegotiating America’s three-country trade deal with Mexico and Canada, as well as revising a trade deal with South Korea, has won him allies in the administration, even among the many officials who disagree with him.
That sets him apart from White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, whose policy stances align with Lighthizer’s but who has clashed with senior aides.
“Even those who disagree with his substantive approach respect Bob’s deep legal knowledge and unwavering professionalism,” said former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, who oversaw the administration’s internal trade discussions until he resigned earlier this year.
The renegotiation of the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada deal, formerly known as NAFTA, was among Lighthizer’s first tests as trade representative, and Trump wanted it done as soon as possible.
In more than a year of talks with Canada and Mexico, Lighthizer combined a “my way or the highway” attitude with a thorough understanding of policy minutiae that he used to win concessions from his counterparts, according to people familiar with the intense negotiations.
At one point this spring, as negotiators were racing to conclude talks before a late May deadline they ultimately missed, Lighthizer began to grow visibly frustrated with what he viewed as a lack of flexibility from the other countries.
Mexico had prepared a document with a series of bullet points offering ideas for changes to make to the chapter at hand, and Lighthizer, unsatisfied with the ideas presented, responded during the next session with a typed-up, bulleted list of his own.
But instead of fresh ideas, typed next to each bullet point were the same words: “This is not a proposal.”
“It was very funny in a dark, dry way,” said a former high-ranking official involved in the NAFTA talks, who was present at the meeting.
“He was like a small kid that just played a prank on someone, and it worked.”
While Lighthizer did cinch the deal, some critics have said the revised NAFTA amounts to little more than a slight update of the original accord — not an overhauled agreement as the Trump administration has portrayed it.
Lighthizer’s tough negotiating style, and his focus on protecting America’s core industries from foreign imports, has long been well-known in Washington, where he went to college and law school and spent his four-decade career before joining the Trump administration.
As a young lawyer, Lighthizer worked for the Senate Finance Committee before joining the Reagan administration as a deputy U.S. trade representative, where he helped negotiate “voluntary restraint” agreements with trading partners to limit U.S. imports of cars, semiconductors and other goods.
He then spent years as an attorney at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, largely focused on defending the U.S. steel industry from subsidization by foreign countries, including China, and illegal dumping.
That background has prompted some criticism of Lighthizer and his allies from detractors who say they have acted too brashly to help the steel industry at the expense of U.S. businesses and the broader American economy — particularly as they imposed tariffs on metals imports that prompted widespread retaliation from countries across the globe.
In recent years, Lighthizer was winding down his career, spending more time with his three grandchildren and at his condo in Palm Beach, Florida — which sits just a few miles from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club — when he was approached by Dan DiMicco, a longtime friend and former steel industry executive who was working on Trump’s transition team.
DiMicco initially convinced Lighthizer to help with the transition.
Then he later recommended Lighthizer for the USTR job, casting him as a world-class negotiator who could help the president fulfill his campaign promises.
Lighthizer appeared to be already familiar with, and supportive of, Trump’s trade views.
In 2011, he penned an op-ed for the Washington Times defending Trump — who was toying with the idea of a presidential campaign — against what he believed was unfair criticism that the reality show star was “liberal on trade.”
He argued instead that trade-restrictive policies and toughness toward China were inherently conservative ideas.
“Given the current financial crisis and the widespread belief that the 21st century will belong to China, is free trade really making global markets more efficient?” he wrote, presenting a challenge to traditional Republican free-trade orthodoxy.
“If Mr. Trump’s potential campaign does nothing more than force a real debate on those questions, it will have done a service to both the Republican Party and the country.”
Lighthizer’s views make him arguably the most protectionist trade representative in recent memory. His predecessors focused largely on pushing for open markets and fewer trade barriers, not more. Often, these negotiations served more of a geopolitical purpose than an economic one.
“Bob is an outlier,” said former Florida Rep. James Bacchus, the former chairman of the World Trade Organization’s highest court, the Appellate Body.
Bacchus has strongly criticized Lighthizer’s policies, including his recent decision to block the appointment of new judges to the WTO.
But Lighthizer has been unapologetic about his views, even penning a New York Times op-ed years ago on “the venerable history of protectionism.”
He has defended his position as the only way to protect America’s future, and he, like his boss, often says that short-term pain felt by farmers and manufacturers will be worth the long-term payoff.
"If your conclusion is that China taking over all of our technology and the future of our children is a stupid fight, then you are right, we should capitulate," Lighthizer told lawmakers earlier this year, when they criticized the administration’s trade policies for the pain they have caused export-dependent industries.
"My view is that's how we got where we are. I don't think it's a stupid fight."
As point-man on the China talks, Lighthizer is taking over a role previously held by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, neither of whom managed to convince Beijing into making the type of sweeping structural changes that the U.S. has long wanted, including commitments from Beijing to buy more U.S. products, fewer restrictions on American firms entering the Chinese market and a reduction in the pilfering of American trade secrets.
The high-pressure job comes with huge risks — and if Lighthizer fails, his relationship with Trump could go down the tubes.
But people close to Lighthizer say he believes he has little to lose, in part because his current job is likely the last one of his career.
“He isn’t looking to move up the ladder after this job,” one White House official said.
And if he succeeds, he has the opportunity to end his career having fulfilled a primary goal he has held since he started it.
When he sat before the Senate Finance Committee as part of a confirmation hearing for his first appointment to USTR in 1983, Lighthizer was instructed by then-Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to be sure never to forget to put America’s interests first, a prophetic echo of the philosophy that has come to define Trump’s presidency.
“If at any time it appears that I lose consciousness of the fact that I am there representing this committee and this country, I hope that someone points it out to me,” responded Lighthizer, then 35 years old.
“I don’t expect to fall into that trap.”