Wanted: A Strategy to Limit China's Grand Plans for the South China Sea

The United States needs to play an active role in helping broker resistance to the Chinese political push.
By Dean Cheng

The United States has significantly accelerated the pace of it freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) in the South China Sea. 

Last year it conducted four such operations in the span of five months. 

This contrasts with the four FONOPs conducted during Barack Obama’s entire second term.
On January 17, the USS Hopper, a U.S. Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, conducted the first FONOPs of 2018. 

This one occurred near Scarborough Shoal, much farther north than the previous operations. 

Like those earlier FONOPs, it rapidly drew a rebuke from the People’s Republic of China.
China’s Defense Ministry spokesman declared that the repeated “illegal” entry (feifa jinru 非法进入) of American warships to Chinese island groupings and maritime regions in the South China Sea endangered both sides. 

He condemned the operations as a threat to Chinese sovereignty and security and said they disrupted regional security and stability.
Scarborough Shoal has been a source of ongoing friction. 

Claimed by both China and the Philippines, it was the scene of a confrontation between Manila and Beijing in 2012. 

The United States brokered what was supposed to be a mutual withdrawal, but which saw the Chinese remain establishing effective control over the area. 

Thus far, however, Beijing has refrained from engaging in the kind of island reclamation or building at Scarborough that it has conducted in the Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands.
But that restraint may be coming to a close. 

China’s state-run news agencies now openly acknowledge that the nation has, indeed, engaged in significant land reclamation and artificial island building in the South China Sea region. 

Chinese media have also unveiled a number of new dredges. 

This includes the Tian Kun Ho, one of the most powerful excavation vessels in Asia. 

The 140-meter-long vessel can reportedly dredge six thousand cubic meters per hour, and reach thirty-five meters below the ocean surface. 

Beijing appears to be warning that it can engage in rapid island development at any time—and Scarborough Shoal is potentially one of those sites.
The People’s Republic of China has long promulgated a map of the South China Sea that includes a “nine dash line” encompassing most of the region. 

Based upon a map initially published by the Republic of China, Beijing has been ambiguous over what exactly the nine-dash line represents. 

Is it a claim over the land features within it, including the Paracel Islands, Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal? 

Or is it an assertion that the entire region, including the waters, belongs to Beijing, essentially making the South China Sea its territorial waters? 

Its behavior, including repeatedly interfering with American warships and military aircraft transiting the region, would seem to suggest the latter. 

Beijing, however, has protested this view, arguing that it has never interfered with civilian ships on the sea lanes that traverse the area.
In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) ruled on a complaint against China filed by the Philippines, as part of the binding arbitration applicable to signatories of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), to which both the Philippines and China are parties. 

The PCA ruled on a number of elements, in almost all cases finding in favor of Manila. 

This included a ruling that China’s claims to "historic" rights, or other sovereign rights or jurisdiction, within the area encompassed by the nine-dash line was contrary to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and without lawful effect.
But Beijing bluntly rejected the findings, often in very intemperate terms. 

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang described the PCA as a “law-abusing tribunal” engaging in a “farce.” 

China’s ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, accused the tribunal of “professional incompetence” and “questionable integrity.” 

Indeed, since the ruling, Beijing has expanded its military presence, despite promises to Obama not to “militarize” the South China Sea.
Meanwhile, Chinese actions have also increasingly worried Indonesia. 

Indonesian territory extends to Natuna Island and an associated array of natural gas fields in the southwestern portion of the South China Sea. 

Chinese fishing boats have steadily encroached on its waters—much like they had on Scarborough Shoal. 

More alarming, one Chinese fishing boat detained by Indonesian authorities for illegal fishing has been seized back by the China Coast Guard. 

China’s growing naval capabilities have therefore also raised concerns. 

Most worrisome, Indonesian requests to clarify whether Natuna Island (and the surrounding waters) are encompassed within the nine-dash line have not received official clarification from Beijing. Instead, the PRC has said that, while it recognizes Indonesian sovereignty over Natuna island, it still retains “overlapping claims to maritime rights and interests.”
These issues led Indonesia to expand military facilities near Natuna in 2016. 

This has included expanding the island’s runway and increasing the number of troops deployed there. In 2017, Djakarta announced that it would rename the area near Natuna, within its own Exclusive Economic Zone, the North Natuna Sea. 

The Chinese promptly rejected this move, warning that it would not be “conducive” to good relations.
The name change has been endorsed by the United States, however. 

Secretary of Defense James Mattis used the term while visiting Indonesia, saying, “We can help maintain maritime domain awareness in the South China Sea, the North Natuna Sea. . . . This is something that we look forward to doing.”

An Integrated Course of Action for the Future
There is no reason to think the Chinese will back away from their increasingly assertive stance toward the South China Sea. 

Far from opening to compromise, Beijing has steadily tightened its grip over the area, while its actions toward Indonesia suggest that its ambitions may extend even further. 

Beijing is clearly engaged in a long-term effort. 

It is essential, then, for the United States to have short-, medium-, and long-term responses.

Short-Term: Slowing Down Chinese Actions
One of the great challenges has been China’s island construction. 

Literally moving earth and sea, Beijing has built entirely new islands, complete with airfields and military installations, and thereby changing the facts on the ground. 

The growing strength of all parts of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)—including the PLA Navy, PLA Air Force, and the PLA Rocket Forces—makes challenging China an ever more dangerous proposition.
But China’s ability to build these islands rests upon certain companies, such as the state-owned China Communications Construction Company, and their attendant ability to build and maintain dredging capabilities. 

Insofar as their dredging equipment relies on imported parts, restricting the sale and supply of those parts can affect the pace of operations. 

The Tian Kun Hao’s predecessor, the Tianjing, clearly relies on imported equipment.
It is also possible to restrict the operations of companies engaged in Beijing’s dredging operations. 

Not all are state-owned enterprises. 

Some are commercial entities, based in China and Hong Kong. 

Denying them the ability to bid on commercial contracts in the United States (and, ideally, Japan, Australia and Europe), would compel them to assess whether South China Sea operations are worth the price. 

State-owned enterprises, too, can be vulnerable to sanctions. 

Even though they are less vulnerable to sanctions, China would nonetheless like to expand their global footprint. 

By publicizing their role in South China Sea activities, and imposing sanctions on their operations, it may be possible to limit their international presence, or at least affect perceptions of them.
Medium-Term: Improving Local Coordination and Capacity
Perhaps the greatest political challenge to limiting Chinese action is the lack of coordinated responses among the other claimants. 

In the Spratly Islands, it is not a matter of ASEAN states versus China, but rather an array of mutually challenging claims. 

Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and the Philippines all claim at least parts of the Spratly Islands. 

For there to be any hope for balancing the Chinese political push, the local states must first reach a common negotiating stance among themselves. 

The United States needs to play an active role in helping broker such a stance among Kuala Lumpur, Manila and Hanoi.
Similarly, any kind of common Southeast Asian response to China must eventually include Indonesia, the most populous of the ASEAN members. 

ASEAN is unlikely to assume a direct military-security role, but enhancing the members’ mutual information-sharing, maritime domain awareness, and general situational awareness would facilitate intra-ASEAN confidence. 

The inability to determine the fate of Malaysian Airlines MH17 underscores the general utility such improved information sharing could have, regardless of Chinese claims in the region.
Improving local coordination will also require rehabilitating relations with Thailand. 

Within ASEAN, Thailand is the fourth most populous nation, boasting the second largest GDP (in nominal terms) and one of the largest militaries. 

It is also a U.S. ally and has been a key partner in many U.S. military interventions in the post–Cold War era. 

It is also centrally located as part of the “Indo-Pacific” region.
But Thailand’s 2014 coup and the regime’s subsequent suppression of public dissent are inconsistent with American sensibilities, severely complicating Washington’s relations with Bangkok. 

The United States should certainly not approve of such moves, and should strive to shift Thailand back on a path to civilian rule and orderly civil-military relations. 

But just as the United States nonetheless maintained coordination and interaction with the Egyptian military in the wake of its toppling of Mohammed Morsi, strategic calculations should be integrated into our handling of Thailand.

Long-Term: Building New Approaches
At the end of the day, these moves underscore that the United States cannot, by itself, manage, much less resolve, the South China Sea issue. 

But as President Trump indicated at the recent World Economic Forum, “America first” is not the same as America alone. 

Similarly, while there are many things that America can do to help balance China, more can be achieved in conjunction with other states.
The nascent “quad” of the United States, Japan, Australia and India offers a potential new path for addressing some of the South China Sea issues. 

When officials from the four states met during President Trump’s November circuit of Asia, it gave new life to the concept, which has hibernated for nearly a decade.
The “quad” is not—and should not be—an effort at creating a regional-alliance structure. 

The four states have very divergent views on security, as well as national constraints on their ability to interoperate. 

But facilitating political and diplomatic coordination among these states, and perhaps advancing certain economic and political policies jointly, can provide a significant underpinning for individual- and bilateral-security moves.
For example, making clear that all four states believe in freedom of the seas and reject the idiosyncratic Chinese interpretation is a political, not a military, move, which could then be buttressed by individual national naval activities. 

Simply having all four nations maintain a steadfast position on the importance of keeping the region’s sea lanes open is likely to have salutary effects.
At the same time, should China choose to adjust its approach and refrain from further destabilizing the region with its artificial island construction efforts, an informal “quad” is far better placed to respond positively than a formal alliance which presupposes incipient hostilities.

Prospects: Still a Question Mark
The Trump administration continues to be a work-in-progress. 

For that matter, so is Xi Jinping’s administration.  

We have yet to fully understand the impact of the personnel changes announced in the 19th Party Congress, including the elevation of Yang Jiechi to the Chinese Communist Party Politburo and Wang Huning to the Politburo Standing Committee. 

The next several years may see a mutual focus on domestic economic development, and, if so, then there will be a significant likelihood of cooperation.
But the past decade suggests that there is growing friction in the South China Sea, and recent events give us little reason to believe that trend is changing. 

What will follow in the wake of the USS Hopper FONOPs remains to be seen, but it might be best to batten the hatches.

Taiwan Retaliates Against Chinese Airlines, Hampering Lunar New Year Travel

Chinese flights scrapped in Taiwan row
BBC News

Two Chinese airlines have scrapped flights between China and Taiwan, amid a row between Beijing and Taipei over access to air routes.
China Eastern and Xiamen Airlines had planned an extra 176 round trips over the Lunar New Year holiday.
But Taipei has refused to authorise the flights, for which tens of thousands of people have bought tickets.
The stand-off will potentially leave passengers stranded as they try to get home for the year's biggest holiday.
In statements, both airlines said they had no choice but to abandon the flight plans.

Safety risk
The refusal to agree to the extra flights is being seen as retaliation from Taipei, after China opened up several new air routes -- which both China Eastern and Xiamen Airlines have been using.
Taiwan said China's actions risked flight safety, and went against a 2015 deal to discuss such flight paths before they came into operation.
They included a northbound route known as M503, which travels up the Taiwan Strait that divides China from the self-ruling island.
But Beijing insisted it had the right to launch the routes, including M503, which it said was "designed by China in cooperation with the United States and other countries" in 2007.
It said there was no danger to safety, and that the routes, which were aimed at easing congestion, would only be used for civil aviation.
Beijing added it had advised Taipei of its plans to use the route, but that it did not require consent.
The incident is the latest spat between the two.
China sees Taiwan as a breakaway province that will eventually be part of the country again, but many Taiwanese want a separate nation.

Ticket struggle
Reports suggest about 50,000 passengers will be affected by the flight cancellations.
The Taiwanese government has raised the possibility of using military planes to bring back people wanting to go home.
The BBC's Cindy Sui in Taipei says that would-be passengers wanting to travel between the mainland and the island were likely to fly via Hong Kong or Macau.
Alternatively they could choose a Chinese airline or Taiwanese airline that had not been using the new routes, though tickets would be hard to come by, our correspondent added.

The Manchurian Pope

Vatican is selling out Catholic Church to China: Holy See ordered two bishops to make way for Beijing’s choices 
By Lucy Hornby in Beijing

 Cardinal Joseph Zen: 'Do I think that the Vatican is selling out the Catholic Church in China? Yes'

One of Asia’s most senior Catholic leaders has accused the Vatican of selling out the Church by pursuing a rapprochement with Beijing while the Chinese government cracks down on religious freedom.
Cardinal Joseph Zen, the outspoken 86-year-old former bishop of Hong Kong, hand-delivered protests from two Chinese bishops to Pope Francis earlier this month after a Vatican delegation ordered them to make way for replacements picked by Beijing.
 The issue of bishop appointments has been a stumbling block in talks between Beijing and the Vatican to try to establish diplomatic relations.
The Vatican is one of 20 remaining states that maintain diplomatic ties with self-governing Taiwan, which Beijing insists is part of China.
 “Do I think that the Vatican is selling out the Catholic Church in China? Yes, definitely, if they go in the direction which is obvious from all what they are doing in recent years and months,” Cardinal Zen wrote in a blog post.
 The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
 Chinese Catholics went underground during the bloody decades of Maoist rule and the Cultural Revolution, before religious practice was tolerated again in the early 1980s.
 In many parts of China, the “underground” congregations and those led by bishops appointed by Beijing have been reconciled since a 2007 letter from Pope Benedict to Beijing, with bishop appointment agreed upon by the Vatican and Beijing’s “patriotic association”.
In some areas the rift still persists.
 There are 19 active “underground” bishops and 58 official bishops, not counting those who have retired, according to the Holy Spirit Study Center, which is part of the Catholic diocese of Hong Kong.
The protest from Cardinal Zen comes amid a general crackdown on religious practice in China outside the churches or mosques that are governed under the patriotic associations, which report to the Communist party’s United Front Work Department.
 Crosses have been removed from many Protestant churches that were constructed without permission and “house churches” ordered to disband.
The crackdown has included the foreign Catholic community in Beijing, which has lost one of the venues where Catholics previously met for English-language mass.

Xi Jinping's Pope: The Secret History of Francis

Francis courts China with plan to install communist bishops
Associated Press

Cardinal Joseph Zen, pictured here in 2013, said he was revealing confidential information because Chinese Christians should know the truth. 

The retired cardinal of Hong Kong has revealed the Vatican’s efforts to improve relations with China included a request for a bishop to retire in favour of an excommunicated one recognised by Beijing.
Cardinal Joseph Zen, the most vocal opponent of Pope Francis’s overtures to China, bitterly criticised the proposed change in Shantou diocese, Guangdong, and revealed in a Facebook post Monday that he had travelled to the Vatican this month to personally raise it with the pope.
Zen confirmed reports by the AsiaNews missionary news agency that the Vatican had asked Shantou bishop Peter Zhuang Jianjian, 88, to step aside for Bishop Joseph Huang Bingzhang. 

Huang was excommunicated by the Vatican in 2011 after he was consecrated without papal approval.

Pope's deal with China would betray Christ, says Hong Kong cardinal.

Zen said he was exposing the “confidential” information – including the contents of his audience with Pope Francis on 14 January – so China’s Christians “may know the truth to which they are entitled”.
“My conscience tells me that in this case, the right to truth should override any such duty of confidentiality,” he wrote.
The issue of bishop nominations is the key stumbling block in Vatican-Chinese relations, which were officially severed when Beijing ordered Chinese Catholics to cut ties with the Holy See soon after the foundation of the Communist state in 1949.
The Vatican insists only the pope can nominate successors to Christ’s apostles. 

China views the Vatican’s insistence as interference in its sovereignty.
Popes from John Paul II onward have expressed hope for restoring diplomatic ties, with Pope Benedict XVI taking the boldest step in 2007 by urging the millions of Chinese Catholics worshipping in both the state-controlled churches above ground and the oft-persecuted clandestine underground churches to unite under his jurisdiction.
Francis is taking that overture further to try to reach a deal with the state-backed Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.
“Do I think that the Vatican is selling out the Catholic Church in China?” Zen asked in his post. 

“Yes, definitely, if they go in the direction which is obvious from all what they are doing in recent years and months.”
Vatican spokesman Greg Burke declined to comment, or to confirm or deny the AsiaNews report.
The news agency, which follows the Catholic Church closely in China, reported this month that a Vatican delegation was in Beijing in December to negotiate Zhuang’s retirement and Huang’s nomination in Shantou.
The Vatican asked the legitimate bishop of Mindong, Monsignor Joseph Guo Xijin, to accept a demotion to become an auxiliary bishop to Bishop Vincent Zhan Silu, who isn’t recognised by the Vatican, the agency reported.
But Zen wrote that when he raised the cases with Francis during a private audience, the pope said he had told his aides “not to create another Mindszenty case”.
The reference was to the Hungarian cardinal Jósef Mindszenty, who was imprisoned by Hungary’s Communist rulers and, during a brief spell of freedom during the revolution of 1956, took refuge in the US embassy in Budapest. 

Pope Paul VI eventually stripped him of his titles under pressure from the Hungarian government.
Zen said he felt encouraged by the pope’s refusal to allow a similar fate to befall China’s underground churchmen. 

“His words should be rightly understood as of consolation and encouragement more for them than for me,” he said.

Calls to the ethnic and religious authorities in the two dioceses went unanswered. 

There was also no answer at the China Patriotic Catholic Association.

Chinese Peril

CIA chief says China as big a threat to US as Russia
BBC News

CIA director Mike Pompeo

Chinese efforts to exert covert influence over the West are just as concerning as Russian subversion, the director of the CIA has said.
Mike Pompeo told the BBC that the Chinese "have a much bigger footprint" to do this than the Russians do.
As examples he cited efforts to steal US commercial information and infiltration of schools and hospitals -- and this extended to Europe and the UK.
Mr Pompeo was a hardline Republican congressman before becoming CIA chief.
In his BBC interview, Mr Pompeo also said:

• He expected Russia to try to disrupt US mid-term elections in November 2018. There had been no significant diminishing of Russian attempts at subversion in Europe and the US.
• North Korea may have the ability to strike the US with nuclear missiles "in a handful of months"
• Recent claims in the book Fire and Fury that Mr Trump was not up to the job were "drivel".

Focused efforts
"Think about the scale of the two economies," Mr Pompeo said of Russia and China.
"The Chinese have a much bigger footprint upon which to execute that mission than the Russians do."

CIA Director: China intent on stealing US secrets
Earlier this year, a former CIA officer was arrested on charges of retaining classified information in a case thought to be connected to the dismantling of the agency's spy operations in China.
In the two years before Jerry Chun Shing Lee's arrest, some 20 informants had been killed or jailed -- one of the most disastrous failures of US intelligence in recent years.
But officials did not know at the time whether to blame a mole or data hack.
The US spy chief told the BBC that countries could collectively do more to combat Chinese efforts to exert power over the West.
"We can watch very focused efforts to steal American information, to infiltrate the United States with spies -- with people who are going to work on behalf of the Chinese government against America," he said.
"We see it in our schools. We see it in our hospitals and medicals systems. We see it throughout corporate America. It's also true in other parts of the world... including Europe and the UK."

Chinese methods v Russian
By Gordon Corera

Russian interference has been the focus of political debate in Washington with allegations of hacking and releasing information as well as using social media to sow division.
But the CIA director's surprising claim to me was that China has a more wide-ranging ability to exert influence and more needs to be done to confront it.
China's reach, the CIA director says, ranges from traditional espionage (human and cyber) through allegations it has used stolen intellectual property to helps its businesses.
But it also includes the way in which it uses its economic weight to influence American companies seeking access to its market.
Mr Pompeo also challenged the idea that the US had little influence on the conflict in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad is still in power and backed by Russian and Iranian support.
"We're going to work on those complicated problem sets and push back against the Iranians everyplace we can," he told the BBC.
It emerged last year that he had written to Qasem Soleimani -- the leader of the Quds force, part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards -- to warn him that any attacks on US interests would not go unpunished.
"I wanted to send a clear message to Qasem Soleimani that there are American interests -- there are Western interests, British interests and others -- and an attack on those will be met with an equal response.
"He should be deeply aware that it is intolerable for the Iranians to take on American interests," he continued.
The CIA director said that Iran firing missiles at Saudi Arabia through a proxy force in Yemen was "unacceptable" and constituted "acts of war".
He told the BBC the best way of avoiding an escalation of conflict was to make sure the Iranian people understood the cost of such activities by their government, not just in the region but also in Europe.
"I hope that they will rise up and understand that it is not the best interests of their country to send forces to places like Europe as proxies to try and conduct malign activity in Europe when there's so much that can be done to make Iran a better place," he said.
"We are confident that the Iranian people will understand that. We are hopeful that their leaders will accept that proposition as well."

Born to spy: China built backdoors into African Union’s headquarters for spying

The African Union’s HQ building was bugged by the Chinese government for five years
By Nick Statt

The African Union, a coalition of 55 countries established in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, has been a victim of state-sponsored espionage after an investigation from French newspaper Le Monde revealed China was using the computers in a new building’s IT division to spy on its continental neighbors.
China was able to do this because it financed and built the new building itself to act as the African Union’s new headquarters and gifted it under false pretenses of cordial partnership, Le Monde reports. 

The spying has been happening since 2012 when the building opened in downtown Addis Ababa. 

The backdoor into the African Union’s computer systems was first discovered in January 2017, when engineers in the IT division noticed an unusual spike of activity late into the evening when the building was no longer staffed.
China’s ambassador to the AU, Kuang Weilin, called the claims “absurd” in response, and denied China used the infrastructure for spying. 

“I think it will undermine and send a very negative message to people. Certainly, it will create problems for China-Africa relations.”

“[The building] has been fully equipped by the Chinese. The computer systems were delivered turnkey. And Chinese engineers have deliberately left two flaws: backdoors, which give discrete access to all internal exchanges and productions of the organization,” writes Le Monde. 

“According to several sources within the institution, all sensitive content could be spied on by China. A spectacular leak of data, which would have spread from January 2012 to January 2017. Contacted, the Chinese mission to the AU did not follow our requests.”
The AU moved quickly to remedy the situation by purchasing its own computer servers and encrypting its data and communications. 

Without official confirmation from the Chinese government, it’s unclear what the purpose of a cyber-espionage operation was beyond an apparent desire to keep an eye on the Pan-African region and monitor its governmental policymaking.
Regardless, without more information, the news is sure to further complicate the relationship between Chinese companies, which are intertwined with the country’s government, and the rest of the world, specifically the United States in which some Chinese companies perform a majority of overseas business. 

Chinese phone maker Huawei lost a deal with AT&T earlier this month to sell its new smartphone, the Mate 10, in the US over concerns of government spying. 

Huawei CEO Richard Yu addressed the situation at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on January 9th, going off-script to say, “We are serving over 70 million people worldwide. We’ve proven our quality.”

Péril chinois: A Addis-Abeba, le siège de l’Union africaine espionné par Pékin

Il y a un an, les informaticiens du bâtiment, construit en 2012 par les Chinois, ont découvert que l’intégralité du contenu de ses serveurs était transférée à Shanghaï.
Par Joan Tilouine et Ghalia Kadiri

Au siège de l’Union africaine (UA), à Addis-Abeba, des ascenseurs parlent encore le mandarin et les troncs des palmiers en plastique sont griffés China Development Bank. 

De nouveaux bâtiments en construction par des sociétés de Pékin ou Hongkong ceinturent la tour de verre moderne offerte en 2012 par la Chine à l’Afrique. 

C’est là que doit se dérouler, dimanche 28 et lundi 29 janvier, le 30e sommet de l’organisation panafricaine.
Les contrôles sont stricts pour pénétrer dans ce bâtiment où ministres et chefs d’Etat se retrouvent deux fois l’an pour évoquer les grands enjeux du continent. 

Il y a pourtant une menace sécuritaire invisible ignorée par la plupart des dirigeants et des diplomates, mais qui préoccupe au plus haut point certains hauts responsables de l’UA.
En janvier 2017, la petite cellule informatique de l’UA a découvert que ses serveurs étaient étrangement saturés entre minuit et 2 heures du matin. 

Les bureaux étaient vides, l’activité en sommeil mais les transferts de données atteignaient des sommets. 

Un informaticien zélé s’est donc penché sur cette anomalie et s’est rendu compte que les données internes de l’UA étaient massivement détournées. 

Chaque nuit, les secrets de cette institution se sont retrouvés stockés à plus de 8 000 km d’Addis-Abeba, sur des mystérieux serveurs hébergés quelque part à Shanghaï, la mégapole chinoise.

« Don de la Chine aux 'amis' de l’Afrique »
Le nouvel immeuble, « don de la Chine aux amis de l’Afrique », a été offert il y a tout juste six ans. 

Il a été entièrement équipé par les Chinois. 

Les systèmes informatiques ont été livrés clé en main. 

Et les ingénieurs chinois ont volontairement laissé deux failles : des portes numériques dérobées (« backdoors ») qui donnent un accès discret à l’intégralité des échanges et des productions internes de l’organisation.
Tous les contenus sensibles ont pu être espionnés par la Chine. 

Une fuite de données spectaculaire, qui se serait étalée de janvier 2012 à janvier 2017. 

Contactée, la mission chinoise auprès de l’UA n’a pas donné suite à nos sollicitations.
« Ça a duré trop longtemps. A la suite de cette découverte, nous avons remercié, sans faire de scandale, les ingénieurs chinois présents à notre siège d’Addis-Abeba pour gérer nos systèmes, confie sous couvert d’anonymat un haut responsable de l’UA. Nous avons pris quelques mesures pour renforcer notre cybersécurité, un concept qui n’est pas encore dans les mœurs des fonctionnaires et des chefs d’Etat. On reste très exposés. »
Depuis, l’UA a acquis ses propres serveurs et a décliné l’offre de la Chine qui se proposait de les configurer. 

Au rez-de-chaussée de la tour de verre, dans une salle qui passe inaperçue, se trouve un centre de data qui concentre une bonne partie du système d’information de l’organisation. 

Toutes les communications électroniques sont désormais cryptées et ne passent plus par Ethio Telecom, l’opérateur public de l’Ethiopie, pays réputé pour ses capacités de cybersurveillance et d’espionnage électronique. 

Désormais, les plus hauts responsables de l’institution disposent de lignes téléphoniques étrangères et d’applications plus sécurisées.
Lors du 29e sommet de l’UA, en juillet 2017, de nouvelles mesures de sécurité ont été éprouvées. Quatre spécialistes venus d’Algérie, l’un des plus gros contributeurs financiers de l’institution, et des experts en cybersécurité éthiopiens ont inspecté les salles et débusqué des micros placés sous les bureaux et dans les murs. 

Une nouvelle architecture informatique, indépendante des Chinois, a également été déployée. 

Comme ce système de vidéoconférence, développé par les équipes informatiques internes et utilisé par les chefs d’Etat, qui fonctionne par câble et non plus par Wi-Fi. 

Ainsi, les quelques diplomates et chefs d’Etat précautionneux peuvent continuer à utiliser leurs brouilleurs d’ondes sans encombre.

« Les Chinois sont là 27 h/24 »
L’Union africaine se contente de seulement 10 millions de dollars (8 millions d’euros) de budget alloué à l’informatique. 

A l’exception de la Banque mondiale, qui a payé une partie du nouveau centre de data, les partenaires étrangers ne se montrent guère intéressés pour financer une agence de cybersécurité. 

« Ça arrange tout le monde que ce soit une passoire, déplore un fonctionnaire déjà présent du temps de l’Organisation de l’Unité africaine (OUA, 1963-2002). On se laisse écouter et on ne dit rien. Les Chinois sont là vingt-sept heures sur vingt-quatre, ont planté plein de micros et d’outils d’espionnage cyber quand ils ont construit cet immeuble! »

Selon les documents extraits par Le Monde, en collaboration avec le site The Intercept, des archives de l’ex-consultant de l’Agence nationale de sécurité (NSA) américaine Edward Snowden, les antennes des services secrets britanniques (GCHQ) n’ont pas épargné l’UA. 

Entre 2009 et 2010, plusieurs responsables ont ainsi vu leurs appels et leurs courriels interceptés, comme Boubou Niang, alors conseiller spécial du médiateur de l’ONU et de l’UA au Darfour (Soudan).
Certaines puissances occidentales privilégient le renseignement humain à l’UA. 

A l’instar des services de renseignement français qui, outre leurs dispositifs d’espionnage techniques, ont tenté de convaincre des chefs d’Etat du pré carré francophone de les informer des coulisses de ces sommets. 

L’organisation panafricaine s’est toujours montrée particulièrement attachée à la défense de la souveraineté et de l’intégrité territoriale, deux principes qui figurent dans l’acte constitutif de l’UA. Toutefois, faute de moyens et de prise de conscience des chefs d’Etat et de la plupart des fonctionnaires, les territoires numériques panafricains restent à la merci des services d’espionnage étrangers.
« Ici, c’est sécurité “Inch Allah” ! », ironise un haut fonctionnaire. 

Attribuée à la Chine, l’immense opération d’infiltration des systèmes informatiques, durant cinq longues années, a néanmoins rappelé à certains hauts responsables de l’UA qu’il était peut-être temps, alors que se discute la réforme de l’institution lors de ce sommet de janvier, de sécuriser leur cyberespace.

Chinese Paranoia

Command and control: China’s Communist Party extends reach into foreign companies
By Simon Denyer

Chinese dictator attends the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in October. Xi’s vision of complete control over Chinese life is intruding into the boardrooms of foreign companies.

BEIJING  — American and European companies involved in joint ventures with state-owned Chinese firms have been asked in recent months to give internal Communist Party cells an explicit role in decision-making, executives and business groups say.
It is, they say, a worrying demand that threatens to put politics before profits, and the interests of the party above all other considerations. 

It suggests that foreign companies are no longer exempt from Xi Jinping’s overarching vision of complete control.
“The creeping intrusion by the party apparatus into the boardrooms of foreign-invested enterprises has not yet manifested itself on a large scale, but things are certainly going down that path,” said James Zimmerman, a managing partner of the law firm Sheppard, Mullin, Richter and Hampton and former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, who is instructing clients to “push back.”
The party’s demand would give its cells a formal role in approving management decisions, such as investment plans or personnel changes. 

And that is ringing alarm bells.
At the same time, a campaign to reinforce China’s draconian censorship of the Internet is beginning to affect foreign companies.
The twin efforts to keep tabs on foreign companies are an expression of the Communist Party’s constant paranoia about internal stability. 

But they also represent a shift in the balance of power here, as China feels itself to be stronger economically and Western businesses more dispensable.
Not every company is affected by the changes. 

Larger enterprises have dedicated lines and special technology ensuring unfettered Internet access. But the smaller ones do not have that latitude.
By the same token, wholly owned foreign ventures have not faced the same pressure from internal party cells, while even companies involved in joint ventures are pushing back against the new demands.
But everyone is aware which way the wind is blowing.
For decades, China was something of an El Dorado for foreign companies, its low wages luring manufacturers and its vast consumer market and rapidly expanding middle class presenting an unrivaled opportunity for growth — even if it was always a challenging place to operate. 

These days, the mood has perceptibly changed: China is no longer so keen to put out the welcome mat, and foreign companies are increasingly prone to complain of unfair treatment.
Even after the wholesale transformation of the Chinese economy, the Communist Party has remained ever present in business. 

Executives of state-owned firms are party members, while under Chinese law, any organization that has three or more party members has to provide the “necessary conditions” for cadres to establish a party cell.
In practice, that rule has not, up to now, been intrusive.
Party members might use company premises to meet, but they would tend to do so after office hours and might help organize social events for employees. 

Executives described relations as friendly and cooperative, with the cells acting at times as if they were adjuncts to existing human resources departments.
In the past year, that has begun to change. 

Party members are expected to spend more time studying Xi Jinping Thought, the president’s political theory, in office hours or in time-consuming off-site retreats. 

Although a formal role for party cells in management decisions is not required under Chinese law, business executives are worried about a trend toward growing party interference.
“The long-term negative cost, in my view, is the inefficiencies and wastefulness that are likely to result from political influence that has no other purpose than to drive the political machine,” Zimmerman said.
The European Chamber of Commerce in China said in a statement that introducing an “additional layer of governance” would have serious consequences for the independent decision-making ability of joint-venture companies and deter investment from the continent.
China’s investment law stipulates that foreign companies must enter into joint ventures in many sectors of the economy. 

Already, many companies are being used simply to mine their intellectual property, before they are one day pushed aside by their erstwhile partners.
For now, minority joint ventures are feeling the most heat from party cells, but even 50-50 joint ventures have reported a growing assertiveness, executives and business groups say.
“That’s the danger European investors see, a kind of salami-slicing tactics, that starts with the minority joint ventures, then heads for the 50-50 joint ventures, and eventually heading for the 100 percent foreign-owned companies,” said Joerg Wuttke, former president of the European Chamber of Commerce.
“We really want people here to understand: We don’t object to party activities or people, but we do want them to stay away from operational questions,” Wuttke said.
The controls on the Internet could follow a similar salami-slicing tactic, whereby controls are extended across smaller companies first.
China has embarked on a major crackdown on VPNs, or virtual private networks, technology that is widely used to jump over the country’s Great Firewall to gain access to banned websites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and many foreign news sites.
Although large companies use dedicated lines and technology known as MultiProtocol Label Switching, which allows them to bypass the firewall and encrypt messages, that’s often too expensive for small and medium-size enterprises that rely on commercial VPN and encryption software.
Some companies have had ports closed down until they register with local telecommunications operators and report who is accessing the Internet and why.
To regain full access to the Internet, one American company was asked to sign a “solemn commitment” — that it would obey the Chinese Communist Party’s “seven bottom lines,” do nothing to undermine the socialist system, public order or social morality, and wouldn’t use the Internet to violate the interests of the state.

Chinese dictator shown on a screen in front of logos of China’s leading Internet companies, Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba Group, during the fourth World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China, in December. 
The agreement, made in Shanghai last November, is typical of the hoops some foreign companies are having to jump through to maintain access to the Web, and to continue doing business in a country where politics is back on top of the agenda.
That has led many American companies to take a “much more cautious approach” to regulating who within their organization uses VPN software, said Jake Parker, vice president of China operations at the U.S.-China Business Council in Beijing.
A mergers and acquisitions team might, for example, be cleared to access websites such as Reuters and the Financial Times to make better business decisions, but other staffers would be more restricted, Parker said.
“That’s because there is an emerging consensus among our legal counsels that using VPNs for noncommercial functions could be construed as potentially violating China’s rules and regulations,” he said. 

“There is a ‘more safe than sorry’ approach.”
Parker said not everyone was taking this approach, but there has been a shift in that direction, with “10, 15 or 20” companies saying they had adopted similar procedures.
An ongoing clampdown on VPN use by private individuals could also have a negative effect on recruitment, executives say: Parents will be reluctant to relocate to China if their children can’t access their preferred social media sites, many of which are banned here.
A more fundamental anxiety is that the Communist Party will ultimately demand to see everything that flows in and out of the country over the Internet, under China’s new Cybersecurity Law, which went into effect in June.
“How safe will intellectual property and trade secrets be? Will servers have to be stored here? Will companies have to hand over encryption codes to Chinese authorities?” asked a ­Beijing-based diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
“Could perhaps entire industry sectors become off limits for foreigners for security reasons? It’s not clear whether Chinese authorities are aware of possible collateral damage to businesses.”
To an extent, Beijing does not care as much about foreign firms as it used to, with a definite hubris setting in after the Western financial crisis, experts say.
“Foreign companies used to be seen as special here, as friends of China,” said James McGregor, a China-based author and businessman. 

“But that kind of flipped during the Western financial crisis.”
Attitudes changed, he said. 

China began to believe its system of state-directed capitalism was superior to the West’s, and that foreign companies are simply “here to serve us.”
One consequence: As President Trump starts to take retaliatory action against China over its trade and business practices, Beijing is putting off some of its most valuable lobbying partners.
“In the past, foreign business has been an important ally for China, but the country now appears to be alienating it at a time when it most needs friends abroad,” said Wuttke, the former president of the European Chamber of Commerce.

Chinese aggressions

Mattis says a U.S. aircraft carrier is likely to visit Vietnam amid Chinese tension
By Alex Horton 

The nuclear-powered USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier leaves San Diego Bay for deployment to the western Pacific Friday, Jan. 5, 2018.

HANOI, Vietnam — The United States is finalizing plans to dock an aircraft carrier in the south of Vietnam this March, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Thursday, part of growing military cooperation between the nations and a 1,092-foot-long signal to China to rethink its aggressive expansion.
The USS Carl Vinson will make a port call in Danang, according to the proposal, the first-ever carrier port call after smaller U.S.-flagged ships have moored here.
“We recognize that relationships never stay the same. They either get stronger or they get weaker, and America wants a stronger relationship with a stronger Vietnam,” Mattis told his counterpart Ngo Xuan Lich.
Mattis’s trip to Southeast Asia included a two-day visit in Indonesia, part of a larger Pentagon strategy to foster military relationships to blunt influence of big state powers like Russia and China.
The United States believes it may have found a key ally in Vietnam. 

The nation is increasingly emboldened to challenge Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, a strategic region flush with resources.
China has mostly claimed the sea as its own and has studded artificial islands with radar arrays and military outpost, edging out Vietnam and other nations dependent on waters for fishing and commerce.
Vietnam-U.S. defense relations are still taking shape. 

Mattis said his talks with Vietnamese officials spurred creation of channels to develop military education and U.N. peacekeeping training but did not involve definite plans to sell or provide specific military equipment.
The United States sold a Coast Guard cutter to Vietnam last year, which officials said became the largest ship in its fleet.
That recent activity has relieved officials in Vietnam who believe the United States was too focused on brushfire insurgencies in the Middle East and Africa while China consolidated territory unchecked, said Zack Cooper, an Asia security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
“They want to make sure the U.S. is actively engaged with the South China Sea,” Cooper said.
Mattis also met with Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, and thanked Vietnam for supporting U.N. sanctions against North Korea and recognized U.S. efforts to remedy the effects of toxic defoliants such as Agent Orange left behind at a Danang air base.
He also met with President Tran Dai Quang. 

Mattis will conclude his trip Friday, when he will meet his South Korean counterpart in Hawaii to discuss strategic issues in the region.

Poisoning the World

Chinese Are Getting Opioids Into the U.S. Through the Postal Service
By DESMOND BUTLER AND ERIKA KINETZ

United States Postal Service workers sort packages at the Lincoln Park carriers annex in Chicago, Illinois on Nov. 29, 2012.

WASHINGTON — Congressional investigators said Wednesday that Chinese opioid manufacturers are exploiting weak screening at the U.S. Postal Service to ship large quantities of illegal drugs to American dealers.
In a yearlong probe , Senate investigators found that Chinese sellers, who openly market opioids such as fentanyl to U.S. buyers, are pushing delivery through the U.S. postal system. 

The sellers are taking advantage of a failure by the postal service to fully implement an electronic data system that would help authorities identify suspicious shipments.
At a time of massive growth in postal shipments from China due to e-commerce, the investigators found that the postal system received the electronic data on just over a third of all international packages, making more than 300 million packages in 2017 much harder to screen. 

Data in the Senate report shows no significant improvement during 2017 despite the urgency.
The U.S. Postal Service said it has made dramatic progress in the last year in total packages with opioids seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“The Postal Service will continue to work tirelessly to address this serious societal issue,” spokesman David Partenheimer said in a statement.
He said implementing the use of electronic data is slowed by the need to negotiate with international partners, but the service is making progress.
The Senate probe matches many of the findings of a 2016 investigation by The Associated Press that detailed unchecked production in China of some of the world’s most dangerous drugs.
AP reporters found multiple sellers willing to ship carfentanil — an opioid used as an elephant tranquilizer that is so potent it has been considered a chemical weapon. 

The sellers also offered advice on how to evade screening by U.S. authorities.
Researchers on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations also contacted Chinese sellers directly. 

The sellers preferred payment in Bitcoin.
Investigators traced the online sellers to seven U.S. opioid deaths and 18 drug arrests. 

The Senate has cleared the report to be handed over to law enforcement.
In one case, the investigators traced orders from an online seller in China to a Michigan man who wired $200 in November 2016. 

The next month he received a package from someone identified by the investigators as a Pennsylvania-based distributor. 

A day later, the Michigan man died of an overdose from drugs, including a chemical similar to fentanyl.
The huge influx of opioids has led to a wave of overdose deaths across the U.S. in recent years. Republican Sen. Rob Portman, the subcommittee’s chairman, noted that fentanyl now kills more people in his home state than heroin.
“The federal government can, and must, act to shore up our defenses against this deadly drug and help save lives,” he said.

American Paper Tiger

China Wants Confrontation in the South China Sea
By Gordon G. Chang

Last Wednesday, the USS Hopper, an Arleigh Burke–class missile destroyer, sailed within twelve nautical miles of Scarborough Shoal, a few rocks in the northern portion of the South China Sea.
We would not have known about the sail-by if we were relying on the Pentagon.

Beijing announced the event and then made threats.

The Chinese, we have to conclude, are itching for a confrontation.
Therefore, strategic Scarborough Shoal, a mere 124 nautical miles from the main Philippine island of Luzon and guarding Manila and Subic bays, could be the hinge on which America’s relations with China swings.
Think of Scarborough as perhaps this century’s Sudetenland. 

In the spring of 2012, Chinese and Philippine vessels sailed in close proximity of contested Scarborough. 

Washington brokered an agreement between Beijing and Manila for both sides to withdraw their craft. 

Only the Philippines did so, leaving China in control of the feature, which had long been thought to be part of the Philippines even though it was inside Beijing’s infamous “nine-dash line.”
Washington, unfortunately, did not enforce the agreement it had arranged, undoubtedly under the belief it could thereby avoid confrontation with China. 

The White House’s inaction just made the problem bigger, however. 

By doing nothing, the Obama administration empowered the most belligerent elements in the Chinese capital by showing everyone else there that duplicity—and aggression—worked.
An emboldened Beijing then ramped up pressure on Second Thomas Shoal, where China employed Scarborough-like tactics by swarming the area with vessels, and the Senkakus, eight specks under Japanese administration in the East China Sea.
In short, Washington, through timidity, ensured the Chinese took ever more provocative actions.
And ensured American allies questioned Washington’s leadership. 

Today, American policymakers complain that the current Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, has been cozying up to Beijing. 

Although thoroughly anti-American all his adult life, the Philippine leader has a point when he said his country, despite the mutual defense treaty with America, could not rely on Washington to defend his islands. 

The result of irresolute American policy is that China, which is dismembering the Philippines, is now more influential in Manila than the United States, the only nation pledged to defend the archipelago’s security.
In view of China’s growing confidence and assertion, it is no surprise that its reaction to the Hopper’s passage has been intense. 

State and party media, while replaying old themes of protecting “indisputable” sovereignty, went into overdrive with their most provocative language, that of inflicting indignity on the United States. 

“The reckless provocation ended in disgrace for the U.S. Navy,” wrote Curtis Stone of the Communist Party’s People’s Daily, China’s most authoritative publication.
The Global Times, the tabloid controlled by People’s Daily, predicted that if Washington did not change course, it would become “a lonely pirate” and “suffer complete humiliation.”
Washington’s reaction was, in keeping with its traditional posture, low-key. 

“All operations are conducted in accordance with international law and demonstrate that the United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows,” said Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Logan, without specifically mentioning Hopper’s patrol.
And when Washington policymakers did talk about the Hopper, they did so anonymously and in tones meant to avoid offense. 

A “U.S. official” said the transit was an “innocent passage” and not a freedom of navigation operation.
That stance allowed the Philippine defense secretary, Delfin Lorenzana, on Sunday to defend the U.S. Navy’s sail-by, because it did not impinge on his nation’s sovereignty.
Yet Hopper would have never made the transit if Manila were in sole control of the shoal. 

The motivating factor, of course, was China. 

“China’s goal in the South China Sea appears to be a gradual extension of its sovereignty to a maritime space the size of India,” Anders Corr, editor of the just-released Great Powers, Grand Strategies: The New Game in the South China Sea, told the National Interest.
In view of this expansive vision, an “innocent passage” is a counterproductive response.
“In our department in Newport, we’re always taking leaders to task for ‘self-defeating behavior,’” James Holmes of the Naval War College e-mailed me on Monday, commenting for himself and not on behalf of the U.S. government. 

“The anonymous official quoted in press accounts as saying the Hopper passage was an ‘innocent passage’ is guilty of that behavior.”
“Innocent passage is something ships do when passing within 12 nautical miles of sovereign territory,” Holmes, co-author of Red Star Over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy, points out. 

“So if we’re depicting the Hopper passage by Scarborough Shoal as an innocent passage, we are conceding precisely what a freedom-of-navigation operation is supposed to dispute: that China is the lawful sovereign over Scarborough and that it’s entitled to a 12-mile territorial sea around the shoal.”
Scarborough is well within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines, and China is essentially asserting squatter’s rights. 

Moreover, Philippines vs. China, the July 2016 Hague decision applying the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, holds that the shoal does not confer a twelve-nautical-mile band of territorial water. “Our passes by Scarborough must show that they are not innocent in legal terms,” Holmes notes. 

“We must get our language straight, stay on message, and remind everyone regularly that the Hague tribunal smacked down China’s unlawful claims with extreme prejudice back in 2016. That’s how we avoid defeating ourselves.”
American officials, for years, have been characterizing freedom of navigation exercises around Chinese-held features as “innocent passages,” hoping not to rile Beijing. 

That strategy, unfortunately, has produced the opposite result.
The Trump administration, however, is changing four decades of America’s soft approach to China. That “pivot” is evident in the National Security Strategy, unveiled in December, and the National Defense Strategy, a summary of which was released Friday.
China in these landmark policy statements is essentially characterized as an adversary.
Yet historic changes in policy take years to implement.
“My belief is that we still have a long way to go to undo the pernicious impact of the policy of appeasement,” James Fanell, a former U.S. Navy intelligence officer with the Pacific Fleet, told the National Interest in strong, but nonetheless accurate, terms.
“We have several generations of government workers who have been trained to be more attuned to ‘not provoking’ or ‘not offending’ the Chinese than in openly challenging their expansionist activities. This is despite two new policy documents, the NSS and NDS, that clearly intend to challenge Beijing’s outrageous expansionism.”
American policymakers are struggling to come to terms with Beijing’s open hostility to the United States.
Obviously, Chinese officials could have ignored the Hopper’s passage, but their choosing to make an issue of it suggests they are determined to pick a fight.

Chinese Colonialism

China holding at least 120,000 Uighurs in re-education camps
By Tom Phillips in Beijing

Chinese police patrolling the old town in Kashgar, East Turkestan. The city has been the focus of a major crackdown on the Muslim Uighur people.

At least 120,000 members of China’s Muslim Uighur minority have been confined to political “re-education camps” redolent of the Mao era that are springing up across the country’s western borderlands, a report has claimed.
Radio Free Asia (RFA), a US-backed news group whose journalists have produced some of the most detailed reporting on the heavily securitised region of Xinjiang, said it obtained the figure from a security official in Kashgar, a city in China’s far west that has been the focus of a major crackdown.
Last year, as Xi Jinping was crowned China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong at a politically sensitive congress in Beijing, Xinjiang’s re-education centres were “inundated” by detainees, who were forced to endure cramped and squalid conditions.

Just in the city of Kashgar – which has a population of about half a million inhabitants – tens of thousands of people were confined. 

Taking into account the wider region around Kashgar, the number rose to 120,000.
Maya Wang, a Human Rights Watch campaigner who wrote a recent report on the camps, said the figures cited by RFA were credible although growing levels of repression in Xinjiang meant reliable numbers were impossible to ascertain. 

Estimates of the total number of people who have spent time in such centres in Xinjiang, which has a population of about 22 million, ran as high as 800,000, Wang added. 

“It’s just like a black hole which people are added to and don’t get out of.”
Kashgar, the largest city in southern East Turkestan, has found itself at the eye of a growing security storm since a hardline party leader, Chen Quanguo, took charge of the region in the summer of 2016.
Activists and academics say a key strand of an increasingly high-tech push to control Xinjiang’s residents has been the creation of “re-education centres”, where those suspected of going against the party’s teachings or being “politically unreliable” are being interned in their thousands.
Last year BuzzFeed visited one such institution, known as the Kashgar Professional Skills Education and Training Centre, describing a beige building with shades covering its windows. 

“People disappear inside that place,” one local warned.
One leading East Turkestan expert told Canada’s Globe and Mail the camps were “a form of enforced disappearances in a very organised way”.
China defends what authorities call “extremism eradication” schools as an important part of its fight against radicals it blames for a wave of attacks.
According to Human Rights Watch’s report, the centres are often housed in converted government buildings such as schools or specially built facilities. 

Wang said detainees were often held, unlawfully and without charge, as a result of religious “offences” such as excessive praying or non-religious acts such as accessing proscribed websites.
Wang said that while authorities claimed the centres were about combating terrorism and separatism, they were in fact designed to brainwash and assimilate Uighurs. 

“At the political education facilities, they sing patriotic songs. They learn about Xi Jinping thought. These are 'patriotic' measures aimed at making Uighurs love the Chinese government,” she said. 

“It’s extreme repression and yet completely silent.”

Han Terrrorism

China detained bookseller Gui Minhai to stop him from telling his story
By Oliver Chou, Mimi Lau and Catherine Wong

China snatched a Swedish citizen and former Hong Kong-based bookseller to prevent him from telling his story before a trial over his alleged involvement in “illegal book trading” wraps up, his former employer said, citing a source.
Publisher Lau Tat-man, founder and chief editor of Ha Fai Yi Publication, where Gui Minhai was a freelance writer and editor for seven years, believes Gui’s dramatic arrest on Saturday at a train station near Beijing – under the watch of Swedish diplomatic staff – was a bid to stop him from leaving the country.
“The case of Causeway Bay Books has yet to be settled in an official trial, so Gui heading towards Beijing with Swedish diplomats could have been part a plan to get him out of the country,” Lau, citing a reliable source, told the South China Morning Post.
Gui was one of five people who went missing from 2015, all of whom were associated with the bookshop that released titles critical of Beijing. 

Gui was in Thailand when he disappeared for the first time, then resurfaced in custody across the border. 

He was freed from prison in October on a drink-driving charge.
Lau could not confirm whether Gui was released on the condition that he stay within the city of Ningbo, in Zhejiang, but he said “I’m sure there are conditions attached to his release”.
“Gui has stayed low-profile since his release in October and the only person he’s had contact with is a long-time acquaintance in Shanghai,” he said.
The European Union joined Sweden’s call on Wednesday for the immediate release of Gui, which Beijing said was “unreasonable”.
The missing booksellers case made international headlines at the time, and although not much had been heard about the booksellers recently until Gui was taken away on Saturday, Lau said the authorities had continued to keep him under tight surveillance.
“Lee Po has stayed quiet and Lui Por and Cheung Chi-ping are in their Shenzhen homes and are not free to travel – that shows the officials are still worried that these people will speak out like Lam Wing-kee did once they are set free,” he said, referring to the bookstore manager who revealed details of his detention on the mainland when he returned to Hong Kong.
Lau called on the Swedish government to take the lead for the West and stand firm on international law and human rights.
“Many Western countries have kowtowed to China because of economic gains – it’s time for the West to wake up,” he said.

Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs Margot Wallström said on Tuesday that Gui “was at the time of his arrest in the company of diplomatic staff, who were providing consular help to a Swedish citizen in need of medical care”.
“This was perfectly in line with basic international rules giving us the right to provide our citizens with consular support,” she said in a statement.
“The Chinese authorities have assured us on numerous occasions that Mr Gui Minhai has been free since his release having served a sentence for a traffic-related offence, and that we can have any contact we wish with our fellow citizen.”
In Beijing on Wednesday, the European Union’s ambassador to China Hans Dietmar Schweisgut said the EU “fully supports” Sweden’s efforts to resolve the issue with China, Reuters reported.

Magnus Fiskesjö, an associate professor at Cornell University who was a Swedish diplomat in Beijing and has known Gui since the 1980s, said the incident was “not only wrong but also damaging to China’s international image”.
“When China disrespects our country by mistreating a citizen of ours, we have to stand up for our citizen – there is no other option for it,” he said.
“It has outraged people and goes beyond the bounds of international law in a repeated and offensive manner. When people hear about this news in Sweden, they feel that this is China bullying a small country like us.”
Fiskesjö said the Swedish embassy and consulates in China had sought access to Gui since 2015 on multiple occasions since he was first detained but “with long delays and long waits”.

Han terrorism: Condemn China for kidnapping Gui Minhai

As Sweden’s reaction to the seizing of its citizen shows, countries allow Beijing to flout human rights in exchange for trade deals
By Jojje Olsson

The kidnapping of a foreign citizen in front of accompanying diplomats constitutes a new level of assault, even for China.
If the world does not condemn it in the strongest possible terms, it will also represent a new level of submission, encouraging China to continue exporting its repression abroad.
Ever since Swedish publisher Gui Minhai was first kidnapped in October 2015, my government’s primary focus in its relations with China has been to increase economic cooperation. 

Last year, our prime minister, Stefan Löfven, visited China with the largest Swedish trade delegation in decades.
Yet while Löfven claimed he had raised the issue of Gui Minhai behind closed doors, neither he nor anyone else, uttered a single word about Gui in public. 

The post-trip communique was packed with details about new trade deals and economic cooperation. Not a single line mentioned the Swedish political prisoner who was falling sick behind bars at a secret location far from conventions and banquets.
The quiet diplomacy that has characterised Sweden’s handling of Gui Minhai stands in stark contrast to the case of Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson, two Swedish journalists who were jailed in Ethiopia in 2011. 

Swedish ministers became personally involved in that case almost immediately. 

The prime minister branded Ethiopia a “dictatorship”.
Gui Minhai has enjoyed no such support. 

Despite several requests, his daughter, Angela Gui, only managed to speak on the phone with foreign minister Margot Wallström for the first time at the weekend. 

The foreign ministry has told her not to contact the Swedish embassy in Beijing. 

Last year Angela told me that Lars Fredén, the Swedish ambassador to China until 2016, had deliberately avoided her when they ended up at the same social event in Stockholm.
Gui was kidnapped for a second time last Saturday. 

But only after the story was reported on Monday did Wallström issue a short statement calling for “the immediate release of our fellow citizen”.
That was the first time during Gui’s 829 days of extralegal detention that the Swedish authorities had openly criticised China’s actions.

That is, of course, exactly the way Beijing wants it. 

Because shedding light on the regime’s oppression hurts its ambitions to build its soft power to help increase the Chinese influence in international organisations, and make overseas investments with as little scrutiny as possible.
Several western countries have already been brought into line by the stick and carrot of economic cooperation. 

When Liu Xiaobo received the Nobel peace prize in 2010, Beijing severed diplomatic and trade relations with Oslo. 

Only after the Norwegian foreign minister in late 2016 travelled to Beijing and read aloud a humiliating joint statement was Norway again able to export its salmon to China.
Despite all his flattery of China, David Cameron’s government was warned that Britain should not dare comment on Beijing’s erosion of Hong Kong’s freedoms.
Nowhere is Beijing’s disregard for international treaties more obvious than in the South China Sea, which China continues to militarise, despite international censure and a damning ruling from an international tribunal in 2016.
China is also succeeding in silencing the European Union’s criticism of its behaviour. 

Last year, Hungary and Greece, both big destinations for Chinese loans and investments, blocked two EU joint statements on the deteriorating human rights situation in China.
After the two Swedish journalists were released from Ethiopian jail in 2012, Sweden’ ambassador hailed international pressure as a decisive factor. 

Sweden now needs to reach out to the international community for a similar cooperation on Gui Minhai. 

Every politician who still claims a shred of morality must step out and speak out.

Chinese State Hooliganism

EU, Sweden call for China to release detained publisher
AP

In this June 18, 2016, file photo, freed Hong Kong bookseller Lam Wing-kee stands next to a placard with picture of missing bookseller Gui Minhai, in front of his book store in Hong Kong as the protesters are marching to the Chinese central government's liaison office. Gui, who was secretly detained in China has been taken away by Chinese authorities again after being released into house arrest last October, his daughter said Monday, Jan. 22, 2018. 

BEIJING— The European Union on Wednesday joined Sweden in calling on China to immediately release a Swedish book publisher who was taken off a train in front of his country's diplomats by Chinese police four days ago.
The Chinese foreign ministry on Wednesday indicated Gui Minhai, the Hong Kong-based book publisher, and the Swedish diplomats who were with him may have been breaking Chinese law.
Gui was first abducted in 2015, one of five Hong Kong booksellers whose disappearances became a symbol of the extent to which China was willing to reinforce its hard line on squelching political dissent and a free press — despite international criticism.
The office of EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said it "fully supports the public statement and efforts of the Swedish government" on Gui's behalf.
"We expect the Chinese authorities to immediately release Mr. Gui from detention, allow him to reunite with his family and to receive consular and medical support in line with his rights," it said in a statement.
On Tuesday, Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs Margot Wallstrom said in a news release that China has given no clear explanation for Gui's detention. 

Sweden has already summoned China's ambassador in the Scandinavian country over the 53-year-old's case.
"We take a very serious view of the detention on Saturday of Swedish citizen Gui Minhai, with no specific reason being given for the detention, which took place during an ongoing consular support mission," Wallstrom said in her statement.
"We expect the immediate release of our fellow citizen, and that he be given the opportunity to meet Swedish diplomatic and medical staff," she said.
Wallstrom said the Swedish diplomats accompanying Gui had been "providing consular assistance to a Swedish citizen in need of medical care.
"This was perfectly in line with basic international rules giving us the right to provide our citizens with consular support," she said.
Gui had been running a Hong Kong publishing company specializing in tales about high-level Chinese politics when he disappeared from his Thai holiday home about two years ago. 

He had been spirited away by Chinese security agents to mainland China, where he later turned up in police custody. 

In a videotaped confession that was coerced, Gui stated that he'd turned himself in to mainland authorities over a hit-and-run accident.
He was released into house arrest in October in the eastern city of Ningbo, living in what his daughter Angela called a police-managed apartment.
His daughter told Radio Sweden, the English-language service of national broadcaster Sveriges Radio, that her father was on a train with two Swedish diplomats on Saturday when a group of police officers seized him.
She said her father was traveling to Beijing to see a Swedish doctor after he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neurological disease that he developed while in custody.
Gui's 2015 abduction reinforced rising fears that Beijing was chipping away at the rule of law in Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese city that is promised civil liberties such as freedom of speech until 2047.
The books Gui and his colleagues sold at their Causeway Bay Bookshop were popular with visitors from mainland China, where such titles are banned.

Chinese authorities have a history of continuing to persecute political prisoners even after their release from prison and other legal strictures.
Noted human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng recently disappeared back into custody after five years of prison and three more years confined by guards at home. 

Liu Xia, the wife of the late Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, has been held a virtual prisoner for years despite never being charged.
Since her husband's death in July while serving a prison sentence, Liu has had virtually no contact with friends or family and the authorities will not say where she is currently being held.

Chinese Peril

India plans closer Southeast Asia maritime ties to counter China
By Sanjeev Miglani

A cyclist rides past an ASEAN-India Commemorative Summit billboard the side of the road in New Delhi, India, January 23, 2018. 

NEW DELHI -- India is gathering the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Regional Cooperation (ASEAN) for a summit on Thursday to promote maritime security in a region dominated by China, officials and diplomats said.
India has been pursuing an “Act East” policy of developing political and economic ties with Southeast Asia, but its efforts have been tentative and far trail China, whose trade with ASEAN was more than six times India’s in 2016-17 at $470 million.
China has also expanded its presence in South Asia, building ports and power plants in countries around India’s periphery, such as Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and spurring New Delhi to seek new allies.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has invited the leaders of all ten ASEAN nations to join him in the Republic Day celebrations on Friday in the biggest ever gathering of foreign leaders at the parade that showcases military might and cultural diversity.
The leaders, who include Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, will hold talks on maritime cooperation and security, the Indian foreign ministry said in a statement.

Both India and the Southeast Asia nations have stressed the need for freedom of navigation and open seas and India already has strong naval ties with countries such as Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, Preeti Saran, secretary in the Indian foreign ministry, said.
“The ongoing activities of ship visits, of coordinated patrols, of exercises that take place bilaterally, are taking place very well,” Saran said. 

“And every time we have defense to defense talks or navy to navy talks, there is a great deal of satisfaction that has been expressed by the ASEAN member countries.”
But several Southeast Asian countries locked in territorial disputes with China have sought even greater Indian engagement in the region, experts say.
“China’s distinctly hegemonic moves in the last few years in the South China Sea and its growing assertiveness have made ASEAN look towards India as a partner for equilibrium,” said Arvind Gupta, former Indian deputy national security adviser who now heads the influential Vivekananda International Foundation in New Delhi with close ties to the ruling government.
But India, which has been building up its navy, is wary of getting entangled in South China Sea disputes and provoking a backlash from China.
One of the plans the Indian and ASEAN leaders will be discussing at the close-door summit on Thursday will be for their navies to exercise near the Malacca Straits between Malaysia and Singapore, one of the busiest routes for international shipping, a navy official said.