Inside the Chinese jail behind the Christmas card scandal

Former inmates at the prison where a plea was smuggled out in festive cards for Tesco say they faced forced labour and torture
By Lily Kuo
Qingpu prison in Shanghai. Former inmates have told the Observer of conditions inside the jail. 

For over three years, Leo spent his days at the Qingpu prison in Shanghai silently packaging sticky notes, face masks, gift bags and labels while guards kept close watch.
If he refused, he would be punished – barred from reducing his prison sentence, making phone calls home, or worse.
This Christmas, a cry for help from Leo and other foreign inmates of Qingpu was smuggled out, hidden in a Tesco greetings card.
Now the Observer has gathered testimony from six former inmates of Qingpu prison who describe in unprecedented detail the conditions they were forced to endure during their incarceration in China.
These include being forced to work for a pittance and in some cases tortured for disobeying prison authorities.
“If you don’t work you would be an enemy. If you don’t work, you would become a target,” said Leo, who says he was one of two inmates who wrote a total of 10 cards calling for attention to the plight of Qingpu’s prisoners.
“They will deprive you of so many things,” he said.
Leo, who provided his prison ID, court verdict and notice of his sentence, completed earlier this year, has asked to not reveal his real name for fear of retribution in his home country, where he believes Chinese influence is strong.
The name of the other inmate who he refers to, who is still in Qingpu, is being withheld to protect his safety.

Florence Widdicombe, six, who found the inmates’ plea for help in a Tesco Christmas card at her home in Tooting, south London.

China has one of the largest penal labour systems in the world, one that human rights advocates say has flouted international standards against forced labour for decades. 
Beijing maintains that prison labour, legal in China, is done in accordance with the law.
The ministry of foreign affairs did not respond to a request for a comment on this story.
The six former inmates, all released from Qingpu in the last two years, said they witnessed authorities forcing prisoners to work.
Four of the six, including Leo, described having to work between five and six hours a day, sometimes seven days a week, for as little as 30 yuan (£3.20) a month.
Two of the group said they refused to work and were punished in a range of ways, including not being allowed to buy clothes, soap, slippers or food to supplement the meagre meals provided, all items that had to be purchased from the prison.
Two inmates, one of whom refused to work, described being tortured through sleep deprivation, being strapped to a wooden plank, and in one case, waterboarding. 
The prison did not respond to requests for comment.
“Their prison system is meant to destroy rather than to reform,” said Peter Mbanasor, 42, a trader from Nigeria who spent more than two years in Qingpu after being convicted for concealing criminal income.
“People were forced to work because they don’t want to fall in [the guards’] hands.”
Qingpu, established in 1994 on about 8 square miles of land on the outskirts of Shanghai, holds 200 foreign inmates and describes itself as a “first-class prison” that cultivates “pride in work”.
In the last week, state media have released reports highlighting its “productive labour” on things such as jade and bamboo carvings done by inmates, to an orchestra and a Christmas musical production.
Former inmates paint a markedly different picture.
Wednesdays, reserved for “training”, usually consist of watching propaganda videos.
The work is menial and educational opportunities are few.

Peter Mbanasor. He was tied to a wooden plank in the prison.

“Nobody wants to do this kind of work. Some people want to learn new things, like fish farming, carpentry, making clothes or shoes. They are not teaching us,” said Leo.
Inmates said punishment – usually psychological, such as sending prisoners to solitary confinement – could be extremely cruel.
Mbanasor said he was sent to solitary for 21 days after he insisted on hosting church gatherings and Bible studies against guards’ orders.
In July 2017, he said he was tear-gassed and dragged from his cell to the “confinement” hall of small windowless rooms.
In 40°C heat, he was given hot water and barred from removing his clothing.
When he began praying aloud, a group of guards tied him to a wooden plank and left him for 24 hours.
Unable to move or get up to use the bathroom, he wet himself.
“All these things together are to destroy you. When it was happening, it was unspeakable,” he said.
Pedro Godoi, 45, a Brazilian businessman who served five years in Qingpu after being convicted of visa fraud, went on hunger strike over what he saw as mistreatment of prisoners.
He was also denied privileges when he refused to work.
He said he was strapped to a wooden plank for 12 days in solitary last year. 
A loudspeaker broadcast Chinese propaganda next to his head.
Inmates keeping watch woke him up every 20 minutes.
One former inmate said he saw Godoi being force-fed by doctors while tied to the wooden bed.
Godoi was waterboarded three times by Chinese inmates under orders from the prison authorities.
“Qingpu is a meat-grinder. It’s to destroy a person,” said Godoi, who was released in May.
“The idea of Qingpu is to show the people outside you can’t mess with the government. It’s a big labour camp. Arresting people in China is an industry. It’s a business.”
Three days before Christmas, Leo was watching the evening news when he saw the familiar Tesco card, featuring a kitten in a Santa hat.
Half a year earlier, as other inmates blocked the view of surveillance cameras in the workshop, Leo had hid five or six Tesco cards in his clothes.
Back in his cell, he nervously wrote on them and later slipped them back into the pile of cards destined for the UK.
Now, he was shocked to see one those notes being broadcast around the world.
“I was crying. I was really crying. I can’t believe it,” he said.
“My hope is that those people who are in prison can be treated as human beings. Just because someone committed a crime does not mean that should be the end of their life.”

Colleges Should All Stand Up to China

American universities need to show Beijing—again and again—that they reserve the right to unfettered debate.
By Rory Truex
About five times a year, the U.S. military conducts freedom-of-navigation operations, or FONOPs, in the South China Sea to challenge China’s territorial claims in the area.
American Navy vessels traverse through waters claimed by the Chinese government.
This is how the U.S. government registers its view that those waters are international territory, and that China’s assertion of sovereignty over them is inconsistent with international law.
Americans are witnessing a similar encroachment on territory equally central to our national interest: our own social and political discourse. 
Through a combination of market coercion and intimidation, the Chinese Communist Party is trying to constrain how people in the United States and other Western democracies talk about China.

Freedom-of-speech operations (FOSOPs) 
This encroachment needs a measured response—what we might call freedom-of-speech operations, or FOSOPs for short. 
American universities can take the lead.
They should routinely hold events on the fate of Taiwan, the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, the repression of Uighur Muslims in East Turkestan, and other topics known to be sensitive to the Chinese government.
These events can be organized by students, faculty, or research centers.
They need not originate from a university’s administration.
If anything, the message that FOSOPs send—everything in the United States is subject to open debate, especially on college campuses—is even stronger if the pressure comes from the grass roots.
Last month’s NBA-China spat crystallized the basic problem.
After the Houston Rockets executive Daryl Morey tweeted in support of the Hong Kong protesters, Rockets games and gear were effectively banned in China, costing the team an estimated $10 million to $25 million.
It has become common for the Chinese government to force Western firms and institutions to toe the party line.
Gap, Cambridge University Press, the three largest U.S. airlines, Marriott, and Mercedes-Benz have all had China access threatened over freedom-of-speech issues. 
This list will continue to grow.
Recently, the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV canceled the showing of an Arsenal soccer game because the club’s star, Mesut Özil, had criticized the ongoing crackdown in East Turkestan.
The Chinese government regularly uses coercive tactics to affect discourse on American campuses, including putting pressure on universities that invite politically sensitive speakers.
This is precisely what happened at the University of California at San Diego, which hosted the Dalai Lama as a commencement speaker in 2017.
The Chinese government, which considers the Tibetan religious leader a threat, responded by barring Chinese scholars from visiting UCSD using government funding.
There is also disturbing evidence that the Chinese government is mobilizing overseas Chinese students to protest or disrupt events, primarily through campus chapters of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association. 
These groups exist at more than 150 universities and receive financial support from the Chinese embassy in the United States. 
As Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian reported last year in Foreign Policy, the embassy can exert influence over the chapters’ leadership and activities.
The goal of freedom-of-speech operations is safety in numbers.
Other universities remained largely mum after the Chinese government moved to punish UCSD, effectively inviting Beijing to deploy similar tactics against other schools in the future. 
But imagine if instead there had been an outpouring of events on Tibet or invitations for the Dalai Lama. 
Coordination is key.
An affront to one American university should be taken as an affront to all.
At Princeton, where I teach, we held three FOSOPs in recent weeks: the first on East Turkestan, sponsored by the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions; the second on Hong Kong, sponsored by a student group that promotes U.S.-China relations; and a third on East Turkestan, also sponsored by students. 
These events were not labeled as FOSOPs, of course; I, not the organizers, am applying the term.
The panels occurred independently, organically, and with no real interference or involvement from university administration, other than to ensure the safety and security of our students.
I played a small role in the Hong Kong event, at which I moderated a panel that featured three Hong Kong citizens discussing the ongoing protest movement.
Our China talks usually get about 30 attendees, most of whom are retirees who live nearby.
The Hong Kong panel last month was the biggest China-related event I have attended on our campus.
Our room was at maximum capacity, as was the overflow room we created for the simulcast.
It was clear that mainland-Chinese students and Hong Kong students—two groups whose views on the protests generally diverge—had both mobilized in some way or another.
The event was emotionally charged at the outset.
One Chinese student, apparently sympathetic to the Chinese government’s position, flipped the panel the middle finger after a panelist made a comment about police brutality against Hong Kong protesters.
Several of the audience members from mainland China pressed the panelists on some of the basic realities of the events on the ground.
One student asked if there was actually any evidence of police brutality.
It felt like Chinese students had come to the event just to push the Communist Party line. 
But it was healthy and helpful to have pro-Beijing views expressed and debated publicly, and juxtaposed with the lived experiences of the Hong Kong protesters.
As the panelist Wilfred Chan noted, it is especially important right now to have dialogue between the Hong Kongers and mainland-Chinese communists.
Western university campuses are among the only spaces where this can occur.
Firms, local governments, civic associations, and individuals can create their own freedom-of-speech operations.
Imagine if every NBA player signed a pledge to mention China’s mass detention of Muslims in East Turkestan at press conferences, just for one day. 
Or if American churches reached out to Chinese pastors to give sermons about the repression of China’s Christian community.
There will be pushback from the Chinese government, and some events might be labeled as an affront to “Chinese sovereignty” or “the feelings of the Chinese people”—standard rhetorical devices of the Chinese Communist Party.
University administrators may receive warnings or veiled threats in the short term.
But if this sort of interference is met with more campus events, at more universities and institutions, China’s coercion will be rendered ineffective, and its government would have no choice but to back down.
It is important that while we push to preserve freedom of speech on China at Western institutions, we also push to preserve the rights and freedoms of our students from mainland China.
Anti-China sentiment in the U.S. is at historic highs.
Freedom-of-speech operations should be constructed to encourage dialogue and foster norms of critical citizenship.
Done right, these events can protect Americans’ intellectual territory, and demonstrate the value of our open society. 

Taiwan's citizens battle pro-China fake news campaigns as election nears

Contest is in effect a referendum on the future of the nation’s relationship with China
By Lily Kuo and Lillian Yang
Protesters against Taiwan’s pro-China KMT presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu during a protest in Kaohsiung.

Citizen groups in Taiwan are fighting a Russian-style influence and misinformation campaign that originated across the strait in mainland China with just weeks to go before it votes for its next president,
Taiwan goes to the polls on 11 January to decide between two main candidates, incumbent president Tsai Ing-Wen of the Democratic Progressive party (DPP) under whom ties with Beijing have become fraught, and Han Kuo-Yu of the Kuomintang party (KMT), which advocates closer engagement with China.
The contest is in large part a referendum on the future of Taiwan’s relationship with Beijing, which sees the independent nation as a renegade "province" that one day must return to the fold.
Han is Beijing’s favoured candidate while Tsai’s party has been campaigning on the slogan: “Resist China, Defend Taiwan”.
In a televised debate with her rivals for the job on Sunday, Tsai said China’s “expanding ambitions” were the biggest threat to its democracy. 

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen.

Citizen groups in Taiwan say the openness of one of the freest societies in Asia is being used against it by groups in China to wage an online disinformation campaign, made more potent by their shared language, Mandarin.
A recent study by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden found that Taiwan was the most exposed to foreign dissemination of false information.
False reports include claims Tsai’s doctorate degree was fake or that Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong kicked an elderly man when he visited Taiwan in October and met members of the DPP.
“China has multiple ways of pushing misinformation. We’ve found that content mills are no longer simply producing fake information. More and more, they are manipulating opinions,” said Jarvis Chiu, senior manager for the Institute for Information Industry, which has been assisting government efforts to prevent disinformation.
According to Chiu, an army of trolls will leave thousands of comments under a candidate’s post or a news article, shifting the focus of the debate.
Fake social media accounts also share pro-Beijing content or inflate the number of likes such content gets.
“Subliminal attacks” include repeatedly searching for one candidate’s name to influence search algorithm results.
“China won’t give up this practice. It will only increase and because it is non-military, it won’t get much global attention,” Chiu said.
The uncertain status of Taiwan, functionally independent but not internationally recognised, has been an issue in every campaign since direct elections were introduced in the 1990s following decades of martial law under the KMT.
This year, the question of how Taiwan should deal with Beijing looms even larger after years of increasingly strident rhetoric from China.
On Thursday, China sailed its new aircraft carrier, Shandong, through the Taiwan Strait in a move critics described an effort to intimidate voters.
Months of witnessing Beijing’s inflexible response to protesters in Hong Kong have cast even more doubt on the city’s “one country, two systems” framework, once touted as a possible model for Taiwan.
“There’s a sword hanging over everyone all the time,” said Shelley Rigger, a professor of east Asian politics with a focus on Taiwan at Davidson College.
“It’s exhausting to know that you’re being threatened and that the entity that is threatening you is getting more and more powerful all the time.”
In an attempt to push back against the campaign, citizen watchdog groups are manning social media, debunking rumours and trying to trace questionable content back to its source.
Prosecutors have been charging those who spread disinformation.
The party in office is trying to pass a law that would prohibit support from foreign “infiltration sources” to a political party.
“Taiwanese people have only just started understanding what is happening. It’s still the very beginning,” said Summer Chen, of Taiwan FactCheck Center which works on debunking disinformation on Facebook.
“It is a crisis and all of Taiwan needs to be researching this.”
A series of snappy Youtube tutorials educate viewers on the nature and methods of disinformation warfare.
“Taiwan has become the main laboratory for information warfare from China. If China wants to practice its methods, Taiwan is the starting point,” Puma Shen, who runs DoubleThink Labs, which monitors how false information, explains in one of the videos.
Those working on the issue say it is difficult to definitely say these attacks originated in China or link them to Chinese state actors, which makes the work of raising awareness harder.
“I believe that there is cooperation with China, but how much China knows, how much of this is from the Chinese government or people in Taiwan who are pro-China, we don’t know,” said Vivian Chen, a recent graduate studying medicine from Taipei.
China’s efforts to influence events in Taiwan stretch a long way back and go beyond online information warfare, to include traditional media, incentives for citizens or businesses who cooperate with China, group trips and donations to temples and other grassroots organisations.
Last month when Chinese defector Wang Liqiang detailed ways he had been instructed to interfere in Taiwan’s midterm elections in 2018 as well as the upcoming race, few in Taiwan were surprised.
“The story was not as shocking in Taiwan as it was in other parts of the world,” said Lev Nachman, a PhD candidate at the University of California, Irvine, studying social movements and focusing on Taiwan.
“It is not news to Taiwanese people that China has been co-opting local organisations for political influence.”
Observers say it is unlikely efforts to influence voters will affect the outcome of the race, where voters will also choose representatives for the legislature.
According to polls, Tsai is ahead of her rival, helped by months of protests in Hong Kong and concerns about Beijing, and an improved economy.

U.S.'s 5,025,817 Chinese Spies

Chinese arrested for taking photos at Naval Air Station in Key West
By Jay Weaver
The future USS Billings is docked at the Naval Air Station Key West’s Truman Waterfront base on Aug. 1, 2019.

The day after Christmas, a Chinese man rose early because, he said, he wanted to take photographs of the sunrise on the grounds of the Naval Air Station in Key West.
It was only a matter of time before witnesses spotted Lyuyou Liao at 6:50 a.m. Thursday walking around a perimeter fence and entering the military facility from the rocks along the water.
They warned Liao that he was trespassing in a restricted area, known as the Truman Annex, as he took photographs of government buildings near “sensitive military facilities,” according to a federal criminal complaint filed Thursday.
Then, U.S. Military Police saw him snapping photos with the camera on his cellphone, approached him and took a look at the pictures.
The police officers immediately called a federal agent, who arrested Liao on a charge of entering Naval property for the purpose of photographing defense installations.
Liao agreed to waive his Miranda rights and told the agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service in broken English that “he was trying to take photographs of the sunrise,” according to the complaint affidavit.
But when Liao provided the pass code to his cellphone and allowed the agent to look at the images, he “observed photographs of Truman Annex on the camera.”
Liao, 27, had his first federal court appearance Friday afternoon in Key West via a video hookup with Magistrate Judge Patrick Hunt in Fort Lauderdale and Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Gilbert in Miami.
Hunt appointed the federal public defender’s office to represent Liao and scheduled his pretrial detention hearing for Jan. 6.
His arraignment will be a week later.
Liao’s arrest marks the second time since last year that a Chinese national has been charged with taking photos of defense installations at the Naval Air Station in Key West
In September of last year, Zhao Qianli, who claimed to be a music "student" from China, got caught by the Key West police for trespassing onto the high-security Naval Air Station.
He later told federal authorities that he lost his way on the tourist trail and did not realize it was a military base.
Investigators found photos and videos on Qianli’s cellphone as well as on his digital camera that he had taken of government buildings and a Defense Department antenna field on the military base.
Qianli, 20, pleaded guilty in February to one count of photographing defense installations at the Key West military facility and was sentenced to one year in prison by U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore. 
The judge gave him the maximum sentence, which was higher than the sentencing guidelines between zero and six months.
The U.S. attorney’s office sought nine months in prison.
The following March, a Chinese woman was arrested at President Donald Trump’s private club in Palm Beach after she bluffed her way into Mar-a-Lago to attend a purported “United Nations friendship” event that she knew had been canceled before she left China.
Yujin Zhang, 33, was charged with trespassing in a restricted area and lying to a federal agent.
In September, Zhang was convicted at trial and sentenced in November to eights months in prison — or the time she had been in custody since her arrest — by U.S. District Judge Roy Altman.
Another Chinese woman, Lu Jing, 56, was arrested December 18 after she had been reported trespassing and taking pictures at Mar-a-Lago.

Total War

Grand Theft Auto V becomes latest battleground of Hong Kong protests
By Isaac Yee

Hong Kong -- The Hong Kong political crisis is now playing out in the virtual world.
Popular online video game "Grand Theft Auto V" has become a battleground between protesters in the semi-autonomous Chinese city and their rival players in mainland China.
The online duel began after Hong Kong players discovered that their in-game avatars could dress like protesters, wearing black clothing, gas masks and yellow safety helmets.

They shared the discovery last week on LIHKG, a social media platform and discussion forum similar to Reddit that is popular in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong has been rocked by anti-government protests for more than six months, with escalating violence and anger on all sides. 

The demonstrations began in June after the government introduced a bill that would have allowed the extradition of people across the border to face trial in mainland China.
The bill has since been withdrawn, but the protests have expanded to include calls for greater democracy and an inquiry into accusations of police misconduct.
GTA V is an action-adventure game that rewards gamers for committing virtual crimes. 

It allows dozens of players to interact simultaneously in "open world" environments, with bank heists and carjackings at the core of its gameplay.
While most video games keep the player busy on a predetermined course of action, open-world games allow greater freedom to explore. 

And it didn't take long for Hong Kong gamers to begin mimicking the real-life actions of hardcore protesters by throwing petrol bombs, vandalizing train stations and attacking police within the open world of GTA V.

A screengrab from the game shows a Hong Kong-based player adopting protester-style identity.

Mainland Chinese gamers were quick to notice, and several of them subsequently took to the Twitter-like social media platform Weibo to call on other players to defeat their Hong Kong rivals.
Using a derogatory term adopted by some police officers to refer to protesters, one Weibo user posted: "Cockroaches expressed their desire to kill GTA and beat us, the war in this game may become more fierce and fierce. Are you ready?"
Other Weibo users responded by posting screenshots of their characters dressed as riot police and wielding guns, with the posts captioned: "Ready!"
Several intense battles played out simultaneously, according to Hong Kong gamer Mickey Chang, who is in his 20s and plays games that are live-streamed on the YouTube channel Minilife HK.
Protester avatars threw petrol bombs at riot police controlled by mainland gamers, who responded with water cannons and tear gas. 

In the end, the mainlanders emerged victorious as they overwhelmed the Hong Kong protesters through sheer numbers, Chang told CNN Business.
Chang said that he liked to play as a protester because it helped to "raise awareness" overseas about the situation in Hong Kong.
"(GTA) is a fun way of engaging people with different viewpoints to discuss, since you can have up to 30 strangers on a server that may not know much about Hong Kong," he said.
Launched in 1997, the "Grand Theft Auto" series by Rockstar Games is one of the most successful in video game history. 

GTA V alone has sold over 125 million copies since its 2013 launch. 

But the series has long been criticized for its violent gameplay — the 2001 release, GTA III, achieved notoriety after it was discovered that players could hire a prostitute, have (offscreen) sex with her, kill her, and then steal her money.
CNN Business has reached out to Rockstar Games for comment about its use by Hong Kong protest supporters and their opposition.
This is not the first time that Hong Kong protesters have taken to video games to publicize their struggle.
In October, Google removed a role playing game called "The Revolution Of Our Times" — a protest slogan — from the Play Store, citing a violation of its policies.

Sick Man of Asia

Japan Hangs Chinese Killer, 1st Foreigner Executed In 10 Years
By Vanessa Romo

Japan's Justice Minister Masako Mori, pictured in 2014, called it an "extremely cruel and brutal case." She signed Wei Wei's execution order on Monday.

A 40-year-old Chinese national convicted of murder was executed in Japan on Thursday.
His hanging marks the first execution of a foreign-born prisoner in that country in a decade.
Wei Wei, who was living in Japan on a student visa, was found guilty of burglarizing the family home of a clothing shop owner and killing the entire family in 2003.
In the final ruling against him several years later, the courts concluded Wei and two accomplices ransacked the house for valuables then killed the shop owner, his wife and their two children, Kyodo News reported.
They later dumped the bodies into the ocean.
"It is an extremely cruel and brutal case in which the happily living family members, including an 8-year-old and 11-year-old, were all murdered because of truly selfish reasons," Justice Minister Masako Mori said at a press conference, according to the BBC.
Mori added that she signed off on the execution — her first since assuming the post in October — "after careful consideration."
Wei had been on death row for 16 years.
The other men fled to China, eluding capture by Japanese authorities.
But they were later arrested and tried by the communist government.
One man was sentenced to death and executed in 2005.
The other received life in prison.
The AP reports: "Since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe returned to power in 2012, his government has executed 39 people. Last year, Japan hanged 15 people, including the guru of the Aum Shinrikyo cult and 12 former followers convicted in a deadly Tokyo subway gassing."
In a report analyzing 2018 figures, Amnesty International recorded executions in 20 countries — the second-lowest number in the past two decades.
In the U.S., 25 people were executed that year.
However, the group's total of 690 executions worldwide does not include the thousands of executions carried out in China. Without China, according to the findings, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Iraq accounted for 78% of all reported executions.
Meanwhile, at least 2,531 people awaited death sentences in 54 countries.
That marked a slight decrease from the total of 2,591 reported in 2017.

A man of principle

Pr. Peter Navarro Has Not Made His Peace With China
Pr. Navarro is still looking for ways to punish China even as Trump has embraced a deal that his top trade adviser lobbied against.

By Alan Rappeport and Ana Swanson

Pr.Peter Navarro, a top trade adviser to President Trump, has influenced American trade policy toward China and pressed for stiff tariffs over the objections of pro-China advisers.

WASHINGTON — When Trump gathered his top economic advisers at the White House to decide whether to make a deal with China, Pr. Peter Navarro, his trade adviser, was ready with a flurry of arguments against the move.
A deal that removed any of Trump’s tariffs would make America look weak, Mr. Navarro argued at the meeting two weeks ago, and he assailed those who endorsed the idea as “globalists.”
It was a familiar argument for Trump’s top trade adviser, who has spent the past three years encouraging the president to embark on a punishing trade war with China. 

Mr. Navarro’s dark warnings about China’s ambitions and its threat to America have fueled Trump’s embrace of tariffs, overcoming the objections of other pro-China advisers.
This time, however, Trump was not persuaded. 

With the 2020 election approaching, Trump dismissed Mr. Navarro’s concerns, opting for an initial deal with China that would reduce some tariffs on Chinese goods in exchange for a commitment from Beijing to buy more American products and a series of promises to resolve other concerns.
“The deal with China is a massive deal,” Trump pompously said at an event about deregulation at the White House last week, adding: “No, I’m not a globalist.”
Mr. Navarro declined to comment on the events of the meeting.
“What happens in the Oval should stay in the Oval, both for the sanctity and security of the internal discussions and for the good of the country,” Mr. Navarro said.
For three years, Mr. Navarro, 70, has been Trump’s trade warrior, pushing the president to rip up trade deals and rewrite them so they are more favorable to American workers. 

An academic with little previous government or business experience, Mr. Navarro has managed to exert enormous influence over United States trade policy by tapping into the president’s disdain for globalization and encouraging his view that China has been “robbing us blind.”

His pro-China colleagues have chafed at his aggressive approach to China and have tried to block Mr. Navarro’s access to the president.

Mr. Navarro has gained power inside the White House and Trump has often requested his presence at big events, including a meeting with Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires last year.

Still, Mr. Navarro’s thinking has become deeply influential. 

Even those who disagree with him on economic policy and China increasingly tend to credit him for having guided the political debate.
“For all the criticism he gets from the free trade wing of the Republican Party, he was one of the first people to ring the alarm on China years ago,” said Stephen Moore, a Heritage Foundation economist who also advised Trump’s 2016 campaign. 

“Now more people, including myself, look at China’s trade policies as really predatory and economically harmful.”
With Trump moving to ease tensions with his favorite geopolitical foil and with trade deals with Canada, Mexico, Japan and South Korea now complete, Mr. Navarro is at a something of a crossroads — a trade warrior looking for a new fight.
Mr. Navarro has embraced under-the-radar projects aimed at curbing China’s economic power, including efforts to increase inspections of Chinese packages at the ports and renegotiating Chinese postal fees. 

And many China hawks believe that the government’s long history of shirking economic pledges will ultimately vindicate his distrust of an agreement that does little to alter China’s behavior at home.
“I would be very skeptical of any significant agreement being made,” said Greg Autry, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and author with Mr. Navarro of the book “Death by China.” 

“If you’ve spent any time watching the Chinese, they don’t honor their agreements.”
Mr. Navarro’s entry into Trump’s orbit was not exactly predictable. 

A business professor at the University of California, Irvine, Mr. Navarro ran and lost five elections as a progressive Democrat — including unsuccessful bids for mayor of San Diego and California’s 49th Congressional District.
As a candidate in the 1990s and 2000s, Mr. Navarro supported abortion rights, gay rights, environmental protection and higher taxes on the rich.
He even spoke at the 1996 Democratic Convention and campaigned that year with Hillary Clinton.
In his book “San Diego Confidential,” Mr. Navarro described Mrs. Clinton as “one of the most gracious, intelligent, perceptive, and, yes, classy women I have ever met.”
“It is such as dramatic change from how he portrayed himself when he was in the political field in San Diego,” said Doug Case, a former president of the San Diego Democratic Club.
“It looks like maybe his true colors have come out.”
After his political career sputtered, Mr. Navarro continued teaching and writing books about business and investing.
But before long, his attention turned to China and its trade practices which were killing American jobs.
Mr. Navarro’s skepticism first emerged in the 1970s while he was a Peace Corps volunteer building and repairing fish ponds in Thailand.
He traveled extensively in Asia and observed the negative impact China was having on the economies of its neighbors. 
He became increasingly critical of how China’s trade practices were impacting the United States after its admission to the World Trade Organization in 2001, particularly as many of his business students complained of losing their jobs as a result of Chinese competition.
Mr. Navarro’s views soon hardened and he began publishing a series of anti-China books, including “The Coming China Wars,” which Mr. Trump in 2011 listed as one of his favorite books about China, and “Death By China.”
In that book and the accompanying documentary, Mr. Navarro and Mr. Autry excoriated China for unscrupulous economic practices and manufacturing deadly products, like flammable toddler overalls and fake Viagra.
They also faulted multinational companies like Walmart for using China to source cheap goods that were putting American manufacturers out of business.
Mr. Navarro’s views caught the attention of then-candidate Donald J. Trump, who shared similar opinions about China’s impact on American manufacturing and was seeking experts with views that matched his own.
Mr. Navarro joined the campaign as an economic adviser in 2016 and quickly gained the trust of Mr. Trump, who refers to Mr. Navarro as “my tough guy on China.”
“My whole philosophy in life and in this job is the Gretzky perspective — skate to where the puck is going to be, anticipate problems that the president is going to want to solve, and get on them,” Mr. Navarro said in an interview.
Early on in Mr. Trump’s term, Mr. Navarro’s influence was not assured.
Mr. Navarro joined the White House with multiple trade actions written and ready for the president’s signature, including a directive to begin withdrawing the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement or “Shafta,” as Mr. Navarro liked to call NAFTA.
But opposition from other advisers, including "globalist" Gary D. Cohn, the former head of the National Economic Council, stayed the president’s hand.
For months, it seemed like Cohn and his allies had succeeded in muzzling Mr. Navarro — blocking at least three attempts to trigger the NAFTA withdrawal process, as well as an earlier directive to impose steel tariffs and withdraw from a South Korea trade agreement.
But as Mr. Trump’s signature tax cut neared fruition in late 2017, the president grew more anxious to translate his trade promises into policy.
“Where are my tariffs? Bring me my tariffs,” the president would say, and call in his advisers to debate trade policy in front of him.

Mr. Trump has embraced tariffs on imported metals and Chinese goods at the behest of Mr. Navarro.

Mr. Navarro, sometimes joined by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, would recommend tariffs, arguing they would protect domestic industries, demonstrate the president was serious about reversing lopsided trade agreements and raise revenue.
Cohn, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and former staff secretary Rob Porter regularly rebutted those arguments, saying tariffs would harm businesses, the stock market and the president’s re-election chances.
To help buttress his case, Mr. Navarro developed a red, black and yellow chart outlining “China’s Acts, Policies, & Practices of Economic Aggression,” including cyberespionage and theft of American intellectual property. 
Mr. Navarro warned Mr. Trump that China had long promised — and failed — to alter its behavior and said tariffs were the most effective way to force Beijing to change.
By 2018, Mr. Trump was ready to pounce, and Mr. Navarro’s vision of confronting China became reality.
An initial 25 percent tax on $34 billion of Chinese goods in July 2018 quickly escalated to tariffs on $360 billion of products with a threat to tax nearly every Chinese product.
The economic pressure brought Beijing to the negotiating table but Trump ultimately backed down, agreeing to a Phase 1 trade deal that would reduce some tariffs and remove the threat of additional levies in exchange for China buying more farm goods and giving American companies more access to the Chinese market.
Almost none of the big structural changes that Mr. Navarro had pushed for were included.
Trump has said those will be addressed in future talks with China, and many of the tariffs Mr. Navarro recommended will stay in place.
Mr. Navarro has found other ways to counter China.
Earlier this year he waged a successful offensive against a global postal treaty that had allowed Chinese businesses to ship international packages at much cheaper rates than the United States.
He’s helped step up inspections of Chinese packages to crack down on online counterfeiting and gotten involved with a project to revive American shipyards. 
Earlier this year, when executives at Crowley Maritime Corp. told Mr. Navarro that the Navy was in the process of procuring a transport ship from China that would be modified to American specifications, Mr. Navarro personally intervened to scuttle the bid.
He has come to view his office as akin to a special forces unit within the federal bureaucracy.
“With a small office, I learned early that the real power of being at the White House and the real effectiveness stems from leverage — on any given day, one or more government agencies are helping with this office’s mission,” he said.
“You don’t need to be a big bloated bureaucracy. All you need be is lean and flat and nimble enough to harness agency resources for the president and his agenda.”

War of resistance: For 'the braves' there is no turning back in battle for Hong Kong

Young and fearless protesters pose new challenge to Communist authorities.
By Violet Law
Bruised and exhausted young protesters have promised to keep on fighting against the Hong Kong government.

Hong Kong -- A Catholic schoolgirl who left a promising career to lob petrol bombs at police. College students whose raison d'être is to keep the fight going.
A protester who beat arrest to mount his fourth election campaign and win office.
As Hong Kong's anti-government protests have dragged on from summer into winter, these are the kind of people who have emerged as "the braves" -- people prepared to use extreme tactics that set them apart from the vast majority of peaceful demonstrators.
"The braves", whose number is hard to gauge and whose ranks have been replenished by younger and younger protesters give the government the most headaches.
Police have branded them "rioters" determined to round them up in order to quell the unrest.
Few protesters set out to be braves, but nearly all were frustrated by the failure of the Umbrella Movement of 2014, a mass sit-in to demand universal suffrage to elect the full legislature and chief executive.
Back then they played in defence and were met with defeat.
After million-strong marches in June failed to move the government into heeding the people's demands to withdraw the controversial bill that had set off the protests, more extreme action brought results. 
The bill was shelved and later scrapped, after protesters stormed the legislature.
"It was the government who taught us peaceful protests are useless," the braves spray-painted on the walls inside.
"This was the breakthrough (that) opened up the space for radical actions," said Gary Tang, a professor at Hang Seng University who studies youth movements.
"And the process of mutual escalation, between the police and the protesters, where the police are seen to have used disproportionate force, has further solidified sympathy for the braves."
As the current struggle has become the longest the self-governing Chinese territory has seen in more than half a century, the braves, although bruised and exhausted, say they will keep fighting -- while they still can, and while they still enjoy the rights and freedoms of the "one country, two systems" framework, under which the former British colony was returned to China in 1997.
Beijing is to assume full control by 2047.

'Resist now'
"If we don't resist now, what would happen to us [then]?" asked Christie, 20, who recently recovered from having her pelvis cracked by a pepper-ball grenade from the police.
Since being shot, Christie is easily rattled by loud bangs, but she is just as ready to throw a Molotov cocktail at police; mad at herself whenever she misses.
Before throwing herself into the protests, Christie was a pastry chef at a five-star hotel, earning three times the monthly income of the average university graduate even as a secondary school drop-out.
When the police rang her at work and pressed her to tell on fellow protesters, she quit her job.
Her injuries now make it difficult to find employment.
She used to have her own flat.
These days, she shuttles between the couch of a politically aligned host family and a bunk bed at an Airbnb rental shared with three fellow protesters to avoid police searches of their family homes.

Hong Kong's protest movement could not have lasted as long without broad support from the majority middle-class who are avowedly non-violent.

"For me, there's no return," she said.
"All we want is for the government to listen to us."
Once outside, Christie and other braves say they see a "parallel universe," where business ticks along as usual, and passers-by walk oblivious past the defiant graffiti demanding democracy and heralding "the revolution of our time."
If only they would make the personal sacrifice, Christie thinks, to go on strike to bring the economy to a halt and the government to its knees.
But she said she can understand.
Many people have "baggage": a mortgage, children, elderly dependent parents.

Middle-class support
That said, Hong Kong's protest movement could not have lasted as long without broad support from the majority middle-class, who are avowedly non-violent.
They have poured money into the cause, forked out for safe houses and medical treatment, as well as supermarket and fast-food restaurant coupons to keep the protesters fed.
Opinion polls in November suggested twice as many respondents blamed the authorities rather than the protesters for the mounting violence but maintaining that support requires care.
"If the police show restraint and even de-escalate the situation, it remains to be seen how the braves will carry on," said Tang, the researcher.
"If they use more force than the police, they'd risk crossing the line and losing legitimacy with the non-violent majority. That's the dilemma they're likely facing."

The police is using disproportionate force against protesters in Hong Kong.

Used to toggling between odd jobs and Triad activities, Jay, 30, has found purpose in the current protests.
He is careful to avoid being caught.
His Airbnb hideout is strictly for sleeping and killing time.
Other than an "Anonymous" mask and a pair of spent latex gloves, nothing hints at his involvement in protests.
His team's armoury is on a street minded by the Triads.
Jay, too, intuits any escalation of violence must be calibrated.
"You need to wait till somebody is shot and killed on the spot for supporters to think killing the cops becomes fair game -- that hasn't happened yet," he said.

'War of resistance'
But in Hong Kong's leaderless movement, cool heads do not always prevail.
Most often emotions, rather than calculations, push events along.
In mid-November in the police siege of the Polytechnic University more than one thousand protesters including many of the braves were trapped after rushing to help their comrades.
At least a few hundred were arrested, bringing the total to more than 6,000.
If a brave is charged and freed on bail, they generally retreat from the front lines because if they are arrested again, they will have to stay behind bars until their court date.
The siege also allowed the police to seize crucial equipment including goggles and helmets.
The shortage of respirator masks means fewer can face-off against police tear gas and grenades.
As police objections to the mass demonstrations stifled turnout among the non-violent demonstrators -- the last million-strong march was nearly four months ago -- people turned to the ballot box to voice their anger.
In late November, opposition candidates won a landslide victory in district councils elections.
At least five people known to be among the braves won a seat.
On his fourth bid for public office since the Umbrella Movement, Michael finally trounced his opponent, an incumbent from a pro-government labour union.
In his low-income neighbourhood, he has long cultivated a "boy-next-door" image with his mild manner and easy smile, even for those who disagree with his politics.

Pro-democracy protesters have defied Hong Kong's decision to ban the use of masks during demonstrations.

Joining the system has some benefits: Michael, 28, plans to plough the resources from his district's discretionary budget into supplying the protesters with protective gear.
While buoyed by his victory, he is more pensive about where the movement goes from here.
"Now we're at a bottleneck," he said.
"The movement has lost its focus. The protest slogans are sounding a bit hollow."
In the hotel room he's called home since discovering three months ago that police were tailing him, Michael and his friends liken the movement to a war of resistance.
"The best we can hope for is to keep the heat up," Michael said.
"It's getting more and more like guerrilla warfare. It doesn't take that many people, but it takes guts. And the goal is to disrupt and destroy."

Hong Kong people target malls in third day of Christmas protests

Reuters

Hong Kong protesters attend a Christmas Day rally in Sha Tin shopping mall in Hong Kong, China, December 25, 2019. 

HONG KONG -- Hundreds of protesters marched through festive Hong Kong shopping malls on Thursday, aiming to disrupt business in the Asian financial hub for a third day over the Christmas holidays, with riot police deployed in the event of unrest.
The “shopping protests” have targeted malls across the Chinese-ruled city since Christmas Eve, turning violent at times with police firing tear gas to disperse demonstrators in bustling commercial areas filled with shoppers and tourists.
The turnout on Thursday was smaller than on the previous two days, but dozens of riot police patrolled the outskirts of shopping centers on the Kowloon peninsula and in the rural New Territories. Some officers entered the malls to observe chanting black-clad protesters.
Protests started in Hong Kong more than six months ago in response to a now-withdrawn bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China, where courts are controlled by the Communist Party.
They have since evolved into a broader pro-democracy movement, and became more confrontational over the festive season.
Earlier in December, after pro-democracy candidates overwhelmingly won district council elections, they had been largely peaceful.
On Thursday, police detained several people at a mall in rural Tai Po, located far north of the city’s financial center earlier on Thursday, public broadcaster RTHK said.
Some restaurants and stores pulled down their shutters in the malls as protesters, some wearing balaclavas and carrying black flags, marched by.
At some dining outlets protesters stuck up stickers and posters which read “Free Hong Kong, revolution now”.
Demonstrators are angry at increased meddling by Beijing in the freedoms promised to the former British colony when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
Beijing's puppet Carrie Lam condemned the protesters in a Facebook post on Wednesday stating that many Hong Kongers and tourists were "disappointed" that their “Christmas Eve celebrations have been ruined.”
“Such illegal acts have not only dampened the festive mood but also adversely affected local businesses."

Turkey: A Muslim Kapo Nation

They Built a Homeland Far From China’s Grip. Now They’re Afraid.
By Carlotta Gall
Ablet Abdugani with his daughter Serife, 15, and his sons Abdussalam, 11, and Abdullah, age 5, at their home in Istanbul, Turkey.

ISTANBUL — Six years ago, he fled China’s crackdown on Muslim Uighurs and sought refuge in Turkey, joining a community of fellow exiles.
He started a business with his brother, translating and publishing self-help books into their language. His wife got a job as a teacher in a Uighur school where his children began to take classes.
Now, Ablet Abdugani worries the life he built will disappear.
The Turkish government told him he had to leave the country.
That could mean being sent back to China and likely straight into detention in a sprawling network of internment camps where about one million Muslims are held.
“I am scared whenever the door opens,” Mr. Abdugani said in his apartment on the far outskirts of Istanbul.
“I feel very sad about my six years here.”
Uighurs have left China in droves as the government intensified a campaign of assimilation in the western colony of East Turkestan.
In the last three years, at least 11,000 have landed in Turkey, long a favored haven.
Now, they worry they could become pawns in a geopolitical game.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who a decade ago called Beijing’s treatment of the Uighurs a genocide, has tried to reduce his country’s reliance on the West by turning to nations such as China.
In recent years, he has secured billions of dollars in loans and investments from the Asian giant to help prop up the faltering Turkish economy.

Renaay Muhammed, center, who teaches the Uighur language to children, with her students in an empty construction lot next to the school in Istanbul, Turkey.

Earlier this year, Turkey deported at least four Uighurs to Tajikistan. 
From there, they were sent back to China, alarming the Uighur community and drawing protests on social media.
Turkish authorities later said they would not send any Uighurs back to China.
But Mr. Abdugani, who was not deported, and many others like him remain anxious.
“We are caught in the middle of Chinese-Turkish relations and we don’t even know how much we are worth,” Mr. Abdugani said.
For those who have fled China, Turkey has offered them a place to reimagine their homeland.
Their people share a common heritage and similar languages.
Turkey’s government recognizes Turkic people as their own, making it a rare Muslim-majority nation that has spoken up for the Uighurs despite China’s objections.
They can practice Islam without fear and celebrate the culture of their 12 million people.
They teach classes on religion and the Uighur language and hold a yearly rally for their rights, activities that would be risky, or even banned, in China.
But many Uighurs in Turkey find themselves in a state of impermanence.
They are denied work permits and business licenses, and in some cases permanent residence and citizenship.
Once their Chinese passports expire, they are left effectively stateless.

‘Our people are being tortured’
The Uighurs speak a Turkic language and write in an Arabic script.
Their mosques feature turquoise tiled domes, their homes are decorated with Afghan-style rugs and their kitchens serve up cumin-spiced lamb pilaf and naan.
In their new home in Turkey, the Uighurs found something rare: a chance to restore their way of life and the reservoir of collective memory that China’s ruling Communist Party has sought to erode.
China intensified restrictions on the Uighurs after a spate of attacks in 2014 that the authorities blamed on "extremists".
Arrests and criminal convictions soared.
The authorities have confiscated Uighur books, restricted the use of the language in schools and detained scholars, artists and intellectuals, among others, in indoctrination camps.
Omer Hemdulla was studying in the Middle East in 2017 when his family in China warned him against going home.
The authorities had arrested his brothers and confiscated their businesses, they told him.
He went to Turkey and took over a bookstore in Istanbul in January, joining a burgeoning trade of printing books in the Uighur language.

Omer Hemdulla took over a bookstore in Istanbul in January and prints books in the Uighur language.

“The entire Uighur nation is in danger. Our people are being tortured,” said Mr. Hemdulla, 30, a law graduate.
He and his business partner, Nur Ahmet Mahmut, 32, publish anything they can find, from Uighur history and literature to children’s stories and cookery books.
They sell symbols of their hoped-for republic, East Turkestan — such as its sky blue flag with white crescent and star — items that are outlawed in China.
Mr. Hemdulla stocks books that were banned in East Turkestan.
Among the most popular, he said, are the novel “Awakened Land,” by Abdurehim Otkur, a well-known Uighur author, and “East Turkestan History” by Muhamet Emin Bugra, an exiled Turkic Muslim leader.
“I only read them when I came to Turkey and I realized China oppressed and occupied us a long time ago,” he said.
His shop is among half a dozen bookstores in the outlying districts of Sefakoy and Zeytinburnu in Istanbul, where many of the estimated 50,000 Uighurs in Turkey live.
Another publisher, Abduljalil Turan, 61, started his business in the 1990s, focusing on Islamic books and Uighur history and literature.
He asked friends to bring books to Turkey and then began publishing works of Uighur exiles, including his own writings.
He steadily expanded his stock to 1,000 titles and exports them to Uighur communities around the world.
“It is part of the cause,” he said, “to keep awareness alive about our condition.”

‘Will our culture disappear?’
For many Uighurs brought up under Communism, Turkey provides them a chance to raise a generation unbound by party orthodoxy, children who are free to embrace religion and their ethnic roots.
In China, Niaz Abdulla Bostani was imprisoned for three years for teaching the Quran to Uighur children.
Now, at 87, he holds religious classes for Uighur children on weekends at a local hall in Istanbul.

Niaz Abdulla Bostani, right, a religious teacher who moved to Turkey in 2016, and his wife, Hebibihan Merup.

“Young people come to me and ask questions,” he explained.
“Education is the answer. It will not solve things in a few days, but it will affect you all your life.”
Abdurashid Niaz, 55, was imprisoned for a year in China in 2005 for translating a book by the Egyptian Islamist Muhammad Qutb from Mandarin to Uighur.
He now runs a Uighur school in Istanbul with his wife, and says the internment drive in East Turkestan has made the Uighurs worried about their people’s survival.
“Everyone is discussing whether in 50 years, will our culture disappear,” Mr. Abdurashid said.
Four children were studying geography with his wife, Anifa Abdurashid, on a recent morning, and they leapt to answer questions about their homeland.
“I know the population is 32 million,” the youngest in the class, Abdulla, piped up.
The true population of the region of East Turkestan, of which Uighurs make up half, is closer to 24 million, but Mrs. Abdurashid let it go.
The Uighurs have preserved their identity through five millenniums, said Ferhat Kurban Tanridagli, a musician and scholar of Turkic languages.

Uighur children drew a map of their homeland during a class at a Uighur school in Istanbul.

He runs an arts school with his wife, a singer, and teaches music and dance to Uighur children.
He plays the dutar, a long-necked, two-string lute that has been played for 4,000 years in Central Asia.
“Made in Kashgar, in 1993,” he said proudly, turning the instrument of gleaming peanut wood, inlaid with bone, in his hands, referring to the fabled Silk Road trading town which now lives under tight police surveillance.
He warned that the Uighurs would not be able to withstand China’s onslaught on their own.
“If they destroy us, they will not stop. They will do it to others,” he said. 
“All the world needs to say to China to stop. We have no other choice.”

‘Still, there is danger’
This summer, the threat of deportation cast a new shadow of uncertainty over the Uighurs.
Mr. Abdugani, the businessman who had been told in July by the government to leave, said 40 others had received similar orders.
The Uighurs were deeply troubled when the authorities, as part of a crackdown on illegal immigrants, deported a Uighur woman and her two children to Tajikistan, which sent them back to China.
A fourth Uighur, also a woman, was deported as well.
The children were handed to their grandmother, but relatives have no news of the two women and fear they have been detained.
An estimated 2,500 Uighurs do not have legal residency.
Turkey’s interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, said in August that the government was trying to manage migration with “mercy and conscience,” and would not deport Uighurs.
Those without residence papers like Mr. Abdugani could seek humanitarian protection, he said.
That would grant them refugee status and access to health care services but not allow them to work.
Mr. Abdugani applied for humanitarian protection, but several months later was still waiting for a response and risks arrest for his illegal status.
The family was surviving on his wife’s salary and they could not pay for school books or the bus fare, so his children were walking to class most days.
Even as Turkey allows them to stay, many Uighurs said that immigration rules and the state bureaucracy make survival difficult.
Mr. Abdugani said he wanted long-term residence, which would allow him to work and support his family, and after seven years, apply for citizenship.
Businessmen complain they are restricted from developing their businesses, political activists say the authorities limit their demonstrations, and students are only offered free college education if they study religion.
And there is always a lingering fear of China’s reach.

Uighurs with flags of East Turkestan protested outside the Chinese Consulate in Istanbul.

Abdulla Turkestanli, 49, a book publisher, said he was detained without charge by the Turkish authorities for a year in 2017.
He suspected that Beijing had complained about him when he opened a second bookstore in the district of Sefakoy.
The Turkish authorities never explained why he was detained.
“A lot of writers are in prison or dead” he said.
“They are accused of terrorism in China, and so they say we are helping them.”
“I am fine, thanks be to God,” he said, “but still, there is danger.”

No Christmas for Chinese Slaves

Inside Christmas Card, Girl Finds Plea From Chinese Prison Laborers
A 6-year-old found the note in London while writing Christmas cards to her classmates. “Forced to work against our will,” the message read.
By Daniel Victor

Florence Widdicombe, 6, in London on Sunday with a Tesco Christmas card from the same pack as a card she found containing a message from a Chinese prisoner.

A 6-year-old girl in London preparing Christmas cards for her classmates found a message from prisoners forced into labor in China, prompting the Tesco grocery chain to suspend ties with a supplier.
Florence Widdicombe was going through cards her mother purchased about a week ago at a Tesco supermarket when she saw one card had writing in it, her father, Ben Widdicombe, told the BBC.
“We are foreign prisoners in Shanghai Qingpu Prison China,” the handwritten note read.
“Forced to work against our will. Please help us and notify human rights organization.”
The New York Times could not independently authenticate the note, which also suggested that the recipient contact Peter Humphrey, a British journalist who was a prisoner at Qingpu from 2013 to 2015.
Mr. Humphrey, who was jailed on corruption charges he says were bogus while working as a fraud investigator, first wrote about the note in The Sunday Times.
Tesco said in a statement that it would stop selling the cards while it investigates.
The supplier was independently audited in November and “no evidence was found to suggest they had broken our rule banning the use of prison labor,” the company said.
“We abhor the use of prison labor and would never allow it in our supply chain,” the company said. “We were shocked by these allegations and immediately suspended the factory where these cards are produced and launched an investigation.”
But the supplier, Zhejiang Yunguang Printing, said that it had not heard from Tesco and that it became aware of the accusations only after being contacted by foreign news outlets, according to state-run media.
China has a poor human rights record — it has come under criticism for, among other things, its treatment of the Muslim minority in East Turkestan, surveillance of its own citizens and detentions of journalists — but the printing company insisted that it had “never had any connection with any prison” and suggested that the story was manufactured for political reasons.

Peter Humphrey at an event in London last year.

Tesco is among the international companies that have publicly vowed to stamp out prison labor. Britain requires large companies to describe the actions they have taken each year to keep modern slavery out of their supply chains.
Former inmates have described brutal abuse in China’s labor camps, including beatings, sleep deprivation and untreated illnesses. 
Finding a note hidden inside packaging tends to attract worldwide attention, though the claims are difficult to verify and are often suspected of being activist hoaxes.
Still, there have been times when former inmates confirmed they had surreptitiously sneaked out notes.
In 2013, a former inmate at the Masanjia labor camp said he wrote 20 letters that he hid in packaging that seemed headed toward the West. 
One of them was found by a mother of two in Oregon inside a package of Halloween decorations.
Mr. Humphrey, the journalist and former inmate, told the BBC he believed the note was “written as a collective message” from the prisoners.
He said he believed he knew who wrote the note but would not reveal the person’s identity.
He said there were about 250 foreigners kept in Qingpu “living a very bleak daily life.”
The cells held 12 prisoners apiece, with rusty iron bunk beds and mattresses about a centimeter thick, he said.
When he was there, manual labor work was voluntary, with inmates earning pennies they could spend on soap, toothpaste and cookies, he said.
“What has happened in the last year or so is work has become compulsory,” he said.
Mr. Widdicombe said he felt he had a responsibility to pass along the note to Mr. Humphrey.
“The first thought was it must be some sort of prank, but on reflection we realized it was actually potentially quite a serious thing,” Mr. Widdicombe told the BBC.

A Jungle Airstrip Stirs Suspicions About China’s Plans for Cambodia

The Chinese military’s “string of pearls” strategy depends on far-flung regional outposts. Cambodia is becoming one.
By Hannah Beech

The runway at Dara Sakor International Airport, which a Chinese company is constructing, will be the longest in Cambodia.

DARA SAKOR, Cambodia — The airstrip stretches like a scar through what was once unspoiled Cambodian jungle.
When completed next year on a remote stretch of shoreline, Dara Sakor International Airport will boast the longest runway in Cambodia, complete with the kind of tight turning bay favored by fighter jet pilots.
Nearby, workers are clearing trees from a national park to make way for a port deep enough to host naval ships.
The politically connected Chinese company building the airstrip and port says the facilities are for civilian use.
But the scale of the land deal at Dara Sakor — which secures 20 percent of Cambodia’s coastline for 99 years — has raised eyebrows, especially since the portion of the project built so far is already moldering in malarial jungle.
The activity at Dara Sakor and other nearby Chinese projects is stirring fears that Beijing plans to turn this small Southeast Asian nation into a de facto military outpost.
Already, a far-flung Chinese construction boom — on disputed islands in the South China Sea, across the Indian Ocean and onward to Beijing’s first military base overseas, in the African Horn nation of Djibouti — has raised alarms about China’s military ambitions at a time when the United States’ presence in the region has waned.
Known as the “string of pearls,” Beijing’s defense strategy would benefit from a jewel in Cambodia.
“Why would the Chinese show up in the middle of a jungle to build a runway?” said Sophal Ear, a political scientist at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
“This will allow China to project its air power through the region, and it changes the whole game.”

A Chinese construction project in the Dara Sakor investment zone. China is Cambodia’s biggest investor.

As China extends its might overseas, it is bumping up against a regional security umbrella shaped by the United States decades ago.
Cambodia, a recipient of Western largess after American bombs devastated its countryside during the Vietnam War, was supposed to be firmly ensconced in the democratic political orbit.
But to win his place as Asia’s longest-serving leader, Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia has turned his back on free elections and rule of law.
He excoriates the United States while warmly embracing China, which is now Cambodia’s largest investor and trading partner.
Down the coast from Dara Sakor, American military officials say, China has reached a deal for exclusive rights to expand an existing Cambodian naval base, even as Beijing denies military intentions in the country.
“We are concerned that the runway and port facilities at Dara Sakor are being constructed on a scale that would be useful for military purposes and which greatly exceed current and projected infrastructure needs for commercial activity,” Lt. Col. Dave Eastburn, a Pentagon spokesman, said by email.
“Any steps by the Cambodian government to invite a foreign military presence,” Colonel Eastburn added, “would disturb peace and stability in Southeast Asia.”

Raising a billboard for a Dara Sakor construction project. The Cambodian government says the area of southwestern Cambodia will be a global logistics hub.

An American intelligence report published this year raised the possibility that “Cambodia’s slide toward autocracy,” as Hun Sen tightens his 34-year grip on power, “could lead to a Chinese military presence in the country.”
This month, the United States Treasury Department accused a senior general linked to Dara Sakor of corruption and imposed sanctions on him.
Hun Sen denies that he is letting China’s military set up in Cambodia.
Instead, his government claims that Dara Sakor’s runway and port will transform this remote rainforest into a global logistics hub that will “make miracles possible,” as Dara Sakor’s promotional literature puts it.
“There will be no Chinese military in Cambodia, none at all, and to say that is a fabrication,” said Pay Siphan, a government spokesman.
“Maybe the white people want to hold Cambodia back by stopping us from developing our economy.”

The home of Ban Em’s family in Chamlang Kou village will be razed to make way for a “military port built by the Chinese,” her husband, Thim Lim, said Cambodian officials told him.

An Unusual Land Deal
In July, armed men in military uniforms arrived at the wooden house of Thim Lim, a fisherman who lives in Cambodia’s largest national park.
Leave, they demanded.
Mr. Thim Lim said he was told by officials from the Ministry of Land Management that his home would be demolished next year to make way for a “military port built by the Chinese.”
Other villagers who attended the meeting confirmed his account.
Land officials wouldn’t comment.
“China is so big that it can do what it wants to do,” Mr. Thim Lim said.
Mr. Thim Lim’s land is part of the Dara Sakor concession leased more than a decade ago to Union Development Group, an obscure Chinese company with no international footprint apart from its 110,000-acre Cambodian acquisition.

Villagers sorting fishing nets in Chamlang Kou. It is part of the Dara Sakor land concession, which was leased to a Chinese company under unusual terms.

The deal was questionable from its inception.
With no open bidding process, Union Development was handed a 99-year lease on a concession triple the size of what Cambodia’s land law allows. 
The company was exempted from any lease payments for a decade.
On Dec. 9, Gen. Kun Kim, a former military chief of staff, and his family became targets of United States Treasury sanctions for profiting from relationships with a “China state-owned entity” and for having used “soldiers to intimidate, demolish and clear out land.”
While the Chinese firm was not named, rights groups and local residents said it was Union Development.
Presiding over the signing of the Dara Sakor deal in 2008 was Zhang Gaoli, once among China’s top leaders.
The company’s promotional materials call the development “the largest seashore investment project not only in Southeast Asia but in the world.”
Even with generous lease terms, the one part of Dara Sakor that has been built, a resort complex, is languishing.
On a recent day, the golf course was empty and the casino deserted.
The marina restaurant attracted one Chinese family, which had brought seafood in a plastic bag to avoid paying resort prices.
Instead of retreating from a faltering venture, Union Development has doubled down.
The new construction at Dara Sakor includes a 10,500-foot runway and a deep-sea port able to handle 10,000-ton vessels.

The Dara Sakor Resort, which includes Koh Kong Casino, has seen little tourist traffic.

Who controls the venture remains opaque.
For years, Union Development claimed Dara Sakor was entirely private.
Yet Gen. Chhum Socheat, Cambodia’s deputy defense minister, told The New York Times that the nation’s civil aviation authority was running the airport project, meaning that it could not possibly be linked to the Chinese military.
Sin Chansereyvutha, a spokesman for the State Secretariat of Civil Aviation, however, said that “we don’t have an agreement” for Dara Sakor airport.
In May, Union Development handed Hun Sen, the prime minister, a check for $1 million for the Cambodian Red Cross, which his wife runs.
The company’s headquarters in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, are decorated with pictures of Gen. Tea Banh, Cambodia’s defense minister, striding across Dara Sakor’s golf course.
Union Development Group’s main office is next to the defense minister’s home.

Construction at the Chinese-built Sealong Bay International Beach Resort development, near Cambodia’s largest naval base.

‘China Is Looking for Our Prosperity’
Less than 50 miles from Dara Sakor, another nearly empty Chinese-built development rises from another national park.
The Sealong Bay International Beach Resort has sea views and Chinese chefs.
But it’s the project’s neighbor that has been attracting the most attention: Ream Naval Base, Cambodia’s largest.
“All these projects thrive off ambiguity because you’re never really sure what’s going on,” said Devin Thorne, co-author of “Harbored Ambitions,” a study by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, a Washington research group, on China’s maritime strategy in the Indo-Pacific.
“You’ll have five Chinese port proposals; two of them fall through and then suddenly there’s one more next door. It’s really hard to keep track of.”
In July, The Wall Street Journal reported on a secret draft agreement to give China exclusive access to part of Ream Naval Base for 30 years.

Cambodian ships at Ream Naval Base. American officials suspect there are plans for Ream “that involve hosting Chinese military assets.”

Speculation about Ream intensified this year when the United States, which had acceded to a Cambodian request to refurbish U.S.-funded training and boat maintenance facilities on the base, was notified that the Cambodians no longer wanted the Americans’ help.
“The withdrawal of the request six months later was surprising and raises questions about the Cambodian government’s plans for the base,” said Colonel Eastburn, the Pentagon spokesman.
General Chhum Socheat, the deputy defense minister, denied that Cambodia had asked the Americans for money for Ream.
“We are frankly fed up,” he told The Times.
“Do we have to ask the United States to develop our sovereignty? Do we have to beg the United States to do this project, that one?”
But in a May 8 letter to the Cambodian Defense Ministry, the American defense attaché in Phnom Penh noted that Cambodia had “requested U.S. assistance to conduct repairs and minor renovations to U.S.-provided facilities on the base.”
In a response a month later, a Cambodian defense official replied that “the repairs and renovations of the facilities on the base are no longer necessary.”
In a subsequent letter, Joseph Felter, then the American deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia, warned General Tea Banh, the defense minister, of suspicions “that this sudden change of policy could indicate larger plans for changes at Ream Naval Base, particularly ones that involve hosting Chinese military assets.”
The defense minister did not answer the letter.

Hun Sen, center, at a groundbreaking ceremony for a Chinese-built bridge in Cambodia. “We are very good friends,” a spokesman for his government said, referring to China.

Hun Sen and his deputies accuse the United States of trying to foment a revolution against his government.
In July, the United States House of Representatives passed a bill seeking to impose sanctions on individuals who have undermined democracy in Cambodia. 
Associates of Hun Sen, who has crushed his political opponents, could be among them.
Two years ago, the Cambodian military suspended joint military exercises with the Americans and began partnering with the Chinese instead.
Then, in a further sign of deepening military ties, Hun Sen announced in July that he had spent $240 million on Chinese weaponry.
“If the U.S. Embassy, they don’t like us, they can pack up and leave,” Pay Siphan, the government spokesman, who is a dual Cambodian and American citizen, said in an interview.
“They are troublemakers, and we see it when they look down on Cambodia.”
“China is looking for our prosperity,” he added.
“We are very good friends.”

An empty lifeguard tower on the beach at Dara Sakor Resort.