Chinese Killer Virus

China Expands Travel Restrictions to 2 More Cities as Outbreak Grows

• The authorities enacted strict travel bans for the central Chinese cities of Huanggang, Ezhou and Wuhan, collectively home to nearly 20 million people. 
• At least 17 people have died and more than 570 have been sickened by a mysterious illness.

By The New York Times

In addition to canceling flights and trains, the authorities also shuttered movie theaters, cafes and other public spaces.

Police officers guarding an entrance to the closed Hankou Railway Station in Wuhan, China, on Thursday.

The authorities ban travel from three cities at center of outbreak, affecting millions.
The authorities expanded travel restrictions to two central Chinese cities near Wuhan, the epicenter of a mysterious outbreak of coronavirus, hours after announcing that 17 people had died and more than 570 had contracted the disease.
The restrictions on train and other forms of travel will apply to tens of millions of people and come just days before the Lunar New Year holiday, when hundreds of millions of people travel around and out of the country.
The Chinese authorities on Thursday morning closed off Wuhan — a major port city of more than 11 million people and the center of a pneumonia-like virus that has spread halfway around the world — by canceling flights and trains leaving the city, and suspending buses, subways and ferries within it.
By evening, officials planned to close off Huanggang, a city of seven million about 30 miles east of Wuhan, and shut rail stations in the nearby city of Ezhou, which has about one million residents.
In Huanggang, public transportation and departing trains would were to stop service at midnight. Residents would not be allowed to leave the city without special permission, according to a government statement. 

In Ezhou, all rail stations were to be closed.
In Wuhan, residents said that a sense of fear was growing as the city went into lockdown.
The new virus, which first emerged at the end of December, has killed at least 17 people and sickened more than 570, including in Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, South Korea and the United States. 

It has raised the specter of a repeat of the SARS epidemic, which broke out in China in 2002 and 2003 and spread rapidly while officials obscured the seriousness of the crisis. 

That virus eventually killed more than 800 people worldwide.
Roughly 30,000 people fly out of Wuhan on an average day, according to air traffic data. 

Many more leave using ground transportation like trains and cars. 

The city is the hub of industry and commerce in central China, home to the region’s biggest airport and deepwater port.
The sudden restrictions could upend the travel plans of millions of Chinese citizens, who travel in huge numbers during the Lunar New Year holiday, which begins on Friday. 

The government said it would close Wuhan’s airport and train stations to departures, and it urged residents not to leave the city unless they had an urgent reason to do so.

Residents are nervous and angry.

A supermarket in Wuhan, on Thursday.

Across Wuhan on Thursday, residents — some wearing masks, some sniffing or coughing — visited hospitals and clinics seeking treatment. 

In interviews with a New York Times correspondent in the city, some said they were angry about the sudden lockdown. 

Others said they were confused by the restrictions.
Outside the Wuhan No. 3 Hospital, Yang Lin, said she had come to the hospital to see if a sniffling cold she had might be the coronavirus. 

She said that after a quick check, the doctors told her not to worry. 

But she was not reassured.
“They said it was just a common cold, and told me to get some medicine and go home,” Ms. Yang, 28, said. 

“But how am I to know? They didn’t even take my temperature. It’s just not responsible.”
The outbreak is testing Wuhan’s health care system. 

Several Wuhan residents said on social media websites that they had gone from hospital to hospital, waiting in lines for hours, only to be sent home with medicine and instructions to seek further treatment later if symptoms persisted in a few days.
“The government did not fulfill its duty,” Du Hanrong, 56, a retiree, said by telephone. 

“They just are doing things hastily and carelessly.”
Doctors told some patients that there was a shortage of hospital beds as well as testing kits, according to posts on Chinese social media sites.
Cheng Shidong, a doctor at the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, said in an interview that his hospital had set up 100 beds to receive infected patients, but that it didn’t have enough protective material, such as masks and suits, for the medical staff.
In Wuhan, Ms. Yang said that while she was in a pharmacy buying medicine, another person complained that he thought he had the coronavirus but had not been isolated. 

The city’s medical system, especially its smaller hospitals, seems unprepared for the influx of patients, she said.
“I’m willing to accept that we have to stay in Wuhan, O.K., but the medical care needs to keep up,” she said. 

“You shouldn’t tell us we can’t leave, and then give us second-rate medical care. That’s unfair.”


Who are the victims?
Health workers wear protective suits at the Zhongnan Hospital in Wuhan, China, on Wednesday.

China’s health commission, which has tightly controlled news about the toll of the outbreak, released on Thursday its most detailed list of the people who have died of the disease.
The first 17 people were largely older men, many with underlying health problems. 

All died in Hubei Province, which includes the city of Wuhan.
The first confirmed death was a 61-year-old man who went to a hospital in Wuhan on December 27, weak with a fever and a cough. 

He was transferred to another hospital as his condition worsened, and he was later attached to a machine that helped oxygenate his blood. 

But his condition worsened, and he died on Jan. 9.Of the first 17 deaths, 13 were men and four were women, officials said. 

The youngest victim was a 48-year-old woman identified only by her surname, Yin, who died on Monday. 

The oldest were two 89-year-old men who died on Saturday and Sunday.
Many had underlying conditions like cirrhosis of the liver, hypertension, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. 

Most had gone to the hospital with a fever and a cough, though at least three had no fever when they were admitted, according to the health commission.
While a full picture of the virus is still unknown, medical experts found some positive signs in the fact that the disease did not appear to be killing young and otherwise healthy people.It was a somewhat reassuring sign that “the majority of fatal cases are elderly and/or have a chronic disease that would increase their susceptibility to infectious diseases,” said Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, an epidemiologist at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York.

‘I feel extremely powerless,’ says a SARS expert, raising an alarm.

Travelers arrive on Thursday at a nearly deserted train station in Wuhan.

In an unusually blunt interview, Dr. Guan Yi, a professor of infectious diseases in Hong Kong and expert on SARS, criticized the authorities in Wuhan for acting too slowly and obstructing his efforts to investigate the outbreak.
Dr. Guan, who helped successfully identify the coronavirus that caused SARS during the 2002-2003 outbreak in China, told the influential Chinese magazine Caixin that he was deeply frustrated by the city government’s response to the spread of the virus.
He and his team had visited Wuhan on Tuesday hoping that they could track the animal that was the source of the coronavirus but were shocked to find that residents at a market were not taking any precautions or wearing masks. 

No special measures were in place at the airport to disinfect surfaces and floors, either. 

This showed that the city government was being complacent despite the urgent orders handed down by Beijing, he said.
“I thought at the time, we had to be in a ‘state of war’, but how come the alarm has not been raised?” he told Caixin. 

“Poor citizens, they were still preparing to ring in the New Year in peace and had no sense about the epidemic.”
He also criticized the local authorities for disinfecting the market where many infections had been traced to, saying that made it difficult for researchers to investigate where the virus came from.
“I consider myself a veteran in battles,” he said, citing his experience with bird flu, SARS, and other outbreaks. 

“But with this Wuhan pneumonia, I feel extremely powerless.”

What is a coronavirus and why is it so dangerous?

Paramedics taking a man believed to be Hong Kong’s first coronavirus patient to a hospital on Wednesday.

Coronaviruses are named for the spikes that protrude from their membranes, which resemble the sun’s corona. 

They can infect both animals and people, and cause illnesses of the respiratory tract, ranging from the common cold to severe conditions like SARS, which sickened thousands of people around the world — and killed nearly 800 — during a 2003 outbreak.
Symptoms of infection include a high fever, difficulty breathing and lung lesions. 

Milder cases may resemble the flu or a bad cold, making detection very difficult. 

The incubation period — the time from exposure to the onset of symptoms — is believed to be about two weeks.
Little is known about who is most at risk. 

Some of the nine patients who have died also suffered other illnesses.

Chinese worry the government is underreporting cases.
A hospital worker washes the entrance to the Wuhan Medical Treatment Center, where some infected with a new virus were being treated.

There are growing concerns that the Chinese authorities are underreporting the number of people who are ill with the virus. 

Relatives of patients say that hospitals, strapped for resources as they deal with an influx of patients, are turning sick people away or refusing to test them for the coronavirus.Many people remain skeptical of the government’s official statistics, with memories of the effort to cover up the severity of the SARS outbreak in 2003 still fresh.
In Wuhan, Kyle Hui, an architect from Shanghai, said that doctors at Tongji Hospital declined to test his stepmother for the virus, even though she was showing symptoms like a cough and a fever. 

She died on Jan. 15 of “severe pneumonia,” according to a copy of her death certificate.Mr. Hui said that hospital workers treated his stepmother as if she had the coronavirus, wearing hazmat suits. 

After she died, the hospital instructed the family to cremate the body immediately. 

Mr. Hui said that after her death, doctors informed the family that they suspected his stepmother had the coronavirus.
“I’m very sad my stepmother left without any dignity,” Mr. Hui said during an interview this week in a cafe in Wuhan. 

“There was no time to say goodbye.”

Chinese state media plays down the crisis.
Health officials in Beijing take passengers’ temperatures as they arrive on flights from Wuhan on Wednesday. 

A sense of crisis is spreading through China as more people fall ill to the deadly virus. 

But you wouldn’t know it reading the front pages of China’s official newspapers.
As China grapples with one of its most serious public health crises in years, the ruling Communist Party’s most important news outlets seem oblivious to the emergency.
On Thursday, the front page of the People’s Daily featured stories about Chinese dictator Xi Jinping “visiting and comforting” villagers in Yunnan, a southwestern province, ahead of the Lunar New Year Holiday, describing a “warm and peaceful” scene. 

A photo showed New Year’s revelers aboard a train, smiling and snapping photos.
On Wednesday, China Central Television, the state broadcaster, treated the outbreak as a footnote in its evening newscast, one of the most watched television programs in China, instead focusing on Xi’s talks with world leaders.
While more commercially focused outlets, such as Caixin, a financial magazine, and the Beijing News, a newspaper, are covering the crisis extensively, the party’s flagship news outlets have been quiet.
Experts said Xi Jinping was trying to prevent a sense of panic and to limit criticism of the party’s response.“The top priority will be to keep coverage from asking more probing questions about how China’s institutions have responded, questions that might lead to criticism of the government,” said David Bandurski, co-director of the China Media Project.

A New York Times reporter travels to the epidemic’s ground zero.
Chris Buckley, our chief China correspondent, headed to Wuhan from Beijing to cover the outbreak. He is sending live dispatches from his trip.

9:25 A.M. — BEIJING
At the Beijing West Railway Station on Thursday morning there were noticeably more people wearing masks than have been seen around the city in recent days. 

Still, the number of travelers heading out for the Lunar New Year is still sizable. 

This is not the empty ghost city that Beijing became during the SARS epidemic of 2003. 

Hundreds of people lined up to take a train that passes through Wuhan and other cities on the way to Hong Kong. 

Almost all wore masks.

11 A.M. — ABOARD THE G79 HIGH SPEED TRAIN
The G79 high speed train from Beijing to Hong Kong, which stops in Wuhan, was crowded with holiday passengers. 

But few seemed to have plans to get off in Wuhan. 

The train was a hubbub of conversation, much of it about the deadly coronavirus and the lockdown around Wuhan.
Guo Jing, a worker from northeast China, was headed with two friends for a holiday in Macau. 

After some hesitation, they had taken off their masks. 

“They’re too uncomfortable inside,” Mr. Guo said. 

“My view is we have to be careful but not panic. If you’re the panicky type, then you wouldn’t be on this train.”


Chris Buckley 储百亮
✔@ChuBailiang
Time to get back onto Twitter. I’m about to arrive in Wuhan to see how the city is coping under the lockdown and the menace of the coronavirus. Also follow live updates at the Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/world/asia/china-coronavirus.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share …
1,821
6:47 AM - Jan 23, 2020

1:37 P.M. — ABOARD THE G79 HIGH SPEED TRAIN
Half an hour out from Wuhan, the train is quite crowded with passengers, most of whom are wearing masks.
I haven’t been able to find any who say they are ending their journey at Wuhan, and when I explain that I’m getting off there the reactions vary from advice — wear masks, don’t go, drink lots of water — to mordant jokes that I may be there a long time.
“You should know that they probably won’t let people out until the New Year holiday is over,” said one woman, who would only give her family name, Yang. 

I had expected that there might be checks on the train, or guards checking people who planned to get off at Wuhan. 

But not so far.

2:29 P.M. — WUHAN
Wuhan Railway Station, usually thronging with people in the days before the Lunar New Year holiday, is very empty.
An announcement playing on a loop over the speakers tells the few people here that residents cannot leave the city and the station is temporarily closed. 

But there is, so far at least, no extraordinary security around the station. 

There was a fever detector at the exit from the train platform, but I’ve seen no other steps to check people.
Many residents tried to leave the city.
The announcement that the city of Wuhan would be temporarily sealed off from the outside world starting at 10 a.m. on Thursday came while most residents were asleep at 2 a.m.
Some decided to flee the city.
Residents were seen hauling their luggage to a train station in the early hours before the citywide lockdown took effect, the Chinese news outlet Caixin reported. 

Several people said they would buy tickets for any destination as long as they could leave Wuhan, the magazine reported.
Lines of passengers in masks and down jackets, lugging suitcases, formed outside the major Hankou railway station just 20 minutes before the cutoff time, a live video by media outlet The Paper showed.
Han Zhen and Wang Mengkai, two migrant workers from Henan Province, said they had rushed to the railway station in order to leave on Wednesday night, but missed the last train out.
Both said they were frustrated by the sudden lockdown and were scrambling to find a way home.
“It’s serious but not that serious,” said Mr. Wang, who works in an electronics parts factory. 

“We’re trying to figure out how we can get home. If we can’t get out on a train, we’ll try putting together a car with a driver.”
Asked if they were motivated to leave by fear of the virus, Mr. Han said: “No, we are not scared.”
“It’s the New Year, we just have to go home,” he added.

Chinese Peril

CHINESE CORONAVIRUS CONTINUES TO SPREAD AHEAD OF LUNAR NEW YEAR, THE WORLD'S BIGGEST HUMAN MIGRATION
BY KASHMIRA GANDER

Health officials in China have increased monitoring efforts for a mysterious form of pneumonia which has affected over 100 people, as the country gears up for the Lunar New Year—the world's biggest human migration.
China has reported 139 new cases of the illness caused by a new coronavirus, the World Health Organisation said Sunday. 

The WHO said the reports were "the result of increased searching and testing" for the virus among people sick with respiratory illnesses.
According to Reuters, China's National Health Commission said over the weekend that the bug appeared to be "controllable". 

The organization will step up its efforts to track the infection as new year celebrations are due to start on January 24, with what is known as the Chunyun travel period set to last 40 days. 

According to Bloomberg, Chinese citizens will make up to three billion trips in what is the largest human migration on the planet. 

A spike in railway travel of 8 percent on last year is forecast.
Dr Suwannachai Wattanayingcharoenchai, head of Thailand's Department of Disease Control, said according to the Bangkok Post: "We are now on full alert to prevent a disease outbreak, especially during the coming Chinese New Year."
The WHO has not recommended any specific health measures for travelers. 

Individuals who have symptoms of a respiratory illness either during or after travel "are encouraged to seek medical attention and share their travel history with their health care provider," it said. 

The body advised travelers to keep up standard hygiene procedures to prevent the spread of a range of illnesses, including by washing hands and avoiding close contact with others, particularly "anyone showing symptoms of respiratory illness such as coughing and sneezing."
Coronavirus is the term used to describe a large family of viruses encompassing common colds as well as more serious illnesses such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). 

The virus has killed two people since it was first identified late last year in the city of Wuhan, about 700 miles south of Beijing with a population of more than 11 million people. 

One victim had serious underlying medical conditions, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
On Sunday, the WHO said new cases had been detected outside the city within China for the first time "over the past two days," in the capital Beijing and Shenzhen. 

This comes after it was confirmed in travelers from Wuhan in Thailand as well as Japan according to the CDC. 

The Yonhap news agency reported on Monday, citing the Korea Centers for Disease Control, that a Chinese woman who had traveled to Wuhan last week had fallen ill at South Korea's Incheon International Airport.
Last week, the CDC announced travelers entering the U.S. from Wuhan would be screened for symptoms of the condition. 

This is planned for the airports which receive the most travelers from Wuhan: San Francisco (SFO), New York (JFK), and Los Angeles (LAX).


San Francisco International Airport (SFO)
✔@flySFO
In response to an outbreak in China caused by a novel (new) #coronavirus, @CDCgov will begin health screenings of travelers arriving from #Wuhan, China at SFO. https://bit.ly/2v13H1J #novelcoronavirus #2019nCoV https://twitter.com/CDCgov/status/1218252302647287808 …
CDC
✔@CDCgov
Replying to @CDCgov
Health screenings of travelers arriving from #Wuhan, China is part of a layered approach used with other public health measures already in place to slow and reduce possible spread of #2019nCOV into the United States. https://bit.ly/2v13H1J .

According to the CDC, over 60,000 people fly from Wuhan to the U.S. each year, with around 10 percent of the total annual travel between the China and the U.S. happening in January due to the Lunar New Year.
The health body stressed the available evidence suggests the virus poses a "low" risk to the American public, but said "nevertheless, CDC is taking proactive preparedness precautions."
Animals seem to be the most likely primary source of the coronavirus outbreak, the WHO said, but there is "some limited human-to-human transmission occurring between close contacts." 

Most infected patients were exposed to a market where live animals are kept in Wuhan, the CDC said citing Chinese health officials. 

This suggests "this is a novel virus that has jumped the species barrier to infect people," the CDC said.As more cases are identified and analyzed, the WHO said it hopes to "get a clearer picture of disease severity and transmission patterns.
"We will update and expand our guidance as we learn more," the body added.
A passenger walks past a notice for passengers from Wuhan, China displayed near a quarantine station at Narita airport on January 17, 2020 in Narita, Japan. Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has confirmed its first case of pneumonia infected with a new coronavirus from Wuhan City, China.

Chinese Peril

Freedom House calls for oversight on China's efforts to influence media abroad

By Cate Cadell

BEIJING -- U.S. democracy watchdog group Freedom House urged governments on Wednesday to impose penalties on Chinese officials and tighten broadcast regulations amid a “dramatic expansion” in Chinese efforts to influence media overseas.
“When Chinese diplomats and security agents overstep their bounds and attempt to interfere with media reporting in other countries, the host government should vigorously protest,” it said in a report, adding that such officials could also be expelled.
It also said the United States and other governments should support policies that require Chinese media to disclose spending on paid advertorials, ownership structures, and other economic ties to Chinese state actors.
In recent years, Chinese state media and private internet companies have invested heavily overseas, prompting concern from lawmakers and rights groups that Beijing could remotely curtail criticism and expand its sphere of influence.
“While some aspects of this effort are in line with traditional public diplomacy, many others are covert, coercive, and corrupt,” said Freedom House, which is mainly financed by the U.S. government.
China has previously denied the accusations and has in turn criticized foreign social media companies for curtailing the voices of people who are supportive of the Chinese government.
Twitter and Facebook said in August they had dismantled a network of accounts that were part of a Chinese state-backed coordinated effort to undermine the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
Freedom House was among several U.S. NGOs sanctioned by China in December over what Beijing says are efforts to interfere in its internal affairs.
On Sunday the head of Human Rights Watch, another U.S. NGO hit by the sanctions, was barred from entering Hong Kong ahead of the release of its global report, which strongly criticized China.
China says the NGOs are inciting criminal activity by supporting pro-democracy forces in Hong Kong.
In 2016 Chinese dictator Xi Jinping urged state media to grow their overseas influence to “promote positive propaganda as the main theme” and “tell the China story well”.

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.

Chinese Peril

China’s Growing Power, and a Growing Backlash

The U.S., in particular, pushed back against Xi Jinping’s efforts to take a larger role in world affairs

By Charles Hutzler

A housing project in Shiyan, China, where mountains have been removed, 2013, part of the massive construction across the country in the early part of the decade. 

China fully emerged as a power this decade, unsettling global arrangements and stirring a backlash despite long anticipation of the country’s rise.
At the decade’s start, China’s global footprint was chiefly marked by its economic might. 

Its hard-charging economy soared past Japan to become the world’s second largest. 

Its companies began pushing abroad, securing resources and markets and serving an expanding middle class, with an appetite for cars, travel and luxury goods. 

Ambitious development projects at home like a high-speed rail network seemed to present the country as a power of the future.
Under Xi Jinping, who took over in a generational shift early in the decade, China then shook off a long-held reluctance to take a larger role in world affairs and began behaving more like a global power. 

It set up its first military outpost abroad, contributed combat troops for United Nations peacekeeping, promoted an initiative to build ports, highways and other infrastructure across much of the world, and created a new development bank to finance those and other projects. 

A marker of Xi’s ambition was a Communist Party plan to overtake the U.S. and eventually supplant it at the center of a reshaped world order, one that heeds China’s interests.
Beijing’s growing strength—and its increasing willingness to exercise it—fueled a backlash, in some corners inside the nation and outside. 

The U.S., in particular, pushed back, calling China a disruptive force and spurring a trade war that threatens to undo enmeshed economic ties. 

Fears over Beijing’s intrusive control fueled antigovernment protests in the vibrant Chinese city of Hong Kong. 

In the West, policy experts fret over fitting China into a rules-based global order and whether Beijing ever intended to.

A factory in Zhongshan, China, that makes Levi’s jeans. China overtook the U.S. this decade as the world’s No. 1 trading nation. 

“U.S. policy circles have misread and fantasized about China peacefully or easily integrating into the liberal international order,” says Fei-Ling Wang, an international-affairs expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology. 

He counts himself as one who earlier got China wrong—partly, he says, from not understanding that China’s autocratic system would resist liberalization at home and undermine it abroad.
Economic success at home and a higher profile abroad have served to buttress a growing confidence among China’s leaders and, according to opinion polls, many of its citizens that the country is on the right track—and that its authoritarian system, which intervenes readily in the economy and in society, delivers results. 

And, according to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, the world should learn from it.

The Chinese, Xi told a gathering of Communist Party members in 2016, “are fully confident in providing a China solution in the search for better social systems for humanity.”

After decades in which China looked to the U.S. as a guide if not a model, China sees itself as a leader in its own right. 

The shift started before the past decade began. 

When the global financial crisis spread from the U.S. and hit China, Beijing unleashed a wave of stimulus that kept its factories and construction companies humming. 

At a global gathering in 2009, China’s prime minister pointed a finger at the U.S. for causing the crisis.
At the same time, China’s upward trajectory hasn’t been as smooth as the Chinese leadership would like its people and the world to believe.
Despite the nation’s rise to economic prominence, growth has halved over the decade, with tariffs from the U.S. adding further drag. 

Beijing has struggled to constrain the debt among companies and local governments that weighs on the economy. 

The population is aging rapidly, depriving the economy of the pool of young and cheap labor that powered the China boom.

Some partners, such as Pakistan and Tanzania, that welcomed Chinese investment under Xi’s Belt-and-Road infrastructure program want it scaled back or scrapped, seeing the original terms as unfair and predatory. 

China’s practice of encouraging its companies to go abroad while guarding its own markets has animated the trade war with the U.S. and friction with others. 

China’s one, true globally competitive giant, Huawei Technologies Co., has become a target of the U.S.
The U.S., under both major parties, has come to see China as a rival intent on upsetting the global order Washington has led for seven decades, and has tried to clamp down on China’s access to U.S. technology. 

The opening ceremony of a Chinese military base in Djibouti, 2017, China’s first military outpost abroad. 

Xi’s roleXi has been central to China’s assertive stance. 

He held commanding sway over a party conclave in 2017 that endorsed a goal to make China a global leader in strength and influence by midcentury. 

He has also reasserted control over business, media, education, the internet and society, reversing the Communist Party’s decadeslong retreat from people’s daily lives.
The government has poured resources into dominating future technologies and is experimenting with using financial records, internet postings and other information to create “social credit scores,” a gauge of political reliability. 

In the western colony of East Turkestan, the government has combined surveillance with mass detention. 

Beijing has received little pushback for the incarcerations, a sign of its strength.
Detractors of Xi, including some party elite, have accused him of overreach, saying China can’t risk angering the U.S., isn’t prepared for a global role, and in grabbing for one prematurely is arousing resentment. 

Their criticisms have caused Xi to rein in some displays of assertiveness even as the propaganda machinery that controls all media pushes a narrative of China’s inevitable ascent.
Chinese dictator Xi Jinping appears on screen during an exhibition this fall marking 70 years of Communist rule. 

Those conflicting stances—aggressive and restrained—are apparent in a recent incident involving Foreign Ministry official Zhao Lijian, who has attracted attention for his provocative Twitter postings.
“US is doing whatever it takes to weaken & stop China’s development. However, it’s as stupid as Don Quixote versus the windmills,” he tweeted last month.

He went on to write that the current growth rates of the two economies—about 6% for China and 2% for the U.S.—means “China will overtake the US in 10 years. China’s win is unstoppable.”
Mr. Zhao later deleted the tweet.

Chinese Peril

How China Will Take Over The World.
By Tatiana Koffman

There is a new cold war on the horizon. 

But instead of oil, the space race, or nuclear weapons, this one is being fought through the penetration of currencies, specifically the US Dollar against the Renminbi, also frequently referred to as the Chinese Yuan. 

Since Facebook announced its new stablecoin project Libra, in June of 2019, Mark Zuckerberg has been tried in the court of public opinion. 

Both Congressional and House Financial Services Committee hearings have essentially made a mockery of our government and showed just how technologically outmoded many of our politicians are.
But while Congressional Representative Katie Porter was commenting on Zuckerberg’s haircut and Congressman Warren Davidson was asking about “shitcoins,” China has been enjoying the spectacle from afar and making its own move. 

Namely, The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) is only a few months away from launching the digital version of the Chinese Yuan, making China the first country in the world to have a digital central bank currency. 

This historical move has been 80 years in the making, and is the ultimate checkmate in the game of economic expansion.

Post-War Economics
The single most transformational economic event over the last century was World War II (1939-1945). 

As governments overprinted and overspent money on defense, many European nations were faced with financial bankruptcy and saw their currencies significantly devalued. 

And when the war was finally over, their balance sheets were far too weak to rebuild infrastructure or meaningfully participate in international trade.
In 1944, in an effort to stabilize the global economy, many of the world's leaders came together at a gathering in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to introduce the Gold Standard. 

It was decided that most of the world’s currencies would become tied to the US Dollar at a fixed exchange rate, which in turn would be backed by gold held in vaults. 

A new entity, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was created to police these exchange rates, while all participating countries would ship their gold to the U.S.
The IMF then created the Special Drawing Right (SDR) which, rather than representing a currency per se, was designed to represent a unit of account or exchange. 

For example, at the time of writing, 1 SDR = 1.38 USD. 

Today, the SDR is based on a basket of currencies which includes the US Dollar, the Euro, Japanese Yen, the Pound Sterling, and most recently, the Chinese Yuan.
After the Gold Standard was introduced, the post-war period between 1945 and 1970 was perhaps the greatest period of economic stability and prosperity of the last century. 

Countries were investing heavily in infrastructure and manufacturing, which provided well-paying jobs, giving rise to the middle class popularized by suburban America. 

It was during this time that the U.S. assumed its world dominance in the political sphere, largely due to the lingering weakness of recovering European economies and their lack of infrastructure and manufacturing capacity.
In 1971, Nixon abolished the Gold Standard to continue funding war efforts in Vietnam, and the world has not been the same since. 

The US Dollar remained widely regarded as the global reserve currency. 

But beginning in 1995, many European countries started using the Euro instead, which was meant to unify the European region through trade.
China started working on its own currency ascension plan to stimulate its trade and economic growth between 1994 and 2005, when it pegged the Yuan to the US Dollar. 

China embraced widespread centralized economic reforms, averaging a GDP growth of 10% annually and lifting half of its 1.3 billion people out of poverty. 

China is projected to surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy in the next decade. 

In 2016, the Chinese Yuan was the first emerging market currency to be allowed into the IMF SDR basket and by 2019 became the 8th most traded currency in the world.

The New Cold War
The growing might of China has put Western powers on high alert. 

But, the next cold war will not be fought by exerting dominance in the physical world, but rather in the digital one. 

Data has become more valuable than oil. 

Modern societies are now powered using oceans of data, with Facebook and Google at the forefront, and companies like Palantir in the background. 

These companies have more knowledge and power than governments have ever had, but lack the same level of responsibility to its ‘citizens’. 

They are our new multinational multilaterals.
In the physical world, the U.S. is known for weaponizing its currency, using sanctions (12 countries today and counting) to alter global behavior. 

But in the digital world, it simultaneously wages war on its own tech companies with regulations, effectively and unwittingly disabling the very tools that could help it achieve lasting global dominance. 

One such effort is the proposed Democrat house bill “Keep Big Tech out of Finance Act.” 

This bill directly targets companies such as Facebook, Amazon, and Google to prevent them from creating their own ‘corpo-currencies’. 

A similar effort to fight U.S. big tech was undertaken in Europe with the GDPR.
While our governments increasingly make attempts to regulate data, they haven’t quite figured out how to regulate money that isn’t tied to borders. 

Governments can forbid the usage of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, as Russia and China recently did, but since the transactions are designed to disintermediate central authority, the ban has only made its citizens more drawn to it.
China’s answer was not just to ban bitcoin, but to give its people an alternative -- the DCEP (Digital Currency Electronic Payment). 

China becoming the first country to create a central bank backed digital currency shouldn’t come as a surprise. 

After all, this is a country that has a wider penetration of digital payments than any other region in the world.
WeChat, a popular Chinese chat and peer-to-peer payment app, has surpassed 1 billion users and accounts for 34% of total mobile traffic in China. 

The app appears to be popular among non-Chinese users as well, particularly in Asia and Africa. Consumers can pay for their every day expenses and make peer-to-peer payments with WeChat. 

As one of the 5 entities committed to using the DCEP, it is already accepted by most merchants, with paper bills rarely used. 

Even the homeless proudly display their QR codes in the streets.

China has already penetrated the global market by manufacturing the majority of the world’s consumer products. 

What happens when it creates the most efficient (and legal) payment system in the world and forces us to use it when buying its goods?
And just like that, the U.S. faces a real threat of no longer being the global reserve currency.
Digital Payments in Emerging MarketsEnter Facebook, a company with 2.4 billion users and a reputation for misusing user data. 

The giant also owns a popular messaging app, WhatsApp, with 1.5 billion users. 

The company has proposed its own solution to unite the world -- a digital stablecoin which, upon closer inspection, seems to be modelled after the SDR. 

Libra’s basket is based on 50% USD, and the rest in Euro, Japanese Yen, Pound Sterling, and the Singapore Dollar, as well as other stable non-currency assets. 

Facebook has made a point of excluding the Chinese Yuan, drawing a noticeable line in the sand. 
Zuckerberg has acknowledged that Facebook may not have been the best candidate to bring forth a new international currency given its recent issues with privacy and the Cambridge Analytica scandal. 

But the necessity of such a currency still remains if we hope to slow down the Chinese global footprint.
As far as the U.S. is concerned, the DCEP will be a much greater threat to the ‘western hegemony’ than a Libra coin. 

A western-led digital currency like Libra would have kept the majority of the planet that lives outside of China’s firewall aligned. 

But Zuckerberg’s team made two crucial mistakes. 

First, it did not fully align with the U.S. government before launch, the way WeChat is aligned with the Communist Party of China, and second, perhaps more crucially, it did not take full advantage of Libra’s impact story in emerging markets. 
One had to delve into the Libra white paper to discover the problem Libra was actually trying to solve --  “1.7 billion adults globally remain outside of the financial system with no access to a traditional bank, even though one billion have a mobile phone and nearly half a billion have internet access.” 

This is a valuable statistic, but it is missing a much more important point. 

Many people who do have access to a traditional bank account, don’t want to use it. 

Workers in the developing world routinely line up at bank terminals to cash their paycheck the day it arrives, either because they do not trust their institutions or they find that their banks have predatory fees. 

Many rural communities are still cash-based, with ATMs located hours away. 

Libra would have allowed for liquidity in these communities, in a stable method of exchange, increasing the overall velocity of capital. 
Libra could have solved these issues and more. 

For example, many U.S. immigrants run businesses back in their home countries using WhatsApp. Libra would have allowed workers, suppliers, and managers to receive payments straight to their mobile phone and then spend it within their communities using the same app.
Libra could have made global financing accessible for small businesses and farmers in the developing world. 

One area of impact is Nigeria, which has the highest concentration of arable land in Africa and remains underdeveloped because of struggles with financing. 

For example, a young woman needs a small loan to launch her chicken farming business to support her family. 

There are several government programs in place, but they cannot effectively and securely deploy the capital to reach her. 

She has family in the U.S. and the U.K., but they cannot efficiently send her capital. 

Non-profit grants exist but they also cannot effectively reach her. 

And so, her capital options are limited, and are likely to result in letting go of her dream towards self-reliance.
Ignoring impact stories such as these was a crucial oversight by Facebook. 

And if we are unable to rally behind Libra, capital and liquidity issues in emerging markets will be solved through WeChat, extending the economic influence of the Chinese Yuan. 

Emerging markets will likely become the battleground for the next cold war. 

And as such, the U.S. government will need to ask itself what it fears more, a home-grown technology giant or a world led by China.

Salvator Mundi

President Trump has done the world a favor by highlighting China’s monstrous communist regime

By Hugh Hewitt 

William Safire once recalled talking in the early 1990s with his old boss, President Richard Nixon, about events two decades earlier. 

They were talking China.
“Before Nixon died, I asked him — on the record — if perhaps we had gone a bit overboard on selling the American public on the political benefits of increased trade,” wrote the New York Times columnist, who died in 2009. 

“That old realist, who had played the China card to exploit the split in the Communist world, replied with some sadness that he was not as hopeful as he had once been: ‘We may have created a Frankenstein.’”
What Nixon and every president since — save President Trump — has done, is the catapulting of communist China to peer superpower status with the United States. 

Even as we watch, Xi Jinping is playing “the Russia card” against America, in the reverse image of the events of 50 years ago. 

This week, Russia flipped the switch on the new “Power of Siberia” gas pipeline from the Far East of Vladimir Putin’s country to the heart of Xi’s.
Despite its extensive oil reserves, Russia may not just be “Saudi Arabia with trees,” as some have called it, given the old Soviet Union’s nuclear capabilities being modernized by Putin. 

But Russia’s ailing demographics limit it to second-tier superpower status, akin to that of the other members of the nuclear club not named the United States or the PRC.
What President Trump has done, in his nearly three years in office, is fundamentally to redefine the U.S.-China relationship by emphasizing what my radio colleague Dennis Prager first gave voice to as a general rule for competing interests: “Clarity before agreement.”
President Trump has clarified a great deal about China and its ambitions. 

The 45th president has also clarified — especially for Big Tech but also for all providers of goods and services to China, including the NBA — that there are deep differences between the value sets held in Beijing and those in Washington, differences that need to be recognized and understood.
Recent weeks have brought new and intense scrutiny to Xi’s mandates regarding the China’s Uighur minority. 

For months, the world has watched the perilous push by Hong Kong protesters for the preservation of the “one country, two systems” guarantees given them (and the world) by Xi’s predecessors. 

And the West generally, and Americans specifically, are at long last fully awake to the reality that China’s Communist Party has not joined any “end of history” long march toward freedom that inevitably results in an appreciation of liberty and natural law.
What President Trump — with the assistance of popular and crucial books such as Henry Kissinger’s “On China,” Graham T. Allison’s “Destined for War” and Michael Pillsbury’s “The Hundred-Year Marathon” — has made clear is that the competition with China is very much an all-out battle for leadership. 

Its fronts encompass every field of technology, weaponry, Information Age data and artificial intelligence, and cultural and international norms.
This is as significant a breakthrough as Nixon’s in 1972, though of a completely different order. 

In 1972, the world welcomed China back into the community of nations.

Now, with China no longer “rising” but risen, a new era is in front of us, one that President Trump has ushered in with typical Trumpian bluntness but with great effectiveness.

Given China’s ambitions and its array of tactics in the service of Xi’s grand strategic vision of it as the dominant country on the planet, Trump has done even his fiercest critics a great service: He is obliging them to consider China, in every aspect of life, on every stage, in every conversation. 

It is now incumbent on the men and women who would replace President Trump at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to declare their own China policies, and to do so in great detail.

The Democrats have avoided talking about China much, because they don’t want to upset their Silicon Valley funders -- these greedy pro-China Quislings -- who would prefer that China remain just another market — albeit a very large one — instead of an existential enemy not just of America but of the very idea of ordered liberty. 

Democrats also hate to acknowledge the good things President Trump has done, including this infusion of long-needed clarity about Beijing.
China, our Frankenstein’s monster, is a wholly new force on the planet.

Democrats who would be president need to demonstrate that they have a plan, for Xi most certainly does.

Beijing’s harshness is forcing Canada to rethink its China delusions

The Globe and Mail

The one silver lining in the extradition case against Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, now entering its second year, is that Beijing’s behaviour has awakened Canadians – including senior members of the Trudeau government – to the nature of China’s Communist Party regime.

Many in Ottawa and the business community had talked themselves into believing fantasies about the hard men who run Beijing. 

Some imagined that, although China might play rough with other countries, Canada would somehow be entitled to special treatment.
Instead, Beijing has spent the last year giving Canada a special education in how it sees our not-at-all special relationship.
We should be thankful for the lessons. 

The Trudeau government, and the entire political and business establishment, must study them carefully. 

It may allow this country to finally get over its China delusions.
China, and the Communist regime that runs it, are not going anywhere. 

We will have to deal with them, hopefully on peaceful and respectful terms, for a long time to come. But the starting point for the relationship has to be Canada being honest with itself about who we are dealing with.
When Canada followed the rules of its extradition treaty with its closest ally, Beijing had no hesitation in taking two of our citizens hostage – there is no other way to describe what happened to Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig – with the price of ransom being Meng’s release.
All the decades’ worth of treacly odes to Dr. Norman Bethune, Mao’s pet Canadian; all the gratitude Canada supposed it was owed for early recognition of the Communist regime; all the alleged reverence for Trudeau père that allegedly would carry over to Trudeau fils – all turned out to be worth exactly nothing.
Totalitarian dictatorships are not sentimental. 

That’s not something Canada should have had to learn.
The two Michaels are of course still locked up, and there is no sign of their release. 

Yet despite the importance of their condition, the long-term goal of Canada’s China foreign policy is bigger than securing the safe return of two innocents.
Canada of course has to continue to demand their release. 

But it is essential that Ottawa understand that our prisoners in Beijing are also levers that can be used to pressure Canada into going silent on other matters – human rights, the rule of law, Chinese spying, Hong Kong, and a long list of worries that Washington and other Western governments have – in favour of focusing on what China wants, and how it wants Canada to behave so as to avoid being subjected to future hostage-takings.
Canada has never had a relationship like this. 

The Soviet Union was a superpower, but it was also a clear adversary. 

We joined the world’s most important military alliance to oppose it, and it was part of a separate economic system, with which we had almost no trade. 

The lines between the two worlds were thick and bright.
China, in contrast, is part of all of the formerly “Western” or “developed” world’s main institutions. 

It is our second-most important economic relationship, after the United States. 

While there was a time when its party dictatorship appeared to be moving closer to democratic norms, with the Communist Party dispensing with cults of personality and loosening party control, under Xi Jinping that trend is aggressively reversing. 

It is now clear that Beijing joined the international community’s institutions without sharing the international community’s practices and values.
To survive in this new world, Canada needs allies and alliances. Beijing has become expert at playing divide-and-conquer, punishing those who don’t do as they’re told and rewarding those that go along to get along. 

And too many, including Canada, have too often been too ready to go along.
From Sussex Drive to Bay Street, a lot of people would like nothing better than for the past year’s nastiness to be forgotten. But that would mean forgetting all the valuable lessons learned.

Sinicization and Satellization : Suddenly, the Chinese Threat to Australia Is Very Real

After a businessman said Chinese agents sought to implant him in Parliament, that revelation and other espionage cases have finally signaled the end of a “let’s get rich together” era.
By Damien Cave and Jamie Tarabay

Chinese tourists taking photographs outside Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, in January.

CANBERRA, Australia — A Chinese defector to Australia who detailed political interference by Beijing. 

A businessman found dead after telling the authorities about a Chinese plot to install him in Parliament. 

Suspicious men following critics of Beijing in major Australian cities.
For a country that just wants calm commerce with China — the propellant behind 28 years of steady growth — the revelations of the past week have delivered a jolt.
Fears of Chinese interference once seemed to hover indistinctly over Australia. 

Now, Beijing’s political ambitions, and the espionage operations that further them, suddenly feel local, concrete and ever-present.“It’s become the inescapable issue,” said Hugh White, a former intelligence official who teaches strategic studies at the Australian National University. 

“We’ve underestimated how quickly China’s power has grown along with its ambition to use that power.”
American officials often describe Australia as a test case, the ally close enough to Beijing to see what could be coming for others.
In public and in private, they’ve pushed Australia’s leaders to confront China more directly — pressure that may only grow after President Trump signed legislation to impose sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials over human rights abuses in Hong Kong.

A rally last month in Hong Kong in support of a bill in the American Congress.

Even as it confronts the specter of brazen espionage, Australia’s government has yet to draw clear boundaries for an autocratic giant that is both an economic partner and a threat to freedom — a conundrum faced by many countries, but more acutely by Australia.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison continues to insist that Australia need not choose between China and the United States. 

A new foreign interference law has barely been enforced, and secrecy is so ingrained that even lawmakers and experts lack the in-depth information they need.
As a result, the country’s intelligence agencies have raised alarms about China in ways that most Australian politicians avoid. 

The agencies have never been flush with expertise on China, including Chinese speakers, yet they are now in charge of disentangling complex claims of Chinese nefarious deeds.
In the most troubling recent case, first reported by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, the Australian authorities have confirmed that they are investigating accusations made by Nick Zhao, an Australian businessman who told intelligence officials that he had been the target of a plot to install him in Parliament as a Chinese agent.

Mr. Zhao, a 32-year-old luxury car dealer, was a member of his local Liberal Party branch. 

He was a “perfect target for cultivation,” according to Andrew Hastie, a federal lawmaker and tough critic of Beijing who was briefed on the case. 

He told The Age that Mr. Zhao was “a bit of a high-roller in Melbourne, living beyond his means.”
Another businessman with ties to the Chinese government, Mr. Zhao said, offered to provide a million Australian dollars ($677,000) to finance his election campaign for Parliament. 

But a few months later, in March, Mr. Zhao was found dead in a hotel room. 

The state’s coroner is investigating the cause of death.
In a rare statement, Mike Burgess, the head of Australia’s domestic spy agency, said on Monday that his organization was aware of Mr. Zhao’s case and was taking it very seriously.

Last week, a young asylum seeker named Wang Liqiang presented himself to the Australian authorities as an important intelligence asset — an assistant to a Hong Kong businessman who is responsible for spying, propaganda and disinformation campaigns aimed at quashing dissent in Hong Kong and undermining democracy in Taiwan.

Xiang Xin, the man Mr. Wang identified as his former boss, has denied having anything to do with him, or even knowing him.
The challenge of the case is just beginning. 

The detailed 17-page account that Mr. Wang gave to the authorities as part of an asylum application is being taken seriously by law enforcement agencies worldwide.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice detained Xiang and another executive with the company Mr. Wang said he worked for, China Innovation Investment Limited. 

Investigators in Taiwan are looking into assertions that their business acted on behalf of Chinese intelligence agencies.
Other details in Mr. Wang’s account — about the kidnapping of booksellers in Hong Kong, spying on Hong Kong university students, and the theft of military technology from the United States — are still being examined by Australian officials.
“Australia’s peak intelligence agencies are being put to the test,” said John Fitzgerald, a China specialist at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. 

“It’s a tough call, and they cannot afford to get it wrong.”

Chinese mole: Questions of loyalty continue to swirl around a Liberal Party member of Parliament, Gladys Liu.

What’s clear, though, is that they are helping to push the public away from supporting cozy relations. Polls showed a hardening of Australian attitudes about China even before the past week.
Now Mr. Hastie, the Liberal Party lawmaker who chairs Parliament’s joint intelligence committee, says his office has been overwhelmed by people across the country who have emailed, called and even sent handwritten letters expressing outrage and anxiety about China’s actions in Australia.
Questions of loyalty continue to swirl around another Liberal Party member of Parliament, Gladys Liu, who fumbled responses to questions in September about her membership in various groups linked to the Chinese Communist Party.

Massive Chinese fifth column: Chinese student-spies shouting at pro-Hong Kong protesters outside the University of South Australia in Adelaide in August.

The espionage cases also follow several months of rising tensions at Australian universities, where protests by students from Hong Kong have been disrupted with violence by opponents from the Chinese mainland.
Several student activists have told the authorities that they have been followed or photographed by people associated with the Chinese Consulate.
It’s even happened to at least one high-profile former official, John Garnaut. 

A longtime journalist who produced a classified report on Chinese interference for former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2017, he recently acknowledged publicly that he had been stalked by people who appeared to be Chinese agents — in some cases when he was with his family.
These actions of apparent aggression point to a version of China that Australians hardly know. 

For decades, Australia has based its relations with Beijing on a simple idea: Let’s get rich together. 

And the mining companies that are especially close to Mr. Morrison’s conservative government have been the biggest winners.
But now more than ever, the country is seeing that for the Communist Party under Xi Jinping, it’s no longer just about wealth and trade.
“The transactions aren’t satisfying them enough; they want more,” said John Blaxland, a professor of international security and intelligence studies at the Australian National University. 

“They want to gain influence over decisions about the further involvement of the United States, about further protestations to Chinese actions in the South China Sea, in the South Pacific, in Taiwan.”
Mr. Blaxland, along with American officials, often points out that Australia’s biggest export to China, iron ore, is hard to obtain elsewhere reliably and at the prices Australia’s companies charge. 

That suggests that the country has more leverage than its leaders might think.Mr. Hastie, who was recently denied a visa to travel to China as part of a study group that included other members of Parliament, agreed. 

In an interview, he said the recent revelations were “the first time the Australian public has a concrete example of what we are facing.”
Now, he added, it’s time to adapt.