vendredi 28 juin 2019

Joshua Wong: World leaders ‘must’ raise our eroding freedoms at G-20

  • Joshua Wong called on G-20 leaders to voice concerns over the Chinese territory’s waning freedoms at their summit in Japan.
  • “It’s a must for world leaders to share their concern,” Wong, who rose to prominence during 2014 protests for broader democracy in Hong Kong, told CNBC.
  • Huge protests this month have shaken the Asian business and finance center on increasing worries over growing mainland Chinese influence in the former British colony of 7.4 million people.
By Kelly Olsen

It’s time for world leaders to keep their eyes on Hong Kong: Joshua Wong.

Prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong said Friday that G-20 leaders meeting this week in Japan can help protect the city’s freedoms by raising their concerns with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.
Protests this month, some massive in scale, have shaken the Asian business and finance center on increasing worries over what many see as growing mainland Chinese influence in the former British colony of 7.4 million people.
Ahead of the Group of 20 gathering on Friday and Saturday in Osaka, Japan, Hong Kong activists have tried to use the meeting to draw attention to Hong Kong, holding rallies and taking out ads in prominent global newspapers.
“It’s a must for world leaders to share their concern,” Wong said, urging U.S. President Donald Trump and others to follow the lead of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who appeared to obliquely reference the situation in Hong Kong in a meeting with the Chinese leader on Thursday as relations between Asia’s two biggest economies continue to improve.
Abe told Xi of Japan’s support for an “open and free” Hong Kong under the “one country, two systems” set-up, Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun newspaper reported.
A senior Chinese foreign ministry official had said Monday that China would not allow Hong Kong to be brought up at the G-20.
“It’s not only related to political freedom but also related to economic freedom that’s being strongly eroded by Beijing,” the 22-year-old Wong, secretary-general of local pro-democracy group Demosisto, told Chery Kang on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Wong rose to prominence in 2014 during Hong Kong protests known as the Umbrella Movement that called for broader democracy. 
On Friday, he said that the territory’s status as an international financial center must be maintained to ensure a stable business environment.

Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong speaks with CNBC on June 28, 2019 in Hong Kong.

A legal change put forward this year by the Hong Kong government to allow criminal extraditions to China was the spark for the protest movement, but at its core lie years of mounting frustration over waning local autonomy.
Fierce opposition to the proposed legislation, which opponents, including business groups, feared could expose people in Hong Kong to China’s politically controlled courts, forced the city’s top official, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, to indefinitely shelve the plan. 
And while refusing protesters' demands to step down and entirely withdraw the legislation, she has publicly apologized and acknowledged it is unlikely to be resubmitted for debate.

‘Make their decision’
Hong Kong, a former British colony, on July 1, 1997 became a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China under a “one country, two systems” framework, with the territory’s legal system independent from the rest of China.
It was guaranteed a high degree of control over its own affairs, including managing its economy and currency.
Aside from concerns about closer legal ties to China, calls for increased democracy are growing prominent in the protests.
Politically, Hong Kong has its own legislature, but the chief executive is not directly elected and only candidates acceptable to the central government in Beijing are eligible for the role.
Wong, who was released earlier this month after serving a brief prison term related to the 2014 protests, said people in Hong Kong want to freely elect their leader, calling the position “just a puppet of Beijing, serving the interests of (the) communist regime.”
Speaking ahead of the anniversary Monday of Hong Kong’s return to China, Wong renewed a call for direct elections for chief executive, expressing the hope that an annual demonstration that takes place on the day will see another large turnout.
“It’s time for Carrie Lam and the leader of Beijing to make their decision,” Wong said.
Lam’s office had no specific comment on Wong’s remarks, instead referring CNBC to her previous responses to media questions, most recently at a press conference on June 18.

Beware China's Inroads into the Atlantic

From trade deals to bases, Beijing is taking advantage of Washington's diminished presence.
By Michael Rubin


In 1971, the Bamboo Curtain fractured as an American ping pong team entered China, becoming the first official American delegation to visit China in more than twenty years. 
Contrary to popular wisdom, it was not the team’s visit that led to the breakthrough, however. 
In White House Years, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote that the iconic moment did not initiate relations but followed months of secret diplomacy. 
The Chinese communist government had murdered tens of millions of its own citizens and fought U.S. troops directly on the Korean Peninsula less than two decades before, but the prerogatives of realism were at play. 
The growing Soviet threat gave the United States and the People’s Republic of China a common interest.
Sino-American relations developed across administrations. 
Jimmy Carter formally recognized the People’s Republic—withdrawing formal recognition from the Republic of China in Taiwan in the process. 
Over subsequent years, trade with China increased exponentially. 
The United States even provided China with dual-use technology and welcomed Chinese observers to watch operations aboard U.S. aircraft carriers.
Perhaps in hindsight, the Nixon administration’s outreach to China was not a good thing. 
Today, China is more a military threat than a force for peace. 
It is now clear that Deng Xiaoping, who oversaw China’s tremendous economic growth, was less a reformer than an enabler for Xi Jinping’s militancy and the Chinese communist party’s revisionist quest to fundamentally remake the post-World War II order.
Most U.S. threat assessments focus on Chinese aggression in its neighborhood. 
Could China invade Taiwan? 
How much farther will China push in the South China Sea? 
Could China’s claim to the Senkaku Islands lead to conflict with Japan? 
Could China flip traditional Western allies Philippines, Thailand, or even Turkey? 
Could a China-Pakistan axis provoke conflict with India? 
What does the Belt and Road initiative mean for Central Asia and the Indian Ocean basin? 
The Pentagon also worries about direct Chinese asymmetric leaps such as hypersonic missiles, anti-satellite missiles, and carrier killer missiles.
A legacy of both the Obama and Trump administrations may be collectively letting America’s guard down in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean. 
It was during the Obama administration that China flipped many Latin American countries from Taiwan’s camp into China’s. 
China now operates ports at either end of the Panama Canal and may convert a former U.S. Air Force base into another port. 
In December 2018, Xi visited the Canal to inaugurate new locks. 
Chinese leverage over the Canal will tremendously impede the ability of U.S. ships and submarines to transit to the Pacific during a crisis.
The Obama administration for a bevy of bureaucratic and budgetary—rather than strategic reasons—has largely abandoned Lajes Field in the Azores, an archipelago approximately 1,000 miles from the coast of Portugal and 2500 miles from the East Coast of the United States. 
According to a September 20, 2016, letter sent by Rep. Devin Nunes, at the time chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, to then-Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter:
Several high-ranking Chinese officials have visited the Azores in recent years, and I now understand that China has sent a delegation there of nearly twenty officials, all fluent in Portuguese, on a several weeks-long fact-finding expedition, to culminate in a visit by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang
The Chinese delegation is in negotiations to expand China’s investments and its overall presence on the islands, including in the shipping port on Terceira, and they have also expressed interest in using the runway at Lajes Field.
Nunes was not engaged in hyperbole. 
When I traveled around Terceira, one of the larger islands in the Azores, taxi drivers, shopkeepers, and hoteliers were still talking about the Chinese visit, as well as port developments.
Beijing is also lengthening the main airport’s runway and building a port in São Tomé and Príncipe, an island nation off Africa’s west coast. 
China is also reaching out to Cape Verde, another African island nation, which has recently joined Beijing’s Belt-and-Road initiative.
From 1951 until 2006, the United States stationed up to five thousand men at Naval Air Station Keflavik, which was also a major anti-submarine warfare center to monitor Soviet submarines seeking to enter the North Atlantic. 
While the Navy is returning P-8A Poseidon submarine hunters to Iceland—perhaps an acknowledgment of the George W. Bush administration’s shortsightedness in shuttering it in the first place, the U.S. presence remains a shadow of its former self. 
China, meanwhile, is cultivating Iceland by trading business and finance for diplomatic inroads into the Arctic.
Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cancelled a trip to Greenland as he returned to Washington to handle the growing Iran crisis. 
His plans to restore a U.S. diplomatic presence in Greenland are wise, however, given how China is contesting the world’s largest non-continental island which, while an autonomous Danish territory, is physiographically part of North America. 
The distance between the Greenlandic capital Nuuk and Washington, DC is just two thousand miles, less than the distance between Beijing and New Delhi.
In October 2018, the Danish Institute for International Studies issued a paper on growing Chinese interests in Greenland, including on rare earth mineral mining. 
Yang Jiang, its author, noted that while Greenlandic authorities often dealt directly with Chinese companies rather than the Chinese government, “the Chinese companies always align themselves with Chinese government policy, irrespective of whether they are state-owned or private.” 
A January 2018 Chinese white paper on Arctic policy made clear that China was unhappy with the status quo and sought to be a major Arctic stakeholder as China expanded its shipping routes and mineral exploitation. 
The possibility that China would encourage Greenlandic independence—not withstanding its opposition to a similar right for Taiwan, Tibet, or Xinjiang—remains a topic of discussion in Chinese strategic and think tank circles.
In isolation, China’s actions in the Atlantic might appear innocent. 
Taken together, it appears that China seeks wholesale entry into the North Atlantic, a region that American policymakers have long believed immune from Chinese ambitions or interest. 
China may not seek formal bases in the region but, given how its companies often build commercial port and airfields to military specification, strategists in Beijing may at a minimum seek to disrupt U.S. operations in America’s own backyard. 
Xi and senior Chinese officials must find it reassuring that a decade of successive U.S. administrations are making it easy for China to get its Atlantic foothold.

China's Debt Traps

China's ambition dealt blow ahead of G20 as Tanzania and Kenya projects grind to halt
By Sophia Yan

The hopes of China’s dictator Xi Jinping to play a more assertive role on the world stage were under pressure on Thursday as he headed to the G20 summit amid a trade war with the US and blows to his flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Eleven, who has reversed years of foreign policy caution, landed in Osaka amid reports that Tanzania had suspended a port project and Kenya halted construction on a coal power plant, dealing a major blow to Beijing’s ambitions in Africa.
The port in the Tanzanian town of Bagamoyo was worth $10bn and would have been the largest in east Africa.
But financing terms presented by the Chinese were “exploitative and awkward,” said John Magufuli, Tanzania’s president.
“They want us to give them a guarantee of 33 years and a lease of 99 years, and we should not question whoever comes to invest there once the port is operational,” said Mr Magufuli. 
“They want to take the land as their own but we have to compensate them for drilling construction of that port.” When Xi launched the BRI in 2013, developing nations enthusiastically signed on for loans to fund big projects that would set them on the path to prosperity. 
But six years on new governments are starting to cancel and renegotiate contracts given the weight of Chinese debt, casting doubt on the $1 trillion initiative set to inaugurate a new ‘Silk Road’.
Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port was a cautionary tale for many. 
After the country struggled to pay up on billions in debt, Beijing used hardball tactics to acquire a 99 year lease to the port in exchange for loan forgiveness.
The case was a stunning example of what critics had long feared – that the Belt and Road project amounted to a debt trap for weak countries around the world. 
It sparked worries China would again leverage similar defaults elsewhere to acquire key infrastructure assets; last year, the Zambian government even had to deny rumours it was planning to hand over control of major public assets.
On Wednesday a court in Kenya also halted plans for the construction of a $2 billion Chinese-backed coal power plant near the island town of Lamu, a UNESCO World Heritage site famed for its twisting alleyways and stunning coastline.
The plant, which activists say would have increased Kenya's greenhouse gas emissions by 700 percent, was cancelled after judges ruled the environmental assessment was inadequate.
Other African projects, including massive rail construction projects in Ethiopia and Kenya, have also come under scrutiny, leading China to write-off some loans.
Meanwhile Beijing is facing enormous protests in Hong Kong against a law that would extradite suspects to face trial in the mainland, where the Communist Party controls the courts. 
On Thursday hundreds of protesters in Hong Kong rallied outside the offices of the justice secretary, blocking roads as they called for the extradition bill to be dropped for good. 
Carrie Lam, the city’s chief executive, suspended it indefinitely after one million residents took to the streets decrying a power grab by Beijing.
The protesters have appealed for world powers to raise the plight of Hong Kong at the G20, although Chinese officials have already warned they will not discuss the matter.
Instead, Xi is slated to meet Donald Trump on Saturday as the US demands economic reform in return for the lifting of tariffs on roughly $200 billion of Chinese goods.
Mr Trump, officials said, was hopeful for some kind of accord as his 2020 re-election hopes hinge on a strong economy.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Xi will request that the US end its block on the sale of US technology to Huawei, and drop the demand for Beijing to buy even more American exports than it agreed to when the sides met in December.
Analysts doubted the G20 would see an end to the dispute. 
On Wednesday Mr Trump said he was happy with the status quo. 
“They want a deal more than I do,” he told Fox News.

China’s Rare Earths, Locked And Loaded

By Steve Hanke 

President Trump has picked a fight with China on trade. 
This has run the gamut of badgering to the imposition of tariffs on Chinese exports to the United States. 
And, if that is not enough, the President threatens to lay on more tariffs if China fails to comply with a host of U.S. demands. 
China will not stand idly by and be beaten with a stick, but will they pull the trigger?
One weapon that China has in its arsenal is rare earths. 
As the Global Times, a state-owned Chinese newspaper, put it: rare earths are “an ace in China’s hand.” 
Rare earths cover 17 important elements on the periodic table. 
And, they are elements in which China occupies a dominant position. 
Furthermore, the Chinese leadership is well aware of the strategic importance of rare earths. 
As far back as 1992, Deng Xiaoping stressed that “the Middle East has oil; China has rare earths.”
And that is not all. 
China knows that rare earths can be used to counterpunch. 
Last month, China’s Natural Development and Reform Commission, a body that oversees Chinese policy shifts, pointedly brought up rare earths in a question-and-answer bulletin on the threat of a rare earths export ban. 
The notice read: “Will rare earths become China’s counter-weapon against the US’s unwarranted suppression? What I can tell you is that if anyone wants to use products made from rare earth to curb the development of China, then the people of the revolutionary soviet base and the whole Chinese people will not be happy.”
So, the threat of a Chinese export ban on rare earths is not idle. 
Indeed, China has used export bans before. 
In 2010, China cut its exports of rare earths after a Chinese trawler collided with two Japanese Coast Guard ships in the East China Sea. 
Subsequently, the World Trade Organization ruled against these Chinese restrictions.
To punctuate the importance and potential potency of the rare earths weapon, Xi Jinping recently visited a rare earths mining site. 
He also visited a plant that produces precision magnets which rely on rare earths.
Just what are rare earths used for and why are they important? 
Rare earths are found in a wide range of consumer products from iPhones to DVD players and rechargeable batteries. 
They are also critical for many “green” products, like LED lights. 
Prominent products also contain specialized magnets that require rare earths, and China produces 90% of those magnets. 
Motors in electric cars and the generators in wind turbines all use loads of precision magnets. Magnets that use rare earths are also employed in missile guidance systems
Other military equipment, like night vision devices and jet engines use rare earths.
As the following two tables indicate, the reserves of rare earths are scattered around, with China holding down the top spot with slightly over 39% of the world’s reserves. 
When it comes to mining and the physical removal of rare earths, China’s lead becomes dominant. Indeed, over 70% of rare earths are mined in China. 
Further downstream is processing. 
At that stage, China is even more dominant, with 87% of the world’s rare earths being processed in China.



How did China gain such a dominance across the board in rare earths? 
As someone who landed his first faculty position and cut his eye teeth on mineral economics in the late 1960s at the Colorado School of Mines (the top-ranked University in the World in Mineral Engineering), I suspected that China must have invested heavily in the 3Ms: Mining and Mineral Engineering, Metallurgical Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering.
So, let’s take a look. 
The chart below shows that, when it comes to the world’s top-flight universities, China is nowhere to be found in the Top-20.

But, when we move into the 3Ms, things change dramatically. 
China dominates in Mining and Mineral Engineering, with nearly half of the world’s Top-20 programs in those fields.


When we move to Metallurgical Engineering, China holds down 35% of the Top-20 programs in the world.

In Materials Science and Engineering, China slips, but still holds down 5% of the world’s first-class programs.

Just how has China reached the commanding heights in the 3Ms educational fields? 
The answer to this question is hard to nail down with precision. 
We have Deng Xiaoping’s quip about rare earths in 1992. 
So, we know that the Chinese leadership was aware of the importance of the 3Ms. 
But, it wasn’t until 2001 that I was able to turn up specific evidence of the Chinese government pouring money into education and development of the 3Ms.
In 2001, China launched its 10th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development. 
It was signed by none other than Zhu Rongji
According to the plan, China aims to make good use of its abundant mineral resources and enhance traditional industries (such as energy, metallurgy, chemical, machinery, automobile, building materials, construction, textile and light industries) with high, new, and advanced technologies. 
The measures include improving product variety and quality as well as speeding up development of universal, key, and accessory technologies. 
These objectives are to be supported by university investments in the relevant fields.
So, Mining and Mineral Engineering, Metallurgical Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering are supported by the Five-Year Plan. 
The Communist Party has spoken, and in the sphere of the 3Ms, the Party has delivered.
When it comes to rare earths, China is loaded for bear—locked and loaded. 
But, will China fire? 
It is not as likely as it might seem at first sight. 
After all, the last time Beijing attempted to restrict supply, it didn’t work out too well. 
Indeed, the World Trade Organization slapped China down. 
And, given today’s trade wars, China does not want to cross swords with the WTO. China needs the WTO to protect it from Trump’s tariff onslaught. 
Also, if a Chinese export ban was imposed, prices of rare earths would soar, and investment would pour into the development of non-Chinese mines and processing facilities. 
These investments would create new sources of rare earths supply. 
On the demand side, work arounds and rare earths substitutes are available, and they would be used if prices of rare earths become higher and more variable. 
So, China might not pull the trigger on rare earths, but rather just stay locked and loaded.

jeudi 27 juin 2019

President Trump warns China is 'ripe' for new tariffs and suggests Vietnam could be next

President Trump also attacks Germany and Japan as he set off for the G20 summit in Osaka
The Guardian

President Donald Trump issued stark warnings before departing Washington for the G20 summit in Japan. 

President Donald Trump flew to the G20 summit on Wednesday sounding warnings that China was “ripe” for new tariffs and suggesting that Vietnam, which he called “the single worst abuser of everybody”, could be next.
Air Force One took off on a fiercely hot day from Washington and President Trump seemed to promise heat of his own when he meets leaders of the G20 countries in Japan.
Declaring that he enjoyed a strong hand in the trade war with China, he made clear he’ll be in no mood to give much ground when he holds closely watched talks with Xi Jinping on Saturday.

China’s economy is going down the tubes – they want to make a deal,” President Trump said in an interview with Fox Business Network.
President Trump has already imposed levies on $200bn of Chinese imports in an effort to force Beijing to adhere to intellectual property laws. 
The president indicated he was also ready to slap tariffs on all remaining Chinese imports, worth more than $300bn.
“You have another $325bn that I haven’t taxed yet – it’s ripe for taxing, for putting tariffs on,” he told Fox.
During Wednesday’s interview, President Trump also hinted he might impose tariffs on Vietnam, describing the country as “the single worst abuser of everybody”.
A lot of companies are moving to Vietnam, but Vietnam takes advantage of us even worse than China. So there’s a very interesting situation going on there,” President Trump said.
President Trump said that that the China trade tariffs were only hurting China, while the US was benefiting from the situation.
“What is happening is people are moving out of China. Companies are moving out of China, by the way, some are coming back to the United States because they don’t want to pay the tariff,” he said.
President Trump did say that a previous threat to tax remaining trade at 25% could be changed to a less harsh 10%.
The two sides said they were close to a deal before talks broke down in May.
“We were about 90% of the way there,” the treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, told CNBC television, adding he was looking forward to the Trump-Xi talks but stressing there would be no deal for “the sake of a deal.”
“I hope the message that we want to hear is that they want to come back to the table,” Mnuchin said.
President Trump’s aggressive attempt to rewrite the rules with China are part of a wider policy of fixing what he says is a system rigged against the United States.
“Almost all countries in this world take tremendous advantage of the United States. It’s unbelievable,” he said in his lengthy interview.
Casting his eye over the wider landscape, President Trump also lashed out at close partners Germany and Japan.
He described Germany – part of the bedrock of the US alliance with western Europe – as “delinquent” for not paying enough to NATO’s budget.
“So Germany is paying Russia billions and billions of dollars for energy, okay,” he said. 
“So they are giving Russia billions of dollars yet we are supposed to protect Germany and Germany is delinquent! Okay?”
President Trump aired a similar complaint about Japan, Washington’s closest ally in Asia and host of the G20 summit, which has been under the protection of a US military umbrella since its defeat in the second world war.
“If Japan is attacked, we will fight World War III. We will go in and protect them with our lives and with our treasure,” he said. 
“But if we’re attacked, Japan doesn’t have to help us. They can watch it on a Sony television.”
Speaking to reporters at the White House, President Trump remained coy on expectations for his meeting at the G20 with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
President Trump has been criticised for what opponents see as an oddly opaque relationship between the two leaders and he did little to dispel the controversy.
“I’ll have a very good conversation with him,” President Trump told reporters. 
“What I say to him is none of your business.”

Autistic President

Trump just blew a huge opportunity to stand up to China
By Linette Lopez

Donald Trump has essentially been silent about this month's protests in Hong Kong, and in doing so he has wasted an opportunity to stand up for democracy.
Hong Kongers have been fighting to stay an open society for as long as possible, a cause the US should stand for around the world.
But the White House is failing to project that because the president is more concerned with a trade deal than with standing up for democracy.
The Hong Kong protests have held the attention of the planet for weeks now, with nary a word from the leader of the free world. 
This is a shame and a wasted opportunity from the White House.
The millions of people in Hong Kong marching are trying to protect democracy
They are trying to avoid being prematurely swallowed by a totalitarian system, one that was threatening to be able to seize people and assets on the island with relative impunity. 
They were rejecting the rule of the Chinese Communist Party, which instead of becoming more open and democratic as China became more wealthy is gripping Chinese institutions and individuals ever tighter.
This, if you listen to what's come out of Washington for the past few years, is part of why relations between the two biggest economies in the world have become confrontational. 
It seems that the US and Chinese political systems, instead of coming closer together, are moving further apart.
But when Time magazine asked Donald Trump about the protesters early last week he didn't have much to say about their values or what they were fighting. 
He just said that they seemed "effective" and that the US had its own "argument" with China. 
Then, a day later, Trump had a phone call with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and didn't mention Hong Kong at all, according to the official readout.
To Trump, the Hong Kong protesters have nothing to do with the US. He doesn't see the connection between US democracy and Hong Kong's fight to stay democratic. 
This is more than an oversight; it is a moral failure. 
We live in a world where these two systems — the US's open society and China's closed society — are fighting for hearts and minds. 
With these protests Hong Kong's citizens made it clear which system they preferred. 
And the US just wasted an opportunity to stand for that.

Hong Kong rejected the Chinese dream
There is no question that China under Xi is turning away from the West's hopes for it. 
Rather than open up and become more democratic, China is closing itself off from Western thought and building a totalitarian surveillance state.
The Chinese Communist Party has promised the Chinese people that if they accept one-party rule, in exchange they'll get wealth and a restoration of the country's dignity.
That's the "Chinese dream" and the "harmonious society" as we know it today.
China is likely to push for Hong Kong to join this society fully in about 30 years. 
The island was returned to China after British rule in 1997, after which it was promised 50 years of autonomy under the "one country, two systems" rule. 
With its support of the extradition bill, China was reneging on that promise — taking a dramatic step in its creeping encroachment on Hong Kong's independence. 
No one expected Hong Kong to hold Beijing to the promise with such force.
The protests have been censored in China, and state media is decrying a Western "hand" in what it describes as the Hong Kong "riots." 
But outside China the fact that Hong Kong has pushed back so hard against Xi's encroachment is a stark warning.
It is a warning that Xi's China is not a patient China willing to bide its time as it has in the past. 
It sends a warning to countries considering participation in China's One Belt, One Road initiative. 
It sends a warning to the people of Taiwan, who are about to vote in an election next year. 
The Hong Kong protests are being seen as a boost for the incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen, who heads up a party with a more hardline stance against Beijing.
China's encroachment is unlikely to stop. 
Bringing Hong Kong to heel is a part of China's greater narrative about itself — it's part of the story of an aggrieved former empire returning to glory and reclaiming what belongs to it. 
So the fact that Hong Kongers were willing to risk their lives to stand up for democracy in the face of such a strong, determined (and seemingly inevitable) force is even more admirable. 
This is what the US should stand for, and it should be a reminder to the world of what we are.
But this White House blew it.

Leaders of the free world
Trump wasted this opportunity to stand for American values because he does not understand the importance of protecting democracy and because to him all relationships are transactional.
There is no more relevant example than the White House's recent move to sell $2 billion worth of defensive arms to Taiwan, another burgeoning democracy constantly under threat of Chinese encroachment. 
According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump was angry with his staff for committing to closer ties with the nation, which China insists is part of its territory.
When a member of the US State Department named Alex Wong traveled to Taiwan, Trump reportedly flipped out on his aides asking, "Who the f--- is this guy?" 
He was worried that the arms sale would worsen his prospects of a trade deal with China, though for decades the US has been the primary country supplying weapons to Taiwan.
The so-called leader of the free world does not care about keeping the world free.
The best response the US could muster to Hong Kong's protest was a threat from Congress to pass a bipartisan bill that would threaten the economic relationship between the US and Hong Kong.
"The extradition bill imperils the strong US-Hong Kong relationship that has flourished for two decades," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement
"If it passes, the Congress has no choice but to reassess whether Hong Kong is 'sufficiently autonomous' under the 'one country, two systems' framework. We look forward to the introduction of a new bipartisan Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act in the coming days by Senator Marco Rubio, Chairman Jim McGovern, and Congressman Chris Smith."
Hopefully the threat of this bill is enough of a deterrent. 
It would be a shame to punish the people of Hong Kong for China's bellicosity. 

Why Hong Kong’s Protesters Are Turning to G-20 Leaders for Help

By Keith Bradsher, Daniel Victor and Mike Ives
Protesters outside the American consulate in Hong Kong on Wednesday.

Protesters in Hong Kong have flooded the streets and the grounds of government offices in rallies over the past three weeks against an unpopular bill that has thrown the territory into a political crisis. On Wednesday, they directed their appeals to a new audience: the world.
Hundreds of protesters, dressed in black and white T-shirts, demonstrated at foreign governments’ consulates in Hong Kong to demand that world leaders address their concerns at the annual summit meeting of the Group of 20 later this week in Osaka, Japan. 
And thousands turned out for a peaceful demonstration outside City Hall Wednesday night chanting “Free Hong Kong! Democracy now!”
Later in the night, the demonstration took a rowdier turn as thousands of young protesters walked to the headquarters of the city’s police force and surrounded it, blocking nearby roads. 
A few piled metal barricades against a closed metal gate outside the driveway of the complex as officers watched from inside.
Hong Kong has been roiled in recent weeks by what have been some of the city’s largest-ever demonstrations, which have already forced Carrie Lam, the embattled chief executive, to suspend the bill. 
The measure would allow the extradition of Hong Kong’s residents and visitors to mainland China’s opaque judicial system.
But demonstrators still want the legislation to be formally withdrawn, and they want to send a broader message that they will resist the erosion of the civil liberties that set the city apart from the rest of China.
The protesters see the G-20 as a way to pressure China
The demonstrators hope to draw to Hong Kong the attention of the leaders of industrialized and emerging nations and the European Union who will soon arrive in Osaka for the Group of 20 meeting. 
They say that world events have given them extra leverage in forcing Lam and Beijing’s leaders to agree to suspend the law.
“Without the trade war chaos and the G-20 summit, would Carrie Lam have announced the suspension?” said Joshua Wong, a prominent youth activist.
The demonstrations represent the biggest resistance to Beijing’s rule on Chinese soil since Britain handed back the territory in 1997, said Willy Lam, a political scientist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
This is a direct slap in the face of Xi Jinping,” Mr. Lam said, “and so some Western countries, particularly the U.S., may want to use this as an excuse to further put pressure on Xi Jinping.”

Carrie Lam during a news conference last week. Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, appeared to be lying low this week, perhaps to avoid embarrassing Xi Jinping ahead of his trip to Japan or setting off a fresh conflict with her critics at home.


Jeremy Hunt, the British foreign secretary, said on Tuesday that the government would not issue licenses for crowd control equipment to Hong Kong “unless we are satisfied that concerns raised on human rights and fundamental freedoms have been thoroughly addressed.” 
He called for an independent investigation of police violence, echoing one of the demands of the protesters.
President Trump is a particular focus for them
The protesters’ first stop in what they described as a marathon march was the American consulate. There, Lawrence Wong, a 46-year-old filmmaker, handed to an American consulate spokesman a letter addressed to President Trump. 
The letter asked Mr. Trump to raise Hong Kong’s issues at the Group of 20 meeting with Xi Jinping, China’s top leader.
“We hope President Trump can give Xi Jinping some pressure,” Mr. Wong said in an interview later. 
“We need all the friends of liberal democracy, people who believe in human rights and freedom, to be on our side.”
Mr. Trump has expressed sympathy for the Hong Kong protesters, but has not offered to take up their cause at the summit, where he is expected to meet with Xi to discuss trade.
But a bipartisan group of American lawmakers, prompted by the trade war and the protests, earlier this month introduced a bill that could affect Hong Kong’s trade status
That bill angered China, which summoned a senior American diplomat in Beijing to lodge a complaint against what the government saw as foreign interference in its affairs.
If passed, the bill would require the State Department to affirm every year that the territory remained autonomous from the mainland. 
If the department found that Hong Kong had lost its autonomy, that could make Hong Kong subject to controls the United States imposes to prevent the shipment of many high-tech, militarily sensitive goods to mainland China.
Edward Yau, Hong Kong’s secretary of commerce and economic development, said that Hong Kong’s separate trade status from mainland China is secured by many international agreements and by pacts with Beijing. 
The city is a big base for American banks and other companies, he added.
“We help push the door open for overseas companies into the mainland,” Mr. Yau said in an interview in his office last week.
The city’s leader is lying low as pressure grows
Lam appeared to be lying low this week, perhaps to avoid embarrassing Xi ahead of his trip to Japan or setting off a fresh conflict with her critics at home.

A standing weekly meeting of her Executive Council, scheduled for Tuesday, was canceled. 
And even though Hong Kong’s protests have made global headlines in recent days, her office has not issued a news release for a week.
Lam’s popularity in the city has sunk since she started pushing the extradition bill several months ago. 
On Tuesday, the University of Hong Kong said Lam’s popularity rating had fell in the past two weeks to a historic low for the position of chief executive. 
Even some of Lam’s allies in the territory’s pro-Beijing political establishment have joined calls for her to withdraw the bill.
The leader of the largest pro-establishment party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, said on Sunday that supporters of the extradition bill would not oppose the government if it gave in to the demands of the protesters and fully retracted the legislation.
The party’s leader, Starry Lee, when asked in a televised interview whether the party would support or agree with the government if it described the bill as withdrawn instead of suspended, said: “If the government believes that doing this would help repair society, I think we would support and understand.”
Demonstrators are wary of alienating the public
The protest movement, which has been largely leaderless, appeared to be weighing a desire to publicize its cause against concerns that acts of civil disobedience would alienate the residents of this financial hub known for its efficiency.
Last Friday, thousands of protesters, mostly teenagers and people in their 20s dressed in black, drew criticism after they surrounded police’s headquarters for 15 hours and filled the lobbies of at least two other government buildings, disrupting some services.
Dozens of protesters tried to repeat their blockade on Monday, preventing people from entering government buildings in central Hong Kong, in what they called a noncooperation campaign. 
Local television broadcast interviews with irate Hong Kong residents who were unable to pay their taxes or use other government services.
A day later, a handful of protesters turned up at the same site — this time, to apologize for inconveniencing the public.
And on Wednesday, the protesters took pains to keep their demonstrations orderly. 
They stayed on sidewalks, observed traffic lights, kept chanting to a minimum, and focused their efforts on waving signs saying “Please Liberate Hong Kong” and handing over letters to embassy officials.
The protesters are most likely aware that Hong Kong residents could eventually tire of widespread civil disobedience, as many did during the Occupy Central protests that paralyzed commercial districts in the territory for weeks in 2014.

Barbaric Men of Asia

The ugly truth about China’s organ harvesting
By Anastasia Lin



Actress/Beauty Queen Anastasia Lin denounces Chinese Organ Harvesting

The verdict is in: On June 17, the China Tribunal announced its finding that China’s Communist regime has for two decades practiced systematic, forced organ removal from prisoners of conscience, mainly Falun Gong practitioners and Muslims.
The independent, London-based panel of international legal and medical experts was led by Sir Geoffrey Nice, who also headed the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
After unwilling donors are executed, the tribunal found, their organs are sold to Chinese or foreign “transplant tourists.” 
Before 2015, China, whose Confucian value system considers it important to keep the body ­intact after death, had no voluntary organ-transplant system. 
Yet Chinese hospitals perform some 60,000 to 90,000 transplant surgeries each year.
Chinese hospitals promise that they can deliver hearts, livers, kidneys and corneas of matching blood type and size in two weeks. 
The surgeries can be scheduled in advance, which suggests hospitals know exactly when the “donors” are going to die.  
By contrast, America has a highly developed voluntary organ-donation system, and recipients typically have to wait hundreds of days.
According to researchers, Chinese prison authorities subject detained Falun Gong practitioners to medical exams to determine the health of their organs (even as they routinely torture these same prisoners). 
Detained Uighur Muslims report similar medical examinations.
The tribunal also heard from Chinese medical personnel who have defected from the regime. 
They warned Western governments and medical practitioners of this ongoing atrocity.
It wasn’t easy. 
One researcher likened his work to examining the scene following a nuclear explosion. 
Chinese government agencies and hospitals never provide honest numbers, so investigators have to make inferences from evidence such as hospital-renovation notices, patient turnover rates and medical research papers to estimate how many transplants are performed at each hospital.
Beijing deletes all traces of evidence online, making preservation of available records vitally important to rights researchers.
I first grappled seriously with this issue when I starred in the 2016 film “The Bleeding Edge.” 
I played a ­Falun Gong practitioner imprisoned for her beliefs, who is tied to an operating table as her vital organs are removed to be sold for profit.
I later joined these courageous researchers and campaigners. 
We testified at legislative hearings to push for laws prohibiting foreigners from going to China for transplants and banning Chinese medical and police personnel from visiting the West.
It was an uphill battle. 
Although Israel and Taiwan both passed laws making it harder for their citizens to obtain transplants in China, other democratic governments were reluctant to acknowledge this crime against humanity, perhaps ­because doing so would imply an obligation to act immediately.
China launches vicious ad hominem attacks against critics, to undermine our credibility. 
Numerous screenings of my film, and of documentaries on the subject, have been canceled on university campuses and elsewhere following phones calls from Chinese diplomats.
A year ago I was booked to discuss organ harvesting on a prominent Western public broadcaster. 
A producer canceled the interview hours before I was due to go on air. 
My representative was told the order came from “higher up” and that my “affiliations” had disqualified me from talking on live TV. 
China’s state-run media called me a tool of a “cult” working with “anti-China forces” to spread lies.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been murdered and had their organs harvested since the practice was industrialized in 2000. 
The victims were Chinese citizens who wanted nothing more than to practice their beliefs in peace. Instead, they were killed by their government on an industrial scale.
For those of us who have fought to expose this crime against humanity, the tribunal’s verdict is an answer to a prayer. 
We had presented the free world with mounds of evidence but were repeatedly dismissed. 
How many crimes did China’s global partners ignore, because the truth was inconvenient? 
Now that the China Tribunal has concluded that organ harvesting is happening on a massive scale, and systematically documented the practice, there is no excuse left for inaction.

mercredi 26 juin 2019

Hong Kong protesters gearing up for G20 demonstrations amid fears of dwindling freedoms

By Morgan Cheung

Hong Kong activists are preparing for more protests this weekend in the hope of sending a message to world leaders gathering for the G20 summit in nearby Osaka, Japan.
"This is not about a power struggle," Civil Human Rights Front leader Bonnie Leung told the Associated Press. 
"This is about the values that make the world a better place. The whole world, whoever has connections with Hong Kong, would be stakeholders."
The semi-autonomous enclave has been the scene of massive protests for nearly two weeks after Beijing-backed Chief Executive Carrie Lam attempted to pass an extradition bill that would allow "criminal" suspects in Hong Kong to be apprehended and extradited to mainland China for trial. 
 The bill puts critics of China at risk of torture and unfair trials in the mainland and defeats the purpose of the “one country, two systems” framework established for Hong Kong since 1997.

Protesters sing after a march against an extradition bill outside Legislative Council in Hong Kong on Sunday, June 16. 

The millions and more who marched in a June 16 demonstration against the extradition bill -- which has been put on legislative hold -- are becoming agitated that Hong Kong may become just another Chinese city as Beijing expands its influence.
China has promised that Hong Kong would get to keep freedoms absent in the communist-ruled mainland until 2047. 
But 22 years after the British handover, many in Hong Kong believe they cannot live without those rights.
Samson Yuen, a professor at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University, told AP that the Hong Kong protestors come from all walks of life but share a common goal to preserve their freedoms.
“This protest has drawn everybody in town together,” he said. 
“They really value the freedom to speak up and protest.”
Most Hong Kong citizens come from families who fled poverty and political turmoil in the communist mainland. 
 While British rule did not bestow Hong Kong with the right of democracy, it laid the groundwork for strong civic institutions, educational systems, health care, and a laissez-faire trading system dominated by businesses dedicated to keeping Hong Kong as it is.
Further protests are also planned for the July 1 anniversary of the British handover of Hong Kong to China – it is unclear if the turnout for this demonstration will match those of earlier this month.

Made in Vietnam: US-China tensions spark a manufacturing shift but not without growing pains

  • Companies are starting to question whether it’s time to shift production out of China due to the ongoing trade war between Washington and Beijing.
  • Many firms are already making the move to other countries, with Vietnam as a major beneficiary of tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
By Jessica Bursztynsky


Multinational companies are starting to question whether it’s time to shift production out of China due to the ongoing trade war between Washington and Beijing.
Many firms are already making the move to other countries, with Vietnam as one of the major beneficiaries of tensions between the world’s two largest economies.
President Donald Trump is set to meet with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in Japan later this week, where the two leaders are expected to restart stalled trade talks.
However, if talks were to prove unsuccessful the White House has threatened to place 25% tariffs on an additional $300 billion worth of Chinese goods, essentially all remaining imports into the U.S. from China.
Some companies, such as Brooks Running — which is part of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway — are not waiting to see if the additional China tariffs will go into effect. 
CEO Jim Weber said back in May that Brooks would be “predominantly in Vietnam by the end of the year.” 
He also said about 8,000 jobs will move there from China.
Such relocation plans raise the question of whether Vietnam can become the new China. 
CNBC’s Carl Quintanilla reports from Hanoi, ahead of the Trump-Xi meeting, with a look at Vietnam’s manufacturing boom and whether it can be sustained.
Vietnamese firms are starting to grow to try to accommodate the influx of companies, mostly apparel and shoe makers.
Textile firm TNG Investment & Trading told Quintanilla that it’s never seen an expansion like this before. 
Last year, the firm hired 3,000 employees, bringing its total to 15,000.
TNG’s Linh Nguyen said it had to build an apartment complex just to accommodate the additional employees. 
“In order to grow the business, it’s more important for us to build a home for the people than actually building a factory.”
The demand for technical skills is growing in Vietnam, and the Vietnamese government has a goal of training 2 million people in vocational schools.
More than 90% of students trained in technical skills, such as welding or making electronics, can get hired, said professor Nguyen Quang Huy
He told CNBC that it’s “very easy to get a job, and a lot of companies need more people.”
However, Vietnam still lacks much of the infrastructure that has enabled China to become a manufacturing epicenter.
Ramping up the ability to transfer goods from Vietnamese factories to ports will be key. 
Across the country, railroad lines are sparse compared with China’s, highways are smaller, and it’s still an agrarian economy largely focused on rice.
Vietnam is building a deep-water port that can make transfers easier, but that won’t open for another three years.

American Quislings

U.S. Tech Companies Sidestep a Trump Ban, to Keep Selling to Huawei
By Paul Mozur and Cecilia Kang
A Huawei billboard in Shanghai. The deals with United States companies will help Huawei continue to sell its smartphones and other products.

SHANGHAI — United States chip makers are still selling millions of dollars of products to Huawei despite a Trump administration ban on the sale of American technology to the Chinese telecommunications giant.
Industry leaders including Intel and Micron have found ways to avoid labeling goods as American-made, said the people, who spoke on the condition they not be named because they were not authorized to disclose the sales.
Goods produced by American companies overseas are not always considered American-made. 
The components began to flow to Huawei about three weeks ago, the people said.
The sales will help Huawei continue to sell products such as smartphones and servers, and underscore how difficult it is for the Trump administration to clamp down on companies that it considers a national security threat, like Huawei. 
They also hint at the possible unintended consequences from altering the web of trade relationships that ties together the world’s electronics industry and global commerce.
The Commerce Department’s move to block sales to Huawei, by putting it on a so-called entity list, set off confusion within the Chinese company and its many American suppliers, the people said. Many executives lacked deep experience with American trade controls, leading to initial suspensions in shipments to Huawei until lawyers could puzzle out which products could be sent. 
Decisions about what can and cannot be shipped were also often run by the Commerce Department.

American companies like Intel sell technology supporting current Huawei products until mid-August.

American companies may sell technology supporting current Huawei products until mid-August. 
But a ban on components for future Huawei products is already in place. 
It’s not clear what percentage of the current sales were for future products. 
The sales have most likely already totaled hundreds of millions of dollars, the people estimated.
While the Trump administration has been aware of the sales, officials are split about how to respond, the people said. 
Some officials feel that the sales violate the spirit of the law and undermine government efforts to pressure Huawei, while others are more supportive because it lightens the blow of the ban for American corporations. 
Huawei has said it buys around $11 billion in technology from United States companies each year.
Intel and Micron declined to comment.
“As we have discussed with the U.S. government, it is now clear some items may be supplied to Huawei consistent with the entity list and applicable regulations,” John Neuffer, the president of the Semiconductor Industry Association, wrote in a statement on Friday.
“Each company is impacted differently based on their specific products and supply chains, and each company must evaluate how best to conduct its business and remain in compliance.”
In an earnings call Tuesday afternoon, Micron’s chief executive, Sanjay Mehrotra, said the company stopped shipments to Huawei after the Commerce Department’s action last month. 
But it resumed sales about two weeks ago after Micron reviewed the entity list rules and “determined that we could lawfully resume” shipping a subset of products, Mr. Mehrotra said. 
“However, there is considerable ongoing uncertainty around the Huawei situation,” he added.
A spokesman for the Commerce Department, in response to questions about the sales to Huawei, referred to a section of the official notice about the company being added to the entity list, including that the purpose was to “prevent activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”
The Idaho-based Micron competes with South Korean companies like Samsung to supply memory chips that go into Huawei’s smartphones.

A senior administration official said that after the Commerce Department put Huawei on the entity list, the Semiconductor Industry Association sent a letter to the White House asking for waivers for some companies to allow them to continue selling components to Huawei. 
But the administration did not grant the waivers, he said, and the companies then found what they assert is a legal basis for continuing their sales.
Administration officials would like to address this issue, he said, but they do not plan to do so before the G-20 summit in Japan at the end of this week. 
Mr. Trump’s top priority is to discuss the general trade dispute with Xi Jinping and get the two sides to resume trade talks that have dragged on since early 2018, the official said.
The fate of Huawei, a crown jewel of Chinese innovation and technological prowess, has become a symbol of the economic and security standoff between the United States and China. 
Chinese companies like Huawei, which makes telecom networking equipment, could intercept and secretly divert information to China. 
Xi Jinping and President Trump are expected to have an “extended” talk this week during the Group of 20 meetings in Japan, a sign that the two countries are again seeking a compromise after trade discussions broke down in May. 
After the talks stalled, the Trump administration announced new restrictions on Chinese technology companies.
Along with Huawei, the administration blocked a Chinese supercomputer maker from buying American tech, and it is considering adding the surveillance technology company Hikvision to the list.
Kevin Wolf, a former Commerce Department official and partner at the law firm Akin Gump, has advised several American technology companies that supply Huawei. 
He said he told executives that Huawei’s addition to the list did not prevent American suppliers from continuing sales, as long as the goods and services weren’t made in the United States.

The SK Hynix plant in Icheon, South Korea. American companies are worried about losing market share to foreign rivals.

A chip, for example, can still be supplied to Huawei if it is manufactured outside the United States and doesn’t contain technology that can pose national security risks. 
But there are limits on sales from American companies. 
If the chip maker provides services from the United States for troubleshooting or instruction on how to use the product, for example, the company would not be able to sell to Huawei even if the physical chip were made overseas, Wolf said.
“This is not a loophole or an interpretation because there is no ambiguity,” he said. 
“It’s just esoteric.”
After this article was published online on Tuesday, Garrett Marquis, the White House National Security Council spokesman, criticized the companies’ workarounds. 
He said, “If true, it’s disturbing that a former Senate-confirmed Commerce Department official, who was previously responsible for enforcement of U.S. export control laws including through entity list restrictions, may be assisting listed entities to circumvent those very enforcement mechanisms.”
Wolf said he does not represent Chinese companies or firms on the entity list, and he added that Commerce Department officials had provided him with identical information on the scope of the list in recent weeks.
In some cases, American companies aren’t the only source of important technology, but they want to avoid losing Huawei’s valuable business to a foreign rival. 
For instance, the Idaho-based Micron competes with South Korean companies like Samsung and SK Hynix to supply memory chips that go into Huawei’s smartphones. 
If Micron is unable to sell to Huawei, orders could easily be shifted to those rivals.
Beijing has also pressured American companies. 
This month, the Chinese government said it would create an “unreliable entities list” to punish companies and individuals it perceived as damaging Chinese interests. 
The following week, China’s chief economic planning agency summoned foreign executives, including representatives from Microsoft, Dell and Apple. 
It warned them that cutting off sales to Chinese companies could lead to punishment and hinted that the companies should lobby the United States government to stop the bans. 
The stakes are high for some of the American companies, like Apple, which relies on China for many sales and for much of its production.

A FedEx warehouse in Kernersville, N.C. “FedEx is a transportation company, not a law enforcement agency,” the company said in a complaint against the government.

Wolf said several companies had scrambled to figure out how to continue sales to Huawei, with some businesses considering a total shift of manufacturing and services of some products overseas. 
The escalating trade battle between the United States and China is “causing companies to fundamentally rethink their supply chains,” he added.
That could mean that American companies shift their know-how, on top of production, outside the United States, where it would be less easy for the government to control, said Martin Chorzempa, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
“American companies can move some things out of China if that’s problematic for their supply chain, but they can also move the tech development out of the U.S. if that becomes problematic,” he said. 
“And China remains a large market.”
“Some of the big winners might be other countries,” Mr. Chorzempa said.
Some American companies have complained that complying with the tight restrictions is difficult or impossible, and will take a toll on their business.
On Monday, FedEx filed a lawsuit against the federal government, claiming that the Commerce Department’s rules placed an “impossible burden” on a company like FedEx to know the origin and technological makeup of all the shipments it handles.
FedEx’s complaint didn’t name Huawei specifically. 
But it said that the agency’s rules that have prohibited exporting American technology to Chinese companies placed “an unreasonable burden on FedEx to police the millions of shipments that transit our network every day.”
“FedEx is a transportation company, not a law enforcement agency,” the company said.
A Commerce Department spokesman said it had not yet reviewed FedEx’s complaint but would defend the agency’s role in protecting national security.

China’s Hidden Navy

Chinese "fishing boats" around contested islands are part of an extensive maritime militia.
BY GREGORY POLING

The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy aircraft carrier Liaoning participates in a naval parade near Qingdao in eastern China's Shandong province, on April 23, 2019. 

The Spratly Islands, occupied by five different claimants, are the most hotly contested part of the South China Sea. 
Thanks to the harbors and supporting infrastructure Beijing constructed on its outposts there over the last five years, most vessels operating around the Spratlys are Chinese. 
And most of those are at least part-time members of China’s official maritime militia, an organization whose role Beijing frequently downplays but that is playing an increasingly visible role in its assertion of maritime claims.
Writers affiliated with Chinese institutions and state media seek to present an alternate version of reality by artfully cropping satellite imagery, cherry-picking data, or simply ignoring the facts and attacking the motives of those presenting evidence of militia activities.
This is unsurprising—the purpose of employing a maritime militia is to keep aggression below the level of military force and complicate the responses of other parties, in this case chiefly the other claimants (Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Taiwan) as well as the United States, by hiding behind a civilian facade
Without deniability, the militia loses much of its value. 
That gives China a strong incentive to dissemble and deny evidence of its actions. 
But that evidence speaks for itself.
The People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia is not a secret
Article 36 of the China Military Service Law of 1984, revised in 1998, calls for the militia “to undertake the duties related to preparations against war, defend the frontiers and maintain public order; and be always ready to join the armed forces to take part in war, resist aggression and defend the motherland.” 
China’s 2013 defense white paper enhanced the maritime militia’s role in asserting sovereignty and backing up military operations. 
This is the naval analogue to China’s larger and better-known land-based militia forces, which operate in all Chinese theater commands, supporting and under the command of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
In 2013, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping visited the maritime militia in Tanmen township on Hainan, China’s southernmost province, and labeled it a model for others to follow. 
Andrew Erickson, Conor Kennedy, and Ryan Martinson at the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College have spent years documenting the activities of the maritime militia, including extensive acknowledgment by Chinese authorities and many instances in which militia members have publicly discussed their activities.
A review of available remote sensing data by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Vulcan Inc.’s Skylight Maritime Initiative, including infrared imaging, synthetic aperture radar, and high-resolution satellite imagery, shows that the largest number of vessels operating in the Spratly Islands belongs to the Chinese fishing fleet, which frequently numbers between 200 and 300 boats at Subi and Mischief Reefs alone. 
This is not by itself peculiar: China maintains the world’s largest fishing fleet, and its distant water vessels operate around the globe due to overfishing and pollution of Chinese coastal waters. 
But the vessels operating in the Spratlys are not part of that distant water fleet—those boats are larger and head farther afield in the hunt for high-value migratory species. 
And at 800 nautical miles (about 920 miles) from the mainland, the Spratlys are too far for small and medium-sized Chinese fishing vessels to operate productively without being heavily subsidized.
But even China’s two-decade-old policy of subsidizing fishing as an assertion of sovereignty can’t explain the behavior of most Chinese vessels in the Spratlys in recent years.
Chinese fishing boats in the islands average more than 500 tons, well over the size legally required for boats undertaking international voyages to use Automatic Identification System (AIS) transceivers, which broadcast identifying information, headings, and other data about oceangoing vessels. 
But fewer than 5 percent of them actually broadcast AIS signals at any given time. 
This suggests a fleet intent on hiding its numbers and actions.
These large, modern vessels represent a stunning level of sunk capital costs but do not engage in much commercial activity. 
Frequent satellite imagery shows that the vessels spend nearly all of their time anchored, often in large clusters. 
This is true whether they are inside the lagoons at Subi and Mischief Reefs or loitering elsewhere in the Spratlys. 
Operating in such close quarters is highly unusual and certainly not the way commercial fishing vessels usually operate.
Light falling net vessels, which account for the largest number of Chinese fishing boats in satellite imagery of the Spratlys, very rarely have their fishing gear deployed. 
China’s trawlers, meanwhile, almost never actually trawl; instead, satellite imagery and the AIS signals of those few trawlers regularly broadcasting both show that they spend most of their time at anchor. 
These unusual, and highly unprofitable, behaviors suggest that most of these supposed fishing boats are not making a living from fish.
When Chinese fishing vessels are not at Subi or Mischief Reefs, they are most often seen in satellite imagery anchored near Philippine- and Vietnamese-held outposts in the Spratlys. 
This is corroborated by the small number of AIS signals detected from Chinese ships. 
The most spectacular example of this behavior was the swarm of vessels from Subi Reef that dropped anchor between 2 and 5 nautical miles from Philippines-held Thitu Island as soon as Manila began modest upgrade work on that feature in December 2018. 
The number of vessels seen in satellite imagery peaked at 95 on Dec. 20, 2018, before dropping to 42 by Jan. 26. 
That presence continued into early June, when reports suggested that China had begun to pull back the vessels. 
The exact number of ships fluctuated from day to day, but almost none broadcast AIS or deployed fishing gear, and they operated in much closer quarters than any commercial fishing vessels would.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines confirmed that it had monitored 275 individual Chinese vessels swarming near Thitu between January and March, and Manila filed protests with Beijing over their presence. 
Meanwhile satellite imagery from March to April showed another cluster of Chinese vessels displaying the same puzzling behavior around two other Philippine-held features: Loaita Cay and Loaita Island. 
In that case, some dropped anchor just half a nautical mile from the isolated Philippine facility on Loaita Cay.
The only explanation that can make sense of all of these behaviors is that most of these vessels engage in the work of China’s maritime militia. 
The job of that militia force has been well documented by sources as diverse as the U.S. Naval War College, reports from the Philippine military, and China’s own official documents outlining the militia’s role. 
On a day-to-day basis it serves as a logistics and surveillance arm of the PLA, ferrying supplies to Chinese outposts, monitoring and reporting on the activities of other claimants, and engaging in joint training exercises with the military and law enforcement. 
But they also move into more direct harassment of other nations’ vessels when called up—maneuvering dangerously close to foreign naval, law enforcement, and civilian vessels, sometimes shouldering and ramming them, and in general making it unsafe for other parties to operate in areas contested by Beijing, all while the PLA and China Coast Guard are kept in reserve as an implicit threat with a level of deniability.
Some analysts have offered alternative explanations for the curious, unproductive behavior of these ships. 
But none of the theories stand up well to scrutiny.
One suggestion is that these vessels never have gear in the water because they are actually reef fishers engaged in harvesting high-value species such as sea cucumbers and giant clams. 
Relatedly, theorists posit that they don’t broadcast AIS because they are too small, or too old, or because they know that harvesting endangered species is illegal under Chinese law and they want to hide their activities. 
Some have even argued that the flood of vessels around Thitu was due to a surge in demand for seafood ahead of China’s Spring Festival.
But these explanations make little sense. 
The sizes and types of vessels are easily determined from satellite imagery. 
These fleets consist of large (over 160-foot) modern trawlers and falling net vessels, not the smaller (80- to 115-foot) motherships that accompany Chinese reef fishers around the Spratlys and other disputed features such as the Paracels and Scarborough Shoal, and certainly not the reef fishing boats themselves. 
And while reef fishing vessels average just 15 feet, they can be seen in satellite imagery; it would be immediately obvious if hundreds were operating around Thitu Island. 
There is plenty of sea cucumber harvesting in the Paracels—at Antelope Reef, for instance—and giant clam poaching has been well documented across the South China Sea. 
This is not that.
Another theory is that these vessels don’t appear to be fishing because they are involved in transshipment, serving in a support role by purchasing catch from and providing supplies to other fishing boats in the area. 
That might fit if it was just some small percentage of the Chinese fleet involved. 
But the opposite is true: Most Chinese ships observed in the Spratlys don’t appear to be commercially fishing. 
They can’t all be support vessels; what would they be supporting?
A third hypothesis is that some of these vessels are simply passing through the Spratlys to fraudulently collect the fuel subsidies China offers for ships that operate in the contested waters. After securing their subsidy, the theory goes, these boats likely head for more productive fishing grounds beyond the region. 
This could be true for some small number of ships; it would be impossible to prove either way. 
But this cannot explain the long-term presence of hundreds of vessels anchored around Thitu and other features. 
And while only a small percentage of Chinese ships broadcast AIS in the Spratlys, those that do tend to spend months at a time there, mostly anchored.
The evidence that China is using hundreds of fishing vessels under the aegis of its publicly acknowledged maritime militia to assert claims and harass its neighbors in the Spratlys is considerable. 
By contrast, the alternative theories are severely lacking. 
No other convincing explanation has been offered for why so many fishing vessels are engaged for months at a time in activities that make little or no commercial sense, or why they are so intent on hiding their actions.
The maritime militia is the vanguard of China’s assertion of claims to the waters of the South China Sea. 
It is the largest fleet operating in the area and is the most frequent aggressor toward both China’s neighbors and outside parties like the United States when asserting international rights in waters claimed by Beijing. 
It operates as a nonuniformed, unprofessional force without proper training and outside of the frameworks of international maritime law, the military rules of engagement, or the multilateral mechanisms set up to prevent unsafe incidents at sea. 
The next violent incident to take place in the South China Sea is far more likely to involve the Chinese militia than the PLA or China Coast Guard, and it will lack the mechanisms for communication and de-escalation that exist between those professional services and their counterparts in other nations.
The only way to avoid an eventual crisis triggered by these paramilitary vessels is to convince Beijing to take them off the board. 
And the first step is to pull back the curtain of deniability, acknowledge that the evidence for their numbers and activities is overwhelming, and insist that the Chinese government be held accountable for their bad behavior.