The media miss massive anti China protests in Pakistan
The US holds its first Democracy Summit
And is it game over for Chinese companies in the US?
That and more on this week’s China news headlines
Welcome to China Uncensored.
I’m Chris Chappell.
This episode is sponsored by Blinkist.
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And now for this week’s China news headlines.
You probably haven’t heard, but there have been massive protests in Pakistan—and they’re
related to China.
They’re happening in Gwadar, which is here.
These protests have been going on for the past month.
Locals are upset over a series of unkept promises and unfair restrictions from the government.
And a lot of those relate to Chinese investment in the area.
Gwadar is a key part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
It’s part of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor—or CPEC.
It aims to give China access to the Indian Ocean.
And they’ve built the Gwadar port.
But it sure feels more Chinese than Pakistani.
And even after several years, “Shipping and industrial activity at the port are negligible.
And for the vast majority of Gwadar’s residents, conditions are unchanged or worse.”
So...having China build their port hasn’t made things better for the locals.
Plus having all those Chinese workers and money in the area has led to other problems.
For example, China’s fishing trawler fleet has devastated the ocean and forced local
fishermen out.
And many of the promised benefits from the CPEC haven’t happened.
“Major projects—including a vocational training center, medical hospital, and desalination
plant—have either been delayed, scaled down, or dropped.”
Ultimately, the protests are not just against China.
They’re also tied to other tensions in the region, including a long-simmering independence
movement.
The protests have been led by a moderate Islamist politican and include a large number of women
and children.
That’s unprecedented.
So now the Pakistani government has to deal with large-scale protests.
And on top of that, they’re having problems with China.
Initially, Pakistan authorities thought Gwadar was vital to China.
Here’s an official CPEC roadway and energy pipeline map showing how Gwadar would link
up to China’s Xinjiang Autonomous region.
But as this 2020 US Naval War College study says, Chinese analysts have come to view it
as not viable.
This has become a pattern throughout the world.
China comes in with big promises of investment and infrastructure that don’t pan out.
Locals end up getting screwed, and protests erupt.
Unfortunately, a lot of these are authoritarian countries, where local protests are not well
met by the government.
Or where no Western country is willing to invest.
But it is creating an international alliance of authoritarian countries geared toward rivaling
the West.
And that alliance made a big step forward this week.
I’ll tell you more after the break.
Welcome back.
The US held its first Democracy Summit.
You may remember that China was very upset that President Biden invited Taiwan.
But China must have been very happy with this.
A Taiwanese minister used this map showing Taiwan in a different color from China.
Then the next time she spoke, her video was cut, and replaced with this visual placeholder
showing just the minister’s name.
Now no one quite knows for sure what happened.
Reuters says sources told them it was deliberate.
But the State Department said it was a technical error.
But after her feed was cut, a disclaimer appeared on the screen saying, “Any opinions expressed
by individuals on this panel are those of the individual, and do not necessarily reflect
the views of the United States government.”
Which sure makes it sound like...not a technical error.
And while this democracy summit was going on, China targeted Taiwan’s allies.
Nicaragua cut ties with Taiwan and now recognizes China diplomatically instead.
Now only 13 nations and the Vatican recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country.
The US is not included.
But at least Lithuania is doubling down on its support for Taiwan.
They’ve pulled their diplomats from China and closed their embassy over concerns for
their safety, after China began targeting the country for their support of Taiwan.
As Lithuania has continued to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party, the Party is
trying new ways to break Lithuania.
Including pressuring multinational companies to “sever ties with Lithuania or face being
shut out of the Chinese market.”
The Chinese Communist Party: it’s like the mafia, but with more boring suits.
And while the US was having a democracy summit where China wasn’t invited, China was having
its own party.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with Russian leader Vladimir Putin at a virtual summit.
“Dear President Xi Jinping, dear friend, I am glad to see you!
Am greeting you!”
Of course Putin is happy to see Xi.
They’re best friends!
Xi literally gave Putin a golden friendship medal.
Something Shelley has never given me, I might add.
And Putin gave Xi an entire case of ice cream for his birthday.
​​Something Shelley has never given me, either.
I’m starting to think we’re not best friends, Shelley.
As the New York Times says, “President Biden may have his alliance of democracies, but
as a video summit on Wednesday underscored, Russia and China still have each other.”
It’s touching really.
A word I never want to associate again with Putin and Xi.
Xi Jinping told Putin, “We firmly support each other on issues concerning each other’s
core interests and safeguarding the dignity of each country.”
In other words, even though they don’t have a formal alliance, China and Russia are teaming
up against the West.
For every Justice League, there’s a Legion of Doom.
And after the break, it’s game over for Chinese companies in the US.
Welcome back.
This week, Congress unanimously passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act.
President Biden will sign it into law, making the US the first country to ban goods made
by Uyghur slave labor.
“The bill will ban all imports from China’s Xinjiang region into the United States unless
companies can show the U.S. government ‘clear and convincing evidence’ their supply chains
have not used the labor of ethnic Muslims enslaved in Chinese camps.”
This is great news.
And it’s been a long time coming.
There’s been a bipartisan effort to pass this bill since last year.
But a lot of US companies didn’t like it.
Nike and Coca-Cola were among the companies lobbying against the bill.
The Trump administration had previously banned cotton and tomatoes from Xinjiang.
But it was up to US Customs to enforce the ban, which can be hard, since the cotton and
tomatoes could be sent from China to be made into products in another country.
Now with this new law, US companies are legally responsible for guaranteeing they don’t
use slave labor.
And some of them don’t want to look too closely at their supply chains.
The US is on a blacklist spree when it comes to Chinese companies.
This week, the US blacklisted eight more Chinese companies, including DJI—the world’s largest
drone maker.
The Treasury Department has a blacklist for companies involved in China’s military-industrial
complex.
These companies are being added for their involvement in human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
A lot of them do surveillance or facial recognition technology.
DJI was already put on a Commerce Department blacklist earlier this year, which means American
companies can’t sell parts to them.
Now, Americans can’t invest in DJI or these other companies, either.
But you know what Americans can do?
You can still buy all the DJI drones you want.
Earlier in the week, the US also banned investment in a Chinese AI Company, called SenseTime.
It’s “one of the world’s highest-valued AI startups and leading developer of facial-recognition
technology.”
It turns out, a lot of corporations like to invest in Chinese companies regardless of
what human rights atrocities they may be committing.
But according to one global asset manager, it’s game over for Chinese companies in
the US.
He predicts, “Chinese companies listed on Wall Street will likely be cut off from U.S.
capital markets in the next three years.”
That’s why a lot of these Chinese tech companies are already beginning to dual list on the
Hong Kong stock exchange as well.
The Chinese Communist Party is trying to break free of its reliance on the American financial
system.
If it succeeds, then that’s bad news.
It would mean the US would lose its economic leverage over its greatest rival.
A Harvard professor is going on trial for hiding his ties with China.
The professor is Charles Lieber , the former chair of Harvard’s department of chemistry
and chemical biology.
He was arrested in January “on allegations that he hid his involvement in China’s Thousand
Talents Plan, a program designed to recruit people with knowledge of foreign technology
and intellectual property to China.”
And over in Hong Kong, Media tycoon Jimmy Lai and seven others have been jailed for
commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.
You see, Hong Kong always commemorated the Tiananmen Square Massacre—something the
Chinese Communist Party hated.
But after passing the quote unquote national security law that gave the Party a stranglehold
over Hong Kong, they decided to ban the large-scale outdoor memorial, starting in 2020.
You know, over concerns about the spread of Covid.
Right.
The sentences for those who supposedly incited it range from about four months to over a
year.
Jimmy Lai got 13 months.
Of course, Jimmy Lai is already in prison.
He’s been there since last December, when he was charged with crimes under the national
security law and denied bail while awaiting trial.
He’s also serving two other sentences over unauthorized assemblies in 2019.
Clearly the Chinese regime wants to keep Jimmy Lai in prison forever.
There’s only one thing he can do: Put up a poster of Rita Hayworth
And start digging his way out.
Speaking of breaking out, the Omicron Covid variant has come to China, in spite of the
country's zero Covid policy.
If only Covid were as easy to lock up as ethnic minorities.
And speaking of locked up ethnic minorities, this week a group of Tibetan activists protested
the Beijing Winter Olympics by staging a sit-in at the International Olympic Committee headquarters
in Switzerland.
Including by chaining themselves to the Olympic rings and urging a boycott of what they call
the genocide games.
But the IOC still firmly has its head in the sand, as Canadian IOC member Dick Pound continues
to defend the IOC’s decision to award the Olympics to China.
Pound also said that Olympic athletes will be totally safe and free to express their
opinions in Beijing.
With one caveat, they must follow Chinese law.
Which makes things difficult, since Chinese law says you are not safe and free to express
your opinions.
And when he was asked during an interview what would happen to an Olympic athlete who
brought up the Uyghur genocide, Dick Pound had this to say:
“I don't know enough of the facts about this.
I hear them, see them in the media, but you know enough about your own media to know that
sometimes what is asserted as a fact is not necessarily so.”
Yes, Dick Pound basically called the Uyghur genocide fake news.
He also went on to suggest an independent review of what was going on, and maybe that’s
something China would consider.
Maybe he should suggest that to Chinese officials the next time he’s in Beijing.
I’m sure he’ll feel safe and free to express that opinion.
And South Korea has decided not to boycott the Beijing Olympics.
The US announced earlier this month it would stage a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming
Beijing Winter Olympics—meaninig the US wouldn’t send any diplomats or officials.
And quickly a bunch of other countries joined in.
Not South Korea though.
Of course, as I’ve talked about, South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in has been moving closer
and closer to the Chinese Communist Party.
There were even accusations that China helped rig a recent election in favor of Moon’s
Party.
So I can’t say I’m entirely surprised by Moon’s decision not to boycott the Olympics.
The good news is, without diplomats from a bunch of Western countries there, Moon Jae-in
will surely get great seats.
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Once again, I’m Chris Chappell.
Thanks for watching China Uncensored.