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WHO asks China to provide more realistic epidemic report || but Chinese state media plays down the severity of the epidemic

2023-01-03T19:24:00.011-08:00

WHO asks China to provide a "more realistic" epidemic report, but Chinese state media plays down the epidemic's severity.

File photo - World Health Organization (WHO) flag. The photo is a screenshot of the relevant video by the Associated Press in Beijing, China. Courtesy of Associated Press.

Scientists at the World Health Organization say they want a "more realistic" report on the situation with COVID-19 from top Chinese experts as concerns mount over the country's rapid spread.

Reuters reported that the WHO on Tuesday (January 3) invited Chinese scientists to a closed-door video meeting with its Virus Evolution Technical Advisory Group to present data on the variant circulating in China. WHO hopes to have detailed discussions with China on the evolution of the new coronavirus, and looks forward to China's regular sharing of specific and real-time data on epidemiology, including more genetic sequencing data, data on the impact of the disease, including hospitalizations, ICU admissions and death toll etc. The meeting is closed to the public or media.

"We want to see a more realistic picture, to understand what's really going on," said Dutch virologist Professor Marion Koopmans, a member of the WHO committee.

She told Reuters ahead of the meeting that some data from China, such as the number of hospitalizations, was "not very credible". "It is in China's own interest to provide more reliable information," she said.

South African scientist Professor Tulio de Oliveira is also a member of the committee. He said it was "of course" good to have more information from China, but that also applies globally.

Professor Koopmans and colleagues hope to discuss similar information with scientists from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention at a World Health Organization meeting on Tuesday.

The panel is an international committee of experts that has come together throughout the pandemic and receives regular briefings from countries experiencing large waves of infections or new variants.

Prof Koopmans said they had seen only a "small fraction" of the cases sequenced in China so far - around 700 - and called for a global surveillance network to track the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2.

Just before the meeting, the official media controlled by the CCP tried their best to downplay the seriousness of this surge in infections.

International health experts predict that at least 1 million people in China will die from infection or complications of the new coronavirus this year. On Monday (January 2), China reported only three deaths from the novel coronavirus, and there were one or a few cases per day for many days before that. Therefore, the infection and death data provided by China has been widely questioned at home and abroad.

On December 7 last year, without preparation, China suddenly canceled the "zero-clearing" epidemic prevention and control that Xi Jinping personally deployed and personally directed for the past three years, triggering a "wildfire-like" large-scale infection across the country, resulting in At least hundreds of millions of people have been infected in a short period of time, and the medical system is overwhelmed. Hospital fever clinics, emergency departments, and intensive care units are overcrowded. Countless elderly people and people with underlying diseases have died. Funeral parlors and crematoria are overloaded, and many remains cannot be removed in time. And decent storage, cremation often has to wait for ten days or longer, and in some places, there are even tragic situations where people burn their bodies in the community by themselves.

In the past three years, China has required strict multiple tests and long-term isolation for immigrants, and even refused to issue visas to some Chinese WHO wish to return to their country for funerals. Facing concerns about the outbreak of the epidemic in some countries, they require 48 hours for immigrants from China. Nucleic acid testing and other temporary epidemic prevention measures, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning criticized on January 3 as "lack of scientific basis" and "unacceptable", and threatened that "corresponding measures will be taken in accordance with the principle of reciprocity according to different situations."

Meanwhile, the People's Daily, the Communist Party's mouthpiece, quoted Chinese experts on Tuesday as saying that for most people, the illnesses caused by the new coronavirus are relatively mild. Tong Zhaohui, deputy director of Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, told the People's Daily that severe and critical illnesses account for 3% to 4% of infected patients currently admitted to designated hospitals in Beijing.

Kang Yan, director of West China Tianfu Hospital of Sichuan University, said that in the past three weeks, a total of only 46 patients have been admitted to the intensive care unit, accounting for only about 1% of symptomatic infections.

However, Reuters reported that an eyewitness said the emergency department of Zhongshan Hospital in Shanghai was overwhelmed with patients. Some patients were being dripped on beds in hospital corridors, and many were waiting in line to see a doctor. It was not possible to verify how many of those people needed medical treatment because of the new coronavirus.

Separately, Bloomberg reported Tuesday that a family in Shanghai waited five days for a funeral vehicle to remove the remains of their loved ones parked at their home.

According to the report, Shanghai Longhua Funeral Home posted a public announcement over the weekend that it received more than 500 remains daily, about five times more than usual. And after waiting for hours, families were brought in and out of the room like they were put on a conveyor belt, and each family was only allowed five to ten minutes to hold a simple meeting in the crowded room filled with yellow body bags. The farewell ceremony completely lacked the dignity of a traditional Chinese funeral.

According to the report, a staff member WHO answered the phone at the Longhua Funeral Home said that the entire system was paralyzed, beyond what could be tolerated. And similar situations are playing out in funeral homes and crematoria across China. Grieving family members and exhausted workers showed the outside world that the Chinese authorities suddenly canceled the "clearing" epidemic prevention and control on December 7 last year, and the "tsunami" spread of the epidemic had an impact on the Chinese people and families.

At the same time, the World Health Organization once again asked China to regularly share specific and real-time data on the epidemiological situation, including more gene sequencing data, data on the impact of the disease, including hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths, etc. The WHO also asked the Chinese government to provide data on vaccination status, especially among vulnerable groups and those over 60 years old.

WHO officials held talks with Chinese officials on Dec. 30 about the surge in coronavirus cases in China, urging China to share real-time data so other countries could respond effectively.

Reuters said that some experts doubt that China will be very candid. The report quoted an expert in Singapore as saying that he does not think China will be very sincere in disclosing the data because China's transparency is an issue.

US NASA director The competition for the moon is becoming increasingly fierce || and if China gets there first, it may become its own

2023-01-03T10:12:00.006-08:00

US NASA director: The competition for the Moon is becoming increasingly fierce, and if China gets there first, it may become its own.

NASA's Orion spacecraft flies by the Moon. (December 5, 2022)

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has warned that the US-China race to the Moon is intensifying, and the next two years could determine who has the upper hand. If China beats the U.S., China may claim the Moon as its own.

Nelson, a former astronaut and Florida senator said in an interview with the U.S. media "Politico" (Politico) on Sunday (January 1) that Beijing may establish a stronghold on the Moon and try to monopolize the resources on the surface of the Moon The most prosperous locations, or not even letting the U.S. in.

"It's a fact: we're in a space race," Nelson said. "We'd better beware that they're not going to go to a place on the Moon under the guise of scientific research, it's true. They may say, 'leave; we're here; this is our turf'."

Nelson said that China's military expansion in the South China Sea foreshadowed that. He said, "If you question this, look at what they are doing in the Spratly Islands (called the Spratly Islands in China)." According to the

Report recently released aerial pictures show China has disputes in the South China Sea. The Spratly Islands set up new military installations.

NASA completed the Artemis I mission (Artemis, the goddess of hunting in ancient Greek mythology) in November last year, involving an unmanned flight around the Moon by the manned spacecraft "Orion". The mission's Artemis III program will land astronauts on the lunar surface by 2025.

China recently completed the construction of its new "Tiangong Space Station," sending astronauts to the space station last November. Beijing plans to launch three lunar missions over the next decade as part of China's "Chang'e Lunar Exploration Project." Earlier, China claimed to have discovered a new lunar mineral that may be used as an energy source on the Moon and named it "Chang'e Stone."

Nelson, the head of NASA, said China had achieved "great success" in its space program over the past decade.

Currently, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA is cooperating with the Space Exploration Technology Corporation (SpaceX) owned by the world's richest man Elon Musk on the Artemis III mission. Nelson said he asked about the progress of cooperation with SpaceX every day, and all the answers were that they were completing all planning goals.

Nelson's tough stance on China's space program comes at a time when Congress has just passed NASA's full-year budget. NASA didn't get all the funding requested, but Nelson insisted they got what "must have," including key components of the future Artemis II and III missions.

The report said that any major delays or missteps in the U.S. lunar space program would risk falling behind China. NASA's plans to land on the Moon have been pushed back by a year.

Likewise, the U.S. military is alarmed by the security implications of China's foray into deep space. The U.S. military has expressed growing concern that space systems developed by Beijing could threaten U.S. satellites.

In a recent report to Congress, the Pentagon highlighted a series of recent leaps forward in China's space program.

U.S. official says U.S. not considering U.S.-South Korea nuclear drills

2023-01-03T08:19:00.004-08:00

U.S. official says U.S. not considering U.S.-South Korea nuclear drills

U.S. soldiers inspect F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets on the deck of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan arriving at the port of Busan, South Korea, Sept. 23, 2022.

SEOUL-

The United States plans to hold tabletop military games with South Korea and expand other areas of defence cooperation but is not considering joint nuclear exercises with Seoul, a senior U.S. administration official said.

The U.S. announcement came after South Korean President Yoon Suk-yue said in an interview Monday that the U.S. and South Korea were in talks aimed at giving Seoul a greater role in the operation of U.S. nuclear forces.

Yoon told the conservative Chosun Ilbo newspaper that the discussions focused on joint planning and exercises of South Korean and U.S. nuclear forces — a process he envisions having the same effect as "shared nuclear weapons."

U.S. President Joe Biden said "no" when asked on Monday night if he was discussing joint nuclear exercises with South Korea. Biden was returning from a trip to the eastern U.S. state of Kentucky at the time, without elaborating.

On Tuesday, a senior U.S. administration official emailed VOA a statement seeking to clarify the situation, saying the U.S. and South Korea are "working together to enhance extended deterrence, including ultimately exploring our responses to a range of scenarios through tabletop games, Including North Korea's use of nuclear weapons."

North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) launched a record number of ballistic missiles last year and said on Sunday it was "doubling" its production of nuclear warheads.

The U.S. administration official also said North Korea's recent actions and statements had drawn "increasing concern."

Both the White House and South Korea's presidential office later denied that there was any contradiction in Biden's and Yin Xiyue's statements, and pointed out that because South Korea is not a nuclear-weapon state, technically speaking, it cannot participate in "joint nuclear exercises."

While this may be partly due to semantics, many analysts believe it reflects behind-the-scenes tension between the two allies over how best to engage South Korea in countering the North Korean threat.

Yoon, a conservative, has in the past pushed Washington and Seoul for a NATO-style arrangement that would have South Koreans train for the possible use of U.S. nuclear weapons in a conflict. At present, it seems that South Korea may only be satisfied with more cooperation in other fields.

After Biden and Yoon met in Cambodia in November, both leaders tasked their teams with developing a plan, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council said in a statement emailed to VOA. "Effectively coordinated responses to a range of scenarios, including North Korea's use of nuclear weapons."

"As the president said, we are not discussing joint nuclear exercises," the White House NSC official added.

South Korean presidential spokesman Kim Eun-hye defended Yoon's remarks in a statement to reporters. "South Korea and the U.S. are discussing information sharing related to U.S. nuclear assets, joint planning and subsequent joint implementation plans to counter the North Korean nuclear threat," she said.

The United States has not deployed nuclear weapons in South Korea since the early 1990s. At that time, the United States withdrew its tactical nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula as part of a disarmament agreement with the Soviet Union. In its place is the U.S. "nuclear umbrella" that protects South Korea -- an ally that Washington has vowed to use all its capabilities, including nuclear weapons, to defend.

In an interview on Monday, Yin Xiyue said such thinking was outdated. "What we call 'extended deterrence' means the U.S. will take care of everything, so South Korea doesn't have to worry," he said.

"But now, it's hard to convince our people with this idea alone," Yin Xiyue said.

When running for president of South Korea in 2021, Yoon Suk-yue said he would ask the United States to redeploy tactical nuclear weapons or agree to nuclear sharing. The State Department quickly vetoed the proposal.

Many analysts are skeptical that the U.S. would make such an arrangement, noting that it would run counter to the administration's stated global non-proliferation goals and support for the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

"South Korea's concerns and wishes are understandable, but the U.S. will not be able to discuss the nuclear program together to the extent that Seoul wants. This is still too difficult to achieve." Kim Do-yeon, an expert on Korean Peninsula issues at the Center for a New American Security in Seoul Say.

If South Korea participates in the tabletop game, it could learn more about how the U.S. weighs options in various crisis situations, she said.

"Since (U.S.-South Korea) joint nuclear planning is not going to happen and Seoul wants to have a say, a South Korean leader like the president can unilaterally tell the U.S. president that he/she is expected to be involved in the nuclear (military) program," said Kim Do-yeon. Consider which North Korean targets, but cannot expect a response."

She added: "It is conceivable that South Korean fighter jets could one day practice escorting U.S. bombers as a way for NATO to engage in 'nuclear sharing', but it is hard to imagine the U.S. doing more than that."

Ankit Panda, a nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, also doubts that the United States would be willing to include South Korea in its nuclear program.

"Ultimately, the decision on whether nuclear weapons should be introduced into a particular crisis contingency will rest with the President of the United States," Panda told VOA.

The issue has become even more urgent as North Korea has become more belligerent and expanded its nuclear arsenal.

North Korea is thought to have enough fissile material to make about 50 nuclear bombs and has a growing collection of short- and long-range weapons capable of delivering nuclear bombs. Some South Koreans worry that Washington may be reluctant to respond to a North Korean attack on South Korea if North Korea can destroy a major U.S. city.

Many South Koreans are also uncomfortable with former U.S. President Donald Trump, who frequently questioned the value of the U.S.-South Korea alliance and even threatened to withdraw troops from South Korea.

As a result, more and more prominent South Korean figures are calling for South Korea to acquire its own nuclear deterrent.

Sixty-seven percent of South Koreans, including 70 percent of conservatives and 54 percent of liberals, support South Korea acquiring nuclear weapons, according to a poll released Monday by Seoul-based Hankook Research.

The medical system cannot cope with the revenge return to the hometown during the Spring Festival, and the epidemic may explode in rural China

2023-01-03T08:11:00.004-08:00

The medical system cannot cope with the revenge return to the hometown during the Spring Festival, and the epidemic may explode in rural China.

Passengers wearing face masks wait in the waiting room of Beijing South Railway Station. (January 14, 2022)

HONGKONG-

China is about to start the Spring Festival travel, and it is also the first time since the epidemic outbreak that the authorities have allowed people to return to their hometowns for the New Year. China's National Health Commission said it had prepared for a possible severe attack in rural areas, but the claim has been questioned. Some commentators even believe that China's rural areas are severely lacking in medical resources and are simply unable to cope with large-scale cross-infection of the new crown.

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The first Spring Festival after China's relaxation of inter-provincial travel is approaching, and many people have returned from cities to their hometowns. At a press conference on January 2, the National Health and Medical Commission of China expressed concern that the flow of people from cities to rural areas during the Spring Festival may cause an epidemic. Jiao Yahui, Director of the Health Care Reform Department of the National Health and Medical Commission, said that it is necessary to ensure that enough medicines can be delivered to rural areas and that counties and townships will be required to organize vehicles to send severe patients in rural areas to county hospitals as soon as possible, and at the same time send medical staff from big cities to county hospitals to prepare to Receive serious illness.

In an interview with Voice of America, Wang Jian, an independent media person living in the United States, described the remarks of the National Health and Medical Commission as "nonsense".

Wang Jian said: "Do you send a car? Who sends the car? Those farmers are not even willing to pay for the car. Chinese farmers are impoverished. I believe 60% are willing to carry it home and unwilling to spend money on medical treatment. They are not willing to spend money. It means a delay in treatment and loss of rescue. It is meaningless to say such nonsense. The National Health and Medical Commission is an extraordinary existence, neither responsible for resource allocation nor responsible for taking responsibility."

"Retaliatory" return to hometown may trigger cross-infection.

Since the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, Chinese authorities have been discouraging ordinary people from going home for the New Year. There are concerns that so-called "retaliatory" returns to hometowns may occur during the Spring Festival, triggering cross-infection.

Wang Jian said: "Hundreds of millions of people are on the road. Many people are converging on trains, cars, ships and other means of transportation. This is a huge hotbed of infection. This provides a 'perfect' scenario. From point A to point B, the virus at point A will be brought to point B. A village may be dominated by left-behind elderly and children. Suddenly, many people come back from outside, which is another 'perfect' collection."

Wang Jian described rural areas as the most vulnerable link in the Chinese medical system.

Wang Jian said: "The two levels from the township to the village level are basically abolished. They are meaningless. There is a shortage of doctors and medicines. The county hospitals themselves do not have many medical resources. The real battlefield of Chinese medical care is not in cities, not in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, in the quiet countryside. There are no doctors, medicines, medical facilities, or medical resources. If there is a large-scale outbreak, they can only send patients to the city. The problem now is that China, from the central government to the local government, does not have a complete set of plans to save the rural medical system. Because it can't manage the cities."

British research predicts that China's new crown deaths will peak on the second day of the new year.

Airfinity, a London-based health data company, estimated at the end of last month that the number of deaths from the new crown in China may reach a peak of 25,000 around January 23, the second day of the first lunar month. Since there will be a large number of people moving to China during the Spring Festival, the epidemic may spread, and the number of new infections in a single day in China may reach a peak of about 3.7 million on January 13, 10 days earlier.

Chen Xiuxi, a National Taiwan University's School of Public Health professor who accepted an exclusive interview with Voice of America, believes that the assessment is not alarmist.

Chen Xiuxi said: "Will mainland China allow older people to have better isolation? Most of these predictions are based on insufficient public health defence measures. The biggest purpose of our early warning scientists is not to hope that this will come true but to I hope this will not come true. If I mentioned no anti-epidemic measures today, such an estimate is not alarmist because the virus is highly transmissible. For older people, it may be caused by other diseases. It became severe."

Chen Xiuxi said China has hastily transitioned from "dynamic clearing" to a complete relaxation of prevention and control. There is not enough time to prepare for the corresponding medical support.

Chen Xiuxi said: "Intensive treatment requires a period to prepare for patient care, ventilator preparation, and drug treatment. It may be a significant challenge if many severe patients are hospitalized. Although mainland China is currently developing antiviral drugs on its own, It will take time to get them into production. Having enough antiviral drugs to keep patients out of hospital would help moderate the demand on medical resources."

Some people believe the current epidemic is severe, and the Chinese authorities should not allow people to return to their hometowns for the New Year. Taiwanese scholar Chen Xiuxi believes that Taiwan's experience can be a reference for the other side.

Chen Xiuxi said: "The Chinese New Year family reunion year is a part of the happiness index. Based on humane care, this is also reasonable. I would advise our friends in Taiwan, if they come back from mainland China, to accept Strain) bivalent vaccine injection to protect yourself, and you can also take care of family members."

Expert: The impact of China's next wave of epidemics is unknown

Jiao Yahui, director of the Medical Reform Department of the National Health and Medical Commission of China, said in an interview with the official media CCTV that different cities in China are experiencing peaks of emergency and severe cases. It will become weaker to a certain extent. Chen Xiuxi could have been more optimistic. He said that as China relaxes travel and quarantine arrangements, overseas travellers will likely introduce mutant viruses, which will challenge the medical system.

China News Weekly reported on January 3 that three patients in Shanghai were confirmed to be infected with a new variant of Omicron XBB.1.5 with a more vital immune escape ability. Lu Mengji, a Chinese-German virologist and professor at the Institute of Virology at the University of Essen, said that China has not experienced the peak periods of Delta and Omicron BA.1 and BA.2, so the scale and impact of the next wave of local epidemics It is too early to draw conclusions about how powerful it will be. China needs better monitoring of the actual spread of the virus, and it is currently impossible to predict the future trend of the local epidemic.

Chinese experts briefed the WHO on the eve of the outbreak || official media played down the severity of the epidemic

2023-01-03T07:54:00.003-08:00

Chinese experts briefed the WHO on the eve of the outbreak official media played down the severity of the epidemic.

File photo - World Health Organization (WHO) logo.

On the eve of Chinese scientists briefing the World Health Organization on Tuesday on China's latest coronavirus outbreak, state-run media controlled by the Communist Party have gone to great lengths to downplay the severity of the infection surge. WHO hopes to have detailed discussions with China on the evolution of the new coronavirus, and looks forward to China's regular sharing of specific and real-time data on epidemiology, including more genetic sequencing data, data on the impact of the disease, including hospitalizations, ICU admissions and death toll etc.

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Separately, Bloomberg reported Tuesday that a family in Shanghai waited five days for a funeral vehicle to remove the remains of their loved ones parked at their home.

According to the report, Shanghai Longhua Funeral Home posted a public announcement over the weekend that it received more than 500 remains a day, about five times more than usual. And after waiting for hours, families were brought in and out of the room like they were put on a conveyor belt, and each family was only allowed five to ten minutes to hold a simple meeting in the crowded room filled with yellow body bags. The farewell ceremony completely lacked the dignity of a traditional Chinese funeral.

WHO officials held talks with Chinese officials on December 30 about the surge in coronavirus cases in China, urging China to share real-time data so other countries could respond effectively.

The World Health Organization technical advisory group concerned with the evolution of the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 held a meeting on Tuesday afternoon Geneva time, and the World Health Organization has invited Chinese scientists to provide detailed virus gene sequencing data.

A WHO spokesman said ahead of the meeting that a detailed discussion is expected to take place on the variant strains currently circulating in China and globally, and Chinese scientists will give a briefing.

The United States may continue to block Huawei will open another battlefield || the smartphone market Analysis

2022-12-30T03:39:00.005-08:00

Huawei will open another battlefield after the chip is exhausted and retreats from the smartphone market? Analysis: The United States may continue to block

Chips made by Huawei HiSilicon are displayed at the Huawei China Economic Partnership Conference in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, March 21, 2019.

WASHINGTON —

According to the latest report by the international research organization Counterpoint Research, the Chinese telecommunications giant (enterprise) Huawei’s inventory of high-end chips used to manufacture smartphones has been exhausted. With the chip supply being cut off by the United States, Huawei may be forced to withdraw from the global smartphone market. However, analysts say that Huawei has high resilience and has opened up new battlefields, deploying new businesses such as 5G cloud services and low-carbon energy. However, the part involving 5G network communications may still attract the attention of the United States and continue to suppress it.

Counterpoint Research, an international research organization, recently released a report saying that after checking and comparing sales data, it found that Huawei has run out of high-end chips designed by its IC factory HiSilicon.

Huawei's Kirin chip share is zero

According to the report, the share of HiSilicon-designed smartphone chips (Kirin series) in the global smartphone application market has slipped from 3% in the second quarter of last year to 0% in the third quarter of this year.

Restricted by the U.S. ban, Huawei’s advanced chip supply channels have been completely cut off, which means that high-end fabs including Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung cannot continue to manufacture for them. Under this premise, Huawei’s high-end 5G mobile phones use The current Kirin chip may have become extinct.

Since Huawei and HiSilicon were included in the U.S. trade blacklist in 2019, they have urgently hoarded chips for more than a year, but after more than two years, the chip inventory will eventually run out one day.

During Huawei's struggling period, the market had expected and speculated about the comeback of Kirin chips, including the news that Huawei had broken through in November and had applied for a patent for a lithography machine for chip manufacturing, which is expected to break through the bottleneck of the United States, or Huawei SMIC's "chip stacking" patent allows SMIC's 14-nanometer mid-range process to achieve the performance of 7-nanometer chips, or earlier, the Dutch merchant ASML (ASML) reported that it had changed its mind and wanted to sell lithography machines to China.

However, analysts say that the chip and high-tech game between the United States and China has been raised to the level of national strategy, and it is by no means a single company that can reverse it. Therefore, the probability of Huawei successfully breaking through the US blockade in the mobile phone business is not high.

Dale Gai, director of semiconductor research at Counterpoint Research’s Taiwan office, responded to an interview with Voice of America by email, saying, “Based on the current restrictions on the import of high-tech equipment for wafer manufacturing (below 14nm), SMIC’s In the next few years, it is unlikely to establish enough advanced process chips to supply to Huawei. Regarding the possibility of ASML selling lithography machines to Chinese semiconductor factories, although we cannot speak on behalf of the company's executives, we believe that in the short term, the The company will abide by the regulations of the Bureau of Industry and Security of the U.S. Department of Commerce (the ban on sales to China) to protect the rights and interests of its shareholders.” Li Chengdong, a Beijing-based electronics industry analyst and founder of Dolphin Think Tank, also said in an interview with Voice of America that it is difficult for Huawei to bypass US restrictions and find a stable source of chip supply. Moreover, Huawei is a brand that manufactures high-end, high-performance mobile phones. If it is forced to use SMIC's backward manufacturing process to build high-end mobile phones, it will actually damage the brand image.Li Chengdong said: "(Huawei) making a fake 5G mobile phone in order to sell mobile phones is actually unnecessary. In particular, more than 80% of Chinese consumers use 5G mobile phones, but if you push a 4G mobile phone, consumers It’s actually not acceptable.”

The gods fight the little ghosts and suffer?

Li Chengdong lamented that Huawei could have surpassed South Korea's Samsung to become the world's leading smartphone company, but a US-China technology war abruptly knocked Huawei down from the altar, and the mobile phone business shrank sharply as a result. He described this as the two powerhouses of China and the United States. "The gods fight, and the kid suffers."

However, he said that although China is several generations behind the United States in high-end chips, the result of the fierce competition between the United States and China will accelerate the process of localization of chips in China, especially the mid-range chips used in a large number of home appliances. He said that China is also a big exporter of chips, importing about US$400 billion worth of chips last year, but also exporting US$200 billion worth of chips.

He also said that he had talked with Huawei's executives, and that Huawei believes that it has a lot of experience in surviving the crisis and continuing to grow. Therefore, it is still optimistic about the prospects and is also actively deploying new businesses.

Li Chengdong said: "They (Huawei executives) believe that every time Huawei has a crisis, the combat effectiveness of the entire team will increase. For example, this time a major crisis is equivalent to accounting for 50% of the company's smartphone business. We can't say Zero, but at least it was seriously affected, which led to Huawei having to make new adjustments. Now I don’t have 5G chips to use, so we are looking for new breakthroughs. It will readjust the entire team structure and find new fronts , so it has laid out a lot of service industries, that is, cloud (service), that is, 5G technology is applied to different scenarios, such as smart cars and smart ports, to expand this new opportunity.”

After the defeat of the mobile phone business, Huawei has deployed new businesses such as 5G cloud

He said that the global mobile phone market is only 400 billion US dollars in size, but energy is a large market of 10 trillion US dollars. Therefore, Huawei may have struggled with mobile phones, but it is optimistic about the new opportunities brought by new businesses, especially in 5G network technology, Huawei has the most patents.

In the face of the US sanctions against Huawei, Li Chengdong said that China could have targeted the US mobile phone manufacturer Apple to offer corresponding anti-sanctions. However, the sanctions on foreign investment will actually damage China's economy and business environment, which is not conducive to China's long-term development. Therefore, He said that it may be difficult for China to adopt a head-to-head anti-sanctions strategy in the technological hegemony between the two major powers.

Although Huawei has been sanctioned by the United States for many years, Neil Shah, vice president of research at Counterpoint Research in Mumbai, India, said in an email interview with Voice of America that Huawei's patents and vertical integration in 5G technology make it A unique development niche, whether it is a mobile device or a web-side implementation.

Neil Shah said: "Huawei has many 5G patents and is also investing heavily in 6G. Cellular IP is one of the key technologies required for the success of the future networking ecosystem, from mobile phone applications to the Internet of Things, and even Self-driving cars. This means that even if Huawei is excluded from 5G devices or 5G network business in some major markets, it still has influence on mobile communication protocols, which can be licensed to other manufacturers, such as Qualcomm (Qualcomm) ), Ericsson and Nokia to build a sizeable business."

Huawei and Nokia issued a written statement on December 23 announcing that the patent license agreement between the two parties that expires this year will be renewed. A few weeks ago, Huawei also issued a written statement announcing that it had signed a global patent cross-licensing agreement with OPPO Guangdong Mobile Communications Co., Ltd., which covers basic patents for cellular communication standards including 5G standards.

These agreements highlight that Huawei's intellectual property still has a certain status in the global network, which cannot be stripped away by US sanctions.

U.S. will continue to block Huawei's 5G network expansion

However, Li Chengdong believes that network communication is still an area of concern for the United States, so it is impossible for the United States to give up its suppression of Huawei on this battlefield.

The "5G clean network initiative (5G clean network)" proposed by the former US President Trump's administration is to prevent Huawei's information security penetration, calling on all countries to exclude Huawei's participation in the construction of 5G networks. Even with the backing of China, Huawei has managed to penetrate the markets of many other Third World countries, even though its markets in Western countries have been hit hard.

In this regard, Su Yihao, an assistant professor of the Department of Political Science at National Taiwan University in Taipei, said in an interview with Voice of America that Huawei is indeed a resilient company with a lot of experience in quickly recovering from failure. He said that as long as Huawei avoids the US radar, there are still ways to enter the 5G industry.

Su Yihao said: "Although Huawei is gradually losing ground in the European market, it still has a way to win the favor of local governments in some third world (countries)... The United States is actually focusing on neighboring Central and South America, There are countries in Europe, and Asia. If Huawei is purely from a commercial perspective, it can actually enter some 5G industries and operate in some markets that the United States does not value.”

Su Yihao said that Huawei is a "champion enterprise" strongly supported by China, so it has become the target of US sanctions, which has a warning effect. That is, the US uses sanctions on Huawei to warn other Chinese companies. If it constitutes an information security risk or unfair commercial competition, it may be locked by the United States.

The United States seems to have defeated Huawei's mobile phone business. Will it loosen its siege on Huawei in the future? Su Yihao said that it depends on whether Huawei will still threaten the geopolitical interests of the United States in the future.

Su Yihao said: "The next step is to see if Huawei has any new moves, that is, whether it wants to go to the European or Central American market. If Huawei continues to have such a situation, then I think the United States will continue to have so-called A counterattack. However, if Huawei evaluates it by itself, it does not really want to have another foot in the Sino-US cold war. It may just know what to do and put its important business on the side that has more commercial interests. , and no longer intervene in a geopolitics of Cold War strategy.”

The United States will require Chinese passengers || the measure is appropriate but the effect may be limited

2022-12-29T08:43:00.002-08:00

The United States will require Chinese passengers to provide a negative certificate for the new crown test Expert: the measure is appropriate but the effect may be limited

CDC

WASHINGTON —

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Wednesday (December 28) that the U.S. will require all children aged two and two entering the U.S. from China (including Hong Kong and Macau) to Passengers over the age of 10 should present a negative COVID-19 test certificate within 48 hours before boarding the plane. This requirement will also apply to passengers departing from China and arriving in the United States via a third country. Public health experts believe the U.S. move is appropriate given the limited case data provided by China, but there are also concerns that the new rules may have little real effect.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated in a press release on Wednesday that in view of the lack of sufficient and transparent epidemiological and virus genome sequencing data in China, the CDC announced this measure to slow down the spread of the virus in the United States during the surge in cases of infection in China. spread.

The United States is concerned about the rapid spread of the new coronavirus in China, federal health officials said on Wednesday, raising the possibility of new variants emerging. Officials say China has provided limited monitoring data on the surge and has rejected U.S. offers to provide vaccines. It follows restrictions on travelers from China in countries including Japan and Malaysia.

At present, the number of people infected with the new crown in China has exploded, and large-scale and widespread infections have appeared in many parts of the country. However, China's National Health Commission announced on December 25 that it would no longer release daily epidemic information. The agency also stated that from January 8th, inbound passengers only need to provide a negative nucleic acid result 48 hours before departure, and no longer require inbound passengers to be quarantined.

Professor of Georgetown University Law School, World Health Organization Public Health Law and Larry Gostin, director of the Human Rights Coordinating Center, believes that the entry control measures adopted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are appropriate and should be implemented immediately.

"The current number of new crown cases in China is exploding, so the response of the United States is reasonable," he told Voice of America, "I think the CDC should further require passengers to be tested 24 hours before leaving China, and infants under two years old should be tested. Young children should also be tested. More importantly, CDC should implement this testing requirement immediately, not wait until January 5th."

Chen Xi, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health, also believes that the response of the United States is reasonable, but how to implement this measure, especially for passengers entering from third countries, will be challenging.

"We don't want this to contribute to any anti-Asian racism and xenophobia, so it has to be implemented with great care," he told VOA. "The purpose of this measure is to ensure the safety of travelers and residents at the destination."

some public health experts believe that the new measures may not have a substantial effect.

"I think such measures will only have a marginal effect, because the new crown is also very popular in the United States at the moment," said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior researcher at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. "I think it's better to recommend that people take a test after traveling to China, rather than make it mandatory," Yin said.

On Monday, China's National Health and Medical Commission announced that starting from January 8, it will no longer require inbound passengers to be quarantined and will cancel nucleic acid testing and centralized quarantine for all staff after entry.

This marks an important step for China to loosen its borders. As soon as the news came out, Chinese citizens who hadn't been abroad for three years flocked to the travel agency network and started booking future trips abroad.

However, due to the current explosive growth of the number of new crown infections in China, in addition to the United States, some countries have immediately announced quarantine regulations for Chinese tourists.

Japan said on Tuesday that it will implement emergency measures to strengthen entry epidemic prevention from midnight on December 30. Entry testing will be implemented for all personnel who have traveled to Japan from China and have been to China within seven days, and those who are positive will need to be quarantined for seven days.

The South Korean government has included China on the list of "quarantine key countries" on December 16, and will strengthen the new crown screening of Chinese immigrants. Likewise, India and Malaysia have also announced enhanced inspections for travelers from China.

At the same time, there are also countries that oppose the imposition of special travel requirements for Chinese citizens. Singapore Airlines will resume direct passenger flights between Singapore and Beijing, China this Friday. It was the airline's restart of passenger service to Beijing after a nearly three-year hiatus.

Putin described the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as war

2022-12-23T10:34:00.007-08:00

Putin described the conflict between Russia and Ukraine as "war" for the first time, and was sued by opposition politicians on suspicion of breaking the law

FILE PHOTO - Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at a conference in Moscow.

WASHINGTON —

A politician in St. Petersburg, Russia, has asked prosecutors to investigate President Vladimir Putin's "illegal" use of the word "war" to describe the conflict with Ukraine, accusing Putin of directly violating his own laws.

Since Putin invaded Ukraine in February this year, he has been using "special military operations" to describe the Russian military's aggression in Ukraine. In order to crack down on and suppress anti-war voices, Putin formulated and signed a law in March this year that would impose heavy fines and long prison sentences for the spread of "deliberate false information" about the Russian armed forces, especially when someone uses " When the term "war" is used to describe the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, it risks being sued.

But Putin himself violated the law he created and signed when he spoke to reporters on Thursday (December 22), directly calling the conflict in Ukraine a "war."

"Our goal is not to turn the flywheel of a military conflict, but on the contrary, to end this war," Putin said.

According to reports from Reuters and CNN, Nikita Yuferev, an opposition member of the St. Petersburg city council, formally filed a legal complaint against Putin's latest remarks, asking prosecutors to investigate Putin's violations. remarks. He said his legal challenge to Putin was likely to go nowhere, but decided to sue anyway to expose the "absurdity" of the system.

"It's very important to me that I do this to attract contradictions and injustices to these laws that he adopted and signed that he himself did not abide by," Yuferov told Reuters.

"I think the more we talk about it, the more people will question his integrity and his infallibility (the myth), and the less support he will have."

Yuferov took a vehemently opposed stance on the Ukraine war. He has fled Russia fearing reprisals from the Putin government. By publishing an open letter, Yuferov asked the Russian Attorney General and the Minister of the Interior to "hold (Putin) accountable for disseminating false information about the actions of the Russian army in accordance with the law."

In an interview with Reuters, Yuferov specifically asked not to reveal his current location. He said that many of Putin's opponents have been severely cracked down and punished by the authorities for publicly calling the war a war.

Opposition politician IIya Yashin was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison earlier this month for spreading "false information" about the army. Another opposition member of the local council, Alexei Gorinov, was sentenced to seven years in prison by a Russian court in July this year for condemning Russia's military operations in Ukraine.

Yuferov said that in fact, high-level officials of the Putin administration used the word "war" illegally in the past, and he also reminded the authorities of this in the past. Those who used the word "war" illegally included Seigei Kiriyenko, First Deputy Chief of the Russian President's Office, and Sergey Mironov, head of the pro-Kremlin Just Russia party.

Yuferov said Russian police told him they had investigated his allegations against Kiriyenko, but found nothing wrong with his words or deeds. The police also refused to investigate Mironov's case.

Yuferov told Reuters that he had received hundreds of hate messages shortly after publishing his open letter on Putin's illegal remarks. But he believes that the vast majority of Russians know what is happening in Ukraine.

"War is a scary word in Russian society. Everyone's grandparents lived through World War II, and everyone remembers the saying 'Anything but never war'," Yuferov said.

World Bank slashes China's economic growth forecast for this year and next

2022-12-20T19:09:00.005-08:00

World Bank slashes China's economic growth forecast for this year and next.

Shanghai's Lujiazui financial district has been empty due to the outbreak. (December 19, 2022)

WASHINGTON —

In a report published on Tuesday (December 20), the World Bank significantly lowered its forecast for China's economic growth this year and next. The report said that the main factors dragging down the Chinese economy were the three-year lockdown measures of the new crown epidemic and the sluggish real estate industry.

According to the latest forecast of the World Bank, China's economic growth this year is expected to be only 2.7%, which is much lower than the 4.3% forecast made by the World Bank in June this year. The World Bank's forecast for China's economic growth next year has also been lowered from 8.1% to 4.3%.

The annual economic growth target set by the Chinese government at the beginning of 2022 is 5.5%. However, due to the continuation of the epidemic prevention and control measures and the deterioration of economic conditions, senior Chinese government officials have said that the economic growth target of 5.5% has been impossible to achieve. The World Bank expects China's economic growth this year and next to be far below the target of 5.5%.

"Economic activity in China continues to ebb and flow with the outbreak, and slower growth has contributed to an uneven recovery (locally)," the World Bank said in a report.

"As the economy reopens, real GDP growth is expected to reach 2.7 percent this year and recover to 4.3 percent in 2023," the report said.

In the past three years, under the extreme epidemic prevention and control measures of "dynamic zeroing", people's livelihoods and economy have suffered serious impacts and disturbances, which not only troubled investors but also caused public dissatisfaction. Under the dual pressure of public protests and demonstrations and a sharp economic downturn, the authorities have begun to loosen extreme containment measures. However, the control measures that still exist, and the surge in the epidemic due to the loosening of containment measures continue to affect consumption and business activities

Residents of Beijing line up for nucleic acid testing. (November 24, 2022)

.In September this year, the World Bank lowered its forecast for China's economic growth this year and next. China's economy was forecast to grow 2.8 percent this year and 4.5 percent next year.

"China's growth prospects are constrained by significant risks arising from uncertainty about the outbreak, policy changes in response to the outbreak, and changes in household and business behavior," the World Bank report said.

Mara Warwick, World Bank country director for China, Mongolia and South Korea, said China's "continued adaptation" of its anti-epidemic policies was critical to its economic recovery and public health.

"Accelerating efforts on public health preparedness, including efforts to expand vaccination, especially among high-risk groups, may allow for a safer and less disruptive reopening," Huamaya said.

Beijing residents walk past a mobile vaccination site for the new coronavirus vaccine. (October 26, 2022)

The World Bank pointed out that China's economy is also challenged by other risks unrelated to the epidemic, including uncertainty about the development of the global economy, the impact of climate change, and "sustained pressure" on the real estate market due to Beijing's crackdown on excessive lending in the real estate industry. .

Chinese leaders said last week they would speed up policy adjustments to support a slowing economy as a slowing global economy hurts exports and to cushion the impact of the coronavirus on businesses and consumers.

"As growth expectations remain below actual potential and the global environment deteriorates, sustained macroeconomic support is needed," said Elitza Mileva, World Bank chief economist for China.

Yuwen Vision || Jiang Zemin's Legacy and Whether His Death Will Be an Unstable Factor for the CCP

2022-12-19T00:35:00.002-08:00

Yuwen Vision Jiang Zemin's Legacy and Whether His Death Will Be an Unstable Factor for the CCP

On November 28, 2002, a mother in Beijing pushed her baby past a billboard promoting the "Three Represents" ideology. The "Three Represents" thought is considered to be an important theoretical contribution of Jiang Zemin.

WASHINGTON —

Editor's Note: This is an opinion piece written by Deng Yuwen for Voice of America. This guest commentary does not reflect the views of Voice of America. Reprinters please indicate that they are from Voice of America or VOA.

China's political culture emphasizes finality, and politicians especially value the evaluation of themselves by posthumous organizations. However, if we understand the coffin conclusion as judging the merits, demerits and influence of a political figure before and after his death from a historical perspective, it will be very different from the official evaluation—the latter is generally a compliment—or even completely reversed. come over.

Jiang Zemin, the former general secretary of the Communist Party of China who just passed away, received very high praise from the Chinese authorities, calling him a great Marxist, comparable to Deng Xiaoping. Leaving aside Xi Jinping’s intention behind elevating Jiang so much, the question is, even from the party’s point of view, whether Jiang is qualified to receive such a high evaluation, whether his political legacy left behind by the CCP has promoted historical progress, or whether he wants to contribute to China’s progress. Quite responsible for today's status quo?

File photo: A publicity board for various leaders of the Communist Party of China erected on the streets of Lhasa. (June 1, 2021)

Among the five generations of CCP leaders from Mao to Xi, Jiang can be regarded as a turning point figure. Mao Deng was a professional revolutionist. Starting with Jiang, the leaders of the CCP became technocrats. By technocrats, I mean the professional background and professional ability of officials. He and Hu Jintao after him were both technocrats. Although Xi did not have a technical background and once again emphasized the revolutionization of leading cadres, technocrats still dominate the leadership of the CCP. The turning point is also reflected in the peaceful transfer of power by the replacement of the top leader, and the establishment of a set of procedures and norms for the transfer.

Jiang came to power under the specific circumstances after the June 4th student movement was suppressed. This made the world, including himself, think that he would be a transitional leader, temporarily taking care of the position of general secretary for the veterans, so that he had to be extra careful in handling affairs and administration. In his later words, "I feel like I am facing an abyss and walking on thin ice." . It’s just that this “transition” lasted 13 years. If you add that he also served as the chairman of the Military Commission for three years after retiring from the position of general secretary, he was responsible for supervising the country and actually ruled China for 16 years. Jiang’s period can be divided into two stages. In the five years before 1994, although Jiang was the general secretary, he was actually in the position of a daughter-in-law and was guarded by the elders; after 1994, along with Deng, Chen and other elders, As he got older, his health gradually deteriorated or he died, and he was also cultivating his own power at the top. He basically got rid of the constraints of the elders and ushered in the "Jiang Era" in the sense of governance.

On October 19, 1992, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and CPC General Secretary Jiang Zemin met with members of the Central Committee

In Jiang’s more than ten years in power, in the words of former Citibank director, Jiang biographer, and American Kuhn, he transformed China from a country “turbulent by the Tiananmen incident into a major engine of world economic development and commercial and cultural center, and become a vibrant and open country". Jiang carried out economic and state-owned enterprise reforms, established a preliminary market economy in China, joined the WTO, and locked China on the road to opening up; allowed capitalists to join the party, put forward the "Three Represents" thought, and promoted the certainty of democracy within the party. development and the expansion of social freedom. Of course, these were not mainly done by Jiang alone, but as the top leader of the CCP at that time, he still played a key role in it.

Specifically, Jiang left the following political legacy to the CCP and China:

First, the radical reform of state-owned enterprises during Jiang’s period, especially “grasp the large and let go of the small”, laid the foundation and prepared conditions for the establishment of a market economy in China; He eliminated interference to join the WTO, allowing China to move towards comprehensive economic opening and globalization, and to integrate with the world economic system. Before 1989, China's economic reform and economic opening were only in the preliminary stage. After 1992, the market economy system was introduced, and reform and opening up entered a new stage. The rapid development of China's economy came after this.

However, the reform and opening up during this period also created a lot of problems, mainly the shock therapy reform of state-owned enterprises, which bought out workers' seniority and drove them out of the factory. Although the overall economic efficiency was improved, it also caused inflation and severe unemployment. The state-intervened market economy with a socialist tail can only be called a semi-market economy at best, causing social polarization and power as a tool for wealth creation.

Second, Jiang's greatest contribution to the CCP is also the greatest political legacy he left to the party. His "Three Represents" thought reformed and broadened the class foundation of the CCP, making the workers and peasants proletarians that the CCP insisted on since the founding of the party. The class parties became the de facto parties of the whole people, of the elite and of the propertied classes. Jiang has the idea of transforming the CCP from a revolutionary party to a ruling party in his hands, but this requires reforming the party's theoretical and class foundations. The so-called reform, in the final analysis, is to make the private economy justifiable and become a second force that keeps pace with the state-owned economy. If the problem of capitalists joining the party is not solved theoretically, it will turn this originally supportive force of the party into an alien force, which is not conducive to stabilizing the CCP. rule.

Although the "Three Represents" thought expanded the political foundation of the CCP and marked the transformation of the CCP from a party of the proletariat to an elite party, Jiang failed to achieve the goal of transforming the CCP from a revolutionary party to a ruling party. The reason is that to become the ruling party, one must not only give up the thinking of the revolutionary party, but also give up the ruling method and interests of the revolutionary party, which cannot be achieved with Jiang's authority. In addition, the party no longer represents the interests of workers and peasants in theory, which further marginalizes the political status of workers and peasants, who account for the majority of the population.

Third, a difficult problem for the autocratic regime is the peaceful transfer of supreme power. Since there is no institutionalized way for the transfer of power, the transfer process is likely to be full of conspiracy, violence and even murder. Deng failed to solve this problem. The peaceful transfer of power by the top leader of the CCP was realized by Jiang, and a set of procedures and mechanisms were established for this purpose. This is another contribution he made to the CCP.

File photo: Former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin attends the 18th Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on November 8, 2012.

However, while Jiang closed the door to life tenure for the CCP, he also opened a window for the elderly to intervene in politics. He did not hand over the most important post of Chairman of the Military Commission to Hu as scheduled. At this point, he is not even as good as Deng. To some extent, the old people in Deng's era had no choice but to intervene in politics. Because the Cultural Revolution destroyed the CCP's cadre system, at the beginning of the reform, there was a shortage of cadres, and a large number of veteran cadres who had been sidelined during the Cultural Revolution were needed to come out to work. However, after many years of his daughter-in-law becoming a mother-in-law, Jiang tasted what it was like to be a mother-in-law. He did not want to decentralize all powers. He inherited the tradition of old people meddling in politics and made it worse in the post-Deng era. Finally, he promoted Xi to the position of general secretary. , judging from today, this is his biggest failure.

Fourth, Jiang promoted the factional era in Chinese politics, which would have had the opportunity to lead the CCP toward inner-party democracy. Factions in the party existed during the Mao-Deng period, but because of their personal authority, they actually became the co-owners of all factions. Without the authority of these two, Jiang could only recognize the interests of different factions and establish the rules of the game for factional politics.

In China, the party is too powerful, and it is too difficult to initiate democracy from the society, and it is easy to be strangled by the party. If there are factions with different forces in the party, they compete with each other, and it is possible to gradually develop into a formal set of internal party competition. Rules thus lead to democracy. In Jiang's later period, theorists advocated inner-party democracy, and inner-party democracy would lead to social democracy, and Jiang also accepted this view. However, the imbalance of factional politics, Jiang’s faction is too strong, other factions are too weak, and the interest groups that have emerged in the reform, especially the red families in the party have not squeezed out the interests of the reform, and they do not want to damage their own interests by democratization too quickly, and The centralized system of the party itself emphasizes the uniqueness of the highest power, which makes the practice of inner-party democracy short-lived.

Fifth, although Jiang regarded banning the military from doing business as one of his three major political achievements during his term of office, in fact the CCP’s corruption broke out in Jiang’s period, and doing business for all people is actually corruption for all people, especially the privatization of state-owned enterprises created a feast of corruption, which led to Xi Later, he was able to successfully use anti-corruption to establish his totalitarian rule. In addition, Jiang is equally relentless in suppressing grassroots protests, non-government political dissident forces, religious freedom, and rights protection actions that threaten the CCP's rule. A representative example of this is his suppression of Falun Gong.

After Jiang Zemin passed away, Chinese people laid flowers outside his hometown in Yangzhou, Jiangsu. (December 1, 2022)

Jiang's above-mentioned political legacy is intertwined with good and bad, and it is difficult to completely separate it. This makes people's evaluation of him controversial. Today, his death arouses public memory, of course, because the darkness of Xi’s regime is unbearable, so that any era of CCP leaders before Xi, except perhaps Mao, is worth remembering in people’s memory. Many political opponents of Xi hope that Jiang's death will trigger a massive rebellion against the current regime in China at a sensitive moment when China's "white paper movement" is emerging, just as Zhou Enlai's death triggered the April 5th Movement and Hu Yaobang's death It is the same as triggering June 4th. However, if you observe calmly, there is a high probability that this expectation will fail.

First of all, unlike Zhou and Hu's sudden death, Jiang passed away at the age of 96. There have been many reports of his critical illness before, and the society has expected this; secondly, the evaluation of Jiang by the authorities cannot be higher. Gao, appeased the faction of Jiang suppressed by Xi, so that they could not express their dissatisfaction; Thirdly, Jiang did not enjoy nearly unanimous favor with the living people of Zhou and Hu when he was alive. Again, Jiang has long since faded out of the public eye. Many of the young people in China protesting today have never heard of his name and cannot establish an emotional identity with him. A corresponding plan was made for social unrest. In view of this, even if someone wants to use Jiang's death to fuel this wave of social protests, it will be difficult for most people to respond and follow.

Among the party's political elders, Jiang's symbolism is the strongest. In this regard, his death marks the complete end of China's old-fashioned political tradition in Xi's era, and therefore, the complete fading of his political influence can be expected.

Huangpu Jiangfeng || The end of China's zero-zero policy-historical regression or social awakening?

2022-12-19T00:15:00.004-08:00

Huangpu Jiangfeng The end of China's zero-zero policy-historical regression or social awakening?

Students at Tsinghua University in Beijing hold blank papers to protest against the strict epidemic prevention policy, mourning at least 10 victims who died in a fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang a few days ago (November 27, 2022)

Editor's note: This is an opinion piece written by Jiang Feng for Voice of America. This guest commentary does not reflect the views of Voice of America. Reprinters please indicate that they are from Voice of America or VOA.

Since the promulgation of the "Twenty Articles" on November 10, the social situation in China seems to have fallen into an unprecedented chaos. The situation is changing every day, as if entering a strange state of anarchy, just like the early days of the Cultural Revolution. situation. In particular, just a few days after the fire in Urumqi on November 24, fierce protests swept across the country, forming a self-rescue movement of the people on an unprecedented scale since 1949.

Moreover, this highly spontaneous struggle and rapid development of the situation cannot be mobilized by any organization or so-called external forces, and it is beyond the rigid understanding of traditional bureaucracy and media bureaucracy, and is heading towards a near-revolutionary direction. evolve. How to assess the development of this movement, whether it will catch up with the large-scale protests in Iran in the past few months, or recreate the 2011 Jasmine Revolution, or return to the traditional track of Chinese politics, such as the mass protests held by Hong Kong people in 2019. The demonstrations and subsequent brutal suppression, or earlier, going back to the 7,000-person meeting in 1962, awakening the error-correction mechanism within the CCP?

If we only look at it from the perspective of the policy of dynamic zeroing, this is the direction of public dissatisfaction and the main source of the current chaos. Just a week ago, before the opening of the World Cup in Qatar, China was still in chaos after the release of the "Twenty Points". On the one hand, it insists on dynamic clearing, while on the other hand it makes slight adjustments. The contradictory signals of "necessary and necessary" issued by the "Twenty Points" are like the revival of "grasping revolution and promoting production" in the late period of the Cultural Revolution. While the government and the people are at a loss, it also leads to the brewing of a political crisis.

Such a situation is not only like the end of 1961, when the "three-year famine" was coming to an end, but also like the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. In the six months after the "516" notice was released, Mao Zedong certainly gained unparalleled absolute authority, but the subversion of the bureaucratic system under the slogans of "kicking out the party committee for revolution" and "smashing the public prosecutor's law" also brought Chinese society into unprecedented chaos. . After the Shanghai "General Department of Industry" seized power, Zhou Enlai presided over a meeting of the Politburo and formulated the so-called "Six Public Security Articles" in accordance with Mao Zedong's "several articles" instruction. It was not officially abolished until 1979 in the form of a temporary criminal law throughout the Cultural Revolution. In contrast, the timing and purpose of the "Twenty Points" must be said to reflect, to some extent, China's current weird political situation of "kicking out the State Council to make zero efforts".

On November 10, the Politburo Standing Committee meeting chaired by Xi Jinping and composed of all favorites elected at the just-concluded 20th National Congress discussed and approved the so-called 20 Articles, and the next day the State Council, where the premier was absent, promulgated them. Although compared with the "Nine Prohibitions" promulgated by the State Council for a long time but difficult to implement, the 20 Articles have only been used and only made minor technical adjustments, but they have left local governments that have always adhered to zeroing as the only standard before. The transition zone between retreat and cover, persistence and lying down, zeroing out and coexistence is at a loss.

This, in fact, was also the situation before the 7,000-member meeting was held from the end of 1961 to the beginning of 1962. Also at the central meeting held on November 10, in the face of Deng Xiaoping’s 1962 annual grain requisition target, all secretaries of the Central Bureau fell silent. Mao Zedong was forced to retreat to the second line. Of course, this struggle eventually ignited the Cultural Revolution four years later.

For the new members of the Politburo Standing Committee who were born in the Red Guards, this period of history may be the most familiar, so it is called "hard exploration." On the contrary, for most Chinese people, either immersed in the afterglow of globalization or trapped in the torment of the epidemic, including those intellectuals who are obsessed with the suffering of the Cultural Revolution, they may have forgotten the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution after 1949. The most critical turning point before the outbreak was a brief but incomplete correction in the history of the CCP. When China's political system is going further and further down the road of restoration, the system and reality are repeating the disaster of the three-year famine from 1959 to 1961, and even the deterioration of Sino-US relations during the epidemic is similar to the 22 The openness of conflicts between the Soviet Union and China, and how to prevent the second meeting of 7,000 people after the end of the three-year epidemic may become the most worrying issues for the Chinese leadership before the 20th National Congress.

Sixty years ago, on the afternoon of January 27, 1962, at the beginning of the conference, Liu Shaoqi threw away his speech script and told the truth with what Bo Yibo later called "fearless courage", that is, he told the bad economic situation and the "Three Divide natural disasters into seven parts of man-made disasters", talk about "three to seven", openly deny Mao Zedong's famous "relationship between one finger and nine fingers", and made a "passionate, vivid and powerful" political mobilization for the party elite at that time , it is possible to lead the adjustment of the CCP’s policy after the meeting, and walk out of the wrong political line that led to the three-year famine.

Of course, this meeting of 7,000 people was unprecedented in the history of the CCP, but it did not completely win, which laid the groundwork for the ten-year civil turmoil of the Cultural Revolution. Later, only the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee at the end of 1978 could be regarded as partially inheriting the model of the 7,000-person conference, and truly completed the liquidation of ideas and routes, helping the century-old CCP to turn in time and return to the correct path welcomed by the people. Also because of the existence of this historical rationality, many old Chinese politicians, the bourgeoisie, the new middle class, and intellectuals who were beneficiaries of the reform and opening up, still had illusions until the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, thinking that the error correction within the CCP The mechanism and power have not been lost, and it is still possible to stand up and turn things around at the last moment, or after the 20th National Congress or after the 20th National Congress.

Looking back now, this is of course an illusion, a very naive illusion, ignorant of the fundamental changes that have taken place in China's political ecology and institutions in the past ten years. An authoritarian secular party has approached A totalitarian system without any internal challenge.

Similarly, it now appears that the dramatic scene at the 20th Congress and the final all-in-one team are not only the inevitable result of this transformation, but also to prevent the emergence of the second or new 7,000-member congress, and to prevent any possibility within the party. The power of the Communist Party of China has used the review of the three-year epidemic situation as an excuse to promote a political turnaround. Perhaps this is the original intention of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China repeatedly emphasizing "two establishments and two maintenances" around the 20th National Congress. It is a historical fear in the name of political security, and it is also a political fear.

In this sense, although China’s dynamic zero-clearing policy has gone bankrupt after the closure of Shanghai, and the public’s psychology has already entered the post-epidemic era, it is conceivable that there will be no new 7,000-person meeting in 2023, and The dynamic clearing policy will not automatically withdraw from the stage of history. Although the authorities may give up or change the specific measures of dynamic clearing, due to the closed-door mode of "foreign defense import, internal defense rebound", the authorities will regard the core of the system of dynamic clearing as an important legacy of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. perpetuate.

For the public, this kind of political expectation is hopeless, which may be the root cause of the wave of protests that have erupted across the country in the past few days. For the citizens of Shanghai, the grievances and anger accumulated in the first half of the closure of the city have not been vented, but the personnel layout of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China has sealed the people's dissatisfaction like a seal. For the majority of young students, three years of campus control and online classes have long been enough, and they have been traumatized psychologically and cerebrally. For ordinary residents or the middle class in big cities, the arbitrary violence from grassroots control in the final stage of the three-year epidemic has seriously damaged their dignity. Amid the political chaos and despair following the "Twenty Articles," a great social awakening is taking shape.

Three weeks after the promulgation of the "Twenty Articles", Chinese society reached a critical point. It was at this critical point that a fire in Urumqi awakened the historical relationship between Xinjiang and Shanghai, the concentration camps in Xinjiang and the shelters in various places, Foxconn's workers and the campus, and so on. The next action: demand to unblock, walk out of the community, tear down the fence, mourn the dead, and it spread like a fire. A national protest movement unprecedented since 1949 has emerged.

China quickly loosens extreme anti-epidemic measures || but young people still worry about jobs and livelihoods

2022-12-18T23:58:00.003-08:00

China quickly loosens extreme anti-epidemic measures, but young people still worry about jobs and livelihoods

On August 9, 2022, Beijing citizens hurried to take the subway to work. In the summer of 2022, more than 11 million college students across China will graduate and enter the job market. The strict new crown control measures have made the production department of the factory boom, and it is difficult for college students to find jobs.

Driven by strong public grievances and public opinion, the Chinese government finally issued the "New Ten Articles" epidemic prevention regulations aimed at loosening the extreme epidemic prevention measures of "dynamic clearing". Not only does it make it difficult for many young people to find jobs, but college graduates also suffer setbacks in finding jobs.

The New York Times quoted a 21-year-old female college student surnamed Liu in Beijing as saying that anyone who has lived in China during the epidemic will find the country's future increasingly uncertain.

For many Chinese people, the extreme epidemic prevention and control measures that lasted for nearly three years were absolutely suffocating. They not only suffocated life, but also suffocated production and the economy, resulting in a sharp shrinkage of employment opportunities and an extremely severe employment situation. A female college student surnamed Liu will graduate next year, majoring in tourism management. Ms. Liu told the New York Times that she has submitted more than 80 job applications so far, but has not received a single job offer.

Ms. Liu said that many young people listen to the Chinese Communist Party and do what the Party tells them to do, but they find that the reality disappoints them. "What we're seeing is people are trying to get by."

The extreme containment measures of the Beijing authorities "dynamically cleared" have caused public dissatisfaction in recent weeks. Not only did residents of major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai take to the streets very rarely to protest the containment measures, but many people across the country, including Tsinghua University, Students from the university also held blank papers and staged silent protests, creating a new way of protest known as the "blank paper movement". Protesters in Shanghai even chanted slogans such as "Xi Jinping step down" and "Communist Party step down".

These large-scale protests and demonstrations, which have occurred for the first time since Chinese President Xi Jinping came to power, or even the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, may have made the Chinese authorities realize that blindly implementing extreme blockades regardless of people's livelihood and economic costs not only severely damages the economy, but also Therefore, a sharp deterioration in the employment situation will constitute the greatest threat to social stability.

Perhaps because of the fear that the demonstrations and protests may soon become a prairie fire, the Chinese authorities this week without any warning, planning or preparation, suddenly introduced the "New Ten Articles" epidemic prevention regulations, greatly relaxing the epidemic prevention and control Measures to open up the public from staying at home, without providing a negative nucleic acid test certificate or health code, they can enter and exit public places, go to work, go to school, go shopping, and even travel by plane and high-speed rail and visit relatives and friends.

The problem is that three days of freezing is not a one-day cold, and the economy and job market, which have been hit hard by extreme lockdown measures, cannot recover immediately and return to normal as the lockdown measures are loosened. China's job market is so overcrowded that it is no longer possible to provide today's young people and college graduates with the jobs their parents enjoyed during the boom years.

Unemployment among young people in China remains near record highs, while another 11.6 million new university graduates will join the job search next year. Not only are these young people under great employment pressure, but their parents also feel the pressure.

“Students want to protest because we feel our situation is getting worse,” said a female college student in Beijing who gave her surname as Liu, who was interviewed by The New York Times.

China's current younger generation grew up in a relatively prosperous economic environment. Their parents caught up with the great opportunity of China's booming economy, with stable employment, rising family income and better quality of life. These young people have been told from the first day of school, and they themselves believe, that as long as they work hard, the future will be better.

"If you get a good education, you will definitely get a high-paying job. This is a promise. But this promise can no longer be fulfilled," said the Mercator China Institute, the largest think tank in Germany and Europe specializing in China issues. chief economist Max Zenglein told The New York Times.

"Being the first generation of people to be disappointed by this can cause a lot of psychological pressure," Zeng Lian said.

Xi Jinping once said that "the country will only be good if the young people are good". He also said that young people in China are full of optimism and entrepreneurial spirit. But empty talk stands in stark contrast to reality. In July of this year, the unemployment rate of young people aged 16 to 24 in China was close to 20%, which is also a new high since China began publishing this data in 2018. Youth unemployment has fallen slightly from its peak of late, but is still three times the national average in China.

Yuwen Vision || Xi Jinping's will to power is defeated by the economy

2022-12-18T23:49:00.005-08:00

Yuwen Vision Xi Jinping's will to power is defeated by the economy

People in Beijing took to the streets and held up white papers to protest the authorities' strict epidemic prevention and control measures. (November 27, 2022)

The degree of liberalization of China's epidemic prevention and control has exceeded expectations. Many people credit the "blank paper movement" with "credit". One of the immediate appeals of the movement is to abandon zeroing and loosen control. During the talks with European Council President Michel, Xi Jinping also admitted that young people took to the streets to protest because of their frustration in the three-year epidemic, which is actually tantamount to admitting the failure of eradicating the epidemic. In view of the strict control over society in Xi's era, the sudden and large-scale outbreak of the "white paper movement" without warning will have a strong psychological impact on Xi. This may directly cause the authorities to abandon the zero-clearing policy in response to public opinion.

However, pressure from the economy may be a deeper and more critical factor. Let's just say, if China's economy is doing well, maintaining robust growth like India's or Vietnam's, will Xi back down from the demands of the protest movement? It is estimated that it will be difficult.

More than a month ago, I predicted that if the Chinese economy performed well in the fourth quarter, it is likely that the epidemic control will be released after the two sessions next year; It is only possible to let go of the moon. The reason I make this judgment is that if the economic situation is good, then in Xi’s view, his set of clearing methods is correct, and can achieve both epidemic prevention and economic development, just like what he did during the Delta virus stage . In the first stage of the fight against the epidemic, the containment measures adopted by China not only controlled the epidemic, but at the same time the economy recovered rapidly. He was considered a so-called "top student" in the international fight against the epidemic. It was this perception that made him reluctant to give up Clearing, at least one of the reasons. However, if the economic situation deteriorates, it means that his idea of having both the fish and the bear's paw cannot be realized, and he is doomed to give up one end. In terms of the impact on society and the stability of his personal power, protecting the economy is obviously much more important than keeping zero.

Unfortunately for Xi, the Chinese economy will fare very badly in the fourth quarter of this year. In the first quarter, because the economic growth rate in the same period last year was too low, there was relatively high growth; in the second quarter, due to the closure of Shanghai, the economy almost stopped growing; in the third quarter, it improved and resumed growth, although the growth rate was still very low. The authorities pinned their hopes on the fourth quarter. If the epidemic did not recur and local governments imposed random restrictions, a growth rate of four percentage points in the fourth quarter would be possible. Although the annual growth target of 5% set by the authorities would not be reached, the Should be able to achieve a 3.5% growth rate.

However, the economic situation in the fourth quarter was much worse than the authorities expected. According to the data disclosed by five economists including Yao Yang, Dean of the National Development Institute of Peking University, who wrote to the authorities before the announcement of the new 11 articles, the three drivers of consumption, investment, and exports declined in an all-round way in October. Although manufacturing investment is resilient, its growth has also slowed down, with real estate, exports and consumption seeing the largest declines. In October, the total retail sales of social consumer goods -0.5% year-on-year, down 3 percentage points from the previous month; real estate sales -23.7% year-on-year, down 9.5 percentage points from

the previous month; exports (in US dollars) -0.3% year-on-year, down from the previous month 6 percentage points. It is especially difficult for small and micro enterprises, which are the main source of employment. In October, the unemployment rate of the 16-24 population survey was as high as 17.9%, and the actual situation may be even more severe. Affected by the economic downturn and corporate layoffs, the employment situation of college students is very severe.

The situation in November was even worse. The PMIs of the managers' indexes of large, medium and small enterprises were 49.1%, 48.1% and 45.6% respectively, down 1.0, 0.8 and 2.6 percentage points from the previous month. It can be seen that if the lockdown is not lifted, the economic growth rate in the fourth quarter will drop sharply compared with the third quarter, which will affect the economic development of next year.

An internal research report of the Bank of China also revealed that in the first eight months of this year, the local general fiscal budget gap reached 10.2 trillion yuan, much higher than the central general fiscal budget gap of 6 trillion yuan, an increase of 65% over the same period last year. In terms of provinces, except for the fiscal revenue and expenditure gaps of Shanxi and Henan, which narrowed by 15.9% and 0.3% respectively, the fiscal revenue and expenditure gaps of other places all expanded to a certain extent. Among them, the fiscal revenue and expenditure gaps of Zhejiang,

Beijing, and Guangdong, the three major economic powerhouses, expanded the most, reaching 1619.2%, 293.9%, and 102.7% respectively, while Shanghai's fiscal surplus decreased by 79.2% compared with the same period last year. The report attributed the expansion of the local fiscal budget gap to the unexpected impact of the epidemic and the sluggish land market, which led to a sharp decline in land transfer revenue. The latter is actually influenced by the former.

Fiscal revenues continue to be under pressure, while expenditures continue to expand. Only healthcare expenditures accounted for the proportion of national public fiscal expenditures, which remained at about 8% in the first eight months, higher than the same period in history.

The report also pointed out three consequences of excessive financial pressure. First, the risk of default increased. The ratio of bond balances to income in China’s 31 provincial-level administrative regions was close to the warning line of 120% set by the Ministry of Finance; second, it restricted the growth of infrastructure investment. Weakening the ability of the government to promote economic development in the medium and long term; third, the public sector and economic and social development are facing obstacles.

There is a popular view that Xi Jinping doesn't care about economic performance, but the preservation of rights is what he values most. If we say that Xi’s power is not yet very stable, the economic downturn is not too fast and has not had a great impact on the exercise of government capabilities, his priority is to focus on his own power, just like before the epidemic; then, now he He has been re-elected three times and has formed an all-in-one "Xi's cabinet". The will to power has been implemented without hindrance at the top, but the economy is in a mess. Not only has it affected his expansion plan to push China's power to the world, but it has also affected Basic people's livelihood and social stability is likely to have a greater impact on his regime. At this time, how could he not make the economy the focus of government work?

Some people may still question, is the Chinese economy really so bad? The answer should be in the affirmative, otherwise, official scholars such as Yao Yang would not call on the authorities to let go of zero at this time, and suggested that the economic growth target for next year should be set above 5%, in order to re-send a political signal to officials at all levels: put work The focus turns to the economy. Xi wants to be a promising "monarch". The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed the goal of so-called Chinese-style modernization. It is necessary to explore another modernization path for human beings. Without this, Chinese-style modernization is nonsense.

So the economy is a hard indicator. And now a direct consequence of the recession is the fiscal crisis. Regardless of other things, according to the aforementioned report of the Bank of China, if the normalized nucleic acid testing covers 900 million urban population, it will bring about 0.7 trillion fiscal expenditures for the whole year, which is an extra burden for local governments. The governments at the county and township levels in China have been bankrupt long ago and cannot afford to support nucleic acid testing. This is why Shandong and other places rely on debt issuance to build shelter hospitals. But sooner or later, the debt will have to be paid back. If the central government has to borrow a lot to survive, the probability of a systemic financial crisis is very high. And if the clearing continues for another half a year, this situation is not impossible.

The economy is fundamental. This statement applies to any government, but it is especially important to the CCP. Since Mao lost its ideological appeal, the CCP has actually placed the legitimacy of its regime on economic growth and the resulting prosperity of the country and the improvement and improvement of people's lives. Although there were deviations at some stages in the 30 years before Xi came to power, this trend has generally been maintained. In the first five years of Xi Jinping’s time, he also wanted to make a difference in the economy.

He formulated an ambitious master plan for China’s reforms, implemented supply-side reforms, and personally appointed the director of the Central Deepening Reform Group. However, anti-corruption and centralization have hit The enthusiasm of the officials made his reform plan come to naught. In the next five years, due to the deterioration and confrontation between China and the United States, and to ensure the success of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Xi's focus turned to protecting power and responding to pressure from the international community.

During this period, he launched an unprecedented suppression of capital. Especially in the three years of the epidemic, governments at all levels are busy controlling the epidemic. Although Xi Jinping proposed to balance economic development and epidemic prevention, in fact, this cannot be achieved. The price of forcibly clearing the blockade is the complete shutdown of the economy.

Citizens of Beijing line up in front of a wall of slogans promoting Xi Jinping Thought for an accounting test. (December 5, 2022)

However, Xi Jinping’s transformation of the CCP in the past ten years has given him an illusion. He is too superstitious about the will to power. There will be some twists and turns, but in the end nothing can't be done. His anti-corruption campaign, the suppression of capital, and the Sino-US trade war have all strengthened his perception. After the outbreak, he also believed that with his strong will to power, he could control the epidemic, tame society, and tame the economy. But he miscalculated this time. Economic rationality, economic logic, and economic power are much stronger than his personal will to power. People—even the so-called great leaders—cannot be completely defeated against the laws of economics.

Huangpu Jiangfeng || No one is a man clearing the hard landing and the whole country to lay down the system

2022-12-18T23:36:00.002-08:00

Huangpu Jiangfeng No one is a man clearing the hard landing and the whole country to lay down the system,

An elderly woman was admitted to the fever clinic of a hospital in Beijing. (December 11, 2022)

Contrary to the jubilation and liveliness after countries around the world announced the end of the epidemic, the week after China lifted the zero-clearing control has fallen into chaos and silence. Especially in Beijing, this depression and tension seem more like Wuhan at the beginning of the outbreak than at any point in the past three years. The infection rate of the new crown among citizens has risen sharply. Hospitals and pharmacies are suffering. For the first time in three years, there are only a few shopping malls and restaurants that are open without restrictions. The employment rate of enterprises and institutions has shrunk sharply. "recovery" call for the resumption of production.

What's really going on behind the chaos in Beijing? This is a question that everyone is curious and concerned about.

This chaos has been going on for a month. After the CCP concluded the "Twentieth National Congress" and the "First Plenary Session" of the "Twentieth National Congress", Xi Jinping passed the so-called "Twenty Points" at the new Politburo Standing Committee presided over on November 10, trying to The dynamic clearing policy that has been strictly controlled over the past three years has been fine-tuned to save the economic downturn, improve international outlook, and prepare for the so-called gradual and orderly deregulation of control. But that's where the chaos begins.

In the ensuing month, the public saw successively that the closures in Shijiazhuang, Zhengzhou, and Guangzhou fluctuated. On November 23, there was a collective conflict at the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou. Beginning on the 1st, citizens from many places including Beijing, Chongqing, Wuhan, and Chengdu rushed out of the closed residential quarters, and college students from all over the country spontaneously held mourning rallies on campus. The "blank paper revolution", an "almost revolution", has been suppressed on the spot, but it has continued to this day, and has erupted one after another in universities and medical schools around the world. Under tremendous political pressure, the three-year dynamic zeroing policy came to an abrupt end.

Patients and their families waiting for treatment at a children's hospital in Beijing. (December 14, 2022)

However, after the unblocking, the Chinese people are ushering in the biggest wave of epidemics since the outbreak of the new crown. Before the "blank paper revolution", the number of infected people in various places had quietly increased, and finally broke out in the first week of December. When people shared their positive reactions openly and boldly on social media for the first time in three years, they were surprised to find that the street cadres and neighborhood committee social workers who had been ubiquitous for the past three years disappeared overnight, and the cold medicine sold in pharmacies The ambulances and ICUs are quickly full, and it seems that the government is not prepared for the unblocking. Dynamic zeroing is bringing another wave of shocks beyond the epidemic in the form of a hard landing.

This is what is happening in China right now, a horrible and absurd situation. After people rose up to overthrow the zero-clearing control, what they saw was a system that had been lying flat for three years. In the past three years, all the resources of this system have been invested in the control of ordinary people and the construction of large-scale concentration camps, and not many resources have been used to improve the public health system. Although all the controls are based on the pretext of worrying about running out of medical care, three years have been wasted in vain. No efforts have been made to expand hospitals, recruit professional medical care, increase first-aid equipment, reform and improve the first-aid system, introduce and produce effective vaccines and drugs, and focus on guarantees. Medical treatment for the elderly, children, patients, etc.

Empty shelves at a pharmacy in Beijing. (December 13, 2022)

The reason is that during the implementation of the three-year clearing policy of strict control over the people, the entire bureaucratic system in China seems to have been cleared: under the epidemic prevention system of "responsibility for guarding the soil" and the "Fengqiao model", the entire bureaucratic system Resources are all given priority to "clearing society". Party and government officials have lost the flexibility they have gradually developed since the reform and opening up, and they have also lost the rationality and independence of traditional Confucian bureaucrats. Rigid groups. This means that the entire bureaucratic system in China has been laid down spiritually, and has entered the post-totalitarianism of the Brezhlev era in advance.

The irony is that in the past three years, China's propaganda machine seems to have noticed this atmosphere of laying down in the system. Although this laying down mainly refers to cadres' sabotage, procrastination and passive coping, they may never be aware of the clearing and Lying flat is but two sides of the same coin. It is precisely those bureaucratic cadres who appear to be the most active, absolutely loyal, and insist on strict clean-up are the lying-down clan. Their political careers have been spent waiting for the highest instructions, and they do nothing, and they dare not do anything, and then sit back and watch. The outbreak of social crisis, and even revolution. Historically, on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the general state of mind of the Soviet Communist Party officials was surprisingly similar to this, which was called "no one is a man" by Chinese leaders more than ten years ago.

In this sense, a system in which the whole country is cleared is exactly a system in which the whole country is laid flat. When even the slightest shake occurred at the highest level of this system, a dynamic clearing system known as the "new national system" fell apart within a month, bringing about a revolution that was almost a blank sheet of paper. After the revolution, the people gave up the city and streets, turning Beijing into an empty city, continuing the revolution in another unconscious way. What Beijing can do is to urgently appeal for "willing to resume work and production" and to postpone the holding of the "Central Economic Work Conference".

It has to be said that this may be a preview of future Chinese politics. A political situation similar to the end of 1961-early 1962 is even more dangerous because of the lack of a competitor like Liu Shaoqi in the party. A deeper political crisis is accelerating. revealed.

Japan may join the U.S. chip ban, and China's advanced chip research and development may suffer a severe setback

2022-12-18T23:25:00.001-08:00

Japan may join the U.S. chip ban, and China's advanced chip research and development may suffer a severe setback

Semiconductor chips assembled at new nanoelectronics manufacturing center in Brooklyn, New York, USA

TAIPEI-

The World Trade Organization (WTO) confirmed on December 15 that China had lodged a complaint against the US chip export restrictions. But experts believe that the U.S. camp to suppress Chinese chips is growing, and Japan may also join. However, China will be affected by the ban on high-end chip technology, and Japan will face the challenge of operating limited options under the US-China strategy.

Japan's accession to China ban has strategic significance

The World Trade Organization confirmed on December 15 that China had lodged a complaint against the United States' chip export restrictions, accusing the United States of threatening the stability of the global supply chain. In this regard, the United States insists that its export restrictions are in the interest of national security.

The Biden administration announced in early October this year the most comprehensive chip export control measures against China over the years, and actively wooed Taiwan, Japan, the Netherlands, and South Korea to join the anti-China camp.

"Kyodo News Agency" quoted sources on December 10 as saying that US Secretary of Commerce Raimondo had a telephone conversation with Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura on December 9 and asked Japan to respond to US chip control measures against China. It is reported that this is the first time that Japanese and US ministerial officials have directly requested cooperation.

"Bloomberg" reported on December 12 that the United States has successfully persuaded Japan and the Netherlands to jointly control the export of Chinese semiconductors. It is reported that the two countries of Japan and the Netherlands will announce in the next few weeks that they will implement some of the chip bans imposed by the United States in October.

Dr. Xu Wenfu, former convener of the science and technology group of the Taiwan Professors Association and market consultant of the French power system manufacturer SAFT, pointed out that from 2021 to 2023, 84 new wafer factories will be built around the world, with an investment of up to 500 billion U.S. dollars, of which the U.S. There are 18 fabs, and China has 20, but China's fabs are different from the high-end technologies below 20 nanometers invested by the United States and other countries.

He told Voice of America: "The production equipment of semiconductor fabs in the world mainly comes from three countries. The first is the United States, the second is the Netherlands, and the third is Japan. The current ban from the United States will Their country’s semiconductor equipment was banned from China, and then the Netherlands followed suit, and Japan should follow suit. So even if China’s semiconductor factories will build 20, they are all mature processes with low gross profits. The more advanced processes are all Like in the United States, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea. Therefore, it is of great strategic significance for Japan to join hands to ban the export of advanced process equipment to China."

Dr. Satoshi Tachibana, an expert in international management and founder of Wheelis Japan Consulting It is believed that at the macro level of the country, it is the subjective desire of politics to dominate the economy. For example, after the outbreak of the Russo-Ukraine War, most countries in the European Union had to sacrifice their economy and follow up sanctions against Russia in order to follow the United States and to be politically correct.

Satoshi Tachibana told Voice of America: "Japan's semiconductor industry has lagged behind Taiwan and South Korea. Japan's participation in the sanctions actually suffers little economic loss. Therefore, it is better to push the boat with the tide and win a few more points politically. Why not? No reason? At the same time, the United States is also aware of this point. The United States also has great political and symbolic significance. Japan is the leader of the Western camp of the United States in the East, so it must join the sanctions, otherwise, the United States will lose face."

Tachibana Satoshi said that even if Japan does not join the chip sanctions, it will not get important benefits from China. Therefore, it is impossible for Japan to fall to China and fully oppose the United States. He believes that if Japan does not join the chip sanctions this time, the result will be unfavorable to both sides, making people inside and out.

In an interview with Voice of America, Lu Xinji, executive director of the Japan-Korea Research Center at Chung Hsing University in Taiwan, said that Japan's participation in the sanctions represents support for the US sanctions policy under the hegemonic trading system led by the US. As long as Japan has a certain industrial proportion in this industrial chain, it will have its importance.

He said: "There is actually no direct logical relationship between the United States and Japan's re-establishment of Japan's role in its semiconductor industry chain and Japan's relatively insignificant role in the past. If the information from foreign media is correct, it is more important. What is more relevant is whether the United States, Japan and the Netherlands will jointly block the proportion of the semiconductor supply chain they own in the future, or whether they have key technologies, or whether they have confidential technologies. This is what Japan has after joining the sanctions. It is the basis for the key evaluation of nature.”

Japan’s policy announcement may be a bargaining chip in the negotiation with China

Kyodo News reported on December 10 that if Japan imposes similar export control measures on China, it will inevitably trigger a strong backlash from Beijing, which may make it difficult to achieve specific policy cooperation between Japan and China.

Lu Xinji, executive director of the Japan-Korea Integrated Research Center of Chung Hsing University in Taiwan, said that Beijing's strong backlash must be considered in Japan's options for whether it is willing to cooperate with the US sanctions plan, and it is impossible to simply judge which side Japan is leaning on in its strategic choices. In dynamic international trade negotiations, Japan can even declare its current policy as a bargaining chip with the next party.

Lu Xinji said: "On the whole, in pure international trade, Japan must be able to estimate the profit-loss ratio between the cost and the income. But how to properly operate the options under the US-China strategy, such as policy announcements that favor the US Sanctions policy, but in fact through other subsidies or reinvestment policies to avoid harsh criticism from the Chinese side, what is more, losses in short-term trade, and in exchange for a more medium-term and long-term political commitment, are all Leaders and leadership teams must think about it under the pressure of ruling policies and the international system."

Lu Xinji pointed out that if the policy cooperation between Japan and China is difficult to achieve, what can be exchanged for is a closer cooperative relationship with the United States, which may cause the Japanese government to turn around.

Dr. Xu Wenfu, the former convener of the Science and Technology Group of the Taiwan Professors Association, believes that it is inevitable for the Japanese government to offend China in the joint research and development plan with the United States based on political factors.

He said: "The biggest reason is that the United States and Japan are about to conduct joint research and development of next-generation semiconductor infrastructure equipment. This plan will enable Japan and the United States to cooperate in the development of two-nanometer process technology. The funding for this is rumored It may be as high as 350 billion yen. This part is the main reason why Japan's semiconductor industry or the Japanese government needs to guide the semiconductor competition between China and the United States. In addition to this part, the United States and Japan will also have more diplomatic, military, and even The political combination is in response to the direction of Japan's more advanced plan to prevent China's semiconductor industry from joining the ranks of the United States and the Netherlands."

Xu Wenfu pointed out that China's appeal to the World Trade Organization regarding the US ban should have no effect, because the US issued the ban based on national security reasons, and Japan will inevitably put national security issues above Japan-China economic cooperation.

Dr. Satoshi Tachibana, an expert in international business management, said that capitalism is a free market economy, so it is difficult for politics to completely control the economy. China is a one-party dictatorship, so the "clearing" policy can last for a long time, but other democratic countries cannot. For example, Japan's ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party, is under pressure from the corporate and financial circles. Democratic countries have elections, and the economy will counteract politics.

He said: "What is the United States doing now? It is using the 'visible hand' to control the 'invisible hand'. Can it be controlled? It may be possible to control some, but not all; it may be possible to control In the short term, we can’t control the long term. We often say in mainland China that there are policies and there are countermeasures. In fact, it is the same everywhere in the world. Politics should dominate the economy. If that is against economic principles, there will be a rebound at the economic level.”

Tachibana Satoshi pointed out that even the CCP could not stand the economic pressure and gave up the complete "clearing" policy in the end, so it is hard to predict how long the chip control in the United States can last.

Japanese experts doubt the effectiveness of the ban

The British "Financial Times" reported on December 10 that senior Japanese technicians believe that the US chip ban on China will not be very effective.

It is reported that Hiroaki Kitano, head of technology at the Japanese company Sony (Sony), believes that the US chip sanctions against China will only temporarily affect China's procurement of chips, but it will not curb China's growth momentum in the field of artificial intelligence. He also believes that the US's export restrictions on semiconductor products and devices will not have a long-term impact on China. The president of NEC, Takayuki Morita, also has the same doubts. He believes that the blockade of Chinese semiconductors may weaken China's chip research and development capabilities in the short term and prevent the People's Liberation Army from easily obtaining advanced semiconductors for military use. But it can only achieve short-term restrictions, and it is difficult to continue to restrict China's semiconductor development in the long run. Morita Takayuki said that the Chinese government is vigorously developing semiconductors, making Chinese semiconductor companies more and more competitive.

Dr. Xu Wenfu, the market consultant of SAFT, a French power system manufacturer, said that China has invested as much as 850 billion yuan in the development of its semiconductor industry, and the growth rate is indeed impressive. The chip ban issued will severely setback China's semiconductor technology improvement.

Xu Wenfu said: "It is true that China's full investment in funds has also allowed China's semiconductors to grow from zero to one-third of the current level, but if we want to go to advanced manufacturing processes, we must import them from the United States, the Netherlands, and Japan. Some very advanced equipment. Therefore, China is indeed facing an impossible challenge in the development of advanced manufacturing processes. Even if China devotes all its efforts, it will be difficult to develop this kind of equipment in a short period of time.”

Taiwan Lu Xinji, executive director of the Japan-Korea Research Center of Chung Hsing University, believes that the factors that the industry must measure are significantly different from those in the political and diplomatic fields. Business leaders bet on risks that include both present and future profits. It is not the same as the entry point where politicians must look at the overall situation and draw a hair out of their political career.

He said: "In the face of competition, the industry may have options for absolute interests such as preemption, merger, or competition, but from the government's perspective, there may only be options for relative interests such as restriction, comparison, or competition. Therefore, the industry cannot fully cooperate with the government. We have heard about policy cases from time to time. On the other hand, from the perspective of the government, how to persuade enterprises to implement policies that do not violate national interests depends on various ratios such as moral norms and persuasion, legal restrictions and enforcement, or intervention through coercion. Actions based on principles.”

Dr. Satoshi Tachibana, the founder of Wheelies Japan Consulting Company, believes that under the capitalist system, the state has limited control over enterprises, and enterprises have limited control over individuals. He pointed out that the Russia-Ukraine war is entangled in the energy industry, oil and gas, which are basically beyond the control of the individual level, and it is also difficult for companies to fully control it. But semiconductor chips are completely different. Enterprises and individuals can control a lot. As long as China provides superior conditions, technology outflow is inevitable. Perhaps we should consider changing our foothold.

He said: "The United States says 'you China can't play by the rules of the game like this'; China says 'this is the rules of the game you made, I have my own set of rules of the game'. That's the essence of the problem. So, US-China The dispute is a dispute over the right to formulate the rules of the game. The United States and the West are the only ones that can formulate the rules of the game. We often discuss issues within this premise and framework, but now the essence of the problem has shifted to another level. If we slightly change our footing This will solve a lot of problems.”

A Light Analysis of State Affairs || The Sunshine of Humanity and Freedom the Blank Paper Revolution

2022-12-18T23:24:00.002-08:00

A Light Analysis of State Affairs The Sunshine of Humanity and Freedom the Blank Paper Revolution

People in Beijing gathered under the Liangma Bridge to protest the authorities' strict anti-epidemic policies. (November 28, 2022)

Editor's note: This is an opinion piece written by Wu Guoguang for Voice of America. This guest commentary does not reflect the views of Voice of America. Reprinters please indicate that they are from Voice of America or VOA.

Perhaps a couple of sentences can be borrowed from the inappropriate person to roughly express the gist of this article. One sentence says: "Revolution is a great festival of the people" - this is from Lenin, the founder of the communist regime in the Soviet Union. Another sentence comes from Mao Zedong. He said: "A piece of blank paper has no other burdens. It is easy to write the latest and most beautiful words, and it is easy to draw the latest and most beautiful pictures." Using the words of Lenin and Mao Zedong to describe the effect of China's "blank paper revolution" is of course quite absurd, and may not be politically correct, but I don't like talking nonsense because of people, so I still borrow it. The true meaning of quoting these two sentences lies in my continued observation of the "blank paper protest" of the Chinese people, and I have come up with four points of view; these points of view together highlight the spiritual liberation and humanity of this protest for the Chinese people The positive effect of regression.

People in Beijing took to the streets holding blank papers to protest China's strict epidemic prevention policy and mourn the victims of the fire in Urumqi. (November 27, 2022)

"Not one of them is a man"? But there are thousands of good daughters!

My first observation concerns the role of women in the progress of Chinese society. The courage and demeanor displayed by young women in this "white paper protest" is very eye-catching. At the beginning of the protest, many people noticed this phenomenon, so there are some related interpretations: Why are they? There are many different views on this, but what I want to emphasize here is just a basic historical fact and a social observation based on this fact. This historical fact is: women have always played a very important role in China's social progress, especially in modern times; from the May 4th era, to the Republican Revolution, and then to the Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989, Gaimo was an exception. My relevant observation is: the emergence of the "2022 Blank Paper Revolution" is becoming a new starting point, highlighting this fact that was originally obscured in front of people.

Being able to remove this kind of veil should firstly be related to the change and progress of the means of communication. The attention paid to the phenomenon of female leadership in the "blank paper protest" is obviously because the scene of this protest was disseminated through the means of dissemination of both words and images, and the prominent role of female protesters can be objectively presented through image dissemination. It is less likely to be obscured by the means of written communication with deep gender bias and gender blind spots formed in the history dominated by patriarchy. Secondly, I am afraid that because the gender equality awareness of the disseminated audience has increased in recent years, it is more or less able to get rid of the gender blind spots formed over the years, and can truthfully identify the female protesters as women among the figures of many protesters. identity, rather than turning a blind eye or turning a blind eye.

In this way, it can be said that the "blank paper protest" is making more people realize the outstanding role and great contribution of women in promoting China's social progress, and may further make more people realize: women's bravery and determination Not inferior to men and can completely surpass men, they can be more persistent and conscious in maintaining and pursuing rights, freedom and social justice. This should help dispel the demonization of the feminist movement pervasive in Chinese society, and increase the Chinese public's awareness and understanding of gender equality, which will be of far-reaching significance for China's long-term progress.

For the Chinese regime, I hope this can at least be a lesson in feminism: Xi Jinping once quoted the ancient poem "No one is a man" to summarize the lessons of the collapse of the communist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China held under his leadership A Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China with "no one is a daughter" was born. Now, he should have seen: Even if "none of them are men", there can be thousands of good daughters, and they will stand up to promote China's progress!

Hong Kong residents hold white paper and bouquets of flowers to mourn the victims of the fire in Xinjiang and support the protests in mainland China. The Hong Kong police went to check their ID cards. (November 28, 2022)

The white paper and the yellow umbrella are held together, and the Han people share the same feelings for the people.

Another observation is that I saw that the Chinese people, especially the young people who participated in the "blank paper protest" began to understand the struggle of the Hong Kong people since the "Umbrella Revolution". It is said that some of the participants in the "blank paper protest" were sympathetic and even hostile to the protests of the Hong Kong people. According to Hong Kong, these people belong to the "blue silk" who stand on the side of the Chinese authorities, not the "yellow silk" who demand the rights of the people. The causes of this situation are complex and will not be analyzed here. However, when the mainland people also had to take to the streets to defend their basic rights, they had in fact stood in the same team as the Hong Kong people who were fighting for their rights.

The third observation is similar to this, that is, during the “blank paper protests,” mutual sympathy between Han Chinese and Uyghur people has increased. It should be said that the origin of this protest is Urumqi, Xinjiang. It should be said that it is not accidental. It is there that the "big prison" system that deprived people of their minimum biological freedom, which was established in various parts of China during the three-year epidemic, was established earlier for the Uyghur people. The "square cabin hospitals" in the mainland, in terms of depriving residents of their freedom and brutally treating each resident, are actually the mainland version of Xinjiang's so-called "education transformation centers" and "concentration camps." People in the same concentration camp know each other without meeting each other. In the previous article of this column, the observation of "empathy" was put forward on the "blank paper revolution", and the two-way understanding between land and port that is beginning to appear, and the mutual sympathy between Han and Uygur are all further manifestations of this empathy.

Demonstrators gathered on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley to protest the Chinese government's harsh anti-epidemic policy. (November 28, 2022)

Overseas is no longer the world of "little pinks", right?

The fourth observation extends overseas. Here, for the first time in decades, there have been political awakenings and protests among Chinese students studying abroad to demand rights, pursue freedom, and support the domestic "blank paper revolution". In modern Chinese history, from the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Republic of China to the end of the 20th century, overseas students and a wider group of overseas Chinese have always been one of the vanguard forces promoting China's progress. Over the past quarter of a century, overseas seems to have become the domain of the so-called "little pinks". Relying on the rise of China's material power, taking advantage of the pluralistic and tolerant environment of a free society, it has become popular to live abroad but take "patriotism" as work. Now, it is the "blank paper revolution" that is changing this atmosphere.

Why is there such a wide range of understanding, empathy and awakening accompanying the "blank paper revolution"? Going back to Lenin’s words at the beginning but changing them, it can be said: Revolution is the spiritual liberation of the people. Based on the above four observations alone, the "Blank Paper Movement" indeed deserves the title of "revolution" because it aroused meaningful changes in the depths of human nature. If these changes continue to ferment, solving millennial problems such as gender equality and national reconciliation will not be a dream! Leaving aside the words of Mao Zedong quoted at the beginning, let me give an explanation: A piece of white paper can reflect the sunshine of humanity and freedom!

The Russian army retreated repeatedly on the battlefield, and Putin had no choice but to ask the commanders in the field to make brilliant moves

2022-12-18T22:48:00.001-08:00

The Russian army retreated repeatedly on the battlefield, and Putin had no choice but to ask the commanders in the field to make brilliant moves

Russian president Putin

WASHINGTON —

The Kremlin said on Saturday (December 17) that Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the Russian military command that directs the Ukraine war and held a meeting with military commanders to hear their views on how the Ukraine war should be conducted.

Russia has invaded Ukraine for ten months, but the Russian offensive has suffered major setbacks in the outskirts of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, Kharkov, the second largest city in Ukraine, and Kherson, an important city in southern Ukraine, and was forced to abandon it. A retreat from three places. Putin was also forced to call up reserve officers and soldiers to cover the heavy losses suffered at the front. However, the performance of the Russian army on the battlefield has been criticized and criticized by military experts from Russia and its allies.

In October this year, Putin replaced the commander who lost the battle in Ukraine, and appointed General Sergei Surovkin, the commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces, as the new commander-in-chief of Ukraine's "special military operations". However, after Surovkin took office, the Russian army had almost no offensive in ground combat operations on the Ukrainian battlefield and was basically on the defensive. However, the Russian army has carried out large-scale missile and artillery attacks on the civilian infrastructure of many Ukrainian cities in an attempt to cut off power and water in these cities when the cold winter weather is approaching, making them unable to eat and drink water.

According to a video released by the Kremlin, Putin presides over a meeting with more than a dozen military generals at a round table next to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who has been criticized by Russia's hawkish commentators. Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the Russian Army General Staff Valery Gerasimov.

In another video released by the Kremlin, Putin sits at another conference table of the Russian Joint Special Operations Command, asking the participating military commanders for their opinions on military operations in the Ukrainian battlefield.

"We will listen to the opinions of the commanders of each operational direction, and I want to hear your suggestions for our current and medium-term actions," Putin told Russian commanders.

Photos of Surovkin attending the meeting were also posted on the official Kremlin website.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russia's Interfax news agency that Putin spent a full day at the Russian Army's Joint Special Operations Command.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday that Russia has enough missiles to continue a more serious large-scale air strike against Ukraine.

A total of 76 missiles of various types were used by the Russian military in Friday's airstrike, Ukrainian officials said, and Ukrainian engineers have been busy with repairs in the wake of the Russian airstrike in order to restore power supply as soon as possible.

Putin also spoke on the phone with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday, the Kremlin said, in which they discussed the war in Ukraine and bilateral relations between Russia and India.

"The leaders discussed in detail the prospects for concrete cooperation in mutual investment, energy, agriculture, transport, and logistics," a Kremlin statement said.

The statement said that Putin and Modi "expressed satisfaction" with the high level of cooperation between the two parties based on the special strategic partnership.

"At the request of Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin made a principled assessment of the state of Russian operations in the direction of Ukraine," the statement said.

Year-end report: Xi Jinping's summit of power and his unexpected challenge

2022-12-18T22:46:00.002-08:00

Year-end report: Xi Jinping's summit of power and his unexpected challenge.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping attends the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. (September 16, 2022)

In the first half of 2022, the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, the zero-clearing policy, and the economic downturn, the international and domestic environment is not favorable for Chinese President Xi Jinping, but these did not affect his exception to win a third term at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in the second half of the year , And then formed a team of Xi's Politburo Standing Committee that excluded other factions, and truly ascended to the pinnacle of power of "king of the world".

How on earth did he do it? Why is there no power in the party to check and balance him?

"Everything is under Xi Jinping's control" VS "All variables are possible "

At the beginning of the year, two experts commented on China's political outlook. One said, "Everything is under Xi Jinping's control," and the other said, "All variables are possible." Looking back on the past year, the facts seem to prove that they have their own reasons. The former shows that Xi Jinping’s power is indeed unchallenged, and the latter proves that Xi’s high degree of centralization cannot avoid various accidents.

In January, Anyou Lai, a professor of political science at Columbia University, said in an interview that Mr. Xi had cleared all obstacles that could challenge him.

Li Anyou believes that in the era of Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao, there were still hills or factions in the party, but Xi Jinping has cleared them all away. put people who really supported him in power."

From October 16 to 22, the highly anticipated 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China was held. As Li Anyou expected, Xi Jinping successfully won his third term.

In an interview also in January, Gao Wenqian, the author of "Zhou Enlai in His Later Years" and former member of the Document Research Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, believed that in the historical resolution passed at the Sixth Plenary Session of the Nineteenth Central Committee, Xi Jinping won the leadership core and guiding ideology. status, "but he did not achieve his original goal, which is to negate the Deng Xiaoping era, correct reform and opening up, and hold his predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, responsible for the rampant corruption within the party."

"Xi Jinping's biggest opponent is himself. There is neither talent nor trustworthy people around him. It is Wu Dalang who opens the shop, and those who are taller are not allowed to enter," Gao Wenqian said. If Xi Jinping completely overturns the established national policy of reform and opening up, his opponent will be even worse. Too much, "All the beneficiaries of the reform and opening up, whether they are ordinary people or senior officials in the party, will not agree, they are all his opponents."

The new Politburo Standing Committee announced at the First Plenary Session of the 20th National Congress seems to prove that what Gao Wenqian said is true. However, the content of the banner that Peng Zaizhou, a former warrior of the Sitong Bridge in Beijing at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, was instantly displayed in the thick smoke, only a little more than a month later, it became a common slogan at home and abroad protesting against Xi Jinping’s zero-clearing policy, and Xi Jinping was forced to insist on the three-year clean-up policy. The zero policy was abolished overnight, which also proves that although Xi Jinping has the ability to centralize power, it cannot guarantee that black swan-like accidents will happen at any time.

The most impressive scene of the 20th National Congress, and also the biggest unexpected event, maybe that Xi Jinping’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, the former General Secretary whom he praised as “high-minded and virtuous” because of his naked retirement, was invited out of the 20th National Congress in full view venue. This undoubtedly vividly explains in front of the world that "everything is under Xi Jinping's control", but it also seems to explain that "all variables are possible".

On October 22, 2022, at the closing ceremony of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Hu Jintao was helped away by guards.

"The atmosphere at that time can only be described by the word 'threat'. Everyone was silent and did not dare to express any sympathy for Hu Jintao." said Gao Falin, an independent historian who once worked in the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League.

"He (Xi Jinping) knows that their buttocks are not clean, or I can make you unclean, because he has mastered the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and Political and Legal Affairs Commission, as long as he sends people to check one by one." Song Yongyi, an expert on the history of the Cultural Revolution, said.

"In his (Xi Jinping's) view, the party is about to change color after so many years of reform and opening up. According to the original intention of the party, this change of color means betraying the highest ideal of the party, which is contrary to every party member's oath to join the party. He This logic can be used to restrain everyone, including Premier Li Keqiang," said Wen Guanzhong, professor emeritus of economics at Trinity College.

Standing on the moral high ground of saving the party and the country, through anti-corruption campaigns, weeding out political enemies who hinder his centralization of power, deterring potential challengers, and winning the support of the people who hate the rich and officials are the key to Xi Jinping's continuous consolidation and expansion of power.

Begin to eliminate the source of opponents at the beginning of taking office

Joseph Fewsmith, an American scholar and professor of international relations at Boston University who is considered to be the first to study Chinese elite politics, believes that Xi Jinping began to eliminate the source of all opponents when he came to power.

"He has launched a strong anti-corruption campaign against clearly vulnerable opponents, his big start with Zhou Yongkang and obviously Hu Jintao's aide Ling Jihua on the other side, these are all powerful figures in the party, and the military Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong. If you can take down someone like that, who else can you not take down?"

In the five years of Xi Jinping’s first term, that is, from the 18th to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, through the anti-corruption campaign, one state-level official (Zhou Yongkang) and five deputy state-level officials (Ling Jihua, Sun Zhengcai, Su Rong, Xu Caihou, Guo Boxiong), 20 ministerial-level officials, and 130 deputy-ministerial-level officials.

The anti-corruption campaign enabled Xi Jinping to control the handles of knives and guns, cracked down on the factions of the Communist Youth League, broke the unspoken rules of succession through generations, and deterred potential opposition forces within the party.

"That was a display of political power like we haven't seen in recent years," Furschel said. By the time of the Nineteenth National Congress, "most of the members of the Central Committee were chosen by him."

Many experts predicted that at the 20th National Congress, Xi Jinping would still abide by the unspoken rules of the CCP’s top officials, but Fu Shizhuo always believed that Xi Jinping would not abide by it.

"Jiang Zemin, in my opinion, just broke the arrangement, he appointed all his people so that when Hu Jintao came to power, he was surrounded by all Jiang's people and could hardly do anything. So why should people believe that Xi Jinping will follow about the rules of ups and downs?" Fu Shizhuo said.

Even so, he did not expect that Xi Jinping would introduce a standing committee composed entirely of people loyal to him at the 201st plenum. "It's unprecedented," Furschel said.

Fu Shizhuo believes that Xi Jinping's approach violates the CCP's own tradition. "I think there's almost always some form of balance in the party. That's the norm, too."

During Deng Xiaoping's time, Chen Yun balanced him, "There was at least one different voice at the top of the party," he said. "Jiang Zemin had to deal with several voices that could change over time; Hu Jintao of course first had to deal with the fact that Jiang Zemin was still very active as chairman of the Military Commission for the first two years of his term, and Jiang remained a very powerful individual even after that."

Will the dictator apologize to the people?

Becoming a dictator is dangerous, Mao Zedong is a lesson from the past. His Great Leap Forward led to the Great Famine that killed tens of millions of people, and he launched the Cultural Revolution, which caused a large number of abnormal deaths, cultural and moral decline, and the economy was on the verge of collapse.

But "Xi Jinping wants to be the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong," said Ian Johnson, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "I think his (Xi Jinping's) main drive is also his ego, he believes he can do it, he thinks he is indispensable, he wants to rectify China, rectify the Communist Party, and save the Chinese people." Zhang Yan said.

"It's a lot like the temptation of dictators, because the temptation is, when you have power, you think I can do better than everyone else, so you start micromanaging a lot of things. Like Mao." Zhang Yan said.

Zhang Yan believes that a truly strong leader does not need to directly control everything. “Because if something goes wrong, you can’t blame other people. If you’re at the top and you’re in direct control of key policy, it makes you vulnerable if something goes wrong with the policy.”

Under the circumstances that the Omicron mutant virus has been proven to be less toxic around the world, Xi Jinping still insists on the zero-clearing policy; and when the people could not bear the strict epidemic prevention and control and protested, the authorities suppressed the protests on the one hand, and at the same time Suddenly announced the cancellation of the clearing policy.

"Xi Jinping's government has shown unusual responsiveness in effectively conceding to protesters' key demands at the same pace, reversing the unpopular 'clearing' policy." Claremont-McKenna College Government Professor Pei Minxin wrote in The New York Times.

Pei Minxin believes that now Xi Jinping has actually obtained an opportunity, which he called "the destiny" of Deng Xiaoping to clean up the mess of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution and lead China to the path of reform and opening up for economic development.

However, Pei Minxin believes that Xi Jinping's situation is different. "Deng Xiaoping was able to take advantage of the crisis because others (Mao Zedong and the Soviet Union) were blamed. Xi Jinping has invested a lot of political capital with him, but has killed the economy and caused rare It is not so easy to draw a line between the anti-epidemic policy of street demonstrations."

The New York Times reported that some people in China have proposed that “the government should admit that the strict zero-clearing policy was a serious mistake, and should apologize for the harm caused by the policy.”

The report quoted an article on WeChat by art historian and former CPPCC member Li Gongming, urging the Guangzhou municipal government that "the first step may not be separated from admitting mistakes, expressing condolences to the dead, and apologizing to the people. compensation."

Another article quoted by the report said, “For some health officials who lied and misled the country, an apology may not be enough, and they should be prosecuted.”

The author of the article also asked the government to count the secondary disasters caused by the “zeroing” policy, such as “suicides, deaths caused by delayed treatment or being rejected by hospitals, and accidental deaths related to the “zeroing” policy.”

But the report noted: “During its 73 years in power, the CCP has never apologized for any brutality suffered by the Chinese people under its rule.”

However, Pei Minxin believes that Xi Jinping has its "unique advantages" because "everything is under Xi Jinping's control" and "admitting major policy mistakes will not endanger his political life."

“No one knows whether Xi Jinping thinks he needs to turn around,” Pei Minxin wrote. "But if he does understand the recent protests, he must find that a renewed contract with the Chinese people may be crucial to preserving his own 'Mandate of Heaven.'"

Also read the medical system cannot cope

South Korea military North Korea fired two medium-range ballistic missiles Sunday

2022-12-18T22:04:00.004-08:00

South Korean military North Korea fired two medium-range ballistic missiles Sunday.

FILE PHOTO; In Seoul, people watch news reports of North Korea firing a ballistic missile toward its east coast.

WASHINGTON —

North Korea launched two intermediate-range ballistic missiles on Sunday, the South Korean military said. A few days ago, Pyongyang announced that it had successfully tested a solid-fuel engine for a new weapon system.

Military tensions on the Korean peninsula have escalated sharply this year, with Pyongyang conducting unprecedented weapons tests, including last month's launch of the country's most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile ever.

South Korea's General Staff Headquarters said the South Korean military detected two ballistic missiles fired from the Dongchang-ri area of North Pyongan Province.

Yonhap News Agency said that North Korea fired two medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBM) into the eastern waters of the Korean Peninsula from 11:13 am to 12:55 am on Sunday in Dongchang-ri, North Pyongan Province. The missiles flew about 500 kilometers.

"Our military has stepped up surveillance and vigilance while maintaining full combat readiness in close cooperation with the United States," South Korea's General Staff added in a statement.

Sunday's missile launch came three days after North Korea tested a "large Thrust solid fuel engine," North Korean state media described as an important test of "the development of another new strategic weapon system."

Pyongyang has built an arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles despite tough international sanctions on North Korea's weapons program.

However, North Korea's existing ICBMs are all propelled by liquid fuel, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has made developing solid-fuel engines for more advanced missiles a strategic priority.

Kim Jong-un said this year he wanted North Korea to have the world's most powerful nuclear force, declaring North Korea an "irreversible" nuclear power.

A wish list he revealed last year included solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles that could be launched from land or submarines.

Analysts said the latest engine test was a step toward that goal, but it was unclear how far North Korea had come in developing the missile.

After overseeing the launch of the Hwasong-17 "Monster" missile last month, Kim Jong-un declared he wanted North Korea to have the most powerful nuclear force in the world.

The isolated nation's policy direction for next year will be set at a key party meeting later this month, with North Korea's official KCNA news agency reporting earlier that Kim said 2023 would be a "historic year".

For the past few years, Kim Jong-un has delivered his speech on Jan. 1 each year but recently abandoned that tradition in favor of a statement at the Labor Party plenary meeting at the end of the year.

In his most recent speech, delivered on New Year's Day last year, Kim Jong-un focused on domestic affairs.

While Kim Jong-un did not address the United States directly in his speech last year, he may change his tone this time around, experts said.

The United States and South Korea have warned for months that this could happen when North Korea conducts its seventh nuclear test.

North Korea has fired an unprecedented number of missiles this year in defiance of international sanctions. According to statistics released by North Korea’s official media, as of the 18th of last month, North Korea has launched a total of 36 times, 62 ballistic missiles and 3 cruise missiles.

North Korea has been sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council several times since 2006 for its nuclear weapons and missile activities.

(This article is based on an AFP report.)

Russia shells Kherson, steps up broader assault on southern Ukraine

2022-12-18T21:56:00.004-08:00

Russia shells Kherson and steps up broader assault on southern Ukraine.

On November 26, 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a speech at the opening ceremony of the "Ukrainian Food Initiative International Summit" in Kyiv.

Russia shelled the city center of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson on Sunday, the latest in a string of attacks on the region from which it retreated last month.

A Ukrainian official said three people were wounded in the attack on Kherson, while regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevich said Russia had launched rocket, mortar and tank fire in the Kherson region over the past day. 54 attacks, resulting in three deaths and six injuries.

Meanwhile, in Russia, Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Sunday that one person was killed and eight were wounded by Ukrainian shelling of the region on Ukraine's northern border.

For weeks, Russia has been targeting Ukrainian infrastructure in an attempt to cut off water and power lines as winter looms in an effort to demoralize the Ukrainian people.

Rotating blackouts have hit much of Ukraine, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address on Saturday night that power had been restored to nearly 6 million Ukrainians. Crews have been working non-stop to stabilize the power grid to restore heat and water, he said.

The most difficult situation is in "Kyiv and the region, Vinnytsia and the region, Lviv and the region," he said. But the massive blackout also affected many other regions, including Dnipro and Dnipropetrovsk.

"We'll see what happens when we don't have enough air defenses," Oksana Markarova, Ukraine's ambassador to the United States, said on ABC News' "This Week."

Markalova said half of Ukraine's energy grid had been destroyed by Russian missiles. "We have to stop it. The only way is to increase air defenses all over Ukraine," she said.

U.S. officials say they plan to send a Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine to help shoot down an incoming Russian airstrike, but no official announcement has been made. Russia condemned the expected U.S. action, calling it provocative and escalating U.S. involvement in the conflict.

Nonetheless, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told VOA in an interview on Friday that the United States would provide additional security assistance to Ukraine.

Asked whether Washington would heed Russia's warnings not to deliver the advanced Patriot anti-aircraft missile, Kirby replied: "Russia is not going to tell the United States or any other country what kind of security assistance we provide to Ukraine."

The U.S. official said Washington "is in lockstep with the Ukrainian people, discussing their needs with them on an almost daily basis and making sure we can best meet those needs."

Zelensky thanked the European Union and the United States for their decision to provide defense, energy and financial support to Ukraine in the coming year. He added that more work needed to be done and urged "credible air defense shields" to protect the Ukrainian people from "the main form of Russian terror - missile terror".

The MoD said in an intelligence update on Saturday that "Russia's long-range strike operations against critical national infrastructure in Ukraine have increased in recent days."

"The strike wave mainly included air and sea-launched cruise missiles, but almost certainly also Iranian-supplied unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) launched from Russia's Krasnodar region," the ministry tweeted.

Ukraine has said restoring its pre-2014 border with Russia is the goal of its nearly 10-month war to defend Russia, including retaking the Crimea peninsula that Moscow annexed in 2014.

Markova acknowledged that "taking everything back is difficult," but added, "There was no option."

Russia last week announced the formation of a creative brigade to boost the morale of troops at the front and plans to send opera singers, actors, and circus performers to the front. However, in its latest intelligence update on Sunday, the MoD said that while "low morale almost certainly remains a significant weakness for much of Russia's military", soldiers' concerns lie elsewhere.

"Soldiers' concerns centered on very high casualty rates, poor leadership, pay issues, lack of equipment and ammunition, and unclear objectives of the war," the ministry said.

"It is unlikely that the creative team's efforts will fundamentally alleviate these concerns," the MoD report concludes.

(Information for this article comes from The Associated Press, AFP and Reuters. )

Kissinger calls on Ukraine to negotiate peace, Kyiv rejects offer

2022-12-18T21:50:00.005-08:00

Kissinger calls on Ukraine to negotiate peace, Kyiv rejects offer.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger delivered a speech at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (November 2014, photo by Fang Bing, Voice of America)

Veteran US diplomat Henry Kissinger said the time was near for Ukraine to negotiate a peace that would reduce the risk of another devastating world war, but the Kyiv government dismissed his comments as amounting to "pacifying aggression" ” and said an agreement involving territorial concessions was impossible.

Kissinger, 99, was secretary of state under Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford and was the architect of the Cold War détente with the Soviet Union. He has met with Putin several times since Putin first became president of Russia in 2000.

There is no sign of ending the conflict sparked by Putin's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, which has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions. The United States and Western allies criticized the invasion.

Russia now controls about a fifth of Ukraine.

The Kremlin said Kyiv must recognize Moscow's annexation of the south and east. Ukraine says every Russian soldier must leave its territory, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. Kyiv applied to join NATO after Moscow announced the subsequent annexation in September.

Kissinger wrote in the Spectator: "The time is coming to build on the strategic changes already made and integrate them into a new structure for a negotiated peace."

Kissinger wrote, "The peace process should link Ukraine with NATO, however it is expressed. The option of neutrality no longer makes sense."

Kissinger said he proposed a ceasefire in May and that Russia would withdraw to the borders it had before the February invasion, but that Crimea would be the subject of "negotiations".

The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 when a pro-Russian president was overthrown in Ukraine, Russia annexed Crimea and Russian-backed separatists fought Ukrainian armed forces in eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian presidential aide Mikhailo Podolak said on the social platform "Telegram", "Mr. Kissinger still does not understand anything ... neither the nature of this war nor its impact on world order. Impact."

“The prescription that the former secretary of state demanded but was afraid to speak out was simple: appease the aggressor by sacrificing parts of Ukraine and promise not to invade the rest of Eastern Europe.”

He added, "All proponents of easy solutions should remember the obvious: any deal with the devil - a bad peace at the expense of Ukrainian territory - would be a victory for Putin, and a success for dictators around the world good recipe."

Kremlin officials could not be reached for comment late Sunday.

CIA Director William Burns said in an interview published Saturday that while most conflicts end in negotiations, the CIA's assessment is that Russia is not yet serious about real talks to end the war.

Ukraine and the West say Putin has no reason to justify what they say is an imperial war of occupation.

Kissinger warned that the desire to make Russia "incompetent", or even seek to dismantle it, could lead to chaos. Neither Ukraine nor any Western country is advocating either path.

(This article is based on a Reuters report)

Ukrainian president's office criticizes FIFA for refusing to broadcast || Ukrainian president's peace message during World Cup final

2022-12-18T21:50:00.004-08:00

The Ukrainian president's office criticizes FIFA for refusing to broadcast the Ukrainian president's peace message during the World Cup final.

The final match of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar will be held in Doha on December 18. Argentina and France will compete for the World Cup title.

Ukraine's president's office has criticized FIFA for refusing to broadcast President Zelensky's video message ahead of Sunday's FIFA World Cup final in Qatar 2022. CNN reported that the office issued a written statement to CNN saying the video, recorded in English, was meant to be a "call for peace."

"Qatar supported President (Zelensky)'s initiative, but FIFA blocked it and did not allow the president's video speech to be played before the final," the Ukrainian president's office said in a statement.

The Ukrainian president's office also stated that if FIFA does not broadcast President Zelensky's video speech, it will distribute the speech independently; FIFA's blocking of the speech will show that "FIFA no longer has a valuable understanding of football, That is, football is a sport that unites peoples rather than supporting existing divisions."

CNN reported that CCN sent inquiries to FIFA, but did not receive a response. Qatar has made no public comment on Ukraine's proposal to broadcast President Zelensky's speech ahead of the final.

CNN obtained a copy of Zelensky's pre-recorded video speech on Saturday. Zelensky said in the video that football is meant to bring people together. He called for "the World Cup, not a world war." He said: "The World Cup once again proves that different countries can decide who is the strongest through fair competition instead of playing with fire, and decide the outcome on the green field instead of on the battlefield."

The Ukrainian president's office told CNN that it had been informed by FIFA that Zelensky's message was too political, but that "the president's call to politicalize sporting events is anything but political, and the call does not contain subjective evaluations and comments." political message and does not contain accusations." "FIFA should not be afraid to hear the language of peace as football is celebrated around the world as a symbol of peace".

Taiwan is facing the pressure of sluggish population growth and insufficient military resources

2022-12-18T21:38:00.005-08:00

Taiwan is facing the pressure of sluggish population growth and insufficient military resources

FILE PHOTO - A guard of honor from Taiwan marches during a welcoming ceremony for visiting Prime Minister Ralph Gonzalez of St. Vincent and Grenada in front of Taiwan's presidential palace.

At a time when the threat from China is growing and Taiwan urgently needs to step up its response, Taiwan's military is under pressure from decelerating population growth and increasingly scarce sources of troops.

CNN reported from Taipei on Saturday that Taiwan's military shortage cannot be solved through the defense budget or the purchase of more weapons.

Democratic Taiwan, with a population of 23.5 million, faces a growing challenge of recruiting enough young men to serve in the military. Taiwan's interior ministry said the challenge was at least partly caused by Taiwan's low birth rate.

The decibels of belligerent noise made by the Chinese Communist Party authorities are getting louder and louder, threatening that they will never give up force to seize Taiwan in order to realize the CCP’s so-called national reunification. However, Taiwan's population growth has shown a downward trend since 2020, when Taiwan urgently needs to upgrade its armed forces to deal with the threat from China.

Declining or even negative population growth due to lower birth rates is not a unique problem in Taiwan. In East Asia, South Korea's birth rate is 0.79, the lowest in the world. Japan is 1.3, Taiwan is 0.98, and China is 1.15.

In order to keep the total population constant, the birth rate must reach 2.1. Population growth in countries and regions below this birth rate will slow down and eventually turn negative. Due to China's strict so-called one-child policy that a couple can only have one child in the past 30 years, China's population growth rate decline curve is the steepest in the world.

The deceleration or even shrinkage of population growth will cause various problems, including pension problems (more people retire and fewer people work), education problems (schools have difficulty recruiting qualified students and can only lower enrollment standards), economic problems (labor and consumption or lack thereof) and defense issues.

These problems also exist for China and Taiwan. China's problems are worse because of a more steep decline in population growth. But this situation does not bring much comfort to Taiwan, because China's population is 1.4 billion, while Taiwan's is only 23.5 million. China's population is much larger than Taiwan's.

In addition, many researchers who study China have also pointed out that the Chinese Communist Party, struggling to cope with various domestic problems, may try to take major actions, including attacking Taiwan, to relieve itself, in order to increase the public's support for the Chinese Communist regime, or at least This can be used to completely block any criticism.

Faced with the increasing military threat from China and the lack of manpower in Taiwan's military, the general public in Taiwan is in favor of extending the military service period to alleviate the shortage of military manpower. But the proposal to alleviate the problem has been opposed by some young people in Taiwan who must serve in the military. Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense said a few days ago that careful discussions are underway, and the relevant procedures have yet to be completed.

The U.S. Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act to provide Taiwan with tens of billions of military aid for five years.

2022-12-18T04:09:00.002-08:00

The U.S. Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act to provide Taiwan with tens of billions of military aid for five years.

The U.S. Senate voted to pass the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2023 on December 15, 2022. The bill will then be sent to the White House and signed into law by the president. (Screenshot of the live broadcast video of the academy meeting)

CAPITOL HILL- On Thursday night, December 15, the U.S. Senate approved the defense budget plan for the upcoming fiscal year. The package will now be forwarded to the White House for the president to sign into law. The plan, according to lawmakers, would give the Pentagon crucial funding to bolster the American military. The measure also proposes to provide Taiwan a total of $10 billion in military aid over the course of five years in order to improve its defensive capabilities against Chinese threats.

The almost $858 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the fiscal year 2023 was overwhelmingly approved Thursday night by a vote of 83-11. The budget suggested by President Joe Biden earlier this year will be increased by $45 billion under the legislation.

The bill will be submitted to the White House for President Biden to sign into law after receiving backing from the House of Representatives last week.

After the law passed after months of bipartisan discussions in both chambers, Sen. Jack Reed, D-RI, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, declared that this is the most significant vote of the year.

Senator Reed of Rhode Island stressed the need of passing the defense budget authorization measure by saying, "I've said it before, and I'm not the only one who said it, right now the globe is in the most dangerous situation I've ever seen in my life." importance.

The law includes a variety of clauses designed to improve the air power, ground defense, and cybersecurity of the US military.

In order to help Ukraine fend against Russian incursions, the bill proposes to give Ukraine $800 million in security aid. The plan also allots $6 billion for the Europe Deterrence Initiative, which was established in response to Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 in order to strengthen the readiness of American forces there to thwart potential Russian aggression.

The Pacific Deterrence Initiative (Pacific Deterrence Initiative) will get an additional $11.5 billion from the bill to help it run more smoothly and increase US military capabilities in the Indo-Pacific.

Speaking on the Senate floor on Thursday morning, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) highlighted the threat presented by China and stressed the vital role that the National Defense Authorization Act would play for the United States military might and presence in the Indo-Pacific area. According to him, the law would significantly improve ties between the US and its partners and allies in the Indo-Pacific area.

From Asia to the Middle East to Africa and beyond, China is deliberately undercutting American ties and interests. Our own power will grow thanks to the NDAA. According to McConnell, it prioritizes the Indo-Pacific region's crucial ties.

Balancing He said, "China will demand a coordinated effort of greater, deeper relations between the United States and our like-minded allies and partners, including everything from access to military facilities, joint operations, and increased By providing our partners the military capabilities they require, we can continue to be a win-win situation for security and the economy.

Give Taiwan 10 billion in military funding over a five-year period

The National Defense Authorization Act for the coming year contains military support to Taiwan, which has garnered considerable interest from all spheres of society.

Sen. Bob Menendez, D-NJ, the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, presented the Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act (TERA), which is included in the legislation. The Taiwan Policy Act (Taiwan Policy Act), which was approved by the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, served as the foundation for the bill's main provisions on Taiwan's security and defense. Menendez and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC) crossed party lines to present the Taiwan Policy Act in June of this year, and it was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in September.

By establishing, for the first time, a particular military modernization plan for Taiwan, the Strengthening Taiwan Resilience Act of the National Defense Authorization Act would considerably boost the U.S. defense alliance with Taiwan. Through the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program of the U.S. State Department, the U.S. will be permitted to give Taiwan up to $2 billion per year in non-remunerated military assistance from 2023 to 2027, for a maximum of $10 billion in five years.

The measure also permits Taiwan to receive direct loans for foreign military financing of up to $2 billion.

The measure also grants the President the power to withdraw from Taiwan up to $1 billion in defense goods or services annually through the exercise of the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA). In order to immediately supply defense items and services to foreign international organizations from the Department of Defense equipment inventory without Congressional permission, the President of the United States may use a Presidential Withdrawal Authorization.

Concerns over the security situation in the area are escalating as a result of China's increasingly regular military aggression in the Taiwan Strait. The voice of reacting to military threats from China has also become stronger as a result of the bipartisan support in the US Congress for giving Taiwan defense aid to improve its self-defense capabilities.

Bipartisan foreign leaders from both parties signed a letter to the leadership of Congress on December 15 requesting that the comprehensive government appropriations bill that is currently being negotiated and discussed by Taiwan provides at least $500 million in foreign military financing. The letter was signed by the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Menendez, Top Republican Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), and Michael McCaul, R-TX.

Legislators sent letters to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Chuck Schumer, the majority leader in the Senate, and Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, both announced that they had asked for $1 billion in emergency funds to support the Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act, or TERA, in the Presidential Withdrawal Authorization project to provide Taiwan the power.

The congressmen said in a joint letter that Taiwan may advance its asymmetric strategy against China by restarting and expanding vital production lines to create weapons that are no longer utilized by the U.S. military but are crucial to our allies.

The grants, according to lawmakers, show the depth of America's commitment and aid in securing ongoing backing for ongoing battles.

The National Military Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 also calls for accelerating Taiwan's acquisition of weapons and developing training programs to strengthen Taiwan's defense capabilities.

Joint military drills with Taiwan are a crucial component of boosting combat preparedness, according to Congress.

The ultimate allocation amount is decided by the Appropriations Committee of Congress, and the National Defense Authorization Act is simply responsible for creating defense spending authorization items. It was previously stated that certain Democratic Party members had reservations about giving Taiwan such a large quantity of military aid. As a result, it is still unclear how much military assistance for Taiwan will be approved by the Appropriations Committee.

A comprehensive government appropriations measure that would fund government operations until September 30 of the next year is now being negotiated by members of both parties in the Senate and House of Representatives.

Musk restores some journalists' Twitter accounts || the United Nations says it sets a dangerous precedent

2022-12-18T03:54:00.002-08:00

Musk restores some journalists' Twitter accounts, the United Nations says it "sets a dangerous precedent"

Musk's Twitter

WASHINGTON — Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, stated in the early hours of Saturday (December 17) that the reporter's temporarily suspended Twitter account will be reactivated.

Following Musk's tweet, a number of journalists' accounts, including VOA's top domestic reporter Steve Herman, have been reactivated; however, not all blocked accounts have been done so.

Because the media revealed his private jet's real-time position, Musk said he had to freeze the accounts. He said that it permitted a stalker to abuse one of his kids.

None of the journalists whose accounts were frozen tweeted about Musk's plane's whereabouts while they covered Musk and his decision to shut down the @ElonJet account. Other websites that are open to the public also have this information.

The blocking of journalists' accounts has caused international organizations, human rights groups, and journalists to express grave concern.

According to UN spokeswoman Stephane Dujarric, "at a time when journalists throughout the world confront censorship, physical threats, and more," the practice of unilaterally "freezing accounts" is "extremely alarming."

The freezing of journalistic accounts has also drawn the attention of the European Union. The suspension of the account is concerning, according to Vera Jourova, vice president for values and openness at the European Commission, who also noted that "EU law on digital services mandates respect for press freedom and the basic rights of individuals." Our press freedom laws further safeguard such rights.

She suggested that Musk should be aware of. She declared, "The sanctions are there, and the red line is there, too." The

The Committee to Protect Journalists also voiced its worries, underlining that it would be "a significant breach of the principle that journalists do not have to fear reprisal" if journalists were punished for their reporting and had their accounts blocked.

The freedom to report news in the given situation.

According to a statement released by Human Rights Watch's head of technology and human rights, Frederike Kaltheunet, "closing an account on the grounds of privacy or security alone cannot be justified." The location is open to the public, and Musk is a well-known individual with links to both industry and government. His locations, if they are revealed by a flight tracker, will likewise be made public, and any danger to his safety will be disclosed. People tweeting do not present a risk.

On her official Twitter account, National Association of Professional Journalists President Claire Regan raised worry over the suspending of accounts since they were "contrary to Musk's attitude on the site." maintaining our dedication to free expression. We'll keep an eye on developments and fight for free speech and the press across the board.

The suspension of its reporter Herman's account prompted a response from Voice of America, which emphasized that "Mr. An accomplished journalist who adheres to the highest journalistic standards and uses the social media platform as a news gathering and networking tool, Mr. Herman has not received any explanation from Twitter for the suspension of his account. Mr. Herman covered both home and foreign events as the lead domestic correspondent, and

His ability to carry out his responsibilities as a reporter was hampered by Twitter's suspension of his account. Nearly 59% of respondents, according to the study, want these accounts reactivated right away. Musk tweeted the results and stated that "the people have spoken."

Musk said that Twitter was operational again in a post sent early on Saturday morning. He has engaged in conversations with several journalists concerning his habit of freezing select journalists' accounts in voice group chats on the Twitter platform. Twitter's group conversation feature was disabled when Musk went offline.