Links for Tuesday, July 28, 2020

WHAT WE’RE READING:

More important China news and analysis from around the web:

“The Uyghurs’ suffering deserves targeted solutions, not anti-Chinese posturing,” writes the scholar James Millward in the Guardian. Noting that what Beijing is doing to the Uyghurs fits two of the five parts of the UN definition of genocide, Millward praises international pushback, including from the U.S., but cautions about “pointlessly antagonistic actions against China and the Chinese people,” namely:

…broad tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese goods; using a racist term to refer to COVID-19 rather than collaborating to defeat a global pandemic; cancelling Peace Corps and Fulbright exchanges; calling Chinese students and scholars “spies”; threatening to block CCP members and their families (a group estimated at more than 200 million, the vast majority with no role in policy-making); or shutting down the PRC consulate in Houston, Texas, at short notice.

Millward urges people outside just the U.S. and China to “think and act with agility to help stop the genocide but also head off a cold war,” to investigate Xinjiang-connected supply chains, to shame and sanction “corporations and officials linked to the Xinjiang gulag,” and to provide “support and legal refuge to Uyghur, Kazakh and other Xinjiang exiles.”

• Worth noting and emphasizing: The Trump administration makes no exception to its anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant stances when it comes to Uyghurs. The Wall Street Journal reports today that “a few hundred Uyghurs” are part of a 340,000-strong backlog of cases in front of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). One Uyghur, Kalbinur Awut, applied for political asylum in the U.S., and her case “has been pending with USCIS for 1,796 days, not including delays.”

Banning Chinese companies is not a viable solution to data security problems, writes Financial Times deputy Beijing bureau chief Yuan Yang, in response to the American government’s “attempt to kill [Huawei’s] global telecoms equipment business” and potential ban on TikTok. She argues:

We cannot hermetically seal ourselves off from China and its companies — nor should we try to. Instead, we need to figure out practical ways to meet a challenge that has been with us since long before the rise of China: our need to coexist in a world with people we don’t trust.

Yang suggests that some of those “practical ways” to address problems are to increase digital literacy — since “the most common data leaks don’t stem from the high-tech machinations of the Chinese security services or U.S. companies” — mandate end-to-end encryption, conduct regular audits for operators, and increase accountability and transparency for the algorithms that power apps like TikTok.

See also Samm Sacks on The China Project: Banning TikTok is a terrible idea.

IN OTHER NEWS:

BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY:

• India extends scrutiny to hundreds of Chinese apps
  India examines 275 more Chinese apps for security risks / Caixin
• Trip.com might leave Nasdaq
  China’s Ctrip in talks with investors to delist from Nasdaq / Reuters
• Worldwide ambitions of WeChat
  Tencent’s WeChat Pay launched in Turkey / Xinhua
• Dongfeng Motor Group to list on Shenzhen’s ChiNext
  Dongfeng the latest to see stock surge on China listing plan / Bloomberg (porous paywall)
• Baijiu maker outlook is buoyant
  Moutai’s net jumps 13% for half year buoyed by China recovery / Bloomberg (porous paywall)
• Will Huawei beat Apple’s expected 30% market share?
  Huawei may become the world’s biggest 5G-phone maker this year / Caixin (paywall)
• Mǎ Wéi-Yīng 马维英 leaves ByteDance after three years
  ByteDance AI lab head to leave as TikTok faces global headwinds / Caixin (paywall)
• Noble gas production in Ningxia
  China opens first large-scale helium plant as it tries to reduce reliance on U.S. imports / SCMP
• Tesla advertises for 1,000 Shanghai factory workers
  Tesla hiring in Shanghai as production ramps up / Reuters via Yahoo
• Chinese tech giants struggle to get off the mainland
  Global prospects dim for China’s tech champions as great powers clash / Reuters
• The NBA’s balancing act
  The NBA’s jam / The Wire China

SCIENCE, HEALTH, AND THE ENVIRONMENT:

• Second day of most COVID-19 cases since March
  China reports 68 new coronavirus cases, including two in Beijing / Reuters
  Xinjiang reports largest single-day spike in coronavirus cases / Sixth Tone
  Covid-19 outbreak in Xinjiang prompts fears of spread inside China’s camps / Guardian
  On The China Project yesterday: China reports 61 new COVID-19 cases, the most in a day since March 6.
• Senior official Gāo Fú 高福 takes hands-on approach to vaccine advocacy
  Head of China CDC gets injected with experimental vaccine / AP

POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS:

• Xi addresses fifth annual AIIB conference
  Xi Jinping uses annual conference of infrastructure bank to spell out China’s multilateral and global ambitions / SCMP
  Xinhua has reports on Xi’s remarks (in English and Chinese).
  See also: The curious case of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank / Pekingology newsletter by Zichen Wang
• The seed shipments mystery
  China mystery seeds: Beijing offers to help U.S. investigate source of packages / SCMP
• China and Russia criticize “certain countries” for “spreading disinformation”
  Beijing and Moscow join forces in ‘information war’ as China-US relations rapidly deteriorate / SCMP
• When “rural vitalization” means land theft
  Residents of China’s Shandong left homeless by suspended rural resettlement plan / Radio Free Asia
  See also on The China Project: A Chinese province razes the countryside. Why? and In China’s countryside, housing complexes are built to be torn down.
• Should China be allowed fishing subsidies?
  China’s demand for special status a sticking point in WTO fishing subsidies negotiations / SeafoodSource
• Op-ed by Jiang Zemin biographer on souring U.S.-China ties
  Anti-China rhetoric is not just US election bluster this time around / SCMP

SOCIETY AND CULTURE:

• “Sexist and unscientific advisories” at a Henan middle school
  School message board removed over puritanical posts / Sixth Tone
• Life after floods in Jiangxi
  Floating life: China’s flood victims pick up the pieces / Sixth Tone