Links for Friday, November 13, 2020

WORTH THINKING ABOUT

Pieces of news or analysis that caught our eye:

“Volkswagen’s Uyghur problem” is the title of a new Deutsche Welle TV report, which says that the German car company “might have forced laborers in its workforce.” 

But in an interview with the BBC, the company’s CEO in China, Stephan Wollenstein, “defended Volkswagen’s presence in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, where it runs a factory with 600 workers, producing up to 20,000 vehicles a year.”

The BBC points out that Volkswagen “was founded by the ruling German Nazi Party in 1937 and used forced labor — including concentration camp prisoners — in its factories during WWII.” Referring to this history, Wollenstein stated:

What happened in the Nazi times was something that happened in our factories where we had forced labor, people producing Volkswagen cars. This certainly is an unacceptable situation. Therefore, we are making sure that none of our production sites have forced labor, and this is something that we specifically checked in Urumqi and I can assure you, we do not have forced labor.

“The rivalry between China and the United States will give rise to threats to Beijing’s political stability, a top Communist Party security official warned,” reports the South China Morning Post. Guō Shēngkūn 郭声琨 — head of the Party’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, which oversees the police, intelligence agencies, prisons, and courts — said “the series of risks must be controlled with a complete ‘chain’ that covered the sources, transmission and transformation of the risks,” according to the SCMP.

MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY:

• The booming healthcare sector
  China’s health-care listings break record / WSJ (paywall)
  “More than 60 Chinese health-care companies have raised a total $16.3 billion from IPOs and secondary listings this year.”
• “Clearing out bloated fuel stockpiles in Asia”
  China’s oil giant eyes new supertankers to shrink fuel glut / Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance “Unipec, the trading arm of China’s biggest oil refiner Sinopec Group, hired a newly-built very large crude carrier to load low-sulfur diesel in Asia for delivery to Europe.”
• Auto sales up
  China auto sales grow 12.5% in October, but down for year / AP
• Foxconn and Pegatron  
  Taiwan’s big two Apple suppliers to invest in U.S. after Biden win / Caixin
• Drones that carry people
  EHang’s aerial people-mover logs maiden flight in Seoul / Caixin
• State blockchain — China Construction Bank
  Major Chinese state-owned bank uses blockchain to sell $3 billion of bonds / Caixin
• Games help Tencent rake in the cash
  Hit games push Tencent profits past forecasts / Nikkei (porous paywall)

SCIENCE, HEALTH, AND THE ENVIRONMENT:

• A brief audit of China and U.S. climate change claims
  Fact-checking the US and China on climate and environment / BBC
  See also:
  • Ma Jun: China has started to ‘walk the walk’ on climate crisis / Guardian
  • China’s climate goals leave gas plans in doubt / RFA

POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS:

• More trains for Tibet
  New railway to boost Tibet’s development / China Daily
• Another gesture from Beijing to Washington?
  American Air restarts China flights as travel curbs ease / Caixin
• WHO’s troubled relationship with Taiwan
  WHO drops censorship of words ‘Taiwan’ and ‘China’ on social media after backlash / Guardian “The World Health Organization has removed social media filters which were censoring the words ‘Taiwan’ and ‘China’ from its Facebook page after an online backlash, but said the blocks were because of an ‘onslaught’ of cyber attacks.”
• South China Sea aggression
  Sunken boats. Stolen gear. Fishermen are prey as China conquers a strategic sea / LA Times
  “Beijing’s aggressive South China Sea expansion shows its willingness to defy international laws for President Xí Jìnpíng’s 习近平 visions of power.”
• International opprobrium at Hong Kong crackdown
  Britain, EU join U.S. in condemning China’s crackdown on Hong Kong lawmakers / NPR
  China’s grip over Hong Kong poses an immediate challenge for Biden / Washington Post

SOCIETY AND CULTURE:

• The state of China — a conversation
  ‘Adieu, China!’ — Jianying Zha’s long farewell / China Heritage
  “Zhá Jiànyīng 查建英 and Katō Yoshikazu’s ‘new decameron’ is a rare commodity for it offers from Beijing an open and heartfelt exchange between two engaged cultural figures about the state of China, the Sino-American conundrum, the future of East Asia and how their own lives have been and are intermeshed with all of these issues.”
• Competition and corruption in academia
  How Chinese university admissions became a no-holds-barred arms race / Sixth Tone
  New guideline to rein in graduate adviser power abuse / Sixth Tone
• Selfie culture
  In selfie-obsessed Shanghai, street cleaners are told to leave the leaves / Sixth Tone