Editor’s note for June 26, 2023
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
Dear reader:
The Chinese government and its media have been rather quiet about Russia: The Foreign Ministry curtly noted that the Wagner Group insurrection was “Russia’s internal affair,” while most media just published vague, paragraph-long pieces on Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aborted uprising, citing foreign media sources. The government’s Xinhua News Agency briefly reports that a criminal case against Prigozhin has not been closed.
CCTV, the main state broadcaster, on Saturday posted to its website a three-minute package produced by a provincial TV station on the affair. It is not critical of the Russian government, which it says has accused the Wagner Group of armed rebellion. CCTV itself has just broadcast a 30-second piece that reports that “Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says Russia is investigating whether the West was involved in the Wagner Group affair.”
Outward-directed state media were a little more effusive in their commentary. The China Daily’s biggest piece on the subject is titled, “Wagner incident resolved, but it’s an uneasy calm,” while the more pugnacious Global Times goes with “Wagner’s revolt weakening Putin’s authority ‘wishful thinking’ of the West: experts.”
Drugs: Last Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed its first prosecutions against China-based companies and people for selling key chemicals used to make fentanyl, the drug that is currently doing the most damage to Americans.
China’s Foreign Ministry has “strongly condemned” the move, but in the Chinese media, the only news about drugs today seems to be messages related to the United Nations’ International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, which has been observed annually on June 26 since 1989. (Xinhua News Agency has a story warning readers to “beware the ‘fancy disguise’ of these new drugs,” such as a “small ‘stamp’ that is actually a drug, ‘jumping candy’ that will damage the nervous system, and ‘fake Coke’ that will cause the whole body to go into a fever.”)
The DOJ filing does not mention International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, and the date of filing appears to be a coincidence. Scroll down for a summary of the DOJ fentanyl actions, or click through for the whole thing.
You might also be interested in a feature we published recently: China’s war on drugs: From incarceration to rehabilitation by Dylan Levi King. The piece examines China’s approach to treating drugs as a societal problem, which differs greatly from America’s. Despite many problems, in some ways, it seems to be more successful and humane by comparison.
New Zealand prime minister Chris Hipkins landed in China earlier today. Last week, he publicly disagreed with U.S. President Joseph Biden’s characterization of Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 as a “dictator.”
Hipkins seems set on schmoozing with China for more trade. But despite the fact that roughly a third of his country’s exports go to China, many of its citizens are increasingly leery of the People’s Republic: According to a new survey, 37% of New Zealanders view China as a “threat,” while only 30% see it as a “friend.” Only 13% of respondents say they trust China to “act responsibly in the world.”
Our Word of the Day is: Russia accused Wagner of armed rebellion (瓦格纳被俄指控武装叛乱
wǎgénà bèi é zhǐkòng wǔzhuāng pànluàn).
—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief
