New Zealand’s turn in the doghouse

Today’s news in six bullet points:

• New Zealand has joined the club of Turkey, Canada, Norway, Australia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Lithuania as a recent target of Beijing’s wrath.

• Anti-Beijing sentiment is rising in countries around the world, for a variety of reasons.

• Beijing’s proof-of-life video response to Turkey over concern about the fate of folk poet Abdurehim Heyit appears to have backfired: Uyghurs around the world are now demanding evidence that their relatives in Xinjiang are still alive, using the hashtag #MeTooUyghur.

• Trump indicated the March 2 trade talks deadline could “slide for a little while,” as American negotiators meet with their counterparts in Beijing.

• Sex workers and their clients may no longer be detained extrajudicially as soon as later this year, if reports are true.

• China’s most famous living director, Zhāng Yìmóu 张艺谋, just had a film pulled from the Berlin Film Festival by Chinese authorities.

Announcements:

Our first Slack chat of 2019 will be a digital fireside get-together with our own Kaiser Kuo on Monday, February 18, at 10 a.m. EST (11 p.m. Beijing time). If you need any help getting logged on to the Slack channel, please email lucas@thechinaproject.com. You can find transcripts of previous Slack chats in the #access_qa_archive channel.

If you are in New York, or will be at any time in the next few months, please scroll down to the bottom of this email to read about our upcoming events. We have a lot planned, and even more to come.

—Jeremy Goldkorn and team

1. New Zealand’s turn in the doghouse

New Zealand has joined the club of Turkey, Canada, Norway, Australia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Lithuania as a recent target of Beijing’s wrath. The New Zealand Herald reports:

Diplomatic links with China appear to have plummeted to a new low as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is given the cold shoulder by Beijing and a major tourism promotion is postponed by the superpower.

Ardern was scheduled to visit China early this year but the invitation has been put on hold.

The 2019 China-New Zealand Year of Tourism was meant to be launched with great fanfare at Wellington’s Te Papa museum next week, but that has been postponed by China…

…The GCSB’s version that Huawei posed a risk to national security isn’t enough for Beijing. It wants a better explanation before opening the door to Ardern.

In related news:

• An Air New Zealand flight was forced to return to Auckland after several hours in the air en route to Shanghai. New Zealand news website Stuff.co.nz reports that the issue was that paperwork for the flight “included reference to Taiwan, which China took to be an acknowledgement that the island was independent.”

• China’s hostage diplomacy is starting to spook New Zealanders. One pundit warned on a TV news show that if the country continues “down an inevitable path towards banning Huawei, then I would simply say that if you are doing business in China, if you are a New Zealand resident in China, you need to be cognisant of the fact that there could be a knock on your door and you could be taken away on corruption charges or turpitude charges.”

2. Anti-Beijing sentiment spreads across the globe

2019 is shaping up to be the year when China’s relationships with many countries will be “complicated.” The following are just from today’s headlines:

• United Kingdom: The UK’s shift in attitude to the threat of China / Spectator

Defence secretary Gavin Williamson’s speech today is another demonstration of how the UK government’s attitude to China has changed. In the Cameron Osborne era, the UK was determined to be China’s best friend in the West. All the emphasis was on creating a ‘golden era’ in Anglo-Chinese relations. But now, the government strikes a more realistic — and hawkish — tone on China. In his speech today, Williamson brackets China with Russia as a threat.

• The Philippines: Pudding-throwing incident stokes anti-China sentiments in the Philippines / Straits Times

• Egypt: Egyptian billionaire: Trump is right about China / CNBC

Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris didn’t mince words in his evaluation of the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China and the security concerns about Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei… “President Trump is right about that: This has been a long time where we closed eyes on China raping us. So, by the time you come and tell them, ‘You need to change,’ I mean, they just used to be so comfortable and do whatever they want,” he said.

• European Union: China’s influence in Balkans poses risks, report warns / Balkan Insight

China’s economic outreach in the Western Balkan region poses risks for the EU, notably in terms of increased reliance on Chinese loans, the 2019 Munich Security Conference report, published on Monday, warns.

• Australia: Chinese billionaire stripped of visa calls Australia ‘a giant baby’ / CNN

Huáng [Xiàngmò 黄向墨] described the idea that his donations in Australia and political connections in China were “threatening (Australia’s) national security” as “ridiculous”… Relations between Beijing and Canberra soured in December 2017 after the Australian government introduced a package of foreign interference laws, amid growing concerns over China’s influence on politics, academia and media in the country.

3. Uyghurs to China: Show us proof-of-life videos, too

Lily Kuo of the Guardian reports:

Beijing’s latest efforts to dispel criticism of its treatment of Uighur Muslims in the northwestern Chinese territory of Xinjiang appear to be backfiring.

In an effort to dispel rumours of the death of famous Uighur musician Abdurehim Heyit, who disappeared in Xinjiang in 2017, Chinese state media released a video of Heyit attesting to his health. In the video, he says he is in police custody and has “never been abused.”

Now, activists and members of the Uighur diaspora are calling for proof of life videos of their relatives who have disappeared into a network of internment camps that China claims are “vocational training centres.” Under the hashtag #MeTooUyghur, members of the Uighur community are posting the names and photos of their missing family members…

Other relevant reporting:

• China rejects Turkey criticism on Uighurs, denies poet’s death / Al Jazeera
  ”China has hit back at claims by Turkey over its treatment of Uighur people and denied reports a prominent poet and musician from the ethnic Muslim minority was tortured to death in prison.”

• Uighur crackdown: ‘I spent seven days of hell in Chinese camps’ / BBC
  “The Chinese government calls them free ‘vocational training centres’; Aibota Serik, a Chinese Kazakh whose father was sent to one, calls them prisons.”

• Ethnic Kazakh man who fled China sent back to Thailand / Radio Free Asia
  “Authorities in Uzbekistan have sent an ethnic Kazakh man with Chinese nationality back to Thailand in spite of Beijing’s attempts to have him repatriated, RFA has learned.”

• China issues Turkey safety alert after Ankara’s ‘vile’ statements about treatment of Uygurs in Xinjiang / SCMP

To note: ‘Rising political star’ sent to Xinjiang

“Beijing has sent a trusted senior cadre — with a track record of versatility and economic development — to join the highest decision-making body of China’s highly sensitive Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region,” reports the South China Morning Post.

Wáng Jūnzhèng 王君正, 56, was appointed to Xinjiang’s 14-member Communist Party standing committee, but a specific role “was not specified in the two-paragraph announcement.” For further speculation on Wang’s posting to Xinjiang, see this bilingual note from Mingjing.

—Jeremy Goldkorn

4. Pacific Reset, day 222: Trump indicates trade talk deadline could ‘slide for a little while’

American and Chinese trade negotiators are meeting in Beijing, and will be for the rest of this week. The Wall Street Journal reports (paywall):

Discussions between midlevel officials began on Monday in China’s Commerce Ministry. Next, a high-level U.S. delegation led by Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will hold two-day talks, starting Thursday [February 14], with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He and his entourage.

Both sides hope to hash out a framework of a deal, the people said, with the goal of getting it finalized in a meeting between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The date for such a session hasn’t been set.

We wrote yesterday that the two governments’ desires for a presidential-level meeting to seal a trade and economic agreement was likely to extend the March 2 talks deadline. Today, Trump confirmed this by telling reporters at the White House that “If we’re close to a deal… I could see myself letting [the deadline] slide for a little while.”

Other news from the Pacific Reset:

• Market reaction
  Asian markets gain as investors pin hopes on U.S.-China trade talks / MarketWatch
  U.S.-China trade hopes give stocks a lift / WSJ (paywall)

• Commentary
  Kevin Rudd says Donald Trump’s trade deal with China will be ‘superficial’ / Australian Financial Review (paywall)
  Blanket bans on China tech firms make no sense / FT (paywall)
  Robert Hannigan, the former director of the Government Communications Headquarters in the U.K., writes, “There will need to be sensible restrictions on exactly where foreign technology is deployed and a diversity of providers so that there is no single point of failure or potential leverage. But assertions that any Chinese technology in any part of a 5G network represents an unacceptable risk are nonsense.”

• Southeast Asia
  U.S.-China trade war boosts Vietnamese city’s economy / NPR
  “Vietnam’s economy grew faster than any mature country last year, partly because of the trade war. Manufacturers are leaving empty factories in China and are fleeing to cities like Hai Phong.”

• Military competition
  Beijing calls out US defense agency report into Chinese space programme as smokescreen to hide an arms race / SCMP

• Made in China 2025
  Florida Senator Marco Rubio proposes legislation to counter Beijing’s ‘Made in China 2025’ plan / SCMP
  “Senator Marco Rubio is proposing legislation that would counteract China’s ‘Made in China 2025’ economic-development initiative by restricting and taxing Chinese investment in the US and by raising import duties on goods produced by industries supported by Beijing’s programme.”

• Huawei in Hungary
  Briefing: US warns Eastern European countries of Huawei’s growing influence / TechNode
  “US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Hungary’s government on Monday of the security risks associated with equipment supplied by Huawei Technologies, hinting that it could complicate the European country’s partnerships with the US.”

• Huawei in the Philippines
  Huawei gets vote of confidence from Philippines’ Globe Telecom, which says security concerns somewhat overblown / SCMP
  “Globe Telecom, a Philippines-based network operator that counts Huawei Technologies as a key supplier, said that concerns over the potential threat posed by the Chinese company to national security were overblown ‘to a certain extent’ and that it was pushing ahead with a planned roll-out of fifth-generation (5G) commercial services in the second quarter of this year.”

—Lucas Niewenhuis

5. An end to extrajudicial detention of sex workers and their clients?

At East Asia Forum, Emile Dirks writes:

If reports are true, this year China may abolish its system of extrajudicial detention for sex workers and their clients. This is welcome news. China’s sex workers deserve to live and work in safety and eliminating this system would be a major step towards achieving this end. But if this is a victory, it’s a partial one. Though sex worker detention may soon be abolished, similar systems targeting users of drugs and Xinjiang’s Muslims continue to grow.

6. Back to the ’90s: Zhang Yimou film removed from Berlin Festival

China’s most famous living director, Zhāng Yìmóu 张艺谋, just had a film pulled from the Berlin Film Festival by Chinese authorities. Agence France-Presse reports:

The highly unusual move, which comes amid a Beijing crackdown on the domestic entertainment industry, was announced in a festival statement citing “technical difficulties encountered during post-production.”

Zhang’s “One Second” (一秒钟 yī miǎo zhōng) had been scheduled to screen on Friday. It is billed as an intimate portrait of a prisoner who escaped from a labor camp during the Cultural Revolution and is on a trek to see a key newsreel in a rural village cinema…

…The cancellation follows another Chinese film, “Better Days,” being withdrawn last week, also for “technical reasons.”

Good ol’ “technical reasons.” To translate this choice piece of officialese: “Just see what kind of story it tells and you know why it happened,” one Chinese social media user commented, according to the South China Morning Post, which also notes:

The last time Zhang, who has won numerous accolades including the Golden Bear and Golden Lion awards, had trouble with the film regulators was decades ago. In 1994, his epic “To Live” was banned in China, even though it won awards in Cannes that year.

He was fully “rehabilitated” by the Communist Party in 2008 when he was appointed director of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games.

—–

Our whole team really appreciates your support as Access members. Please chat with us on our Slack channel or contact me anytime at jeremy@thechinaproject.com.

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief

BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY:

• Ecommerce — JD’s new hotel
  JD to turn Beijing hotel into a research and commercial center / TechNode
  “China’s e-commerce giant JD.com has acquired 100 percent ownership of the Jade Palace Hotel in Beijing for $400 million. The Nasdaq-listed company is planning to transform the building into a space for technology innovation and commercial business.”

• Electric vehicles and copper
  China’s demand for electric vehicles charges copper / FT (paywall)
  “The number of petrol cars made in China this year is expected to drop by 9 percent, according to Citi, while electric car production is set to rise by 53 percent. That results in net copper demand growth of 0.3 percent for the sector.”

• Signs of the slowdown
  China’s private firms going bankrupt after guaranteeing others’ loans / Reuters
  “The warning bells are already sounding in the once-prosperous eastern city of Dongying, a hub for oil refining and heavy industry in Shandong Province. Here, at least 28 private companies are seeking to restructure their debts and avoid bankruptcy, mainly due to souring loans that they guaranteed for other firms, court rulings seen by Reuters show.”
  China’s grey economy losing ability to be employment backstop for laid off industrial workers / SCMP
  “Chinese internet-based service companies, which served as the employment backstop in the last economic downturn, have themselves fallen on hard times, only adding fuel to rising lay-off worries. Online search traffic for the keyword ‘lay-off’ has shot up since December to a level higher than at any time since the beginning of 2011 when such data first became available, according to Baidu Index.”

• Gold at the central bank
  China on gold-buying spree? PBOC adds 11.8 tonnes to reserves in January / Kitco News
  “The latest reserve data from the People’s Bank of China shows its gold holdings increased by 11.8 tonnes to 1,864 tonnes as of the end of January. The newest increase follows December purchase of just under 10 tonnes of gold, the first time the central bank increased its reserves since October 2016.”

• Tesla
  Tesla is staking its future on China — here’s what it’s up against / CNBC
  “CEO Elon Musk recently warned that without manufacturing in China, Tesla won’t be able to produce 10,000 Model 3 electric sedans per week (as the company has aimed to do for years) and won’t be able to offer the eagerly awaited base model at a price of $35,000.” Click through to the article for a list of reasons Musk might not find it so easy.

POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS:

• Twitter censorship and Venezuela
  China targets Twitter users critical of Venezuela’s Maduro / Radio Free Asia
  RFA reports:

Zhao Weidong, a Twitter user from the northern province of Shaanxi, was called in for questioning by police in the provincial capital Xi’an and fined after he forwarded a post to social media critical of the country’s beleaguered authoritarian government. He was issued with an administrative fine of 500 yuan on Jan. 29 for retweeting “false information,” according to a copy of the fine notification seen by RFA.

• Air pollution
  Pollution in northern China up 16 percent in January as industrial activity spikes / SCMP
  “Air pollution in January in 39 major northern Chinese cities rose 16 percent from a year earlier, according to official figures, with surging industrial activity making it increasingly unlikely they will meet their winter emissions targets.”

• Endangered wildlife trade
  Hong Kong, crossroads of the criminal wildlife trade / NYT (porous paywall)
  “Despite reforms, the territory is a linchpin in the global traffic in illegal animal parts.”

• Are India and China greening the world?
  India, China leading global greening effort: NASA study / Moneycontrol
  China, India leading in Earth’s greening, says NASA / Sixth Tone
  “The planet has become greener due to human activities like forestation and crop production, according to a new study.”

• When Beijing claims Taiwanese citizens as its own
  Taiwan finds regrettable deportation of nationals to China by the Philippines / Manila Bulletin
  “The government of Taiwan on Tuesday expressed its ‘solemn concern’ and ‘deep regret’ over the Philippine government’s forced deportation to China of seven Taiwanese nationals who were facing alleged telecom fraud charges.”
  Taiwan critical of Manila’s sending of its nationals to China (update) / Focus Taiwan

• Extradition between Taiwan, Macau, Hong Kong, and China
  Fugitives face extradition to Macau, Taiwan and mainland China under Hong Kong government proposal to amend law this year / SCMP
  “The extradition of fugitives between Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and mainland China may be possible as early as the second half of this year under a government proposal to amend legislation and enable the surrender of suspects in criminal cases.”

• Photo diary: The woman who accused a TV host of sexual harassment
  The face of China’s #MeToo movement enters the fray / ChinaFile

SOCIETY AND CULTURE:

• Obituary for a much-loved China scholar
  Roderick MacFarquhar: the scholar who wrote the leading history of China’s Cultural Revolution as it happened / SCMP
  “Professor Roderick MacFarquhar, a prominent Western specialist on China, particularly the Cultural Revolution, died on Sunday. He was 88. Harvard University’s Fairbank Centre for China Studies, where MacFarquhar was director from 1986-1992, described him as a ‘great scholar and great man.’”
  China hands mourn a giant of the field / Caixin

• Death of a dim sum diner
  A vanishing century-old tea house in Hong Kong, as heritage gives way to wealth / Channel NewsAsia
  Journalist Vivienne Chow writes that Lin Heung Tea House, which is “one of Hong Kong’s oldest teahouses serving traditional dim sum,” is “set to close in end February, because the landlord has refused to renew its lease, in a district that increasingly caters to the rich.”

• Justifying sexism with traditional culture
  Table manners / World of Chinese
  “Public figures making sexist remarks are sadly commonplace in China today. The latest is internet entrepreneur Liǔ Huáfāng 柳华芳, who believes that Chinese culture may collapse if women are offered a place at the table — literally.”

• Corruption at Beijing Film Academy
  Actor investigated for academic misconduct in doctoral program / Sixth Tone
  “Zhái Tiānlín 翟天临 has been accused of sidestepping graduation requirements, raising concerns over academic integrity and preferential treatment for celebrities.”

• Video game that teaches kids to be parents
  In China, this video game lets you be a tiger mom or a driven dad / NYT (porous paywall)
  “Mete out love and discipline. Set ambitious goals. Endure a teenager’s first dates. Fans say the game Chinese Parents is a surprisingly poignant exercise in role reversal.”

• Lunar New Year litterbugs
  Mucky migration: China’s Lunar New Year motorists leave behind a mountain of mess / SCMP
  “According to a report by news website Thepaper.cn, a dozen sanitation workers in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, spent the best part of a day collecting detritus dumped by motorists on a section of motorway that runs through their patch.”

VIDEO ON SUPCHINA

More unexpected things you can do with an excavator

Remember the talented excavator operator in China who has been filming tricks of dexterity with heavy construction equipment and going viral on the video platform Kuaishou? His newest feats include turning on an iPhone, igniting a row of lighters, and transporting a lightbulb.

FEATURED ON SUPCHINA

‘Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj’ highlights China’s #MeToo movement, online censorship, and Uyghur repression

In the first episode of its second season, Netflix’s current events and culture satire show Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj focuses on censorship in China. Minhaj explains the topic through the lens of how China’s #MeToo feminist activists have fought the system and built arguably the largest social movement in the country since 1989. He also highlights China’s imprisonment of a million Uyghur Muslims, a topic that receives barely more attention on American television than it does on Chinese.

Rural Love in China: The Auntie of Sanpi

In 2018, Clarinda Blais spent nine months living in Sanpi 伞陂, a small village in Huangchuan County, Henan, about 230 kilometers from Wuhan. She returned this year to spend Spring Festival with her host family in hopes of answering a question: What is love in rural China? This story is about Sun Jieping, a 43-year-old woman who attempted suicide five years ago when her husband revealed he kept mistresses. She has since found purpose through taking care of the village’s children.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

The Houhai swimmers

Freelance journalist Beimeng Fu took this photo upon the first real snowfall of the winter in Beijing (click here for a gallery of more photos). She writes:

It was my first stroll in the Year of the Pig along Houhai Lake near where I live, and I had almost forgotten about the ice swimmers — but here they are! Business as usual. Onlookers gather, eyes wide open. “I bet it must be warmer in the water,” one commented. Others shot back with friendly laughter, “Why don’t you go down and have a try!’”

The China Project events this week and beyond

In New York City, we are hosting several events:

February 14: Spend Valentine’s Day with me, my Sinica co-host, Kaiser Kuo, and Zhá Jiànyīng 查建英, author of the books China Pop and Tide Players! We’ll record a live podcast about activism in the current Chinese political climate — specifically through the lens of Zha’s brother, a democracy activist who has been jailed and has seen firsthand how the state suppresses those accused of “subversion.” Zha recently wrote about her brother for the New Yorker in a story we highly recommend: China’s bizarre program to keep activists in check. If you’d like to attend, please reserve your space here.

On February 28, we will have a The China Project Women’s Network Monthly Series event with Jolyne Caruso, CEO of The Alberleen Group — details here.

On March 12, our next Women’s Network Monthly Series event will feature Catherine Li, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of ChainDD, who will talk about how blockchain is developing in both China and the U.S., and how it is changing our markets. Details here.

Finally, mark your calendars for the third annual The China Project Women’s Conference! Early-bird ticket sales are coming soon.