The Kashmir problem

Announcements for Access members:

Thanks to all who joined us for our Slack chat with Kaiser Kuo earlier today. The conversation can still be viewed live on the #supchina_access channel, and later this week, it will be archived to the #access_qa_archive channel.

Our next Slack chat is already scheduled: Christian Shepherd, incoming Beijing correspondent for the Financial Times and former Chinese politics reporter for Reuters, will join us on Wednesday, February 27, at 10 a.m. EST. While at Reuters, Christian wrote about everything from Erik Prince in Xinjiang to disappearing constitutional law textbooks, the outlawing of Marxist student activism at Peking University, and a seemingly endless crackdown on Chinese rights lawyers. After spending his early childhood in Beijing, he returned in 2013 to do a master’s degree in Chinese studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China and then studied Mandarin at the Tsinghua-based IUP.

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief

1. The Kashmir problem

In a nutshell, there was a terrorist attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir by a group China refuses to call “terrorist.”

Pakistan, Kashmir, the disputed borders between China and India, the malcontent Balochis: there are so many things that could go wrong in the relationship between South Asia and China this year. This is just one of them:

In the South China Morning Post, C. Uday Bhaskar, director of the Society for Policy Studies, New Delhi, writes on how China’s stance on Kashmir attack will test ties with India:

The terror attack in the Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday, killing over 40 Indian paramilitary policemen, is by far the deadliest assault since the proxy war between India and Pakistan began about three decades ago. This attack [was] claimed by the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), a terror group banned by the United Nations…

…Apart from issuing pro forma statements against terror as a global challenge, China has provided unstinting and uncritical support to Pakistan despite its role in nurturing Islamic terror groups and related ideology.

It is pertinent to note that at the UN Security Council, Beijing used its veto to shield JeM leader Masood Azhar from global sanctions. This issue is likely to receive considerable diplomatic attention at the bilateral level and the Xi-Modi camaraderie exuded at Wuhan last year in April will be tested…

…China has supported the Pakistani stance apropos Azhar and is the only member of the UNSC that has opposed listing the JeM leader as a global terrorist despite the evidence from over two decades. Azhar is accused of masterminding JeM’s attack in January 2017 on an Indian air force base in the border town of Pathankot.

See also:

• China declines to back India’s bid to list JeM chief Azhar as global terrorist / Economic Times of India

• Stop blaming China, Pakistan: Chinese media to India / Economic Times of India

• Pulwama attack headwind could impact China-India ties / Hindustan Times

• Opinion | China’s master plan: A weak Indian regime to emerge from elections / Hindustan Times

• ‘We want revenge’: India mourns soldiers killed in Kashmir attack blamed on Pakistan / AFP

• Kashmir attack revives India-China tensions / FT (paywall)

• China tunnels into India’s idea of Kashmir / Livemint
  “India believes that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is a major threat to its national security…. Not only will China’s military power appear simultaneously in its east, north and west flanks, but Pakistan will also be able to completely cut off India from Iran.”

—Jeremy Goldkorn

2. Huawei — U.K. and Germany not aligned with U.S.

Since 2012 the U.S. has effectively shut Huawei out of the American market. More recently, the Trump administration has been pressuring U.S. allies around the globe to follow its lead in banning Huawei from sensitive 5G networks at the very least. In the second half of 2018, Australia, New Zealand, and then Japan all did so.

• But earlier this month, Germany appeared to be leaning against the idea of banning Huawei outright — Bloomberg reported, “Cabinet members from Merkel’s administration…concluded that singling out Huawei from a list of suppliers was not legally viable.”

• The U.K. is now also leaning toward “mitigating” safety risk from Huawei, rather than banning its equipment outright, the Financial Times reports (paywall). The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a wing of the British intelligence agency GCHQ, has “determined that there are ways to limit the risks,” two sources told the paper.

• This could be a watershed moment because, as the FT notes, “the UK has access to sensitive US intelligence via its membership of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network,” which also includes Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

• “Other nations can make the argument that if the British are confident of mitigation against national security threats then they can also reassure their public and the U.S. administration that they are acting in a prudent manner in continuing to allow their telecommunications service providers to use Chinese components as long as they take the kinds of precautions recommended by the British,” one of the FT’s anonymous sources said.

• The apparent conclusion of British intelligence follows a remarkable op-ed (paywall) in the FT last week by former GCHQ head Robert Hannigan, who stated, “The key point here, obscured by the growing hysteria over Chinese tech, is that the NCSC has never found evidence of malicious Chinese state cyber activity through Huawei.”

The cases of Huawei in Germany, Canada, and New Zealand are complicated. Here are three articles to read to understand why:

• Why the German debate on 5G and Huawei is critical / The German Marshall Fund of the United States
  “Germany remains undecided about a blanket ban of Chinese companies for building its 5G network — and the country’s role in the European conversation is critical.”

• Banning Huawei from Canada’s 5G networks could be costly for taxpayers / CBC
  “As the Trudeau government decides whether to join its security and trading partners in banning Huawei Canada from supplying technology to build Canada’s 5G wireless network, it risks an expensive lawsuit under the terms of a foreign investor protection agreement signed by its predecessor.”

• China-NZ ties face troubles following Huawei ban / China Digital Times
  A roundup of recent stories relating to turbulent New Zealand-China relations.

And in case you were wondering how the Chinese government feels about the pushback on Huawei, the SCMP published just the AP article you’re looking for under a headline that about sums it up: ‘Hypocritical, immoral, unfair bullying’: Chinese spokesman Geng Shuang blasts US for ‘fabricating’ security fears against Huawei as economic ploy.

—Lucas Niewenhuis

2b. Pacific Reset update: ‘Soooo’ much progress

Donald Trump tweeted twice about the U.S.-China trade negotiations over the weekend:

(We should note that this is not how tariffs work.)

The second tweet caught the attention of Chinese state media, which repeated the optimistic tone, the SCMP reports:

China applauds ‘positive’ Donald Trump tweet ahead of Washington talks

…[An] opinion piece [in Chinese], which was published by the official Xinhua news agency, the People’s Daily and the Global Times under the pseudonym Niu Tanqin, is seen to be part of Beijing’s efforts to reassure its citizens that the trade war with the United States will soon be over.

It did contrast previous columns on Trump by the same author, who in March last year argued that China dislikes the American president for his “insatiable demands, greediness and lack of trust worthiness”…

—Lucas Niewenhuis

3. Xinjiang data leak — millions tracked by facial recognition

“Victor Gevers, a well-known security researcher,” told tech news website ZDNet that a facial recognition database that “the Chinese government is using to track the Uyghur Muslim population in the Xinjiang region has been left open on the internet for months.”

• SenseNets, a Shenzhen-based company, owns the database. Its website is here (in Chinese). “Vitalize video value” is its English marketing slogan.

• The database contained information on 2,565,724 people, “along with a stream of GPS coordinates that came in at a rapid pace.” During the last 24 hours that Gevers followed the database, “nearly 6.7 million GPS coordinates were recorded, meaning the database was actively tracking Uyghur Muslims as they moved around.” All coordinates were in Xinjiang.

• “Names, ID card numbers, home addresses, dates of birth, photos, and employer,” along with a list of GPS locations each user had been seen visiting, were included in the database.

• The database is no longer accessible on the internet: “Not knowing what he found at the time, Gevers reported the exposed database to its owner…the Chinese company, which secured it earlier today… Gevers said he now regrets helping the company secure its oppression tool.”

See also:

• “Never again” is happening again — that’s according to influential journalist Anne Applebaum who compares the world’s lack of concern about the internment camps in Xinjiang to excuses given for similar apathy about the Soviet gulags and Ukrainian famine of 1932-33.

• World Uyghur Congress chief to visit Canada: Asia Times reports: “Canada’s troubled ties with China could be headed for another blow-up in the coming weeks to add to the Huawei political crisis that is still unfolding in Ottawa. The president of the World Uyghur Congress [Dolkun Isa], who Beijing regards as a leading terrorist, said he is preparing for a first visit to Canada after Ottawa cleared him of any security threat by granting him a five-year entry visa.”

• What will happen to these Uyghurs detained in Thailand? “All of the seven Uighur nationals who escaped from an immigration police detention cell in this northeastern border province on Tuesday night have been recaptured,” reports the Bangkok Post. The article notes, without elaborating on the fate of the seven recently captured Uyghurs: “In the past, Thailand has been criticised for sending detained Uighurs back to China, where they reportedly face persecution.”

• ‘Show me that my father is alive.’ China faces torrent of online pleas. That’s the headline of the New York Times report (porous paywall) on the #MeTooUyghur social media campaign.

• Other news of the crushing of minority cultures: Chinese province defends ban on children taking ‘illegal’ Tibetan language classes, reports the South China Morning Post.

—Jeremy Goldkorn

4. Chinese female bodybuilder in feud with internet police over bikini videos

Lara Zhang, an Australia-based Chinese female bodybuilder, engaged in a social media feud on Monday with China’s cyber police, who accused her of spreading pornography after she posted a bodybuilding video of herself posing in a bikini on Weibo. The controversial clip was shared by Zhang in July 2018, but the official Weibo account of internet police in Maoming, Guangdong Province, somehow dug it out today and warned Zhang of the legal consequences of posting “obscene” content on the Chinese internet.

Click through to The China Project for more details.

—Jiayun Feng

—————

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:

• Chinese fish in Kenya
  Kenya lifts China fish ban to boost supply / Business Daily
  Kenya can’t supply itself with fish, despite its rich marine resources:  

The Department of Fisheries has lifted a ban on fish imports following a biting shortage after President Uhuru Kenyatta’s directive against Chinese catch that had flooded the market. The ban was lifted in January, barely three months after the restrictions took effect in November…

…Kenya imports approximately 1.8 million kilogramme of fish every month. It produces about 135,000 tonnes annual against an annual demand of 500,000 tonnes… Most factories that import fish cite unreliable supply from the local market, which affects their customers.

• See also:
  Why Kenya’s fishing industry is sailing in rough waters (2018) / Business Daily Africa
  Kenya lags behind in exploiting potential in sea fishing / The Nation (Kenya)  

• Australian coal in limbo
  China restricts Australian coal imports at its ports in a bid to boost domestic market / Australian ABC
  “Dozens of vessels carrying Australian coal continue to be in limbo off the coast of China as restrictions on imports are introduced at key ports across the country.”

• Artificial intelligence subsidies
  Chengdu offers AI startups 3 million yuan subsidies as race for talent heats up / TechNode
  “The capital city of Sichuan Province is facing increased pressure to acquire talent amid an AI race involving a slew of Chinese cities.”
  Opinion: Trump’s artificial intelligence executive order will ensure America doesn’t lose the AI race to China / Fox News

• The death of the P2P boom
  China police freeze P2P lending assets in expanded probe / Bloomberg via Taipei Times
  “Chinese police have frozen about 10 billion yuan ($1.48 billion) of assets across more than 380 peer-to-peer (P2P) lenders in an escalated investigation into illicit financing. Codenamed ‘Fox Hunt,’ the operation spanned 16 countries and regions, including Thailand and Cambodia, and led to the arrests of 62 suspects implicated in Chinese P2P frauds since June last year.”
  China’s peer-to-peer lenders fight for survival / Nikkei Asian Review
  “China’s peer to peer lenders face a Darwinian struggle for survival in 2019 with the number of operators expected to plunge dramatically for a second consecutive year amid the government’s continuing crackdown on these private online financial service providers.”

• China on the Moon
  China’s landing site on the far side of the Moon now has a name / Space.com
  “One [lunar feature] is a mountain now called Mons Tai, after a mountain in China’s Shandong Province just south of Beijing.”
  “The Milky Way Base” – China names first human-technology landing site on Moon’s far side / The Daily Galaxy

• The softening auto market
  China’s car sales in January fell 16 percent, marking seven months of decline / CNBC

• Gold is king
  China’s latest gold rush has transformed a fifth-tier city / Economist (porous paywall)
  Reporting from Putian, Fujian:

Chinese demand for gold jewelry has regularly surpassed that of India and America combined since then, accounting last year for 14 percent of physical gold demand globally. China has been the world’s largest producer since 2007. Yet it consumes even more gold (1,089 tonnes) than it unearths (426 tonnes). Flush with cash, its miners are moving to the high street: China Gold and Shandong Gold, two state-owned giants that are the country’s largest miners, have recently set up jewelry affiliates.

POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS:

• Study Xi app: Who made it?
  Alibaba is the force behind hit Chinese Communist Party app: sources / Reuters
  “A Chinese government propaganda app that recently became a huge hit was developed by Alibaba, two people at the company told Reuters, at a time when the nation’s tech firms are under global scrutiny over their ties to Beijing.”

• Study Xi app: What is the user experience like?
  Gamifying propaganda: Everything you need to know about China’s ‘Study Xi’ app / What’s on Weibo
  Read more about the Study Xi app in our newsletter from last Thursday.

• Australian parliament hack
  Australia says a ‘sophisticated state actor’ hacked parties, parliament week before election / AFP
  “Australia on Monday said a ‘sophisticated state actor’ had hacked the country’s main political parties and parliament, just weeks before a closely fought election.” China was not named.

• Canadian campus incidents
  China denies role in backlash against Tibetan student’s election at U of T / CBC
  Read about the two incidents in last Friday’s Access newsletter.

• Dumplings and epizootics
  Chinese dumpling maker Sanquan recalls products suspected of African swine fever contamination / Reuters
  “Major Chinese frozen food producer Sanquan Food said on Monday February 18 it has recalled products that may be contaminated with African swine fever, following media reports that some of its dumplings tested positive for the virus. African swine fever is incurable in pigs but does not harm people.”
  African swine fever found in Chinese frozen pork dumplings, but you can still buy them / SCMP
  Over 32,500 chickens culled in Changhua due to avian flu / Focus Taiwan
  China suspends wool trade from South Africa due to foot-and-mouth disease outbreak / Australian ABC

• Social credit blacklist
  Blacklist labels millions of Chinese citizens and businesses untrustworthy / SCMP
  “Over 3.59 million Chinese enterprises were added to the official creditworthiness blacklist last year…according to the 2018 annual report released by the National Public Credit Information Centre.”
  Note that the blacklist is a separate thing from the Sesame Credit app by Alibaba and others like it, which function rather similarly to Western credit-rating agencies.

• Aircraft carrier chief on trial for spying for foreign power?
  The case of the Chinese aircraft carrier spy / Daily Beast
  “The man who oversaw the construction of China’s first two aircraft carriers is on trial in Shanghai for corruption and also, according to press reports, for passing along information to foreign agents.”

• Forgetting the Vietnam War
  40 years on, Chinese veterans defy official silence to remember the Vietnam border war / SCMP

• China’s own jihadis
  China’s foreign fighters problem / War on the Rocks
  “China has a foreign fighters problem. Like many other states, it is dealing with the complex security and legal implications of its residents leaving the country to join jihadist groups.”

• “Security grip tightens”
  Police embedded in grass-roots Communist Party cells as security grip tightens on Beijing / SCMP
  “Police officers in Beijing are being appointed to top positions in grass-roots Communist Party cells overseeing communities throughout the city as part of sweeping efforts to further tighten control and scrutiny of residents in the capital.”
  Mother of jailed Chinese rights activist under police guard in own home / Radio Free Asia

• Corrupt cadres in Australia, and getting their money back to China
  Project Dragon and China’s attempts to reclaim money from inside Australia / Australian ABC
  ”China has recruited the services of former police detectives in Australia and other Western countries to help it recover millions of dollars in alleged ‘hot money’ taken out of the country.”

SOCIETY AND CULTURE:

• Screen time, apps, and homework
  Chinese province to ban homework on mobile apps / AP
  Zhejiang Province “plans to ban teachers from assigning homework to be completed on mobile apps as part of efforts to preserve students’ eyesight.”

• Hip-hop in Chengdu
  The rise of trap in southwest China – Chengdu / Vice on YouTube
  Chengdu-based hip-hop group Higher Brothers is highlighted on this 17-minute Vice documentary. “Trap” is a style of hip-hop originating from the southern United States.

• Being Chinese, and a P.R.C. passport
  I am Chinese, insists table tennis queen Deng Yaping as she posts photos of her and France-born son’s passports / SCMP
  “The former table tennis champion Dèng Yàpíng 邓亚萍 has posted photographs of her and her son’s Chinese passports on social media in an attempt to put a stop to years of questions about their nationality.”

• Taiwanese identity
  With each generation, the people of Taiwan feel more Taiwanese — and less Chinese / LA Times

• Beauty standards
  Chinese netizens decry, then defend, Zara model’s freckles / Sixth Tone

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The Caixin-Sinica Business Brief, episode 76

This week on the Caixin-Sinica Business Brief: the seemingly never-ending trade talks between China and the U.S., Didi Chuxing’s mass layoffs, China’s trade surplus, Huawei, Doug Young on the wine scene in China, and more.

• Subscribe to the Business Brief on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, or Stitcher.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

Sparklers on the streets of Bangdong

To celebrate the start of the Year of the Pig in rural Yunnan Province, children play with “fairy sticks” (仙女棒 xiānnǚbàng; sparklers) in the streets. Photo by Matthew Chitwood, who is @theotherchina on Instagram.