Central Asian schmoozefest and a new KMT presidential candidate
News briefing for May 17, 2023
These are the top news stories about China on May 17, 2023.
Top story: Chinese leader Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 will chair the China-Central Asia Summit in Xi’an on May 18–19, and welcome his counterparts from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. But the publicity for the schmoozefest belies tensions in the relationships. Here is a look at Kazakh fears about China, and here is an examination of what China’s growing presence in the region means for Russia.
State media: Party paper the People’s Daily’s home page and paper edition both cover aspects of the China-Central Asia Summit in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, on May 18–19, while Xinhua News Agency focuses on “Chinese-style modernization” in Shaanxi.
Taiwan’s main opposition party Kuomintang (KMT) has picked Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜 Hóu Yǒuyí) as its candidate to run in the January 2024 presidential election, in a highly-anticipated reveal that will outline the party’s strategy and set the tone for the entire election. Hou, the current mayor of New Taipei City and the former director of the National Police Agency, won favor as a popular and competent mayor. While that was enough to earn him a win over Chinese nationalist Terry Gou (郭台銘 Guō Táimíng), the billionaire founder of Foxconn, some are concerned that the careful and reserved Hou may not turn out to be as aligned with the KMT’s vision for Taiwan.
China fined a Chinese comedy troupe about $2 million over a “severely insulting” joke about the Chinese military. Shanghai Xiaoguo Culture Media, a well-known comedy company, was fined for a quip made by Lǐ Hàoshí 李昊石, known by his stage name House, during a stand-up performance in Beijing on Saturday. Li had invoked a well-known Chinese military slogan to describe a scene in which his two adopted stray dogs were chasing a squirrel. The slogan, an army with “an excellent work style that can fight to win,” was used by Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 to address a military delegation in 2013, and has since been frequently repeated by Chinese state media.
A Chinese fishing boat capsized in the Indian Ocean yesterday with 39 crew members from China, Indonesia, and the Philippines on board. Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 ordered “all-out efforts” to search for survivors, while foreign ministries in the region are coordinating search and rescue operations. None of the missing people have been found so far and the precise location of the incident south of the Maldives is still unknown.
China shut down more than 100,000 online accounts over the past month for spreading “false news” and misrepresenting news anchors and media agencies, according to the country’s cyberspace regulator (in Chinese). The closures come as part of a recently launched special campaign aimed at cleaning up the internet from the spread of fake news coverage, including using artificial intelligence (AI) posing as counterfeit anchors to mislead the public.
The U.S. Justice Department charged a software engineer who worked at Apple from 2016 to 2018, Weibao Wang (Chinese characters unknown), with six counts of theft or attempted theft of the company’s technology.
Chinese search giant Baidu’s revenue rose a stronger-than-expected 10%, with its advertising and cloud businesses both benefiting from China’s post-pandemic reopening. Meanwhile Tencent Holdings is cutting prices for cloud services by up to 40% amid a price war.
