Tag: Chinas

You ain’t no middleman: EU and NATO slam China’s bid to be a Ukraine peacemaker

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BRUSSELS — China’s attempt to style itself as a neutral peacemaker in the Ukraine war fell flat on Friday when NATO and the EU both slammed its playbook for ending the conflict one year after Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Beijing is a key strategic ally of Russia, which it sees as a useful partner against the West and NATO. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Chinese companies are already supplying “non-lethal” aid to Russia, but added there are indications that China is weighing up sending arms — something Beijing denies.
Earlier on Friday, the Chinese foreign ministry published a 12-point, 892-word “position paper” with a view to settling what it calls the “Ukraine crisis,” without referring to it as a war.

“China’s position builds on a misplaced focus on the so-called ‘legitimate security interests and concerns’ of parties, implying a justification for Russia’s illegal invasion, and blurring the roles of the aggressor and the aggressed,” Nabila Massrali, the EU’s foreign policy spokeswoman, said in a press briefing.
“The position paper doesn’t take into account who is the aggressor and who is the victim of an illegal and unjustified war of aggression,” Massrali, said, calling the Chinese position paper “selective and insufficient about their implications for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.”
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said China’s stance was anything but neutral.
“It is not a peace plan but principles that they shared. You have to see them against a specific backdrop. And that is the backdrop that China has taken sides, by signing for example an unlimited friendship right before Russia’s invasion in Ukraine started,” she said at a press conference in Estonia. “So we will look at the principles, of course. But we will look at them against the backdrop that China has taken sides.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also joined officials in pouring cold water on Beijing.
“China doesn’t have much credibility,” he told reporters on Friday, responding to the latest official document. “They have not been able to condemn the illegal invasion of Ukraine.”
Stoltenberg added that there have been “signs and indications that China may be planning and considering to supply military aid to Russia,” although NATO has not seen “any actual delivery of lethal aid.”
China has been hoping to improve ties with the Europeans, as it doubles down on efforts to discredit the U.S.
Assistant Foreign Minister Hua Chunying, for instance, accused the U.S. of benefiting from the war. Wang Lutong, the head of European affairs at the Chinese Foreign Ministry, appealed directly to the European Union: “China is willing to make joint efforts with the EU and continue to play a constructive role on Ukraine,” Wang said in a tweet, adding a screenshot of the latest proposal.
More doubts
Merely five lines into China’s newly unveiled official plan on resolving the “Ukraine crisis” — released on Friday marking the first-year point of what Beijing studiously refuses to call a war — Russian propaganda appears.
“The security of a region should not be achieved by strengthening or expanding military blocs,” the Chinese foreign ministry position paper reads, supporting the Russian claim that war broke out in order to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.
The next point in the Chinese plan: “All parties must … avoid fanning the flames and aggravating tensions.” Chinese diplomats have in recent weeks accused the U.S. of being the biggest arms supplier for Ukraine, while it faces mounting pressure not to provide Russia with weapons.
Oleksandr Merezhko, chair of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, called China’s position “hypocritical.”
“[China’s proposal] is very reminiscent of the hypocritical Soviet rhetoric of ‘fight for peace,’” said Merezhko. “It’s a set of declarative empty slogans; it’s not backed by specifics or an implementation mechanism.”
Paramedics carry an injured Ukrainian serviceman who stepped on an anti-personnel land mine | Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images
Merezhko also asked Europe not to fall for China’s charm offensive as it seeks to split the transatlantic unity on assisting his country. “China, just like Russia, is trying to split the EU and the U.S. and to undermine transatlantic solidarity,” he told POLITICO in response to the Chinese proposal. “It’s very dangerous.”
Central and Eastern European countries, the most vocal supporters of arming Ukraine further, are equally dismissive of Beijing’s rhetoric.
“China’s plan is vague and does not offer solutions,” Ivana Karásková, who heads the China Observers in Central and Eastern Europe think tank based in Prague. “The plan calls on Russia and Ukraine to deal with the issue themselves, which would only benefit Russia; China continues to oppose what it calls unilateral sanctions and asks for the sanctions to be approved by the UN Security Council — well, given the fact that the aggressor is a permanent UNSC member with a veto right, this claim is beyond ridiculous.”

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

February 21, 2023
John Kirby: Don’t be surprised by China’s balloon ‘bluster’

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Wang has heavily criticized the Biden administration shooting down the Chinese spy balloon as a “weak” and “near-hysterical” response that amounted to an “excessive use of force.”
The discussion between the two leaders was “a forthright, very candid exchange” which “laid bare our deep concerns about what they did,” Kirby told Fox host Shannon Bream.
He maintained that the manner in which the Chinese balloon was shot down allowed the U.S. to collect its debris.
“Now we have that debris, and we’re going to exploit that debris. We’re going to learn more about this system,” Kirby said.
The U.S. downed the surveillance balloon off the coast of the Carolinas earlier this month, after it crossed the continent over the course of a week.
“We acted accordingly, and believe me, the message was clearly sent to China this is unacceptable,” Kirby said Sunday.
Since then, the administration has directed three additional objects to be shot down, but those are now believed to have been benign, Kirby said earlier this week. “Nothing right now suggests that they were related to China’s spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from any other country,” President Joe Biden added on Thursday.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 19, 2023
China’s Communist Party claims decisive victory over COVID-19

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Beijing: China’s ruling Communist Party has claimed to have scored a “decisive victory” over the coronavirus pandemic by minimising the casualties and staunchly defended its much-criticised zero-COVID policy, saying that it has succeeded in preventing the widespread prevalence of variants.
Since December last year, millions of people in China contracted the Omicron virus and unofficial reports said thousands of people, especially those above 60 years old, fell victim to it.
More than 200 million people were treated and nearly 800,000 patients in severe conditions received effective treatment, according to an official press release issued after the party’s political bureau meeting held on Thursday.
With a strong sense of responsibility and strategic resolve, China has optimised and adjusted the COVID-19 prevention and control measures in light of the evolving situation, and effectively balanced pandemic containment with economic and social development, it said.
“As a result, we have succeeded in preventing the widespread prevalence of variants that are more virulent and fatal, effectively protecting people’s safety and health, and buying us precious time for winning the battle against the pandemic”, it said.
“We have scored a decisive victory in our response to COVID-19. China, a country with a large population of 1.4 billion, has created a remarkable feat in the history of human civilisation by successfully walking out of the pandemic,” the party claimed.
Since November 2022, the focus was on optimising response measures to safeguard the health and prevent severe cases and secure a smooth transition within a short period of time, it said.
China’s mortality rate of COVID-19 has been kept at the lowest level globally, it said without providing any data on the death toll during the recent Omicron spread in the country.

Last month Chinese health officials reported 59,938 new coronavirus deaths in hospitals across the country over the last 30 days, amid criticism from the WHO that Beijing was heavily under-reporting the magnitude of the pandemic.
China was the rare country where its vaccination campaign focused more on people below 60 years to keep the working-age population safe.
The country’s zero covid policy was effective to halt the Delta variant but fell flat to containing the Omicron variant of COVID.
Periodic lockdowns of top cities including Shanghai and arbitrary sealing of residential buildings resulted in rare public protests in December last year, prompting the government to lift the restrictions suddenly. It resulted in the massive spread of Covid in the country.
China reopened its borders to international travellers on January 8 after nearly three years.
The coronavirus initially broke out in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019 before it spread to other countries and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

February 17, 2023
Of course China’s balloon was spying. States all spy on each other – and we all benefit | Jonathan Steele

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Long ago, in May 1960, an American U-2 spy plane took off from Pakistan to fly at high altitude across the Soviet Union as part of a mission to photograph key facilities and military sites on behalf of the CIA. The Russians saw it and shot it down. The pilot, Gary Powers, managed to descend by parachute and was arrested. In Washington, the Eisenhower administration lied about his mission, claiming the U-2 was a “weather plane” that had strayed off course after its pilot had “difficulties with his oxygen equipment” (sound familiar?).
The incident caused a temporary poisoning of US-Soviet relations as the Kremlin turned it into political theatre. Moscow subjected Powers to a highly publicised criminal trial and gave him a 10-year sentence.
In the US, Powers was portrayed as an all-American clean-cut hero who neither smoked nor drank (which was not true). In spite of the mutual fury neither side was genuinely shocked, since it was accepted that spying was routine. The technology might change as improvements were made in information-gathering systems, but the practice of surveillance went back to time immemorial and could not be stopped.
The analogy with the US downing of a Chinese high-altitude balloon that intruded into US airspace last week is clear. It too produced a hurricane of hypocritical outrage. The Republicans attacked Joe Biden for being weak and failing to protect US national security. They said he should have shot the intruding balloon down as soon as it was spotted. Fearful of being seen as too old to run for a second term, Biden ordered his secretary of state to delay a planned visit to Beijing.
In a pathetic parody of the political row in Washington, the UK government promptly ordered a review of Britain’s security. Rishi Sunak forestalled any Labour charges of being weak on defence by announcing that RAF jets were on standby to shoot down any Chinese surveillance balloons that penetrated UK airspace. What about Chinese spy satellites? Are they also going to be taken out by doughty British pilots?
The reality is that using technology to spy on other states’ military capabilities is as old as it is widespread. So is the use of covert tools to discover another government’s intentions. The methods are constantly being updated. Listening devices and phone-tapping have now been supplemented by cyber systems to hack emails and other internet messaging. An Israeli company, NSO Group, has – as well documented in the Guardian developed the Pegasus technology that can listen to conversations, read SMS texts, take screenshots and access people’s lists of contacts. It has sold the system to a range of authoritarian foreign governments that want to monitor their own citizens’ views and behaviour.
Phone-tapping and cyber surveillance are not only done by governments to potential or actual enemies. Remember the row in 2013 that erupted during Barack Obama’s presidency after Edward Snowden revealed that the US National Security Agency had been listening to German chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone conversations for years. The Germans were almost as embarrassed as the Americans. Merkel angrily declared that “spying between friends just isn’t on” but an inquiry by the German federal prosecutor was quietly dropped.
Let’s face it. Spying is a benefit. The more that countries know about a potential enemy’s defence systems the better it usually is. Starting hostilities is less likely if you have accurate and up-to-date information about what your army is up against (a lesson Vladimir Putin failed to learn before 24 February last year).

Understanding another state’s or another leader’s intentions is even more important, whether this intelligence-gathering is performed by spies, diplomats and non-governmental political analysts or by what are politely called “technical means”. The crucial issue, which no amount of balloons or satellites can provide, is empathy. Put yourself in the other side’s shoes. Understand their history, culture and the economic and political pressures their leaders are under.
There is no doubt that the relationship between the US and China is the leading global security challenge of at least the next 10 years. The two countries are rivals and competitors, but they are not enemies. Everything should be done by western countries not to slip into a mindset that treats China as hostile. Peace in Asia – and indeed the whole world – is too important to be hijacked by hysterical excitement over a roving balloon.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

February 16, 2023
Trial of the ‘Hong Kong 47’ symbolises China’s attempts to dissolve civil society

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When Hong Kong police arrested dozens of pro-democracy politicians, lawyers, scholars, journalists, NGO workers and activists in early morning raids across the city on 6 January 2021, a sense of terror spread across the city.
Under Beijing’s new national security law, the most influential members of Hong Kong’s civil society were accused of “conspiring to subvert state power” by holding primaries for pro-democracy candidates in the Hong Kong legislative election.
In the following months, many who had been active in pro-democracy activities fled the city. Some who tried to escape got arrested at the airport.
Observers say the current trial of the group, who came to be known as the “Hong Kong 47”, symbolises the death of the city’s civil society and is an extension of Xi Jinping’s crackdown on their mainland Chinese counterparts. During Xi’s decade in power, China’s fledgling civil society has almost completely dissolved after a series of crackdown on human rights lawyers, liberal scholars, journalists, NGO workers and underground churches.
Chinese authorities want to send the same chilling message to Hong Kong that, as on the mainland, critical voices deemed a threat to the regime will be severely dealt with, veteran Chinese activists say.
“The Communist Party believes civil society is a threat to a dictatorial regime. They need to crackdown on the most outspoken voices in society because those are the free voices that refuse to bow to government control,” said Dr Teng Biao, a former mainland rights lawyer who called for the abolition of death penalty and has himself been detained in extralegal “black jail.”
“[The party] feared the influence of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movements and liberalism would spread to mainland China,” said Teng, now a visiting professor at the University of Chicago. He noted Hong Kong’s pro-democracy groups have supported mainland dissidents and their families for decades and staged vigils to commemorate victims in the Tiananmen crackdown for 30 years.
Among those arrested were Hong Kong’s most outspoken figures in its previously robust civil society. They include legal scholar Benny Tai, a key initiator of the primaries, dozens of pro-democracy lawmakers and district councillors, journalist-turned-lawmaker Claudia Mo, young activists Joshua Wong, Tiffany Yuen and journalist Gwyneth Ho, as well as political novices such as Winnie Yu, a health worker unionist and Mike Lam, founder of a retail chain.

Former law professor Benny Tai, a key figure in Hong Kong’s 2014 Occupy Central protests who was arrested under Hong Kong’s national security law, is escorted by correctional services officers. Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP
“We believed we were doing something open and transparent, how could we have guessed [the authorities’] ridiculous, twisted mentality?” said Ted Hui, an opposition lawmaker who fled Hong Kong just a month before the mass arrests. Hui, who faced a raft of criminal charges over the 2019 anti-government protests, said he too would have been arrested if he had not escaped.
In the following months, more than 50 civil groups including unions, rights groups, independent media outlets and political parties shut down, often after being contacted by so-called “middlemen” who delivered threats or admonishments.
Since the national security law was imposed, more than 230 people have been arrested on national security charges, including newspaper editors following police raids on outspoken media outlets such as Apple Daily and the Stand News. Politically sensitive books have disappeared from bookshops and libraries.
Chang Ping, an influential mainland Chinese writer who was fired from the state-owned Southern Weekend newspaper for his liberal views and denied a work visa in Hong Kong, said the city was now experiencing a “condensed” version of China’s crackdown.
He noted how the Chinese authorities crackdown on not only political activities but also the non-political initiatives aimed at raising people’s consciousness of rights. Groups that have been closed included those advocating patients’ rights, education rights and gender equality.
“They are repeating this pattern (of crackdown) in Hong Kong as they fear this sense of rights will extend to political demands,” Chang said.
William Nee, a researcher at US-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said the Chinese leadership “go after what they see as the ultimate source of instability in Hong Kong – anyone dedicated to electoral democracy, anyone opposed to their authoritarian rule.”
“Going after the most vocal and capable pro-democracy leaders is a way to systematically crush dissent and instil fear in the population,” he said.
In the short term, the government has succeeded in “killing the chicken to scare the monkey” – silencing critics by making an example of the most outspoken ones.
“Those going to trial may be detained for two or three more years before final judgement, so the government can’t lose in its effort to wipe out the leadership of civil society even if the court of final appeal should ultimately grant acquittal to an accused,” said China law expert Jerome Cohen at New York University, on the 47.
Staff members from Hong Kong’s Apple Daily pose at newspaper’s headquarters in June 2021. Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP
Sociologist Prof Chung Kim-wah, who fled Hong Kong last year after receiving threats from national security police over his independent opinion polls, believed the crackdown in Hong Kong has been even more intense than in China in the past few years, with more than 10,000 arrested over a range of public order charges over their involvement in the 2019 anti-government protests.
Chung said he expected prosecutions to intensify in the years to come “to frighten and intimidate more people into silence.”
Eva Pils, a law professor at King’s College London, said “by trying to understand these trials in mainland Chinese terms, we are beginning to normalise political persecution in Hong Kong – which is no doubt what the central authorities want us to do.”
But observers say that Hong Kong civil society’s strong roots cannot be so easily eradicated.
Hong Kong’s robust civil society has enjoyed a long history of fighting for ordinary people’s rights and checking the power of the government. Even under persecution, like their mainland counterparts, Hong Kong activists, NGO workers, journalists and lawyers are finding ways to continue their mission through less sensitive work. For instance, some journalists whose media outlets have closed turn to operating bookshops while others found new media outlets focused on non-political issues.
“The crackdown sends a chilling message to society, but it also appeals to people’s sense of justice and inspires people to get involved,” said a mainland Chinese NGO worker who declines to be identified for fear of reprisals. “The ‘Blank paper’ movement is an example.”
Ted Hui says he looks forward to a day when he could return to Hong Kong, although it might be a long wait.
“We have to compete with (the Chinese Communist Party) to see who will last longer,” he said.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

February 16, 2023
China’s provinces spent almost £43bn on Covid measures in 2022

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Chinese provinces spent more than £42.8bn on tackling Covid-19 in 2022, according to data released by local governments, with the figure expected to rise as the huge cost of the pandemic hits the world’s second-largest economy.
Although national statistics are not yet available, at least 20 of China’s 31 provinces have published figures on how much money they spent on measures to control the pandemic.
China abandoned its zero-Covid policy in December. It is now trying to revive the sagging economy, which grew by just 3% in 2022, down from 8.4% in 2021, according to official statistics.
Different provinces measure their Covid-19 expenditures in different ways. Some include spending at all levels of government, while others only include provincial-level spending.
But according to the published data, the southern province of Guangdong, which is home to 127 million people and is China’s largest provincial economy, was the biggest spender. In 2022 it spent 71.1bn yuan (£8.6bn) on measures such as vaccination, testing and emergency benefits for people affected by the pandemic – an increase of more than 50% on the previous year. That spending equated to about 0.6% of the province’s gross domestic product in 2022. Before the pandemic, China spent about 5% of its GDP a year on healthcare.
Beijing spent 26.4bn yuan, mainly on epidemic control and prevention, the equivalent of about 111% of the city’s healthcare budget for last year. Shanghai, the country’s financial hub, spent 16.8bn yuan on similar Covid-prevention measures, including the construction of temporary hospitals. The two months of total lockdown in Shanghai hit the city’s economy, which contracted by 0.2% in 2022.
Since abandoning zero-Covid, China’s government has introduced various measures to try and stimulate economic growth. On 8 January, it reopened its borders for international travel, abandoning quarantine requirements for inbound travellers. The government has also announced measures to make it easier for property companies to raise financing after investment in 2022 fell by 10%, the first decline since records began. The real estate industry accounted for nearly one-quarter of China’s GDP in 2021, but a crackdown on the sector last year hit the economy.
Public spending can now be redirected towards measures designed to boost the economy. Local governments have embarked on a hiring spree of civil servants, with a plan to increase recruitment by 16%. Economists at the US investment bank Goldman Sachs forecast China’s growth in 2023 will reach 6.5%, boosting global demand by 1%.

But for ordinary Chinese, the cost of Covid-19 remains high. In December, China’s National Health Commission stopped publishing data on daily cases, amid concerns about a huge rise in infections after the end of the zero-Covid policy. China has officially recorded around 80,000 Covid-19 deaths since December, which would be a far lower death rate than Hong Kong experienced in the first two months of its Omicron wave. Still, other indicators suggest that illnesses and deaths are much higher: hospitals and mortuaries are overcrowded, and doctors in many places have run short of Covid-19 medicines.
Additional research by Xiaoqian Zhu
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

February 15, 2023
Balloon furor deflates China’s commercial charm offensive

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“This intrusion was completely unacceptable and has got a lot of people asking a lot of questions,” Rep. Bill Huizenga, a senior member on the House Financial Services Committee, said about the initial balloon incursion. “I don’t see [our approach] becoming less hawkish. If anything it’ll stay the same, but likely get more hawkish.”
The House Financial Services Committee is now kicking off work on legislation targeting American firms operating in China — rules they hope will prevent U.S. banks from funding technologies that can end up in Chinese military or surveillance applications, like the balloon and other spy devices. The Biden administration is also readying its own action on the same front, with a new executive order expected next month, following its decision Friday to blacklist six Chinese aerospace firms allegedly associated with surveillance balloon development.
The reopening of hostilities in the trans-Pacific trade war is a shift from the implicit ceasefire that President Joe Biden struck with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Bali last November, when they pledged to put a “floor” on the deteriorating relationship on the sidelines of the G-20 summit.
Since that meeting, the U.S. had refrained from issuing trade penalties that could inflame Beijing, like sanctioning new military-aligned firms, and planned high-level visits for the nations’ top economic and diplomatic officials. Meanwhile, Chinese officials mounted a diplomatic campaign in Washington to reset the two countries’ commercial relationship.
But in the time it took the Chinese balloon to travel from Montana to South Carolina, U.S. officials say that any nascent goodwill has evaporated, and Washington is again revving up its campaign to hem in the Chinese economy.
“It’s literally got the entire country lit up now,” said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul, who authored a House resolution this week condemning the balloon that passed unanimously. “I think it did tremendous damage … to the relationship. If that was their goal, fine, but I don’t think that was in their best interest.”
Whether by design or accident, the balloon incident has dealt a critical blow to Beijing’s recent efforts to improve the trade relationship as its economy emerges from the coronavirus pandemic. Since late last year, Communist Party officials have blanketed Washington with diplomatic overtures, offering lawmakers visits to China and policy briefings on contentious issues like Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok’s operations in the U.S.
The Chinese sought openings with even some of the most hawkish members of Congress, including McCaul and Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.), who both confirmed in interviews that China’s ambassador to the U.S. contacted them late last year.

“They made a lot of charming overtures for me to come to China,” said McCaul, who said the Israeli ambassador facilitated an introduction to China’s then-ambassador at a social function in November. “And the TikTok issue, they want to talk to me about this new arrangement they have,” he said, referring to a proposed national security compromise between the firm and the Biden administration.
Barr said his contact with then-ambassador Qin Gang — now China’s Foreign Minister — was more contentious.
“Our conversations should be diplomatic, and that was not,” he said, declining to elaborate. “We just have a lot of reasons to be upset with the Chinese right now. They shouldn’t be spying on the American people.”
But while Washington is by and large united in its desire to crack down on China’s high-tech economy, policymakers are increasingly divided over how to do it.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) questions Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, April 28, 2022.
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Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo
For over a year, China hawks in Congress have pushed legislation that would set up a new federal oversight body to review — and potentially deny — American investments in key Chinese industries that could affect U.S. national security. Sponsors of that bill, the National Critical Capabilities Defense Act, say they will soon reintroduce it in the new Congress. The Biden administration is also considering restricting U.S. investments in those sectors via an executive order that has been in the works since last year.
But some House Republicans oppose those efforts, arguing they are a dangerous expansion of the federal government’s power over business, even as they insist they want to penalize Beijing’s high-tech industries.
Those lawmakers presented their case at a Financial Services hearing on China this week, led by committee Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.).
“For the U.S. to compete with China, we cannot become more like the Chinese Communist Party,” McHenry said. “We need to carefully evaluate if a policy proposal could jeopardize America’s ability to innovate, grow, and allocate capital, or if it would cause allies to question our commitment to free people and free markets.”
Instead of a government review board, members of the committee offered up a bill from Barr that would expand the federal government’s authority to sanction or blacklist Chinese firms connected to the country’s military. Such an approach would give more certainty to financial institutions about where they could invest, Barr said, rather than leaving their fate up to an oversight committee.
The debate on stricter oversight of U.S. investment in China is still in its early stages on Capitol Hill. The Senate Banking Committee is set to take up the issue in a hearing at the end of the month, likely setting up months of debate and negotiation over how to shape final legislation.
The debate is also continuing to play out in the White House, where the push by national security adviser Jake Sullivan and others to tighten oversight of U.S. investments in China has been met by resistance by economic officials in the Treasury and Commerce Departments. Congressional leadership has pushed the Biden administration since last year to quickly issue that order, and China hawks are hopeful the balloon incident will spur them to action.
“They said, originally, March,” Casey said. “I hope they can keep to that. We’re pushing them.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 14, 2023
Beijing leads China’s AI industry with over 1,000 AI companies

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Beijing: Beijing had 1,048 major artificial intelligence (AI) companies as of October 2022, accounting for 29 per cent of the national total, according to a report on the capital’s AI development released on Monday.
The report, released by the municipal bureau of economy and information, noted that Beijing boasts the top industrial agglomeration capacity in China and that it has a well-developed AI industry chain, Xinhua news agency reported.
The city has more than 40,000 professionals in core AI technologies and has produced the most published papers on AI in the country, the report said.
The number of smart factories and digitalized workshops in Beijing reached 36 and 47, respectively, in 2022.
In 2023, Beijing will guide enterprises, research institutes, open-source communities, and others to collaborate for the achievement of core AI technology innovation. It will also support top firms in creating ChatGPT-style large models to strive for new breakthroughs in the development of the AI industry, according to the report.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

February 13, 2023
‘Wake-up call’: Top Republicans sound alarm over China’s nuclear expansion

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“We have no time to waste in adjusting our nuclear force posture to deter both Russia and China,” the lawmakers said. “This will have to mean higher numbers and new capabilities.”
Lamborn and Fischer are the top Republicans on the Armed Services subcommittees that oversee nuclear weapons programs.
The head of U.S. Strategic Command, Gen. Anthony Cotton, told lawmakers in a letter dated Jan. 26 that the U.S. retains a larger inventory of ICBMs and nuclear warheads, but that China has exceeded the U.S. in the number of fixed and mobile land-based launchers for those missiles. The Wall Street Journal first reported the letter.
The information came in response to a December letter from Republicans Rogers, Lamborn, Fischer and then-Senate Armed Services ranking member Jim Inhofe.
The revelation is likely to only further fuel uproar in Washington over Beijing, after a Chinese surveillance balloon traversed the U.S. before it was shot down last week.
Biden administration officials are set to brief the full Senate on the balloon on Thursday. The House is also likely to soon get briefed, leaders say. And House Republicans are weighing a resolution condemning China for the flap.
China’s military modernization, including its nuclear capabilities and a potential invasion of Taiwan, have been an early focus for Republicans.
House Armed Services held its first hearing Tuesday on the threat posed by China. During the session, Rogers broached the ICBM launcher news and warned of China’s nuclear expansion, urging the U.S. to act immediately to deter Beijing.

“The [Chinese Communist Party] is rapidly expanding its nuclear capability. They have doubled their number of warheads in just 2 years,” Rogers said at the outset of Tuesday’s hearing. “We estimated it would take them a decade to do that.”
The U.S. is undertaking a long-term overhaul of all three legs of its nuclear arsenal as well as fielding new weapons introduced under the Trump administration’s 2018 nuclear blueprint.
Low-yield warheads have been deployed aboard ballistic missile-carrying submarines. Congress has also preserved funding to develop a new sea-launched nuclear cruise missile that the Biden administration sought to cancel.
Nancy Vu contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 7, 2023
China’s Mideast buildup stirs security worries for U.S.

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China has previously used spending on pipelines, ports and other commercial facilities to pave the way for military bases near strategic locations such as the mouth of the Red Sea, the CSIS authors write. Now, China’s investment in regional ports and infrastructure in Oman and the United Arab Emirates could provide an entry point for Chinese naval ships in the strait. Such ships already travel nearby waters to patrol against pirate vessels.
“China has laid the groundwork for something it might do in the future,” said Matthew Funaiole, senior fellow at the CSIS China Power Project. “It’s all about giving itself options.”
He added: “China has cast a wide net in the region, which gives it plenty of leverage. And a military facility on the western side of the Arabian peninsula does make sense from a military planning standpoint.”
The Biden administration has kept an eye on Beijing’s presence in the area, said a senior administration official who requested anonymity because of lack of authorization to speak to the media.
“The administration is focused on infrastructure buildout by China and has developed strategies with our G7 allies to ensure a global high-quality and diversified supply chain,” the official said.
The CSIS report documents China’s billions of dollars of investment over the past decade in port facilities in the UAE and Oman, two countries that straddle the strait across the water from Iran. The expansion of Beijing’s footprint at the Khalifa Port in the UAE, plus its ownership stake at a fuels storage terminal at the country’s Port of Fujairah about 100 miles to the east and investment at Duqm Port in Oman, raise the issue of Chinese power growing in the region, the report says.
The report notes that the China Harbour Engineering Co. won a bid in October 2022 to build a 700,000-square-meter container yard and 36 supporting buildings at Khalifa Port. The company is a subsidiary of China Communications Construction Co., one of the firms that the Trump administration sanctioned for supporting China’s construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea.
Years earlier, Shanghai-based shipping giant COSCO signed a $738 million agreement to build a container terminal at the same port. The deal includes provisions giving China exclusive design, construction and management rights over the terminal for 35 years.

Good reasons exist for concern that the Chinese government may use its commercial relationships in the Hormuz Strait as a foundation for the development of a military foothold in the region.
Beijing parlayed its commercial relations with Djibouti to seal a deal in 2014 to allow the Chinese navy to use the African country’s port near the mouth of the Red Sea. Beijing used that agreement to establish a naval installation in 2017 that U.S. Africa Command has accused of using military- grade lasers to harass U.S. fighter pilots landing in Djibouti.
Western interests worry that Beijing’s focus on the area may eventually lay the groundwork for the Chinese military to add its presence to the area. The U.S. government has flagged this as a concern for years. The Defense Department noted in a report to Congress last year that China is “likely” considering the UAE as a location for military logistics facilities.
“The [Persian] Gulf area is now going to become a contested region, subject to superpower strategic competition,” said John O’Connor, chief executive at J.H. Whitney Investment Management, a firm that analyzes geopolitical risk. “And that’s a new feature, not a bug.”
Not everyone thinks a military buildup is inevitable, however.
Other assessments of China’s military in the Strait of Hormuz suggest that it’s highly unlikely that Beijing will seek to extend its reach in the region with the creation of facilities for People’s Liberation Army Navy units or personnel. A RAND Corp. analysis published in December that rated the relative attractiveness of 24 countries for potential PLA facilities assessed the possibility of such a development in the UAE as “low feasibility” due to the Pentagon’s close scrutiny of the country and the Arab nation’s dealings with potential rivals.
And China has its own concerns about the flow of oil out of the strait that would make it want to build up infrastructure there. It has surpassed the United States as the world’s No. 1 consumer of oil and heavily depends on the Middle East for much of its supply. Ports and storage facilities could be a way to protect China’s own supply from being disrupted in an area known for regional conflict.
Other analysts say the PLA doesn’t need to establish formal military facilities in strategic ports where Chinese state firms are already present.
“Rather than raise international threat perceptions with overt shows of military presence, the PLA may opt to embed plainclothes personnel … and use nominally commercial warehousing, communications, and other equipment to quietly meet military needs,” an article in the spring 2022 edition of the journal International Security concluded.
Despite China’s substantial and growing economic and political relations with the UAE and Oman, “I don’t see any indications that China currently seeks to establish a base or enduring military presence in either of those countries, or elsewhere in the Middle East,” said Dawn Murphy, associate professor of national security strategy at the National War College and an expert on China’s relations in the Middle East. “I see no signs that China desires to fundamentally change its security presence in the Middle East, pick sides between countries, or challenge the U.S. security role in the region – for now China is primarily an economic and political power in the region.”
Still, a heavy Chinese presence in the area could roil oil markets if concerns over possible military tensions with the United States or Europe over Taiwan spill into the area. Crude prices often spike whenever anxieties grow over friction between the U.S. and Iran.
That China’s buildup in the area can raise concerns in the United States shows how oil politics can still loom large for the U.S., the world’s biggest oil producer. Even a benign presence at the choke point would give Chinese companies information about fuel or ship movements that they could send back to Beijing as intelligence, said Republican aides with the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“Everything in the private industry in China is somewhat connected to the larger CCP or the PLA,” said the official, who was granted anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to be quoted in the media. “Even if you’re a private company, you might be called upon by the Chinese government to share intel.”
At worst, having a direct PLA presence on the Strait of Hormuz would set off alarm bells among energy security experts, said Scott Modell, chief executive of consulting firm Rapidan Energy and a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who served in the Middle East, Central Asia and Latin America.
“National security hawks like me will view the news of Chinese bases along the Strait of Hormuz as an unacceptable threat to U.S. national security, sensing that Beijing’s long-term objective is the placement of military bases at choke points around the world to offset the risk to strategic commodity flows in the event of a major geopolitical event such as a forced reunification with Taiwan,” Modell said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 4, 2023