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China offers support to Spanish government amid Catalonia crisis

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China understands and supports the Spanish government’s efforts to protect the country’s unity and territorial integrity, Beijing said on Thursday, amid moves by Catalonia to declare independence.  Foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a daily news briefing. China “understands and supports the Spanish government’s efforts to protect national unity … and its territorial integrity”, Hua said. It believes Spain has the ability to guarantee social order and people’s interests in accordance with the law, she said. Beijing says it adheres to a policy of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs, but it generally takes a dim view of independence or secessionist movements around the world. hough it generally remains officially agnostic on such issues abroad, Beijing has expressed more openness towards independence votes when both sides have agreed to them, such as Scotland’s unsuccessful 2014 referendum to leave the United Kingdom, and South Sudan’s 2011 vote in favour of independence from Sudan.

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Fear of forced repatriation rising among defectors in China

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North Korean defectors living in northeast China continue to fear for their safety as North Korean and Chinese authorities ramp up efforts to arrest and repatriate them back to the North. Although such individuals have always been mindful of their illegal status, the past year has seen a shift in policy to a point where even the children of defectors are being forcefully repatriated to North Korea. Daily NK has been collecting their stories since June last year and found over 120 instances of forced repatriation of North Koreans residing in areas across China’s northeast, including Shenyang in Liaoning Province, Kunming in Yunnan Province, Changbai, Tumen, and Yanji in Jilin Province, Qinhuangdao in Hebei Province, and other regions. While a considerable number of defectors have already been repatriated to North Korea, many more sit languishing in detention centers in China, awaiting their own deportation. A source in China informed Daily NK that “unlike previously, when defectors could easily pass through these routes simply by blending in, the authorities have stepped up their surveillance and questioning, establishing more checkpoints and generally making it much more challenging. Making their way to third countries like Thailand or Laos has now become much harder than crossing the China-North Korea border itself. International human rights organizations are also sounding the alarm at the increase in arrests and forced repatriations in China. Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported earlier this month that in July and August of this year alone, at least 41 North Koreans were detained on suspicion of defection. From July 2016 until this June 2017, HRW recorded 51 separate instances, bringing the total during this period to at least 92 persons, including a newborn baby, an 11 year-old child, and four elderly women.

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Xi Jinping’s UK visit transformed China-UK relations

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October 19 marks the second anniversary of President Xi Jinping’s State Visit to the UK. Bilaterally, President Xi’s State Visit heralded a new era for China-UK relations. The State Visit was the first by China’s head of state in ten years. It took place in the first year of the second decade of China-UK comprehensive strategic partnership. That was an important moment where China and the UK could build on the achievements of the past and herald a coming new era. During the State Visit, China and the UK committed to building a global comprehensive strategic partnership for the 21st Century. The State Visit opened the “Golden Era” in UK-China relations featuring enduring, inclusive and win-win cooperation and raised the banner of consensus and cooperation. President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Theresa May maintained close personal contact, exchanging letters on many issues and having two meetings and one telephone talk. Both leaders reaffirmed the shared commitment to building the China-UK “Golden Era”, which was a strong reassurance for the continued, healthy growth of our bilateral relationship and our ever deepening cooperation across the board. Both China and Britain are permanent members of the UN Security Council and important members of G20. We have maintained sound cooperation on international issues and have more shared commitment to economic globalization, trade liberalization and investment facilitation.

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China’s central bank chief makes reform appeal: please free up the yuan

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China must press on with a “trinity” of reforms to fully realise an open economy, Zhou Xiaochuan, the country’s central bank chief for the last decade-and-a-half, told influential financial magazine Caijing in what could be one of his last major interviews in the top job. Zhou, governor of the People’s Bank of China, said China must embrace free trade and investment, let the market decide the yuan’s value, and scrap capital account controls. Zhou said China’s position in the global economy was the result of a combination of the three liberalisations. At 69, Zhou has designed and promoted a series of economic liberalisations over the last 15 years, including freeing up interest rates at home and earning the yuan a nominal international reserve currency status abroad. Zhou also said China has been trying to find a new way to balance its trilemma, that it can only choose two of the three goals of free capital outflow, an independent monetary policy and a stable exchange rate. Zhou said: “In my understanding, central bank independence doesn’t mean independence from the government. In fact, it means an independent and effective monetary policy”. Zhou said China’s opening could only move forward through the “ratcheting effect”, a reference to the difficulty of reversal once certain events have happened.

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China and Russia urge restraint after new round of Trump tweets on North Korea

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Russia and China called for restraint on North Korea on Monday after US President Donald Trump warned over the weekend that “only one thing will work” in dealing with Pyongyang, hinting that military action was on his mind. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call: “Moscow has called and continues to call on the parties involved in the conflict and on those who have anything to do with this issue to exercise restraint and to avoid any steps that would only worsen the situation”. In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying repeated China’s position that all parties exercise restraint, describing the situation as extremely complex and serious. China hopes all sides do nothing to irritate each other or worsen the problem and speak and act cautiously, she told a daily news briefing. On Saturday, Trump made a similar comment on Twitter about how negotiations have failed for 25 years and said “only one thing will work” with North Korea. Jim Mattis on Monday told the US Army to be ready with military options on North Korea: “There is one thing the US Army can do and that is you have got to be ready to ensure that we have military options that our President can employ if needed. Mattis add: “We currently are in a diplomatically led effort and how many times have you seen the UN Security Council vote unanimously, now twice in a row, to impose stronger sanctions on North Korea”.

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High-level dialogue mechanisms beneficial to US-China relationship

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The four high-level dialogue mechanisms established between China and the United States help promote bilateral relationship, according to US officials and experts. China and the United States held their first law enforcement and cybersecurity dialogue on Wednesday, during which the two sides reached broad consensus on issues of counterterrorism, counter-narcotics, cybersecurity and immigration. It was the last of the four high-level dialogues established during a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump in April. The four high-level dialogue mechanisms have set the course for future cooperation between Beijing and Washington. The other three dialogues cover diplomatic and security issues, the economy, and social and cultural issues. During a recent briefing,  US State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said the United States wanted to have “a good understanding and a good working relationship with China”. “The better that we can both understand one another, the more that we can have meetings to talk about areas of mutual concern, areas where we can better work together”, said Nauert. In a recent interview with Harvard professor Joseph Nye, who coined the term “soft power,” said that dialogues between the largest developing country and the largest developed country are important. “I think the dialogues are important and we do need to have talks”, said Nye. “I think the more that Chinese and Americans have contact with each other and understand each other, the less likely they are to have worst case analysis of the other”.

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Chinese authorities crack down on North Korean smuggling with checkpoints

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Chinese authorities have set up strict checkpoints near the border regions with North Korea in Liaoning Province, Dandong City, including the mobilization of military dogs. This latest measure appears to be the Chinese government’s attempt to close down smuggling routes that have provided holes in the international sanction campaign against the North Korean regime. According to a North Korean source with knowledge of the issue, Chinese frontier public security officers in military garb are enforcing thorough inspections and crackdowns on smuggling from the Hwanggumpyong Island area to the Yalu River Estuary near Donggang. A Dandong-based source added, “this is the first time we have seen military dogs in the Yalu River area. It looks as if the authorities are intending to crackdown on the vibrant drug trade and other smuggled items that flows through the region”. Daily NK recently reported that many North Korean defectors were boarding smuggling vessels that crossed from Sinuiju City, North Pyongan Province, North Korea across the Yalu River to China. “China is responding sensitively because the world is watching how it deals with North Korean smuggling and defectors”, the Dandong-based source said. “The checkpoints and inspections are aimed at blocking smugglers and defectors, which does not come as good news for North Korean residents”.

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US business groups claim WTO rules cannot stop unfair Chinese trade tactics

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US business groups expressed frustration on Wednesday with what they said are China’s efforts to tilt the economic playing field in favour of domestic companies, adding that World Trade Organisation rules are insufficient to police all of Beijing’s trade practises. US companies face increasing threats from Chinese investment rules, industrial policies, subsidies to state-owned enterprises, excess manufacturing capacity, cybersecurity regulations and forced technology transfers, the groups told a public hearing held by the US Trade Representative’s (USTR) office. Josh Kallmer, senior vice-president of global policy at the Information Technology Industry Council, said China had woven a “tapestry” of rules and policies that places foreign companies at a disadvantage and incentivises the transfer of technology. “It just in general puts a thumb on the competitive scale in a way that significantly and profoundly affects US-based and foreign companies”, said Kallmer, who was representing a coalition of technology groups from semiconductors to software. Jeremie Waterman, the US Chamber of Commerce’s vice-president for Greater China, said China’s restrictive investment regime and other industrial policies requiring technology transfers in recent years have made China a less attractive place to invest for foreign firms, and not all of these policies can be changed with full WTO compliance. This has been made worse by China’s “Made in China 2025” plan, which aims to supplant foreign products and technologies with domestic ones and new cybersecurity regulations that put foreign information technology products at a disadvantage, Waterman said. “The ballast has become less stable in recent years” in the US-China economic relationship, he added.

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Foreign firms want action not words from China about opening up its markets, warns EU envoy

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Foreign businesses are becoming increasingly frustrated by Beijing’s lack of action to open up its markets, according to the European Union’s envoy to China. President Xi Jinping delivered a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January firmly endorsing free trade and has promised to further open up the country’s market. Beijing suspended imports of some cheese products and required additional certificates for low-risk food imports from October 1. Foreign firms are also complaining about the possibility they will be forced to make technology transfers in exchange for market access. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker proposed to set up a screening framework for foreign investment in EU countries during his state of the union address on September 13, the same day that the United States banned acquisition of Lattice Semiconductor by a Chinese equity fund. China’s investment in the EU last year grew by 77 per cent compared with 2015 to €35 billion (41 billion dollar)”. The EU’s investment in China fell for the fourth straight year to €8 billion, down 23 per cent last year, while its investment in the United States reached 277 billion dollar. Juncker’s proposal, which was made in response to pressure from the German, French and Italian governments, was interpreted as a countermeasure to the rapid inflow of Chinese investment designed to buy up hi-tech firms and know-how from Europe. On Monday the EU also agreed on tough new rules to curb cheap imports, which Juncker described as an “anti-dumping measure”, although he insisted it was not aimed at any country in particular.

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Employees recalled to work as Xinjiang scraps week-long National Day holiday

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Authorities in the restive Chinese region of Xinjiang have abruptly cancelled the week-long National Day holiday “to prepare” for the Communist Party congress later this month, residents say. Local government officials, academics and students told the South China Morning Post they had also been called back to work. “This is the first time the whole National Day holiday has been cancelled”, a nurse from southern Xinjiang said. Those working in the private sector were apparently not affected by the cancellation. Arrangements for students varied but one university employee said academics had been ordered this week to study a collection of confessions made by corrupt officials. The snap decision comes a year after rising political star Chen Quanguo took over as party boss of Xinjiang, introducing a series of security measures including asking residents to hand over their passports and beefed up police patrols. James Leibold, an expert on China’s ethnic minorities at La Trobe University in Australia, said the move appeared to be an effort by Chen to “demonstrate his utmost loyalty to Xi and that he is a safe pair of hands”. The State Council, China’s cabinet, said late last year that the National Day holiday would run from October 1 to 8 and those who had to work during the period would be paid up to three times their regular rate, state news agency Xinhua reported.

 

 

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