Pro-Hong Kong democracy students in Perth allege death threats, intimidation from Chinese nationals

Hong Kong national 'Mary' has been active in Perth's pro-Hong Kong democracy scene, and for the past six months has been considering seeking asylum in Australia.

The 25-year-old university student was so worried about the reach of Beijing she only agreed to share her story wearing a mask and using a pseudonym.

"I have received death threats from Chinese people," she said.

"Our address and personal information were all disclosed in WeChat, social media for Chinese people."

Mary also said she believed she had been followed home from a rally last year by Chinese nationals after police tipped her off that she had been filmed there.

"They [the police] actually went to ask, 'who sent you here' and they pretended that they were journalists from other media, western media," she said.https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-07/perths-pro-hong-kong-democracy-scene-alleges-death-threats/12418266

China trade war: Why does Beijing hate Australia and the US?

It’s most a clash of civilisations and it’s not a clash of East and West traditions. This is why China makes the US and Australia a target.It’s not a clash of civilisations.

It has fish. It has clams. It has oil. It has gas. It’s also one of the busiest shipping highways in the world. Little wonder Beijing is so keen to seize it for itself.

Always certain to push just one level below open conflict, the Chinese Communist Party has been surprisingly swift in asserting its dominance over the 3.5 million square kilometres of water between Vietnam, The Philippines, Malaysia and Borneo.

Against all diplomatic precedent and international law, it simply occupied reefs in the Spratly and Paracel islands before subjecting them to massive terraforming campaigns. Seven of them are now artificial island fortresses.

Possession, after all, is nine-tenths of the law.They are strategically well placed for warships, combat aircraft and missiles stationed there to dominate the surrounding air and sea supply lines. Everything that comes and goes can be closely monitored.This gives Beijing de facto control over the rich seafood stocks in the water and the valuable energy and mineral resources beneath it. It also gives China the power to choke the supply of food, fuel – and military reinforcement – to its neighbours.In April, Beijing attempted to cement the appearance of sovereignty over these disputed islands by declaring them to be part of a new government district. This includes territorial control of the surrounding seabeds – though artificial islands are not recognised as granting that right under international law.

It’s just another bold, assertive transgression.

Now China has begun enforcing the claims.

Its coast guard has begun ramming foreign fishing boats.

Its navy has been interfering with Vietnamese and Malaysian survey ships.

Its own exploration vessels have been pushing deep into the territorial waters of its neighbours.

None of this is enough to spark open conflict. But the idea is for this situation to quickly become the “new normal”.It’s another big push forward for Beijing’s territorial ambitions. And disenfranchised nations such as Vietnam and Malaysia fear it is already too late to claw back their claims.

They have the most to lose. China insists it owns the entire South China Sea right up to these nation’s coastlines. The UN, however, grants them rights to vast swathes of the sea under universal standards established after World War II.

An international tribunal rejected China’s claim to historical rights over the sea as baseless in 2016. Beijing simply ignored the ruling and continued its project to fortify the illegally occupied territory.Now the world fears China will soon assert total control over the waterway. Will it claim rights to its international airspace and intercept all unapproved flights? Will it assert control over the major shipping lanes? Will it attempt to evict other navies from what are in truth international waters?

Declaring the illegal island fortresses to be part of a formal government administrative district is just another patient push Beijing has made down that path.https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/south-china-sea-inside-chinas-plans-to-claim-ocean-dominance/news-story/e5e0c0b8ce3ba0c03cc1262ea0bdbd3f

For a man named by Forbes as the world's most powerful person, there's been little transparency as to how Xi Jinping accrued so much power in such a relatively short amount of time.

China's President was almost unknown to the world just over a decade ago — even his folk singer wife, Peng Liyuan, was far more renowned than the trailblazing political statesman.

But over the last 50 years Mr Xi — the son of a powerful communist revolutionary — strategically used his personal life narrative as a cave-dwelling farmer during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and '70s to grant himself political validation as he rose steadily but patiently through ranks of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) right to the top.

Few pundits would have predicted the amount of influence and power the Chinese leader has come to wield after becoming the nation's paramount leader in November 2012 — launching sweeping anti-corruption crackdowns against senior politicians while asserting himself on the world stage — let alone imagine that he'd be able to pull off abolishing China's 10-year presidential term limits exactly one year ago in March 2018 during last National People's Congress.

As the 2019 National People's Congress kicks off this week, we take a look at the astonishing tale of the high-profile leader: from life among Beijing's elite as a child, to living in a cave as an exiled farmer in China's remote countryside, to becoming Beijing's most powerful leader since Chairman Mao Zedong.

'I didn't even know if I'd survive': From princeling to peasantAs the son of former vice-premier Xi Zhongxun, who fought alongside Mao Zedong in the Chinese civil war, Xi Jinping is no stranger to politics.

Born in Beijing in 1953, Mr Xi was what is known as a communist "princeling", but later became an outcast when his father was purged in 1962 for supporting a novel regarded as critical of Chairman Mao.

Xi Jinping, left, younger brother Xi Yuanping, middle, and father Xi Zhongxun, right, in 1958.(Wikipedia Commons: People's Daily)

While the elder Xi was jailed or otherwise confined during the Cultural Revolution — a 10-year period between 1966 and 1976 when academics and intellectuals were publicly humiliated and shunned — the younger Xi was sent to an impoverished village in China's north-western Shaanxi province.

The 16-year-old "princeling" was then among millions of urban youth sent to rural areas as part of the "Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement" to be re-educated by farmers and labourers during the tumultuous communist period.

In a 2004 interview, Mr Xi recounted the relief he felt escaping the political pressures he was facing in Beijing as his train was pulling away from the capital for Yan'an in Shaanxi province.

"At the time, my relatives beside the train asked me: 'Why are you smiling?'

"I told them that if I had to stay, then I'd be crying, because I wouldn't even know if I'd survive."

Mr Xi also admitted in the interview that at first he wasn't accustomed to the hard work in the countryside, and after just three months fled back to Beijing where he was locked up for half a year.

His only option to escape was to return to Liangjiahe Village in Yan'an, the famous revolutionary base, where he spent the remaining six years immersed in poverty, intensive labour while adjusting to living in the cave homes that were dug into the hillsides.

'They ate bitterness': A generation who doesn't give up easilyKerry Brown, professor of Chinese studies and director of the Lau China Institute at King's College London, told the ABC that it was a formative time for Mr Xi's generation, and his father being absent also forced him to become "very independently minded".

Professor Brown writes in his book — CEO, China: The rise of Xi Jinping — that compared with his predecessor Hu Jintao, who opted to keep his public persona relatively "faceless", Mr Xi proceeded to use his own life story and varied experiences to earn himself "political validation".

"Xi Jinping is sort of typical of that generation in having a pretty tough outlook," Professor Brown said.

"As they say in Chinese … they ate bitterness and so they're not people who give up easily. It made a pretty tough generation."

Xi Jinping was sent to Liangjiahe Village in Yanchuan County in Yan'an in 1969.(Yanchuan County Lvyou)

As the Cultural Revolution wound down in the mid-1970s, one of Mr Xi's anonymous friends said he chose to become "redder than red" — red symbolising the communist party's ideology — to survive, according to an unpublished WikiLeaks batch of US diplomatic cables.

In 1973, Mr Xi started on his impressive political journey by applying to join the Communist Party, but it reportedly took him some 10 attempts before he was accepted — likely due to his "bad family background" after the purge of his father.

And as China went through a period of transformation with the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 followed by the rise of Deng Xiaoping, Xi Jinping was also going through his own personal transformation.

In 1975, the 22-year-old was admitted to the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing to study chemical engineering, and later worked at the Central Military Commission as former defence minister Geng Biao's secretary after graduating in 1979.

Over the next two decades, Mr Xi advanced his political career through various county, municipal and provincial leadership positions across the country.

In 1987, Mr Xi married folk singer Peng Liyuan — his second marriage after his first one, of which little is known, ended in divorce a few years earlier.At one point, Peng even reached the rank of major-general in the People's Liberation Army musical troupe — though it's unclear whether she still holds that rank — and is also the World Health Organisation's Goodwill Ambassador for tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.

"Until 2007, you would have said that she was way more famous than him [and] probably way more influential than people think," Professor Brown said — Peng was renowned for her impactful and catchy propaganda songs.

The couple's daughter, Xi Mingze, born in 1992 under the one-child policy, reportedly studied at Harvard University under a pseudonym as Mr Xi's political career continued to thrive.

Xi builds himself a network among Beijing's eliteOne of the more prominent positions Mr Xi held was as party chief of Zhejiang province, from 2002 to 2007, where he supported local private enterprises and oversaw strong economic growth.

His achievements in Zhejiang won him the support of political elites, and when former Communist Party boss of Shanghai Chen Liangyu was sacked in one of China's highest-level corruption scandals in 2006, Mr Xi was controversially chosen to replace him in the senior position.

It was a huge leap from the days when he was voted last in the rankings of alternate members of the 15th Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1997.

The Communist Party is said to have almost 90 million members.(ABC News: Jarrod Fankhauser)

But during it all, Mr Xi kept a low profile in Shanghai — giving no ammunition to potential rivals — and just seven months into his appointment, he was unexpectedly promoted directly to the country's most elite political body at a party congress gathering in late 2007.

"At that time nine people were running the country … so he had evidently built up a network around him in the elite Central Committee that supported him."

Mr Xi and Li Keqiang, the current Chinese Premier, were both widely considered to be likely successors to then-president Hu Jintao.

But Mr Xi's appointment as vice-president in March 2008 indicated that he was likely being positioned to succeed Mr Hu as president.

It's still unclear why Mr Xi was put forward, but China expert Ross Terrill believes it was partially related to his one great historical advantage: his father.

"His father was a well-known figure who had been a leading communist in the 1930s, and was revered because he got cut down in the Cultural Revolution," Dr Terrill, an associate in research at Harvard University's Fairbank Centre for Chinese Studies, told the ABC.

From veiled threats of arrest for Westerners who criticise China to race-based insults aimed at India, they’re all about reinforcing the Party line. And they’re taking to Twitter and YouTube – an act that would see their fellow citizens arrested.

Wolf-warrior diplomats, Communist Party members unleashed to attack Western values on Western social media, no longer cut it. Instead, a video posted last weekend by the CCP-controlled Xinhua News agency reveals Beijing’s evolving propaganda tactics.A fresh, young face smiles out from behind a pristine desk; bold nationalist banner in the background. The English subtitles declare her to be a local government cadre, or political officer, in Xinjiang province. She’s so happy with life she can’t hold back from singing and dancing as she checks in on her smiling provincial subjects.

The reality, however, is starkly different.

Xinjiang’s ethnic minority Uighur women are being forcibly sterilised. And about one million Uighur Muslims are estimated to have been locked up in dozens of new detention centres to undergo ‘re-education’. But that’s something even Beijing’s ambassador to the UK refuses to address.

PLEASING THE BOSS

“Why limit yourself to a small pack of Wolf Warriors when there’s a whole knot of toadies waiting in the wings?” writes the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Fergus Ryan.

That is why we’re seeing much more pushback from Beijing on Western social media. And why it often looks so weird.

It’s also part of official policy.

“In order to win the right to speak, we must take the initiative and actively shape it,” Hua Chunying wrote in a CCP publication in July 2019. She’s now the head of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s information department.

“And take the initiative she has, along with her fellow ‘Wolf Warrior’ colleagues who have been deploying scorn, sarcasm and conspiracy theories in their attempt to shape the global discourse,” Mr Ryan says.

Earlier this year, a Chinese man was arrested for posting news of the birth of his child on Twitter. His crime? Breaching the “Great Firewall” against uncensored international news and contact.

Hua and her cohort of trusted wolf warriors and Beijing beauties, however, can do so without fear. So long as they’re on message.

Last month, Twitter closed thousands of profiles it says were part of a CCP co-ordinated influence campaign. But Beijing’s ambitious Party members, eager to carve out a reputation for themselves, are eager for more. They want Twitter “blue ticks” – like Hua.“Plenty of others, including Chinese think tankers, media professionals, nationalist trolls, and even the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are pushing for their own opportunity to be part of the experimentation,” Mr Ryan says. “Each group is jostling for the chance to demonstrate its fealty to the Party and its willingness to take the fight to Western imperialists.”

SOCIAL EXPERIMENT

Western social media has its advantages. Even for Beijing.

More traditional methods – such as face-to-face interviews with reporters – haven’t been going so well. At the weekend, China’s ambassador to the UK Liu Xiaoming was visibly flummoxed when presented with video footage of hundreds of handcuffed and blindfolded Uighur detainees.Social media, however, is more controlled. There is no compulsion to answer difficult questions. Scenes, such as the dancing Xinjiang cadre, can be carefully produced and stage managed. Which is why Liu’s Twitter account has since issued the carefully crafted response he should have given the BBC interviewer.It’s also why Chinese state-controlled media organisations are experimenting with a variety of presentation techniques and styles across the likes of YouTube and Twitter.

Beautiful Beijing ‘honey traps’ are joining the ranks of ‘wolf warriors’. Radiant women in traditional dress fill YouTube clips. Earnest-faced experts extol the virtues of one-man, one-party rule.

Zhai Liyou uses Twitter to spread his message.Source:Twitter

“The Party-state appears to be allowing for experimentation across the apparatus of government in how to promote the CCP’s view of its place in the world,” an ASPI report released last month reads.

It says Beijing is now developing “overt manipulation” methods to feed its message to Western audiences.

“The Party-state’s online experiments will allow its propaganda apparatus to recalibrate efforts to influence audiences on Western platforms with growing precision. When combined with data acquisition, investments in artificial intelligence and alternative social media platforms, there is potential for the normalisation of a very different information environment from the open internet favoured by democratic societies.”https://www.news.com.au/world/asia/chinas-plan-to-use-beautiful-women-to-reinforce-communist-party/news-story/d90d7c84ab3fadebcf33d37bd4ed7c2d

Australia and the United States this month hardened their position on the South China Sea, where Washington has accused Beijing of attempting to build a "maritime empire" in the potentially energy-rich waters, despite regional concerns.

The rivals have accused each other of stoking tension in the strategic waterway at a time of strained relations over everything from the new coronavirus to trade to Hong Kong.

A statement from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on July 13 was the first time the United States had called China's claims in the sea unlawful and accused Beijing of a "campaign of bullying".

Australia then followed suit, writing a letter to the United Nations in which it said China's territorial claims in the contested waters were "inconsistent" with international law.

"There is no legal basis for China to draw straight baselines connecting the outermost points of maritime features or 'island groups' in the South China Sea, including around the 'Four Sha' or 'continental' or 'outlying' archipelagos," it said.

Heated rhetoric has also been on the rise elsewhere in the region, where Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam challenge China's claim to about 90 per cent of the sea.

So, what exactly are the tensions over? And could they lead to full-blown conflict?

What are tensions in the South China Sea about?

China illustrates its claims in the South China Sea with a vague, U-shaped "nine-dash line" that includes swathes of Vietnam's exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, as well as the Paracel Islands and Spratly Islands.

It also overlaps the EEZs of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

A tribunal at The Hague, based on a suit brought by the Philippines, ruled in 2016 that China has no "historic title" over the waters, and that its line was superseded by the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Australia echoed this ruling in its letter to the UN this month, asserting that it rejected Beijing's claim to "historic rights".

"The Australian Government encourages all claimants in the South China Sea, including China, to clarify their maritime claims and resolve their differences, in accordance with international law, particularly UNCLOS," it said.

Why do the US, Australia and Japan care?

The Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a thinktank, estimated in 2016 that a third of all global shipping passed through the South China Sea.

The sea is rich in oil, gas and for commercial fishing, which provides jobs and food for the region.

Analysts have argued that while the world's attention is focused on battling the pandemic, Beijing is taking the opportunity to assert itself regionally — namely in terms of its land borders with South Asia as well as in the South China Sea.

Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told the ABC earlier this year that nobody had predicted the current state of tensions when the Australian naval vessel HMAS Parramatta left home in February for a four-month deployment in South-East Asia.

Why do the US, Australia and Japan care?

The Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a thinktank, estimated in 2016 that a third of all global shipping passed through the South China Sea.

The sea is rich in oil, gas and for commercial fishing, which provides jobs and food for the region.

Analysts have argued that while the world's attention is focused on battling the pandemic, Beijing is taking the opportunity to assert itself regionally — namely in terms of its land borders with South Asia as well as in the South China Sea.

Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told the ABC earlier this year that nobody had predicted the current state of tensions when the Australian naval vessel HMAS Parramatta left home in February for a four-month deployment in South-East Asia.https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-27/south-china-sea-what-tensions-with-us-australia-are-about/12492432

A Chinese train company with major government clients in Australia that has been accused of using Uighur labour has engaged lawyers to fight a US blacklisting.

Last week, the KTK Group, which has extensive operations in Australia, was one of 11 companies added to a US blacklist over the alleged use of forced Uighur labour in China.

The US commerce department’s announcement said KTK Group shared “connection with the practice of forced labor involving Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in the [Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region]”.

KTK, which provides interior fittings for trains, is a major supplier to state government transport departments, working with the New South Wales government on the Sydney metro and new intercity fleet projects, Victoria on the X’Trapolis and high capacity metro train projects, and Queensland on its $4.4bn next generation rolling stock fleet project.Following the announcement, Queensland’s transport minister Mark Bailey asked his department to urgently review whether parts manufactured by KTK overseas and installed in the state’s new trains involved any forced labour, and urged Qtectic, the consortium responsible for maintenance, to find alternate suppliers.Transport for NSW said contracting partners on both the intercity fleet and metro projects were required to abide by “relevant NSW and commonwealth laws”.

“The contracting partner is also responsible for ensuring these obligations are met by any sub-contractors or consultants that they engage,” a spokeswoman said.

“Transport for NSW also has rights to access and audit the supplier’s records and the materials, goods, workmanship or work methodology employed at any place where the supplier’s activities are being carried out.”

Victoria’s transport department said it has asked its manufacturers to “take additional steps to ensure the integrity of their supply chains”, but had received assurances from KTK that no forced labour had been used.

KTK has stridently denied the allegations, saying it was added to the blacklist in the absence of any proof.

It says it has never employed any Uighurs in any part of its supply chain.

Related: World is legally obliged to pressure China on Uighurs, leading lawyers say

The company is now engaged in urgent talks with its government and private clients in Australia.

A spokeswoman said it had also engaged lawyers in the US to fight the government’s decision to blacklist it.

“The US Commerce Department has provided no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the KTK Group,” a spokeswoman told the Guardian. “The company has engaged a US law firm to petition to have KTK Group removed from the Department of Commerce list.”

The company is named in a major and damning report on Uighur forced labour, published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute this year.

The report details a labour program targeting Uighurs – a persecuted minority in the far west Xinjiang region – shifting them vast distances across the country, placing them under surveillance and direct supervision, making them swear allegiance to China regularly, learn Mandarin, and restricted from returning home or conducting normal religious practices.

The report says that in July last year, 41 Uighur workers were transferred to KTK Group in Changzhou, citing a local media report.

KTK says that it did take workers from Xinjiang. But it says they were not Uighurs.

“KTK Group has never been involved in the employment of any forced labour and the company has never employed any people of Uyghur ethnicity,” the spokeswoman said.

The Guardian has previously revealed that a factory using Uighur labour is supplying surgical masks to Australia as part of the pandemic response.