Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha promised on Thursday to pursue all legal avenues against pro-democracy protestors who are demanding his resignation and changes to the constitution, including limiting the powers of King Maha Vajiralongkorn.
 
Protestors expressed concern that Prayuth’s threat could result in the resumption of prosecutions under some of the world’s harshest laws barring insults of the royal family.  
 
“Prayuth has declared a battle against the people,” said protest leader and rights attorney Arnon Nampa.
 
Prayuth’s warning came as demonstrations for reforms have escalated.  
 
Protests on Wednesday were the most violent since July, as thousands of protestors hurled paint at police headquarters in Bangkok in response to police firing water cannons and tear gas at protestors the previous day, injuring dozens of them. Some protestors painted graffiti against the monarchy.
 
“The situation is not improving,” Prayuth said in a statement. “There is risk of escalation to more violence. If not addressed, it could damage the country and the beloved monarchy.”
 
Prayuth did not say if he would enforce Article 112 of the country’s criminal code, which prohibits citizens from insulting the monarchy.
 
But some royalists responded to the anti-monarchy graffiti by calling for the application of Article 112 against protestors on social media.
 
Protest leaders have been among the dozens of activists who have been arrested on a variety of charges in recent months, but not for criticizing the monarchy. 
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Malaysian rubber glove makers have started paying back thousands of migrant workers for recruitment fees totaling tens of millions of dollars since the U.S. stopped importing from some of them late last year over forced labor claims.Malaysia supplies nearly 2 in every 3 pairs of disposable rubber gloves used worldwide and has seen demand for the personal protective equipment soar amid the coronavirus pandemic. Most of the factories rely on an army of migrant workers, many of whom pay recruiters hundreds or thousands of dollars for the jobs and take on crippling loans to do so.Labor advocates call it debt bondage, a prime example of modern-day slavery that can shackle workers to abusive employers for years while they pay off their debts.In September 2019, U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued a “withhold release order” against Malaysia’s WRP Asia Pacific over evidence of forced labor at its factories, blocking imports of its gloves into the U.S. The agency issued a similar order in July against two subsidiaries of Malaysia’s Top Glove, the world’s largest rubber glove maker.The U.S. Customs order against Top Glove cited debt bondage specifically.Since the orders, both companies have launched efforts to reimburse their migrant workers for the recruitment fees they paid to land their jobs. Top Glove says it has been covering the full recruitment costs of new hires since January 2019. Since the U.S. started blocking its shipments, though, it has begun reimbursing migrant workers hired before 2019.In recent months, at least three more of Malaysia’s leading glove makers not facing U.S. sanctions — Hartalega, Kossan and YTY — have announced similarly sweeping payback schemes of their own.The Malaysian Rubber Glove Manufactures Association, which represents the sector, said the companies have committed at least $61 million to the effort in all to address the U.S. forced labor claims. It did not say how many workers are due to be paid back, but Top Glove said in an August statement that it alone will be reimbursing more than 9,000.Hartalega, Top Glove, YTY and the association all turned down VOA’s requests for interviews. Kossan and WRP have not replied.Fear factorLabor rights advocates say the U.S. sanctions, and even just the fear of them, are helping push the glove makers to address one of the leading labor abuses plaguing the industry.”These companies are doing it out of fear from sanctions,” said Adrian Pereira, executive director of the North South Initiative, a local nongovernment group and a member of the Migrant Workers Right to Redress Coalition.Having investigated labor abuses in the glove sector and others for many years, he added, “I personally don’t think that these companies are doing it out of genuine care and concern for the migrant workers.”Andy Hall, another labor rights advocate, said the U.S. sanctions are “translating into real impact and real money into workers’ pockets in remediation and remedy, which is really important.”One Top Glove worker, from Bangladesh, told VOA that his first monthly installment from the company’s repayment program showed up on his August pay slip, sliding straight into his bank account. He said all Top Glove workers from Bangladesh have been promised 12 monthly installments totaling about $4,900, roughly what most of them paid recruiters to find them work in Malaysia.The glove companies have shared few details about their reimbursement plans, but the payment pledges seem to match the average recruitment fees migrant workers from each country have paid, although some may have paid more or less. The Top Glove employee said coworkers from Nepal have been promised about $1,200, roughly what most of them claim to have paid recruiters themselves.”Everyone [is] really happy getting this money,” said the worker, an electrician, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from the company for speaking to the media without permission.Coming from Bangladesh, he said he poured all his savings into covering half the recruitment fee up front. He borrowed the rest and spent his first two years at Top Glove paying the loan off.With the money now pouring back, he plans to spend it on a new, two-story house he and his brother are building back home for them and their parents.”I feel really great about this. You know I [was] shocked when I heard that TG would pay us back,” he said.Real reformLabor rights groups, though, say it’s tough to judge just how much impact the U.S. import bans are having without more details on how and why the sanctions are being applied and lifted. U.S. Customs and Border Protection won’t reveal the evidence of forced labor it uses to sanction companies. When the agency lifted the import ban on WRP in March, it said the company had cleaned up its labor practices but refused to provide specifics.The U.S. law that makes the sanctions possible “really does have the potential to be one of the strongest pieces of law that can punish corporations or discourage them from profiting from forced labor in their supply chains,” said Esmeralda Lopez, legal and policy director for the International Labor Rights Forum, based in Washington.”But in terms of their effectiveness, we think that without increased transparency as to CBP’s enforcement and how that’s being done and how many times they are in fact stopping imports and … the amount, the number, the financial impact, it’s really difficult to assess,” she added.Asked about the critique, the agency told VOA it was barred by law from disclosing confidential business information and any other details that were “law enforcement sensitive” or could compromise current investigations.Advocates also say that targeted U.S. import bans are far from enough to comprehensively address debt bondage in Malaysia, which may be hosting more than 3 million migrant workers, according to the World Bank, many of them undocumented. Each withhold release order can take a year or more of investigation and, by their nature, can only be applied to companies that export to the U.S.Pereira said debt bondage remains rife in other sectors besides glove making that also lean heavily on migrant workers, including garments and agriculture, and will only be rooted out among companies and recruiters with a degree of government oversight and enforcement that he believes is still lacking.He said private-sector payback programs by companies facing or fearing U.S. sanctions were a help, but no substitute for thorough government-led reform.”It’s good,” Pereira said, “but it’s not a replacement.”The Malaysian Human Resources Ministry and its Labor Department did not reply to multiple requests for an interview.
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The U.S. State Department and American lawmakers in the Senate are outlining the risks and opportunities in Washington’s relationship with China in two new reports.At the State Department, a report published Tuesday and described as a blueprint for the U.S. response to China’s rise as an authoritarian superpower, says Beijing’s Communist Party is facing internal vulnerabilities, frustrating its growing global ambitions.”China under the CCP is marked by a variety of vulnerabilities. These begin with the disadvantages endemic to autocracy: constraints on innovation, difficulties forming and maintaining alliances, and costs arising from internal repression,” the State Department’s Office of Policy Planning wrote in the report, titled, FILE – Medical staff treat COVID-19 coronavirus patients at a hospital in Wuhan, in China’s central Hubei province, March 19, 2020.Beijing has consistently rejected such criticism, insisting it has been a model global partner in trying to curb the coronavirus pandemic. China has offered foreign countries access to vaccines under development and dispatched medical teams during the early part of the pandemic to advise how to combat the virus.  But that has done little to improve Beijing’s image among Western analysts, some of whom fear a nightmare scenario where Chinese leaders will respond to domestic pressures by devoting more attention to aggressive foreign policies.In recent years, one of the CCP’s biggest fears has been so-called “Western spiritual pollution,” referring to the Western ideas of liberty, rule of law, and governance that are features of democratic governments.“Xi Jinping is cracking down on that sort of teaching in the education system, even in the business system, because it terribly fears the influence of Western ideas,” said Dan Blumenthal, director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a research group based in Washington.“Mishandling of COVID-19 is causing an international backlash against him, but Xi doesn’t back down from this pressure. In fact, he escalates,” Blumenthal added.For example, Blumenthal said during the same year that China and other countries have struggled with the health and economic impacts of COVID-19, the Chinese Communist Party got into a border skirmish with India, increased political tensions in Australia, pressured Europeans to remove any language about Chinese disinformation campaigns around COVID-19, further clamped down on Hong Kong’s more open political culture, and continued its aggressive policies in the South China Sea and mass incarceration of Uighurs in Xinjiang.FILE – Watchtowers are seen on a high-security facility near what is believed to be a re-education camp where mostly Muslim ethnic minorities are detained, on the outskirts of Hotan, in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, May 30, 2019.China insists that all of these policies are either internal matters that foreign governments misrepresent, or as in the case of Europe and Australia, are Beijing having legitimate policy disagreements with one of its trading partners.But Blumenthal says Beijing’s actions abroad also have a goal of shaping domestic opinion, and that could lead to dire consequences.“So the nightmare scenario is as Xi gets more frustrated, he will try to compensate with more external aggression. And that’s what we have been seeing,” said Blumenthal during a webinar on Tuesday.The State Department’s paper outlines 10 tasks for the United States to focus on in its China relationship, including strengthening its alliance system and creating new international organizations to promote democracy and human rights; cooperating with China when possible and constraining it when appropriate; as well as training a new generation of public servants who understand great-power competition with China.U.S. officials have said Washington wants a results-oriented and constructive bilateral relationship based on fairness and reciprocity.“We are ready to work with China as long as China is willing to take concrete actions to address these challenges in mutually beneficial ways,” a spokesperson told VOA.Collaboration with Europe?The Senate Foreign Relations Committee also released a report Wednesday, calling for greater collaboration between the United States and Europe on the challenges posed by China.”China has become a true systemic rival to shared American and European interests. Both sides of the Atlantic increasingly recognize this reality,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman James Risch said in an event Wednesday introducing the report.”We have to turn this agreement into action. Neither the United States, nor Europe will be able to combat these threats alone. Those who suggest that possibility are simply wrong. China is simply too large and too well-equipped,” he said.Among its recommendations, the report suggests the new Biden administration provide an opportunity for the U.S. to rejoin international organizations and prevent China from filling the void left by the lack of U.S. international participation. 
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Regional analysts say Taiwan’s recent surge in exports despite a global economic downturn is most likely due to an increase in orders from Chinese tech firms that hope to depend less on the United States in the wake of trade and regulatory disputes.Chinese technology hardware firms are stockpiling semiconductors made in Taiwan because Taiwanese factories produce some of the world’s most advanced chips, as shown by a 6% jump in exports from July through September, the analysts believe. China has separately announced plans to become a tech powerhouse but hasn’t perfected chips for 5G technology.Taiwan and China are meanwhile locked in a political dispute. China claims sovereignty over the island, which rejects China’s design for unification and over the past four years has pushed companies to rely less on the Chinese market. The two sides have been self-ruled since the 1940s.“They know they’re not yet able to produce at least the highest-end semiconductors needed for 5G, so Taiwan has a huge role to play because that’s what they do the best, and I don’t think they’re going to give up on that for whatever political, geopolitical reasons,” said Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief Asia-Pacific economist with the French investment bank Natixis. “It’s just too juicy.”  Tech hardware is Taiwan’s top China-bound export, while information and communication technology gear make up half of Taiwan’s total exports.Over the third quarter, $27.2 billion of Taiwan’s $90 billion in exports went to China, Bureau of Foreign Trade data show, and Chinese importers bought more than one-third of the $32.9 billion in exports from the category that covers semiconductors.September export data alone reflected “rush shipments” from Taiwan to the giant Chinese telecom firm Huawei Technologies and China’s biggest chip factory Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., Taiwan government-backed Central News Agency says. The new Huawei Mate 40 Pro smartphone is held for a photo, in London, Wednesday Oct. 21, 2020.Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., or TSMC, is the world’s largest contract chipmaker with some of its most advanced technology. In the third quarter this year, 22% of TSMC’s net revenues came from China, up from 21% in the previous quarter and 20% in the July-September period of 2019, a company publicist said. Exports pushed Taiwan’s GDP growth in the most recent quarter up 3.3% year-on-year, and the government forecasts a 1.56% GDP increase this year. Both figures would contrast sharply to the International Monetary Fund forecast of a 4.9% global economic fall this year, led by some of the world’s biggest economies.Third-quarter data in Taiwan tracked a tightening of U.S. restrictions on Huawei, which President Donald Trump’s government considers a national security threat. Those orders came amid a nearly 3-year-old Sino-U.S. trade dispute and before the U.S. presidential election, all spelling uncertainty for China.“A lot of these goods are being sold in China because China is actually stockpiling inventory, and the reason for stockpiling is the recent state of Sino-U.S. relations — not just Huawei, but there are a lot of uncertainties for the whole industry,” said Brady Wang, an analyst in Taipei with the market intelligence firm Counterpoint Research.Chinese firms still traditionally look to Silicon Valley for upstream technology.In a statement Tuesday on the sale of a smartphone unit, Huawei said its consumer product lines had been “under tremendous pressure as of late” because of “a persistent unavailability of technical elements needed for our mobile phone business.”Chinese tech firms are trying anyway to depend less on foreign supplies and ideas, a trend that analysts describe as self-reliance. Growth in local talent and “constant advances” in research ability show China is already an “influential innovation power in the world”, domestic news website Chinanews.com reported in October 2019. The report cites “accelerated leapfrogging” since 2011 and says China is “moving from an important technological country in the world to a world tech powerhouse.”China eventually hopes that it can make everything it needs domestically, Wang said. But he said it will depend on foreign ideas and supplies for a while. “in the process they’re clear they can’t go to the United States for that,” Wang said.“Self-reliance from China doesn’t mean full self-reliance because they’re not yet ready and I think that’s going to boost in a way that semiconductor industry even further in Taiwan,” Garcia said.U.S. President Donald Trump’s curbs against Chinese tech, with no signs of abating under President-elect Joe Biden, raised the urgency for China to rely more on itself, said Song Seng Wun, an economist in the private banking unit of Malaysian bank CIMB. “I suppose it’s a wake-up call because of four years of the Trump Administration and that it doesn’t look like even if there’s a change of administration that the policy will be changed significantly,” Song said.China accelerated Taiwan’s export growth in another way over the first nine months of the year: Exports received by American firms grew by 7% year on year as the importers “shifted from China to alternative suppliers to avoid U.S. tariffs,” London-based forecasting and consulting firm Capital Economics said in an October 30 research note.Taiwan owes another part of its boom to the quick control of COVID-19, meaning no shutdowns in early 2020. China bounced back in March from the worst of its outbreak and production has hummed along normally since then.
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