Author: SeeEA

Shy penguin wins New Zealand’s bird election

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WELLINGTON, New Zealand — It’s noisy, smelly, shy – and New Zealand’s bird of the year.

The hoiho, or yellow-eyed penguin, won the country’s fiercely fought avian election on Monday, offering hope to supporters of the endangered bird that recognition from its victory might prompt a revival of the species.

It followed a campaign for the annual Bird of the Year vote that was absent the foreign interference scandals and cheating controversies of past polls. Instead, campaigners in the long-running contest sought votes in the usual ways — launching meme wars, seeking celebrity endorsements and even getting tattoos to prove their loyalty.

More than 50,000 people voted in the poll, 300,000 fewer than last year, when British late night host John Oliver drove a humorous campaign for the pūteketeke — a “deeply weird bird” which eats and vomits its own feathers – securing a landslide win.

This year, the number of votes cast represented 10% of the population of New Zealand — a country where nature is never far away and where a love of native birds is instilled in citizens from childhood.

“Birds are our heart and soul,” said Emma Rawson, who campaigned for the fourth-placed ruru, a small brown owl with a melancholic call. New Zealand’s only native mammals are bats and marine species, putting the spotlight on its birds, which are beloved — and often rare.

This year’s victor, the hoiho — its name means “noise shouter” in the Māori language — is a shy bird thought to be the world’s rarest penguin. Only found on New Zealand’s South and Chatham islands — and on subantarctic islands south of the country — numbers have dropped perilously by 78% in the past 15 years.

“This spotlight couldn’t have come at a better time. This iconic penguin is disappearing from mainland Aotearoa before our eyes,” Nicola Toki, chief executive of Forest & Bird — the organization that runs the poll — said in a press release, using the Māori name for New Zealand. Despite intensive conservation efforts on land, she said, the birds drown in nets and sea and can’t find enough food.

“The campaign has raised awareness, but what we really hope is that it brings tangible support,” said Charlie Buchan, campaign manager for the hoiho. But while the bird is struggling, it attracted a star billing in the poll: celebrity endorsements flew in from English zoologist Jane Goodall, host of the Amazing Race Phil Keoghan, and two former New Zealand prime ministers.

Aspiring bird campaign managers — this year ranging from power companies to high school students — submit applications to Forest & Bird for the posts. The hoiho bid was run by a collective of wildlife groups, a museum, a brewery and a rugby team in the city of Dunedin, where the bird is found on mainland New Zealand, making it the highest-powered campaign of the 2024 vote.

“I do feel like we were the scrappy underdog,” said Emily Bull, a spokesperson for the runner-up campaign, for the karure — a small, “goth” black robin only found on New Zealand’s Chatham Island.

The karure’s bid was directed by the students’ association at Victoria University of Wellington, prompting fierce skirmish on the college campus when the student magazine staged an opposing campaign for the kororā, or little blue penguin.

The rivalry provoked a meme war and students in bird costumes. Several people got tattoos. When the magazine’s campaign secured endorsements of the city council and local zoo, Bull despaired for the black robin’s bid.

But the karure – which has performed a real-life comeback since the 1980s, with conservation efforts increasing the species from five birds to 250 – took second place overall.

This weekend as Rawson wrapped up her campaign for the ruru, she too took her efforts directly to the people, courting votes at a local dog park. The veteran campaign manager who has directed the bids for other birds in past years was rewarded by the ruru placing fourth in the poll, her best ever result.

“I have not been in human political campaigning before,” said Rawson, who is drawn to the competition because of the funds and awareness it generates. The campaign struck a more sedate tone this year, she added.

“There’s been no international interference, even though that was actually a lot of fun,” she said, referring to Oliver’s high-profile campaign.

It was not the only controversy the election has seen. While anyone in the world can vote, Forest & Bird now requires electors to verify their ballots after foreign interference plagued the contest before. In 2018, Australian pranksters cast hundreds of fraudulent votes in favor of the shag.

The following year, Forest & Bird was forced to clarify that a flurry of votes from Russia appeared to be from legitimate bird-lovers.

While campaigns are fiercely competitive, managers described tactics more akin to pro wrestling — in which fights are scripted — than divisive political contests.

“Sometimes people want to make posts that are kind of like beefy with you and they’ll always message you and be like, hey, is it okay if I post this?” Bull said. “There is a really sweet community. It’s really wholesome.”
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87 and hobbled, Pope Francis goes off-script in Asia and reminds world he can still draw a crowd

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DILI, East Timor — It was the farthest trip of his pontificate and one of the longest papal trips ever in terms of days on the road and distance traveled. But Pope Francis, age 87, hobbled by bad knees and bent over with sciatica, appeared to be having the time of his life.

With half of East Timor’s population gathered at a seaside park, Francis couldn’t help but oblige them with a final good night and languid loops in his popemobile, long after the sun had set and the field was lit by cellphone screens.

It was late, the heat and humidity had turned Tasitolu park into something of a sauna, and most of the journalists had already gone back to their air-conditioned hotel to watch the Mass on TV. But there was Francis, defying the doubters who had questioned if he could, would or should make such an arduous trip to Asia given everything that could go wrong.

“How many children you have!” Francis marveled to the crowd of 600,000, which amounted to the biggest-ever turnout for a papal event as a proportion of the population. “A people that teaches its children to smile is a people that has a future.”

The moment seemed to serve as proof that, despite his age, ailments and seven hours of jet lag, Pope Francis still could pope, still likes to pope and has it in him to pope like he used to at the start of his pontificate.

That’s never truer than when he’s in his element: in the peripheries of the world, among people forgotten by the big powers, where he can go off-script to respond to the spirit of the moment.

And it was certainly the case on his 11-day trip through Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, during which he clocked nearly 33,000 kilometers (20,505 miles) in air travel alone. It was a trip that he had originally planned to make in 2020 but COVID-19 intervened.

Four years and a handful of hospitalizations later (for intestinal and pulmonary problems), Francis finally pulled it off. He seemed to relish getting out of the Vatican and away from the weighty grind of the Holy See after being cooped up all year, much of it battling a long bout of bronchitis.

Francis does tend to rally during foreign trips, though he usually sticks to a script when he’s in the protocol meetings with heads of state, dutifully delivering speeches that were written in advance by Vatican diplomats.

But when he’s meeting with young people or local priests and nuns, he tends to show his true colors. He’ll ditch his prepared remarks and speak off-the-cuff, often engaging in back-and-forth banter with the faithful to make sure his message has stuck.

Doing so thrills the crowd, terrorizes his translators and complicates the work of journalists, but you always know Francis is enjoying himself and feels energized when he goes rogue. And he went rogue plenty of times in Asia — and on the in-flight press conference coming back to Rome, during which he urged American Catholics to vote for who they think is the “lesser evil” for president.

Francis started in Indonesia, arguably the most delicate destination on his itinerary given the country is home to the world’s largest Muslim population. The Vatican would be loathe to say or do anything that might cause offense.

And yet from his very first encounter with President Joko Widodo, Francis appeared in a feisty mood, praising Indonesia’s relatively high birthrate while lamenting that in the West, “some prefer a cat or a little dog.”

Francis has frequently made the same demographic quip at home in Italy, which has one of the world’s lowest birthrates. But the high-profile trip meant that his trademark sarcasm got amplified. American commentators immediately assumed Francis had entered the “childless cat ladies” debate roiling U.S. politics, but there was no indication he had JD Vance in mind.

Even in the most delicate moment in Jakarta, at Southeast Asia’s biggest mosque, Francis threw protocol aside and kissed the hand of the grand imam and brought it to his cheek in gratitude.

In Papua New Guinea, Francis was similarly jazzed after pulling off a visit to a remote jungle outpost that had seemed impossible for him to reach: The airport in Vanimo, population 11,000, doesn’t have an ambulift wheelchair elevator that Francis now needs to get on and off planes, and bringing one in just for him was out of the question.

The stubborn pope, who really, really wanted to go to Vanimo, ended up rolling on and off the back ramp of a C-130 cargo plane that Australia had offered to get him, and the metric ton of medicine and other supplies he brought with him, to the town.

Despite the considerable security concerns of entering a region torn by tribal rivalries, Francis seemed to relish the jungle visit, perhaps because he felt so much at home. A dozen Argentine missionary priests and nuns have lived in Vanimo with the local community for years and had invited him to come. They decorated the simple stage in front of the church with a statue of Argentina’s beloved Virgin of Lujan, to whom Francis is particularly devoted, and had a gourd of mate, the Argentine tea, waiting for him.

In East Timor Francis had to negotiate perhaps the most sensitive issue clouding the visit: the case of Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, the revered national hero who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent independence campaign. The Vatican revealed in 2022 that it had sanctioned Belo, who now lives in Portugal, for having sexually abused young boys and ordered him to cease contact with East Timor.

Francis didn’t mention Belo by name and didn’t meet with his victims, but he did reaffirm the need to protect children from “abuse.” There was nary a mention of Belo’s name in any official speech during a visit in which East Timor’s traumatic history and independence fight were repeatedly evoked.

In Singapore, his final stop, Francis once again ditched his remarks when he arrived at the last event, a meeting of Singaporean youth on Friday morning.

“That’s the talk I prepared,” he said, pointing to his speech and then proceeding to launch into a spontaneous back-and-forth with the young people about the need to have courage and take risks.

“What’s worse: Make a mistake because I take a certain path, or not make a mistake and stay home?” he asked them.

He answered his own question, with a response that could explain his own risky decision to embark on the Asia trip in the first place.

“A young person who doesn’t take a risk, who is afraid of making a mistake, is an old person,” the 87-year-old pope said.

“I hope all of you go forward,” he said. “Don’t go back. Don’t go back. Take risks.”
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Shanghai braces for direct hit from Typhoon Bebinca

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SHANGHAI/BEIJING — Shanghai halted transportation links, recalled ships and shut tourism spots including Shanghai Disney Resort on Sunday as it braced for Typhoon Bebinca, in what could be the strongest tropical cyclone to hit the Chinese financial hub since 1949.

The Category 1 typhoon, packing maximum sustained wind speeds near its center of around 144 kph, was about 500 kilometers southeast of Shanghai as of 1 p.m.  It is expected to make landfall along China’s eastern coast after midnight on Monday.

The strongest storm to make landfall in Shanghai in recent decades was Typhoon Gloria in 1949, which tore through the city with gusts of 144 kph. Shanghai was last threatened by a direct hit in 2022 by the powerful Typhoon Muifa, which instead landed 300 kilometers away in the city of Zhoushan, in Zhejiang province.

Shanghai is typically spared the strong typhoons that hit farther south in China, including Yagi, a destructive Category 4 storm that roared past southern Hainan province last week. But Shanghai and neighboring provinces are taking no chances with Category 1 Bebinca.

Resorts in Shanghai, including Shanghai Disney Resort, Jinjiang Amusement Park and Shanghai Wild Animal Park, have been temporarily closed while most ferries have been halted to and from Chongming Island – China’s third-biggest island known as “the gateway to the Yangtze River.”

More than 600 flights to and from Shanghai were also canceled, according to local media.

In Zhejiang, ships have been recalled while several parks in the provincial capital Hangzhou announced closures.

Bebinca’s arrival will coincide with the Mid-Autumn festival, a nationwide three-day holiday when many Chinese travel or engage in outdoor activities.

China’s Ministry of Water Resources on Saturday issued a Level-IV emergency response — the lowest level in China’s four-tier emergency response system — for potential flooding in Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui. 
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Historians say increased censorship in China makes research hard

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BEIJING — At Beijing’s largest antiques market, Panjiayuan, among the Mao statues, posters and second-hand books are prominent signs warning against the sale of publications that might have state secrets or “reactionary propaganda.”

Some of the signs display a hotline number so that citizens can tip off authorities if they witness an illegal sale.

China’s antique and flea markets were once a gold mine of documents for historians, but now the signs are emblematic of the chill that has descended on their ability to do research in the country.

On one hand, Beijing wants to increase academic exchange and President Xi Jinping last November invited 50,000 American students to China over the next five years — a massive jump from about 800 currently.

How much steam that will gather is very much an open question. But scholars of modern Chinese history in particular — arguably among the people most interested in China – fear that tightened censorship is extinguishing avenues for independent research into the country’s past.

This is especially so for documents relating to the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution — the most historically sensitive period for the Chinese Communist Party — when Mao Zedong declared class war and plunged China into chaos and violence.

“I would say the period of going to flea markets and simply finding treasure troves is pretty much over,” said Daniel Leese, a modern China historian at the University of Freiburg.

Trawling for documents “has basically gone out of favor because it has simply become too complex, difficult and dangerous,” he said, adding that younger foreign scholars are increasingly relying on overseas collections.

The Chinese Communist Party has exerted control over all publications including books, the media and the internet since establishing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, with the degree of censorship fluctuating over time.

But censorship has only intensified under President Xi Jinping, who came to power in 2012 and has blamed “historic nihilism” or versions of history that differ from the official accounts for causing the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In recent years, a raft of new national security and anti-espionage legislation has made scholars even more wary of citing unofficial Chinese materials.

Some scholars of modern Chinese history who have published studies that either challenged Chinese state narratives or are on sensitive topics say they have been denied visas to China.

James Millward, a historian at Georgetown University, said he had been visa-blocked on several occasions after contributing to the 2004 book Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland but has since received short-term visas a few times albeit after a lengthy process.

The political climate is also shaping how historians choose their research subjects. One historian based in the U.S. said he has chosen to work on non-controversial topics to maintain travel access to China. He declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue.

China’s education ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. The foreign ministry said it was unaware of relevant circumstances.

Documentary discoveries

Leese and other foreign historians say they previously found case files of persecuted intellectuals as well as secret Communist Party documents at Chinese flea and antique markets.

These were often donated by relatives of deceased officials or painstakingly rescued by booksellers from recycling centers near government offices disbanded during the mass state sector layoffs of the 1990s.

But the government has, since 2008, cracked down on flea markets and other sources of used books and documents. Buyers have been arrested, sellers have been fined and used book websites have been cleared of politically sensitive items, according to domestic media reports, collectors and four overseas researchers who spoke with Reuters.

In 2019, for example, a Japanese historian was detained for two months on spying charges after buying 1930s books on the Sino-Japanese War from a second-hand bookshop.

Two years later, a hobbyist accused of selling illegal publications from Hong Kong and Taiwan publishers on Kongfuzi, China’s biggest website for used books, was fined 280,000 yuan ($39,000) for not having a business license, Chinese media reported.

And this year, two workers at a recycling center were punished for selling confidential military documents, state media said.

Buyers now cultivate personal relationships with merchants who sell through WeChat, said a Beijing-based collector interested in documents from the Cultural Revolution, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Historians also note that access to the vast majority of local government archives has been restricted since 2010 and their digitization has enabled censors to heavily redact them.

Foreign-based historians add that their counterparts in mainland China can only preserve materials for posterity in the current political climate. But not all are downbeat.

“Even under Xi, Chinese scholars continue to seek openings and enlarge the understanding and interpretation of PRC history,” said Yi Lu, assistant history professor at Dartmouth College, who has worked extensively with Chinese university collections of 20th-century materials. “All is not lost.”
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China’s economy softens in August as Beijing grapples with lagging demand

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BEIJING — China’s economy softened in August, extending a slowdown in industrial activity and real estate prices as Beijing faces pressure to ramp up spending to stimulate demand.

Data published by the National Bureau of Statistics Saturday showed weakening activity across industrial production, retail sales and real estate this month compared to July.

“We should be aware that the adverse impacts arising from the changes in the external environment are increasing,” said Liu Aihua, the bureau’s chief economist in a news conference.

Liu said that demand remained insufficient at home, and the sustained economic recovery still confronts multiple difficulties and challenges.

China has been grappling with a lagging economy post-COVID, with weak consumer demand, persistent deflationary pressures and a contraction in factory activity.

Chinese leaders have ramped up investment in manufacturing to rev up an economy that stalled during the pandemic and is still growing slower than hoped.

Beijing also has to deal with increasing pressure to implement large-scale stimulus measures to boost economic growth.

While industrial production rose by 4.5% in August compared to a year ago, it declined from July’s 5.1% growth, according to the bureau’s data released.

Retail sales grew 2.1% from the same time last year, slower than the 2.7% increase last month.

Fixed asset investment rose by 3.4% from January to August, down from 3.6% in the first seven months.

Meanwhile, investment in real estate declined by 10.2% from January to August, compared to last year.

The figures released Saturday come after trade data for August saw imports grow just 0.5% compared to a year ago.

The consumer price index rose 0.6% in August, missing forecasts according to data released Monday. Officials attributed the higher CPI to an increase in food prices due to bad weather.

But the core CPI, which excludes food and energy prices, rose by just 0.3% in August, the slowest in over three years.
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Japan, US face ‘shared challenge’ from China steel, PM hopeful says

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TOKYO — Japan and the United States should avoid confrontation about the steel industry and work together amid competition from China, the world’s top steelmaker, leading prime ministerial candidate Shinjiro Koizumi said Saturday.

Sources told Reuters Friday that a powerful U.S. national security panel reviewing Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion bid for U.S. Steel faces a September 23 deadline to recommend whether the White House should block the deal.

Koizumi, Japan’s former environment minister, said at a debate Saturday that Japan and the U.S. should not confront each other when it comes to the steel industry but to face together the “shared challenge” coming from China’s steel industry.

“If China, producing cheap steel without renewable or clean energy, floods the global market, it will most adversely affect us, the democratic countries playing by fair market rules,” Koizumi said.

Nippon Steel’s key negotiator on the deal, Vice Chairman Takahiro Mori, said last month that his company and other Japanese steelmakers were urging Tokyo to consider curbing cheap steel imports coming from China to protect the local market.

On Sunday, Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden about their deal, as Biden, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump have all opposed the merger.

“We are also in the midst of elections, just like the U.S., and during elections, various ideas may arise. Overreacting to each of these would, in my view, call into question diplomatic judgment,” Koizumi said when asked about the deal.

Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s minister in charge of economic security and another prime ministerial candidate, also defended the deal during the same debate attended by eight other Liberal Democratic Party’s, or LDP, leadership contenders Saturday.

“It appears they are using CFIUS to frame this as an economic security issue,” she said,  referring to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. “However, Japan and the U.S. are allies, and the steel industry is about strengthening our combined resilience.”

The 43-year-old son of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the junior Koizumi, is seen as a leading contender in the September 27 race to pick the LDP’s new leader, who will become the next prime minister due to the party’s control of parliament.

Koizumi said Saturday that he would seek a dialog with the North Korean leadership to resolve the issue over the abduction of Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s. The purported primary goal was to train North Korean agents to impersonate Japanese people.

“We want to explore new opportunities for dialog between people of the same generation, without being bound by conventional approaches, and without preconditions,” Koizumi said.

After admitting in 2002 that it had abducted 13 Japanese, North Korea apologized and allowed five to return home. It said eight others had died and denied that an additional four entered its territory. It promised to reinvestigate but has never announced the results.

Japan says North Korea has refused to send the others home because of concern that they might reveal inconvenient information about the country.
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Limited role for US Navy SEAL Team in defense of Taiwan

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Washington — The United States Navy’s elite SEAL Team Six would likely have a limited role in defending Taiwan should China invade the self-governing and democratic island, say analysts responding to a Financial Times report that the unit has been training for it for more than one year.

Lyle J. Morris, senior fellow for foreign policy and national security at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis, tells VOA Mandarin if the unit is indeed preparing for an attack by Beijing, it may indicate that the U.S. is more deeply involved in defending Taiwan than previously thought.

However, he stressed that the secret and precise combat characteristics of SEAL Team Six mean its role in resisting China’s invasion of Taiwan would be very limited, and the focus would be on carrying out special tasks.

“As far as their sheer capability to repel an invasion. I think that’s more limited,” he says. “I think it’s in a very discreet, narrow way of coming in for a specific task that Taiwan might need, whether it’s helping to protect, let’s say, an airfield in Taiwan or protect a communication asset in Taiwan, in Taipei, they could come in and out very discreetly and very lethally to protect that asset.”

SEAL Team Six specializes in performing sensitive, highly difficult missions. In 2009, the unit rescued Richard Phillips, captain of the MV Maersk Alabama, who was taken hostage by Somali pirates.

The elite unit gained an international reputation after the successful raid on al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan in 2011.

It is one of the most highly regarded U.S. military units, along with the United States Army’s Delta Force, the 75th Ranger Regiment’s Regimental Reconnaissance Company, the Intelligence Support Activity, and the Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron, and part of the Joint Special Operations Command.

“Navy SEALs usually deployed from submarines or, most likely, small ships. And are useful for targeting vulnerabilities in enemies’ presentation,” Richard D. Fisher Jr., senior fellow with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, tells VOA.

Analysts say the U.S. military likely revealed the SEAL Team Six training program to the Financial Times to send a warning to Beijing amid China’s increasingly assertive moves in the region.

“This is one way the U.S. is bolstering deterrence towards China, towards preventing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan,” says Morris. “So, I think this is just an added factor getting China to second guess or to reconsider what it will face if it were to invade Taiwan.”

Dennis Wilder, a senior fellow for the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University and a former Central Intelligence Agency military analyst, posted on social media platform X, “It is sure to get under Beijing’s skin.”

In a written response to VOA Mandarin, Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., said, “The Taiwan question is the very core of China’s core interests and the first red line that must not be crossed in the China-U.S. relationship.”

He urged “the U.S. to earnestly abide by the one-China principle and the three China-U.S. joint communiqués, stop enhancing military contact with the Taiwan region or arming it by any means or under whatever pretext, stop creating factors that could heighten tensions in the Taiwan Strait, and stop conniving at and supporting the separatists’ attempt to seek ‘Taiwan independence’ by force.”

Taiwan split from China during the civil war that saw the Communist Party seize power in Beijing in 1949 and the Nationalist Party flee to the island, which developed into a flourishing democracy. But China’s one-party, authoritarian state never gave up its claim to Taiwan and considers it a renegade province that must one day reunite with the mainland, by force if necessary.

Admiral Philips Davidson, former commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, warned in 2021 that China could attack Taiwan within six years. President Joe Biden has repeatedly stressed that if China invades Taiwan, the U.S. will intervene militarily to defend it.

The U.S. Department of Defense declined to confirm or deny the Financial Times report. Pentagon spokesperson John Supple said in an email to VOA, “The DoD and our service members prepare and train for a wide range of contingencies. We will not comment on specifics, but will restate that we are committed to our longstanding one China policy, guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the Three Joint Communiques, and the Six Assurances. As we have said before, conflict is neither imminent nor inevitable.”

America’s one-China policy is a strategically ambiguous agreement it made in 1972 to establish relations with China that recognizes Beijing as the only government of China and acknowledges, but does not endorse, Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is part of China.

Washington has unofficial relations with Taiwan defined through the Taiwan Relations Act, the Three Joint Communiques with Beijing, and the Six Assurances with Taipei, which underscore U.S. opposition to attempts to unilaterally alter the status quo and determination to help Taiwan defend itself through weapons sales.

There has been previous U.S. military training for Taiwan’s defense, both on the island and in the United States. Reuters reported last year the U.S. was set to expand the number of troops helping train Taiwanese forces on the island and Taiwanese officials confirmed more of their troops would be training in the U.S.
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China condemns German navy’s transit of Taiwan Strait

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BEIJING — China’s military on Saturday condemned the transit of two German navy ships through the Taiwan Strait saying it increased security risks and sent the “wrong” signal, adding that Chinese forces monitored and warned the vessels.

China, which claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own, says it alone exercises sovereignty and jurisdiction over the strait. Both the United States and Taiwan say the strait — a major trade route through which about half of global container ships pass — is an international waterway.

The People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command said the passage of the two ships — a frigate and a supply vessel — was “public hyping,” and that its navy and air forces monitored and warned them throughout.

“The German side’s behavior increases security risks and sends the wrong signal. Troops in the theater are on high alert at all times and will resolutely counter all threats and provocations,” it said in a statement.

China’s embassy in Germany said in a separate statement it had lodged “representations” with Berlin, saying Taiwan belonged to China, a position the democratically elected government in Taipei strongly rejects.

“The question of Taiwan is not a matter of ‘freedom of navigation’, but of China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” it said.

The Taiwan Strait is Chinese waters “and there are no so-called ‘international waters’ at all,” the embassy added.

China urges Germany to avoid any “interference” that would jeopardize the healthy and stable development of bilateral relations, it added.

Taiwan’s government says only the island’s people can decide their future.

U.S. warships sail through the strait around once every two months, drawing the ire of Beijing, and some U.S. allies like Canada and Britain have also made occasional transits.

China, which has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control, has over the past five years stepped up military activities around the island, including staging war games.

On Saturday, Taiwan’s coast guard said it had again sent ships to monitor and warn away four Chinese maritime police vessels sailing in restricted waters near the Taiwan-controlled Kinmen islands, which sit right next to China’s coast.

The Chinese ships have continued to provoke and damage peace in the strait, and the coast guard is determined to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty upholding the principles of no provocation, no conflict and no show of weakness, it said.

Calls to China’s defense ministry seeking comment went unanswered. 
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Dozens of Hong Kong journalists threatened in harassment campaign, says HKJA

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BANGKOK — Dozens of Hong Kong journalists and their families have been harassed and intimidated in the past three months, according to the chair of a local press club.

The Hong Kong Journalists Association or HKJA said Friday it had tracked “systematic” and “organized” attacks on journalists from June to August this year.

At least 15 journalists and their family members, employers and neighbors were harassed both online and offline, the press club said.

Selina Cheng, the chair of the HKJA, said in a press conference Friday that it is the biggest case of intimidation that the association has ever seen.

“I don’t believe this is right, and that’s why we are making a loud call today to say we do not accept such behavior,” she said.

“This type of intimidation and harassment, which includes sharing false and defamatory content and death threats, damages press freedom,” she added.

Journalists from multiple Hong Kong media outlets have been affected, with anonymous threats and harassment made via social media email or in the mail, the HKJA said in a statement.

Some of those targeted received threats to their personal safety and were warned to give up their employment or position within associations, the HKJA added.

“HKJA has gathered detailed information on a number of affected journalists and organisations,” the statement read. Those affected include two journalism education institutions and 13 media outlets, including the executive committee of the HKJA, Hong Kong Free Press, InMediaHK, and HK Feature.

Many of the letters and emails warned that association with the named organizations or people could be a violation of Hong Kong’s national security laws.

The emails and letters were sent anonymously, with emails sent from Microsoft Outlook accounts.

On social media, posts showed photos of journalists and members of the HKJA executive committee pictured alongside images of knives, blood, shooting targets and “memorial” signs.

The Hong Kong Free Press condemned the attacks. In a statement shared on social media, it said that the landlord of the news website’s director, Tom Grundy, had received threatening letters, saying “unimaginable consequences” would occur unless Grundy was evicted from his property.

Grundy reported the threats to police, the news website said.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders or RSF called on the international community to take action.

“We strongly condemn this harassment campaign led against the independent media outlets that managed to survive the previous waves of government repression,” said Cedric Alviani, RSF’s Asia-Pacific bureau director. “We urge the international community to intensify its pressure on the Chinese regime so press freedom is fully restored in the territory.”

VOA requested comment late Friday from the Hong Kong Police Force but did not immediately receive a response.

Hong Kong’s undersecretary for security, Michael Cheuk, told media “no one should be intimidated, insulted, or so-called harassed.”

Cheuk urged anyone who felt under pressure to report it to law agencies, Reuters reported.

The HKJA said that it has contacted Meta, which owns Facebook, and Wikimedia Foundation, the two main platforms used in the harassment campaign.

Cheng told VOA she believes a person or group of people are responsible.

“Bots means they are machine-controlled. I don’t think that’s the case,” she added.

Details of the intimidation campaign come as critics warn that press freedom is being eroded in Hong Kong.

Since Beijing imposed a national security law on Hong Kong in 2020 — which carries life imprisonment for those found guilty of what are deemed as sedition, subversion, foreign interference or terrorism — news outlets have shuttered and there is greater self-censorship on sensitive issues, say media experts.

Activists, political figures, lawmakers and reporters are cautious about speaking on the record to the media, with most declining to be interviewed for fear of reprisal.

Media unions like the Hong Kong Journalist Association have also come under pressure, after being criticized by authorities and Chinese state media for alleged links to activist organizations.

The governments of Hong Kong and China have said that the security law has brought stability back to the former British colony.

But since 2020, dozens of people have been arrested under the legislation. At least 28 of those arrested were journalists or press freedom defenders.

In August, two journalists from the now-defunct Stand News website were found guilty of sedition in a landmark case. And the pro-democracy publisher Jimmy Lai is in prison and on trial under the national security law for charges he denies.  
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China’s retirement age, among youngest in world, set to rise

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BEIJING — Starting next year, China will raise its retirement age for workers, which is now among the youngest in the world’s major economies, in an effort to address its shrinking population and aging work force.

The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, the country’s legislature, passed the new policy Friday after a sudden announcement earlier in the week that it was reviewing the measure, state broadcaster CCTV announced.

The policy change will be carried out over 15 years, with the retirement age for men raised to 63 years, and for women to 55 or 58 years depending on their jobs. The current retirement age is 60 for men and 50 for women in blue-collar jobs and 55 for women doing white-collar work.

“We have more people coming into the retirement age, and so the pension fund is (facing) high pressure. That’s why I think it’s now time to act seriously,” said Xiujian Peng, a senior research fellow at Victoria University in Australia who studies China’s population and its ties to the economy.

The previous retirement ages were set in the 1950’s, when life expectancy was only around 40 years, Peng said.

The policy will be implemented starting in January, according to the announcement from China’s legislature. The change will take effect progressively based on people’s birthdates.

For example, a man born in January 1971 could retire at the age of 61 years and 7 months in August 2032, according to a chart released along with the policy. A man born in May 1971 could retire at the age of 61 years and 8 months in January 2033.

Demographic pressures made the move long overdue, experts say. By the end of 2023, China counted nearly 300 million people over the age of 60. By 2035, that figure is projected to be 400 million, larger than the population of the U.S. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences had previously projected that the public pension fund will run out of money by that year.

Pressure on social benefits such as pensions and social security is hardly a China-specific problem. The U.S. also faces the issue as analysis shows that currently, the Social Security fund won’t be able to pay out full benefits to people by 2033.

“This is happening everywhere,” said Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. “But in China with its large elderly population, the challenge is much larger.”

That is on top of fewer births, as younger people opt out of having children, citing high costs. In 2022, China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that for the first time the country had 850,000 fewer people at the end of the year than the previous year, a turning point from population growth to decline. In 2023, the population shrank further, by 2 million people.

What that means is that the burden of funding elderly people’s pensions will be divided among a smaller group of younger workers, as pension payments are largely funded by deductions from people who are currently working.

Researchers measure that pressure by looking at a number called the dependency ratio, which counts the number of people over the age of 65 compared to the number of workers under 65. That number was 21.8% in 2022, according to government statistics, meaning that roughly five workers would support one retiree. The percentage is expected to rise, meaning fewer workers will be shouldering the burden of one retiree.
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Report details how China retaliates against people for engaging with UN

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washington — China is among the foreign governments that retaliate against people for engaging with the United Nations, according to a report released this week by the U.N. Secretary-General.

The report highlights how hard Beijing tries to silence its critics, according to Sophie Richardson, an expert on human rights in China.

“These [U.N.] mechanisms are some of the only ones available to people inside China, at least on paper, to provide any modicum of redress or justice for the human rights abuses either they’ve endured or the communities they work with have endured,” Richardson told VOA.

“That’s why you see the Chinese government go to extraordinary lengths to silence people who are simply trying to take reports to some of these human rights experts or bodies,” Richardson said.

A former China director at Human Rights Watch, Richardson is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford University.

The annual report chronicles government retaliation against people for engaging with the U.N. In addition to China, other countries named in the report include Colombia, India, Nicaragua, the Philippines and Russia.

“In my perfect world, governments that get referenced in these reprisals reports shouldn’t be members of the Human Rights Council,” said Richardson, who is based in Washington. China is a current member of the council in Geneva.

China’s Washington embassy, as well as its U.N. offices in New York and Geneva, did not reply to VOA’s emails requesting comment for this story.

One of the incidents included in the report’s China section is harassment against two members of the international legal team supporting Jimmy Lai, a pro-democracy publisher.

Lai is on trial in Hong Kong on national security charges that are widely viewed as politically motivated. The 76-year-old is in prison following convictions in other cases that supporters also view as sham cases.

Members of Lai’s legal team have faced death and rape threats, as well as attempts by unknown sources to hack their email and bank accounts, according to the report.

Sebastien Lai thanked the U.N. for shedding light on his father’s case.

“These intimidation tactics will not succeed. I will not rest until my father is freed,” he said in a statement.

Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, a barrister leading Jimmy’s international legal team, also condemned the attacks.

The reprisals “are personally unpleasant and distressing,” Gallagher said in a statement. “But they are also an attack on the legal profession and on the international human rights system.”

The reprisals make it harder for Jimmy Lai to use U.N. mechanisms to achieve justice in his case, Gallagher said.

Hong Kong’s government has tried to argue that the legal team interfered in Hong Kong’s judicial process by bringing his case to U.N. human rights mechanisms, according to the report.

“It’s just so nakedly in tension with its obligations under international law,” Richardson said.

On Thursday, Lai’s international legal team submitted an urgent appeal to the U.N. special rapporteur on torture. The appeal raised several concerns, including that the elderly publisher has been in solitary confinement since late 2020 and that the British national has been denied access to independent medical care, according to a statement from his legal team.

Lai’s trial began in December 2023. It was initially expected to last around 80 days but is now expected to resume in November.

Press freedom groups have called the trial a sham, and the U.S. and British governments have called for his immediate release. Hong Kong officials, however, have said he will receive a fair trial.

Other incidents cited in the U.N. report include the case of Cao Shunli, a Beijing-based human rights defender who was arrested following an attempt to engage in a universal periodic review of China’s human rights record at the Human Rights Council. Cao died in custody in 2014.

Another case is that of the Beijing-based activists Li Wenzu and Wang Quanzhang, who are married. The couple have faced significant retaliation, including police surveillance and evictions, and their son is unable to enroll in school due to pressure from state authorities, the report said.

“If one reads these cases, you get a sense of what risks — what unbelievable risks — people are taking to do this kind of work,” Richardson said.

The report doesn’t mention specific incidents involving Uyghurs or Tibetans, but Richardson says their absence underscores how difficult it is for some groups to access U.N. mechanisms in the first place, as well as how some people may be too scared to report such incidents to the U.N.

The Chinese government has engaged in severe human rights abuses against both ethnic groups, according to myriad reports. Multiple governments and international human rights organizations have accused Beijing of committing genocide and crimes against humanity against the Uyghurs, which the Chinese government rejects.
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China, US step up top-level military exchanges amid ongoing tension

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Taipei, Taiwan — An expected visit to Hawaii by the head of China’s Southern Theater Command next week will come just days after a high-ranking Pentagon official attended a defense conference in Beijing.

The visits, analysts said, are part of an effort to expand high-level exchanges between the U.S. and China and boost top-level military-to-military communication. It is unclear, though, how much the exchanges will do to help avoid miscommunication and keep tensions in the Indo-Pacific under control, they added.

Earlier this week, the head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Sam Paparo, and the head of the PLA, or People’s Liberation Army, Southern Theater Command, General Wu Yanan, held a video call for the first time in years.

The Chinese defense ministry said the two commanders had an “in-depth exchange of views on issues of common concern” while Paparo urged the Chinese military “to reconsider its use of dangerous, coercive and potentially escalatory tactics in the South China Sea and beyond.”

Wu is expected to attend a defense conference held by the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii next week, U.S. defense officials have confirmed to VOA.

Meanwhile, Michael Chase, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for China, Taiwan and Mongolia, is holding defense policy coordination talks with Chinese defense officials while attending the annual Xiangshan Security Dialogue held in Beijing this week.

A meeting that took place on the sidelines of the Xiangshan forum was designed to “underscore the United States’ shared vision for the region,” according to a U.S. Department of Defense readout Thursday.

The Biden administration has been working to restore communication between Chinese and American militaries since the U.S. president’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the APEC summit in California last November.

Chase’s visit to Beijing this week and Wu’s expected reciprocal visit next week follow a first meeting between U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan and China’s vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, Zhang Youxia, last month.

During that meeting, Zhang said maintaining military security is “in line with the common interests of both sides” and Sullivan highlighted the two nations’ shared responsibility to “prevent competition from veering into conflict or confrontation.”

Some analysts see a potential for further communication and engagement between the two militaries.

“I won’t rule out the possibilities that Beijing and Washington may look to establish a hotline between the two militaries, and whether that mechanism could be extended to the theater command level remains to be seen,” Lin Ying-Yu, a military expert at Tamkang University in Taiwan, told VOA by phone.

While the resumption of top-level communication allows Beijing and Washington to avoid miscalculations, other experts say it is unclear whether China and the U.S. can establish a more sustainable mechanism to cope with potential crises.

“While having contact and knowing your interlocutors are positive things during non-crisis times, the real test is whether these contacts can hold back any unintended escalation when incidents happen,” said Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore.

Chong said since theater commanders from the U.S. and China oversee implementing rather than formulating policies, it is unclear whether the latest development can become established protocols.

“If there’s a persistence of [maintaining military-to-military communication], then it would suggest that it has become a policy,” he told VOA by phone.

Tensions remain high over contentious issues

Tensions remain high between China and the U.S. over a range of issues, including the repeated collision between Chinese and Philippine vessels near disputed reefs in the South China Sea and Beijing’s increased maneuvers in waters and airspace near Taiwan and Japan.

During the Xiangshan forum, Lieutenant General He Lei, the former vice president of the PLA Academy of Military Sciences, characterized the Philippines’ attempt to safeguard its territorial claims in the South China Sea as “a unilateral change of the status quo” while accusing the U.S. of undermining security across the Taiwan Strait by selling weapons to Taiwan.

“The Chinese people and the People’s Liberation Army will never allow any external forces to interfere in China’s internal affairs or invade China’s territory,” he told Chinese state broadcaster CGTN in an interview.

Some analysts say there are limits to what military-to-military communications can do to ease tensions over what are essentially political disagreements.

“The military tension is only a manifestation of their political differences over Taiwan and the South China Sea, so if their disagreements are not resolved, the military tension is very unlikely to see a permanent resolution,” Yun Sun, China program director at the Stimson Center in Washington, told VOA by phone.

With less than two months until the U.S. presidential election, Chong in Singapore said Beijing and Washington’s recent efforts may be an attempt to lay the foundation for bilateral military-to-military communication to be continued after the November election.

“On the Democrat side, if some of the current team stays [after November], perhaps we would see this momentum continue,” he told VOA.

“On the Republican side, things are a bit messier, because you have those who prefer the isolationist approach, those who advocate a containment approach in Asia, and people who talk about competing against China to win,” Chong added.

Sun said if Donald Trump wins the election in November, Beijing will expect instability in bilateral relations and be prepared for the military relationship to be affected.
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Analysts say Vietnam officials US trip could set path to C-130 deal

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HO CHI MINH CITY — Analysts say this week’s visit to Washington by Vietnamese Defense Minister Phan Van Giang shows advances in cooperation between the two countries, despite rising Vietnamese nationalism that may indicate rising anti-American sentiment in Vietnam.

A U.S.-based analyst told VOA on September 12 that Giang’s trip set the groundwork for Hanoi to potentially purchase military cargo planes from the United States this year.

Giang met with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon on Monday. [September 9] Both leaders “reaffirmed the importance of the U.S.-Vietnam partnership,” the Defense Department said in a statement, and noted the one-year anniversary of the elevation of the countries’ ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership, the highest tier in Hanoi’s diplomatic hierarchy.

The leaders also underscored the importance of working together to address the lasting impacts of the U.S.-Vietnam War. Austin announced that the U.S. would budget $65 million over the next five years to complete the decontamination of Bien Hoa airbase of dioxin, bringing the total from department to $215 million. The airbase was the primary storage site for the toxic chemical Agent Orange during the U.S.-Vietnam War and remains an environmental and public health hazard for those nearby.

Andrew Wells-Dang, who leads the Vietnam War Legacies and Reconciliation Initiative at the United States Institute of Peace, told VOA by phone on September 5 that diplomatic visits are key to advancing war-remediation efforts, including finding and identifying the remains of missing soldiers. He said that along with the U.S. visit of Deputy Defense Minister Vo Minh Luong in July, visits from authorities provide “opportunity for them to have high level support.”

Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington and an expert on Southeast Asia, said joint war-reconciliation efforts also set the groundwork for defense cooperation more broadly.

“The United States is very pleased with the growth in bilateral defense relations, and it started from very low levels and was built on humanitarian missions,” Abuza said during the August 29 call.

“We’ve just continued to build on that,” he added.

Cargo planes

Reuters reported in July that Hanoi was considering purchasing Lockheed Martin C-130 cargo planes from the U.S., according to unnamed sources.

The U.S.-based analyst, who asked that his name to be withheld because he has not been cleared to discuss the topic, said the C-130 deal was discussed but not finalized during Giang’s visit. The analyst said the deal was held back by the “massive [U.S.] bureaucracy” and because solidifying the purchase during the Washington visit would be “too inflammatory for the Chinese.”

Ian Storey, senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, noted Vietnam’s delicate diplomatic balancing act, illustrated by Giang’s travel itinerary before the Washington trip.

“Vietnam aims to keep its relations with the major powers in balance,” he wrote in an email on August 30. “As such, Vietnamese Defense Minister Phan Van Giang visited Russia and China in August.”

Storey added that the purchase of C-130 planes would not pose a threat to China in its maritime territorial disputes with Vietnam.

“C-130 aircraft would enable the Vietnamese to transport troops and supplies to its occupied atolls in the South China Sea, but these assets are non-strategic and won’t shift the dynamics in the South China Sea,” he wrote.

Nguyen The Phuong, a maritime security expert at the University of New South Wales Canberra, said the C-130 purchase would be a “symbolic move.”

“Vietnam will try to explore more areas of security and defense cooperation between Vietnam and the United States to upgrade to a higher, more meaningful level,” he told VOA on August 30. “The C-130 would be the symbol of that kind of evolving relationship,” he said.

Phuong said a C-130 is a likely entry point as there is still mistrust between the former foes regarding lethal weapons, and the deal would not rankle China too much.

“It could be quite advantageous for Vietnam,” he said of a potential C-130 purchase. “Vietnam can improve its relationship with the United States, and at the same time, we could not anger China because Vietnam would just buy non-lethal weapons.”

Rising nationalism

Although there are positive signs to improving Hanoi-Washington relations, there have also been recent instances of anti-Western sentiment that could be an impediment to the countries relations, Phuong said.

Fulbright University Vietnam, which has significant backing from the United States, is facing accusations of fomenting a “color revolution,” similar to the popular uprisings in former Soviet republics.

On August 21, Vietnam National Defense TV aired a critique of Fulbright for allegedly not displaying the Vietnamese flag at a graduation ceremony and facilitating a color revolution.

The report has since been taken down, but Phuong said the Fulbright issue and other recent incidents show tension between Vietnam’s conservative and liberal factions.

“It’s a presentation of a continuous struggle between different factions, one conservative and one liberal,” Phuong said.

Abuza said that Vietnamese authorities may be attempting to tighten control ahead of the anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

“Next April is the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon,” he said. “The Vietnamese want to control that narrative 100%. There are a lot of sensitivities.”

Along with the Fulbright incident, Phuong pointed to recent uproar around Vietnamese celebrities who were pictured with the South Vietnam flag while traveling to the United States. In addition, a Vietnamese high school student faced cyber bullying and was summoned by police after posting in September that he wanted to leave the country and would “probably never see the [Communist] Party positively again.”

“There’s extreme nationalism in Vietnam at the moment,” Phuong said. “It’s against Western values.”
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Vietnam typhoon death toll rises to 233 as more bodies found in areas hit by landslides and floods 

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HANOI, Vietnam — The death toll in the aftermath of a typhoon in Vietnam climbed to 233 on Friday as rescue workers recovered more bodies from areas hit by landslides and flash floods, state media reported.  

Flood waters from the swollen Red River in the capital, Hanoi, were beginning to recede, but many neighborhoods remained inundated and farther north experts were predicting it could still be days before any relief is in sight.  

Typhoon Yagi made landfall Saturday, starting a week of heavy rains that have triggered flash floods and landslides, particularly in Vietnam’s mountainous north.  

Across Vietnam, 103 people are still listed as missing and more than 800 have been injured.  

Most fatalities have come in the province of Lao Cai, where a flash flood swept away the entire hamlet of Lang Nu on Tuesday. Eight villagers turned up safe on Friday morning, telling others that they had left before the deluge, state-run VNExpress newspaper reported, but 48 others from Lang Nu have been found dead, and another 39 remain missing.   

Roads to Lang Nu have been badly damaged, making it impossible to bring in heavy equipment to aid in the rescue effort.  

Some 500 personnel with sniffer dogs are on hand, and in a visit to the scene on Thursday, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh promised they would not relent in their search for those still missing.  

“Their families are in agony,” Chinh said.  

Coffins were stacked near the disaster site in preparation for the worst, and villager Tran Thi Ngan mourned at a makeshift altar for family members she had lost.  

“It’s a disaster,” she told VTV news. “That’s the fate we have to accept.”  

In Cao Bang, another northern province bordering China, 21 bodies had been recovered by Friday, four days after a landslide pushed a bus, a car and several motorcycles into a small river, swollen with floodwaters. Ten more people remain missing.  

Experts say storms like Typhoon Yagi are getting stronger due to climate change, as warmer ocean waters provide more energy to fuel them, leading to higher winds and heavier rainfall.  

The effects of the typhoon, the strongest to hit Vietnam in decades, were also being felt across the region, with flooding and landslides in northern Thailand, Laos and northeastern Myanmar.  

In Thailand, 10 deaths have been reported due to flooding or landslides, and Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra flew to the north on Friday to visit affected people in the border town of Mae Sai. Thailand’s Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation warned of a continuing risk of flash floods in multiple areas through Wednesday, as new rain was expected to increase the Mekong River’s levels further.  

International aid has been flowing into Vietnam in the aftermath of Yagi, with Australia already delivering humanitarian supplies as part of $2 million in assistance.  

South Korea has also pledged $2 million in humanitarian aid, and the U.S. Embassy said Friday it would provide $1 million in support through the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID.   

“With more heavy rain forecast in the coming days, USAID’s disaster experts continue to monitor humanitarian needs in close coordination with local emergency authorities and partners on the ground,” the embassy said in a statement. “USAID humanitarian experts on the ground are participating in ongoing assessments to ensure U.S. assistance rapidly reaches populations in need.”  

The typhoon and ensuing heavy rains have damaged factories in northern provinces like Haiphong, home to electric car company VinFast, Apple parts suppliers and other electronic manufacturers, which could affect international supply chains, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in a research note.  

“Though 95 percent of businesses operating in Haiphong were expected to resume some activity on September 10, repair efforts will likely lower output for the next weeks and months,” CSIS said. 
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North Korea’s Kim tours uranium enrichment site, calls for more weapons

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SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea offered a rare glimpse into a secretive facility to produce weapons-grade uranium as state media reported Friday that leader Kim Jong Un visited the area and called for stronger efforts to “exponentially” increase the number of his nuclear weapons.

It’s unclear if the site is at the North’s main Yongbyon nuclear complex, but it’s the North’s first disclosure of a uranium-enrichment facility since it showed one at Yongbyon to visiting American scholars in 2010. While the latest unveiling is likely an attempt to apply more pressure on the U.S. and its allies, the images North Korea’s media released of the area could provide outsiders with a valuable source of information for estimating the amount of nuclear ingredients that North Korea has produced.

During a visit to the Nuclear Weapons Institute and the production base of weapon-grade nuclear materials, Kim expressed “great satisfaction repeatedly over the wonderful technical force of the nuclear power field” held by North Korea, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.

KCNA said that Kim walked around the control room of the uranium enrichment base and a construction site that would expand its capacity for producing nuclear weapons. North Korean state media photos showed Kim being briefed by scientists while walking along long lines of tall gray tubes, but KCNA didn’t say when Kim visited the facilities and where they are located.

KCNA said Kim stressed the need to further augment the number of centrifuges to “exponentially increase the nuclear weapons for self-defense,” a goal he has repeatedly stated in recent years. It said Kim ordered officials to push forward the introduction of a new-type centrifuge, which has reached its completion stage.

Kim said North Korea needs greater defense and preemptive attack capabilities because anti-North Korea “nuclear threats perpetrated by the U.S. imperialists-led vassal forces have become more undisguised and crossed the red-line,” KCNA said.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry said it strongly condemned North Korea’s unveiling of a uranium-enrichment facility and Kim’s vows to boost his country’s nuclear capability. A ministry statement said North Korea’s “illegal” pursuit of nuclear weapons in defiance of U.N. bans is a serious threat to international peace. It said North Korea must realize it cannot win anything with its nuclear program.

North Korea first showed a uranium enrichment site in Yongbyon to the outside world in November 2010, when it allowed a visiting delegation of Stanford University scholars led by nuclear physicist, Siegfried Hecker, to tour its centrifuges. North Korean officials then reportedly told Hecker that 2,000 centrifuges were already installed and running at Yongbyon.

Satellite images in recent years have indicated North Korea was expanding a uranium enrichment plant at its Yongbyon nuclear complex. Nuclear weapons can be built using either highly enriched uranium or plutonium, and North Korea has facilities to produce both at Yongbyon. It’s not clear exactly how much weapons-grade plutonium or highly enriched uranium has been produced at Yongbyon and where North Korea stores it.

“For analysts outside the country, the released images will provide a valuable source of information for rectifying our assumptions about how much material North Korea may have amassed to date,” said Ankit Panda, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Overall, we should not assume that North Korea will be as constrained as it once was by fissile material limitations. This is especially true for highly enriched uranium, where North Korea is significantly less constrained in its ability to scale up than it is with plutonium,” Panda said.

In 2018, Hecker and Stanford University scholars estimated North Korea’s highly enriched uranium inventory was 250 to 500 kilograms, sufficient for 25 to 30 nuclear devices.

The North Korean photos released Friday showed about 1,000 centrifuges. When operated year-round, they would be able to produce around 20 to 25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, which would be enough to create a single bomb, according to Yang Uk, a security expert at Seoul’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies.

The new-type centrifuge Kim wants to introduce is likely an advanced carbon fiber-based one that could allow North Korea to produce five to 10 times more highly enriched uranium than its existing ones, said Lee Choon Geun, an honorary research fellow at South Korea’s Science and Technology Policy Institute.

Some U.S. and South Korean experts speculate North Korea is covertly running at least one other uranium-enrichment plant. In 2018, a top South Korean official told parliament that North Korea was estimated to have already manufactured up to 60 nuclear weapons. Estimates on how many nuclear bombs North Korea can add every year vary, ranging from six to as many as 18. 
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US, China talk more as tensions simmer in Indo-Pacific region

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American and Chinese diplomats and military officials are talking ahead of the U.S. presidential elections as tensions simmer in the South China Sea and around Taiwan. State Department Bureau Chief Nike Ching reports. Contributor: Jeff Seldin. Narrator: Elizabeth Cherneff.
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China tries to reshape Tibet, Xinjiang narratives with new propaganda efforts

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Taipei, Taiwan — Chinese authorities have rolled out new propaganda efforts aimed at countering Western narratives about the human rights situation in the northwest Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and Tibet.

In recent weeks, they have continued to invite foreign vloggers to visit Xinjiang, home to millions of Uyghur people, a majority Muslim ethnic minority group. Also this month, China inaugurated an international communication center to produce content portraying some “positive developments” in Tibet, such as Tibetan people’s growing income.

Since 2017, the United States, United Nations, European Parliament and rights organizations have condemned China for interning up to 1 million Uyghurs, forcing hundreds of thousands of Uyghur women to go through abortion or sterilization, and forcing Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang to work in factories, which prompted the United States to pass the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act in 2021.

In Tibet, human rights organizations and Western countries, including the U.S., have accused the Chinese government of erasing the Tibetan language and culture through compulsory Chinese language education for Tibetan children, forcing hundreds of thousands of rural Tibetans to relocate to urban areas and replacing the name “Tibet” with the Romanized Chinese name “Xizang” in official documents.

Taiwan said on September 5 it knows of reports China has been recruiting Taiwanese influencers to visit Xinjiang and help promote a more positive narrative about the region through their videos.

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which oversees cross-strait exchanges, said it was still looking into the recent surge of Xinjiang-related content produced by Taiwanese influencers and urged them to avoid violating an anti-infiltration law by accepting payment from Beijing.

Taiwanese Youtuber Potter Wang claimed in June that the Chinese government had been inviting Taiwanese influencers on paid trips to China to produce content. His claims prompted several Taiwanese YouTubers who have recently published videos about Xinjiang to deny receiving payment from Beijing.

In response to warnings from Taiwanese authorities, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said Beijing welcomed “Taiwan compatriots” to visit China and enjoy “the magnificent mountains and rivers, taste the various kinds of food, experience the local customs, and share what they have seen and heard.”

Apart from inviting Taiwanese influencers to visit Xinjiang, Beijing has been inviting foreign journalists and vloggers to visit Xinjiang since the start of 2024.

In several reports, China’s state-run tabloid Global Times said these foreigners learned about “Xinjiang’s latest economic achievements, religious freedom, and ethnic integration” following visits to local industry, religious venues and residential homes.

Some experts say Chinese authorities usually impose tight control over foreign influencers’ itineraries in Xinjiang to ensure the content they produce is aligned with the positive narrative that Beijing aims to promote, which is contrary to existing foreign media reports about mass internment of Uyghurs, forced labor of ethnic minorities or harsh birth control programs.

“Foreign influencers usually spend time in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, and visit places like the Grand Bazaar, where they will try local food and watch dance performances that could seem to suggest that cultural forms of the Uyghur people are protected,” said Timothy Grose, a professor of China Studies at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana.

In addition to showcasing aspects of Uyghur culture, Grose said, foreign influencers’ Xinjiang videos will often portray Uyghurs being employed and local signs containing Chinese and Uyghur characters.

“Beijing believes this is an effective strategy [to counter existing international narratives about Xinjiang] if they are indirectly controlling the types of pictures that are exported out of Xinjiang,” he told VOA by phone.

By flooding social media platforms with Xinjiang content produced by these foreign influencers, Grose said, the Chinese government is trying to reach and influence casual viewers, especially younger audiences, with no deep knowledge about China or Xinjiang.

“These casual viewers don’t have expertise in China, so they won’t know where to find signs of oppression in the videos since they are unfamiliar with the Uyghur culture or China’s ethnic policy,” he said.

Since China is directly or indirectly filling social media platforms with content aligned with their preferred narrative for Xinjiang, Grose said, it will be difficult for academics, activists, and journalists to counter Beijing’s propaganda efforts with content that reflects the reality in the region.

Telling the Tibet stories

Beijing has also launched a new initiative to “tell the Tibet story well.”

On September 2, several local and central Chinese government agencies inaugurated an “international communication center” in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, that aims to enhance Beijing’s ability to promote its preferred narratives about Tibet.

During a roundtable event focusing on “building a more effective international communication system for Tibet-related issues,” French writer Margot Chevestrier, who works for China’s state-run China International Communications Group, said that many young Chinese people are affected by “biased reporting” on global social media and that these misunderstandings often stem from “misleading reporting by some media or individuals.”

The new international communication center will “enable more people at home and abroad to know Tibet, understand Tibet, and love Tibet,” according to China’s state-run China News, an online news website.

Some analysts say the communication center may serve as a centralized institution to “coordinate” Beijing’s propaganda efforts focusing on Tibet.

“Since there doesn’t seem to be as much propaganda efforts on Tibet as on Xinjiang, Beijing might be thinking how they can use this tactic,” said Sarah Cook, an independent researcher on China and former China research director at nonprofit organization Freedom House.

Cook said the amount of propaganda effort that China dedicated to Xinjiang and Tibet shows that these two issues are of a high priority for Beijing.

“While Tibet and Xinjiang are their priorities, the tactics that the Chinese propaganda apparatus deploys are similar, including spreading disinformation through fake accounts, restricting foreign journalists’ access to certain places, and suppressing information that contradicts their preferred narrative,” she told VOA by phone.

Since its propaganda efforts have been seemingly successful, Grose said, Beijing will continue to employ the same set of strategies to challenge existing facts about the situation in Xinjiang and Tibet.

To push back against Beijing’s campaigns, he said, Xinjiang and Tibet-focused groups should try to increase their presence on social media platforms and create more “captivating and moving” visual content that is “properly contextualized” but can influence young audiences.

Additionally, Cook said it’s important for individuals concerned about the situation in Tibet and Xinjiang to work with like-minded research groups and expose the different propaganda campaigns that China is pushing.

“They can try to produce short videos informing people of Beijing’s tactics,” she said.
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US imposes sanctions on Cambodian tycoon over scam centers

Posted on by SeeEA

washington — The United States announced sanctions on Thursday on Cambodian businessman and ruling party senator Ly Yong Phat as well as several entities over alleged abuses related to workers who were trafficked and forced to work in online scam centers.

The move comes at a delicate phase in relations between the United States and Cambodia, which has moved ever closer to Washington’s strategic rival China despite U.S. efforts to woo its new leader Hun Manet, son of longtime strongman Hun Sen.

Ly Yong Phat was appointed Hun Sen’s personal adviser in 2022.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said the sanctions targeted Ly’s L.Y.P. Group Co. conglomerate and O-Smach Resort.

It said it was also sanctioning Cambodia-based Garden City Hotel, Koh Kong Resort, and Phnom Penh Hotel for being owned or controlled by Ly.

Bradley Smith, the Treasury’s acting under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said the move was made to “hold accountable those involved in human trafficking and other abuses, while also disrupting their ability to operate investment fraud schemes that target countless unsuspecting individuals, including Americans.”

Cambodia and other countries in Southeast Asia have emerged in recent years as the epicenter of a multibillion-dollar criminal industry targeting victims across the world with fraudulent crypto and other schemes, often operating from fortified compounds run by Chinese syndicates and staffed by trafficked workers.

The Treasury statement said scammers leverage fictitious identities and elaborate narratives to develop trusted relationships and deceive victims.

In many cases, this involves convincing victims to invest in virtual currency, or in some cases, over-the-counter foreign exchange schemes, it said.

The statement said traffickers force victims to work up to 15 hours a day and, in some cases, “resell” victims to other scam operations or subject them to sex trafficking.

It noted that the U.S. State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report this year highlighted abuses in O’Smach and Koh Kong and that official complicity in trafficking crimes remained widespread, resulting in selective and often politically motivated enforcement of laws.

Americans have been targeted by many of the scams. In 2022, in the U.S alone, victims reported losses of $2.6 billion from pig butchering – a type of long-term scam – and other crypto fraud, more than double the previous year, according to the FBI.

The Treasury reportsaid that for more than two years the O-Smach Resort has been investigated by police and publicly reported on “for extensive and systemic serious human rights abuse.”

It said victims reported being lured there with false employment opportunities, having phones and passports confiscated upon arrival and being forced to work scam operations.

“People who called for help reported being beaten, abused with electric shocks, made to pay a hefty ransom, or threatened with being sold to other online scam gangs,” it said, adding that there had been two reports of victims jumping to their death from buildings within the resort.

The report said local authorities had conducted repeated rescue missions, including in October 2022 and March 2024, freeing victims of various nationalities, including Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, Malaysian, Singaporean, Thai and Vietnamese.

The U.S state department said in June that Cambodian government officials were complicit in trafficking and that some officials owned facilities used by scam operators.

Spokespeople for Cambodia’s government and foreign ministry did not answer phone calls or respond to messages seeking comment when asked about the sanctions.

The U.S. and other governments have repeatedly engaged with Cambodia to put an end to the scam centers.

Washington had considered sanctions for months, sources briefed on the matter told Reuters. They said the decision was initially expected earlier this year but had been delayed.

A change of leadership to West Point-educated Hun Manet last year was seen by U.S. officials as an opportunity to mend ties with Cambodia, but despite U.S. efforts, its ties with China have steadily grown. Beijing sent warships to Cambodia this year and is backing the expansion of a key naval base.
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Pope Francis, in Singapore, urges fair wages for migrant workers

Posted on by SeeEA

Singapore — Pope Francis on Thursday urged political leaders in Singapore, a leading global financial hub, to seek fair wages for the country’s million-plus lower-paid foreign workers.

In likely the last major speech of an ambitious 12-day tour across Southeast Asia and Oceania, the 87-year-old pontiff expressed concern for Singapore’s rapidly aging population and its migrant workforce, centered in the construction and domestic services industries.

“I hope that special attention will be paid to the poor and the elderly … as well as to protecting the dignity of migrant workers,” the pope said in an address to about 1,000 politicians and civil and religious leaders.

“These workers contribute a great deal to society and should be guaranteed a fair wage,” he said.

There were 1.1 million foreigners on work permits in Singapore who earned less than S$3,000 ($2,300) per month as of December 2023, including 286,300 domestic workers and 441,100 workers in the construction, shipyard and process sectors, government data shows.

Many of the migrant workers come from nearby countries such as Malaysia, China, Bangladesh and India. Many also come from the Philippines, a majority Catholic country.

A Singapore NGO that provides services for migrant workers, Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics, welcomed the pope’s remarks, saying they were in “full agreement” with his call for fair wages.

Singapore’s workforce ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Concern for migrants has been a common theme for Francis. Earlier on his trip, he asked leaders in Papua New Guinea to work for fair wages as that country becomes a major target of international companies for its gas, gold and other reserves.

‘Example to follow’

Francis’ speech came after private meetings with President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Prime Minister Lawrence Wong at the country’s parliament building, where the pope was presented with a white orchid plant, a new hybrid that was named in his honor.

Francis praised Singapore’s efforts to confront climate change, calling them a model for other countries.

Singapore’s government says rising sea levels due to global warming could have major implications for its low-lying coastline and it is planning to spend S$100 billion ($77 billion) over the course of the century on the issue.

“Your commitment to sustainable development and the preservation of creation is an example to follow,” the pope said. Francis, who has prioritized trips to places never visited by a pope, or where Catholics are a small minority, is only the second pope to visit Singapore, following a brief 5-hour layover by the late John Paul II in 1986.

Singapore, with a population of 5.92 million, is plurality Buddhist, with about 31% of people identifying with that faith. The Vatican counts about 210,000 Catholics in the country, although that number is higher if foreign workers are included.

There are also strong Muslim, Hindu and Taoist communities, and Francis praised Singapore as “a mosaic of ethnicities, cultures and religions living together in harmony.”

Hong Kong presence

Francis celebrated a Mass the Vatican said drew some 50,000 people to Singapore’s national sports stadium, a venue that has also hosted performers such as Taylor Swift, who played six concerts there in March.

People queued outside the stadium, under tight security measures, at least five hours before the start of the event.

Connie Rodriguez, a Filipino Catholic in Singapore, said it was “overwhelming” to see the pope. “You really feel so blessed,” she said.

Francis toured the stadium at the beginning of the event in a white golf cart decorated with the Vatican seal. He greeted dozens of schoolchildren, babies, and disabled people. He also took a few selfies.

Among those who attended the Mass, which featured a prayer in Mandarin, were Catholics who traveled from Hong Kong for the event, including the territory’s archbishop, Cardinal Stephen Chow Sau-yan.

The Vatican is currently renegotiating a controversial deal with China over the appointment of Catholic bishops in the country, which is up for renewal in October.

Francis’ 12-day tour has also included stops in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and East Timor. He returns to Rome on Friday.

($1 = 1.3039 Singapore dollars)
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South Korea approves building two nuclear reactors

Posted on by SeeEA

Seoul — South Korea approved the construction of two nuclear reactors on its east coast Thursday, reversing a previous administration’s anti-nuclear policy as Seoul now works to expand its atomic energy capabilities.

The Nuclear Safety and Security Commission approved permits to build the Shin Hanul 3 and 4 reactors after it “confirmed the safety” of the project in southeast Uljin city.

“No factors have been found at the reactor construction site that could cause geological disasters such as subsidence or ground collapse,” it said.

Each reactor will have a capacity of 1.4 gigawatts, and they are scheduled to be built by 2033.

Seoul sought to phase out nuclear energy under the leadership of Moon Jae-in, whose government aimed to make South Korea completely nuclear-free by 2084.

But since Yoon Suk Yeol took office in 2022, his government has ambitions to increase the share of power generated from nuclear energy to 36 percent by 2038, up from the current 30 percent.

The new reactors will “contribute to the development of cutting-edge technologies such as AI by providing a stable supply of clean and reliable energy,” said Sung Tae-yoon, Yoon’s chief of staff for policy.

The development could also “help the country secure reactor construction bids overseas,” he told reporters.

The approval came eight years after Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Company first submitted the permit request. The process was suspended in 2017 amid the then-government’s push to reduce the country’s dependence on nuclear energy.

Thursday’s decision was criticized by Korean activist group Energy Justice Actions as an “irresponsible move that threatens the safety of the people, in opposition to the global trend towards an energy shift” towards renewable resources.

The two new reactors will be Uljin’s ninth and tenth, the group said, calling such a concentration a “global rarity.”
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