A coronavirus deal signed by Australia with an international drug company is raising ethical concerns among prominent church leaders.Australia has signed a deal with the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to produce and distribute a vaccine being developed by Britain’s Oxford University… if the treatment works.But three of Australia’s most senior archbishops have written to Prime Minister Scott Morrison urging him to reconsider the agreement, saying the use of “fetal tissue” in the research is “deeply immoral.”“To use that tissue then for science is reprehensible,” said Glenn Davies, Anglican Archbishop of Sydney. “Once I know something that is morally compromised, it is my job to speak out about it.”The Oxford University study uses embryonic kidney cells harvested from a female fetus in the Netherlands in 1973.Dr. Nick Coatsworth, Australia’s deputy chief medical officer, says the work adheres to strict guidelines.“There are strong ethical regulations surrounding the use of any human cell, and this is a very professional, highly-powered research unit,” he said.Other vaccines in Australia use genetic material that originally came from a human fetus. They include inoculations against rubella, hepatitis A and rabies.Senior religious leaders have not explicitly called for a boycott of the potential Oxford University COVID-19 drug. But they have said that members of their congregations might consider their “individual conscience.”Experts have stressed that any successful vaccine for coronavirus developed using fetal cells would have no remnants of that genetic material in the final product.  
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Earlier this month, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued its first penalty for goods made with forced labor under the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015.The agency levied a fine of $575,000 against the Chinese entity PureCircle, a company accused of using prison inmates in China to produce the food sweetener stevia.  
 
The fine against PureCircle is one of a series of actions over forced labor taken up by CBP in the past year. Since September 2019, the agency has issued 11 moratoriums on the importation of forced labor products into the United States, four of which were directed at Chinese companies.
 
“As part of its trade enforcement responsibilities, CBP is dedicated to vigilantly monitoring U.S.-bound supply chains for links to forced labor, including prison labor, and will act to deter and disrupt the importation of merchandise made with forced labor practices,” Brenda Smith, executive assistant commissioner of CBP’s Office of Trade said in a statement.
 
She continued, “The use of forced labor is not just a serious human rights issue, but it also brings about unfair competition in our global supply chains. CBP’s goal is to ensure that goods made by forced labor never reach U.S. consumers.”
 
So far this year, U.S. law enforcement authorities have stepped up scrutiny of a range of products from China suspected of being manufactured through forced labor.
 
“We’ve had a very active year this year in terms of issuing withhold release orders,” Smith told VOA.
 
In just the past few months, CBP has targeted several Chinese companies for allegedly selling products made with forced labor to American consumers.  
 Lenovo also targetedOn Monday the Associated Press reported that the U.S. Commerce Department has imposed sanctions on Lenovo, a Chinese manufacturer that supplies laptops to U.S. public schools, due to its alleged use of forced labor.
 
On August 11, CBP issued a moratorium on all U.S. ports of entry for imports from the Hero Vast Group, a Chinese clothing company.
 
On 1 July, CBP officials at the port of Newark FILE – In this June 29, 2020, photo, provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, an officer inspects a hair accessory at an exam station in Newark, New Jersey. Some of the products are believed to be made in Chinese detention camps.On June 17, CBP issued a moratorium on the release of all U.S. ports of entry for the detention of all or part of imported goods made from products produced by Lop County Meixin Hair Product Co. Ltd. (Meixin) in Xinjiang, China.
 
The official at CBP told VOA that each case is based on a “reasonable suspicion” of the use of forced labor.  
 
“So essentially what that means is that when goods arrive at a port of entry and we have identified that they are likely to have been produced using forced labor,” Smith added.
 ‘Proving’ products are free from forced labor
 
Li Qiang, executive director of China Labor Watch in New York, told VOA that CBP’s “reasonable suspicion” policy is to identify and withhold goods first.  “As long as your company’s products come in, I’ll have to detain you first, and you’ll have to provide evidence that you’re not using forced labor,” Li said.
 
Li said that this places a heavy burden on companies suspected of using forced labor – effectively assuming guilt and forcing importers to prove their innocence. “Now some multinationals must strengthen the management of their supply chains to prevent orders from flowing to places where forced labor is used.”
 
CBP’s Smith said that, to ensure that they do not send products made through forced labor into the U.S., importers not only have to comply with the law themselves, but also keep an eye on their supply chains and make sure their supplies also comply with U.S. law.
 
“So our expectation is that they will be looking not only at the supplier that they buy directly from, but, for example, the supplier’s supplier. So if there is a shipment of apparel garments that comes into the United States and that the importer that brings it into the United States will not only be looking at who makes that garment, but who makes the fabric or who grows the cotton that goes into the fabric,” Smith told VOA.FILE – Residents line up inside a vocational training center in Artux, in western China’s Xinjiang region, Dec. 3, 2018. Critics say China uses some of these facilities as detention camps for forced labor.Prison labor sweetener
 
PureCircle USA is a U.S.-based subsidiary of PureCircle Biotech, a joint venture between China and Malaysia based in Jiangxi, China. In 2016, an NGO accused it of importing several products made by prison inmates into the U.S., including stevia and its derivatives exported by a company in Inner Mongolia.
 
The CBP’s $575,000 fine against the group came four years after that initial accusation, pointing to how difficult it can be to win judgments against companies.  
 
CBP said in a statement, “The action against PureCircle stems from an investigation into stevia produced in China by Inner Mongolia Hengzheng Group Baoanzhao Agricultural and Trade LLC (“Baoanzhao”) that CBP initiated after receiving an allegation from a Non-Governmental Organization. That investigation led CBP to issue a Withhold Release Order (WRO) in May 2016. The WRO remains in effect.”
 
PureCircle USA has denied importing products made by forced labor before 2016, saying that it agreed to a penalty amounting to only 7% of the amount originally proposed by CBP in a settlement with CBP to avoid “extensive litigation requiring travel to China during the COVID-19 pandemic.”  Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
 
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A string of mammoth drug busts and low street prices for methamphetamine across Southeast Asia this year suggest COVID-19 has done little to stem the flood of illegal drugs washing over the region, even as the pandemic seals borders.If anything, the coronavirus has proven just how resilient the transnational cartels dominating the meth trade out of Myanmar truly are, experts say.”We think it’s business as usual in 2020, which is to say that supply is still surging just as it has been in the last few years,” Jeremy Douglas, Southeast Asia and the Pacific chief for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, told VOA.”If Myanmar, Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodia data is any indication — and we think it is — then at least within the Mekong the supply is as high or higher than last year in those countries,” he said by phone from Bangkok.The price is rightMethamphetamine prices across the region last year were already the lowest they had been in a decade, even as the purity of the drugs shot up.Data compiled by the UNODC during the pandemic show the price of a kilogram of crystal meth, or ice, in Myanmar and Vietnam on par with 2019. In Cambodia, the price of “yaba,” a popular mix of meth and caffeine, has actually fallen by roughly half, to less than $1 per pill. The UNODC says Thailand also reported a drop in both ice and yaba prices in late 2019 and early 2020 compared with the same period a year before.Long a hub of the heroin trade, the Golden Triangle — where the remote and lawless corners of Laos, Myanmar and Thailand meet — has in recent years seen transnational cartels turn it into one of the world’s premier meth laboratories, according to the UNODC. Protected by government-backed militias and ethnic rebel armies in Myanmar’s eastern Shan state, the U.N. agency says the cartels’ drugs pour across Southeast Asia and on to more lucrative markets as far off as Australia and Japan. The UNODC now puts the meth market in East and Southeast Asia at some $61.4 billion a year.Since the pandemic, drug seizures have kept pace with 2019 as well, or even picked up.In early July, Thai authorities said they intercepted 1.42 tons of crystal meth on its way to Malaysia. In May, authorities in Myanmar announced Asia’s largest drug bust in decades, netting 200 million meth pills and 500 kilograms of ice; they also seized 35.5 metric tons and 163,000 liters of precursor chemicals and arrested 33 suspects.On their own, more seizures can mean either a spike in production or better enforcement. The fact that prices have stayed low argues strongly in favor of the former, said Richard Horsey, a senior adviser to the International Crisis Group based in Myanmar.Given the stable prices for the drugs, “there’s every indication that big seizures reflect big production, and not that … somehow the police are winning this and seizing everything that’s being produced,” he said.”So, I think the transnational criminal organizations, the synthetic drug trade in Shan state, has shown itself to be extremely resilient to COVID,” he told VOA by phone from Yangon.Plan B, and C and DHorsey likened the cartels to the relatively few big business winners of the pandemic, such as online retail giant Amazon, using their scale, dexterity and deep pockets to adapt quickly to changing market conditions.”They have supply chains that are very sophisticated but also multiply redundant. And that means that border closures and so on, they can find ways around that. They’ve got a Plan B and a Plan C and a Plan D,” he said.”So, they have multiple different routes that they’re constantly testing with test shipments and constantly innovating and constantly keeping lots of options open so that if their main preferred channel fails, they’ve got lots of other options. And that works very well for COVID.”The cartels’ penchant for innovation looks to be paying off.Since the string of large busts earlier this year, Horsey said the cartels have started shifting more of their shipments out of Myanmar from northern Shan to the state’s east and south. He said there were also early signs that they have started shipping much more ice out of Myanmar through the country’s far western Rakhine state, taking advantage of its coastline to reach markets via the Bay of Bengal.The UNODC says seizures of precursor shipments to Myanmar over the past few years also show the cartels tweaking their meth recipes by replacing ephedrine and its sort with sodium or benzyl cyanide, yet more proof of their flexibility.Most of the chemicals come from neighboring China.On Myanmar’s side of the border, experts say a patchwork of militias and warlords in command of virtually autonomous fiefdoms helps make the frontier more sieve than wall.That, too, helps the cartels evade the worst of the border restrictions brought on by the pandemic, said Tom Kramer, a Myanmar-based researcher for the Transnational Institute who studies the nexus of the country’s drug trade and ethnic conflicts.”These illegal routes are still there, and what the government has been controlling of course is the formal trade routes,” he said.Considering the bulk of some of the shipments, he suspects many of them cross formal checkpoints as well but slip through thanks to rampant corruption.”There’s so much money involved, and people can always find different ways of course of getting stuff into the country. The borders are so porous it would be very hard to control them,” he said, even under lockdown.Market shareDouglas, of the UNODC, said the relative ease with which the cartels in Myanmar can continue to access precursors during the pandemic may even help them gain market share over competitors farther afield who source more of their chemicals by sea and air, where supply chains have frayed most.”They’re using the moment in front of them very effectively,” he said.”They never had a problem maintaining production. They had huge chemical stockpiles in place and continuing access to chemicals to ship in to production points in the Triangle, and they kept production at very high levels during the pandemic, and they’ve essentially just continued pumping that supply out.”
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A Twitter hashtag that surfaced in April as a clapback against Chinese nationalist attacks on a Thai celebrity for a perceived insult to Beijing is growing into a pan-Asian political movement.Named after drinks associated with places struggling against increasingly authoritarian impulses — Hong Kong’s milky black tea, Taiwan’s bubble tea and Thailand’s iced tea — the cyber-based Milk Tea Alliance, made up of like-minded netizens primarily from those regions, is beginning to gain traction in the real world.While the group has endorsed myriad online campaigns, from Mekong River damming to censorship and the erosion of civil rights in Hong Kong, some observers say recent street demonstrations of historic proportions in Thailand are proof that online activism can translate into real-world action.Pro-democracy leaders Tattep Ruangprapaikitseree and Panumas Singprom walk to meet with the media after being granted bail, outside the criminal court in Bangkok, Thailand, Aug. 26, 2020.“At its heart, it united online proponents of civil liberties and self-determination, so it only makes sense that the alliance’s fire would turn not just on China but on authoritarians at home in Thailand,” said Gregory B. Poling, senior fellow for Southeast Asia and director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at  the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.“As with most things that catch fire online, the #MilkTeaAlliance hashtag resonates because it is both clever and serves as a stand-in for the shared identity of a large community,” he told VOA. “It was a tongue-in-cheek way for online communities in Thailand, Taiwan and Hong Kong to hit back at heavy-handed attempts by Chinese diplomats and netizens to censor online speech.”Recent anti-government rallies in Bangkok saw demonstrators toting “#MilkTeaAlliance” signs alongside Thai national flags, the World Taiwanese Congress flags and Black Bauhinia flags used by pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong.Same ‘opposition’Milk Tea Alliance supporters from various countries showed support for dissolution of Thailand’s parliament, along with various constitutional amendments, by converging on the streets of Taiwan’s capital, Taipei.“[In] almost all the issues that we used the hashtag for, we have the same — not enemy, but opposition, which is China, and the dictatorship that is going on in Asia,” said Thachaporn Supparatanapinyo, a Taipei-based Thai national who studies in Taiwan.Supparatanapinyo, who spoke at the Taipei rally in solidarity with pro-democracy movements in Thailand and Hong Kong, is associated with the nonprofit Taiwan FILE – Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian takes a question at the daily media briefing in Beijing, April 8, 2020.According to Reuters, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian was dismissive of the group’s political significance.“People who are pro-Hong Kong independence or pro-Taiwan independence often collude online. This is nothing new,” he was quoted as telling Reuters. “Their conspiracy will never succeed.”Unlikely originsFounded on Twitter in April, the #MilkTeaAlliance hashtag was first used in response to Chinese microbloggers who trolled Thai celebrity Vachirawit “Bright” Chivaaree for retweeting a set of images that identified Hong Kong as a country. In response, netizens in Thailand, Hong Kong and other places began using the hashtag to show their regional breadth and numbers.Taiwan-based Singaporean activist Roy Ngerng said the group’s jovial take on serious topics and casual approach to creating online content resonates with young, savvy social media users across the region.Humor ‘very powerful’“Humor is a very powerful tool that has been used to delegitimize our authoritarian regimes,” Ngerng, a U.N.-recognized human rights defender, told VOA by email. “We are able to laugh off their threat, thereby weakening their perceived sense of strength for oppression.”What started as a lighthearted and quirky reference to a shared affection for tea has snowballed into a political force that can leverage specific issues.FILE – A Chinese boat with a team of geologists surveys the Mekong River, at the border between Laos and Thailand, April 23, 2017.One recent campaign: China’s upstream damming of the Mekong River. With water levels in the lower Mekong basin at record lows, the Mekong River Commission recently issued two reports indicating China’s damming of the Lancang tributary is exacerbating ecological imbalances, reducing household fishing hauls and imperiling a critical food source for tens of millions of people across Southeast Asia.James Buchanan, a City University of Hong Kong doctoral candidate, told VOA: “Issues like the dams on Mekong River show an uneasiness with China’s more expansive and assertive role in the region, where it is sometimes perceived as bullying its smaller neighbors. In fact, that’s increasingly becoming China’s image globally.”“The Mekong River is one of the most obvious issues on which China disregards the interests of its neighbors and uses disinformation and nontransparency to hide its actions,” said Poling of CSIS. “It is almost tailor-made to outrage those in Thailand, and their like-minded peers abroad, who identify with the #MilkTeaAlliance community.”In response to the severe consequences for China’s damming activities in the region, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted:The U.S. supports the Mekong River Commission’s call for transparency in dam operations on the Mekong River. The People’s Republic of China’s massive dams are manipulating flows in a non-transparent manner that harms Mekong countries. https://t.co/kFVs1r4soZ— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) August 14, 2020With Milk Tea Alliance help online, a petition to the White House calling for China to stop damming on the Mekong River collected almost 100,000 signatures.This story originated in VOA’s Mandarin service. Some information is from Reuters.
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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has announced he is stepping down due to chronic health concerns. His departure ends a historic tenure in office, but the conservative leader’s resignation underscores his mixed accomplishments in regional relations.   During a televised press conference Friday in Tokyo, Abe said that he can no longer carry out his duties while receiving medical care. Abe said he has experienced a relapse of ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease.   The 65-year-old has held power for nearly eight years, making him Japan’s longest-lasting prime minister. Abe also served in the position starting in 2006 but resigned a year later due to the same illness.   His current term was set to expire in 2021.  Abe’s conservative politics made him a controversial figure in east Asia. Detractors in South Korea and China often accused him of historical revisionism for what were seen as attempts to obscure Japan’s early 20th century aggression.  Some observers say that impression was exaggerated.   “Abe’s enemies viewed him as the reincarnation of militarism,” Robert Dujarric, who directs the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies at Temple University’s Tokyo campus, wrote in an email to VOA.  Dujarric noted that even some of Abe’s most right-wing supporters wrongly regarded him as “the man who would restore Japan’s rightful place in the world.”“The truth is that he’s been a very pragmatic conservative, only increased resources allocated to the armed forces very marginally, didn’t get into fights with China and continued to keep a fairly low profile in international security affairs,” Dujarric wrote.Dujarric has voiced doubt that Abe’s departure will provide Tokyo with an opportunity to improve relations with Seoul or Beijing.   The outgoing prime minister had pledged to amend Japan’s pacifist constitution, which was largely drafted by occupying U.S. forces following Tokyo’s World War II defeat.  That attempted reform, as well as his apparent support of political allies who make visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, a war memorial in Tokyo, gave many South Koreans a negative view of Abe, according to Kim Eun-bin, a journalist who covers Japan for Newspim.FILE – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, center, follows a Shinto priest to pay respect to the war dead at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, Japan, Dec. 26, 2013.Visits to the shrine by prominent Japanese officials anger China and South Korea, which consider Yasukuni a symbol of Japan’s militarism and reminder of its wartime atrocities. The shrine honors 2.5 million Japanese war dead, including some convicted war criminals from World War II.“In Korea, he was seen as a very dangerous leader in that he is a grandson of Kishi Nobusuke (a suspected war criminal and later prime minister), pursued constitutional amendments and dreamed of turning Japan into a normal state, in regard to its self-defense forces,” she says.   The entire Korean peninsula was under Tokyo’s rule from 1910 until 1945.  Kim says that Abe had won some praise for his willingness to cooperate with Seoul to redress the so-called “comfort women,” who were drafted into Japanese military brothels throughout the Pacific region during the war. But a 2015 deal struck with former South Korean leader Park Geun-hye to provide financial support was later annulled by current South Korean President Moon Jae-in over allegations that the agreement was brokered without consulting the victims.   Abe’s resignation comes as Japan and South Korea continue to wage a commerce dispute that was taken to the World Trade Organization in July. The case is widely seen as linked to a South Korean court’s 2018 ruling that former colonial forced laborers should be paid compensation by Japanese firms.  During a speech to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan, President Moon said he is willing to hold talks with Tokyo to resolve the tensions.    Despite lingering historic animosities with his country’s nearest neighbors, Abe saw diplomatic successes in his efforts to foster military ties with Australia, negotiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership and brokered a trade pact with the United States. The agreement was a cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy pivot toward Asia.FILE – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, shakes hands with President Donald Trump before signing a trade agreement on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, in New York City, Sept. 25, 2019.    Some of the prime minister’s most skillful acts of statecraft occurred while holding talks with current U.S. President Donald Trump, whose positions on bilateral trade and security often seemed “erratic and incoherent,” says Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based international relations expert at Troy University.   Trump has criticized Japan for what he says are unfair policies toward the U.S.  “Abe bent over backward to build a personal relationship with Trump” knowing that through flattery, Tokyo could win more favorable agreements, Pinkston explains.    But some other analysts say Abe might be most remembered for what he didn’t achieve.  Leif-Eric Easley, an international studies lecturer at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said in an email to VOA that while the Japanese leader built a reputation as “Mr. Stability” for serving as long as he did, he also came up short on major initiatives.  “He will be remembered for missions unaccomplished,” Easley wrote. “His Abenomics policies have not achieved promised growth and reform. And his dream of revising the constitution to free Japan’s military from post-war constraints remains unfulfilled.”The most glaring setback of Abe’s administration, Easley adds, might be the postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics due to the coronavirus pandemic. Easley said the move deprived the prime minister of the chance to preside over the Games that should have “symbolically” marked Japan’s recovery from the pandemic as well as the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.Juhyun Lee contributed to this report.
 
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Taiwan has registered 22 newly arrived foreign journalists so far this year, including some barred from working in China, a political rival of Taipei, which lures them with media freedoms.The journalists registered “because we provide for freedom of speech and press and respect these rights in practice,” Taiwan’s foreign ministry said Thursday in a statement for VOA. China monitors journalists, censors the internet and expelled several American reporters earlier this year.Seven of the 22 had been based before in China, excluding Hong Kong, including some who were expelled from Beijing in March over published content that the Chinese government resented. The expelled journalists had worked for The New York Times and Wall Street Journal.“As a result of the expulsion order by the Chinese government, we have relocated some affected correspondents in various locations in the region, including Taipei,” said Danielle Rhoades Ha, New York Times Co. communications vice president.China and Taiwan struggle to get along. Each is self-ruled, but China claims sovereignty over Taiwan, and it has threatened use of force to make the two sides unify.Covering ChinaForeign correspondents normally prefer a Beijing base as a news hub for Chinese government announcements and major diplomatic events. Reporters in Taiwan would have to cover China using internet tools and occasional travel, as allowed.Both locations are in the same time zone and a flight from Taiwan to China takes as little as 80 minutes. Flights from Taipei to major cities in Southeast Asia take two to four hours each. Japan and South Korea are each about three hours away.“Even when they’re away from China, they can still do a lot of research interviews on the internet,” said Ku Lin-lin, associate journalism professor at National Taiwan University.Reporters in China risk being tracked by police and sometimes detained as they work on politically sensitive stories. The Communist Party and Chinese government agencies “have long sought to influence public debate and media coverage” of their country “through obstruction of foreign correspondents,” the Freedom House advocacy group said in a study this year. The past 10 years have seen a “dramatic expansion in efforts to shape media content,” the study says.Chinese authorities sometimes secretly assign people to follow foreign correspondents, said George Hou, mass communications lecturer at I-Shou University in Taiwan.“They will assign some people to supervise you or to monitor you,” Hou said.As a democracy, Taiwan legally allows reporters to cover any topic and interview anyone. The 2020 Freedom House report on global freedom ranks Taiwan among the freest places in Asia.“It wants to present itself as a value-based country and the values around democracy and human rights have been articulated, and not just for itself,” said James Gomez, regional director at the Bangkok-based think tank Asia Center.“I think it also wants to set an example for others, so it kind of wants to walk the talk,” he said.A total of 114 journalists from 68 foreign media outlets are now based in Taiwan.Hong Kong risksMedia outlets that focus on Asia news traditionally station Asia correspondents in Hong Kong, Bangkok or Singapore, except for those covering Japan or the Koreas, Gomez said. Those three cities are likely to stay ahead of Taiwan, he said, although reporters shy away from covering Thailand or Singapore when based there – in line with those governments’ expectations.Foreign reporters in Hong Kong risk being denied visas by a new national security unit under the Chinese territory’s Immigration Department, media outlets in the territory have reported.“You could be ousted anytime,” said Cedric Alviani, East Asia bureau director with the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders. “Your visa renewal might be denied. This is a major threat for the stability of the operation.”However, many people in Taiwan lack the English skills and widespread international awareness that have drawn journalists to places such as Hong Kong and Singapore, Ku said. And Taiwan may need new legislation to smooth the legal process for media outlets hoping to open news bureaus, Gomez said.Reporters covering China from Taiwan will eventually find their work hobbled by lack of face-to-face encounters with sources in China unless they visit the other side periodically, Ku added. Those without Chinese visas would need to apply for them outside Taiwan, which lacks Chinese consular services, and risk being rejected.
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Taiwan’s agreement this month to buy $8 billion worth of advanced F-16 fighter jets from the United States will prompt threats from China against the island and in turn spark more anti-China action by Washington, but eventually help keep Beijing at bay, experts say.U.S. President Donald Trump approved the sale a year ago of at least 66 late-model jets and this month Taiwan signed an agreement to buy them from by 2026 from American defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. It will be Taiwan’s first such deal since the U.S. government approved a sale of 150 F-16s in 1992.Downward-spiraling relationsThe current sale marks the latest development in downward-spiraling Sino-U.S. military, political and trade relations. As part of that trend, the U.S. side has buoyed China’s old political rival Taiwan since 2017 through arms sales and naval activity aimed at safeguarding the island, which is just 160 kilometers off the Chinese coast.“Given everything that has happened between Beijing and Washington, I think the Chinese feel that this is just another measure that [the] Trump administration has held up of their anti-China trend,” said Yun Sun, East Asia Program senior associate at the Stimson Center, a research organization in Washington.Beijing sees Taiwan as part of its territory and insists that the two sides eventually unify despite widespread opposition among Taiwanese people. The dispute goes back to the Chinese civil war of the 1940s, when the Nationalists lost to the Communists and re-based their government in Taiwan. China, armed with the world’s third-strongest military, has not ruled out use of force if needed to take over Taiwan.Separately, the U.S. and China have blocked each other’s internet services, shuttered consulates and, since 2018, been embroiled in a trade dispute. The arms sale is part of that struggle, experts say.“Whenever the U.S. and Taiwan do something together, China is obligated to respond and that response naturally is going to escalate the tension, because that’s the action-reaction cycle,” Sun said.Military maneuversChina has stepped up military maneuvers near Taiwan since June. On August 10, the Chinese air force briefly sent planes across a median line dividing Taiwan’s air defense zone from China’s. It had flown over the line at least eight other times in June.China’s People’s Liberation Army has held amphibious landing exercises off the south coast of China too “at a time when the U.S. has been frequently conducting provocative military activities near the island of Taiwan,” Beijing’s state-controlled Global Times news website reported August 9. It anticipated more exercises over the coming weeks.“The U.S. should be warned and should not make dangerous moves to avoid misjudgments that neither side would like to see,” the Global Times said, citing analysts.U.S. Navy vessels pass all but routinely through the ocean strait separating China from Taiwan, and two U.S. aircraft carrier groups sailed into the adjacent South China Sea last month.Taiwan’s purchase of the F-16s shows that Washington is determined to keep pressuring China, said Sean King, vice president of the Park Strategies political consultancy in New York. The U.S. military has offered support in recent months for Vietnam and the Philippines as well, as both Southeast Asian countries vie with China over maritime sovereignty.’So much frustration’“There’s just so much frustration in Washington with Beijing right now that nobody in the Trump administration is ready to stand in the way of whatever’s good for Taiwan,” King said.China has been used to a closer economic relationship with the United States and settling political issues through diplomacy. Its “recent behavior” may mark a “new era in Chinese foreign policy, one that reflects the country’s growing strength and ambitions,” Council on Foreign Relations’ president Richard Haass writes in an August 13 commentary.However, China can do only so much in reaction to the fighter jet sale and other specific military moves by Washington, analysts say.The U.S. activity reminds China that Washington could protect Taiwan if attacked, Sun said.Communist officials would act “bluntly” against Taiwan only if they had a stronger consensus within their ruling party and freedom from domestic economic issues, including trade issues with the United States, said Alexander Huang, strategic studies professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan.“I believe a rational decision-making body or a relatively rational [Chinese President] Xi Jinping would not like to take the risk unless there is an overwhelming challenge from Taiwan,” Huang said.Chinese officials have vented less vociferously this time compared to their reactions to previous U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, King said.“That could be because Beijing’s taking so many hits from Washington at the moment that it’s not quite sure which perceived outrage to prioritize,” he said.
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U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has warned the world’s “free and open” system forged in the wake of World War II is under attack by what he calls China’s “rule-breaking behavior” in the Indo-Pacific region.Esper spoke in Hawaii, home to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, ahead of travel to Guam and Palau to take part in ceremonies marking the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II.Esper called the Indo-Pacific region the “epicenter” of great power competition, vowing not to “cede an inch” to countries that threaten international freedoms, in an apparent dig at China.“The People’s Liberation Army continues to pursue an aggressive modernization plan to achieve a world-class military by the middle of the century,” Esper said. “This will undoubtedly embolden the PLA’s provocative behavior in the South and East China Seas and anywhere else the Chinese government has deemed critical to its interests.”Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian told news media Thursday that the U.S. has “continued to provoke tensions and undermine China’s sovereignty and security.” He added that current diplomatic relations between the two countries have been “severely damaged.”China has made expansive claims over the South China Sea, basing military weapons and aircraft on artificial islands built atop reefs to bolster its territorial claims, which overlap with the territorial claims of other nations.US Sanctions Chinese Companies Over South China Sea Dispute  24 state-owned businesses targeted, along with individuals   The United States frequently conducts freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea to dispute Beijing’s claims and to promote free passage through international waters that carry about half the world’s merchant fleet tonnage, worth trillions of dollars each year.The U.S. imposed sanctions Wednesday on 24 Chinese companies and several people who allegedly participated in building and militarizing disputed artificial islands in the South China Sea.The U.S. Commerce Department said in a statement the companies played a “role in helping the Chinese military” with the construction project, while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a separate announcement that Washington was placing visa restrictions on individuals “responsible” or “complicit” in the project.“Since 2013, the PRC (People’s Republic of China) has used its state-owned enterprises to dredge and reclaim more than 3,000 acres (1,214 hectares) on disputed features in the South China Sea, destabilizing the region, trampling on the sovereign rights of its neighbors, and causing untold environmental devastation,” Pompeo said.Esper also called on U.S. allies in the region to increase their defense spending and rely less on Chinese technology, a “collective detriment” to regional allies.“I continue to encourage all like-minded partners to carefully consider their choices regarding telecommunications infrastructure and assess the long-term, collective risks of using Chinese state-backed vendors,” he said.VOA’s Nike Ching contributed to this report.
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Both U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and President Donald Trump are newly condemning China’s treatment of its Uighur Muslim minority, with Biden calling it genocide. “The unspeakable oppression that Uighurs and other ethnic minorities have suffered at the hands of China’s authoritarian government is genocide and Joe Biden stands against it in the strongest terms,” his campaign said this week. The Trump administration has not described Beijing’s actions as genocide, but National Security Council (NSC) spokesman John Ullyot condemned the Chinese treatment of the Uighurs. He said China had committed “horrific acts against women, including forced abortion, forced sterilization and other coercive birth control methods, state-sponsored forced labor, sexual violence including through rape in detention, compulsory home-stays by Han officials and forced marriages.”A man holds a sign during a rally to show support for Uighurs and their fight for human rights in Hong Kong, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2019.The NSC spokesman added, “The Chinese Communist Party’s atrocities also include the largest incarceration of an ethnic minority since World War II.” Biden’s campaign said that if the Trump administration decides to call the Chinese actions genocide, “the pressing question is what will Donald Trump do to take action. He must also apologize for condoning this horrifying treatment of Uighurs.” Ullyot said, “President Trump’s policies have demonstrated that every person — the born and unborn, the poor, the downcast, the disabled, the infirm, and the elderly — has inherent value.” He said Trump has taken “bold action” against China for its treatment of the Uighurs. A senior Trump administration official said that over the last year, the U.S. has imposed a variety of restrictions and sanctions on Chinese officials for human rights abuses in Xinjiang, the region where the Uighurs have been detained. 
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A spate of hacking attacks on Indonesian media that published articles critical of the government’s response to the coronavirus has raised concerns over press freedom, the country’s leading journalists’ association said on Monday.
 
At least four media organizations have been targeted in unprecedented digital attacks, said Abdul Manan, chairman of the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI).
 
“This is too serious to be an accident,” Manan said. “It is certain this type of attack, and the intended target of the media that has been quite critical so far. There is a very clear intention: that this is part of an effort to reduce the media’s critical attitude toward the government.”
 
Manan said the attacks ranged from DDoS attacks to doxing and the hacking of media servers, including the removal of select stories.
 
Last Friday the news website Tempo, which is a part of Tempo Media Group that also publishes Koran Tempo daily and Tempo weekly magazine, was replaced with a black screen and the word ‘hoax’ printed across it in bold red font.
 
The same day seven articles, including two critical of the Indonesian intelligence agency’s role in the pandemic response, were removed from the website of tirto.id, editor in chief Sapto Anggoro told Reuters.
 
“By hacking in any way, shape, or form, erasing and illegally editing Tirto and other media, it shows a sign of a threat to Indonesia’s freedom of press,” Anggoro said.
 
Wahyu Dhyatmika, editor in chief at Tempo magazine, told Reuters he feared the attacks would lead to self-censorship within Indonesia’s media industry.
 
The Indonesian president’s office was not immediately available for comment on allegations of deteriorating press freedoms, or veiled claims a government agency may be responsible.
 
Media organizations have not been the only ones subject to the recent online attacks.
 
Pandu Riono, a leading epidemiologist and vocal critic, saw his Twitter account hacked after he criticised collaborative research between Airlangga University, the state intelligence agency, and the Indonesian Army.
 
The university rector recently claimed the research might lead to the ‘world’s first coronavirus cure’, but Riono criticized those involved for not registering for clinical trials in line with international standards.
 
The university and the state intelligence agency were not immediately available for comment.
 
Ross Tapsell, a lecturer from the Australian National University, said the attacks were part of a broader, regional trend.
 
“It’s a worrying trend and a growing trend of using the digital apparatus to crack down on and hinder journalism and the media in Southeast Asia,” said Tapsell, “This is an extension of that through hacking and doxing.”
  
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Vietnam is exploring the launch of an international arbitration case against China over a series of mishaps in a disputed sea if diplomacy fails, analysts believe.   Over the past six years, Beijing has authorized the placement of an oil rig in contested South China Sea waters and Vietnam has begun exploring for undersea energy in spots that Beijing considers sensitive.In April a Chinese survey vessel sank a Vietnamese fishing boat. Vietnamese officials claim the sea’s Paracel Islands belong under their flag, though China has controlled the archipelago since the 1970s.   The Philippines, which spars with China over other tracts of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea, won world court arbitration in 2016. The tribunal found that China had no legal basis to its claims to about 90% of the waterway including tracts east of Vietnam. China rejected the outcome and stuck to its course but spent the next year improving economic relations in Southeast Asia. “Through my own assessment of it, [for Vietnam] I think it’s probably one of the more palatable options,” said Derek Grossman, senior analyst with the Rand Corp. research institution in the United States. Whenever China offends Vietnam at sea, he said, “they get really, really apoplectic and then they start to think about what are some of the ways they can push back.” Vietnam and China have been at odds over the sea and their land border for decades, straining relations between the two Communist neighbors. The Chinese oil rig sparked deadly anti-China rioting in Vietnam in 2014.   FILE – A protester gestures as he marches during an anti-China protest in Vietnam’s southern Ho Chi Minh City, May 18, 2014.Vietnamese deputy foreign affairs minister Le Hoai Trung told an international conference in November that “arbitration” and “international litigation” were among the means Vietnam had explored. This year Vietnam contracted a panel of international maritime law specialists to advise the government.   Grossman said he heard earlier this year from a Vietnamese official that the government was considering arbitration.   Foreign ministers from both sides met Sunday to mark an anniversary of a bilateral land border treaty, signaling that diplomacy is alive for now, said Nguyen Thanh Trung, Center for International Studies director at University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnam’s role as 2020 chair of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) gives it extra clout to push China over maritime issues.   “I think that they still want to rely on the bilateral mechanism and also the multilateral mechanism to settle their disputes between the two countries,” Nguyen said.   Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan claim all or parts of the sea as well. Governments prize the waterway for natural gas, oil and fisheries as well as marine shipping lanes.   Vietnam should show it has exhausted diplomacy before filing for any arbitration, said Carl Thayer, Southeast Asia-specialized emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia. The government in Hanoi would look too for a “critical moment” when its dispute with China had “crystallized”, he said. Arbitration would especially appeal to Vietnam if China declared an air defense zone over the disputed sea, a threat to the activities of other Asian countries.   Diplomacy is “increasingly not effective” because “China is not listening”, said Alexander Vuving, professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii. Vietnam’s military can’t compete with China’s, he added. “That narrows down the viable options that Vietnam can take,” Vuving said.   Vietnam must approach any world tribunal cautiously because some of its holdings in the South China Sea’s Spratly Islands are too tiny to justify establishing an exclusive ocean economic zone around them, scholars caution.   China would react angrily if called to arbitration, Nguyen said. It might scale back economic relations and become more aggressive toward Vietnam at sea, scholars say. The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, a foundation for world arbitration, does not force either side to carry out arbitration results.   But ASEAN could use a Pro-Vietnam arbitration outcome as pressure to make China comply Thayer said.   External “maritime powers” such as the United States and Japan would cite the award as a legal basis to push back against China he said.  
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Officials with the World Health Organization (WHO) are downplaying a confirmed case of a Hong Kong man who became reinfected with COVID-19, saying chances of that happening on regular basis are slim.University of Hong Kong scientists announced the development Monday, saying the virus strains that infected the man more than four months apart were different.Speaking to reporters virtually Tuesday from Geneva, WHO spokeswoman Dr. Margaret Harris said it was important the event was documented and confirmed. There had been previous anecdotal reports of reinfection that could have been just a problem with testing.Harris noted this is the first confirmed case of COVID reinfection in more than 23 million cases, and if it were more of a regular occurrence, there would have been more cases before now.She said the case is significant, though, in terms of what it means for people’s immunity to the virus. “This is why we have got a lot of research groups actually tracking people, measuring antibodies, trying to understand how long the immune protection lasts.”Harris said people should understand the natural immune protection that develops after a person has a virus is not the same as the immune protection that a vaccine provides. 
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