The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday said it was looking to recover another $96 million in assets in real estate and artwork linked to the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) international money-laundering conspiracy.The assets include luxury real estate in Paris and paintings by Claude Monet and Andy Warhol linked to the embezzlement of the 1MDB fund by Malaysian officials, the Justice Department said in a statement.The agency has so far recovered or assisted Malaysia in recovering nearly $1.1 billion in assets related to the alleged scheme.The Malaysian government set up the 1MDB fund in 2009. U.S. officials have estimated that $4.5 billion was siphoned out of Malaysia by high-level fund officials and associates between 2009 and 2014, in a scandal that has also embroiled Goldman Sachs Group Inc.In October, the U.S. Justice Department announced its largest ever anti-kleptocracy deal, in which fugitive Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho, or Jho Low, agreed to turn over $700 million in assets.Low has denied wrongdoing.  
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday that China’s newly enacted Hong Kong national security law was “an affront to all nations” and that Washington was taking steps to end special permissions for the Chinese region.“The United States is deeply concerned about the law’s sweeping provisions and the safety of everyone living in the territory, including Americans,” Pompeo said.The Chinese legislature, the National People’s Congress, adopted the national security law for Hong Kong on Tuesday, a day before the 23rd anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule.The law recommends harsh penalties for vaguely defined crimes such as “collusion with foreign countries.” Crimes such as damaging public transportation could be considered terrorist activity punishable by life in prison. Legal analysts say it effectively ends political freedoms that long allowed Hong Kong residents to publicly express their political views and helped transform the territory into an international business hub.“Article 38 of the new law also purports to apply to offenses committed outside of Hong Kong by nonresidents of Hong Kong, and this likely includes Americans. This is outrageous and an affront to all nations,” Pompeo said.US-China tensions growingAs Beijing has tightened control over Hong Kong, U.S. leaders say China’s actions threaten American economic interests, security and values.FILE – Pro-China supporters hold a placard on their way to protest at the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong, May 31, 2020. President Donald Trump has announced a series of measures aimed at China as a rift between the two countries grows.Analysts said the relationship between the two is at its lowest point in decades.“The actions against Hong Kong are particularly alarming. If this is how the Chinese Communist Party treats its commitments to its own people, then the rest of world has to be truly frightened about what they can expect from the regime’s global actions,” said James Carafano, Heritage Foundation vice president for national security.In Beijing, China imposed more restrictions on American news agencies this week, telling four organizations they must disclose details about their business operations in the country in response to what it called U.S. “suppression” of Chinese state-run news outlets. This is similar to China’s action against other foreign news outlets, including Voice of America, earlier this year.Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said The Associated Press, CBS News, National Public Radio and United Press International had seven days to submit to the Chinese government details about their staffing, finances, real estate holdings and other information.That move by Beijing came days after Washington designated four additional Chinese state-run outlets operating in the U.S. as “foreign missions.” Under the June 22 designation, China Central Television, China News Service, the People’s Daily and the Global Times are required to report personnel rosters and U.S. real estate holdings, similar to certain administrative requirements that are applied to all foreign embassies and consulates in the U.S.US lawmakers vow more actionThis week, Washington ended defense and dual-use technology exports to Hong Kong.  Last Friday, the U.S. announced visa restrictions on current and former Chinese Communist Party officials deemed responsible for undermining human rights and fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong.Last Thursday, the U.S. Senate passed the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, threatening to impose sanctions on foreign individuals and entities that materially contribute to China’s failure to preserve Hong Kong’s autonomy.FILE – Sen. Bob Menendez talks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 28, 2020.Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who is ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told VOA Mandarin on Tuesday that the latest action by China was very “alarming.”“This is a continuing effort by China to have a strong grip on Hong Kong to undermine its autonomy,” Menendez said.“That’s why the legislation that we’ve offered here is critically necessary to move forward,” Menendez added, referring to the Hong Kong Autonomy Act.Pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, as well as in the United States and other Western nations, say the law effectively ends the “one country, two systems” concept that was part of the 1997 handover deal, which guaranteed the city a high degree of autonomy and civil liberties for 50 years.’Watch very carefully’Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida told VOA Mandarin that his immediate worry was that those who spoke up peacefully in Hong Kong would be subject to indefinite detention.“I think we need to watch very carefully what happens next — particularly against groups and individuals who I’m pretty sure the Chinese government will target them to make an example of in the early days after the passage of that bill,” Rubio said.On May 27, Pompeo reported to Congress that Hong Kong was “no longer autonomous from China” and “Hong Kong does not continue to warrant” special treatment under U.S. laws, given facts on the ground.Yihua Lee of VOA’s Mandarin Service contributed to this report.
 
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China said Wednesday it has demanded that four American news organizations disclose details about their business operations in the country in response to what it called U.S. “suppression” of Chinese state-run news outlets.Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at his daily media briefing that Associated Press, CBS News, National Public Radio and United Press International had seven days to submit to the Chinese government details about their staffing, finances, real estate holdings and other information.“The above-mentioned measures by China are completely necessary countermeasures and are completely legitimate defenses compelled by unreasonable suppression of the U.S. said on Chinese media agencies in the United States,” Zhao said.China’s announcement comes after the Trump administration designated four more Chinese state-controlled media organizations last month as “foreign missions,” a move that could force them to reduce staffing in the U.S.When making the June announcement, the U.S. State Department said the four Chinese outlets, including CCTV, must submit a list of all staffers in the U.S. and any real estate holdings.The U.S., which said the move was necessary because of their association with the Chinese government and the ruling Communist Party, previously labeled five other Chinese as foreign missions in February.China expelled reporters from several large U.S. news outlets earlier this year after the U.S. limited the number of Chinese journalists who work in the U.S.In addition to expelling reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, China had also ordered two other news outlets — Time magazine and the independent U.S.-funded Voice of America news operation — to give Chinese authorities detailed information about their work in China. 
 
A VOA statement issued at the time joined its U.S. media counterparts in condemnation of China’s restrictions on free press. “In common with our colleagues at The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, we remain committed to our work in China and condemn attempts to curtail it. We are committed to continuing to serve as a consistently reliable, trusted and authoritative source of news to our Chinese-speaking audiences,” VOA said. Nike Ching contributed to this report.
  
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South Korean President Moon Jae-in says he hopes U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will hold another summit before the U.S. presidential election in November.  A South Korean official said Wednesday Moon recently relayed the request to the White House. The U.S. side “understands” Moon’s position and is “working on it, as far as I know,” the South Korean official added.  U.S. officials have not publicly responded to Moon’s comments, which were initially expressed in a conversation Tuesday between the South Korean president and European Union officials.  Steve Biegun, the deputy U.S. secretary of state, said earlier this week another Trump-Kim summit was unlikely before November, in part because of coronavirus concerns.  “In the time remaining and with the wet blanket COVID-19 has put over the entire world, it’s hard to envision circumstances where we could do an in-person international summit,” Biegun said during an online forum organized by the German Marshall Fund research organization. But Biegun, the lead U.S. negotiator on North Korea, said Washington remains open to engagement with Pyongyang, adding that the U.S. goal continues to be the “final and complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” Biegun is planning to visit South Korea sometime in July, according to South Korean media reports. Talks stalled  It has been just over a year since Trump and Kim’s last meeting — a hastily organized, brief encounter at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas. People watch a TV screen airing reports about North Korea’s firing missiles with file images of missiles at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, April 14, 2020.North Korea has since walked away from the talks, conducted frequent missile tests, and lobbed more threats and insults, mainly at its neighbors in South Korea. Despite the tensions, Trump has frequently insisted his relationship with Kim remains strong, sometimes even hinting he is open to another summit. But with the U.S. election just over four months away and Trump trailing in opinion polls, analysts say North Korea may not be his top priority. It’s also not clear whether North Korea would agree to hold another summit. Officials in Pyongyang have repeatedly warned it will take more than good Trump-Kim relations to drive progress in the nuclear talks.  North Korea is angry at the U.S. refusal to relax sanctions and provide security guarantees as part of a step-by-step denuclearization process. The Trump administration wants Pyongyang to first agree to give up its entire nuclear weapons program.  North Korea is also upset at the South for failing to implement a series of 2018 agreements related to economic cooperation and reducing military tensions. The sanctions have prevented South Korea from moving ahead with the deals. Pressure campaign halted 
Last month, North Korea escalated tensions against the South, blowing up the de facto inter-Korean embassy just north of the border and cutting off communications channels with Seoul.  The moves were seen partly as an attempt to get Seoul to pressure Washington in the nuclear talks. However, the North’s motives became muddied after Kim last week abruptly suspended the pressure campaign without explanation.  The situation has been awkward for South Korea, a longtime U.S. ally that is currently led by a left-leaning administration that desperately wants to improve ties with the North. FILE – In this image taken from video provided by Korea Broadcasting System, April 27, 2018, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un crosses the border into South Korea, along with South Korean President Moon Jae-in for their historic face-to-face talks.Moon, whose 2018 meetings with Kim helped pave the way for the U.S.-North Korea diplomacy, is expected to prioritize the revitalization of inter-Korean ties during the final two years of his presidential term. 
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New Hong Kong security laws came into effect on Wednesday that will punish crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison, heralding a more authoritarian era for China’s freest city. Hong Kong authorities threw a security blanket across the city early on Wednesday, the 23rd anniversary of the former British colony’s handover to Chinese rule, only hours after Beijing imposed the new national security laws on the city. Some two dozen Western countries, including Britain and the United States, have urged China to reconsider the security laws, saying Beijing must preserve the right to assembly and free speech in the Asian financial hub. China says the laws targeted at a few “troublemakers’ and accuses Britain and the United States of interfering in internal matters and fomenting unrest in Hong Kong. Following are details of the laws, which took effect at 1500 GMT. * Crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces punishable by up to life in prison. * The activities of a new national security agency and its personnel in Hong Kong will not be under the jurisdiction of local government. * The central government in Beijing has an overarching responsibility for national security affairs in Hong Kong. * Anyone convicted of violating security legislation will not be allowed to stand in any Hong Kong elections. * Rights and freedoms, including freedom of speech, of the press, of publication, of assembly and demonstration, will be protected in accordance with the law. * Companies or groups that violate national security law will be fined and could have operations suspended. * Damaging certain transportation vehicles and equipment will be considered an act of terrorism. * Authorities can surveil and wire-tap persons suspected of endangering national security. * The law will apply to permanent and non-permanent residents of Hong Kong. * The law says the management of foreign NGOs and news agencies in Hong Kong will be strengthened. * Hong Kong leader will appoint judges for national security cases under law. * Property related to crimes under legislation could be frozen or confiscated. * Mainland authorities will exercise jurisdiction in “complex” cases such as those involving a foreign country, or serious situations that pose a major or imminent threat to national security. 
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In a rare twist to Washington’s long-standing restrictions on the Chinese tech giant Huawei, the Commerce Department recently reversed its ban preventing U.S. firms from working with Huawei on developing new technical standards.The move was seen by many in China as an admission by President Donald Trump’s administration that it cannot ignore Huawei’s influential role in developing the technical standards critical for future technologies.  “America finally bowed its head” read a headline by Chinese network Phoenix TV.The new rule, announced by the Commerce Department on June 15, amends the Huawei “entity listing,” to allow American companies to collaborate with Huawei on setting standards that will determine the technical rules of the road for 5G and other emerging technologies.   “This action is meant to ensure Huawei’s placement on the entity list in May 2019 does not prevent American companies from contributing to important standards-developing activities despite Huawei’s pervasive participation in standards-development organizations,” the department said.  The situation with Huawei is no accident. For years, Beijing has focused on joining international standard-setting bodies, such as 3GPP and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which are little-known among the public, but make some of the most consequential decisions in modern telecommunications.
 3GPP and the future of your smartphone
 
Nestled in a quiet industrial park in southern France, a technology consortium with esoteric name, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project, or 3GPP, sets the technical standards behind the world’s communication platforms, the fundamental building blocks for product development. As the primary global standard setting organization for the last 20 years, 3GPP helped create technologies such as WiFi, Bluetooth as well as today’s 5G high-speed networks.
“Standards are not very sexy but extremely important,” Andrew Polk, partner at Beijing-based research and consultancy firm Trivium China, told VOA. “And it takes sustained long-term effort and attention. While western companies try to set standards, China has a long-term coordinated game plan to influence standards,” he said.FILE – A staff member holds a Huawei ‘Mate20 X 5G’ smartphone at the IFA 2019 tech fair in Berlin, Germany, Sept. 5, 2019.China’s leaders have long seen technology as a key to the country’s economic and military might, and have financially backed companies such as Huawei to become powerful global competitors that will help the country’s political and military goals. Critics say Beijing takes the same approach to setting technical standards.
 
“Beijing views standards as foundational to its goals to reshaping global governance and expand geostrategic power,” said Dr. J. Ray Bowen, analyst of Pointe Bello, a Washington, D.C.-based strategic intelligence firm.
 
Even though U.S. companies remain world leaders in most areas of technology, observers such as Dustin Daugherty, head of North America Business Development at Dezan Shira & Associates, a pan-Asia business consulting firm, say China’s strategy means “in the future the U.S. could fall behind a coordinated government effort in standard setting (such as from China).”
 China’s long-term plan
 
As of May, Chinese firms and government research institutes have accounted for the largest number of chairs or vice chairs in 3GPP, holding 16 of the 45 available leadership positions, according to VOA’s count based on the data release by 3GPP. By comparison, U.S. companies hold nine such leadership positions.
 
That’s up from a year ago, when 3GPP sent VOA a file showing that representatives from Chinese and U.S. companies each held 12 chair and vice chair positions.
While the 3GPP is the primary global group setting 5G standards, another major global organization, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), is now led by a formal Chinese government official Zhao Houlin.
 
Zhao, who began his career in China’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, was first elected as the secretary-general of ITU in 2014. He was reinstated in November 2018 for another four-year term.
 
Established in 1865, ITU is one of the oldest international organizations in the world and has historically avoided politics. However, Zhao publicly criticized Washington in its dispute with Huawei, the Chinese communications giant that U.S. officials say has deep links to the military. “I would encourage Huawei to be given equal opportunities to bid for business,” Zhao told reporters in Geneva earlier this year. “But if we don’t have anything then to put them on the blacklist – I think this is not fair.”FILE – Zhao Houlin, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), attends a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland, May 28, 2018.Under Zhao’s leadership, another Chinese national, Richard Li, serves as the chairman of a critical group with the ITU called Focus Group Technologies for Network 2030. Li, according to his LinkedIn Page, is still currently employed by Huawei as Chief Scientist and Vice-President of Network Technologies, is in charge of examining the world’s emerging technologies and 5G.
 
Doug Barry, the spokesperson for The US-China Business Council (USCBC), a private organization with the mission of promoting trade between the two countries, said there are companies that are concerned about the abuse of leadership positions by China, but so far he has not heard any examples of this happening in practice.
 
“Most international standards setting bodies have strong due process which makes it difficult for stakeholders to abuse leadership positions to force proposals through or block proposals,” said Barry.
 
Daugherty said because Chinese companies are among the most important international players in a variety of industries, including telecommunications, their presence in industry groups and standard setting bodies is logical. But he said there is an important difference between them and their counterparts from democratic countries.  
 
“Chinese companies (and by extension possibly their individual representatives on such bodies) may ultimately need to answer to Beijing’s priorities for strategically important issues,” said Daugherty.
 
In an interview with VOA, he said the politicization of such international bodies could conceivably lead to a decrease in legitimacy in international standard setting. “The damage could be immense,” he said.
 Flooded with proposals
 
Holding leadership positions is one part of Beijing’s strategy. Another part involves massive investments in submitting technical proposals to the international groups.
 
In a rare disclosure last September, Huawei said for one particular technical area alone, the company submitted 18,000 5G New Radio proposals. “If printed on A4 paper and piled up high, would stand a staggering 10 meters tall,” it said proudly on its official twitter account.FILE – A 5G logo is displayed on a screen outside the showroom at Huawei campus in Shenzhen city, in China’s Guangdong province, March 6, 2019.The U.S.-China Business Council said last February this is an issue of concern.  “Some companies and experts complained that Chinese stakeholders submit large numbers of proposals that are low-quality or irrelevant to market needs in some industries, including for products that China does not actually produce.”
 
The report titled “China in International Standards Setting” said this takes valuable time and resources away from considering serious proposals.
 
China also sends more people to attend international meetings that discuss, vote and make decisions on standards.
 
According to a report release last November by German intellectual property research firm Iplytics, Huawei dispatched over 3,000 engineers to participate in the 5G standard-setting process. American chipmaker Qualcomm sent 1,701 engineers to attend 3GPP meetings.
 
Dr. Melanie Hart, director for China Policy Center for American Progress, said the Chinese government is channeling state financial support to help Huawei and other Chinese firms send personnel to attend 3GPP meetings and flood the process with Chinese technical contributions.
 
“It is difficult for private companies from other nations to match that level of activity because sending engineers overseas to participate in 3GPP meetings and devoting R&D resources to develop 3GPP technical contributions are costly activities,” she testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission last March.   
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China’s legislature has passed a controversial national security law for Hong Kong that the United States and pro-democracy activists believe will further erode the semi-autonomous city’s freedoms. The new law, approved Tuesday in Beijing by the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress, generally calls for the central government in Beijing to establish a national security office in Hong Kong aimed at confronting subversion of state power, terrorism, separatism and collusion with foreign forces.  The exact details of the new law have yet to be released. The new law caps Chinese President Xi Jinping’s aggressive efforts to tighten control over the financial hub over the past few years, which has led to massive street protests by pro-democracy activists seeking greater freedoms for Hong Kong. The city was rocked during the second half of 2019 by angry and often violent demonstrations sparked by a controversial extradition bill that was eventually withdrawn.Buildings are seen above Hong Kong and Chinese flags, as pro-China supporters celebration after China’s parliament passes national security law for Hong Kong, in Hong Kong, June 30,2020.The action by the Chinese legislature bypasses Hong Kong’s legislature, which has the authority to pass any security laws under the Basic Law, the city’s constitution.  Hong Kong lawmakers have been pressured by Beijing in the past to approve a national security law, but were met by heavy protests.  The law was approved Tuesday on the eve of the anniversary of Britain’s 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China.  City authorities have banned the annual rally marking the anniversary of the handover, citing risks of the coronavirus pandemic.   The Trump administration has taken a series of steps after China announced its intentions to approve the national security law back in May.  U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced earlier this month that the United States no longer considers Hong Kong autonomous from China, and on Monday ended exports of defense equipment and dual-use technologies that originate in the U.S. to Hong Kong, citing national security purposes. Last Friday, the United States announced visa restrictions on current and former Chinese Communist Party officials deemed responsible for, or complicit in, undermining Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, or undermining human rights and fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong.  A spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry told reporters Monday in Beijing it would impose similar visa restrictions on certain U.S. individuals. 
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Researchers in China have discovered a new type of swine flu that is capable of triggering a pandemic, according to a study published Monday in the U.S. science journal PNAS. Named G4, it is genetically descended from the H1N1 strain that caused a pandemic in 2009. It possesses “all the essential hallmarks of being highly adapted to infect humans,” say the authors, scientists at Chinese universities and China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention.  From 2011 to 2018, researchers took 30,000 nasal swabs from pigs in slaughterhouses in 10 Chinese provinces and in a veterinary hospital, allowing them to isolate 179 swine flu viruses.   The majority were of a new kind, which has been dominant among pigs since 2016. The researchers then carried out various experiments including on ferrets, which are widely used in flu studies because they experience similar symptoms to humans, principally fever, coughing and sneezing.   G4 was observed to be highly infectious, replicating in human cells and causing more serious symptoms in ferrets than other viruses. Tests also showed that any immunity humans gain from exposure to seasonal flu does not provide protection from G4. According to blood tests, which showed antibodies created by exposure to the virus, 10.4% of swine workers had already been infected. The tests showed that as many as 4.4% of the general population also appeared to have been exposed.  The virus has therefore already passed from animals to humans but there is no evidence yet that it can be passed from human to human, the scientists’ main worry. “It is of concern that human infection of G4 virus will further human adaptation and increase the risk of a human pandemic,” the researchers wrote. The authors called for urgent measures to monitor people working with pigs.  “The work comes as a salutary reminder that we are constantly at risk of new emergence of zoonotic pathogens and that farmed animals, with which humans have greater contact than with wildlife, may act as the source for important pandemic viruses,” said James Wood, head of the department of veterinary medicine at Cambridge University. A zoonotic infection is caused by a pathogen that has jumped from a non-human animal into a human. 
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The Chinese government is taking draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population, even as it encourages some of the country’s Han majority to have more children.
While individual women have spoken out before about forced birth control, the practice is far more widespread and systematic than previously known, according to an AP investigation based on government statistics, state documents and interviews with 30 ex-detainees, family members and a former detention camp instructor. The campaign over the past four years in the far west region of Xinjiang is leading to what some experts are calling a form of “demographic genocide.”  
The state regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands, the interviews and data show.
Even while the use of IUDs and sterilization has fallen nationwide, it is rising sharply in Xinjiang.
The population control measures are backed by mass detention both as a threat and as a punishment for failure to comply. Having too many children is a major reason people are sent to detention camps, the AP found, with the parents of three or more ripped away from their families unless they can pay huge fines. Police raid homes, terrifying parents as they search for hidden children.
After Gulnar Omirzakh, a Chinese-born Kazakh, had her third child, the government ordered her to get an IUD inserted. Two years later, in January 2018, four officials in military camouflage came knocking at her door anyway. They gave Omirzakh, the penniless wife of a detained vegetable trader, three days to pay a $2,685 fine for having more than two children.  
If she didn’t, they warned, she would join her husband and a million other ethnic minorities locked up in internment camps ¬— often for having too many children.
“God bequeaths children on you. To prevent people from having children is wrong,” said Omirzakh, who tears up even now thinking back to that day. “They want to destroy us as a people.”  
The result of the birth control campaign is a climate of terror around having children, as seen in interview after interview. Birth rates in the mostly Uighur regions of Hotan and Kashgar plunged by more than 60% from 2015 to 2018, the latest year available in government statistics. Across the Xinjiang region, birth rates continue to plummet, falling nearly 24% last year alone — compared to just 4.2% nationwide, statistics show.
The hundreds of millions of dollars the government pours into birth control has transformed Xinjiang from one of China’s fastest-growing regions to among its slowest in just a few years, according to new research obtained by The Associated Press in advance of publication by China scholar Adrian Zenz.
“This kind of drop is unprecedented….there’s a ruthlessness to it,” said Zenz, a leading expert in the policing of China’s minority regions. “This is part of a wider control campaign to subjugate the Uighurs.”
China’s foreign ministry called the story “fabricated” and “fake news,” saying the government treats all ethnicities equally and protects the legal rights of minorities.
“Everyone, regardless of whether they’re an ethnic minority or Han Chinese, must follow and act in accordance with the law,” ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Monday when asked about the AP story.
Chinese officials have said in the past that the new measures are merely meant to be fair, allowing both Han Chinese and ethnic minorities the same number of children.
For decades, China had one of the most extensive systems of minority entitlements in the world, with Uighurs and others getting more points on college entrance exams, hiring quotas for government posts and laxer birth control restrictions. Under China’s now-abandoned ‘one child’ policy, the authorities had long encouraged, often forced, contraceptives, sterilization and abortion on Han Chinese. But minorities were allowed two children — three if they came from the countryside.
Under President Xi Jinping, China’s most authoritarian leader in decades, those benefits are now being rolled back. In 2014, soon after Xi visited Xinjiang, the region’s top official said it was time to implement “equal family planning policies” for all ethnicities and “reduce and stabilize birth rates.” In the following years, the government declared that instead of just one child, Han Chinese could now have two,  and three in Xinjiang’s rural areas, just like minorities.  
But while equal on paper, in practice Han Chinese are largely spared the abortions, sterilizations, IUD insertions and detentions for having too many children that are forced on Xinjiang’s other ethnicities, interviews and data show. Some rural Muslims, like Omirzakh, are punished even for having the three children allowed by the law.
State-backed scholars have warned for years that large rural religious families were at the root of bombings, knifings and other attacks the Xinjiang government blamed on Islamic terrorists. The growing Muslim population was a breeding ground for poverty and extremism, “heightening political risk,” according to a 2017 paper by the head of the Institute of Sociology at the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences. Another cited as a key obstacle the religious belief that “the fetus is a gift from God.”
Outside experts say the birth control campaign is part of a state-orchestrated assault on the Uighurs to purge them of their faith and identity and forcibly assimilate them. They’re subjected to political and religious re-education in camps and forced labor in factories, while their children are indoctrinated in orphanages. Uighurs, who are often but not always Muslim, are also tracked by a vast digital surveillance apparatus.  
“The intention may not be to fully eliminate the Uighur population, but it will sharply diminish their vitality,” said Darren Byler, an expert on Uighurs at the University of Colorado.  “It will make them easier to assimilate into the mainstream Chinese population.”
Some go a step further.
“It’s genocide, full stop. It’s not immediate, shocking, mass-killing on the spot type genocide, but it’s slow, painful, creeping genocide,” said Joanne Smith Finley, who works at Newcastle University in the U.K. “These are direct means of genetically reducing the Uighur population.”
For centuries, the majority was Muslim in the arid, landlocked region China now calls “Xinjiang” — meaning “New Frontier” in Mandarin.
After the People’s Liberation Army swept through in 1949, China’s new Communist rulers ordered thousands of soldiers to settle in Xinjiang, pushing the Han population from 6.7% that year to more than 40% by 1980. The move sowed anxiety about Chinese migration that persists to this day. Drastic efforts to restrict birth rates in the 1990s were relaxed after major pushback, with many parents paying bribes or registering children as the offspring of friends or other family members.
That all changed with an unprecedented crackdown starting in 2017, throwing hundreds of thousands of people into prisons and camps for alleged “signs of religious extremism” such as traveling abroad, praying or using foreign social media. Authorities launched what several notices called “dragnet-style” investigations to root out parents with too many children, even those who gave birth decades ago.  
“Leave no blind spots,” said two county and township directives in 2018 and 2019 uncovered by Zenz, who is also an independent contractor with the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a bipartisan nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. “Contain illegal births and lower fertility levels,” said a third.
Officials and armed police began pounding on doors, looking for kids and pregnant women. Minority residents were ordered to attend weekly flag-raising ceremonies, where officials threatened detention if they didn’t register all their children, according to interviews backed by attendance slips and booklets. Notices found by the AP show that local governments set up or expanded systems to reward those who report illegal births.
In some areas, women were ordered to take gynecology exams after the ceremonies, they said. In others, officials outfitted special rooms with ultrasound scanners for pregnancy tests.
“Test all who need to be tested,” ordered a township directive Zenz found from 2018. “Detect and deal with those who violate policies early.”
Abdushukur Umar was among the first to fall victim to the crackdown on children. A jovial Uighur tractor driver-turned-fruit merchant, the proud father considered his seven children a blessing from God.
But authorities began pursuing him in 2016. The following year, he was thrown into a camp and later sentenced to seven years in prison — one for each child, authorities told relatives.  
“My cousin spent all his time taking care of his family, he never took part in any political movements,” Zuhra Sultan, Umar’s cousin, said from exile in Turkey. “How can you get seven years in prison for having too many children? We’re living in the 21st century — this is unimaginable.”
Fifteen Uighurs and Kazakhs told the AP they knew people interned or jailed for having too many children. Many received years, even decades in prison.  
Leaked data obtained and corroborated by the AP showed that of 484 camp detainees listed in Karakax county in Xinjiang, 149 were there for having too many children – the most common reason for holding them. Time in a camp — what the government calls “education and training” — for parents with too many children is written policy in at least three counties, notices found by Zenz confirmed.
In 2017, the Xinjiang government also tripled the already hefty fines for violating family planning laws for even the poorest residents — to at least three times the annual disposable income of the county. While fines also apply to Han Chinese, only minorities are sent to the detention camps if they cannot pay, according to interviews and data. Government reports show the counties collect millions of dollars from the fines each year.
In other efforts to change the population balance of Xinjiang, China is dangling land, jobs and economic subsidies to lure Han migrants there. It is also aggressively promoting intermarriage between Han Chinese and Uighurs, with one couple telling the AP they were given money for housing and amenities like a washing machine, refrigerator and TV.
“It links back to China’s long history of dabbling in eugenics….you don’t want people who are poorly educated, marginal minorities breeding quickly,” said James Leibold, a specialist in Chinese ethnic policy at La Trobe in Melbourne. “What you want is your educated Han to increase their birth rate.”
Sultan describes how the policy looks to Uighurs like her: “The Chinese government wants to control the Uighur population and make us fewer and fewer, until we disappear.”
Once in the detention camps, women are subjected to forced IUDs and what appear to be pregnancy prevention shots, according to former detainees. They are also made to attend lectures on how many children they should have.
Seven former detainees told the AP that they were force-fed birth control pills or injected with fluids, often with no explanation. Many felt dizzy, tired or ill, and women stopped getting their periods. After being released and leaving China, some went to get medical check-ups and found they were sterile.  
It’s unclear what former detainees were injected with, but Xinjiang hospital slides obtained by the AP show that pregnancy prevention injections, sometimes with the hormonal medication Depo-Provera, are a common family planning measure. Side effects can include headaches and dizziness.  
Dina Nurdybay, a Kazakh woman, was detained in a camp which separated married and unmarried women. The married women were given pregnancy tests, Nurdybay recalled, and forced to have IUDs installed if they had children. She was spared because she was unmarried and childless.
One day in February 2018, one of her cellmates, a Uighur woman, had to give a speech confessing what guards called her “crimes.” When a visiting official peered through the iron bars of their cell, she recited her lines in halting Mandarin.
“I gave birth to too many children,” she said. “It shows I’m uneducated and know little about the law.”
“Do you think it’s fair that Han people are only allowed to have one child?” the official asked, according to Nurdybay. “You ethnic minorities are shameless, wild and uncivilized.”
Nurdybay met at least two others in the camps whom she learned were locked up for having too many children. Later, she was transferred to another facility with an orphanage that housed hundreds of children, including those with parents detained for giving birth too many times. The children counted the days until they could see their parents on rare visits.
“They told me they wanted to hug their parents, but they were not allowed,” she said. “They always looked very sad.”
Another former detainee, Tursunay Ziyawudun, said she was injected until she stopped having her period, and kicked repeatedly in the lower stomach during interrogations. She now can’t have children and often doubles over in pain, bleeding from her womb, she said.
Ziyawudun and the 40 other women in her “class” were forced to attend family planning lectures most Wednesdays, where films were screened about impoverished women struggling to feed many children. Married women were rewarded for good behavior with conjugal visits from their husbands, along with showers, towels, and two hours in a bedroom. But there was a catch – they had to take birth control pills beforehand.  
Some women have even reported forced abortions. Ziyawudun said a “teacher” at her camp told women they would face abortions if found pregnant during gynecology exams.  
A woman in another class turned out to be pregnant and disappeared from the camp, she said. She added that two of her cousins who were pregnant got rid of their children on their own because they were so afraid.
Another woman, Gulbakhar Jalilova, confirmed that detainees in her camp were forced to abort their children. She also saw a new mother, still leaking breast milk, who did not know what had happened to her infant. And she met doctors and medical students who were detained for helping Uighurs dodge the system and give birth at home.  
In December 2017, on a visit from Kazakhstan back to China, Gulzia Mogdin was taken to a hospital after police found WhatsApp on her phone. A urine sample revealed she was two months pregnant with her third child. Officials told Mogdin she needed to get an abortion and threatened to detain her brother if she didn’t.  
During the procedure, medics inserted an electric vacuum into her womb and sucked her fetus out of her body. She was taken home and told to rest, as they planned to take her to a camp.  
Months later, Mogdin made it back to Kazakhstan, where her husband lives.
“That baby was going to be the only baby we had together,” said Mogdin, who had recently remarried. “I cannot sleep. It’s terribly unfair.”
The success of China’s push to control births among Muslim minorities shows up in the numbers for IUDs and sterilization.
In 2014, just over 200,000 IUDs were inserted in Xinjiang. By 2018, that jumped more than 60 percent to nearly 330,000 IUDs. At the same time, IUD use tumbled elsewhere in China, as many women began getting the devices removed.  
A former teacher drafted to work as an instructor at a detention camp described her experience with IUDs to the AP.  
She said it started with flag-raising assemblies at her compound in the beginning of 2017 at which Uighur residents recited “anti-terror” lectures.
“If we have too many children, we’re religious extremists,” she said they chanted. “That means we have to go to the training centers.”
Police rounded up over 180 parents with too many children until “not a single one was left,” she said. At night, she said, she lay in bed, stiff with terror, as officers with guns and Taser-like devices hauled her neighbors away. From time to time police pounded on her door and searched her apartment for Qurans, knives, prayer mats and of course children, she said.
“Your heart would leap out of your chest,” she said.  
Then, that August, officials in the teacher’s compound were told to install IUDs on all women of childbearing age. She protested, saying she was nearly 50 with just one child and no plans to have more. Officials threatened to drag her to a police station and strap her to an iron chair for interrogation.
She was forced into a bus with four armed officers and taken to a hospital where hundreds of Uighur women lined up in silence, waiting for IUDs to be inserted. Some wept quietly, but nobody dared say a word because of the surveillance cameras hanging overhead.
Her IUD was designed to be irremovable without special instruments. The first 15 days, she got headaches and nonstop menstrual bleeding.
“I couldn’t eat properly, I couldn’t sleep properly. It gave me huge psychological pressure,” she said. “Only Uighurs had to wear it.”
Chinese health statistics also show a sterilization boom in Xinjiang.  
Budget documents obtained by Zenz show that starting in 2016, the Xinjiang government began pumping tens of millions of dollars into a birth control surgery program and cash incentives for women to get sterilized. While sterilization rates plunged in the rest of the country, they surged seven-fold in Xinjiang from 2016 to 2018, to more than 60,000 procedures. The Uighur-majority city of Hotan budgeted for 14,872 sterilizations in 2019 — about 34% of all married women of childbearing age, Zenz found.
Even within Xinjiang, policies vary widely, being harsher in the heavily Uighur south than the Han-majority north. In Shihezi, a Han-dominated city where Uighurs make up just 2% of the population, the government subsidizes baby formula and hospital birth services to encourage more children, state media reported.
Zumret Dawut got no such benefits. In 2018, the mother of three was locked in a camp for two months for having an American visa.
When she returned home under house arrest, officials forced her to get gynecology exams every month, along with all other Uighur women in her compound. Han women were exempted. They warned that if she didn’t take what they called “free examinations”, she could end up back in the camp.
One day, they turned up with a list of at least 200 Uighur women in her compound with more than two children who had to get sterilized, Dawut recalled.
 
“My Han Chinese neighbors, they sympathized with us Uighurs,” Dawut said. “They told me, ‘oh, you’re suffering terribly, the government is going way too far!'”
Dawut protested, but police again threatened to send her back to the camp. During the sterilization procedure, Han Chinese doctors injected her with anesthesia and tied her fallopian tubes — a permanent operation. When Dawut came to, she felt her womb ache.
“I was so angry,” she said. “I wanted another son.”  
Looking back, Omirzakh considers herself lucky.
After that frigid day when officials threatened to lock her up, Omirzakh called relatives around the clock. Hours before the deadline, she scraped together enough money to pay the fine from the sale of her sister’s cow and high-interest loans, leaving her deep in debt.
For the next year, Omirzakh attended classes with the wives of others detained for having too many children. She and her children lived with two local party officials sent specially to spy on them. When her husband was finally released, they fled for Kazakhstan with just a few bundles of blankets and clothes.  
The IUD still in Omirzakh’s womb has now sunk into her flesh, causing inflammation and piercing back pain, “like being stabbed with a knife.” For Omirzakh, it’s a bitter reminder of everything she’s lost — and the plight of those she left behind.  
“People there are now terrified of giving birth,” she said. “When I think of the word ‘Xinjiang,’ I can still feel that fear.”
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Hundreds of people gathered in Taiwan’s capital Sunday to participate in one of the few LGBTQ Pride events held around the world.   Participants flew a giant rainbow flag in the city’s Liberty Square in central Taipei as they marched in front of a memorial to Chaing Kai-shek, who ruled the island with an iron fist after he was driven off mainland China after losing the 1949 civil war to Mao Zedong’s communist forces.Participants march during the “Taiwan Pride March for the World!” at Liberty Square at the CKS Memorial Hall in Taipei, Taiwan, June 28, 2020.But since his death in 1975, the self-ruled island has since become a symbol of liberal democracy in Asia, becoming the first in the region to legalize same-sex marriage last year. The event in Taipei was staged in honor of the many cities who have been forced to cancel their LGBTQ celebrations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Taiwan has earned worldwide praise for its response to the pandemic, imposing strict restrictions and carrying out widespread contract tracing throughout the island of 23 million people, with just 447 confirmed cases and seven deaths.   
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The coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe looks to have done little, at least in Laos, to slow China’s grand plans for a high-speed rail line linking its landlocked interior to the bustling ports of Singapore through mainland Southeast Asia.Work crews started laying track along the first 414-kilometer leg of the line through the country in March, five years after breaking ground. With most of the many dozen tunnels and bridges it will need to cut through Laos’ mountainous north now bored and built, state media this month reported that the $6 billion project was 90% done. Service is set to start by 2022.Analysts say the full line remains a vital part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. Starting in Kunming, the capital of China’s Yunnan province, it will help the remote region tap into some of Southeast Asia’s largest economies, while boosting China’s political sway over them in the process.”The rail from Kunming to Singapore is a high priority for China. It will allow poor regions of western China, which are now landlocked, increased access to wealthier parts of Southeast Asia. It will boost trade and tourism,” said Murray Hiebert, a senior associate of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.”It would boost China’s political sway, but to a limited extent. Southeast Asian countries remain anxious about China’s goals,” added Hiebert, author of the forthcoming book Under Beijing’s Shadow: Southeast Asia’s China Challenge. He noted the competing claims some of them have with Beijing in the South China Sea and the Chinese dams they blame for choking off the Mekong River and exacerbating droughts in recent years.A bird’s-eye view of the planned route would show it winding through Laos, Thailand and Malaysia before reaching Singapore, hitting the countries’ capitals of Vientiane, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur along the way.Big push for regional influence”It will provide a big push for China to expand its economic influence [and] to eventually dominate mainland Southeast Asia; I think that’s going to be a long-term objective,” said Prapat Thapchatree, who heads the Center for ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Studies at Thailand’s Thammasat University.Laos has embraced the project warmly, hoping it will transform one of Southeast Asia’s poorest countries from landlocked to “land-linked” and draw new business from a line that promises to send more trade and tourists each way. It will turn what is a three-day slog from Boten on Laos’ border with China to the capital of Vientiane, on its border with Thailand, into a three-hour jaunt.However, the potential rewards come with some risk.A 2018 report by the U.S.-based Center for Global Development lists Laos among the countries hosting BRI projects that face the highest debt risk. A more recent report on BRI debts by Australia’s Lowy Institute said Laos owed more of its foreign debt to China, some 45%, than any of the other nine countries selected for its study. Much of it is going to pay for the railway. The government has borrowed about $1.5 billion from the state-owned Export-Import Bank of China to help pay for its 30% stake in the project, according to the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.Critics of China’s “debt diplomacy” say Beijing is pulling those financial strings to have Laos do its bidding within ASEAN. As a member of the 10-nation bloc, Laos stands accused of helping spoil efforts to mount a united front against Beijing’s sweeping South China Sea claims.”At a regional level, China has used Laos as a wedge against other countries in ASEAN,” said Elliot Brennan, a Southeast Asia analyst and research fellow at Sweden’s Institute for Security and Development Policy.The leg of the new rail line running through Laos will be of little use to China if it can’t extend the route south, keen as it is to connect with Southeast Asia’s larger economies.Thailand’s cautious approachHowever, Prapat said Thailand and Malaysia are more reluctant to be drawn much further into China’s orbit and, unlike Laos, have the clout to be coy and dictate terms.”Thailand is very cautious, very concerned about what’s happening in Laos and in Cambodia, when these two countries are too dependent on China,” he said, likening them to de facto provinces of their giant neighbor.Thailand and Malaysia are proving more practical about the project as well. “Even after the military coup in 2014 when the regime in Bangkok was shunned by many Western governments and China was one of its only friends, the generals played very hard to get because the high-speed train China was proposing was very expensive and not a priority for the Thai leadership,” said Hiebert.Thailand has moved cautiously in reaching a deal with China to build the route from Laos to Bangkok over cost concerns, and put off plans to sign the contract in December. Malaysia even froze work on its leg of the line from Thailand to Kuala Lumpur for nearly a year and agreed to start up again in April 2019 only after convincing China to slash the original $20 billion price tag by about a third.Analysts say China’s dreams of a high-speed rail line running the length of mainland Southeast Asia will be a harder sell still after the heavy hit the region’s economies have taken from the pandemic.Until the line does finally pull into Singapore, Prapat said, “it’s going to be a long way to go.” 
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Thousands of villagers have fled their homes in Myanmar’s Rakhine state after a local administrator warned dozens of village leaders that the army planned “clearance operations” against insurgents, a lawmaker and a humanitarian group said.But a government spokesman said late on Saturday an evacuation order issued by border-affairs officials had been revoked. Border affairs acknowledged issuing the order through the local administrator but said it affected fewer villages.The warning to the village leaders came in a letter written on Wednesday, which was seen by Reuters and verified by a state government minister, Colonel Min Than.The letter, signed by the administrator of Rathedaung township, Aung Myint Thein, told village leaders he had been informed the operations were planned in the township’s Kyauktan village and nearby areas suspected of harboring insurgents.The letter does not specify where the order came from, but Min Than, Rakhine state’s border affairs and security minister, told Reuters it was an instruction from his border affairs ministry, one of three Myanmar government ministries controlled by the army.“Clearance operation will be done by forces in those villages,” the letter from the administrator said. “While this is being done, if the fighting occurs with AA terrorists, don’t stay at the villages but move out temporarily,” it said, referring to the Arakan Army, the name of the Rakhine state insurgents.The administrator could not be reached for comment.Targeting ‘terrorists’Min Than said the “clearance operation” described in the letter referred to military operations targeting “terrorists.”He said the administrator had misinterpreted the order from his ministry and that the operations would only take place in a few villages, not the dozens mentioned, but confirmed other details.The operations could last up to a week, Min Than said by phone, adding that “those who remain will be those who are loyal to the AA.”On Saturday, government spokesman Zaw Htay said in a statement on Facebook the government had instructed the military not to use the term “clearance operations”. He also said the letter ordering people to flee had been revoked.He did not answer phone calls from Reuters seeking further comment. Reuters did not see the revocation instructions.This year the Myanmar army has been fighting the AA, a group from the largely Buddhist Rakhine ethnic group that is seeking greater autonomy for the western region, also known as Arakan.Dozens have died and tens of thousands been displaced in the conflict. Save the Children says 18 children were killed and 71 injured or maimed between January and March, citing local monitoring groups. The army says it does not target civilians.Refugees reported mass killings, arson in 2017″Clearance operations” is the term the Myanmar authorities used in 2017 to describe operations against insurgents from Rakhine’s Muslim-minority Rohingya people. During those operations, hundreds of thousands of people fled from their homes. Refugees said the army carried out mass killings and arson, accusations the army has denied.Rohingyas fled to neighboring Bangladesh during that military crackdown, which the government said was a response to attacks by Rohingya insurgents.The United Nations said in a statement on Sunday it was concerned by intense fighting in Kyauktan, including reports people were trapped and houses damaged. It called on all parties to “respect international humanitarian law, fulfill their responsibilities and take urgent measures to spare civilians and civilian infrastructure.”On Saturday, the British, Australian, U.S. and Canadian embassies in Myanmar said they were “deeply concerned by the reports of the Myanmar Military’s clearance operations  along the Kyauktan village tract” and “the worsening humanitarian andsecurity situation across the region.”“We are aware of the historic impacts of such operations disproportionately affecting civilians,” the statement said. It called on “all armed actors to exercise restraint while in areas inhabited by local communities, some of whom may not, by no fault of their own, be able to seek refuge elsewhere.”In anticipation of the new operation, Min Than said 80 people had fled Kyauktan to elsewhere in Rathedaung township and that the army had prepared shelter and food.Zaw Zaw Htun, the secretary of the Rakhine Ethnic Congress, a humanitarian group, said at least 1,700 had fled to the neighboring Ponnagyun township.Another 1,400 are sheltering in a nearby village and are in dire need of food and other supplies, said regional parliamentarian Oo Than Naing from Rathedaung township.A military spokesman did not answer phone calls seeking comment about the operations. Reuters could not independently verify how many people had fled their homes.The U.K.-based rights group Burma Human Rights Network said residents of 39 villages had begun to flee since the order was issued in Kyauktan on Wednesday, citing local sources.The Kyauktan area is home to tens of thousands of people, from both Rohingya and Rakhine communities, according to the Rakhine Ethnic Congress.Journalists are barred from most of Rakhine state, and the government has imposed an internet shutdown on most of the region, making information difficult to verify.  
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