Month: October 2021

The Olympic Torch Arrives in Beijing Under Cloud of Protests, Covid

Chin@Strategy

The Olympic torch arrived in Beijing on Wednesday, beginning a countdown to a Winter Games being held under the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic and calls for a boycott over China’s rights abuses in Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang. The arrival ceremony, like the official lighting of the Olympic flame in Athens on Monday, unfolded without spectators, one of many concessions to Covid-19 that will severely restrict access to the games, which begin on Feb. 4. China, with the “full support” of the International Olympic Committee, is planning to hold…

Can China grow out of its coal habit? Inside the 22 October Guardian Weekly

Chin@Strategy

China revealed its vision for a greener future at the UN biodiversity summit in Kunming last week. But with confirmation that Xi Jinping will not travel to the Cop26 summit in Glasgow at the end of the month, what does the president’s idea of an “ecological civilisation” really entail? It’s a notion that it seems will be hard to realise when coal still plays such a dominant role in the economy as our China affairs correspondent Vincent Ni discovers in a report that looks at life in a mining town…

China’s Bullying Is Becoming a Danger to the World and Itself

Chin@Strategy

Indeed, TSMC and its South Korean rival Samsung have the only foundries in the world able to make the most advanced 5-nanometer chips, and TSMC is expected to begin next-generation 3-nanometer chips in 2022. The smaller the chip’s transistors, the more brain power you can pack onto it. China’s biggest chip maker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, is not even close. It is mainly competing at 28 nanometers and just starting to produce some 14-nanometer chips. I recently spent time in Silicon Valley asking U.S. chip designers what is the secret…

In Xinjiang, officials are trying to stamp out Uyghur identity

Chin@Strategy

Oct 20th 2021 NEW YORK OFFICIALS IN XINJIANG have always been suspicious of the distinctive cultural identity of ethnic Uyghurs. They worry that it may fuel separatist yearnings in the far-western region. But in 2014, as the authorities stepped up their campaign to crush terrorism there, the government still tolerated displays of pride in Uyghur culture. In October that year a new talent show, “The Voice of the Silk Road”, aired on state-owned Xinjiang Television. It featured songs in various styles, from pop and R&B to traditional muqam music with…

China’s Shenzhou 13 Mission and Its Long-Term Impact

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Advertisement On October 16, China launched its most ambitious human space mission yet, the Shenzhou 13, to the Tianhe core module of China’s permanent space station (Tiangong) in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The crew of three astronauts (Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu) will be staying on the Tianhe for six months, the longest stint for Chinese astronauts so far, if accomplished successfully. Earlier missions, including the Shenzhou 12, the first human mission to the Tianhe, were for a period of three months. The Shenzhou 13 astronauts arrived safely…

At least 13 phone firms hit by suspected Chinese hackers since 2019, say experts

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At least 13 phone companies around the world have been compromised since 2019 by sophisticated hackers who are believed to come from China, a cybersecurity expert group has said. The roaming hackers – known as LightBasin – were able to “search and find” individual mobile phones and “target accordingly”, according to CrowdStrike, a group regularly cited by western intelligence. Hackers were also able to obtain personal subscriber information held by phone companies and metadata showing who made and received calls. “Sophisticated signals intelligence activity” aimed at phone company networks has…

Chinese effort to gather ‘micro clues’ on Uyghurs laid bare in report

Chin@Strategy

Authorities in the Chinese region of Xinjiang are using predictive policing and human surveillance to gather “micro clues” about Uyghurs and empower neighbourhood informants to ensure compliance at every level of society, according to a report. The research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) thinktank detailed Xinjiang authorities’ expansive use of grassroots committees, integrated with China’s extensive surveillance technology, to police their Uyghur neighbours’ movements – and emotions. The findings shed further light on the extraordinary scope of the Chinese Communist party’s grip on the largely Muslim and purportedly…

China Evergrande Gets Soft Treatment in Chinese Media

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As China Evergrande Group teeters on the edge of collapse, videos of protesting home buyers have flooded social media. Online government message boards teem with complaints and pleas for intervention to save the huge property developer. The hashtag “What does Evergrande mean for the real estate market?” has been viewed more than 160 million times on one platform. But if trouble threatens for China’s economy, you wouldn’t know it from reading the country’s front pages. The name “Evergrande” has barely been mentioned by top state-run news outlets in recent weeks,…

China’s GDP Growth Slows as Property and Energy Take a Toll

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Volkswagen, the market leader in China, said on Friday that its production had been falling as the company faced an ever-worsening chip shortage and other supply chain issues. The company doesn’t have enough cars to fill customers’ and dealerships’ orders, creating a backlog. “Our priority is to work off our backlog,” said Stephan Wöllenstein, the chief executive of Volkswagen’s China division. Finding Strength in Exports For months, economists have made the same prediction: The fast growth of China’s exports cannot last. The economists were wrong. China’s exports kept surging through…

US ‘very concerned’ despite China denials over hypersonic missile

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The United States is “very concerned” about China’s development of hypersonic technology, the US disarmament ambassador, Robert Wood, has said, after reports that Beijing had recently launched a hypersonic missile with a nuclear capacity. “We are very concerned by what China has been doing on the hypersonic front,” Robert Wood told reporters in Geneva. The Financial Times reported on Saturday that Beijing had launched a nuclear-capable missile in August that circled the Earth at low orbit before narrowly missing its target. Citing multiple sources, the FT claimed the hypersonic missile…