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China Updates
Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment
- Chinese influence spending increases: The Chinese foreign agent filings, compulsory for state-linked media in the United States, show a significant rise in spending in 2020 to $64 million, double the 2019 figure and up from just over $10 million in 2016. The filings for Xinhua, China’s official state media agency, say that while the company is owned by the state, it isn’t directed by it. That's a strange claim, given that Xinhua is run by party officials and Xi has repeatedly said media must take its orders from the Chinese Communist Party. The bulk of the reported funding went to CGTN America, a wing of China’s ubiquitous state television station. It’s questionable whether this money buys anything worthwhile: Although CGTN is available in 30 million households, its viewership is likely tiny. Chinese state influence in the United States mostly doesn’t work through obvious propaganda but instead through the gravitational pull of China’s vast market and the possibility of losing access to it. It’s much more significant that Hollywood refuses to touch Chinese human rights issues than that CGTN broadcasts reports no one watches.
- Coronavirus conspiracies: A 2015 text that touches on the use of coronaviruses as bioweapons has received dramatic coverage from some Western media and politicians, including being described as “bombshell documents” in Britain’s Daily Mail. But what is being presented as secret documents is actually a published book purveying a conspiracy theory about the United States being behind the first SARS outbreak in 2002. Although the book’s author is a senior military doctor, Chinese presses regularly turn out similarly paranoid texts.
- China's population statistics published: The Chinese government has finally released its 2020 population figures, showing a slight increase last year. But after recent leaks suggested the population may have declined, the official numbers have a credibility problem—not least because they were delayed for weeks. Even the public figures show a significantly aging population and a critically low birthrate. The statistics have caused populist propagandist Hu Xijin to hint that new government measures to increase births are on the way. What those policies will look like is up in the air. China could offer better financial incentives and child care assistance, or it could restrict abortion and engage in anti-feminist propaganda. Meanwhile, a new report confirms that while birth restrictions were loosened for the Han majority, they were tightened for Uyghurs, leading to a drop in birthrates.
- Fandom crackdown: The Chinese government’s latest target is online fan culture, which it describes as chaotic and disorderly. It’s true that Chinese fan groups, largely devoted to stars or bands, can be extremely dramatic online. But using the power of the state against them is like breaking a butterfly on a wheel. It’s also economically risky: Fandom is a $16 billion industry in China. The authorities have long been nervous about the influence of South Korean pop culture, but previous crackdowns have focused on stars’ images rather than their fans. But one of the underlying causes of these over-the-top campaigns is that the state has built a huge machinery of repression and censorship. With so many people already silenced, it still needs to justify its existence.
- Tesla in trouble in China: Electric carmaker Tesla has seen sales slide sharply in China after a rash of bad publicity and government scrutiny. An April scandal in which a Tesla executive accused an angry customer of being part of a conspiracy against the company caused a public relations nightmare, and Chinese media has run story after story about the company’s issues. Tesla has halted a significant land purchase in China, blaming the state of U.S.-China relations, and may back off from further investments. Owner Elon Musk’s perpetually eccentric behavior probably doesn’t help the company’s image with the authorities, who prefer more clean-cut businessmen.
- Xiaomi strikes deal with U.S.: The controveraial Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi has been removed from U.S. blacklists, following a series of court battles after the Trump administration listed it as a military-run company. The case was always weak and a little strange, given that Xiaomi isn’t known for its high tech but for its cheap phones and good PR. The move may encourage other Chinese firms to further press their legal challenges to policies left over from Donald Trump’s presidency.
- China grabbing Bhutan's territory: Since 2015, a previously unnoticed network of roads, buildings, and military outposts has been constructed deep in a sacred valley in Bhutan. Experts say China actually doesn’t need the land it is settling in Bhutan: the aim is to force the Bhutanese government to cede territory that China wants elsewhere in Bhutan to give Beijing a military advantage in its struggle with India. Gyalaphug is now one of three new villages (two already occupied, one under construction). This strategy is more provocative than anything China has done on its land borders in the past. The settlement of an entire area within another country goes far beyond the forward patrolling and occasional road-building that led to war with India in 1962, military clashes in 1967 and 1987, and the deaths of 24 Chinese and Indian soldiers in 2020. It violates the terms of China’s founding treaty with Bhutan. It ignores decades of protests to Beijing by the Bhutanese about far smaller infractions elsewhere on the borders. By mirroring in the Himalayas the provocative tactics it has used in the South China Sea, Beijing is risking its relations with its neighbors, whose needs and interests it has always claimed to respect, and jeopardizing its reputation worldwide.
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