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China's State Council Information Office on Monday issued the Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2021. The report said the human rights situation in the US, which has a notorious record, worsened in 2021 as political manipulation led to a sharp surge in COVID-19 deaths, and shooting deaths in the country hit a new record. `
The report revealed that despite having the world's most advanced medical resources, the US has the biggest number of COVID-19 infections and deaths globally. But the US government isn't rethinking its approach and still lacks effective anti-epidemic plans. Instead, it stoked the origins-tracing of COVID-19, and has been keen on passing the buck, shifting the blame and political manipulation. `
The public security situation in the country also deteriorated and violent crimes remained prevalent. There were 693 mass shootings in 2021, up 10.1 percent from 2020. More than 44,000 people were killed in gun violence, according to the report.
US human rights violations in 2021. Graphic: GT
`
The report also highlighted the country's growing discrimination against ethnic minority groups, especially people of Asian descent with around 81 percent of Asian American adults saying violence against Asian communities is rising. `
Unilateral US actions created new humanitarian crises across the globe, the report noted. A US drone strike during US' withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan killed 10 members of an Afghan family, including seven children, among which the youngest was only two years old. `
The report pointed out that in 2021, the US public persona of "human rights defender" was totally debunked as the so-called "Summit for Democracy" under the guise of safeguarding human rights became a farce. At the 48th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, many countries blasted the US for being the "biggest destroyer" of human rights in the world and urged the country to address its own human rights violations. `
It's universally acknowledged that the US has a big human rights problem. The problem is characterized by racial discrimination, the lack of respect for the disadvantaged, the disparity between the rich and the poor, and the number of shooting deaths every year, Li Haidong, professor at the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Monday. `
So when the US talks about human rights issues in other countries, it must have a clear understanding of its own human rights situation, Li urged. But the tragedy is that the politicians in the country always turn a blind eye to US' poor human rights record and pretend to be "teachers on human rights" in the international community, said Li. He added that the US has no qualification and pointed out the fact is that chaos on human rights in other countries and regions have often been brought by the US. `
On the human rights issue, the US should learn to communicate with other countries and regions on an equal footing, instead of imposing its own standards on them, Li urged. `
Chinese observers also criticized the US of weaponizing human rights to smear and attack other countries and regions, saying it is a despicable act.
Uncertain future: In this courtroom sketch,
Meng sits beside a translator during a bail hearing in Vancouver. She
faces extradition to the US on charges of trying to evade US sanctions
on Iran. – AP
The arrest of Huawei 'heiress' has thrown a rare spotlight on the family of the reclusive smartphone giant founder, Ren Zhengfei.
WHEN Huawei CFO Sabrina Meng Wanzhou appeared on Wednesday in a Vancouver courtroom, clad in an unbranded green tracksuit, the moment was witnessed by a single reporter from the local Vancouver Sun newspaper who happened to notice her name on the hearings list that morning.
By the end of the day, Meng’s arrest in Canada at the request of Washington was the biggest story in the world.
And when her bail hearing resumed on Friday, Meng entered court to see about 100 reporters, craning to look at her through two layers of bulletproof glass.
Meng who faces extradition to the United States, was charged for helping Huawei allegedly cover up violations of US sanctions on Iran.
Like many top Chinese executives, Meng is a mysterious figure even in her home country, but the 46-year-old chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies had been widely tipped to one day take the helm of the tech giant her father founded.
That was until her shock arrest, a move that has entangled her in the protracted diplomatic tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Crucially, Meng is the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei – one of China’s leading businessmen, an ex-People’s Liberation Army officer and an elected member of the 12th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
In other words, Meng is part of China’s elite.
Her father Ren moves in the highest government circles in China and founded Huawei in 1988, after he retired from the Chinese armed forces. Born into a rural family in a remote mountainous town in the southwestern province of Guizhou, Ren rose to the equivalent rank of a deputy regimental chief in the PLA and served until 1983, according to his official Huawei biography.
Officials in some governments, particularly the United States, have voiced concern that his company is close to the Chinese military and government. Huawei has repeatedly insisted Beijing has no influence over it.
Ren is one of the most watched entrepreneurs in China and was on Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in the world in 2005 and again in 2013.
But like his elder daughter, Ren has largely kept a low profile.
Ren has married three times. His first wife was Meng Jun, daughter of a former senior official in Sichuan province, Meng Dongbuo; she bore Ren two children: Sabrina Meng Wanzhou and a son, Meng Ping.
Meng’s current wife is Yao Ling, who gave him a younger daughter, Annabel Yao, 20. In a rare move, the three posed last month for a family photoshoot for French lifestyle magazine Paris Match. Annabel, a Harvard computer science student, became a sensation at last month’s Le Bal des Debutantes (or Crillon Ball) in Paris.
Ren’s third wife is Su Wei who, according to Chinese media reports, is a millennial who was formerly his secretary.
Interestingly, all his children opted not to take on their father’s surname – Meng adopted her mother’s surname after her parents divorced. According to Chinese news websites, Meng’s brother Ping, who also works for Huawei, followed her in taking their mother’s surname to “avoid unnecessary attention” – though the son was also known as Ren Ping in the past.
(This practice is not uncommon among the families of China’s elite. The co-founder of Chinese auction house China Guardian, Wang Yannan, opted not to take her father’s surname – she is the daughter of late Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang.)
Born in 1972, Meng joined the company in 1993, obtained a master’s degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 1998, and rose up the ranks over the years, mostly holding financial roles.
In her first media appearance before the Chinese press in 2013, Meng said she had first joined the company as a secretary“whose job was just to take calls”.
In the interview with China’s 21st Century Business Herald, Meng said she began her first job at China Construction Bank after graduating with her first degree in 1992.
Arrested Meng: Like her father, the Huawei CFO had led a quiet life, out of the spotlight. – Reuters
“I joined Huawei one year later because a branch closed its operations due to the business integration [of CCB],” said Meng, describing her early jobs in Huawei as “very trivial”.
Meng has served in various roles at the company since, until her latest role as the Hong Kong-based CFO of Huawei.
In 2003, Meng established Huawei’s globally unified finance organisation, with standardised structures, financial processes, financial systems, and IT platforms.
Since 2005, Meng has led the founding of five shared service centers around the world, and she was also the driver behind completion of a global payment center in Shenzhen, China. These centres have boosted Huawei’s accounting efficiency and monitoring quality, providing accounting services to sustain the company’s rapid overseas expansion.
Meng has also been in charge of the integrated financial services (IFS) transformation program, an eight-year partnership between Huawei and IBM since 2007. This has helped Huawei develop its data systems and rules for resource allocation, and improve operating efficiency and internal controls.
In recent years, Meng has focused on advancing detailed financial management at Huawei, working to align these efforts with the company’s long-term development plans.
Meng’s importance at Huawei became apparent in 2011, when she was first named as a board member. Company insiders describe her as capable and hardworking. Earlier this year, Huawei promoted Meng, to vice-chairwoman as part of a broader reshuffle. Meng is one of four executives who hold the vice-chair role, while retaining her CFO position. Despite assertions by Ren that none of his family members would succeed him in the top job, it is widely speculated that she was being groomed to take over the reins of the company eventually.
Married with a son and a daughter, Meng’s revelation that her husband did not work in the industry, dispelled the speculation she was married to a senior Huawei executive.
Meng did not conduct public interviews before 2013 and has seldom mentioned her personal life until recently, when she used her son to illustrate the importance of persistence.
“My son did not want to go swimming one day and he almost knelt on the ground and begged my husband so that he would not have to go. But he was rejected,” Meng said in a speech at Chongqing international school in 2016. “Now my son is proud to represent his school in swimming competitions.”
Meng recently made a speech at a Singapore academic conference in 2018, in which she talked of Huawei’s future role in technology development.
“Without universities, the world would be left in darkness. Without industry, science would be left in the ivory tower,” said Meng. “The fourth industrial revolution is on the horizon and artificial intelligence is one of its core enabling technologies. Huawei is lucky to be part of it.”
While her brother, Meng Ping, as well as her father’s younger brother and his current wife all work at Huawei and related companies, none has held such senior management roles.
“The other family members are in the back office, Sabrina is CFO and sits on the board,” a Huawei source said. “So she is viewed as the boss’s most likely successor.”
But her fate now is uncertain.
She faces up to 30 years’ jail for the alleged crime. Her lawyer in Canada, David Martin, had told the court that Meng posed no flight risk and should be granted bail. To flee would shame her in front of her father and all of China, said Martin.
“Her father would not recognise her. Her colleagues would hold her in contempt. She would be a pariah,” he said.
Meng leaned forward in her seat and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.
When the hearing adjourned, she was led away with her head bowed, a goldfish in a bowl that is the biggest story in the world. – South China Morning Post
Younger Huawei daughter: ‘I’m just a normal girl’
Arresting Yao: ‘My daily life is actually pretty boring compared to this.’
JUST last month, the reclusive Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei made headlines by appearing in French lifestyle magazine Paris Match with his younger daughter and current wife.
The daughter, Annabel Yao, 20, posed with a smile in front of a grand piano with her mother, identified by the magazine as Yao Ling, and Ren, who wore a blue shirt with his hand resting on her shoulder.
Suddenly, the whole family are making headlines again – even if for quite different reasons.
Few outsiders had previously heard of the younger daughter, a Harvard computer science student and ballerina. But Yao recently made a high-profile appearance at the exclusive Le Bal Debutante ball in Paris.
While Le Bal des Debutantes in Paris each year is a nod to the tradition of young society ladies entering the elite social scene of Europe, these days it courts modern debutantes, aged 16 to 21, who are chosen for their looks, brains and famous parents – prominent in business, entertainment and politics.
They parade in glamorous couture gowns, waltz with their cavaliers – young men who accompany the “debs” for the evening – and take part in photo shoots and interviews.
The schedule at the event, organised by Ophélie Renouard, is full of young women such as Baroness Ludmilla von Oppenheim, from Germany; Julia McCaw, daughter of AT&T founder Craig McCaw; and Yao – one of three debutantes chosen for the opening waltz this year.
“I definitely treated this as a debut to the world,” said Yao after the ball. “From now on, I’ll no longer be this girl living in her own world, I’ll be stepping into the adult world where I have to watch my own actions and have my actions be watched by others.”
Today’s Le Bal, is a diverse affair, a microcosm of the shifting tides of the global elite. Of the 19 debutantes of 2018, there were young ladies from India and America, Europeans from Portugal, France, Belgium and Germany, as well as Hong Kong’s Angel Lee, Kayla Uytengsu from the Philippines and China’s Yao.
Yao – who has lived in Britain, Hong Kong and Shanghai – was one of several Chinese debutantes in recent years. Hollywood offspring, such as the daughters of actors Forest Whitaker, Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone, have also become Le Bal regulars.
“All the girls were down-to-earth, easygoing, helpful and outgoing. No one was pretentious,” said Yao.
“All of them attended top universities or high schools like Stanford, Brown and Columbia, so it’s a group of girls who are privileged, but also work really hard.”
Diverse affair: Today’s ‘Le Bal’ is a microcosm of the shifting tides of the global elite like Yao (far right, front row).
As they swapped their jeans for tiaras and couture gowns and trade teenage antics for waltzing, the girls got to play fairytale princesses for three days and make their grand debut in high society.
They all arrived in Paris two days before the ball to meet, socialise with other girls and their cavaliers (Yao’s cavalier was the young Count Gaspard de Limburg-Stirum), rehearse and take part in portrait sessions.
Girls are given questionnaires about the fashion styles they like, and then choose from a selection. Yao donned a champagne gold J Mendel gown.
“An American designer with a very French style I wanted something modern,” she said. “I’m not super girlie inside, so I prefer something more chic and not so princessy It’s very elegant, and I’m not a fan of very [strongly] pigmented hues. I also loved the tulle texture of the dress, as it reminds me of a ballerina.”
“I definitely feel very honoured to be included, as there are only 19 girls in the world this year,” Yao added. “It means I have to work harder, try to accomplish great things in my life and be a role model for other girls.”
She said: “As people who have more privilege than others, it’s more important for us to help those with less opportunity. I want to get involved in philanthropy and charity I still consider myself a normal girl; it’s important for me to work hard and better myself every day.
“My daily life is actually pretty boring compared to this. I usually live like a normal student.”
Computer science is a heavy subject with a high workload, so she studies a lot. Her spare time is often taken up at the Harvard Ballet company (she’s been dancing since childhood). “I try to dance as much as possible,” she said.
A quick glance at the Ivy League student’s social media shows her jetting around the world wearing Dior, Louis Vuitton and Saint Laurent, but she’s quick to show her serious side. This summer, she did an internship at Microsoft “on a team focusing on machine learning and image recognition”.
However, she noted: “As much as I enjoy coding, I enjoy personal interactions a lot I have a passion for fashion, PR and entertainment.”
In the future, she sees herself working on the business side of technology. “I’ll try to integrate the tech knowledge I have,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll be a software engineer but maybe I’ll be more on the management side. I enjoy building connections.” – South China Morning Post
The Chinese government should seriously go behind the US
tendency to abuse legal procedures to suppress China's high-tech
enterprises. It should increase interaction with the US and exert
pressure when necessary. China has been exercising restraint, but the US
cannot act recklessly. US President Donald Trump should rein in the
hostile activities of some Americans who may imperil Sino-US relations.
In custody: A profile of Meng is displayed on a
computer at a Huawei store in Beijing. The Chinese government, speaking
through its embassy in Canada, strenuously objected to the arrest, and
demanded Meng’s immediate release. — AP
The United States' confrontational attitude toward China on human rights serves only its national interests, and it also harms global governance and the cause of international human rights, China's top human rights researchers, Liu Hainian, director of the human rights research center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said.
In a news conference in Beijing on Monday that was organized by State Council Information Office, four human rights researchers from think tanks and a university criticized the US for duplicity on the human rights issue.
The US, 10 other Western countries and Japan released a joint statement at the United Nations Human Rights Council on Thursday. The statement expressed their concerns over what it called "the deteriorating human rights record" in China, saying that Beijing has not only contravened its own laws but also breached its commitments to the international community.
'Selective blindness'
Liu Hainian, director of the human rights research center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the US is selectively blind to its own human rights problems, as well those of its allies, in racial and gender discrimination, gun violence, the treatment of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay military detention facility and illegal monitoring of citizens' private activities.
"The US' invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and its subversive movements in North Africa and the Middle East, directly harm local residents' human rights," said Liu.
The UN replaced the former Commission on Human Rights with the current Human Rights Council in 2006 to promote joint efforts in human rights protection and to avoid politicizing such efforts. Since then, the US has attempted 11 times to pass an anti-China resolution in the council. But all of these attempts have failed because of opposition from most member states.
'Cold War mindset'
"The US regards human rights as a political and diplomatic tool to realize its own purposes, as it did toward the Soviet Union after World War II," said Chang Jian, director of the human rights research center at Nankai University in Tianjin. "The Cold War strategy and mindset are outdated. The decline of its national power, especially in comparison with China, makes the US decision-makers nervous and they resort to their old tricks," Chang added.
Liu Huawen, a researcher of international law at CASS, said, "China is committed to peaceful development, constantly improving its human rights conditions and strengthening dialogue and cooperation with the other countries on human rights.
"But the US stands on the wrong side of history," he added. "What it wants is confrontation. The US has not yet signed some UN treaties in protecting children's, women's and disabled people's rights. It is ridiculous that it still plays the role of a judge of international human rights."
Li Yunlun, a professor of international studies at the Party School of the Central Committee of the CPC, said: "China faces up to its problems in human rights. China's poverty alleviation project will help the poorest citizens, and the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), if it comes true, will see comprehensive progress in China's human rights.
