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M’sians reminded to continue observing SOP in view of endemic phase
PETALING
JAYA: As Covid-19 cases and hospitalisation rates taper after
heightened pandemic activity in August, health experts are looking at
the government’s preparations for the endemic phase.
Epidemiologist and public health physician Prof Dr Sanjay
Rampal of Universiti Malaya said there was a decline in the national
daily reported cases and an even more pronounced decline in the number
of Covid-19 cases that were ventilated or in the intensive care unit
(ICU).
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As Malaysia enters the last quarter of the year, there is a glimmer of hope that a greater semblance of ‘normalcy’ can return, even if it is a new normal. Daily cases are down from a peak of nearly 25,000 in August while usage of ICU beds remains manageable.
Epidemiologist and public health physician Prof Dr Sanjay Rampal of Universiti Malaya said there was a decline in the national daily reported cases and an even more pronounced decline in the number of Covid-19 cases that were ventilated or in the intensive care unit (ICU).
These trends correlated well with a decreasing trend of test positivity ratio, he added.
As at Sept 27, the positivity rate stood at 9.8%, a decrease from the 14.8% recorded on Sept 16, which was the highest peak from April onwards.
“Based on all these trends, one may conclude that the national burden of Covid-19 has actually drastically decreased in recent weeks,” he said when contacted.
On preparations for the endemic phase or endemicity, Prof Sanjay said that regardless of what the government did, there would still be new cases of Covid-19.
But these cases would have less of an impact on the healthcare system due to the decreased risk of complications in vaccinated people, he said.
“As we learn to coexist with the virus, we must re-adjust back to the time before interstate travel restrictions were enforced while continuing to wear a mask in congested areas, practise good hand hygiene and maintain physical distancing as best as we can.
“Movement restriction should be used as the last resort in the management of the pandemic.
“The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends that movement restriction be implemented in high intensity for only short periods and only when the healthcare system is overwhelmed,” he added.
Prof Sanjay said that as Covid-19 became endemic, there would always be a baseline number of new cases daily but there was not enough data yet to accurately estimate this baseline number.
Universiti Putra Malaysia medical epidemiologist Assoc Prof Dr Malina Osman said an obvious decline in cases could be observed, particularly with active cases which stood at over 268,000 in August compared to over 168,000 on Wednesday.
“Similar patterns were observed for other indicators like hospitalisation, the number of patients in ICUS and those on ventilators.
“This indicates that the situation is much better compared to the previous month,” she added.
However, Dr Malina opined that the positivity rate being kept less than 5% was relevant during the late containment stage or earlier but once the outbreak was already in the mitigation stage, the value was no longer helpful in managing the outbreak.
On Covid-19 testing, Dr Malina said from a public health point of view, the numbers were acceptable as Malaysia had opted for targeted screening rather than mass screening.
She added that the focus now should be more on hospitals and clinical indicators rather than the number of screening tests.
On endemicity, Dr Malina said that as the situation had improved greatly and hospitals were no longer in a compromised state, the system would be able to cope.
“The government through the Health Ministry has taken all the necessary steps to cope with the surge of cases for the past few months.
“I think the major responsibility should be shared by the community as well. Communities should be empowered to decide on their own the best way to achieve optimum health status.
“They should know the best option to avoid getting infected. Practising recommended preventive practices and avoiding risky behaviours should be encouraged,” she added.
Malaysian Public Health Physicians’ Association president Datuk Dr Zainal Ariffin Omar agreed that the declining hospitalisation rates and daily cases were good signs as all the indicators were showing a downward trend.
“We are ready for the endemic phase. Vaccination for people over 12 years old should continue and so should surveillance on new clusters and variants,” he said.
The government should also continue with the current testing strategy and monitor the positivity rate until it was down to less than 5%, with over 150,000 daily tests conducted, he added.
The rates for hospitalisation, daily infections as well as deaths are currently declining after the nation was hit with a surge of Covid19 cases in July and August.
According to data from April to September this year, the highest number of Covid-19 patients hospitalised was on Aug 16, when 16,081 hospital beds were occupied, compared to 9,185 on Sept 29.
The highest number of daily infections was also recorded on Aug 26, at 24,599 cases logged compared to 12,434 on Sept 29.
As for deaths, Aug 7 recorded the highest number of actual deaths on a seven-day average at 334 lives lost, while reported deaths stood at 210 on the same date.
In contrast, Sept 29 recorded 88 actual deaths on a seven-day average and 208 reported deaths on the same date.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced that the entire country had moved out of Phase One of the government’s National Recovery Plan.
Xinjiang PV enterprise refutes unfounded Bloomberg report on irresponsible accusation of ‘forced labor’, plots ‘industry stifling’ in Xinjiang, this time targets solar energy industry - Global Times
First it was cotton; now it's Xinjiang's solar panels that are being targeted. Both are pillar industries of Xinjiang in Northwest China, and they have become the target of what appears to be a malicious campaign launched by Western anti-China forces to destroy Xinjiang's rapidly ascending economy and ultimately obstruct the development of China.
These forces behind the campaign position themselves as saviors and claim to counter a "genocide" in Xinjiang, but what they are doing is essentially attempting to wipe out the industries and the bread and butter of over 25 million people in Xinjiang, locals, businesses and experts said.
Unlike the campaign against Xinjiang's cotton, which was led by political forces, the latest campaign against the photovoltaic (PV) industry appears to be pushed by forces within the PV industry that have been overwhelmed by Chinese firms, including those in Xinjiang, for years, in an apparent ill attempt to use politics to crack down on what they can't compete with in the market, analysts pointed out. Such a shift in trend poses a serious threat for other industries in Xinjiang and around the country and demands forceful countermeasures, they said.
As the debate on the so-called forced labor issue in the Chinese solar energy industry has been hyped up lately following the West's groundless smearing on Xinjiang cotton, Chinese experts and solar energy insiders warned that the US is setting a trap and a pattern, step by step, to destroy Xinjiang's competitive industries, even with an aim to bring about the collapse of Xinjiang's economy and local people's livelihood.
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Once finding the approach of giving a bad name to the Chinese industry useful by citing "human rights abuses" or "forced labor," capital and interest groups may copy the smearing and boycott approach to stifle Xinjiang's industries, experts warned.
The Global Times interviewed a local polysilicon giant and found that the so-called forced labor in the region's PV industry is simply another lie created by certain media outlets, US trade groups and politicians.
"The workers from ethnic minority groups are mainly hired online, from universities and colleges, talent markets and by employee referrals. They enjoy paid annual leave, home visits with subsidies, wedding cash gifts, year-end bonuses and holiday gifts," Zhang Longgen, deputy chairman of Xinjiang Daqo, one of the four major Chinese polysilicon manufacturers, told the Global Times, denying any employment from Xinjiang's vocational education and training centers as reported by Bloomberg, the New York Times, POLITICO and so on.
Xinjiang Daqo's production accounted for around 15 percent of the global market share in 2020. "Silicon wafer producers are the customers of polysilicon. Around 97 percent of the global silicon wafers are made in China. All our products are sold in China," Zhang said.
"The ridiculous thing is that the US forcibly distorts facts and smears all the good things we have done that benefited the ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang," Zhang said.
By doing so, the US would strike a blow to China's, even the world's, solar energy sector and hurt the interests of ethnic groups in Xinjiang, he said.
At Xinjiang Daqo, 18 out of 1,934 workers are from ethnic minority groups. The average monthly salary at Xinjiang Daqo is 7,300 yuan ($1,118), compared with the average monthly salary of 6,617 yuan in Xinjiang's non-private sector and 3,825 yuan in the private sector in 2019.
"The proportion of labor costs in our company is less than 7 percent, so polysilicon manufacturing is not a labor-intensive industry," Zhang pointed out.
Dismissing a Bloomberg report on Tuesday which said "there's no freedom to refuse to sign factory contracts" for workers in Xinjiang, Zhang said some Western media's reports on Xinjiang came out of the reporters' "fertile imagination."
"Forced labor is not only unethical but also illegal in China. We have examined our suppliers recently and found no behavior of 'forced labor,'" Zhang said, adding the company's employee turnover rate is less than 3 percent.
"Anyone who tries to put a label of 'forced labor' on the Chinese PV enterprise should show their evidence. For example, who is forced to work in which enterprise? Without giving any testimony, such a claim is very irresponsible," Zhang said.
In a Bloomberg report, it said "guards in brown camouflage ordered away would-be observers" at the Xinjiang Daqo facility. The company told the Global Times it has been always open for visitors, but the coronavirus reduced such activities in the past year. "Bloomberg contacted us before Spring Festival this year, but China's epidemic control and prevention was strict at that time. That's why we didn't host it.
Echoing Zhang, a 39-year-old ethnic Mongolian worker named Bajin, said the so-called forced labor has never existed in the factory since he came to work for the company in May 2011, and none of his friends have ever complained about being forced to work in Xinjiang.
"I work eight hours per day and get two days off per week. I feel workers from ethnic minority groups at our company can even get extra care from our supervisors. So the Western countries' smearing is intentional to disturb ethnic unity in Xinjiang as well as our country's fast development," Bajin told the Global Times.
"For people at my age in Xinjiang, we all long for a good life, by farming, working or running our own businesses to improve our life quality. 'Forced labor' doesn't exist," he said, adding he earns 9,000 yuan per month as a production safety management staff member.
Smearing campaign
Zhang said he had smelled the conspiracy in the air for months, as he noticed that the share price of the US-listed Daqo New Energy Corp, the parent company of Xinjiang Daqo, dive from $130 to the current $67, dropping by approximately 52 percent in just two months.
Another Chinese PV giant Jinko Solar also suffered from short selling at the US stock market.
"We expressed strong condemnation to the groundless and irresponsible media reports that turned things upside down," Zhang noted.
The pace interestingly is in line with a report released in a publication by consulting firm Horizon Advisory in January, which claimed that "forced labor" is being used in the Chinese PV supply chain.
On top of that, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), the US national trade group, urged its members to move their supply chains out of Xinjiang. More than 170 companies have signed a nonbinding pledge to avoid the so-called forced labor.
Xinjiang produces around 45 percent of the world's polysilicon supply - a type of upstream raw material in the photovoltaic (PV) industry, according to Dai Yanling, a veteran PV practitioner in China. Requiring intensive energy, such material is largely churned out in places that have large amounts and cheap electricity, thermal power and PV energy. That made Xinjiang, Southwest China's Yunnan, as well as North China's Inner Mongolia appealing in polysilicon manufacturing. China accounts for more than 85 percent of the world's polysilicon supply.
"Polysilicon manufacturing is not a labor-intensive industry anymore. Labor costs are not a key factor," Dai said.
US Senators Marco Rubio, Rick Scott and others introduced the so-called "Keep China Out of Solar Energy Act" at the end of March in quick succession, banning US federal funds from being used to buy solar panels from companies based in China.
It is clear that the US has a map to crack down on China's PV industry, as it first started from a trade group's instigation, then to a further upgrading by US politicians, and "the reason behind it is that China's rapid growth in the solar energy sector moved the cheese of US companies," Dai said.
Dai said that before 2010, the polysilicon used in global solar energy had been monopolized by US and German enterprises, which had profiteered Chinese PV firms by forcing the them to sign long-term contracts (some are 10 years) with them.
Over more than a decade after China ramped up efforts in developing the PV industry, the price of polysilicon has dropped from $400-500 per kilogram in foreign companies before 2010 to $20 per kilogram in Chinese companies now, the practitioner noted.
Even if the US is the place of origin of PV technologies, its current PV sector lags behind when compared with developed countries like Germany, Japan and developing countries like China. Such a situation worried the US PV practitioners, Dai added.
To beat down the Chinese PV industry, the US government has taken different actions, such as in 2012, the US Department of Commerce imposed levies of 31.14-249.96 percent anti-dumping duties on Chinese PV cells while China's growth in solar energy was forging ahead.
Global Times reporters also found out over the past two years that many US business and trade representatives have cited the PV industry as a "classic case" when talking about the China-US trade frictions.b
The duties and crackdown policies have not beaten down China's PV industry, which disappointed the US.
According to the SEIA, the US PV industry was at a standstill during the Trump administration, with its PV install capacity dropping in the first two years during his term of office. After the relevant taxation reducing policy, the PV industry recovered a little in the US.
The first thing pushed forward by the incumbent US President Joe Biden was to get back to the Paris Agreement and set strategic goals in the energy sector.
Analysts said that in addition to strengthening the efforts to combat climate change, his aim was also to catch up the pace in the PV sector with other countries and even regain an upper hand, as major countries around the world embrace a green future in front of the crisis of global warming and climate change.
What also concerned the US businessmen is the US' high dependency on China in the PV supply chain, as Chinese companies have both lower costs and technological superiority, particularly in large size silicon wafers and granular silicon.
According to a report by McKinsey & Co in 2018, China's PV industry competitiveness surpassed the US by a lot. Among the top 10 global PV modules enterprises in 2020, three came from China and only one came from the US.
Zhang also cited statistics from the China Photovoltaic Industry Association to prove the country's PV supply could make tremendous contributions to the world's renewable energy transformation: Chinese raw material of silicon accounts for 67 percent of global share, wafers 97 percent, solar cells 79 percent and PV modules 71 percent.
Workers
at a cotton textile factory in Aksu City, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous
Region, northwest China, March 29, 2021. (Photo/CGTN)
Destroying value chain
It looks like the tactics of the PV industry have some water splash.
In a list of questions regarding alleged "forced labor" in Xinjiang, several members of the Dutch parliament urged the Netherlands government to explain if it is aware that solar PV panels and other components imported from China may contain raw materials from Xinjiang, according to local media reports.
They also asked the government to explain the possible impact on Dutch and European renewable energy markets in such situation as imports of Xinjiang-produced solar modules would be suspended.
Regarding the previous action on Xinjiang cotton, and now the PV industry, which accounts for 80-90 percent of the world's PV modules supply, Chinese experts warned that other industries, such as mechanical and electrical products, electric power and petroleum, could also be the next targets, and the US government is trying to suffocate or even kill Xinjiang's outstanding industries, with the help of some other Western countries.
"It looks like the US wants Xinjiang's competitive industries to die out in the region, so far namely cotton and solar energy, but in fact, it is destroying China's participation in the global value chain," Wang Yao, a research fellow specializing in border areas at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.
The exports of mechanical and electrical products in Xinjiang are also vibrant, and countries along the Belt and Road are the main buyers. In 2019, mechanical and electrical products championed the most popular exported goods in Xinjiang, with the export value hitting 33.79 billion yuan, accounting for 27 percent of the region's total exports.
Last but not least, they are copying the smearing approach on Xinjiang cotton onto the PV industry after the first trial was testified effective, Wang noted. "If so, China's PV sector may be kept out of the door by the US, even the world."
However, the tactics being used by US interest groups in slandering Xinjiang's PV sector is a little different from that for cotton. Unlike the crackdown on Xinjiang cotton which was initiated by politicians, the suppression of the PV sector began from companies and industry groups that initiated the accusation, then US politicians stepped in, showing the voluntary collusion between industrial capital and politicians in their mutual objective of cracking down on China's development, experts said.
Last year, amid the reports of alleged "forced labor," the US Fair Labor Association wrote a report on such a topic in January 2020. At that time, the Shanghai office of Switzerland-based Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) had examined cotton factories in Xinjiang and found no forced labor.
Clothing brands such as Adidas and H&M, which have cooperation with BCI, also conducted examinations in Xinjiang. H&M had stated that it found no clue of "forced labor" in factories in the Aksu Prefecture.
But on October 21, 2020, BCI announced on its website to cease all field-level activities in China's Xinjiang region.
Such a move was driven by pressure from outside, as well as other interests. Since member fees are the main financial source for BCI, brand members, including Nike, LEVIS, or GAP from the US, have a significant influence on BCI. The US Agency for International Development was once a council member.
After suffering pressure from multiple sources, including the US government, popular clothing brands declared they refused to source any cotton production from Xinjiang.
After seeing fruitful results of slandering Xinjiang cotton, the cards of Xinjiang human rights and "forced labor" might be a "master key" for the US to hit any industry of Xinjiang, Wang warned, saying electric power and petroleum are very likely to be the next targets.
"The choice of polysilicon is different from that of cotton, as the costs of cotton produced in China remain higher than that produced in the US, Brazil and Australia. That means, with the lower-cost advantage of PV products, this round of crackdown on Xinjiang polysilicon will not succeed," Gao Lingyun, an expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing who closely follows China-US bilateral trade, told the Global Times on Friday.
The sixth National Security Education Day falls on Thursday, with the Chinese national security agency releasing a series of cases related to the threat against China's political security. Experts on international intelligence and security said under the intensifying China-US competition, foreign hostile forces have increased efforts to target the political security of China rather than merely conducting regular espionage activities.
The law enforcement cases released by relevant national security agencies this year are different from the past, which specifically focus on the political security issue, including suspects who have colluded with foreign anti-China forces that try to subvert the state power. Some of them are related to the Hong Kong turmoil in 2019, which try to expand the Western-backed color revolution from the special administrative region to the mainland.
"When we talk about national security, people will normally think of foreign espionage activities that target China's military and economic intelligence. But now many recent cases show that the internal and external anti-China forces are colluding with each other," Li Wei, an expert on national security and anti-terrorism at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times.
"This shows that the foreign hostile forces are strengthening their efforts to promote 'color revolution', to damage the political security of our country," Li said, stressing that this has become the primary national security challenge that China is facing at the moment.
Regular espionage activities targeting military and economic intelligence aim to help relevant countries in their negotiations or competition with China, "but the color revolution that directly targets our political security is trying to harm the stability and public order in our country, so it's much more serious and destructive," said a Chinese expert on international intelligence who asked for anonymity.
Technically, a color revolution is a "smarter measure" to help Western countries, especially the US, destabilize or overthrow a country, the expert said. "After the Iraq War, the US and its allies have been more reluctant to dispatch ground troops because direct military operation will cause casualties to their soldiers and other unpredictable costs. But using social media networks, NGOs, and 'diplomats' to mobilize, train, fund and organize local people against the government will cost less and is easier to create chaos."
Humanitarian disaster: the truth of US-initiated wars
"We can see many similar cases in Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Ukraine and Belarus. The main actors in those countries are local people guided by Western proxies, and Western military forces normally serve as a supporting role, and sometimes they don't even show up," he said.
Chinese analysts said the US and its allies dare not directly launch military operations against nuclear-armed major powers, like China and Russia, or their neighboring countries. So after a series of ineffective approaches like the trade war, military pressure and propaganda stigmatization, the color revolution is being used a major tactic to disrupt China's development, and it seems like is the last card that the US can play to stop China from realizing great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
More aggression
In one case among the recently released law enforcement cases that aim to promote national security education, a student surnamed Tian who studied journalism at a university in North China's Hebei Province has become a "cub reporter" in China working for a mainstream Western media. Tian established an anti-China website in 2018 and cooked up and spread a huge amount of disinformation and political rumors.
In April 2019, Tian was invited to visit a Western country, and has engaged with more than 20 hostile foreign groups and more than a dozen officials of the host country to receive direct instruction, which requires Tian to provide "evidence" that could be used to stigmatize China. Tian's acts have seriously harmed China's political security, and he was arrested in June 2019, according to information provided by state security agencies.
Li said this is a typical case of the US and Western anti-China forces infiltrating and inciting Chinese students and using them to serve the ideological warfare against China.
"Working for Western media outlets is not a problem, but if using the profession of a journalist as a cover to conduct activities to harm national security is a crime," Li said, noting that not all employees in Western media outlets are spies, but there are some Western journalists backed by Western politicians and intelligence agencies.
In cooking-up rumors about "genocide" and "forced labor" in China's Xinjiang, Western media are playing an important role, Li noted. "Just like this case, those 'journalists' are receiving funding and training in other countries, and implementing the tactic of anti-China politicians to destabilize China."
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On Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at the routine press conference that in 2020, the US ambassador to Turkey met with the head of the local ETIM (East Turkestan Islamic Movement) branch.
The ETIM, or Turkistan Islamic Party, is an extremist, terrorist and separatist organization that challenges China's sovereignty and stability in Xinjiang. The UN Security Council Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee has listed ETIM as a terrorist organization since 2002.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry played a video segment at the press conference, which showed Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator, revealing in a 2015 interview that "a lot of these people are taken out (from Xinjiang) by the Gladio operatives...they are trained, they are armed and then they are sent back."
Putting things together, one cannot help but wonder, what did the US ambassador to Turkey talk about with the head of anti-China force? What is Operation Gladio? Does the US intend to cause trouble in Xinjiang?" Zhao said.
According to the released information, in the past, some arrested former senior officials in Xinjiang said they even colluded with foreign separatist forces to conduct or tolerate terrorist attacks in the region, and use textbooks with extremist content in local schools, which brought serious damage to the national unity and political security.
Hong Kong frontline
Hong Kong is another frontline of China's national security and political security. Since the national security law for Hong Kong took effect in June 2020, foreign forces behind months-long anti-government riots in the city since June 2019 have begun to waver, given that offenders would face severe sentences — as high as life imprisonment. The law would also cut off "the invisible hands" behind the chaos caused by foreign troublemakers, experts said.
It's not surprising to many that Western forces used Hong Kong's open city status to incite color revolution through various channels, including media outlets, student unions, political parties and labor unions by funding, training, advising them or organizing illegal assemblies, protests and riots, all tactics that could be found in the 2019 turmoil.
The implementation of the national security law helped Hong Kong restore social order, plugging the loopholes in local security laws, Chris Tang Ping-keung, Commissioner of Police, told the Global Times on Wednesday, as the law has been functioning as an effective deterrence to those lawbreakers who endanger national security.
Since the implementation of the national security law for Hong Kong, 100 people have been arrested by the Hong Kong Police Force for suspected of endangering national security, Tang said.
Safeguarding national security is regarded as the top priority for the Commissioner of Police for 2021, which is also among the top four tasks for the HKPF. The police team will continue collecting and analyzing national security-related intelligence, investigating in criminal cases endangering national security and conducting intelligence-driven operations to prevent acts endangering the national security, Tang noted.
"The HKPF will also enhance cooperation with all institutions and stakeholders in safeguarding national security and earn more public trust and support," he said.
To facilitate public participation in safeguarding national security, the HKPF national security department has launched a hotline for reporting relevant non-emergency cases since November 5, 2020.
Nasty acts will backfire
Apart from targeting Xinjiang and Hong Kong which are traditional geopolitical hotspots, foreign hostile forces are also keen to use issues like LGBT, feminism and environmentalism which are easy to stir heated discussions on social media via disinformation and rumors to create problems by instigating conflicts between specific groups in China, said the anonymous expert on international intelligence.
Fortunately, this kind of practice is unable to cause a significant impact or escalate into a massive color revolution, since with the modernization and development of China, the majority of Chinese netizens are able to discuss these issues with a mature and reasonable attitude, and legal civil organizations on LGBT or environment protection will distance themselves from hostile foreign intervention, the expert said.
"Those extremists backed by Western forces have been marginalized in our society and their illegal activities online and offline will be managed and controlled effectively by relevant law-enforcement agencies," he noted.
Ironically, the US has found that some of its approaches to push color revolution worldwide could backfire, and the rise of Trumpism and intensifying Black Lives Matter movement and the Capitol Hill riot have seriously undermined its image and credibility when it tries to promote color revolutions in other countries, the expert said.
International cooperation
The Western-backed color revolution is a common threat faced by China and many countries including Russia, and countries in Central Asia, Middle East, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. So defending political security now also requires international cooperation, analysts said.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at a press conference after his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in March that the two countries will jointly oppose color revolutions and safeguard their national sovereignty and political security.
"Fighting color revolutions is an important task for China and Russia to not just protect themselves but also safeguard regional peace and stability. The two countries could cooperate on intelligence sharing, joint operations against Western illegal NGOs that would create disinformation to hype instability and cybersecurity," Yang Jin, an expert at the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a veteran anti-China foundation financed by the US government, has been discovered to have spent more than $10 million to fund secessionist organizations and subversive activities in China in 2020. In the financial statements published on NED's website in February, at least 69 programs and activities related to secessionists and anti-China forces received grants in the past year, maliciously interfering in China's internal affairs using pretexts like human rights and religious freedom.
NED is notorious for propagating anti-China propaganda and meddling in other countries' internal affairs. Funding for this self-proclaimed private, nonprofit organization, which largely comes from the US Congress, has long been funneled to secessionists in China's Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan regions, observers have found.
Allen Weinstein, the co-founder of NED, told The Washington Post back in 1991 that "a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."
The foundation - once behind some covert operations in Eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s - now plays a major role in the infiltration and penetration of US-sponsored hostile Western forces into China, said Cao Wei, an expert on security studies at Lanzhou University.
"Their aim is to contain China's development and rise," Cao told the Global Times.
NED's spending on splitting and subverting China in 2020. Graphic: GT
Supporting Hong Kong rioters
On its website, NED published the list of grants for China in 2020 covering four main regions: Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Tibet Autonomous Region, and the rest of the Chinese mainland. With a total of $10.2 million, the grant funding in 2020 was much higher than the $6 million it unabashedly spent in these regions in 2019, the Global Times found.
Hong Kong seemed to be an investment priority for NED in 2020, with more than $2 million in grants being targeted to at least 11 anti-China organizations and projects in the region that year, the NED's website revealed.
The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI), two major US-based organizations included on China's sanctions list for supporting anti-China forces to create chaos and engage in extremist, violent and criminal acts in Hong Kong, unsurprisingly became recipients of grants by NED once again in 2020.
NED gave the Hong Kong teams of NDI and IRI $350,000 each in 2020, which are the two largest recipients in Hong Kong.
Angelo Giuliano, a Hong Kong affairs observer from Switzerland, told the Global Times the US government has always adopted a strategy of funding NGOs, instructing them to "help" particular countries to change course into more "civil societies," which is, in actuality, a blatant attempt at interfering in the internal affairs of other countries or even subverting their administrations.
NDI's key members reportedly met rioters in Hong Kong to support the violence there. Adam Nelson, a senior program manager of NDI's Asia team, met some of the leaders of the Hong Kong rioters in December 2019 at a local restaurant. The organization's president, Derek Mitchell, was also seen talking with riot leader Anson Chan Fang On-sang in Hong Kong one day in November 2019, just after the region's council elections ended, local media reported.
NED was actively seeking foreign allies for the Hong Kong rioters, in addition to providing funding. The foundation said it spent more than $75,000 in the name of building international solidarity and support for Hong Kong in 2020, openly interfering with China's internal affairs with foreign forces.
NED increased its investment in Hong Kong after the "Occupy Central" movement in 2014. It spent an average of $450,000 every year on the city to instigate acts of sabotage between 2015 and 2018, according to the local news outlet wenweipo.com.
"NED is only the tip of the iceberg, the visible side," Giuliano told the Global Times. There is probably more hidden and complex financing when it comes to Hong Kong, which may have started even before the 1997 handover," he said, suggesting the logic behind it is the US' increasing fear of China and some complex practical interests.
Making waves in Xinjiang and Tibet
China's Xinjiang and Tibet regions are major regions where the US' anti-China forces attempted to make waves in 2020. NED spent $1.25 million in Xinjiang and $1 million in Tibet to support secessionist groups and activities there, according to the financial disclosures it published on its website on January 25.
More than half of its Xinjiang-related grants went to the notorious separatist organization, World Uyghur Congress (WUC), and its Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) in 2020, the Global Times found.
Based in Munich, the US-backed WUC, which was reportedly found to be linked to terrorist groups, aims to split Xinjiang from China and this goal has never changed, Weinsheimer, a German scholar on China's ethnic groups, told the Global Times.
In February 2020, WUC triggered widespread anger after using photos of some Xinjiang locals to spread rumors during the 43rd session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. The group printed many photos of Uygur people and concocted false allegations, alleging they were detained or had gone missing in Xinjiang.
One of the persons in the photos happened to be Halat Abudurehman, a friend of Mahemuti Abuduwaili, deputy director of the institute of history at the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences, who was then also in Geneva. Mahemuti told the Global Times that he was surprised to see his friend's photo there. He later called Halat and found the latter was on a walk.
UHRP was active in spreading the recent mass rape allegations against Xinjiang, which involved a woman named Tursunay Ziawudun who claimed to have been gang-raped in a county in Xinjiang. However, the interviews she gave to Western media before did not include allegations of rape or harsh treatment.
UHRP helped Tursunay get to the US where she applied to stay, BBC reported in February. After UHRP stepped in, Tursunay began to claim to have been raped in training centers in Xinjiang.
NED and the separatist groups it funded in Xinjiang invoke human rights and democracy as a cover, but their actions and activities of maligning the Chinese government and deceiving the world have exposed their real political intentions for dividing China and disrupting Xinjiang region's development, Cao Wei remarked.
What NED kept doing in Tibet follows the same old gimmick, said Wang Hongwei, a professor at Renmin University of China's School of Public Administration and Policy.
"Its grants were used to finance the NGOs that explicitly support 'Tibetan independence,' and to foster illegal publications, broadcasts, or media that keep distorting the history and current situation of Tibet on international public opinion stage," Wang told the Global Times.
Infamous separatist organizations, including the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD), and the Tibet Justice Center (TJC) were on NED's 2020 grants list.
Based in India, TCHRD has frequently accused the Chinese government of arresting people in Tibet, which were proved to be no more than baseless attacks.
The US-based TJC was once turned down by the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. TJC aimed to split China and its separatist activities had gravely violated the purposes and principles of the Charter of the UN, said Zhang Yishan, then Deputy Permanent Representative of China to the UN.
Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) was one of the organizations that received more funding from NED in 2020. It got $150,000 under the grant category: strengthening the Tibetan movement - campaigning, training, and strategic organizing. This US-based separatist group was found to have participated in the deadly March 14 riots in Lhasa in 2008, according to China's public security authority.
A more flexible, covert strategy
NED's grant information also showed the anti-China forces' attempt of further infiltrating the Chinese mainland in 2020.
The foundation spent at least $5.8 million in funding more than 30 institutes and projects targeting the mainland, including a $1.2 million grant used to defame the Chinese government on an international scale under the guise of "freedom of expression," observers found.
Among those on NED's long grants list, the organization Solidarity Center (SC) appears to have received more than $1 million to "raise workers' rights awareness," and the US-based secessionist news site, China Digital Times, collected a grant of $125,000.
The data on NED's regional funding and financial statements reveals it has a clear plan and strategy for containing China, Cao Wei said.
Compared with other more intense struggles, the strategy of encouraging these ideologically biased organizations to promote rogue political movements, or to incite hatred under the banner of safeguarding rights, is now more likely to be used by Western anti-China forces, said Cao.
"The strategy is more flexible and covert, less costly, but very effective," he told the Global Times. "It may cause social unrest and even lead to a color revolution in serious cases."
Wang pointed out that NED's primary mission is to serve US foreign policy interests, and a very important part of that mission is to obstruct countries that threaten the US by agitating internal conflicts to weaken and defeat them.
NED has used tactics such as propping up the opposition in general elections or venting at scandals by the ruling party during elections, funding illegal publications, broadcasts and media, and leading figures in the opposition to create images of persecuted heroes to generate public sympathy, Wang said. "All of these tactics have been used on China in recent years," he told the Global Times.
Cao suggested Chinese authorities should actively implement laws and regulations on the management of foreign NGOs and strengthen international cooperation, cutting off the channels of collusion between anti-Chinese forces and their external links, and preventing the formation of rumor mills and fake news proliferation globally.
In recent years, the Chinese government has imposed sanctions on important figures tied to NED, amended the laws on the management of foreign NGOs and counterintelligence, which have achieved certain results, observers said.
Apart from reinforcing the oversight of NGOs in China, Wang suggested the Chinese government strengthen ideological education for people to be more confident in the country and avoid being easily tricked by rumors and slander, he said.
Domestic drive: The US has endorsed ‘Buy American’ policies, which would favour domestic producers but would be blatantly illegal under WTO rules.
https://youtu.be/vcn5Lxshw20
US multilateralism is coming back in many areas but in trade, many retrograde policies of the past are continuing.
AFTER the end of the Trump presidency in January, multilateralists around the world heaved a collective sigh of relief.
Gone would be the wrecking ball aimed at international institutions.
Gone would be the go-it-alone approach to dealing with global problems. Gone would be policies towards the rest of the world premised on “America First”.
Gone, hopefully, would be the capricious trade wars, some of them directed at American allies.
To a large extent, these high hopes have proved justified.
Within its first 40 days, the Biden administration has reversed many of its predecessor’s disengagements from multilateral institutions and processes.
It has rejoined the Paris Agreement on climate change, which the United States had abandoned in 2017.
It walked back to former president Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the World Health Organisation (WHO), which was due to take effect from July 6.
It has pledged US$4bil (RM16bil) for the WHO-sponsored Covax initiative which aims to distribute Covid-19 vaccines to the developing world, which the Trump administration refused to join.
It has agreed to endorse an allocation of special drawing rights – the International Monetary Fund’s hard currency – which would provide additional resources to poor countries without adding to their debt, and which former Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin had declined to support.
Given that the World Bank is the world’s biggest financier of climate change-related investments, its president David Malpass reasonably expects that the Biden administration, for which battling climate change is a priority, will be supportive of its mission.
The administration has also vowed the US’ “unshakeable” commitment to Nato, which Trump had derided as an outdated organisation that imposes excessive burdens on the US.
But there is one critical area where the Biden administration is hesitant to support multilateralism, and that is trade.
Here, multilateralists can be grateful for some small mercies.
At least the administration has affirmed its commitment to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) – the custodian and enforcer of world trade rules – which the Trump administration all but ignored during the last four years and even threatened to leave.
It has also broken the impasse over WTO’s leadership, by endorsing the candidacy of Nigerian-American economist Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for the post of directorgeneral, which was supported by the majority of the WTO’s 164 members, but which the Trump administration had blocked.
So, after being leaderless for almost six months, the WTO now at least has someone in charge.
Modest ambitions
But beyond that, and judging by actions rather than words, the multilateralist ambitions of the Biden administration on trade appear modest.
It has made clear that it will not pursue any trade agreements until it restores America’s competitiveness by investing trillions of dollars in areas such as energy, education and infrastructure.
It has endorsed “Buy American” policies, which would favour domestic producers and would be blatantly illegal under WTO rules.
Citing “systemic problems”, it has continued the Trump administration’s policy of blocking appointments of new judges to the WTO’s appellate body, which functions as a “supreme court” that adjudicates trade disputes.
The body has been unable to issue any judgments since Dec 11, 2019, because it did not have the minimum of three members required to issue a ruling.
Currently, with all judges having completed their terms, there is not a single judge on the body. This means that any appeal against a judgment by a lower panel at the WTO disappears into legal limbo, and the judgment is not binding.
In September last year, a lower panel ruled in favour of China, which made the case that the 25% tariffs levied by the US in June and September 2018 violated the WTO’s cardinal principle of non-discrimination.
The US is appealing that judgment, but the appeal cannot be heard, as the US would know, so the tariffs will remain in place.
Indeed, the Biden administration appears in no hurry to lift the Trump administration’s tariffs on China, all of which are likely to be WTO-illegal, according to trade experts.
It wants to use these tariffs as leverage to secure concessions from Beijing, including its compliance with the phase one trade deal negotiated by the Trump administration under which China was supposed to buy US$ 200 bil worth of US goods and services split over last year and this year, but is falling short of the target.
It has also continued the Trump administration’s policy of designating Hong Kong’s exports as “Made in China”, citing “national security” concerns – which means that in the US view, that issue, too, cannot be adjudicated by the WTO.
In short, a return to multilateralism on trade does not seem to be a priority for the Biden administration.
‘Elephant in the room’
The rise of China is one of the main sources of this reticence.
Like the Republicans, Democrats believe that the WTO is not fit for purpose in dealing with all of China’s alleged trade malpractices.
The case for this is well articulated in a 2016 paper by Harvard Law School Prof Mark Wu, now a senior adviser to the US Trade Representative’s office.
He argues that the main problem is that WTO rules – which were crafted before China joined the organisation – were not made with China’s distinctive economic system in mind.
WTO rules can address only those among China’s trade malpractices which are shared by other countries – such as requiring foreign investors to partner with local firms and buy from local suppliers, or granting exclusive rights to local firms to import or sell goods in the local market – which are practices that are not unique to China, and for which case law already exists.
But problems arise in cases where the boundaries between state and private enterprises are blurred, as is often the case in China. It is then not easy to judge whether a preferential transaction is of a private commercial nature – which falls outside the WTO rules – or amounts to a state subsidy.
At the heart of the problem is what constitutes a “public body”, which in China is not as clear as in other countries.
It is widely accepted, including by WTO itself, that WTO rules need to be updated, not only relating to China but also to issues such as digital trade, competition, services, labour and the environment.
But China, which is involved in the majority of trade disputes involving major economic powers, is the “elephant in the room”.
However, updating the rules should not mean sidelining the WTO in the meantime, which is what seems to be happening.
In a departure from the unilateral approach taken by the Trump administration, the Biden administration says it plans to deal with China’s trade practices in concert with other countries.
But there is no better way to do this than in a multilateral forum like the WTO, which applies a core set of principles to trade disputes such as non-discrimination, has mechanisms to monitor and enforce its rules and which would accommodate the concerns of multiple countries, which is how multilateralism should work.
Besides, China has a good record of complying with WTO rulings that go against it, and not such a good record of caving in to bilateral pressures.
Judicial paralysis
Shutting down the WTO’s judicial function by effectively neutralising its appellate body is especially ill advised.
Some concerns about the way the body functions and its alleged “judicial overreach” may be legitimate, but even if so, this applies only to a minority of cases that the body has adjudicated.
Disabling the WTO’s appellate body prevents the majority of cases, including those unrelated to China, from being resolved.
Besides, for all the criticisms levelled against it, the appellate body has a proud record.
In its 25 years of operation, it has resolved 195 disputes compared with around 160 cases completed in 74 years by the International Court of Justice, with 15 standing judges. Moreover, it has disposed of cases within a few months on average, compared with a few years in the case of other international adjudicating bodies.
Recounting these achievements in her farewell speech on Nov 30 last year, the last appellate judge to finish her term, Dr Zhao Hong, pointed out: “Though there was room to improve, the appellate body distinguishes itself for its outstanding performance among all international adjudicating bodies.”
By continuing to paralyse its functioning, the Biden administration undermines multilateralism and perpetuates the law of the jungle on trade issues, where might is right.
So while the administration has made a good start by re-embracing multilateralism in many areas, its trade policies still leave much to be desired.
-By VIKRAM KHANNA— The Straits Times/ANN
Diplomatic realpolitik
AS double-think runs wild in the White House, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) of Saudi Arabia must be enjoying a quiet chuckle. Diplomatic realpolitik has been accorded precedence over the severe action that was expected of President Joe Biden in the context of the US intelligence report that the Crown Prince was complicit in the ghastly killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.
The Washington Post columnist was allegedly drugged and his body dismembered. Every tenet of human rights was thus violated.
By advancing what they call a “free pass” to MBS, America’s President has proffered a feeble excuse to justify his defence of the de facto leader of the desert kingdom. Biden, who had referred to Saudi Arabia as a “pariah kingdom with no redeeming social value” in course of his election campaign, has now softened his stance to a dramatic degree.
It thus comes about that in the somewhat surprising reckoning of the US President, the price of directly penalising Saudi Arabia’s crown prince is “too high”.
He may be right when viewed through the prism of certitudes of foreign policy.
The US President was reportedly convinced by his newly formed national security team that there was no way to formally bar the Saudi crown prince from entering the United States or to take a call on the criminal charges against him.
Altogether, it was feared by the current US administration that a drastic reprisal would have breached the equation with one of America’s key Arab allies, not to discount the flutter within the Arab region generally.
There is said to have been a consensus in the White House that the price of that breach was quite “simply too high” in terms of Saudi cooperation in the fight against terrorism and in confronting Iran.
Biden had been urged by a section of the establishment to at least impose the same travel restrictions against the Crown Prince as the Trump administration had imposed on others involved in the plot.
The White House appears to have drawn a fine distinction between MBS and the Saudi military. While the Crown Prince is unlikely to be invited to the United States in the immediate perspective, the establishment has denied that the Saudi ruler is being given a “pass”.
It is pretty obvious though, that the coveted International Visitor Program (IVP) will not be denied to the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince. Going by the terms of protocol, he may yet be treated as a state guest in America.-Reuter
After a series of drastic events that laid bare the
profound weaknesses and failures of the US system, Joe Biden was
officially sworn in as the 46th President of the US during a relatively
empty event heavily guarded by thousands of soldiers with weapons of
war, and used his inaugural speech to address domestic challenges in
stark contrast to Donald Trump's bellicose and at times borderline
racist rhetoric against China during his farewell speech.
The US is getting bogged down in a humanitarian disaster caused by the COVID-19 epidemic. However, US federal government officials maintain an indifferent attitude, refusing to mobilize the entire country to adopt forceful emergency measures. This is heinous malfeasance. They are undoubtedly committing a monstrous crime that cannot be forgiven.
The US reported 1 million new COVID-19 cases in the first five days of December and more than 2,000 daily deaths. On Thursday alone, the country recorded 2,879 deaths caused by COVID-19. Hospitals are running out of beds. Crematoriums and cemeteries in some parts of the US have insufficient capacity to cope with the crisis.
The US, which is supposed to be the most developed country in the world today, has become the most terrifying place on the planet where the novel coronavirus is claiming lives.
What is a living hell? The US is a vivid portrayal of that right now. Quite a few countries have become crippled due to US "human rights" accusations. Others have been kidnapped by alliances with the US.
But it is time for the international community to stand up bravely and point at the current ruling administration of the US. The super power must be bluntly told: You are killing your own people. You are crossing the bottom line of humanitarianism. You are a shameful deserter and traitor of humanity as the rest of us fiercely fight the virus.
All people are born equal. Everyone has the right to avoid infection and death from disease. Even if they refuse to comply with epidemic prevention measures due to personal reasons the government is supposed to create conditions to protect them, not leaving them alone with the excuse of "God's" mercy.
Americans are also humans. They are not supposed to be treated as expendables of the Trump administration's defenseless epidemic strategy. So far, more than 281,000 Americans have died because of the novel coronavirus. It is predicted that daily death counts could surpass 4,000 in the coming months. This is a massacre, and a shame for humanity in the 21st century.
A Brookings Institution survey found that 10 percent of American mothers reported that their children under the age of five went hungry to some degree in October and November. Nearly 12 percent of adults said they live in a household where there was not enough to eat "sometimes" or "often" last month, according to the US Department of Commerce. Long lines are spotted in the US with people queuing up for free food. Is that what the world's richest country should look like?
There are many defects and loopholes in the US federal government's abilities to effectively handle the public health crisis under the current administration. The US has been dragged into a long-term political struggle by its political elites. People can clearly see that the current US government has no interest in fighting the virus. They're only focused on election-related political interests. US society has been divided because of polarized politics. It cannot reach a consensus on pandemic controls. It appears to be a collapsing sand castle.
If the COVID-19 pandemic were something that couldn't be curbed, the US failure could be forgiven. But many Asian countries and economies, including China, have put the virus' spread under control. This fully indicates it can be contained. As such, the US has neither reason nor morality to give up its anti-pandemic efforts.
The current US government attaches great importance to economy. But is the US economy getting better? What else economic results can the US government boast about except the abnormal prosperity caused by rushes of hot money into the stock market from quantitative easing?
The pandemic lays bare the arrogance and stupidity of this US government. It has no moral compass and has shirked its own responsibilities by passing the buck to others. So many lives have been lost. It's a tragedy caused by capitalist tyranny under the disguise of "democracy and freedom."
What punishments will the politicians who committed these crimes against humanity receive? Everyone in the world is watching the US now, expecting the incoming administration to have the moral courage to punish evil and stand steadfast for righteous justice and rule of law.
Mar 17, 2016 ...http://t.cn/RG38MOa. Chinese documentary reveals US hypocrisy on humanrights. A TV documentary highlighting the US's double standards ...
Mar 17, 2016 ... The United States' confrontational attitude toward China on human rights serves
only its national interests, and it also harms global governance ...
A worker installs a solar power unit at the construction site of a 300-MW photovoltaic electricity project of the China Datang Corporation Ltd. (Xinhua/Zhang Hongxiang) 
