BEIJING: More than 3 million people took China’s annual civil service exam on the weekend, state media reported on Monday (Nov 27), a record number that underscores young people’s concerns about getting a secure job in a rocky economy. With stubbornly high youth employment in the world’s second-largest economy, theContinue Reading
Recent narratives surrounding People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s influence have framed Australia’s Chinese-language media as problematic. Central is anxiety about the Chinese government’s possible use of diasporic Chinese communities and its media to push its influence.
Some claim Chinese-language media outlets in Australia are primarily instruments of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). WeChat, owned by China’s Tencent, is often blamed for disseminating propaganda to Chinese diasporic communities.
Anxiety about China is neither new nor unique. But little has been done to understand Chinese-language media in Australia. Considering this, a five-year study was undertaken.
This five-year study shows that the Chinese social media platform WeChat — and its Chinese version Weixin — is one of the main news channels used by Chinese Australians. This is highlighted by data from two surveys conducted on Chinese Australians in 2018–19.
Over 60% of respondents reported they “always” used Chinese social media to access news. WeChat was the most used social media platform, with 92% accessing it hourly or several times daily. A 2021 survey confirms this trend remains largely unchanged.
Among Chinese-language news media outlets in Australia, the most notable are the WeChat Subscription Accounts (WSAs), which are run by Chinese migrant content entrepreneurs to target Chinese migrants living in Australia. WSAs nestle in the Weixin ecosystem (thus subject to rules governing PRC users) and are popular among middle-aged and older users.
They use revenue-generating mechanisms to maximize clicks and therefore income from advertising. The user-friendly nature of WeChat and the capacity for infinite reproduction of content ensures online outlets can maximize their reach, profit and impact.
This produces a paradoxical situation. These media outlets are Australian content providers that serve local markets but are subject to Chinese platform and content regulations as China-registered accounts. It is important to question to what extent this sector is an instrument of Chinese government influence.
This research reveals a more complex picture, which calls into question some statements made about the Chinese-language media’s foreign influence.
While some WeChat accounts promote Chinese government interests, Chinese-language social media platforms are business operations and not funded by any government. Some have tried to produce independent content, but this aspiration is mostly overshadowed by the need to produce clickbait headlines.
Since maximizing traffic, growing followers and securing advertising revenue are paramount, WSAs will provide what their intended users want. The intended users are mostly first-generation Mandarin-speaking migrants more interested in information relevant to their new lives in Australia than news about China.
Like any international WeChat users, Australian WeChat users often subscribe to multiple WSAs from multiple sources (including those of the PRC official media), or are exposed to such content in their chat groups. They are also exposed to news from Western media outlets via social media platforms beyond WeChat or Xiaohongshu (popular among young people).
Most Australia-focused WSAs refrain from publishing content critical of China not because they hold a strong pro-China stance, but because of their survival imperatives. News editors note they are also wary of publishing politically sensitive issues involving Australia–China relations for fear of being labeled instruments of the CCP.
Producing content attractive to potential readers while ensuring compliance with Tencent’s regulations requires a pragmatic business model. All posts by WSAs are filtered by automated processes — pre-publication algorithmic censorship and post-publication human censorship.
WSAs are part of a censorship regime that combines high-tech machine-learning technologies with low-tech user reports. Within WeChat, WSAs face the tightest content restrictions because of their easy reach to mass audiences.
All WSAs must comply with Tencent’s service and user agreements, as well as meeting Chinese legal requirements. This includes prohibitions against spreading information that goes against China’s policies on national security, political unity, religion, public assembly or core socialist values.
Another complicating factor is that only media entities with state-authorized news permits in China are allowed to engage in original news reporting. Yet WSAs run by Chinese living overseas and for diasporic markets are subject to a much more flexible regime. They can push original news that focuses on local content and repost original or translated news from mainstream media outlets.
This means WSAs focus mostly on Australia-related news, news about Chinese communities in Australia and lifestyle news. Clickbait titles, sensationalist descriptions and visual appeal all attract more clicks.
The overemphasis on media control overlooks the bigger role WSAs play in the lives of Chinese Australians and undermines the agency of Chinese Australian content entrepreneurs. WSA self-censorship is more a business decision than political coercion. The status of WSAs is confined by a pre-existing technological infrastructure and regulatory framework, not direct intervention by authorities.
The key business strategy has been to publish locally oriented news from multiple outlets, rather than producing original news. In a sample of 87 news posts, 74 were translations of English-language news from Australian media outlets, which were then compiled with reports from other Chinese-language media outlets in Australia.
English-language news is often not just directly translated, but also editorialized. The source texts in English are points of reference to create commentary in Chinese.
For WSA editors, editorialization is not about accuracy – but the cultural relevance of the story they create. There are very few articles directly translated from English. Content is compiled into one article and peppered with commentary from editors.
As anxiety about China grows, so does concern over the content published by Chinese-language media outlets. China’s influence via social media should be addressed with evidence-based research. It is misinformed to interpret an absence of China-critical content as evidence that the Chinese diaspora is acting on behalf of China.
Though many new Chinese migrants are patriotic, the majority of first-generation Chinese Australians are neither active conduits nor passive receivers of propaganda.
First-generation Chinese migrants use a wide range of social media platforms to express an identity of in-betweenness and to cope with the daily challenges of being caught between two increasingly hostile countries.
Wanning Sun is a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney. She also serves as the Deputy Director of the UTS Australia-China Relations Institute.
Haiqing Yu is Professor and ARC Future Fellow in the School of Media and Communication, College of Design and Social Context, RMIT University.
This article was originally published by East Asia Forum and is republished under a Creative Commons license.
PUBLISHED : 27 Nov 2023 at 15:49
Chinese beggars with facial and body disfigurations recently arrested in Bangkok were not working for a Thai boss and had previously solicited money in Malaysia and Singapore, according to the Immigration Bureau.
Pol Maj Gen Panthana Nutchanart, deputy commissioner, said on Monday that some of the six beggars knew each other. They denied they were trafficked by a gang, and told police they worked for themselves and used public transport while in Thailand.
He said they were aged 28-41 years could earn more than 10,000 baht a day in tourist-crowded areas in Bangkok. They had Thai interpreters but there was no evidence Thais gained any other benefits from their activities.
The Immigration Bureau had learned some of them had also begged in Malaysia and Singapore.
They were arrested between Nov 11 and 20, and all had already been deported, he said.
The six, four women and two men, all said the scars on their faces and bodies were from burns incurred as children in China. Immigration security camera footage confirmed they were already disfigured when they arrived arrived in the country.
They usually begged at footbridges and near shopping centres – especially in the Asok, Lumpini and Silom areas. They exchanged their takings for yuan and deposited the money in their accounts, registered in China.
Some of them had begged in their homeland and decided to try their luck in Thailand after friends told them they could earned substantially more here.
Others said they had arrived for a tour but ran out of money. One said he begged while waiting for a new Chinese passport to replace the one he reported lost.
Pol Maj Gen Panthana said the bureau had recently also arrested seven Jordanian adults and 16 minors at hotels on Nana Road, after complaints they had been pestering tourists for money, accosting them while they were shopping or withdrawing cash from ATMs.
All of them had arrived as tourists. They were detained pending deportation.
Other Chinese Weibo accounts that follow Taiwan have been similarly despondent. State-run Shenzhen Television wrote that the breakdown in talks signalled “a chaotic battle” to come in the election. One Chinese Weibo user wrote simply: “I saw news that the talks broke down, and now I’ve lost hope.” The DPPContinue Reading
SINGAPORE: Despite being told by the police and the victim of a scam not to proceed further, a woman persisted in helping her online boyfriend launder about S$89,800 (US$67,000) in scam proceeds.
Tan Liping also tried to transfer about S$86,450 to bank accounts in Malaysia, but succeeded only in remitting about S$24,500.
She was sentenced to 16 months’ jail on Monday (Nov 27), after pleading guilty to one count of money laundering.
A second charge of obstructing justice by deleting her WhatsApp chat history with her “boyfriend” was taken into consideration.
The court heard that Tan, a 35-year-old Singaporean, got to know a man named “Ivan” on an online dating application called Tantan in August 2022.
In October 2022, Tan allowed her boyfriend to use her UOB bank account to receive a sum of S$27,000.
The sum was then transferred to a Malaysian bank account to a person Tan knew as Neomi, a purported employee of Ivan’s.
The police looked into the case and issued Tan a letter of advisory on Nov 22, 2022 to stop associating with Ivan.
They also told Tan not to allow her bank account to be used to receive money from unknown sources or to make outgoing transfers to unknown accounts. Tan was also informed that it was a criminal offence to do so.
Despite the police warning, Tan continued to have an online relationship with Ivan.
In January this year, Tan told Ivan that her UOB bank account had been “unfrozen” and that she could use it.
On Jan 16, Ivan sent a message to Tan, asking her to check if she had received money in her bank account.
Tan checked and confirmed that she had received more than S$33,000 from a company named Pinnovation.
Ivan told Tan that he had received this money from Pinnovation to buy kitchenware for his renovation project.
Despite the police’s earlier warning, Tan believed Ivan.
In fact, the 54-year-old Singaporean director of Pinnovation had been cheated into transferring money to Tan’s account, believing it was for a legitimate business purpose.
In total, he transferred Tan S$89,753.
Ivan instructed Tan to withdraw S$28,300 and transfer the remainder to another bank account to prevent the funds from being frozen.
Tan did as instructed. She tried to transfer S$30,000 to a bank account in Malaysia, but was unsuccessful.
A DBS employee called Tan to tell her that the bank had stopped the transfer as they suspected the transaction was involved in a scam.
Tan then Googled the company Pinnovation and obtained the victim’s number. She called him to verify his reason for transferring S$89,753 to Tan’s account.
The victim was confused when Tan told him that she was not a staff member of Luxoft, the company he was doing business with and thought he was paying in exchange for IT services.
The victim said he would perform some checks at this end and call Tan again. Tan then sent the victim a video clip of herself holding her NRIC to verify that she was the holder of her bank account.
Meanwhile, Tan updated Ivan that the transfer of S$30,000 was unsuccessful and was instructed to use a remittance company to send the money to Malaysia.
On Jan 19, the victim called Tan and told her to return his money. He told her that it would be a crime for her to use his money, but Tan chose to ignore him.
That same day, Tan went to the remittance company suggested by Ivan and made cash transfers.
In total, she remitted S$86,450 to Malaysian bank accounts. She spent an additional S$2,059.05 of the remaining cash, which amounted to about S$3,300.
When the police called Tan in for investigations, she again updated Ivan, who instructed her to delete all the WhatsApp messages between them. She complied, and was arrested on Aug 23.
The prosecutor said Tan had tried several ways to transfer the funds out of Singapore and facilitated the movement of money despite being warned by the police.
She also “went to great lengths” by going to several locations in Singapore to assist Ivan and his supposed employee Neomi, said the prosecutor.
“The accused had reasonable grounds to believe that she was facilitating the control of another person’s benefits of criminal conduct, but still agreed to the arrangement to please Ivan as she considered him as her online boyfriend and for financial gain,” said Deputy Public Prosecutor Santhra Aiyyasamy.
Even as they share similar concerns about economic security and resilience, the United States’ trading partners in Asia wonder what Washington’s new embrace of industrial policy means for their own development.
With deep government pockets, a large domestic market and potent research and development capabilities, the United States has the economic power to capture a significant share of global investment in targeted industrial sectors.
The US turn towards protectionism and its desire to shift trade to “like-minded” friends raise fears that the US market will be closed to Asian exports unless US demands for common standards and supply chain configurations are met.
The CHIPS and Science Act, passed by the US Congress in 2022, illustrates Washington’s “reshoring” intentions and their implications for trading partners. The act is designed to “bring back” domestic semiconductor manufacturing that is presently concentrated in Asia by offering a menu of subsidies, tax credits and domestic content rules that promote onshore research, development and manufacturing.
Bipartisan support for the funding comes from the centrality of semiconductors to civilian and military technology and concerns over the geopolitical vulnerability caused by fabrication that has moved to mainland China and Taiwan.
The CHIPS Act subsidizes onshore investment in semiconductor fabrication, promising US$39 billion of manufacturing incentives on top of 25% investment tax credits. These incentives seem to already be attracting the major semiconductor fabricators and their suppliers to invest in the United States.
According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, from the CHIPS Act’s introduction in 2020 to June 2023, 67 new projects and expansions of existing US facilities were announced in research and development, intellectual property, chip design, semiconductor fabrication and manufacturing equipment, supplies and materials.
This new activity contrasts with the steady decline in the US share of global semiconductor manufacturing, which fell from 19% in 2000 to only 12% in 2020.
Assessing how many of these projects have been attracted to the United States because of CHIPS Act subsidies is difficult. The allocation of these funds has not occurred yet and some of these investments might have been made regardless.
But US export controls on advanced chips and the equipment and supplies needed to produce them have undoubtedly affected decisions within the industry because they limit the materials that can be sent to China for manufacturing.
The CHIPS Act explicitly pulls investment from global semiconductor companies to the United States, raising fears that US industrial subsidies will hollow out tech industries in other regions. East and Southeast Asia is home to 10 of the 16 semiconductor exporters and the top six suppliers, accounting for 84% of global exports in 2021.
While US subsidies are clearly a response to this regional concentration, expanding production capacity in the United States will affect the markets that these exporters now serve. On the one hand, US chip-related activities may reduce US chip imports from some Asian suppliers. But they may also expand trade in materials, equipment and more labor-intensive activities, such as testing and packaging.
How the industry and the market for Asian semiconductor-related exporters evolve in the future also depends on the actions of other countries. In response to the CHIPS Act, the European Union, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea have initiated or extended subsidy programs of their own.
In 2022 the EU launched the European Chips Act to ease government funding rules for semiconductor plants. In August 2023, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) announced plans to build a $11 billion chip manufacturing plant in Germany, in a deal that reportedly includes up to $5.5 billion in government subsidies.
The United Kingdom also announced a 20-year strategy for its domestic semiconductor industry, recognizing its inability to compete with massive US and EU subsidies and focusing on areas where it already has competencies.
This high level of intervention in the industry raises the specter of a coming glut of semiconductors and falling world prices, even as the cost of production by new players is expected to exceed those in more established locations. If such a scenario plays out, governments will be tempted to protect subsidized manufacturers behind import tariffs or offer customer subsidies conditioned on domestic content requirements.
The US turn to such restrictions is evident in the Inflation Reduction Act, passed in August 2022, which provides subsidies to purchasers of electric vehicles assembled in the United States. The threat to Asian suppliers is clear if the subsidy race blocks semiconductor export markets and lowers world prices.
Another concern for Asian suppliers may arise from US demands to reduce Chinese involvement in supply chains. To date, Washington has not made such demands directly, but the CHIPS Act’s investment tax credits are contingent on recipients refraining from significant new investments in manufacturing facilities in China. This indicates that the United States intends to reduce links to the Chinese industry.
The implications of such ambitions are unclear. Silicon is produced by a handful of countries, but the largest supplier by far is China. Pressure to find alternative sources will be a problem throughout the industry.
Even if the United States completely removes China from the supply chains that serve domestic chip manufacturers, it will still rely on imports of legacy chips from foreign partners.
Through ongoing consultations, facilitated in part by the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework’s new Supply Chain Council, Asian exporters may be able to moderate negative spillovers from the emerging semiconductor subsidy race and open up space for their participation in the expanding US industry.
The Council, envisioned to meet at least annually, is tasked with exploring options to diversify concentrated supply sources for sectors and goods of shared interest. Member countries could work to avoid duplication, maintain open trade among members and gradually modify critical material sourcing.
Mary E Lovely is the Anthony M Solomon Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
This article was originally published by East Asia Forum and is republished under a Creative Commons license.
Getty ImagesAuthorities are working on new ways to reach the 41 Indian workers trapped inside a tunnel in Uttarakhand state after the main rescue plan suffered a major delay.
Until now, rescuers were drilling a hole horizontally through the rocks to allow the men to crawl through.
But the operation was halted after the drilling machine broke down on Friday.
The workers have been stuck for two weeks after a part of the tunnel collapsed due to a landslide.
The operation has been challenging from the beginning, mainly due to the presence of falling boulders, loose soil and metal inside the tunnel.
On Friday, the rescuers seemed to be making steady progress when the drilling machine broke down inside the tunnel after getting stuck on pieces of metal that have been mixed in with the debris.
The machine was completely removed on Monday morning.
In the meantime, rescuers have started to dig vertically into the tunnel to carve an alternative route for the trapped men.
Officials say they are also exploring other techniques, including manual digging, to reach them faster.
As per the plan, the rescuers will try to reach the workers from the top of the hill in Silkyara of Uttarakashi district, under which the tunnel was being constructed.
Officials have already created access roads and platforms to reach the top.
The rescuers will have to drill 86m (282 feet) downward to reach the workers – that’s nearly double the distance of the horizontal route (46.6m).
By Monday morning, authorities had managed to dig 31m into the tunnel.
Mahmood Ahmed, a senior official at the National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation, which is leading the rescue operations, said that at the given pace, the rescue operations could be completed in another 100 hours “if no other hurdle comes our way”.
If the process is completed smoothly, the workers will be pulled out in buckets through the vertical hole, according to The Hindu newspaper.
Officials say that bad weather, with approaching thunderstorms and the possibility of snowfall in the Himalayan region, could complicate the process – but add that they are prepared to deal with the situation.
Until now, authorities had been working to send multiple pipes of differing widths through the estimated 60m (197ft) debris wall to create a micro-tunnel through which the workers could be wheeled out on stretchers.
Now, they are also planning to drill 180m perpendicular to the main site of drilling to create an alternate route to reach the workers.
A platform was erected on Sunday to mount the special drills which will be used for this process, the Hindu reported.
But officials have not yet commented on the status of the operation.
Rescuers had managed to drill 34m downwards horizontally, with just 12m remaining, when the auger machine broke down on Friday.
The operation was put on hold until the emergency crews removed the machine from the tunnel, which was completed on Monday morning.
Now rescuers will start digging manually to remove the remaining debris from the route.
But they will continue to use a drilling machine to push the pipes into the opening, officials said.
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SHANGHAI: The spike in respiratory illnesses that China is currently going through is not as high as before the COVID-19 pandemic, a World Health Organization official said, reiterating that no new or unusual pathogens had been found in the recent cases.
Maria Van Kerkhove, acting director of the WHO’s department of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, said the increase appeared to be driven by a rise in the number of children contracting pathogens that two years of COVID-19 restrictions have kept them away from.
“We asked about comparisons prior to the pandemic. And the waves that they’re seeing now, the peak is not as high as what they saw in 2018-2019,” Van Kerkhove told health news outlet STAT in an interview on Friday (Nov 24).
“This is not an indication of a novel pathogen. This is expected. This is what most countries dealt with a year or two ago,” she added.
China’s National Health Commission spokesperson Mi Feng said on Sunday the surge in acute respiratory illnesses was linked to the simultaneous circulation of several kinds of pathogens, most prominently influenza.
The spike became a global issue last week when the World Health Organization asked China for more information, citing a report on clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia in children by the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases.
China and the WHO have faced questions about the transparency of reporting early in the pandemic, which emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019. The WHO said on Friday no new or unusual pathogens had been found in the recent illnesses.
China’s Type 039C Yuan-class submarine appears to mark a new era in underwater stealth technology, posing significant challenges to traditional detection tools as speculation mounts about a possible submarine-led Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Naval News reported that the Type 039C Yuan-class submarine features an angled sail design to reduce its active sonar detectability, making it the world’s first known submarine with the feature.
Naval News reports that China’s mass production capability has made the Yuan-class the most numerous air-independent propulsion (AIP) submarine worldwide.
The use of angled stealth shaping is gaining momentum worldwide, with the upcoming Swedish A-26-class and Germany’s Type-212CD-class incorporating similar features, with the latter even encasing the whole submarine in an angled outer hull.
The trend is being driven largely by the mainstream shift from using passive to active sonar, where passive detection is less effective as submarines are increasingly built to be quieter.
Naval News says that active sonar, which involves emitting a sonar signal and measuring the rebounds, is gaining in use while passive sonar, which listens for sounds emitted by a submarine, is proving less effective.
The report notes that the stealth features on the Type 039C Yuan-class are designed to counter medium frequency sonars and complicate enemy classification of the vessel.
China’s Type 039C appears to represent the latest evolution of its conventional submarine designs and may already have been deployed in military exercises simulating a Taiwan blockade.
China’s conventional submarine program has Taiwan in focus, as an invasion would not require nuclear-powered submarines with unlimited range in the nearby theater.
Asia Times reported in August 2022 that the Type 039C, built in Wuhan and fitted out in Shanghai, marks an evolution in conventional submarine technology using 60% newly researched and improved equipment and featuring significant system reconfiguration.
While the Type 039C features AIP technology, the specific propulsion system is unknown. Some have speculated it may employ lithium batteries, which would make strategic sense considering China manufactures three-quarters of the world’s electric vehicle (EV) batteries.
Submarines can significantly enhance their acceleration for high-speed operations and extend their underwater endurance by over two-fold with lithium-ion batteries.
The People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) has been trying to replace traditional lead-acid batteries with lithium-ion ones for over a decade but apparently hesitated due to thermal runaway and fire risks.
However, recent advancements such as using low-cost, readily available iron and phosphate can replace the usual but dangerous nickel and cobalt combination while hard carbon and ceramic coating can improve the safety of battery packaging.
The Type 039C submarine may have similar weaponry to its Yuan-class predecessors, including wire-guided torpedoes, naval mines and anti-ship missiles. It may also be capable of launching land-attack cruise missiles from its torpedo tubes.
China may already have deployed the Type 039C in August 2022 military exercises off Taiwan, simulating a submarine blockade against the self-governing island.
The Type 039C and other submarines would play a vital role in a future blockade of Taiwan, as the island is believed only to have a 146-day oil stockpile and 11-day natural gas supply.
In a Taiwan blockade, conventional submarines may minimize the risk to PLA-N surface ships and aircraft, and target ships going in and out of Taiwan’s ports. A blockade may force Taiwan to capitulate without sending in an amphibious invasion force and make hiding battle losses and mission failures easier, avoiding a possible domestic backlash in China.
The US and its allies may use a convoy system and engage in anti-submarine warfare (ASW) operations east of Taiwan against a Chinese invasion.
In this scenario, China wins if it sinks enough ships until the US and its allies can no longer guarantee safe access to Taiwan’s ports, and the US and its allies win if they can track down and sink a significant number of China’s submarines.
In a November 2021 article for The Warzone, Kevin Noonan notes that the US Navy may not be prepared to face the threat of China’s high-tech conventional submarines.
Noonan says that since the end of the Cold War, the US Navy has yet to adapt its ASW capabilities for shallow water operations, potentially providing China an advantage in the Taiwan Strait, which is only 60 meters deep on average.
Furthermore, he says that small conventional submarines generate smaller acoustic signals, making them harder to detect, and that Chinese submarines will be essentially operating in their home waters in the Taiwan Strait, giving them a home-field advantage.
He also mentions China’s submariners know how to conceal their submarines in the background noise of civilian commercial shipping, complicating their detection and targeting.
Given those challenges, the Hudson Institute notes in a July 2023 report that the US needs to change its approach to undersea warfare to emphasize uncrewed vessels. That, the report says, would enable the US and allied forces to exploit active sonar and track increasingly stealthy Chinese submarines without risking counter-detection.
SINGAPORE: Singaporean households can donate their unspent Community Development Council (CDC) vouchers from Dec 1 this year until Jan 31, 2024. The donated vouchers will go towards the household’s charity of choice, said Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Edwin Tong on Monday (Nov 27). Mr Tong added that about S$1.19Continue Reading
