The Chinese government has announced the upcoming hosting of an international seminar on Tibetan studies in Beijing. The seminar, set to take place from Aug. 14-16, is being touted as an opportunity for academics to discuss the latest developments in Tibetology research.

However, this event is just another attempt by the Chinese authorities to legitimize their control over Tibet and manipulate the narrative surrounding the region.

The China Tibetology Research Center (CTRC), the organizer of the seminar, claims that this will be the seventh edition of the event since 1991. However, the fact that the event is being held in Beijing rather than on Tibetan soil raises questions about China's true intentions.

With more than 300 scholars expected to attend from China and abroad, it is evident that the Chinese government is keen on showcasing its version of Tibetology research while suppressing any dissenting views.

The topics to be covered during the seminar include education, Tibetan Buddhism, social transformation, architecture, and living conditions on the Tibetan Plateau.

These subjects are undeniably crucial when discussing Tibet, but it's important to note that the Chinese government has a long history of distorting facts and imposing its version of history on Tibetans. This seminar could easily become a platform for propagating Chinese narratives and suppressing any discussions that challenge their control over Tibet.

Li Zuotai, an official with CTRC, has hailed the seminar as a "platform for academics in Tibetology at home and abroad to showcase the latest research findings and deepen exchanges and cooperation."

However, this statement conveniently ignores the fact that academic freedom in China is severely limited, and any research that contradicts the Chinese government's official stance is censored or punished.

The event's topics, including education, Tibetan Buddhism, social transformation, and architecture on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, have all been carefully curated to align with the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) narrative.

The seminar is designed to present a sanitized version of Tibet's history and current situation, deflecting attention from issues like human rights abuses, cultural suppression, and the ongoing tensions between Tibetans and Chinese authorities.  

The upcoming international seminar on Tibetan studies in Beijing is nothing more than a carefully orchestrated attempt by the Chinese government to manipulate the discourse around Tibet and reinforce its oppressive rule over the region.

The absence of genuine academic freedom and the lack of representation from Tibetan scholars cast a shadow over the credibility of this event. It's clear that Beijing's intentions are far from scholarly exchange and cooperation and instead seek to propagate its biased narrative on Tibet. (Edited and collated by Team TRC)

China’s ambitions in Europe suffered a major setback this week when Italy signaled plans to leave Beijing’s flagship foreign-policy program, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), underscoring a broader shift in Europe as governments grow increasingly wary of their economic dependence on Beijing. 

While Beijing has long sought to expand its economic footprint in Europe, including by funneling money into BRI infrastructure projects, the biggest European economies largely refused to sign onto the initiative. That changed in 2019 when Italy diverged from its peers and became the BRI’s first and only G-7 member, a move that enraged Washington and represented a major political victory for China. 

By exiting the BRI, Rome will be dealing an embarrassing blow to Beijing on the initiative’s 10th anniversary. Italy’s planned withdrawal also reflects a broader reckoning overtaking Europe as many leaders turn away from the deep economic integration that has for years defined the Europe-China relationship. For years, Europe has lagged behind Washington’s confrontational approach to China, especially when it comes to economic integration—or decoupling. But that appears to be changing.

“For the Chinese, this is a major humiliation,” said Yun Sun, the director of the China program at the Stimson Center, who noted that Beijing took pride in the fact that Western countries—and particularly European countries—had signed onto the BRI. “For Italy to publicly announce its intent to withdraw from BRI, I think for the Chinese they take great offense in that decision.” 

A cornerstone of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s foreign-policy strategy, the BRI has allowed China to export its industrial overcapacity while expanding its geopolitical influence, although the program now appears to be drawing down. In the decade since its inception, two-thirds of European Union members, mostly in the east, have joined the initiative to harness Chinese investment and jump-start growth—resulting in a slew of railway, port, and highway projects. Many of these countries, like Italy, were grappling with slumping economies and touted the potential economic gains that could come from BRI investment. 

Four years later, those bets have not paid off. When Italy signed onto the initiative, Chinese firms agreed to pour $2.8 billion into infrastructure projects, including for Italian ports—fueling lawmakers’ hopes of sweeping returns. But the economic boom never came.

“Back in 2019, there were irrational expectations about what this deal might bring to Italy,” said Noah Barkin, an expert on Europe-China relations at the Rhodium Group. “This deal has not brought great dividends.” Italian exports to China have remained roughly flat, he said, while Chinese foreign direct investment in Italy has plummeted. 

Rome is now taking a harder line toward China. Former Prime Minister Mario Draghi blocked tech transfers to Beijing and prevented Chinese takeovers of Italian companies. Current Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has gone even further, restricting a Chinese firm’s influence on Italian tiremaker Pirelli and affirming her support for Taiwan. In pointed remarks, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto railed against Italy’s decision to join the BRI on Sunday, labeling it an “improvised and atrocious act.”

“The issue today is: how to walk back [from the BRI] without damaging relations [with Beijing],” he said. “Because it is true that China is a competitor, but it is also a partner.”

The same question has been weighing on the minds of other European leaders who have been reassessing their long-standing economic ties with China amid an intensifying technology trade battle. Last month, China retaliated against Western export controls with its own sweeping restrictions on gallium and germanium, two crucial chipmaking inputs. Fueled by those tensions, Brussels, like Washington, is trying to “de-risk” economic relations.

“Just because everyone agreed on de-risking, it doesn’t mean that everyone agrees what de-risking actually means,” said Liana Fix, a Europe expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “There is definitely a dividing line that runs between how broad the instruments should be applied.”

Italy’s exit from the BRI would only be the latest in a long string of crumbling partnerships between European countries and China. China’s diplomatic push in Central and Eastern Europe, called the 17+1, has progressively lost members over the years; more recently in April, a key trade and investment agreement between the European Union and China collapsed. 

Beyond unveiling their own BRI counterstrategy in 2021—the Global Gateway—European leaders are now dealing yet another blow to Beijing by spurning its upcoming Belt and Road Forum, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“Europe is increasingly seeing China as a competitor, as a rival, as a challenge, and less as an economic opportunity, which is how it used to see China,” Barkin said. “It is pushing for diversification away from China; it is trying to become more economically resilient [and] reduce dependencies on China for critical inputs, as the U.S. is doing.”

Italy’s latest moves unsurprisingly angered Beijing, which criticized “some forces” for “hyping up and politicizing” Rome’s membership in the BRI. Earlier this week, Chinese state media also stressed that Italy’s entrance into the BRI has “promoted pragmatic cooperation” and “serves the interests of people from both sides.”

Given how closely intertwined the BRI is with Xi’s political legacy, Sun, the Stimson expert, said that Italy’s decision will undoubtedly rebound in its relationship with China.  “The Chinese take BRI as a flagship foreign-policy initiative of Xi Jinping; it’s very much closely associated with Xi Jinping’s credibility and his great power leadership,” she said. “I don’t think the Chinese will just lightly let this go.”

Chaotic movement of the productive young and the ageing skilled labor force in China spells economic uncertainty the government appears unclear how to handle. The Covid times are behind them, but they have somehow triggered diffidence among the workers. Young people are unwilling to live in big cities, including in Shenzhen, which is called the city of youth. Many are willing to migrate back to their rural homes.

Unmindful of all this, the government, too, has rolled out programs to bring productivity to the rural areas by incentivizing people move back to the villages. It is really a case of the left hand not knowing what the right does.Amid all this, joblessness is playing spoil sport. Local governments are trying to tackle joblessness.

Guangdong province has come up with a plan to send 300,000 young people to rural villages by the end of 2025 to revitalize local economies. Of these participants, 10,000 are slated to work in agriculture, while another 10,000 will receive help setting up new businesses.

Sluggish manufacturing is one reason for the soft labor market. China’s industrial production in January to March grew at a 3.0% pace, a slowdown from an annual expansion of 3.6% in 2022. With people worried about their jobs, sales of durable goods such as cars and home appliances are stagnant.

Shenzhen, home to the country’s first special economic zone, may have begun to lose its luster. Its population decreased for the first time in 2022, in part because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but also as a result of changes in local government policies.

The population contraction will ease some of Shenzhen’s problems, such as traffic congestion and high rents, but the city’s vaunted growth — which once enticed young people from all over China — is no longer the main driver.

Known as the “city of young migrants,” the average age of residents was 32.5 years in 2020 — well below the national average of 38.8. That ready supply of motivated young people paved the way for big, innovative companies, including Huawei Technologies, BYD and Tencent Holdings. By 1997, Shenzhen’s population had hit 5 million, and exceeded 10 million in 2010 — increasing each year thereafter by about 5%.

That all changed in 2022 when the population dropped 0.1% to 17.66 million. The fall was attributed to the central government’s stringent zero-Covid policy. With the virus in the back mirror, Shenzhen’s population might have been expected to recover in 2023, but local government policy is not helping. Younger people used to be attracted by Shenzhen’s relatively lax registration requirements to get on various important social ladders. In China, census registries play vital roles in access to housing and education. Now everything has tightened up.

The final nail was exorbitant rents – thrice higher than in neighboring cities – which the young cannot afford to pay. So they are leaving.

In other cities, over the past year, a section of young people across China have been ditching white-collar jobs for blue-collar roles as baristas and cashiers. They’ve been sharing photos and videos of their new roles en masse on Xiaohongshu, China’s answer to Instagram. The hashtag “my first physical-work experience” has more than 30 million views as of June 12.

They want to relax, earn what is necessary to live happily, and do not want to get into the competitive rat race of urban jobs. This could prove a jolt to productivity in the services sector in particular, but nobody is caring.

“From fast-food-restaurant owners, cleaners, waiters, to pet grooming, young people try to regain control of their lives and inner order through these ‘mindless’ manual tasks,” a description of the hashtag read.

Many of these people write in the captions about their decision to ditch white-collar jobs, and there’s a clear thread between many of them: Despite having attained highly coveted office jobs, they are ditching them for “mindless” menial work and a better sense of fulfillment.

Analysts say a lot of young people might feel disappointed about their jobs because companies are not hiring them for a job, but they’re hiring you to operate a computer on a desk.

Last but not the least, reverse migration is another headache for the government. It is expected to pick up pace in the near future partly because the workers cannot simply afford city housing and do not have access to city healthcare. Millions of Chinese people did not go back to urban areas for work after the coronavirus pandemic last year, official data show. As of the end of March, the statistics bureau said there were still 2.46 million fewer migrant workers than the same period in 2019.

Already, data show that rather than traveling to China’s biggest cities like Beijing or Shanghai, more migrant workers are staying closer to home, within the same province. Government policy has contributed to the trend as well. As the state loosened its grip on the economy in the last few decades, tens of millions of Chinese people pursued jobs in big cities such as Beijing and Shenzhen.

Local governments built up subways and other urban infrastructure to support growth. However, many migrants faced tough working conditions as laborers in factories or, more recently, couriers for China’s e-commerce giants. A stringent residency system — called “hukou” — prevented migrants from accessing public health care and schools, or buying property in their city of work. The flood of people contributed to a drain on local resources, prompting authorities to evict migrants.

Many people outside big cities are taking jobs in this so-called digital economy, since they can work remotely for companies that may still be based in urban downtowns. The impact of these various kinds of movement of the worker and labor force is showing on the business and industry sectors. With youngsters rejecting grinding factory work, the resultant labor shortage is frustrating manufacturers.

Factory bosses say they would produce more, and faster, with younger blood replacing their ageing workforce. But offering the higher wages and better working conditions that younger Chinese want would risk eroding their competitive advantage. And smaller manufacturers say large investments in automation technology are either unaffordable or imprudent when rising inflation and borrowing costs are curbing demand in China’s key export markets.

According to western media reports, economists say market forces may compel both young Chinese and manufacturers to curb their aspirations. “The unemployment situation for young people may have to be much worse before the mismatch could be corrected,” said Zhiwu Chen, professor of finance at the University of Hong Kong in an interview to a media outlet.

The United States has disclosed that it plans to sell $440 million in ammunition and parts to Taiwan, its latest effort to boost the self-ruling island's defence.

Thursday's sale is comparatively small in scale and does not expand the range of US weaponry to Taiwan, but comes as the United States and China move delicately to stabilise their turbulent relationship.

In a notification to Congress, the State Department said it would sell $332.2 million in 30mm ammunition and related equipment to Taiwan and $108 million in spare and repair parts for wheeled vehicles and weapons.

The sales will help Taiwan "maintain a credible defensive capability" but "will not alter the basic military balance in the region," the State Department added.

It "will help improve the security of the recipient and assist in maintaining political stability, military balance and economic progress in the region”.

Taiwan's defence ministry on Friday welcomed the planned sale for "providing the need for enhancing our defence capacity as well as maintaining regional stability," it said in a tweet.

US-Taiwan relations

Congress has the right to reject the sale but such a move is highly unlikely, with lawmakers pushing for the United States to go further and directly provide weapons to Taiwan rather than approving its purchase requests.

In a decades-long policy, the United States sells weapons to Taiwan to ensure its self-defence but only recognises Beijing.

China, which claims the self-governing democracy as its own territory and has not ruled out seizing it through force, detests any hint of diplomatic relations between Taiwan and other governments.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken paid a rare visit to Beijing earlier in June in which his hosts vowed no compromise on Taiwan, although the two sides voiced hope at keeping up communication to keep tensions from boiling over.

Beijing twice in the past year has carried out huge military exercises in waters around Taiwan in response to gestures of support by top US lawmakers.

On Friday, Taipei said it detected five Chinese warships and 24 Chinese warplanes around the island, of which 11 crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait.

Sales of Yizhuan Automobile Co.’s trash trucks picked up after China ended anti-virus controls in December, but their growth is in low gear as managers struggle to rebuild business lost during the pandemic.

China’s economy rebounded at the start of 2023, but after a good first quarter, factory output and consumer spending are weakening. An official survey in April found a record 1 in 5 young workers in cities were unemployed.

Yizhuan’s sales are up only by single-digit percentages from last year's depressed level, according to its deputy general manager, Yu Xiongli. The 300-employee company is in Hubei province, where the first coronavirus cases were detected in late 2019.

″It is still in the process of recovering,” Yu said. “Growth is quite slow.”

China’s economic growth accelerated to 4.5% over a year earlier in the three months ending in March from the previous quarter’s 2.9%, but forecasters say the peak of that recovery might already be past.

Growth would need to pick up further to reach the ruling Communist Party’s target of “around 5%” for the year.

“For now, the ongoing momentum seems not that promising,” said UBS economist Zhang Ning.

The economy needs a “domestic demand rebound” with government support to boost confidence for businesses and consumers, Zhang said.

The end of restrictions that isolated cities for weeks at a time and blocked most international travel prompted hopes for a consumer boom. But retail sales are weak.

Shoppers are uneasy about the economic outlook and possible job losses and are reluctant to commit to big purchases.

Retail sales in April surged 18.4% over last year’s lackluster level, but that was barely half the growth of up to 35% called for by private sector forecasts. Factory output fell 0.5% compared with March and investment growth slowed.

“I have misgivings about spending money,” said Xue Liang, who works in information technology in Beijing. ”COVID-19 and changes in the international situation have made us worry a lot.”

Manufacturing contracted faster in May, according to a survey by the national statistics agency and an industry group. New orders and export orders declined.

Exports in May tumbled 7.5% from a year ago after global consumer demand was depressed by interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve and central banks in Europe and Asia to cool inflation. Exports to the United States plunged 18.2%.

That is a challenge for automakers and other manufacturers that are trying to make up for weak demand at home by selling more abroad.

Tenglong Automobile Co., which makes electric buses in the southwestern city of Xiangyang, sent salespeople to Russia, South Korea and Southeast Asia as soon as travel controls ended to try to revive orders after a three-year gap.

“Last year, our foreign customers basically didn’t come,” said Tenglong’s deputy general manager, Zhou Shengming. “But this year, we already have had several batches. In May, we had three.”

Yizhuan in Shiyan, which also sells sanitation, cargo and dump trucks to city governments and construction companies, says it exports vehicles worth about $20 million a year to Russia and Southeast Asia.

Li Yichun, who runs a bodyguard business in Beijing, said his customers are less willing to spend.

“It can be seen from my business that the economy is not recovering very well,” Li said., adding that “a lot of clients who are bosses are not intending to spend on hiring as they did before.”

A state-sponsored Chinese hacking group has been spying on a wide range of US critical infrastructure organisations, from telecommunications to transport hubs, Western intelligence agencies and Microsoft said on Wednesday.

The espionage has also targeted the US island territory of Guam, home to strategically important American military bases, Microsoft said in a report, adding “mitigating this attack could be challenging”.

It was not immediately clear how many organisations were affected, but the US National Security Agency (NSA) said it was working with partners including Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the UK, as well as the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to identify breaches.

While Chinese hackers are known to spy on Western countries, this is one of the largest known cyber-espionage campaigns against American critical infrastructure.

“A PRC (People’s Republic of China) state-sponsored actor is living off the land, using built-in network tools to evade our defences and leaving no trace behind,” NSA Cybersecurity Director Rob Joyce said in a statement.

Such “living off the land” spy techniques are harder to detect as they use “capabilities already built into critical infrastructure environments,” he added.

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Microsoft said the Chinese group, which it dubbed “Volt Typhoon”, has been active since at least 2021 and has targeted a number of industries including communications, manufacturing, utility, transport, construction, maritime, government, information technology, and education.

As opposed to using traditional hacking techniques, which often involve tricking a victim into downloading malicious files, Microsoft said this group infects a victim’s existing systems to find information and extract data.

Analysts assessed with “moderate confidence” that this Chinese campaign was developing capabilities that could disrupt critical communications infrastructure between the United States and Asia region during future crises, Microsoft added.

Guam is home to US military facilities that would be key to responding to any conflict in the Asia-Pacific region.

Canada’s cybersecurity agency separately said it had no reports of Canadian victims of this hacking as yet. “However, western economies are deeply interconnected,” it added. “Much of our infrastructure is closely integrated and an attack on one can impact the other.”

The UK similarly warned the techniques used by the Chinese hackers on US networks could be applied worldwide.

China is ranked 179th among the 180 countries and territories, according to the latest edition of the World Press Freedom Index of international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

The 2023 World Press Freedom Index has evaluated China’s plummeting ranking at 179th, just above North Korea as ‘the world’s biggest jailer of journalists and one of the biggest exporters of propaganda content.’ RSF said China’s ranking in the index indicates the situation in the country is “very serious”.

Tenzin Dorjee, a Tibetan journalist from Voice of Tibet (VoT) and the President of Association of Tibetan Journalists (ATJ) speaking to Phayul said, “This is not the first time that China has ranked among the world’s worst-rated countries for press freedom. This is due to the communist regime’s extreme resistance against media outlets.

“Such restrictions directly affect the transparency and authenticity of any information coming from Tibetans inside Tibet, especially information related to human rights violations inside occupied Tibet. The state-run media agencies are highly involved with feeding propaganda campaigns with an unprecedented ability to tamper with the information.”

He further stated that both media agencies and freedom of speech are directly related to one another as the limitation of freedom of speech in China is wreaking havoc on how media operates.

The Secretary-General of RSF said the World Press Freedom Index showed “enormous volatility” and that “this instability is the result of the increased aggressiveness on the part of the authorities in many countries and growing animosity towards journalists on social media and in the physical world.

“The volatility is also the consequences of growth in the fake content industry, which produces and distributes disinformation and provides the tools of manufacturing it.” 

RSF is an international non-profit organisation with an aim to defend and promote media freedom and information, founded in 1985 by four journalists.

"The Chinese Communist Party wants total control over information," said the RSF Secretary General, Christophe Deloire in a statement released alongside the report."It has set up an unparalleled surveillance system that treats all forms of communication as potential threats," he added.

RSF publishes a global ranking of press freedom every year on World Press Freedom Day to “compare the level of press freedom enjoyed by journalists and media in 180 countries and territories.”

The Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima is just a month away and in a bid to compete against China and Russia for influence in Africa, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is all set to embark on a multi-country trip, reported Nikkei Asia.

PM Kishida will leave next week on the first multi-country trip to Africa by a Japanese leader since 2014. His four stops – Egypt, Ghana, Kenya and Mozambique – are all part of the Global South, a loosely defined collection of over 100 developing nations.

The valuable natural resources acquired by many Global South countries, and their general diplomatic aversion to the United States, have brought overtures from Russia and China to Tokyo’s alarm.

Kishida has told his aides that Chinese President Xi Jinping and senior Chinese officials “have been going all over Africa and Latin America,” adding, “At this rate, we’ll lose to them,” as per Nikkei Asia.

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang made a visit to Egypt in January, a month after Xi met with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Saudi Arabia.

Last year alone Kenya’s trade with China spiked 27 per cent, and polling there shows positive views of Beijing soaring to 82 per cent from 58 per cent in 2021.

According to China’s official Xinhua News Agency, In Mozambique, a resource-abundant place, a Chinese-backed liquefied natural gas project began production in November. And Ghana’s finance minister paid a visit to China last month to discuss debt restructuring after its default in December, read a report published in Nikkei Asia.

Support from the Global South will be crucial to the G7’s efforts to isolate China and Russia.
G7 foreign ministers, in a statement after their meeting this week, stressed reinforcing an “international order based on the rule of law,” calling out Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s negligence of international law in the East and South China seas.

But what G7 lacks is the economic dominance it once had. Members that accounted for more than 60 per cent of the global gross domestic product from the 1970s to the 1990s now have shares of less than 50 per cent.

Tokyo’s new outreach efforts go beyond Africa. Yoshimasa Hayashi, Japan’s Foreign Minister, is planning a trip to Latin America later this month.

Peru and Chile are both members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement to which China has applied. Hayashi is expected to argue that new members must adhere to the CPTPP’s high degree of trade liberalisation, according to Nikkei Asia.

Japan seeks to strengthen ties with the Global South by providing finance, training, and other assistance to nations dealing with high energy costs, food shortages, and climate change, while also conveying Tokyo’s positions on the Ukraine crisis and the geopolitical situation in East Asia.

Japan announced plans last month to provide development assistance based on the needs of recipients, Nikkei Asia reported.

Civil judge Syed Mohammad Zahid Termizi has imposed a fine of $2.48 million on China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) for its alleged violation of contract it signed with Petroleum Exploration (Private) Limited, a local company.

As per the details of the case, CNPC came to Pakistan in early 2001 as a service provider to exploration and production companies in the fields of rigs and drilling.

Pakistan during the first decade of 21st century was deemed a great potential for exploration and production companies and saw a great influx of foreign companies.

But great influx associates greater competition therefore CNPC found it difficult to establish and generate business with such foreign competitive companies.

Considering the need of time and to get the necessary head-start, CNPC entered into an agreement with the local company to help procure drilling works for CNPC against a commission for each work procured in favour of CNPC.

From the inception to date, CNPC with the help of the local company, procured drilling contracts and was able to maintain its operation in Pakistan, now comprising over two decades.

The local company petitioned before the court against the alleged violation contractual obligations by CNPC.

The court passed a preliminary decree of $2.48 million in favour of the local company.

Zambia is facing an unsustainable debt burden, and debt servicing is leaving little room for capital formation, especially funds needed for infrastructure development, reported Africa Daily Digital.

While the country is struggling to take up World Bank-suggested reforms such as restoring fiscal and long-term debt sustainability, increasing farmers’ productivity and access to agricultural markets, ensuring access to energy and finance, and private sector development, it is facing a scarcity of resources, which makes the country dependent on and vulnerable to external debt.

Following this, the Zambian government has started actively seeking additional infrastructure development through Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects. Zambia, like other indebted and capital-strapped African countries, urgently require funds to develop infrastructure to connect its mineral-rich areas to major cities and ports, as reported by Africa Daily Digital.

Zambia is under a heavy debt burden, and the post-Covid economic recovery is slow. In such a situation, it is difficult to upgrade the dilapidated road connecting its mining sites to export destinations in the lack of funds to build infrastructure, Africa Daily Digital reported.

China, which has a keen interest in the natural resources of African countries, takes this as an opportunity to make African countries to be dependent on China, and to gain control of their natural resources.

Although China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is assisting many African countries in building infrastructure, the end result is a debt burden on these countries, which in turn forces them to sell their natural resources at lower prices in order to raise funds for debt repayment.

A consortium of Chinese companies recently won a bid to finance the upgrading of a 327-kilometre road connecting Zambia’s capital Lusaka to Ndola in the country’s Copperbelt province.

The bid was won by the Consortium Macro Ocean Investment, which is made up of three Chinese companies: AVIC International Project Engineering, Zhenjiang Communications Construction Group, and China Railway Seventh Group.

The consortium won the USD 650 million public-private partnership (PPP) contract to build the dual carriageway road. The Chinese companies signed a 25-year concession agreement last month, with three years for construction and 22 years for operation and maintenance rights.

According to Africa Daily Digital, the road awarded to the Macro Ocean Investment consortium connects Zambia’s capital to the mineral-rich Copperbelt province and the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), carrying almost all of the region’s road-bound mineral exports towards Tanzania.

However, critics of the Zambian government are raising concerns about the country’s reliance on China for infrastructure development. They are concerned because China is Zambia’s single largest lender, and with the country already facing an unsustainable debt burden, additional Chinese loans at near-commercial rates would exacerbate the problem.

As of December 2021, its loan accounted for more than USD 6 billion of the country’s total USD 16.8 billion, read a report in Africa Daily Digital.
Zambia’s debt burden and the macroeconomic situation deteriorated rapidly after Covid-19. It was forced to seek assistance from the World Bank.

On December 20, 2022, the multilateral financial institution announced the release of the second tranche of its support for Zambia’s Macroeconomic Stability, Growth, and Competitiveness Programme–a USD 100 million concessional credit as part of a USD 275 million concessional development policy financing for Zambia in October 2022 in support of Zambia’s reforms to restore fiscal and debt sustainability and promote private sector-led growth.

Zambia’s new President, Hakaind Hichilkma, came to power in 2021, promising a 10 per cent increase in growth and a five-year plan to get the country out of its USD 12.8 billion debt mess (as estimated at the time).

Youth, who was a key component of his landslide victory over incumbent Edgar Lungu, were motivated by unemployment, political disillusionment, and economic hardship. But it was never an easy task in the past, and it isn’t now.

Dealing with larger economic issues would necessitate austerity measures, which would impose additional economic burdens on people who are already suffering from unemployment and inflation.

The IMF conditionality, which Zambia is committed to implementing in exchange for the multilateral institution’s assistance, would be politically unpopular. These measures would include eliminating electricity and gasoline price subsidies, as well as restructuring the civil service wage bill, Africa Daily Digital reported.

In the current situation, many observers see seeking additional funds for infrastructure development from foreign countries, particularly China, as a sure recipe for disaster, as the latter provides funding at higher and commercial rates.

Many of them are concerned about a repeat of what happened in Sri Lanka last year and is now happening in Pakistan this year as a result of the country’s reliance on foreign debt. If Zambia does not maintain balance and caution in infrastructure development, it may be forced into a default-like situation and a saturating economic crisis.

According to a press release issued at the time of the World Bank’s offer of the second tranche of support for the Macroeconomic Stability, Growth, and Competitiveness Programme, Zambia is in debt distress and urgently requires deep and comprehensive debt treatment in accordance with the Joint WB-IMF Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSA), which called for USD 8.4 billion in debt relief in 2022-25 and additional relief through 2031.

Zambia must be cautious about any new external borrowing in this situation. Rather, it should seek assistance from its largest creditor, China. Furthermore, bartering external funds in exchange for natural resources is detrimental to the country’s future development.

It is always preferable for Zambia to develop and diversify its own industries and gradually strive for self-sufficiency. It is expected that if Zambia implements the economic reforms recommended by multilateral financial institutions, it will have greater access to concessional funds and attract more investment, Africa Daily Digital reported.

Authorities in the Henan province of China are forcing people of faith to register on ‘Smart Religion’ app for worship, reported Fox News.

Henan is one of the most religious provinces in the largely secular country and home to one of China’s most vibrant Christian communities.

Religious members of the public in Henan must fill out a government form and verify their place of worship before gathering with fellow believers, according to Chinese human rights advocacy group, ChinaAid.

“Applicants must fill in personal information, including name, phone number, ID number, permanent residence, occupation, and date of birth, before they can make a reservation,” the group reported.

“Those who are allowed into the church must also have their temperature taken and show a reservation code,” it added.

ChinaAid released their report on the new system on March 6.

The regulation system is required for all citizens seeking to worship, regardless of religion — citizens can select their affiliation with a church, Buddhist temple, mosque, and others.

Smart Religion was developed by the Henan Province Ethnic and Religious Affairs Commission, reported Fox News.

The People’s Republic of China is governed exclusively by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which promotes a policy of secularism.

While not explicitly illegal, religious worship is increasingly dangerous in China as government officials crack down on faith communities found unsatisfactory in patriotism or cultural assimilation.

The CCP continues to run concentration camps for the detention and re-education of Uyghur Muslims.

Numerous Western nations, including the UK, have condemned China for grave human rights abuses involving Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang under a government crackdown to prevent terrorism and religious extremism in the restive region, reported Bitter Winter.

Since 2017, Beijing has carried out a sweeping crackdown in the north-western Xinjiang region under the banner of counterterrorism, undertaking campaigns to forcibly assimilate the mostly Muslim ethnic minority group.

Experts estimate that Chinese authorities have detained more than 1 million Uyghurs as part of the crackdown, holding them in centers and “re-education” camps and drawing international condemnation.

Apple Inc. partner Foxconn Technology Group plans to invest about $700 million on a new plant in India to ramp up local production, people familiar with the matter said, underscoring an accelerating shift of manufacturing away from China as Washington-Beijing tensions grow.

The Taiwanese company, also known for its flagship unit Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., plans to build the plant to make iPhone parts on a 300-acre site close to the airport in Bengaluru, the capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka, according to the people, who asked not to be named as the information is not public.

The factory may also assemble Apple’s handsets, some of the people said, and Foxconn may also use the site to produce some parts for its nascent electric vehicle business. Apple declined to comment.

The investment is one of Foxconn’s biggest single outlays to date in India and underscores how China’s at risk of losing its status as the world’s largest producer of consumer electronics. Apple and other US brands are leaning on their Chinese-based suppliers to explore alternative locations such as India and Vietnam. It’s a rethink of the global supply chain that’s accelerated during the pandemic and the war in Ukraine and could reshape the way global electronics are made.

Hon Hai Chairman Young Liu, who met India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi this week, did not comment on a possible Karnataka investment in a statement on Saturday outlining his visit.

“My trip this week supported Foxconn’s efforts to deepen partnerships, meet old friends and make new ones, and seek cooperation in new areas such as semiconductor development and electric vehicles,” Liu said. “Foxconn will continue to communicate with local governments to seek the most beneficial development opportunities for the company and all stakeholders.”

The new production site in India is expected to create about 100,000 jobs, the people said. The company’s sprawling iPhone assembly complex in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou employs some 200,000 at the moment, although that number surges during peak production season.

Output at the Zhengzhou plant plunged ahead of the year-end holidays due to Covid-related disruptions, spurring Apple to re-examine its China-reliant supply chain. Foxconn’s decision is the latest move that suggests suppliers may move capacity out of China far faster than expected.

What Bloomberg Intelligence Says
 The plan may herald an accelerated relocation from China for Hon Hai. Once completed, we calculate this factory could materially improve the component supply in India and potentially boost the country’s share of iPhone assembly to 10-15 % from a sub-5% currently.

— Steven Tseng and Sean Chen, analysts
Several government officials including India’s deputy tech minister tweeted confirmation of details around the upcoming plant on Friday, including that it will be built soon and create 100,000 jobs.

The plans could still change as Foxconn is in the process of finalizing investment and project details, the people said. It’s also unclear if the plant represents new capacity, or production that Foxconn is shifting from other sites such as its Chinese facilities.

The Karnataka state government also did not respond to a Bloomberg request for comment. Liu has committed to another manufacturing project in the neighboring Telangana state.
Foxconn’s decision would be a coup for Modi’s government, which sees an opportunity to close India’s tech gap with China as Western investors and corporations sour on Beijing’s crackdowns on the private sector.

India has offered financial incentives to Apple suppliers such as Foxconn, which began making the latest generation of iPhones at a site in Tamil Nadu last year. Smaller rivals Wistron Corp. and Pegatron Corp. have also ramped up in India, while suppliers such as Jabil Inc. have begun making components for AirPods locally.

Tough times are ahead for Pakistan as Islamabad and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have failed to reach a staff-level agreement on a much-needed USD 1.1 billion bailout package aimed at preventing the country from going bankrupt.

Analysts believe that the current economic crisis in Pakistan is a culmination of decades of faulty policies, reported The Al Arabiya Post.

Pakistan is seeking a USD 7 billion bailout package from the IMF to prevent the collapse of the economy. While the visiting IMF delegation is asking for several reforms and compliance with its conditionality.

The IMF mission, led by Nathan Porter, began talks on January 31 with the Pakistan government represented by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar for the ninth review of the assistance package.

Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, while addressing an apex committee meeting in Peshawar following Monday’s mosque bombing that killed over 100 people, said, “As I speak, the IMF delegation is in Islamabad and they are giving Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and his team a tough time.”

Notably, the resource allocation pattern in Pakistan from one budget to another puts a disproportionate focus on populism and militarization. This has put an additional burden on its exchequer leading to an unsustainable fiscal gap, reported Al Arabiya Post.

PM Sharif said on February 3 that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was giving a “tough time” to his country over the restoration of stalled bailout package at a time of “unimaginable” crisis.

Shehbaz Sharif admitted that the country has no option but to accept the IMF conditionality. “You all know we are running short of resources,” Sharif said, adding the country was “facing an acute economic crisis”.

Moreover, the Pakistani rupee, which has been in a steep slide since last week, hit a record low against the US dollar. The Pakistani rupee fell by 1.9 per cent to a record low of 276.58 per dollar in the inter-bank market the same day, according to the Central Bank, reported Al Arabiya Post.

As the IMF bailout package is conditional on Pakistan implementing IMF suggested measures, its release would require Islamabad to take tough decisions.

After the first round of technical talks between the IMF team and the government concluded on February 4, Pak Prime Minister observed that the lender was imposing conditions that were “beyond our wildest dreams”.

The discussions covered details of expenditure and revenue performance to identify the policy measures- both revenue and non-revenue- that would have to be taken over the next four months of the current fiscal year. The Pak Prime Ministered, despite calling the IMF conditionality unimaginable acknowledged that the country had no choice but to implement the conditions.

It has been seen that Islamabad has a policy obduracy and inertia that prohibit it to shun its populist policies and take reform measures on debt, fiscal, trade and structural fronts to address its economic woes, reported Al Arabiya Post.

Analysts opine that the rocky road Pakistan is passing through is its own creation. In the first instance, a debt-dependent growth strategy is itself a sure recipe to fall into a debt trap, especially when industrial growth and diversification are limited and the export basket is primarily made up of primary goods.

The debt dependence has also eroded the sovereignty of Pakistan and the country’s economic and foreign policies are dictated by those who provide funds. Such dependence on external funding has impeded the structural transformation of the Pak economy and its indigenous growth impetus.

Secondly, an artificially designed threat perception in Pakistan created by the vested interests in Islamabad’s establishment has totally distorted the allocation of resources in the country giving undue emphasis on militarisation in the name of preparing for a threat that does not exist.

The third most remarkable flaw in Pakistan’s economic policy is a deliberate and foolhardy choice of missing the development opportunities generated by free trade, reported Al Arabiya Post.

While Pakistan has a good location to leverage the presence of two giant economies in its neighbourhood, it has opted to isolate one of them and sided with the other at the cost of huge losses in trade creation.

Not giving the Most Favoured Nation status to India and keeping the trade routes closed for direct trade is a self-defeating proposition.

Islamabad could no more avoid taking hard decisions. The situation continues to deteriorate. With only around USD 3.10 billion in foreign exchange reserves, which can only cover 18 days’ worth of imports, and a shortage of basic goods including food and medicine and ever-spiralling inflation, the choice to comply with the IMF conditionality would not be easy for Pakistan.

China gained a preferential trade partner status with the US in 2001 and since then, the US had to close 50000 production units and has lost more than four million jobs in the sector, he Singapore Post reported, adding that in 2023, the US was preparing to revoke the status to repair the damage done.

US Republican Senators Tom Cotton, Ted Budd, Rick Scott, and JD Vance introduced the China Trade Relations Act on January 26 this year to end China's Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status, the report said.

"Communist China has enjoyed permanent MNF status for two decades, exacerbating the loss of American manufacturing jobs. China never deserved this privilege in the first place, and China certainly doesn't deserve it today. Time to protect American jobs and hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable for its forced labour camps and gross human rights violations," Cotton was quoted as saying in The Singapore Post report.

In 2000, under US President Bill Clinton, China obtained the 'Permanent Normal Trade Relations' status of the US. In 2001, with the support of the Bush administration, China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The report quoted Florida Senator Scott as saying, "The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cares about one thing -- destroying the United States. There is no reason for the United States to use preferential treatment and 'most-favoured-nation treatment' to help the trade operations of the Communist Party government. Now is the time to put the interests of the United States (instead of the CCP) in the first place and overturn this outdated law."

Republican Senator Vance said that Ohio had lost more than 1,30,000 jobs since the approval of MNF status by US congress which he called a 'catastrophic mistake'.

Senator Budd of North Carolina said, "The Chinese Communist Party is not a friend of the United States, nor is it a force for good in the world. From human rights violations to the theft of American jobs and intellectual property, the Chinese Communist Party must be held accountable. One of the most effective ways to counter the Chinese Communist Party is to promulgate the Cotton Senate Congressman's Bill to terminate China's permanent normal trade relations status.”

Two separate but compelling narratives, one a set of paintings, the other an interview to the Voice of America provide a graphic insight of the lives of ordinary Uyghur people living in Xinjiang today. Jamal, a Uyghur man, who recently spoke with VOA explained that “the first priority of the Chinese policy on passports in Xinjiang is to not let anyone cross borders and to keep everyone intact inside the region.

Last August, the release of a damning report on Chinaby the UN rights office brought to the forefront once again the plight of Uyghur and other Muslim ethnic minorities, residing in the Xinjiang province. For years now, China has been accused of arbitrarily detaining Uyghur and its treatment of the Uyghurs has been termed as genocide.The interview given by the Uyghur named ‘Jamal ’echoes many of these aspects.

For instance, he makes it clear that the China as a matter of policy does not issue new passports to the Uyghur. Additionally, he convey show the fear of retaliation by Chinese authorities, prevented the Uyghur from speaking to the media even after leaving the country. Jamal claimed to the VOA that Chinese authorities were pressurised into returning his passport since his spouse was a foreigner.


He added that any Uyghur passport holder needed to be able to present a consent document from the provincial authorities at any customs post in China.”If a Uyghur pers on has a valid Chinese passport and a visa to go to a certain country but doesn’t have that government consent document, customs won’t let them cross the border,” he told VOA.

“When a Uyghur presents his Chinese ID, passport and consent document to the customs officers, they would take that person to a special designated place for Uyghurs and then call the police authorities in Xinjiang to authenticate the document,” he added. Pertinently, Jamal told VOA China’s national security division had started confisticating passports of Uyghur from 2016 onwards.

He said: “For Uyghurs, they had started confiscating passports … in 2016; we had to hand in our passports to the police bureau’s national security division. They said they would keep our passports for safekeeping and would give [them back to us if we needed to go abroad.”More importantly Jamal sheds light on the situation of Uyghur in Xinjiang,

He recalls that last year,some Uyghur released from the re-education camps were transferred to work in factories either in Xinjiang or China’s interior. Those who remained couldn’t easily find jobs because of government discrimination.

Many were never released from re-education and were instead sentenced to prison.Notably, the Chinese government never really stopped arbitrary arrests of Uyghur and even re-arrested Uyghur who had gone through re-education in the past.

Uyghur not only face a problem with overseas travel, but also face a lot of hurdles if they want to go to other parts of the region or China. They have to get special permission from the authorities first. Han Chinese people can move freely compared to Uyghurs, Kazakhs or other local populations. Their movement is not restricted. Recently under the “zero-COVID” policy, some

Han Chinese started to feel and say that their freedom of movement had begun to be restricted.Another aspect of Chinese curbs on the Uyghur becomes clear from Jamal’s description of Michelle Bachelet then the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights visit to the region.Jamal witnessed that the government sealed and closed the majority Uyghur district in Urumqi during her visit under the pretext that there were some asymptomatic COVID cases.

They opened the district after Bachelet left China. A far more graphic and illustrative insight into the lives of Uyghur comes from Tomomi Shimizu, a famous writer and illustrator in Japan.She has produced a new manga booklet depicting the experiences of an ethnic Uzbek woman forced to teach Mandarin to Uyghur detainees in ‘re-education’ camps in China’s Xinjiang.

Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports that Shimizu has portrayed the experiences of female survivors of Xinjiang’s detention camps and her latest work focuses on Qelbinur Sidiq, 53, also known as Kalbinur Sidik, who taught Mandarin Chinese at an elementary school in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi for nearly three decades. Sidiq was in 2017, forced by Chinese authorities to teach Mandarin in Xinjiang’s “re-education” camp system.

As a result of the government campaign to suppress the birth rates of Muslim women in Xinjiang, Sidiq also underwent forced abortion and sterilization, according to RFA. Shimizu released her latest work in December 2022 based on the testimony given by Sidiq at an Independent People’s Tribunal in London in June 2021.

Shimizu told RFA that she was “shocked”when she learnt of the Uyghurs’ situation and “thought it was important to let many people know of their situation to rescue the people in the internment] camps. I also thought that if I illustrated their harsh experiences with easy-to-understand manga, the world would understand it better”.Sidiq experienced torture and rape at the two detention camps in Xinjiang.

Her statements before the Tribunal contradicted Beijing’s claims that the facilities were voluntary “vocational centres” where “students” were treated humanely. RFA further informs that some 55 Uyghur organizations, had called on world leaders to recognize 9 December as Uyghur Genocide Recognition Day.

Uyghur organizations from 20 countries also asked global leaders to take action to end the Chinese government’s human rights atrocities against the predominantly Muslim Uyghur. The two different but compelling narratives of the plight of the Uyghur need to be retold manifold times to make people aware.

This is an essential step towards putting pressure on China with the objective of changing its attitude on ethnic minorities. Undoubtedly, this is a long-drawn task, but the need to persist cannot be over emphasised.

What is going on in China at present has stoked fears about the repetition of the horrific Covid-19 outbreak that killed millions of people across the globe. And like what Beijing did in 2019, this time too Chinese authorities are hiding information about the coronavirus infections from their own people and the world outside.

Had China disseminated true information of the Covid in 2019, the world could have been saved from the unprecedented disaster. The world is still recovering from the losses of livelihoods, damages to businesses and national economies, and healthcare disruptions.

In such a scenario, the new, deadly variant of coronavirus from China can create havoc across the globe if its spread is not checked in time. This demands Beijing must take its citizens and the international community into confidence and share the ground realities with them. Millions of new cases are reported from China daily.

Major cities including Shanghai and Beijing are reeling under rapidly increasing infections. Hospitals and funerals are crowded, and streets are empty. People are not getting beds in the hospitals. They are forced to stay and sleep on benches and floors of hospitals. Even students are disallowed from attending school. Teachers and school staff are falling ill.


It is said to be the biggest wave since the Wuhan outbreak three years ago. Chinese authorities appear helpless and struggling to cope with the growing problem. “The hospital is just overwhelmed from top to bottom. The biggest challenge, honestly, is I think we were just unprepared for this,” Beijing-based doctor Howard Bernstein said.

There are chances that half of Shanghai’s 25 million population can be infectedby the end of 2022. China’s government however has stopped giving out information about new cases and the current Covid patients. It did not furnish any reason.

On other hand, the state-run newspaper Global Times blamed western media for showing negative views about the ongoing crisis in China. It claimed that Chinese authorities were handling the pandemic smoothly.

The leaked government documents however revealed that the situation in China has turned grimmer. World Health Organisation (WHO) emergencies director Mike Ryan said “In China, what’s been reported is relatively low numbers of cases in ICUs, but anecdotally ICUs are filling up.”

Around 250 million people in China are feared to have been infected in the first three weeks of December. This means about 18 per cent of China’s 1.4 billion population has caught covid.

In early December, many suspected China was hiding ground realities and under reporting the infection numbers. After China’s National Health Commission stopped releasing information, it cleared the air and raised concerns over Chinese intentions. Health expert Lawrence Gostin called it “highly suspicious”.


In the wake of the absence of true and real-time data, other countries are grappling with the fear of the repetition of the 2020 disaster. Epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding said the global fallout of the expected 2022-2023 wave would not be small. “What happens in China doesn’t stay in China,” he said.

Nations like the US, India and European Union have begun taking measures to face a possible covid tsunami. People are masking up, buying ration stocks and medicines.


The mystery revolving around the health crisis and the disruptions in industrial and manufacturing in China have stoked fears across the world. “There are clear implications for the global economy with China being shut down because of COVID,” said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Kerry Brown, an associate fellow in the Asia-Pacific program at Chatham House, said the uncertainty in China is going to have a “massive impact” on the rest of the world. 
There however is going to be a harsher impact on small nations.

Dane Chamorro, head of global risks and intelligence at Control Risks, said when the Chinese economy shrinks by 1 per cent, the global economy does by a half per cent. However, it is almost a full percentage point for countries like Indonesia, Chile, which are China’s major trading partners and suppliers, he said.

The slowdown in the Chinese economy and now fears of a new wave of Covid from China have dampened the global spirit and are likely to have a wider negative impact on all aspects of life.

Initiative and Research Specialist of the international human rights organization, Safeguard Defenders, Chen Jingjie has stated that “cross-border repression is a form of human rights persecution that has gradually received attention in recent years. The authoritarian governments use legal and illegal means to bring specific people back to the country, and China in particular favours this method of repression”.

According to the observation of "Protection Guardian", China prefers to capture targets back to China through legal and illegal "cross-border suppression" and persecute them, said Jingjie at a press conference in Taipei on the occasion of World Human Rights Day on Saturday.

The conference was jointly held by Tibet-Taiwan Human Rights Connection, Human Rights Covenant Implementation Monitoring Alliance, Taiwan Abolition of the Death Penalty and other groups to call on world leaders to take immediate action towards China's human rights atrocities and resist the country's "cross-border repression."

According to Jingjie, the legal means used by China include bilateral extradition agreements to request the extradition of individuals, giving unreliable diplomatic assurances to return Chinese citizens who have failed to apply for asylum to China and abusing Interpol's red notices to arrest individuals.

“It becomes impossible for human rights groups to analyse the situation as there are no official records of the repatriation process, said Jingjie, according to Liberty Times Net.

The illegal means, according to Jingjie, include "Operation Fox Hunt" and "Operation Skynet", both launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2015 and 2016 respectively.

The country attempted to rationalize its means by using legislation. According to Liberty Times Net, Chen Jingjie called on Taiwan to stand with other democratic countries when more and more countries realize the problem of China's cross-border repression, conduct investigations on China's influence outside China, and try to strengthen their own democratic defence mechanisms.

Taiwanese human rights activist Lee Ming-che, while speaking at the same conference, cited an article published in the Chinese State-run People's Daily by jurist Wang Yingjin. He added that China could invoke mutual legal assistance treaties to target pro-independence Taiwanese in a third country.

The article, suggests that Beijing is seriously contemplating the strategy, which would endanger all Taiwanese transiting through China or travelling in a country that has an extradition treaty with Beijing, said Lee, according to Taipei Times.

Lee, who was imprisoned in China from 2017 to April 2022 on charge of subverting state power, urged the Taiwan government to react on time to prevent China from abusing the extradition treaties.

The Canadian Royal Mounted Police has announced that it is launching an investigation into reports about the establishment of Chinese “police service stations” in the city of Toronto.

“The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is investigating reports of possible foreign actor interference at undeclared “police service stations” believed to be operating on behalf of the People’s Republic of China in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA),” the RCMP said in a statement on Tuesday.

In the statement, the RCMP said that it is aware of recent reports that accuse China of targeting the Chinese diaspora throughout Canada and is investigating “all criminality” related to such activities.

“Our aim is to prevent intimidation, threats and harassment as well as any form of harm initiated on behalf of a foreign entity being applied to any community in Canada,” the statement said.

It also said that the RCMP emphasized that foreign actor interference is considered a threat to Canada’s national security as it allows direct meddling in the country’s internal affairs.

All attempts made by foreign states to meddle in the lives of Canadian citizens, including through threats, harassment, intimidation or corruption, will be investigated by the RCMP, the statement added.

The authorities have requested Canadian citizens to communicate with them if they are aware of any activity arising from the alleged “police service stations” or if they have been threatened by China.

Earlier this month, China rejected reports of deployment of overseas “police stations” in foreign nations, saying “police service centers” outside the country only assist Chinese nationals in accessing the online service platform in the respective countries.

Beijing’s response came after the Dutch government ordered China to close the “police service stations” in the Netherlands, saying that no permission was sought for the “police service stations” from them.

Addressing a press conference on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian said these sites mentioned are not “police stations” or “police service centers”.

“They assist overseas Chinese nationals who need help in accessing the online service platform to get their driving licenses renewed and receive physical check-ups for that purpose. The venues are provided by local overseas Chinese communities who would like to be helpful, and the people who work on those sites are all volunteers who come from these communities,” he said.

“They are not police personnel from China. There is no need to make people nervous about this,” Zhao added.

Surveillance has tightened up across China as the authorities have increased the DNA mass tests including the arbitrary collection of DNA from residents in many towns and villages throughout the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), several media reports said.

the University of Toronto and a Human Rights Watch Report, the European Times stated that atrocities against ethnic minorities in Tibet, especially Uyghurs and Tibetans by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have skyrocketed.

Population (3.6 million).
Moreover, authorities in Xinjiang collected DNA samples from the entire local population of Uyghur and other ethnic people aged 12 to 65.

According to Human Rights Watch, the bottom line is that these collection drives could be seen as part of ongoing efforts by Beijing to establish a police presence at the grassroots level throughout the region.

The CCP has implemented Bio-security as an agency to control the population, specifically those in the occupied regions of Tibet, East Turkistan and Southern Mongolia being targeted, according to Tibet Press.

Earlier, China used biological means to sterilize thousands of Uyghur Muslims, which has shown horrific results. And the recent mass DNA collection drive occurring in Tibet where Human Rights Watch identified drives in 14 distinct localities across 7 prefectural-level areas indicates how wide this project is under the current regime.

Tibet under Chinese occupation has been repressed since 1949 when the People's Republic of China (PRC) was established.

But since 2017 Beijing under the leadership of Xi Jinping has transformed the functioning of this activity and launched a campaign to collect DNA from 10 per cent of all Chinese men with the sole purpose to trace a man's male relative.

Such an intention and ploy were a functioning modus operandi by Beijing, especially in the occupied regions.

For Tibetans, it was common knowledge that if you have family and links in Tibet, you must be apolitical even if you are personally far away from the direct clutches of Beijing’s authoritarian rule. The reason is that your family members were immediately questioned, threatened and even sentenced due to your actions that occurs far beyond the jurisdiction of Beijing, reported Tibet Press.

As China’s leaders gather for a crucial party congress, the country is expected on Tuesday to announce some of its weakest quarterly growth figures since 2020, its economy hobbled by Covid restrictions and a real estate crisis.

The figures for the third quarter, along with a salvo of other economic indicators, will be unveiled in the middle of the week-long political meeting that is expected to grant President Xi Jinping a historic third term in charge.

A group of experts interviewed by AFP said they expected an average GDP increase of 2.5 percent on last year’s July-September quarter.

In the previous quarter, growth in the world’s second largest economy collapsed to only 0.4 percent compared to the previous year, the worst performance since 2020. The country posted 4.8 percent growth in the first quarter of 2022.

Many economists think China will struggle to attain its growth target this year of around 5.5 percent, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has lowered its GDP growth forecast to 3.2 percent for 2022 and 4.4 percent for 2023.

AFP’s panel of experts predicted average growth of three percent in 2022, a long way off the 8.1 percent seen in 2021.

That would be China’s weakest growth rate in four decades, excluding 2020 when the global economy was hammered by the emergence of the coronavirus.

“The big policy challenge is accepting that the economy has reached a state of maturity that means growth numbers are likely permanently reset to the zero to 4.5 percent range for the coming decade,” Clifford Bennett, chief economist at ACY Securities, told AFP.



Zero-Covid
Another factor that has had an enormous impact is Beijing’s zero-Covid policy.

China is the last of the world’s major economies to continue to follow the strategy, which imposes tight travel restrictions, mass PCR testing and obligatory quarantines.

It also involves sudden and strict lockdowns — including of businesses and factories — which has disrupted production and weighed heavily on household consumption.

But despite the impact on the economy, “there is no clear sign of a significant easing of the zero-Covid strategy”, Nomura’s Ting Lu said, noting that so far the opposite had happened.

In the week leading up to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress, state media have published multiple editorials warning the policy should not be relaxed, and officials have pounced on outbreaks across the country over the last week with increased curbs.

Some lockdown restrictions have returned to major financial hub Shanghai, prompting some to fear a repeat of earlier this year when the city was shut down for two months.

Meanwhile, China is also battling an unprecedented crisis in its real estate sector — historically a driver of growth in the economy and representative of more than a quarter of the country’s GDP when combined with construction.

Following years of explosive growth fuelled by easy access to loans, Chinese authorities launched a crackdown on excessive debt in 2020.

Property sales are now falling across the country, leaving many developers struggling and some owners refusing to pay their mortgages for unfinished homes.

‘Modern economy’
Despite the problems, “many economic indicators have actually recovered reasonably well from the mass lockdowns of March and April”, according to analyst Thomas Gatley from Gavekal Dragonomics.

Car sales held strong in September, driven by strong demand for electric clean vehicles. August exports increased by 7.1 percent compared to the previous year, and Beijing has invested in infrastructure to support activity.

However, “those pillars of growth are becoming more fragile”, Gatley said. And “the Chinese economy faces more fundamental problems” of transformation, sinologist Jean-Louis Rocca told AFP.

After decades of growth fueled by investment and exports, he said China “no longer wants to be ‘the world’s factory'” — instead it aspires to be a “modern economy”, geared towards new technology and consumption — and the transition is still ongoing.

Another worry for the CCP, which draws a large part of its political legitimacy from its economic success, is that this type of modern economy does not create very many jobs, Rocca said — which has serious implications for China’s growing middle class.

As China's pursuit for Taiwan reunification grows larger with every passing day, the Deputy Foreign Minister of the self-governed island, Tien Chung-Kwang on Monday said that Taiwan will not accept any unilateral decision set by China.

Reiterating Taiwan's sovereignty, the minister said that peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait are the responsibility of the two sides and it must be taken care of, at all times, according to Taiwan News.

China's ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) views the self-governed island as part of its territory, despite having never controlled it, and has long vowed to "reunify" the island with the Chinese mainland, by force if necessary.

Describing the support of international organizations for Taiwan, Tien mentioned that the EU's support for Taiwan has become increasingly clear in recent years, Taiwan News reported.

After US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, China's rhetoric on the self-governing island has increased to an unprecedented level, visible by increased military exercises by China in the Taiwan Strait.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping recently said Beijing will not renounce the use of force to reunite Taiwan, the island nation responded by saying that it will never compromise on the values of sovereignty, democracy and freedom.

"The national security team is closely monitoring the situation and will continue to pay close attention to subsequent developments," Taiwan presidential office spokesperson Chang Tun-han was quoted as saying by CNN.

"It is the consensus of the Taiwanese public that territorial sovereignty, democracy and freedom cannot be compromised, and military confrontation must not be the option for both sides of the Taiwan Strait," the spokesperson added.

The statements of Xi Jinping came at a time when the 20th National Party Congress is taking place which will either be re-elected as general secretary of the CCP or will be newly elected as chairman of the CCP, a title that has lain dormant since 1982 and was once the highest position ever held by Mao Zedong.

The congress is taking place at one of the most perilous periods in international affairs in recent years. A war is raging in Ukraine as President Vladimir Putin attempts to burnish his credentials as a great Russian leader, and China remains a staunch supporter of this would-be tsar.

At the same time, Taiwan Strait tensions are at their highest in decades, as China attempts to pummel Taipei into acquiescence.

Few industries more exemplify China’s central role in global supply chains than smartphone manufacturing: in 2021, for every three smartphones produced in the world, two were made in China. China is also the world’s single largest smartphone market – one out of every four phones sold last year was bought by a consumer in China, giving local brands such as Xiaomi, Huawei Technologies Co, Oppo and Vivo a big home market in which to grow first before venturing overseas to take on the likes of Apple and Samsung Electronics. But a prolonged cooling of China’s smartphone market is sending shivers across supply chains as factories face cutbacks in production orders and local smartphone brands struggle to convince consumers to buy their latest models amid an economic downturn. The usual buzz around smartphone brands and suppliers has faded, according to an executive at a handset supplier in southern China’s Guangdong province, with clients now making very conservative estimates about upcoming orders after reviewing forecasts for the year ahead.

“Now we don’t know how many [handsets] we are supposed to produce for the next month until the last minute, since our clients have no clarity on how many they can sell either,” said the executive, who declined to be named as he is not authorised to talk with the media. “Their forecasts now are purely symbolic, and it really depends on how consumption power will change under future Covid-19 policies.” Orders at the executive’s manufacturing company have been cut by 20 to 30 per cent this year. The factory’s clients, which include some of the biggest domestic smartphone brands in China, had been optimistic about 2022 shipment volumes only to have their confidence shattered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the strict Covid-19 lockdown in Shanghai in March, the executive said.

Chinese smartphone brands across the board have been affected to some extent, sending a ripple effect across different parties in the supply chain, said the executive. “For us, less than 80 per cent of orders were completed in line with the production schedule.”

Domestic shipments dropped 23 per cent in the first seven months of 2022 from a year ago to 153 million units, according to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. Global smartphone shipments are expected to reach 1.36 billion units this year, down from 1.39 billion in 2021, according to the latest global forecast from Counterpoint Research. This turn of events has been a shock for China’s home-grown smartphone players and their ambitious plans for 2022, with many planning to penetrate further into the high-margin, premium handset segment.

Xiaomi said in February that it would ratchet up its global challenge to Apple by focusing on the high-end segment. However, Xiaomi’s handset shipments decreased 26.2 per cent in the second quarter, according to the Hong Kong-listed company, and a Fitch report estimated that the company’s total shipments growth will fall by a low teen-digit in 2022.

Realme, a fast-growing Chinese smartphone maker, had hoped to match the same growth rate it saw last year to achieve a 50 per cent increase in global sales for 2022, with a sharpened focus on the high-end market. However, China in March was hit by its worst Covid-19 outbreak since early 2020, resulting in Realme vice-president Xu Qi trimming the firm’s revenue growth target in the domestic market to 30 per cent, while maintaining its overseas target at 50 per cent.

The impact of Covid-19 and harsh lockdown policies to prevent its spread, have had an outsize impact. An outbreak of the Omicron variant in Shanghai led to a draconian lockdown across April and May, which partially sealed off neighbouring provinces that house a lot of smartphone production.

China has maintained its dynamic zero-Covid policy since, putting more cities under lockdowns and conducting massive nucleic acid testing as a go-to-method of containment. That has helped drag the country’s economy down to GDP growth of only 0.4 per cent in the second quarter, the slowest since the economy shrank 6.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2020.

“One of the major trends starting from the fourth quarter of last year [for smartphone brands] was to move into the high-end [segment]. However, most people did not expect the situation to deteriorate to such a gruesome extent,” said Ivan Lam, senior analyst at Counterpoint Research.

That has translated into order cuts and in some cases, zero new orders for the smartphone value chain in the first half of 2022, especially for suppliers of high-end Android products, Lam said. Android OS is a Linux-based mobile operating system that primarily runs on smartphones and tablets not produced by Apple. “Makers of some key components for mid and high-end products, which usually have a long procurement cycle, are no longer receiving new orders as clients had been excessively stockpiling under more optimistic forecasts,” Lam said.


Lam added that manufacturers of display and camera modules were under more pressure in this situation, as smartphone clients clear inventory.

Sunny Optical, China’s biggest camera module maker for major smartphone brands including Apple and Xiaomi, saw its handset lens sales fall 9.1 per cent in the first half of the year “due to weakening demand in the global smartphone market and a downgrading of specification and configuration for smartphone cameras”. BYD, the Shenzhen-based electric carmaker and also a smartphone manufacturer, saw its revenue from handset components and assembly slip 4.78 per cent in the first half of 2022.

China’s top chip maker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp has already warned of lower production due to the Covid-19 lockdown in Shanghai, one of its major manufacturing bases, as well as weak downstream demand. “Many orders [from smartphone makers] have been cancelled,” said co-CEO Zhao Haijun earlier this year.

“Chinese smartphone vendors could reduce shipments by 200 million units this year.” For the first five months of 2022, major Chinese Android phone brands have cut orders for 270 million units, according to two separate reports by Kuo Ming-chi, an analyst at TF International Securities. Kuo estimated that MediaTek has cut mid-to-low end 5G chip orders by 30 to 35 per cent for the fourth quarter, with Qualcomm cutting orders by 10 to 15 per cent for high-end chips for the second half of 2022 despite it traditionally being peak season.

The continuous uncertainties and disruptions could have longer-term implications for China’s long-established smartphone supply chain, with many manufacturers spreading their assembly wings outside China. Apple, for instance, moved some of its iPad production from China to Vietnam in June after Covid-19 lockdowns in Shanghai and nearby regions disrupted production, Nikkei Asia reported. iPhone production in India surged by 50 per cent year on year in the first quarter of 2022.

This was aided by a decision by Apple to assemble more iPhone 13 models at a Foxconn factory near Chennai, according to Indian media reports. “The moves are initially driven by the need to diversify to lower the supply chain risks,” said Counterpoint’s Lam. “However, I expect the pace to be slow. It will still take a long time to build a mature value chain like China’s.”

China has unleashed its cyber warfare on Taiwan which has forced Taipei to have its guard up especially in the wake of heightened tensions after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit, media reports said.

In a bid to become resilient amid the Chinese aggression, Taiwan has raised its defence spending by 15% next year, reported Nikkei Asia. However, in the contemporary world, there are other methodologies which China is eyeing to exploit including cyber warfare against Taiwan.

After Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, the island nation's government and companies were targets of such attacks. Customers in 7-Eleven stores saw bulletin messages reading "Warmonger Pelosi, get out of Taiwan." And electronic billboards were hijacked across Taiwan -- one calling her an "old witch" whose visit is a "serious provocation to the sovereignty of the motherland," reported Nikkei Asia.

Even the websites of the presidential office and foreign affairs and defence ministries were not spared by the Chinese. They were shut down by hackers for a short while. What transpired has instilled worry and concerns in Taiwan.

Taiwan is now thinking aloud over whether its key infrastructure and essential services have strong enough firewalls and the ability to withstand determined cyberattacks. The cyber attack is an added aggression amid China's biggest-ever military drills which encircled the democratic island.

"If power plants, hospitals, and transportation are hacked, the damage would be significant," Wang Ming-hung, an assistant professor of computer studies at National Chung Cheng University, told Nikkei Asia.

"Everyone is exposed to the risks of cyberattacks," he said, "from sensitive data leakage to online service suspension and disinformation or misinformation to critical infrastructure."

Moreover, Kuo Szu-Wei, a cybersecurity analyst at the Taipei-based Institute for Information Industry (III), shares Wang's concern when he noted that, "all of the key infrastructures," Kuo told Nikkei, "hospitals, water and electricity stations as well as leading companies could be targets.

"In the age of digital transformation, linking devices and systems to the internet is almost inevitable. That leads to regular software and firmware updates, which create vulnerabilities for attacks."

Taiwan is not sitting idle as China continues to flex its muscles. Taiwan's government has been stepping up efforts to combat cyberattacks. President Tsai Ing-wen has repeatedly declared "cybersecurity is national security."

Another key area in which Taiwan has started to lay the foundation of a cybersecurity agency inside the newly established Ministry of Digital Affairs, which is headed by hacker-turned-cabinet member Audrey Tang. The agency will hire an initial 150 cybersecurity specialists, a sharp increase from the 20 staff it had at a cabinet-affiliated cybersecurity center.

Myanmar-based Institute for Strategy and Policy (ISP) conducted a survey in July 2022 to gauge the perceptions of Myanmarese policy communities about the relationship with China at a time when the military Junta is becoming increasingly authoritarian and suppressive by using state power against its own people, especially democratic activists and protesters against the excesses of the military regime.

The focus of the survey on Myanmar-China relations becomes important for two reasons. First to gauge whether Myanmarese people who have concerns about policies believe that China would be instrumental in the restoration of peace and democracy in the country or make bonhomie with the military Junta for its larger strategic goals and economic benefits in the region. Second, to gauge their perception of the utility and effectiveness of China’s development model and projects like CMEC.

The views of Myanmar policy communities on Myanmar-China relations were compiled on 70 questions on eight sectors and vary on various scales. It is the biggest and most comprehensive survey of its kind to date. The survey conducted through Zoom and Google forms by the ISP included MPs from 47 political parties from Kachin, Shan (North), Mandalay Region, Magway Region and Rakhine State where the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor projects are being implemented. The participants in the survey also included business communities and famous personalities from various fields.

The survey conveyed a lot of negative sentiments about China and its moves in Myanmar. Around 55% of respondents said that they do not see China as a good neighbor while 40% of respondents opined that China is not a good neighbour. The people of Myanmar, as comes to a survey, doubt China’s capability to expedite the peace process in the country. Only 14% believed that China is capable of the same while 67% disapproved of China’s interference in Myanmar’s political process. 79% of the people perceived that China advocates dictatorship in the country.

According to the survey, the suspicion that China backed the military coup in February 2021 against Myanmar’s elected government runs deep among Burmese people who are resisting the dictatorship of the military Junta. 55% of Myanmarese view China as supporting Myanmar to become an authoritarian state.

China’s silence on the military takeover is widely perceived in the country as support for dictatorship. The Myanmar Junta recently executed four prisoners including Phyo Zeya Thaw and Kyan Min Yun who were popular resistant figures, known respectively for critical lyrics against military dictatorship and pro-democracy activists.

The respondents also noted China’s economic dominance and geopolitical dominance as major challenges. On a question that China’s main interest in relations with Myanmar was to acquire geopolitical dominance in the Indian Ocean, 46% of respondents gave their ascent.

Furthermore, 47% Myanmarese do not believe in China’s economic model and 87% are of the view that democracy with Chinese characteristics is not suitable for Myanmar. On a surprising note, 30% of respondents held that they do not trust China’s Covid vaccines.

China in the past has a track record of hobnobbing with authoritarian regimes without any concern for people. The China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), which aims to bind Myanmar and Chinese economies more closely with projects involving transportation, industry, finance and communication, was developed with the deposed, elected government but the coup has changed the paradigm. Astounding 83% of respondents think that CMEC will benefit only China and it will not have any positive effect on Myanmar.

China’s silence on framing and jailing Aung San Suu Kyi is also being seen as an act of betrayal as she had expedited Chinese projects in the country and showed a willingness to further cooperation. On 15th August, Myanmar Junta Court jailed Aung San Suu Kyi for six years on allegations of corruption, which the European Union (EU) denounced as unjust. China, on the other hand, never castigated Myanmar Junta’s continued brutality against civilians and political opponents. People of Myanmar, given China’s long record of bonhomie with the military regime, expected some kind of positive intervention, but Beijing was disappointed.

China has stepped up open support for the Myanmar junta because it believes it can no longer even afford to appear to take a neutral stance when another authoritarian regime is involved. Because it has decided it can most effectively protect its investments by trying to help the junta win the country’s civil war. China’s lack of support for Aung San Suu Kyi, while she is increasingly being sidelined, is detrimental to the cause of democracy. But China inherently believes that any democratic government in Myanmar would not be as sensitive to its strategic agenda.

Beijing is likely to maintain its tacit acceptance of the generals’ regime not only to protect its investments in Myanmar, but also to exploit its vulnerability to realize its strategic agenda. Although the people of Myanmar want democracy to be restored, neither the military Junta nor China was comfortable with this. A Japanese video journalist was detained in Myanmar while covering a brief pro-democracy march and charged with spreading false and alarming news. In the survey, very few people (15%) agreed that China wants democracy in Myanmar.

Afghanistan highlights the limits of China’s Belt and Road initiative as it is unable to generate change on the ground abroad despite being engaged with the Taliban.

Since the Taliban took control over Afghanistan, none of the countries openly came forward and supported other than China, Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and author of “Sinostan: China’s Inadvertent Empire” wrote for Nikkei Asia.

Chinese institute has extended millions of dollars in aid to Afghanistan and even the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing has been a leading voice in calling for Washington to release USD 7 billion in frozen Afghan central bank funds.

Yet all of this positive engagement has not advanced the goals Beijing actually wants to achieve.
Beijing hoped that the Taliban would hand over Uyghur fighters to curtail their activity within the country but sadly, it failed to do so. Indeed, the TTP appears to have offered training to Balochi separatists and other militants who are targeting Chinese interests in Pakistan. On top of that, the Taliban has confounded expectations by actively courting New Delhi.

To extract economic benefit, China sent its businessmen and traders into Afghanistan, but this is most likely simply the result of entrepreneurs sensing an opportunity amid the decline in violence since the Taliban ousted the previous U.S.-backed government, according to Nikkei Asia.

Growth in direct trade has been limited so far, and China’s big state-owned enterprises are treading carefully. The complete lack of infrastructure or managerial capability on the Afghan side limits their ambition, alongside concerns about what they might be getting themselves into.

Afghanistan used to be a place where China could run joint projects with India, the US, and others. Now instead, Afghanistan is increasingly seen through the light of great power competition as merely another place where Washington and its proxies might undermine Chinese interests.

The poor hand China has to play was most vividly articulated recently by the U.S. drone strike that killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri. To some degree, China had previously been able to count on Washington acting as a backstop for problems in Afghanistan, with U.S. forces even launching airstrikes on the Taliban’s Uyghur allies as a common enemy.

The US still has enemies in Afghanistan and, as was seen with the death of al-Zawahri, the capability to do something about them, even in Beijing’s backyard, while China lacks these same kinetic tools and capabilities to go after its adversaries, according to the author.

A decade from the birth of the BRI concept, Afghanistan highlights Beijing’s difficulty in using its development model as a foreign policy concept to be replicated around the world.

A decade ago, Peking University international studies professor Wang Jisi set the conceptual foundation for what would become the Belt and Road Initiative with an essay called “Marching Westwards.”

In it, Wang decried the excessive focus of Chinese foreign policy on Washington and the Asia-Pacific region, highlighting instead the opportunities and threats along China’s western land borders.

The prolonged Ukraine – Russia conflict is hurting the very fundamentals of poor countries, especially countries like Pakistan. An analysts in JP Morgan Chase & Co. warned recently that global oil prices could reach a ‘stratospheric’ levels if the US and European penalties prompt Russia to inflict retaliatory crude-output cuts. A daily cut of 3 million-barrel in supplies would push benchmark London crude prices to USD 190, while the worst-case scenario of 5 million could mean USD 380 a barrel, said the analyst. This would push Islamabad to a scenario much worse than the current crisis that Colombo is facing. Islamabad is currently experiencing worst energy crisis even when the oil prices are hovering above USD 100 a barrel. The crisis deepened further with the State-owned Pakistan LNG Ltd scrapping recently a purchase tender for July shipment citing high price.

Islamabad’s growing economic challenges are many. High inflation, sliding forex reserves, widening current account deficit and depreciating currency are the few to name. Cash-strapped Pakistan’s trade deficit has surged to an all-time high of USD 48.66 billion in the outgoing fiscal year, a significant increase of 57% over the previous year on the back of higher-than-expected imports, despite a ban on more than 800 non-essential luxury items in May by the Shehbaz Sharif government. The trade deficit is propelled by the highest-ever increase in oil prices and commodities in the international market due to the supply chain disruptions brought about by the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The much hyped China – Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), instead of promoting economic growth in Pakistan has now become a big liability to the government. Sovereign counter guarantee to Chinese Independent Power Producers are eating up government’s revenue, though the asset created was lying idle besides the country facing continued power outages. The CPEC project’s implantation progresses has mostly remained tentative and stop start over the last 4 years though Pakistan is the largest recipient of Chinese grants and assistance across the world.

With soaring inflation rates in the month of June to over 20%, the highest in recent past, the implementation of International Monetary Fund (IMF) recommended PRs. 50 oil price hike has further added fuel to it. In just 33 days, the petrol price increased from PRs. 149 to PRs. 249 per litre. In addition, the electricity and gas tariffs have also been jacked up but the country is reeling under power shortages. It is just unimaginable to foresee where the already northbound inflation would land in the coming days.

Meanwhile, essential imports are also denting on forex reserves. Pakistan’s imports of cooking oil spiked to USD 3.56 billion in the first 11 months of the fiscal year 2021-22, which was 44% higher from previous year. It was equivalent to 60% of the three-year IMF loan programme of USD 6 billion. The price of cooking oil shot up close to PRs. 550 per litre in the domestic market compared to PRs. 200 per litre in January 2019.

According to State Bank of Pakistan, “Pakistan’s reliance on imports of edible oil and oilseed meals to meet domestic demand has been increasing over the past two decades. Some 86% of domestic edible oil consumption in 2020 came from imports, up from 77% in 2000.”

The imports are growing rapidly with the increase in the size of population and per capita income in Pakistan, while the pilot projects initiated for growing palm and soybean plants in the country has failed to deliver satisfactory results, notes an analyst.

According to renowned Pakistan banker Yusaf Nazar, Islamabad had got more IMF bailout packages than any other country. This indicates that external sector has always been vulnerable since no government, civilian or military, has ever tried to address the fundamental problems in Pak economy. The growth figures provided by the government are often misleading. Further, the growth is led by consumption and imports. Any growth not led by exports, investments and savings is bound to unravel.

Islamabad has now come to a stage where its friends as well as international lenders are no more listening to same old stories of bailout. They realised that the country just wants to live on dole-outs. Further, the cycle of seeking financial bailout packages is also shrinking. For example, earlier if Pak sought bailout fund from its friendly countries at a duration of 5 - 10 years, now that period has shortened to just a few months.

The root causes remain inefficiencies and corruption in the system, besides structural weaknesses. The IMF also asked Pakistan to set up an anti-corruption task force to review all the existing laws that were aimed at curbing graft in the government departments. In the last 13 - 14 years, losses in state-owned enterprises (SOEs), such as energy distribution companies, Pakistan Railways and Pakistan Steel Mills, have added the dead weight to the system.

The perennial decline in the export-to-GDP ratio has exacerbated the pressure on the forex reserves. The wealthy households and the rich are comfortable with rent-seeking attitude and investing in highly lucrative real estate instead of economic activity that could be generating income and employment. The private sector in Pakistan is not creating enough jobs to absorb the labour pool, which is at the cusp of anger, immigration and criminal activities, point out critics.

The World Bank states in a recent report that Pakistan could be a victim of instability. Pakistan has been facing an average deficit of USD 16 - 21 billion dollars every year since the beginning of 21st century. Hence, per capita income, after adjusting with inflation, during this period has come down by 2%. The report also stated that national productivity capability has come down compared to past, highlighting structural deficiencies. In spite of current IMF bailout package, Islamabad faces much tougher road ahead, though mostly contributed by the external factors, but mainly due to the fact that the country was managed very badly over the last 70 years.

The United States is rallying its allies against forced labour as it begins implementing an import ban on goods from China's Xinjiang region, where it says Beijing is committing genocide of the Uyghur population.

US Customs and Border Protection (CPB) on 21 June began enforcing the Uighur Forced Labour Prevention Act, which US President Joe Biden signed into law in December.

As per new rules all goods from Xinjiang, where Chinese authorities established detention camps for Uighurs and other Muslim groups, are made with forced labour and barred from import unless it can be proven otherwise.

"We are rallying our allies and partners to make global supply chains free from the use of forced labour, to speak out against atrocities in Xinjiang, and to join us in calling on the government of the PRC to end atrocities and human rights abuses immediately," US State Secretary Antony Blinken said in a statement, referring to China by its formal name, the People's Republic of China.

"Together with our interagency partners, we will continue to engage companies to remind them of US legal obligations," he said.

Xinjiang has a booming industrial, mining, and agricultural sector. Everything from peppers and walnuts to electrical equipment and polysilicon, a key material for making solar panels, ships to the US from the region. It also accounts for 20 per cent of the world's cotton and 80 per cent of China's domestic production.

Britain's Sheffield Hallam University released a report in mid-June documenting the use of forced labour in Xinjiang to manufacture polyvinyl chloride, a core component in floor tiling.

Academics and media organisations have published reports detailing the systematic use of forced labour among Uighurs in what critics describe as internment camps. China, which initially denied the existence of such facilities, later said they were vocational training centres are designed to combat the rise of religious and separatist extremism in the region.

A sweeping crackdown in Xinjiang over the past few years has repressed cultural and religious practices and prompted allegations of forced sterilisation and arbitrary imprisonment conditions that some western governments say amount to genocide.
Rights groups have urged for years that companies and brands linked to shirts, trousers and other Xinjiang-made goods be held accountable for labour conditions in the region.

However, China denies the claims of forced labour as "big lie concocted by anti-China forces" and has warned of retaliatory measures. However, the ban intensifies pressure on Beijing as the Foreign Ministry Spokesman Wang Wenbin said earlier in Beijing that "with this so-called law, the United States is trying to create forced unemployment in Xinjiang and to push for the world to decouple with China".

While Chinese companies and retailers are bracing for chaos as US Customs begins to enforce a ban on imports Xinjiang region. These companies are scrambling to gauge how the new rules could affect their business and supply chains, with Asian clothing suppliers, international retail chains, US solar-panel makers and Chinese floor tile material makers among scores of groups that could see US-bound shipments seized.

The Uighur Forced Labor Prevention Act entails that all US-bound imports traced to Xinjiang, from cotton and tomatoes to floor tile and solar panel materials, were made using forced labour and brands them as "high priority" for seizure.

More than 900 shipments from the region were seized in the last quarter of 2021 by US authorities under earlier trade restrictions. But trade and business groups said the new legislation's vague wording threatened to put the bulk of China's USD 500billion in annual shipments bound for the US at risk.

US customs said it would strictly enforce the rules, which threaten to aggravate already tense relations between Washington and Beijing. "If the act is implemented, it will severely disrupt normal co-operation between China and the US, and global industrial and production chains," said Zhao Lijian, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, the week before the ban. "If the US insists on doing this, China will take robust measures to uphold its own rights and interests as well as its dignity."

There are reports of detainees being moved out of Xinjiang to work in other parts of the country, while components produced in the region have been traced to US-bound exports shipped from elsewhere in China. The law could heap more pressure on pandemic-hit China's supply chains.

Following the inability of Pakistan to make payments to the Chinese power supplies, the country lies in the abyss of electricity outages which is disrupting life and business amid current unbearable heatwave.

They have shut down multiple plants because the Pakistani government has failed to pay dues to the tune of 300 billion rupees (USD 1.5 billion).

Ahmed Naeem Salik, a research fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, said that the current power generation capacity in Pakistan is 41,000 megawatts, while consumption is around 28,000 MW.

“We have 13,000 MW of extra electricity capacity, but still there is a lot of load shedding,” he said, using industry lingo for supply interruptions. This, he said, “is mainly because we have to pay the loans [to Chinese companies] that we are unable to pay, and hence [Chinese] have stopped power production.”

Sharing his grievances on the ongoing unbearable heat wave amid the power outages, Waheed Ahmed, a taxi driver in Rawalpindi, said that the power goes out for 8 hours a day.

Another Pakistani, Mumtaz Baloch, who is a government employee, said the situation in the rural area of the southwestern province of Balochistan is even worse. Baloch said that the electricity there comes just six hours per day, as per Nikkei Asia.

“We are used to living without government-supplied electricity as our forefathers did in ancient times,” she said.

Speaking with Nikkie Asia, Umar Nadeem, the head of the advisory at Islamabad consulting company Tabadlab drew a relation between the power outages and the subsequent economic fallout.

He said that the power cuts will have a direct impact on economic activity and it will hit the lower-income citizens hardest, as they feel the pressure of 13 pc plus inflation.

“Disruptions in electricity supply and a corresponding drop in income levels will make coping with the rising costs even more difficult,” Nadeem said.

As part of a broader policy coordination amid increasing Chinese influence in Southeast Asia, Japan and the United States have held their first strategic dialogue on affairs of the region.

Senior officials from both countries met virtually after Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and US President Joe Biden agreed during talks last week in Tokyo to boost ties with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Kyodo News reported.

The new dialogue focused on how the two allies can bring ASEAN member states closer to a US-led group of free and democratic countries, as China has apparently been striving to alter the status quo in the East and South China seas and other areas in the Indo-Pacific with force and coercion.

"Southeast Asia is key to realizing a free and open Indo-Pacific," Foreign Ministry Press Secretary Hikariko Ono told a press conference after the virtual talks, as per Kyodo News.

South-East Asia suddenly became the power theatre of the East as the United States steps up to leave the rivalry with China behind in wooing the ASEAN.

ASEAN made no bones of the fact that it realises it is stuck between China and the US and wants concessions on its own terms as part of its strategy to be wooed by the big powers.

Joanne Lin, a lead researcher at the ASEAN Studies Center at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore told CNBC, "ASEAN would probably like to see more US support towards its ASEAN-led mechanisms, as opposed to US-led minilateral groupings such as the Quad and Aukus."

However, China has been wooing ASEAN as well, "and not just with the trade and investment that are likely its most powerful levers of influence in Southeast Asia" because in the past one decade, "Beijing has steadily expanded its media influence in these countries in four key ways, as a means of shaping their views", according to Asian media reports.

Compared to the high-profile wooing campaigns of President Biden, China's attempts have been subtle and consistent over a period of time. The communist government has banked upon its extensive propaganda machinery to constantly target ASEAN nations with its specialised content.

For instance, Xinhua, China's official state media agency, has print bureaus in every Southeast Asian country. TV news channels CCTV-4 and the English-language CGTN also have bureaus in this region. China Radio International airs multilingual content in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar.