www.newswire.ca
An economically crippled China might be even more dangerous and unpredictable than a prosperous and confident China:
A Crisis of Confidence Is Gripping China’s Economy
China’s economy, which once seemed unstoppable, is plagued by a series of problems, and a growing lack of faith in the future is verging on despair.
Earlier this year, David Yang was brimming with confidence about the prospects for his perfume factory in eastern China.
After nearly three years of paralyzing Covid lockdowns, China had lifted its restrictions in late 2022. The economy seemed destined to roar back to life. Mr. Yang and his two business partners invested more than $60,000 in March to expand production capacity at the factory, expecting a wave of growth.
But the new business never materialized. In fact, it’s worse. People are not spending, he said, and orders are one-third of what they were five years ago.
“It is disheartening,” Mr. Yang said. “The economy is really going downhill right now.”
For much of the past four decades, China’s economy seemed like an unstoppable force, the engine behind the country’s rise to a global superpower. But the economy is now plagued by a series of crises. A real estate crisis born from years of overbuilding and excessive borrowing is running alongside a larger debt crisis, while young people are struggling with record joblessness. And amid the drip feed of bad economic news, a new crisis is emerging: a crisis of confidence.
A growing lack of faith in the future of the Chinese economy is verging on despair. Consumers are holding back on spending. Businesses are reluctant to invest and create jobs. And would-be entrepreneurs are not starting new businesses.
“Low confidence is a major issue in the Chinese economy now,” said Larry Hu, chief China economist for Macquarie Group, an Australian financial services firm.
Mr. Hu said the erosion of confidence was fueling a downward spiral that fed on itself. Chinese consumers aren’t spending because they are worried about job prospects, while companies are cutting costs and holding back on hiring because consumers aren’t spending.
In the past few weeks, investors have pulled more than $10 billion out of China’s stock markets. On Thursday, China’s top securities regulator summoned executives at the country’s national pension funds, top banks and insurers to pressure them to invest more in Chinese stocks, according to Caixin, an economics magazine. Last week, stocks in Hong Kong fell into a bear market, down more than 20 percent from their high in January.
From its resilience to past challenges, China forged a deep belief in its economy and its state-controlled model. It rebounded quickly in 2009 from the global financial meltdown, and in spectacular fashion. It weathered a Trump administration trade war and proved its indispensability. When the pandemic dragged down the rest of the world, China’s economy bounced back with vigor. The Global Times, a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party, declared in 2022 that China was the “unstoppable miracle.”
A Crisis of Confidence Is Gripping China’s Economy (Published 2023)
China’s economy, which once seemed unstoppable, is plagued by a series of problems, and a growing lack of faith in the future is verging on despair.www.nytimes.com
www.telegraph.co.uk
Xi Jinping isn’t missing G20 to snub Modi. He’s battling plots at home
Many of his key supporters have mysteriously disappeared in recent months
GORDON CHANG7 September 2023 • 4:50pm
Xi wants to boost BRICS, not snub Modi - one of its most important heads of state CREDIT: Anadolu
Xi Jinping will not be attending the G20 summit in New Delhi this weekend. Virtually every analyst says the Chinese ruler wants to snub India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
That’s possible of course, but a more likely explanation is that either Xi is not well – there are wild rumours about a stroke – or, more probably, he feels he cannot leave Beijing due to worsening Communist Party infighting.
The snub-Modi argument has some problems. First, Xi, whether he has had a beef with the host country or not, has never skipped a G20. Missing this one is an especially big deal, because he is giving up an opportunity to promote his vision of a Sinocentric world. Moreover, Xi knows he will be damaging the BRICS – the “I” stands for India – at a time when he is trying to elevate that forum as a competitor to the G7.
In any event, Xi does not look like he is in travel mode these days. He is now threatening not to go to the APEC summit in San Francisco in November, and Xi did not attend, as some thought he might, the ASEAN meeting in Jakarta this week.
In any event, there is turbulence at the top reaches of the Communist Party. Most notably, there are rumours that Qin Gang, the former foreign minister, has been executed. Although the rumours are almost certainly false, the existence of the rumours – and the fact that they have been allowed to spread – suggest something is terribly wrong in Beijing.
Qin “helicoptered” up the foreign ministry and became foreign minister only at the end of last December. He was last seen in public June 25.
At the same time, there have been unprecedented personnel changes in the Rocket Force, the branch of the Chinese military in charge of almost all of the country’s nuclear weapons. Both the branch’s commander, Li Yuchao, and its political commissar, Xu Zhongbo were replaced this year in an extremely unusual shakeup. Neither has been seen in public since. Li had taken up his post in January 2022.
A spate of other personnel changes suggests fast turnover, but what is unnerving is that men Xi recently installed have been removed in short order. Qin Gang was known to be a particular favorite of Xi Jinping.
“Throughout the history of Chinese communism, political purges have followed a predictable pattern,” Charles Burton of the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute told me this week. “First, junior figures are taken down. Then, more senior figures fall. Finally, the real target, the guy at the top, topples as his position becomes untenable. It’s like a game of Jenga.”
What is happening now is different, however. “The extraordinary disappearances of the foreign minister, Qin Gang, and of senior military figures appears to be coming out of nowhere, without any viable explanation whatsoever,” says Burton, who served at Canada’s embassy in Beijing. “Their randomness and the fact that the newly purged have all been closely associated with Xi Jinping suggests the start of an out-of-control political upheaval that is unprecedented in Chinese communist history.”
The most consequential developments in the world today are occurring in China’s regime. Unfortunately, we do not know what is happening, but many unexplained and unusual developments in the past few months tell us something must be amiss at the top of the Communist Party.
These rumors are occurring against a backdrop of simultaneous crises: continuing debt defaults, crumbling property prices, a stagnating economy, worsening food shortages, a deteriorating environment, and failing local governments. The Chinese people are desperate. They are either opting out of society or fleeing China in record numbers.
There was also a series of extraordinary protests beginning last October. For instance, a fire on November 24 triggered demonstrations nationwide. Without coordination, leadership, or organization, people took to the streets, some demanding Xi and the Communist Party “step down.”
Xi Jinping has no answer to the unrest. His domestic policies, almost all of which contemplate more state control, have only been making the situation worse. He may now have only one solution to popular discontent: war to rally the Chinese people. For one thing, he can’t stop talking about war, turning to the subject at every opportunity.
He is doing more than just talking, however. He is implementing the largest military buildup since the Second World War; he is trying to sanctions-proof his regime; he is stockpiling grain and other commodities; and, most ominously, he is mobilizing China’s civilians for battle.
Katsuji Nakazawa of Nikkei reported on the 5th of this month that Communist Party “elders” in effect “reprimanded” Xi Jinping at the senior leadership’s annual retreat in Beidaihe last month. Many China watchers dispute the accuracy of the story, but it is nonetheless clear that there is pervasive unhappiness with Xi’s leadership. Xi has taken power and money from many, and they are now, as the country stumbles badly, looking to get even. As Burton points out, there are too many symptoms of distress to believe the regime is stable.
So we cannot assume China is stable, we cannot assume good outcomes, and we cannot assume that Xi Jinping is not going to New Delhi simply because he does not like India.
Gordon G Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and China Is Going to War. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @GordonGChang
…while many of us aren’t anywhere near rolling over, my fear is the Govt is not only aiming towards reinforcing pro-Chinese attitudes, but exploiting its waning power over the masses to ensure personal self-serving influence sees maximum gain/profit…
www.theglobeandmail.com
Amazing how many Mainlanders here don't realize the extent of Cantonese spoken here.While Cantonese may be increasingly threatened in Hong Kong, the dialect has found refuge overseas where it may thrive.
B.C.’s Cantonese speakers fight to preserve language amid uncertainty in Hong Kong
UBC offers Canada’s only comprehensive, for-credit Cantonese-language university program, and enrolment has climbed steadily
This isn’t new by any stretch. I remember someone saying in the early 2000s that in HK, you have to learn Mandarin to succeed in business.While Cantonese may be increasingly threatened in Hong Kong, the dialect has found refuge overseas where it may thrive.
B.C.’s Cantonese speakers fight to preserve language amid uncertainty in Hong Kong
UBC offers Canada’s only comprehensive, for-credit Cantonese-language university program, and enrolment has climbed steadily
www.telegraph.co.uk
British MPs don’t have the capacity to weed out spies
The temptation to blame MPs for gullibility or naivete in their appointments processes should be avoided
TOM HARRIS11 September 2023 • 3:14pm
As if critics of Britain’s politicians were short of material to bolster their view that the Palace of Westminster is a hive of misconduct, they can now claim it is a threat to our national security. A House of Commons researcher has been arrested on suspicion of spying for China. He proclaims his innocence, but the sound of sharp intakes of breath, pearl-clutching and the clutching of petticoats is almost overwhelming.
According to any number of TV and cinematic dramas, even the lowliest and most anonymous back bencher is privy to top secret files to which the great unwashed would never gain access; details of weapons systems, fragile trade negotiations, secret service activities – they’re all included in an MP’s average day, alongside drafting written questions about unemployment rates and helping out old Mrs Jones with her argumentative neighbour.
The reality is rather more prosaic. It’s hard to imagine exactly what information possessed by MPs in general would be of any interest, let alone use, to agents of a hostile regime. Of course, it seems likely that the two MPs to whom the suspect in the current drama is linked – security minister, Tom Tugendhat, and the foreign affairs committee chair, Alicia Kearns – have access to some genuinely sensitive information.
Nor is this the first time a parliamentary aide has been arrested. In 2010, Ekaterina Zatuliveter, an aide to Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock was arrested for suspected spying. Hancock was chair of the Parliamentary All-Party Group on Russia. (One Labour wag submitted a joke question to the Table Office in the Commons in Hancock’s name, asking: “To ask the Secretary of State for Defence vere are ze nuclear missiles?”) A security court later dismissed the allegation that Zatuliveter had been a Russian spy.
But how are MPs to guard against such heinous stratagems? The lengthy process of appointing parliamentary researchers – where a favoured candidate hasn’t already been identified – is carried out by MPs themselves, perhaps with the aid of one or two existing staff. What are the warning signs that a plausible candidate is not all they seem?
Newly elected MPs are briefed about human resources issues in order to help them avoid some of the more obvious pitfalls of becoming a direct employer, often for the first time. But aside from the usual warnings about sexism and racism, how to structure a working week and what tasks are and are not acceptable to ask a researcher to carry out, there is virtually nothing in the training that prepares MPs for becoming the target of nefarious foreign actors.
Given the increased perceived threat from such nations – China as well as Russia, plus others – there might be a case for a trusted third party, say, the police or Special Branch, to flag applications that cause concerns. Successful applicants for jobs with MPs are already subjected to security checks before they’re issued with their House of Commons passes; we may assume that the man at the centre of today’s news was subject to exactly that process. Is it robust enough? Forensic enough? Is the issuing of Commons passes no more than a bureaucratic box-ticking exercise?
We’re living in an age of greater international tension than at any time since the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Foreign players will undoubtedly seek to place agents in sensitive positions across the British establishment, including parliament as well as Whitehall – whether or not that is in fact the case this time. But MPs themselves can hardly be blamed for appointing individuals who fulfil all the essential criteria for posts. If they are to devote the time and analysis needed to weed out dubious applicants, they need more support and outside expertise. it’s also important that perfectly innocent applicants are not discarded because of unfounded, superficial concerns.
The temptation to blame MPs for gullibility or naivete in their appointments processes should be avoided. National security costs what it costs. Parliamentarians should be given whatever support they need to make the process work properly for them and for the nation.
Parliament investigating how ‘Chinese spy’ got through security
Alleged spy attended invitation-only event, which involved pro-democracy activists, by insisting he was a tourist
ByDominic Penna, POLITICAL REPORTER12 July 2023 • 6:10pm
Finn Lau (left) and Christopher Mung, two pro-democracy activists who have a bounty on their head, spoke at an event in Parliament last week CREDIT: James Manning/PA
The House of Commons is investigating an event held last week which is claimed to have been attended by a Chinese “spy”.
A man reportedly insisted he was a tourist as he tried to enter an invitation-only talk held on July 5 that was addressed by Hong Kong campaigners.
The alleged spy gave a name that was not on the approved list and did not say who he was representing on his arrival at a talk that took place deep within the Houses of Parliament, the Daily Mail reported.
While no formal statement has been issued, The Telegraph understands parliamentary authorities are now investigating the event.
Dozens of attendees were addressed by Finn Lau and Christopher Mung, two pro-democracy activists who have a bounty on their head after John Lee, Hong Kong’s leader, said that they would be pursued for life.
One million Hong Kong dollars – the equivalent of around £100,000 – has been offered by authorities in return for information leading to the arrests of Mr Lau, Mr Mung and six others who have fled after alleged breaches of the strict national security law imposed by Beijing.
‘Risk of abduction has escalated’
Mr Lau, the founder of the activist groups Hong Kong Liberty and Stand with Hong Kong, last week demanded a meeting with James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, and said he did not feel safe because of the bounty in the wake of “threats” from the Chinese Communist Party (CPP).
“The risk of abduction and physical harassment has escalated, skyrocketed in the last few days,” he told the PA news agency.
In a newspaper article last week, Mr Lau warned the Hong Kong authorities “will go to any length possible to harass the greater Hong Kong diaspora – to silence, to shut down and to hide the truth”.
Bob Seely, a Conservative MP who sits on the foreign affairs committee and organised the discussion, said it would be “completely inappropriate” for Beijing “to send an operative to intimidate or record people at a private parliamentary event”.
Benedict Rogers, the chief executive and co-founder of advocacy group Hong Kong Watch, described the alleged surveillance attempt as “awful”.
“The idea that our Hong Konger friends are under surveillance and threat, even in our Parliament, is outrageous,” he wrote on Twitter.
Sources told The Telegraph the alleged incident at the event had not been formally reported to the Commons, and steered away from claims that the parliamentary authorities were warned about security concerns in advance.
A House of Commons spokesman said: “The safety and security of all those who work and visit in Parliament is our top priority, however we cannot comment on our security measures.”
www.telegraph.co.uk
www.telegraph.co.uk
www.telegraph.co.uk
China watchers are busy trying to read the tea leaves. Apparently high level Defense personal have dropped from sight
96 VLS cells on the modern ABs…that’s more like CG territory than even DDG…vice the tweet’s ‘frigates’ wording
Were they subcontracted by Power Corporation?RCMP investigating reports of former Canadian air force members training pilots in China
The RCMP are investigating reports that former Royal Canadian Air Force pilots are training military personnel in China.www.ctvnews.ca
On to more related items.
That's AtkinsRéalis, mister.
Seems like these guys: TFASA | Test Flying Academy of South Africa
