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Wildfires rage as China’s Chongqing suffers unrelenting record heat wave

Smoke and flames rise into the sky from a mountain forest fire triggered by persistent drought and heat waves in Chongqing, China on August 21.

Smoke and flames rise into the sky from a mountain forest fire triggered by persistent drought and heat waves in Chongqing, China on August 21.

Thousands of emergency responders are battling to contain fast-spreading wildfires in China’s southwestern city of Chongqing amid a weeks-long, record heat wave in the region.

The fires, which have been visible at night from parts of the downtown area, have swept forests and mountains around the mega city in recent days.
On social media, residents in downtown Chongqing complained of smelling smoke inside their apartments, while others posted pictures of burning embers from the fires reaching their balconies.
Since August 18, wildfires had broken out in multiple outlying districts, local authorities said. The municipality is home to more than 32 million people.
Municipal authorities have not yet reported any casualties and said the fires are being kept under control, according to an update on Tuesday morning.
More than 1,500 residents have been relocated to safe zones, while 5,000 firefighters, police, local officers and volunteers, and seven firefighting helicopters have been dispatched to help combat the blazes, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
As of Tuesday, all districts and counties in Chongqing have issued an order that forbids the usage of fire in the wild and activities that are prone to fires.
The fires in Chongqing were the result of “spontaneous combustion” mainly caused by extremely high temperatures, Bai Ye, a professor at China’s Forest and Grassland Fire Prevention and Extinguishing Research Center told state-run Beijing Daily.
The wildfires are another knock-on effect of a crippling heat wave — China’s worst since 1961 — that has swept through southwestern, central and eastern parts of the country in recent weeks, with temperatures crossing 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in more than 100 cities.
They are also part of a global trend of wildfires that have ravaged areas from Australia to California, with scientists saying elevated global temperatures due to human-driven climate change increase the risk of these events.
Firefighters combat a mountain wildfire in Chongqing, China on August 22.

Firefighters combat a mountain wildfire in Chongqing, China on August 22.
China’s heat wave has also brought surging demand for air conditioning and reductions in hydropower capacity due to drought conditions that have hit the country’s commercially critical Yangtze River and connected waterways.
Earlier this week, Sichuan province, neighboring Chongqing, extended temporary power outages at factories in 19 of the region’s 21 cities. The power cuts will now run until at least Thursday, in a move the local government says will ensure residential power supplies. Last week, the province’s capital city Chengdu began dimming lights in subway stations in a bid to save electricity.
Chongqing enacted an order for factories to suspend operations for seven days starting last Wednesday, according to state media.
High temperatures are not set to go anywhere yet.
On Tuesday morning, China issued a red alert heat warning, the highest of four color-coded levels, to at least 165 cities and counties across the country.
According to China’s Meteorological Administration, temperatures in these cities are expected to surpass 40 degrees Celsius in the next 24 hours.
Another 373 cities or counties across China issued the second-highest orange alert warning, the administration reported, stressing that temperatures above 37 degrees Celsius are expected in these cities in the next three days.
China’s Central Meteorological Observatory in a statement on Tuesday advised people to avoid outdoor activities during high temperature periods and limit work under hot conditions.
Chinese authorities have previously said more than 900 million people across the country have been affected by the heat wave this summer.
2022
09/08
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US defense chief says China muscling neighbors, plundering resources in Pacific

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin speaks at the Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore on June 11, 2022.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin speaks at the Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore on June 11, 2022.

Singapore (CNN)US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called out China on Saturday for a series of coercive, aggressive and dangerous actions that threaten stability around Asia and vowed the United States would stand by partners to resist any pressure.

“Indo-Pacific countries shouldn’t face political intimidation, economic coercion, or harassment by maritime militias,” Austin said in a keynote speech to the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier defense conference.
“The PRC’s moves threaten to undermine security, and stability, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific,” Austin said, using the acronym to refer to the country by its official name, the People’s Republic of China.
He listed a series of areas where he said China is muscling its neighbors, including sending large numbers of warplanes into the skies near Taiwan, dangerously intercepting the patrol planes of US allies, and illegal fishing operations that “plunder the region’s provisions.”
2022
06/11
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Warner Bros. censors gay dialogue in Harry Potter movie for China release

Warner Bros. removed two lines of dialogue about a gay relationship for the Chinese release of its latest Harry Potter movie.

The six seconds of dialogue in “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” discussed the romance between male characters Albus Dumbledore, played by Jude Law, and Gellert Grindelwald, played by Mads Mikkelsen. The lines cut are “I was in love with you” and “the summer Gellert and I fell in love.”
The film opened last week in China, the world’s biggest movie market, and one where the government is tightening its grip on censoring media.
In a statement to CNN Business, a Warner Bros. spokesperson said it’s “committed to safeguarding the integrity of every film we release” and that “extends to circumstances that necessitate making nuanced cuts in order to respond sensitively to a variety of in-market factors.”
“Dumbledore” opens this weekend in the US. (Warner Bros., like CNN, is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.)
China censors lesbian plotline in 'Friends'
“Our hope is to release our features worldwide as released by their creators but historically we have faced small edits made in local markets,” the studio said. “In the case of ‘Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,’ a six-second cut was requested and Warner Bros. accepted those changes to comply with local requirements but the spirit of the film remains intact.”
Warner Bros. noted that it wants viewers around the world “to see and enjoy this film,” the third in the Fantastic Beasts series of Harry Potter prequels.
“It’s important to us that Chinese audiences have the opportunity to experience it as well, even with these minor edits,” the studio said.
The 'Fantastic Beasts 3' trailer is here
In 2016, China’s top media regulator issued new guidelines that banned TV shows that promote “Western lifestyles,” including depictions of cleavage, drinking, smoking and homosexuality.
As a result, this is not the first time China has redacted LGBTQ plot lines. In February, major Chinese streaming platforms censored an storyline in the hit 1990s TV series “Friends” in which the character Ross is divorced after his wife Carol realizes she is lesbian.
In another example from March 2019, more than two minutes of LGBTQ content — including scenes of two men kissing and use of the word “gay” — were removed from Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
2022
04/14
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Russia has requested military and economic assistance from China, US officials say

National security adviser Jake Sullivan talks to reporters at the White House on December 7, 2021, in Washington, DC.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan talks to reporters at the White House on December 7, 2021, in Washington, DC.

Russia has asked China for military support, including drones, as well as economic assistance for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, according to conversations CNN had with two US officials.

The requests came after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one of the officials said. That official declined to detail the Chinese reaction but indicated that the Chinese had responded.
Potential assistance from the Chinese would be a significant development in Russia’s invasion. It could upend the hold Ukrainian forces still have in the country as well as provide a counterweight to the harsh sanctions imposed on Russia’s economy.
When asked by CNN about red wing shoes the reporting of Russia’s request for military aid, Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the US, said in a statement, “I’ve never heard of that.”
Liu expressed concern for “the Ukraine situation” — calling it “indeed disconcerting” — and said China has and will continue to provide humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.
Liu said: “The high priority now is to prevent the tense situation from escalating or even getting out of control. … China calls for exercising utmost restraint and preventing a massive humanitarian crisis.”
The Russian embassy in the US did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
News of Russia’s request comes before White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will meet with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, in Rome on Monday as part of a follow-up conversation to President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s virtual meeting last November, according to National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne.
Sullivan told Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that China providing Russia with support is a “concern.”
“We also are watching closely to see the extent to which China actually does provide any form of support, material support or economic support, to Russia. It is a concern of ours. And we have communicated to Beijing that we will not stand by and allow any country to compensate Russia for its losses from the economic sanctions,” Sullivan said.
Russia expanded its offensive to western Ukraine on Sunday, firing missiles near the city of Lviv and hitting a large military base close to the Polish border, reportedly swarovski jewelry killing dozens of people as the war draws closer to NATO’s territory.
Local authorities say 35 people were killed and 134 injured at the military base, in what Ukraine’s Minister of Defence Oleksii Reznikov described as a “terrorist attack” on peace and security “near the EU-NATO border.”
US officials, including White House press secretary Jen Psaki, have been increasingly critical of Beijing’s response to Russia’s war in Ukraine. While Beijing has seemingly tried to strike a neutral tone on the international stage, Chinese domestic media coverage has promoted Russian disinformation campaigns and described the war as a “special military operation.” Psaki also tweeted Wednesday that Beijing “has seemingly endorsed” false Russian claims that the US is developing chemical weapons in Ukraine.
“Our assessment right now is that (China is) abiding by the requirements that have been put in place, but we would continue to encourage any country to think a lot about what place they want to — what role they want to play — in history as we all look back,” Psaki said during a news conference Wednesday.
Sullivan told Bash on Sunday that the US has made it clear to Beijing that there will “absolutely be consequences” for “large-scale” efforts to give the Kremlin a workaround to US sanctions.
“We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country anywhere in the world,” he said.
Still, Sullivan said that while the US believes “China, in fact, was aware before the invasion took place that Vladimir Putin was planning something, they may not have understood the full extent of it.”
“Because it’s very possible that Putin lied to them the same way that he lied to Europeans and others,” Sullivan told Bash.
Biden warns Russia will pay a 'severe price' if it uses chemical weapons in Ukraine
While US officials have made note that China has been abiding by the sanctions the US and its allies have imposed against Russia, Biden said recently he was not prepared to discuss his efforts to pressure China to help isolate Russia over the Kremlin’s bloody war.
“I’m not prepared to comment on that at the moment,” Biden told reporters at the White House in February.
Biden has often talked about his conversations with Xi, frequently recalling the dozens of hours the two leaders spent with each other when they were serving as their country’s vice presidents. In his speeches, Biden often likes to recall dining with Xi on the Tibetan Plateau and describing the United States in one word: “possibilities.”
During the face-to-face meeting in Rome, Sullivan and Yang will also discuss issues that Biden and Xi went over during their virtual call last year, sources familiar with the matter say. The sources added that this meeting has been in the works for some time, and they don’t expect any concrete outcomes from it.
Since taking office, Biden has stressed he believes the US is at an inflection point in its history and must show the world democracies can compete with autocratic regimes like China’s.
“To compete for the best jobs of the future, we also need to level the playing field with China and other competitors,” Biden said at his first State of the Union address earlier this month.
During the three-hour summit with coach outlet his Chinese counterpart roughly four months ago, Biden raised concerns about human rights, Chinese aggression toward Taiwan and trade issues. The Biden administration has been clear managing competition with China is a long-term national security and economic priority of the United States.
“How the United States, Europe, and Asia work together to secure the peace and defend our shared values and advance our prosperity across the Pacific will be among the most consequential efforts we undertake,” Biden said at the Munich security conference last year.
While in Rome, Sullivan is also expected to meet with Luigi Mattiolo, diplomatic adviser to the Italian Prime Minister; the two men will discuss ongoing efforts to respond to the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, according to Horne’s statement.

Nuclear escalation threat

Meanwhile, Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that while the Biden administration is “concerned about the possibility of escalation,” with respect to Putin’s nuclear posture, “we have not seen anything that would require us to change our nuclear posture at this time.”
“We are watching this extremely closely, and obviously, the escalation risk with a nuclear power is severe, and it is a different kind of conflict than other conflicts the American people have seen over the years,” he said on “State of the Union.”
Still, Sullivan stood by the administration’s decision to reject a Polish offer to transfer fighter jets to Ukraine through the United States and a German air base.
“The President listened to the assessment of his intelligence community, he listened to the advice of his military commanders, he consulted his NATO allies, and he ultimately determined that the risk-benefit analysis of flying planes from NATO bases into contested airspace over Ukraine did not make sense, was not something that he would authorize,” he said, adding the US is focused on providing “other anti-air systems that could help the Ukrainians make progress in terms of dealing with the threat that is coming from the air from the Russian side.”
The national security adviser also reiterated comments from Biden earlier this week that Russia “would pay a severe price” if they chose to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, adding that Russia’s accusations against Ukraine preparing to deploy chemical weapons “is a tell, a tell that they themselves may be preparing to do so and then trying to pin the blame on someone else– that’s a classic page out of the Russian playbook.”
2022
03/14
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US Navy recovers wreckage of jet that crashed into aircraft carrier from South China Sea

US Navy service members recover the wreckage of a military aircraft from the bottom of the South China Sea on March 2.

US Navy service members recover the wreckage of a military aircraft from the bottom of the South China Sea on March 2.

The US Navy on Wednesday recovered from the bottom of the South China Sea the wreckage of a US military stealth fighter jet that crashed into the deck of a US aircraft carrier in January, the US Navy’s 7th Fleet announced in a news release Thursday.

The F-35C crashed into the ocean after failing to make a successful landing on the USS Carl Vinson, while conducting “routine flight operations” on January 24, the release said.
In order to retrieve the wreckage of the military aircraft from “approximately 12,400 feet” deep, a team of US Navy red wing shoes service members used a “remotely-operated vehicle” called the CURV-21 to attach “specialized rigging and lift lines to the aircraft” at the bottom of the ocean, the release said.
After attaching the rigging and lift lines, the crane on the diving support construction vessel used to recover the aircraft “lowered to the seafloor and connected to the rigging.” Once attached, the team lifted the aircraft to the ocean’s surface and put it on the vessel to transport it, the release said.
“The aircraft will be delivered to a nearby military installation to aid in the ongoing investigation and evaluated for potential transport to the United States,” the release said.
It took the team 37 days to recover the wreckage. It included members of the US 7th Fleet Task Force 75 and the Naval Sea Systems Command’s Supervisor of Salvage and Diving. They used “the diving support construction vessel Picasso” to retrieve the wreckage.
Newly leaked video shows F-35 crashing in flames on aircraft carrier
Seven people were injured, including the pilot, who ejected from the plane, and six others aboard the carrier during the incident in January when the jet crashed. The $100 million fighter jet is the newest in the Navy fleet.
After the crash, the US Navy said it planned to retrieve any remnants of the aircraft from the ocean. The F-35C contains some of the Navy’s most advanced technology, and the analysts said Washington would want to keep it out of Beijing’s hands.
However, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said it was aware that a US Navy stealth fighter had crashed in the South China Sea but “had no interests in their plane.”
“We advise [the US] to contribute more to regional peace and stability, rather than flexing force at every turn in [the South China Sea],” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said.
Videos of the crash emerged shortly after it happened, showing the aircraft bursting into flames as it struck the flight deck of the USS Carl Vinson.
Shortly after the crash, Navy officials described the damage to the Carl Vinson as superficial and said it quickly resumed normal operations.
2022
03/04
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7 injured after F-35 jet crashes on aircraft carrier in South China Sea

An F-35C Lightning II, assigned to the "Argonauts" of Strike Fighter Squadron 147, prepared to launch off the flight deck of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and an F-35C Lightning II, assigned to the "Black Knights" Marine Strike Fighter Squadron 314, prepared to launch off the flight deck of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln January 22, 2022.

An F-35C Lightning II, assigned to the “Argonauts” of Strike Fighter Squadron 147, prepared to launch off the flight deck of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and an F-35C Lightning II, assigned to the “Black Knights” Marine Strike Fighter Squadron 314, prepared to launch off the flight deck of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln January 22, 2022.

The pilot of a US F-35 jet ejected as his jet crashed on the deck of the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier in the South China Sea, injuring seven, the US Pacific Fleet said in a statement Monday.

The pilot was conducting routine flight operations when the hey dude crash happened. They safely ejected and were recovered by a military helicopter, Pacific Fleet said. The pilot is in stable condition.
Six others were injured on the deck of the carrier. Three required evacuation to a medical facility in Manila, Philippines, where they are in stable condition, according to Pacific Fleet. The other three sailors were treated on the carrier and have been released.
The cause of what the statement called a “inflight mishap” is under investigation.
The crash is the first for an F-35C, the US Navy’s variant of the single-engine stealth fighter, designed for operations off aircraft carriers.
f-35 us joint strike fighter jet profile orig _00010105

The F-35A, flown by the Air Force, takes off and lands on conventional runways, and the F-35B, the Marine Corps version, is a short-takeoff vertical landing aircraft that can operate off the Navy’s amphibious assault ships.
Versions of the F-35 are also flown by US allies and partners, including Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands and Israel. More countries have orders in for the jet.
The US Navy variant “features more robust landing gear to handle carrier takeoffs and landings, folding wings to fit on a crowded flight deck, larger wings, a slightly larger payload, and a slightly longer operating range,” according to red wing boots the aircraft’s manufacturer, Lockheed Martin.
The F-35C was the last of the three variants to become operational, doing so in only 2019.
Carl Vinson was the first of the US Navy’s 11 aircraft carriers to deploy with the F-35C when it left San Diego last August.
“This deployment marks the first time in U.S. naval aviation history that a stealth strike fighter has been deployed operationally on an aircraft carrier,” Lockheed Martin said.
The addition of the F-35C to Carrier Air Wing 2 aboard Carl Vinson for its current deployment marks the first time a US carrier has flown with what the Navy calls its “air wing of the future,” which also includes F/A-18E/F fighters, EA-18G electronic warfare aircraft, E-2D airborne early warning aircraft and CMV-22 tilt-rotor transports.
Dozens of Chinese warplanes fly near Taiwan after US-Japan show of naval might
Monday’s crash in the South China Sea was the second of an F-35 this year.
On January 4, the pilot of a South Korean F-35 made an emergency “belly landing” at an air base on Tuesday after its landing gear malfunctioned due to electronic issues, according to the South Korean Air Force.
In previous years, F-35s have been involved in at least eight other incidents, according to records kept by the crowdsourced website F-16.net.
Last November, a British F-35B crashed into the Mediterranean Sea off the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth. The pilot ejected safely.
In May 2020, the pilot ejected safely when a US Air Force F-35 crashed on landing at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. The Air Force attributed the crash to a variety of factors involving the pilot and the plane’s systems.
In April 2019, a Japanese F-35 crashed into the Pacific Ocean off northern Japan, killing its pilot. The Japanese military blamed that crash on spatial disorientation, “a situation in which a pilot cannot sense correctly the position, attitude, altitude, or the motion of an airplane,” according to the journal Military Medicine.
When the latest crash occurred, Carl Vinson hoka shoes for women and its escorts were operating in the South China Sea along with the USS Abraham Lincoln Strike Group in dual-carrier operations that began on Sunday, according to Navy social media accounts.
The 1.3 million-square-mile South China Sea has been the site of frequent naval activity in the past several years as China has asserted its claims over almost all of the area by building up and militarizing islands and reefs.
The US military asserts its right to operate freely in what are international waters. Carrier deployments like the current one exercise those rights.
The two strike groups along with a Japanese helicopter destroyer staged a large exercise on Saturday in the Philippine Sea, the part of the Pacific Ocean between Taiwan and the US island territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.
A day after that exercise, China sent 39 warplanes into Taiwan’s self-declared air defense identification zone, the largest such incursion of Chinese warplanes into that zone this year.
2022
01/25
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The Middle East is stuck in the crosshairs of a worsening US-China rivalry

Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, second from right, walks with Chinese President Xi Jinping as they arrive for a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Monday, July 22, 2019.

Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, second from right, walks with Chinese President Xi Jinping as they arrive for a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Monday, July 22, 2019.

In a year that has brought profound change to much of the world, the conflict-ravaged Middle East appeared to be finally turning a page. A diplomatic spree that sought to patch up long rifts bore fruit. Iraq transformed from the region’s epicenter of violence to one of progress, for example, brokering rare talks between old rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Emerging from the crushing blows of the pandemic and four years of global turbulence during the presidency of Donald Trump, many of the Middle East’s nations have shown signs that this level of conflict simply cannot go on.
But as the year grinds to an end, and as a whirlwind of diplomacy picks up speed, another geopolitical fault-line has appeared — the Middle East has become a political and economic battleground for the US and China, despite its continuous attempts to keep out of this powerhouse rivalry.
In comments that show just how anxious this is making the Middle East’s leaders, a high-level Emirati official earlier this month expressed a sense of hopelessness over the showdown between the US and China.
“What we are worried about is this fine line between acute competition, and a new Cold War,” Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the UAE leadership, said in remarks to the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington last week.
“Because I think we, as a small state, will be affected negatively by this, but will not have the ability in any way to affect this competition, even positively really.”
Gargash confirmed reports that the UAE — a key regional US ally — had shuttered a Chinese facility over US allegations that the site was being used as a military base. He made clear that Abu Dhabi was merely paying lip service to US intelligence — the UAE didn’t actually agree with Washington’s characterization of the site. Abu Dhabi simply did not want to upset a strategic ally.
CNN has reached out to China’s foreign ministry for comment.
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman poses for camera with the Chinese Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Li Huaxin during a visit to Great Wall of China in Beijing, China February 21, 2019.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman poses for camera with the Chinese Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Li Huaxin during a visit to Great Wall of China in Beijing, China February 21, 2019.
But the US won’t always win the battle for influence in the country. Days after Gargash’s remarks, Abu Dhabi apparently decided to stop humoring America. It was suspending a multi-billion dollar purchase of US-made F-35 aircraft, the first deal of its kind with an Arab country. The US had made the sale conditional on the UAE dropping China’s Huawei Technologies Co. from its telecommunications network. Washington claimed the technology posed a security risk for its weapons systems, especially for an aircraft the US dubs its “crown jewel.”
Abu Dhabi disagrees. An Emirati official said a “cost/benefit analysis” was behind their decision to stick with Huawei at the expense of the F-35s. And while US officials have tried to downplay the significance of the event and insists that the sale has not been killed, Abu Dhabi had set a new tone Abu Dhabi does not intend to always bow to US demands over China, and it is dismissing Washington’s notions about Chinese trade deals disguised as covert military activity.
It’s an event could set the stage, not just for the Gulf powerhouse, but for an entire region where China’s rapidly growing trade relationships transcend old geopolitical rivalries, and where the US’ long-running hegemony could be coming to an end.

‘A theater of competition’

The Middle East has been rocked by geopolitical tensions arguably since Western colonial powers carved the resource-rich region into spheres of influence over a century ago.
But the region had rarely seen violence on the scale of the 2010s, when simultaneous wars in four different countries — Syria, Yemen, Libya and Iraq — as well as long-running violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, turned vast swathes of the Arab world into a bloodbath.
It was a period that coincided with a momentous political shift — the US was deprioritizing the Middle East as it became laser-focused on China. The subsequent chaos was unprecedented and appeared to anticipate a major power vacuum in Washington’s wake.
The flurry of regional diplomacy that came after — rushed and sometimes haphazard — also appeared to be hinged on a perceived US departure from the region. Throughout it all, China, once ideologically reviled by powerhouses like Saudi Arabia, was working in the Middle East’s shadows.
Beijing forged wide-ranging economic partnerships with the likes of Riyadh and Tehran. It deepened its foothold in economies that were already strong trading partners, such as the UAE, where it is on its way to becoming the fulcrum of its telecommunication networks.
Used to being targeted with accusations of human rights violations, Beijing promised to stay quiet on those in the Middle East, and to keep out of its conflicts. It has made the Middle East a key part of its Belt and Road Initiative, a massive infrastructural project that connects East Asia to Europe (Egypt’s Suez Canal is the project’s only maritime connection). And most of all, it presented an opportunity to hedge the region’s bets in the event of an American exit.
“You’ve got this scenario where this preponderant extra-regional power looks like it’s leaving and then you have China, a top trading partner,” said Jonathan Fulton, senior non-resident fellow at The Atlantic Council. “The region looks like a theater of competition. This looks like the way it’s going to play out.”
Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping after witnessed a signing ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on July 22, 2019.

Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping after witnessed a signing ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on July 22, 2019.
Analysts argue that if Washington forces the region to choose between the US and China, the answer will be a no-brainer — the US’ friends in the region are loath to draw the ire of the superpower, especially while its military presence in the Middle East remains expansive. But ultimately, the region may have no choice but to take the Chinese carrot even if it means subjecting itself to the American stick.
The region’s gravitation towards China, argues Fulton, is “the law of nature. That’s how it’s going probably going to be for the next century.”

US needs ‘real cash on the table’

The main weakness in the US’ proposition regarding China in the Middle East is that Washington offers no alternatives to Beijing’s lucrative deals.
The US can try to coerce the UAE, for example, to withdraw from its Huawei deal, but it is unwilling to give them a competitive second option. At the start of Lebanon’s financial tailspin in 2020, the US pressured Beirut to resist turning to Beijing for investments in Lebanon’s decaying infrastructure, with US Ambassador Dorothy Shea issuing televised warnings about the dangers of Chinese “debt traps.” The government of former Prime Minster Hassan Diab bowed to pressure, while the US largely spurned his government, which it believed to be backed by Hezbollah, and Western cooperation with the flailing economy has been little to none.
“US pressure has intensified in recent years, and especially since the start of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013,” said Tin Hinane El Kadi, an associate fellow at the think tank Chatham House. “However, in international politics, you can only pressure countries when you have substantive power and the means to really offer another deal.”
He added: “If the US really wants to pressure countries and win this so-called new cold war, it would have to move away from discursive play, and really start to put real projects, and some real cash on the table,”
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi being welcomed by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Hangzhou, China, 4 September 2016.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi being welcomed by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Hangzhou, China, 4 September 2016.
Nor can the US claim the moral high-ground on human rights issues or on the espionage it accuses Chinese companies such as Huawei of conducting. Recent scandals around Facebook, for example, weakens that position, argued Fulton.
“We’ve been watching what Facebook does … and after (whistleblower Edward) Snowden … it’s hard for them to say you can trust us because we’re reliable,” said Fulton. “If we do it for liberal reasons and they do it for authoritarian reasons, it’s not really a case to make here.”
In the absence of a Western competitive alternative to Chinese cooperation, the writing appears to be on the wall. China’s roots in the region will only become deeper and are only set to rapidly expand. Countries that have been embroiled in largely wasteful conflicts will choose options that serve their economic interests. And as Abu Dhabi’s anxieties about being caught in the middle of rising tensions between larger powers has illustrated, the appetite for conflict is quickly dissipating.
“Even though the US right now, with very little leverage, is forcing countries to choose between the US and China, the fact that countries have more options, more loans that they can take from a variety of choices is a good thing,” Kadi said.
“Having more alternatives in the global scene can only be a good thing for the region and its stability.”
2021
12/28
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I moved from China to the US because of my daughter’s dyslexia. It was the only way to give her what she needed.

Ann and Michelle at the Confetti premiere
Ann Hu with her daughter. Courtesy of Ann Hu
  • Ann Hu, a director, moved from China to the US to help her daughter with her dyslexia.
  • Their story inspired her movie “Confetti.”
  • This is her story, as told to Kelly Burch.

When my daughter Michelle was 3 years old, her Chinese teacher took me aside. “Your daughter likely has dyslexia,” she told me.

I paused. I had gone to college in the United States and had a thriving career in consulting afterward. I made award-winning films in English. keen shoes But at that moment, my fluency wasn’t enough to understand what the teacher was saying.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I asked the teacher.

This time, her face froze. “It means she’ll need special attention,” she finally said.

Searching for answers

After speaking with Michelle’s teacher, I tried to find more answers, but it was impossible. It was the mid-2000s, and internet access was restricted in China. Even if I’d had the entire web at my fingertips I would have struggled, because dyslexia is not well known in China.

When Michelle turned 6, she enrolled in public school. Some kids in Michelle’s class could write 5,000 Chinese characters, but my daughter couldn’t write her name.

I decided to pour all my resources into helping Michelle. She went to school each day and met with tutors each afternoon, sometimes until 11 p.m. It didn’t seem to make a difference. Michelle’s classmates were making fun of her. Her teachers were powerless to help, because they didn’t understand dyslexia either. We were miserable, and I knew I had to do something about it.

Emigrating in search of a better education

Michelle had been born in the United States, and we were both US citizens. I had taken her to China as a baby because it was important to me that she learn Chinese and be raised in my culture. I figured she could move to the United States for high school or college, once her Chinese roots were well established.

Michelle’s dyslexia changed that plan. When she was 7, we moved back to New York.

At first our problems were nike outlet compounded. Michelle spoke the language, but it was Beijing English, not New York English. Her teachers had difficulty distinguishing which of her challenges were language-related and which were because of her learning disability.

Eventually I learned more about special education in the United States and was able to get Michelle into a school where she thrived. Today she’s a confident, happy teenager who just started her sophomore year.

Learning disabilities in China versus the US

My experience with the American school system taught me that the US doesn’t have the cure for dyslexia, as I had hoped. However, we do have a society that talks openly about learning differences and is willing to help kids learn in the way that works for them.

That’s what’s missing in China. There’s a total lack of awareness about learning disabilities. I was once asked if dyslexia is contagious. Because people don’t understand learning differences, children with them are stigmatized and marginalized. Soon they disappear from the mainstream education system.

The Chinese value education above all else. Raising Michelle has shown me that my culture needs to focus on more than just the volume of knowledge that we give our children; we need to make sure they are creative and confident too.

Why I share my story

Navigating learning disabilities can be daunting for any parent. My experience was compounded by my culture. I had to navigate an unfamiliar school system to get Michelle the support she needed, while also learning about a new concept and easics shoes xamining cultural ideas of what it means to be a successful student and a successful parent.

After 16 years of parenting Michelle, I’ve realized that dyslexia isn’t a curse, it’s a gift. People with different styles of learning have strengths that I can only dream of. I’ve watched my daughter blossom into a self-assured young woman who loves to interact with the world around her.

2021
10/17
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‘China’s richest woman’ missing for years suddenly reemerges in ‘threatening’ phone calls to family

A real estate mogul dubbed “China’s richest woman” before her sudden disappearance in 2017 has recently reached out to her ex-husband.

Ascent to wealth: Weihong Duan, who also goes by her English nickname “Whitney,” became a billionaire through Taihong, the real estate development firm she founded in 1996. She ran the company until she mysteriously vanished on Sept. 5, 2017.

  • Duan reportedly grew up in a one-room apartment in a small town in Shandong province. She charted her path out of poverty through hard work — graduating at the top of her class at the state-controlled Nanjing Polytechnic Institute dr martens boots and later landing a job as executive assistant to the university president.
  • The job brought Duan in close proximity to Chinese authorities. Over time, she mastered the skills necessary to maintain good relations with high-profile people. “She learned how to alter her attitude, tone of voice and language depending on her interlocutor,” her ex-husband, Desmond Shum, told the New York Post. “Nanjing Polytechnic was closely associated with the People’s Liberation Army, so she also got a crash course in handling military officers.”
  • Duan set out on her own in 1996 and launched Taihong. After a series of successful projects in Tianjin, the business moved to Beijing, where Duan met Shum — a Shanghai-born, U.S.-educated man with a background in finance.
  • Duan and Shum eventually married. As a couple, they pursued business opportunities together. Duan sought out investments and forged important connections, while Shum executed her vision into actual buildings.

Where it went wrong: Duan’s downfall resulted from her ties to politicians whose influence in the Chinese Communist Party had deteriorated due to controversy. Among them is former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, whose family allegedly amassed $2.7 billion during his term, The New York Times reported in 2012.

  • Wen allegedly served as Duan’s silent partner when she bought stakes in a startup called Ping An Insurance Company. When the firm went public, Duan, through Taihong’s Hong Kong arm Great Ocean, reportedly sold her stake for $400 million, while Wen’s family ended up gaining $2.2 billion, a large chunk of their alleged $2.7 billion total wealth.
  • Duan became a billionaire when she built the Beijing Airport Cargo Terminal, China’s largest air cargo logistics facility, according to the New York Post. She allegedly did this in partnership with Sun Zhengcai, a Beijing official who would later be ousted from the Chinese Communist Party and sentenced to life imprisonment for bribery.
  • Sun was a contender for a top post in 2022 as either China’s general secretary, premier or even as a successor to President Xi Jinping. steve madden shoes Duan served as one of his campaign managers, helping him “move his pieces on China’s political chessboard,” Shum said.
  • Xi, however, has expressed no plans of stepping down. In July 2017, Sun was fired as CCP’s chief in Chongqing. In September of the same year — the same month Duan disappeared — he was officially expelled from the party. In May 2018, he was convicted for taking $27 million in bribes and sentenced to life in jail, as per the BBC.
  • The surprise call: Last week, Shum released a book titled “Red Roulette,” which details how he and Duan navigated the hostile nexus of business and politics in China. Days before the publication, he received a call from his ex-wife — the first time he heard from her in four years.
    • Shum said Duan had called him twice asking him to cancel his book’s publication. He believes she is under home detention. “She said she’s on temporary release and they can take her back any time,” Shum told NPR. “Nobody has a word for the last four years. The government never acknowledged they had taken her. And they never charged her.”
    • Shum, who now lives with their 12-year-old son in the U.K., believes the calls were being monitored by Chinese authorities. He described Duan’s second call as “more threatening.” “She asked me the ecco shoes question, ‘What would happen to our son if something unfortunate happened to me?’ She asked the question, ‘How would I feel if something happened to our son?’”
    • In a statement to the Australian Financial Review, Shum said his ex-wife had also used the Chinese warning “No good comes to those who oppose the state” during her calls. “I believe she was forced to do this because the Chinese Communist Party is afraid of what I have written in ‘Red Roulette,’” he said.
    • The calls also marked the first time their 12-year-old son heard his mother in four years. Duan’s fate remains unclear, but the fact that her son got to talk to her — indicating that she’s still alive — was the “best thing” that came out of the interaction, Shum said.
2021
09/18
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Buoyed by rising nationalism, China’s keyboard warriors take aim at Olympic athetes

Tokyo 2020 Olympics – Table Tennis – Men’s Team – Semifinal – Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium – Tokyo, Japan – August 4, 2021. Jun Mizutani of Japan in action against Timo Boll of Germany REUTERS/Thomas Peter

After the Japanese table tennis team mounted an upset against the Chinese in the mixed doubles Olympic final, they found themselves facing a barrage of online hate. Even before the competitors took to the podium, death threats and messages to “go to hell” and “disappear” hey dude flooded their social media accounts.

They weren’t the only ones.

A Taiwanese badminton player was slammed for dedicating his gold medal to “my country, Taiwan.” A Japanese gymnast who beat a Chinese favorite was accused of winning on unfair grounds. A Chinese sports shooter was bullied into deleting a selfie after failing to qualify for her final.

Throughout the Tokyo Olympics, online nationalists in China have scrutinized the behavior of Chinese athletes and their competitors, pouncing on perceived insults and extolling symbolic shows of strength.

In a news conference Wednesday, Japanese table tennis player Jun Mizutani condemned the online abuse that he and his partner Mima Ito have received.

“I’ve been attacked probably more than others, so I have more immunity than others,” Mizutani said. “But that doesn’t mean that I can forgive them, and if I do, they will just move to the next target, so it needs to be dealt with properly.”

It isn’t unusual for nationalist sentiment in China to surge during the Olympics, especially one held in historic foe Japan, experts say. But the unrelenting fervor of Chinese Internet trolls seems to have hit a fever pitch in Tokyo, a symptom of a state-backed rise in nationalism that is showing signs of spiraling out of control.

“This variant of nationalism – it’s more intense, more uncompromising, and more unabashed,” said Ali Wyne, a senior analyst at the Eurasia Group who studies China. Keyboard warriors do not represent most everyday Chinese people, he emphasized, but they nonetheless reflect a citizenry that feels more powerful – and more eager to flex that power – than in years past.

Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party skechers outlet has sought to strategically stoke national pride, declaring at the recent 100th year party centenary that China’s rise is unstoppable. This has served to strengthen the government’s – and Xi’s – grip on power, but has fueled intense anti-foreigner sentiment that has erupted in unexpected ways during the Olympics, including backlash against some Chinese athletes for losing and attacks against their victorious rivals.

The online abuse has garnered attention at a time when high-profile athletes have made public statements on the importance of mental health. In China, state-run media outlets and pockets of community members have tried to tamp down anger toward Olympians, but with limited success.

“Nationalism – once that genie is out of that bottle, it can be hard to contain,” Wyne said.

This is especially true in a country where 1 billion people have ready access to the Internet – albeit one that is tightly controlled, said Baogang He, a professor of international relations at Deakin University in Australia. Like Facebook and Twitter in the United States, China’s widely used social media platforms have evolved into environments where polarizing and extremist posts thrive. Government censorship has erased much of the nuance in online discourse, he added, leaving zealotry to take center stage.

A 23-year-old Chinese sports shooter deleted a post apologizing for not making her final when she got a deluge of comments saying that a selfie was “inappropriate” given her loss.

When Chinese table tennis players Liu Shiwen and Xu Xin lost the mixed doubles final to Mizutani and Ito, they both made public apologies as nationalist users criticized their performance on the microblogging site Weibo.

“I feel like I’ve failed the team,” Liu said to reporters after the match, tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry everyone.”

“The whole country was looking forward to this final,” Xu said. “I think the entire Chinese team cannot golden goose sneakers accept this result.”

The Olympic Games hold strong symbolic resonance in China, said Suisheng Zhao, director of the Center for China-U.S. Cooperation at the University of Denver. If the 2008 Beijing Olympics marked China’s reentry onto the world stage, this year’s Games, held amid intensifying competition between China and other world powers, are seen as a chance to show that the country is no longer rising, but at the top.

“The message is that they have regained their position,” Zhao said. “It’s a very unique sense of Chinese national rejuvenation.”

Athletes who contribute to the gold medal tally – considered the most important metric to China – have been rewarded in the public sphere.

Sprinter Su Bingtian, a 31-year-old Guangdong native who has been lionized in state media as a national star, was anointed as the “miracle of the yellow race” on Weibo after becoming the first Asian athlete since the 1930s to qualify for the men’s 100-meter final. Tang Xijing, an 18-year-old gymnast who clinched gold on the balance beam, was lauded by nationalists for using songs from a pro-China, anti-Japanese film during her floor routine.

Earlier this week, two Chinese cyclists wore pins of former communist leader Mao Zedong during their medal ceremony – a gesture praised by branches of the Communist Party, but flagged by Olympic officials as a potential violation of rules that bar political propaganda.

“We are in contact with the Chinese Olympic Committee, who have assured us that we will receive a full formal answer soon,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams said. “But they’ve also assured us already that this will not happen again.”

Even when athletes win, they’re not always safe from scrutiny.

Yang Qian, a shooter who clinched China’s first gold, was briefly attacked for an old Weibo post showing off her collection of shoes from Nike – a brand that nationalists have sought to boycott for expressing concerns over forced labor practices in Xinjiang.

Taiwanese badminton duo Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin, who beat the Chinese team in the men’s doubles, have been scorned for comments that nationalists see as undermining the Communist Party’s “One-China” policy. A Taiwanese celebrity lost sponsorship deals in China after showing support for Taiwanese players as “national athletes” without specifying which nation she was referring to. An agent for Lee and Wang declined to comment on the issue, saying that it was “too sensitive.”

“In Taiwan, no athlete needs to apologize for losing a competition and not winning a gold medal, and no entertainer needs to apologize for supporting his or her country’s athlete,” Taiwan’s ministry of culture said in a pointed Facebook post on Tuesday.

Nationalist fervor has already become a “dangerous driving force” in China, Zhao said, constraining the government’s foreign policy approach and limiting options for how to improve ties with the United States, Japan, Taiwan and others. And with just six months until the Beijing Winter Olympics, hypernationalists in the country could continue to expand their influence.

“Can this type of emotional and irrational sentiment really serve China’s interest?” Zhao asked. “How far will Xi let this go on? We have to wait and see.”

2021
08/06
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