The real question is, how to deal with China going forward? The President of China is now President for life, so it's like like you can wait for the eventual regime change, and hope the new President can soften his stance. Why are Muslim countries so quiet on this issue? They seem to have a perpetual hatred toward the west, but we are not persecuting them over their religion, so why not the same level of anger toward China.
The majority of Muslim countries are theocracies that wage war on their own, if you don’t toe the line, think Sunni/Shia, Shia/Sunni, and god forbid be Persian or Palestinian. And you expect them to police or influence China? The “leader of the free world” banned Muslims from 7 Muslim countries from entering the “greatest country in earth.” The US has no moral authority.
I get you. Just for the record, I never said the US has moral authority.
Well the only thing you got out of it was to blame trump. Seriously I get you dislike him but let it go. You ve added nothing to the discussion.
Since 1978 China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty, creating the largest middle class in the world. I blame Nixon.
I don’t blame Team Trump Treason for the current situation but I also have absolutely no expectations that the “leader of the free world” has a fucking clue what to do about it, never mind know about it. Why don’t you tweet him and stop wringing your hands?
Wait a fucking minute, you are going to tout China as some human rights success story? Wtf
Can you name any other country that has lifted 800 million people out of poverty? Who’s touting who? I’m giving you facts. You’ve given LOL and o Lordy.
i read it. China has been very successfully in moving people above the $350/year level. How they have done it has some negative effects, no? Isn’t this what the article is taking about? I found it interesting to see if it will last.
China is also very successful in gaining that $ by controlling all business, stealing intellectual property and a lot more. But that’s ok huh? Seriously, why does China get s pass from you?
WTF is wrong with you? 4,000 years of existence. Great Wall. Abacus. Fireworks. Oh my fucking god they’re not like the US! Stop the presses.
Im very aware of the potential threat China poses. But I’m also realistic in knowing that the current administration has absolutely no clue what to do about, or how to cope.
When was the last time you traveled out of the US? Did you notice anything?
Last time I travels out of the US? 2018. Notice anything? Wtf do you mean? Whit with your bullshit hidden agenda questions and say what the fuck you mean
Last time I travels out of the US? 2018. Notice anything? Wtf do you mean? Whit with your bullshit hidden agenda questions and say what the fuck you mean
Awful hostile, there Cincy. You know, maybe you’d prefer a forum where you have followers and head nodders?
Where did you go, outside the US in 2018? Because for me, since 1997, I’ve noticed a lot more Chinese tourists and businesses in all kinds of places. You?
Been watching this thread since posted... 850 posts about a freshman Congresswoman, and countless posts about Trumps weight and toilet paper.... but crickets on this story
Interesting
I didn't realize this was news. This is regular China. Yes, it's totally fucked up over there in many ways. It's a reprehensible government, highly corrupt, highly persecutive, highly oppressive, highly willing to do all kinds of things that we find harmful and/or immoral for the almighty dollar and to keep a stranglehold on populations and therefore an irresponsible economy. The west keeps doing business with it and keeps serving it global power on a silver platter because way too many people and nations place money above all else. That includes the majority of individuals in the west. And? What more is there to say about it? Until people demand that nations boycott Chinese products and prevent China from buying up companies and land and resources in all those nations, there is absolutely nothing any of us can say or do. China is deliberately and automatically taking over the world and playing the long game. Nobody cares to stop them, clearly, but perhaps someone will come up with some sort of plan someday. I doubt it though. What more is there to say?
Post edited by PJ_Soul on
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
Hong Kong watching Chinese nuclear plant after leak reported
By ZEN SOO and JOE McDONALD
Today
HONG KONG (AP) — China's government said Tuesday no abnormal radiation was detected outside a nuclear power plant near Hong Kong following a news report of a leak, while Hong Kong's leader said her administration was closely watching the facility.
The operators released few details, but nuclear experts said that based on their brief statement, gas might be leaking from fuel rods inside the reactor in Taishan, 135 kilometers (85 miles) west of Hong Kong.
In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian gave no confirmation of a leak or other details. He responded to reporters' questions by saying, “there is nothing abnormal detected in the radiation level surrounding the plant.”
In Hong Kong, radiation levels Tuesday were normal, according to the Hong Kong Observatory.
Framatome, a French company that helps manage the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant in Guangdong province, said Monday it was dealing with a “performance issue.” It said the facility was operating within safe limits.
That followed a report by CNN that Framatome told U.S. authorities about a possible leak.
“With regards to foreign media reports about a nuclear plant in Taishan, Guangzhou, the Hong Kong government attaches a high degree of importance to this,” said Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam.
She said her government would ask authorities in Guangdong for information and tell the public about any developments.
China is one of the biggest users of nuclear power and is building more reactors at a time when few other governments have plans for new facilities because the cost of solar, wind and other alternatives is plunging.
Chinese leaders see nuclear power as a way to reduce air pollution and demand for imports of oil and gas, which they deem a security risk. Government plans call for Hong Kong to use more mainland nuclear power to allow the closure of coal-fired power plants.
The Taishan plant, which began commercial operation in December 2018, is owned by China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group and Electricite de France, the majority owner of Framatome. A second reactor began operating in September 2019.
They are the first of a new type called European Pressurized Reactors. Two more are being built in Finland and France.
CNN reported Framatome wrote to the U.S. Department of Energy warning of an “imminent radiological threat” and accusing Chinese authorities of raising acceptable limits for radiation outside the plant to avoid having to shut it down.
U.S. officials believed there was no severe safety threat, CNN said.
The Department of Energy declined to comment. The International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. body, told The Associated Press it was aware of the issue and was awaiting information from China.
“There is nothing we can do about it," said Li Tak, a Hong Kong retiree. Justin Santini, a teacher, noted that government officials have said it isn't a problem as of yet. “Until more alarm bells are raised, it’s probably premature to be concerned about it," he said.
Electricite de France said Monday it was informed of the increase in concentration of “certain noble gases” in Taishan reactor No. 1.
That suggests fuel rods are leaking gases produced during nuclear fission, according to Luk Bing-lam, an expert on nuclear engineering at the City University of Hong Kong.
Noble gases such as xenon and krypton are byproducts of fission along with particles of cesium, strontium and other radioactive elements.
“If the leakage is more severe, then you will start seeing more radioactive material like cesium, rather than gas,” said Luk, who is chairman of the Hong Kong Nuclear Society.
Such leaks “happen every so often” in China and plants “usually can handle it themselves,” Luk said. But he said this incident might be complicated if the Taishan plant uses U.S. technology that is covered by export restrictions.
China’s state-owned nuclear power companies are on Washington’s “entity list” that bars them from obtaining U.S. technology without government approval.
The French partner might ask for permission because Framatome previously licensed technology from Westinghouse, Luk said.
“With the situation now, that becomes difficult,” he said. “For even a small problem, they need U.S. government approval.”
China has 50 operable reactors and is building 18 more, according to the World Nuclear Association, an industry group. It is largely self-sufficient in reactor design and construction but is “making full use of Western technology while adapting and improving it,” the association says on its website.
China has constructed reactors based on French, U.S., Russian and Canadian technology and has developed its own Hualong One reactor, based on Westinghouse technology, marketing it abroad since 2015.
Hong Kong gets as much as one-third of its power from the Daya Bay nuclear power plant east of the territory in Guangdong.
Luk, who has worked with Chinese nuclear power plant operators, said he asked the company for information about the leak but managers won’t talk about it.
“I suspect the leakage is far more widespread than just a single assembly,” he said. “Because of that, they probably need some special technology to resolve this leakage problem.”
Previously, the Taishan facility leaked a “small amount” of radioactive gas on April 9, the National Nuclear Safety Administration said on its website. It said the event was “Level 0,” or “without safety significance.”
Zhao, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, defended China's nuclear safety record and said the nuclear agency works with regulators in other countries and the IAEA.
“China’s nuclear power plants have maintained a good record in operation and no incidents affecting the environment or public health have occurred,” Zhao said.
___
This story corrects the spelling of Framatome and fixes the second reference to the nuclear expert to Luk throughout. Also, the translation of the quote by Chief Executive Carrie Lam has been revised to clarify that she said the Hong Kong government “attaches a high degree of importance” to the reports about the nuclear plant, not that it is “highly concerned” about them.
___
AP Business Writer McDonald reported from Beijing. AP video journalist Alice Fung in Hong Kong contributed to this report.
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EXPLAINER: The significance of China's new space station
By SAM McNEIL
Today
JIUQUAN, China (AP) — Adding a crew to China's new orbiting space station is another major advance for the burgeoning space power.
Here's a look at key developments:
WHAT'S THE MISSION'S PURPOSE?
The three-member crew is due to stay for three months in the station’s main living module, named Tianhe, or Heavenly Harmony. They will be carrying out science experiments and maintenance, space walks and preparing the facility to receive two additional modules next year.
While China concedes it arrived late at the space station game, it says its facility is cutting-edge. It could also outlast the International Space Station, which is nearing the end of its functional lifespan.
The launch Thursday also revives China's crewed space program after a five-year hiatus. With Thursday's launch, China has now sent 14 astronauts into space since it first achieved the feat in 2003, becoming the third country after the former Soviet Union and the U.S. to do so.
WHY IS CHINA BUILDING THE STATION?
As the Chinese economy was beginning to gather steam in the early 1990s, China formulated a plan for space exploration, which it has carried out at a steady, cautious cadence. While China has been barred from participation in the International Space Station, mainly over U.S. objections to the Chinese program's secretive nature and close military connections, it's likely the country would have built its own station anyway as it sought the status of a great space power.
At a news conference Wednesday, China Manned Space Agency Assistant Director Ji Qiming told reporters at the Jiuquan launch center that the construction and operation of the space station will raise China's technologies and "accumulate experience for all the people."
The space program is part of an overall drive to put China on track for even more ambitious missions and provide opportunities for cooperation with Russia and other, mostly European, countries along with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.
POLITICS AND SECURITY
China's space program has been a massive source of national pride, embodying its rise from poverty to the world's second-largest economy over the past four decades. That has helped shore up the power of the Communist Party, whose authoritarian rule and strict limits on political activity have been tolerated by most Chinese as long as the economy is growing.
President and head of the party Xi Jinping has associated himself closely with that success, and Ji in his remarks cited Xi as setting the updated agenda for China's rise to prominence in space. The first mission to the station also coincides with the celebration of the party centenary next month, an important political milestone.
At the same time, China is modernizing its military at a rapid pace, raising concerns from neighbors, the U.S. and its NATO allies. While China espouses the peaceful development of space on the basis of equality and mutual respect, many recall that China in January 2007 sent a ballistic missile into space to destroy an inactive weather satellite, creating a debris field that continues to be a threat.
WHO ARE THE ASTRONAUTS?
Mission commander Nie Haisheng, 56, and fellow astronauts Liu Boming, 54, and Tang Hongbo, 45, are former People's Liberation Army Air Force pilots with graduate degrees and strong scientific backgrounds. All Chinese astronauts so far have been recruited from the military, underscoring its close ties to the space program.
For Nie, it is his third trip to space, and for Liu, his second following a mission in 2008 that included China's first space walk. Tang, who was recruited as one of the second batch of candidates in 2010, is flying in space for the first time.
Future missions to the station will include women, according to officials, with stays extended to as long as six months and as many as six astronauts on the station at a time during crew changeovers. With China stepping up international cooperation and exchanges, it's only a matter of time before foreign astronauts join the Chinese colleagues on missions to the station, Ji told reporters Wednesday.
WHAT ELSE IS CHINA DOING IN SPACE?
Along with its crewed space program, China has been moving boldly into exploration of the solar system with robotic space ships. It landed a probe on Mars last month that carried a rover, the Zhurong, which is conducting a range of surveys, looking particularly for frozen water that could provide clues as to whether the red plant once supported life.
Earlier, China landed a probe and rover on the moon's less explored far side, joining the Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, rover that was part of an earlier lunar exploration mission. China also brought back the first lunar samples by any country’s space program since the 1970s and officials say they want to send Chinese astronauts to the moon and eventually build a research base there.
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China flies record 56 warplanes toward self-ruled Taiwan
By HUIZHONG WU
Today
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China flew 56 fighter planes toward Taiwan on Monday in the largest show of force on record, continuing the three days of sustained military harassment against the self-ruled island.
The first sortie of 52 planes included 34 J-16 fighter jets and 12 H-6 bombers, among other aircraft, according to Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense. Later, four more Chinese J-16s flew toward the southwestern part of Taiwan's air defense identification zone — a buffer outside a country’s airspace.
The Taiwanese air force scrambled its fighter planes and monitored the movement of the Chinese warplanes on its air defense system, the ministry said.
China claims democratically ruled Taiwan as its own territory, to be brought under its control by force if necessary. It refuses to recognize the island’s government and has increasingly sought to isolate the independence-leaning administration of President Tsai Ing-wen.
Experts have called the flights and other military maneuvers by Beijing gray zone warfare, or any type of military action short of direct combat. Many say they do not believe the display of force and aggressive rhetoric, much of which is repetitive, will lead to war.
“We are very concerned that China is going to launch a war against Taiwan at some point, even though the threat may not be imminent at this point,” Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corp. broadcast on Monday.
Taiwan and China split during a civil war in 1949, and Beijing opposes Taiwan’s involvement in international organizations. Taiwan announced on Sept. 23 that it had applied join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, a week after China submitted its own application to join the trade pact.
Starting last Friday, on China's National Day, the People's Liberation Army sent 38 warplanes into the area and 39 aircraft on Saturday, previously the most in a single day since Taiwan began releasing reports on the flights in September 2020. China sent an additional 16 planes on Sunday.
The latest maneuvers by the Chinese air force bring the total to 814 flights.
In Washington on Monday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said: “We remain concerned by the People’s Republic of China’s provocative military activity near Taiwan, which is destabilizing, risks miscalculations and undermines regional peace and stability. We urge Beijing to cease its military, diplomatic and economic pressure and coercion against Taiwan.”
In response to a similar statement over the weekend from the U.S. State Department, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs had said that the U.S. selling weapons to Taiwan as well as ships navigating the Taiwan Strait were “provocative action that harmed U.S-China relations.”
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Crowds angered by lockdowns call for China's Xi to step down
By DAKE KANG and HUIZHONG WU
Today
SHANGHAI (AP) — Protesters pushed to the brink by China's strict COVID measures in Shanghai called for the removal of the country's all-powerful leader and clashed with police Sunday as crowds took to the streets in several cities in an astounding challenge to the government.
Police forcibly cleared the demonstrators in China's financial capital who called for Xi Jinping's resignation and the end of the Chinese Communist Party's rule — but hours later people rallied again in the same spot, and social media reports indicated protests also spread to at least seven other cities, including the capital of Beijing, and dozens of university campuses.
Largescale protests are exceedingly rare in China, where public expressions of dissent are routinely stifled — but a direct rebuke of Xi, the country’s most powerful leader in decades, is extraordinary.
Three years after the virus first emerged, China is the only major country still trying to stop transmission of COVID-19 — a “zero COVID” policy that regularly sees millions of people confined to their homes for weeks at a time and requires near-constant testing. The measures were originally widely accepted for minimizing deaths while other countries suffered devastating wavs of infections, but that consensus has begun to fray in recent weeks.
Then on Friday, 10 people died in a fire in an apartment building, and many believe their rescue was delayed because of excessive lockdown measures. That sparked a weekend of protests, as the Chinese public’s ability to tolerate the harsh measures has apparently reached breaking point.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered late Saturday in Shanghai, which experienced a devastating lockdown in the spring in which people struggled to secure groceries and medicines and were forcefully taken into centralized quarantine.
On a street named for the city in China's far west where the fire happened, one group of protesters brought candles, flowers and signs honoring those who died in the blaze. Another, according to a protester who insisted on anonymity, was more active, shouting slogans and singing the national anthem.
In a video of the protest seen by The Associated Press, chants sounded loud and clear: “Xi Jinping! Step down! CCP! Step down!” Xi, arguably China’s most dominant leader since Mao Zedong, was recently named to another term as head of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, and some expect him to try to stay in power for life.
The protester and another, who gave only his last name, Zhao, confirmed the chants. Both insisted on having their identities shielded because they fear arrest or retribution.
The atmosphere of the protest encouraged people to speak about topics considered taboo, including the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in which the ruling Communist Party had ordered troops to fire on pro-democracy student demonstrators, the unnamed protester said. Some also called for an official apology for the deaths in the fire in Urumqi in the Xinjiang region. One member of the Uyghur ethnic group that is native to Xinjiang and has been the target of a sweeping security crackdown shared his experiences of discrimination and police violence.
“Everyone thinks that Chinese people are afraid to come out and protest, that they don’t have any courage,” said the protester, who said it was his first time demonstrating. “Actually in my heart, I also thought this way. But then when I went there, I found that the environment was such that everyone was very brave.”
Initially peaceful, the scene turned violent in the early hours of Sunday. Hundreds of police surrounded the protesters and broke up the first more active group before they came for the second as they tried to move people off the main street. The protester said that he saw multiple people being taken away, forced by police into vans, but could not identify them.
The protester named Zhao said one of his friends was beaten by police and two were pepper sprayed. He said police stomped his feet as he tried to stop them from taking his friend away. He lost his shoes in the process, and left the protest barefoot.
Zhao said protesters yelled slogans, including one that has become a frequent rallying cry: “(We) do not want PCR (tests), but want freedom.”
On Sunday afternoon, crowds returned to the same spot and again railed against PCR tests. People stood and filmed as police started shoving at people.
A crowdsourced list on social media showed that there were also demonstrations at 50 universities. Videos posted on social media that said they were filmed in Nanjing in the east, Guangzhou in the south, Beijing in the north and at least five other cities showed protesters tussling with police in white protective suits or dismantling barricades used to seal off neighborhoods. The Associated Press could not independently verify all the protests.
In Beijing, students at the nation's top college, Tsinghua University, held a demonstration Sunday afternoon in front of one of the school's cafeterias. Three young women stood there initially with a simple message of condolence for the victims of the Urumqi apartment fire, according to a witness, who refused to be named out of fear of retribution, and images of the protest the AP has seen.
Students shouted “freedom of speech” and sang the Internationale, the socialist anthem. The deputy Communist Party secretary of the school arrived at the protest, promising to hold a schoolwide discussion.
Meanwhile, two cities in China’s northwest, where residents have been confined to their homes for up to four months, eased some anti-virus controls Sunday after public protests Friday.
Meanwhile, Urumqi, where the fire occurred, as well as the smaller city of Korla were preparing to reopen markets and other businesses in areas deemed at low risk of virus transmission and to restart bus, train and airline service, state media reported.
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Chinese users play cat-and-mouse with censors amid protests
By ZEN SOO
Today
HONG KONG (AP) — Videos of hundreds protesting in Shanghai started to appear on WeChat on Saturday night. Showing chants about removing COVID-19 restrictions and demanding freedom, they would stay up only a few minutes before being censored.
Elliot Wang, a 26-year-old in Beijing, was amazed.
“I started refreshing constantly, and saving videos, and taking screenshots of what I could before it got censored,” said Wang, who only agreed to be quoted using his English name, in fear of government retaliation. “A lot of my friends were sharing the videos of the protests in Shanghai. I shared them too, but they would get taken down quickly.”
That Wang was able to glimpse the extraordinary outpouring of grievances highlights the cat-and-mouse game that goes on between millions of Chinese internet users and the country’s gargantuan censorship machine.
Chinese authorities maintain a tight grip on the country’s internet via a complex, multi-layered censorship operation that blocks access to almost all foreign news and social media, and blocks topics and keywords considered politically sensitive or detrimental to the Chinese Communist Party’s rule. Videos of or calls to protest are usually deleted immediately.
But images of protests began to spread on WeChat, a ubiquitous Chinese social networking platform used by over 1 billion, in the wake of a deadly fire Nov. 24 in the northwestern city of Urumqi. Many suspected that lockdown measures prevented residents from escaping the flames, something the government denies.
The sheer number of unhappy Chinese users who took to the Chinese internet to express their frustration, together with the methods they used to evade censors, led to a brief period of time in which government censors were overwhelmed, according to Han Rongbin, an associate professor at the University of Georgia’s International Affairs department.
“It takes censors some time to study what is happening and to add that to their portfolio in terms of censorship, so it’s a learning process for the government on how to conduct censorship effectively,” Han said.
In 2020, the death from COVID-19 of Li Wenliang, a doctor who was arrested for allegedly spreading rumors following an attempt to alert others about a “SARS-like” virus, sparked widespread outrage and an outpouring of anger against the Chinese censorship system. Users posted criticism for hours before censors moved to delete posts.
As censors took down posts related to the fire, Chinese internet users often used humor and metaphor to spread critical messages.
“Chinese netizens have always been very creative because every idea used successfully once will be discovered by censors the next time,” said Liu Lipeng, a censor-turned-critic of China’s censorship practices.
Others posted sarcastic messages like “Good good good sure sure sure right right right yes yes yes,” or used Chinese homonyms to evoke calls for President Xi Jinping to resign, such as “shrimp moss,” which sounds like the words for “step down,” and “banana peel," which has the same initials as Xi's name.
But within days, censors moved to contain images of white paper. They would have used a range of tools, said Chauncey Jung, a policy analyst who previously worked for several Chinese internet companies based in Beijing.
Most content censorship is not done by the state, Jung said, but outsourced to content moderation operations at private social media platforms, who use a mix of humans and AI. Some censored posts are not deleted, but may be made visible only to the author, or removed from search results. In some cases, posts with sensitive key phrases may be published after review.
A search on Weibo on Thursday for the term “white paper” mostly turned up posts that were critical of the protests, with no images of a single sheet of blank paper, or of people holding white papers at protests.
It's possible to access the global internet from China by using virtual private networks that disguise internet traffic, but these systems are illegal and many Chinese internet users access only the domestic internet. Wang does not use a VPN.
“I think I can say for all the mainlanders in my generation that we are really excited,” said Wang. “But we’re also really disappointed because we can’t do anything. … They just keep censoring, keep deleting, and even releasing fake accounts to praise the cops.”
But the system works well enough to stop many users from ever seeing them. When protests broke out across China over the weekend, Carmen Ou, who lives in Beijing, initially didn’t notice.
Ou learned of the protests only later, after using a VPN service to access Instagram.
“I tried looking at my feed on WeChat, but there was no mention of any protests,” she said. “If not for a VPN and access to Instagram, I might not have found out that such a monumental event had taken place.”
Han, the international affairs professor, said censorship “doesn't have to be perfect to be effective.”
"Censorship might be functioning to prevent a big enough size of the population from accessing the critical information to be mobilized,” he said.
China’s opaque approach to tamping down the spread of online dissent also makes it difficult to distinguish government campaigns from ordinary spam.
Searching Twitter using the Chinese words for Shanghai or other Chinese cities reveals protest videos, but also a near-constant flood of new posts showing racy photos of young women. Some researchers proposed that a state-backed campaign could be seeking to drown out news of the protests with “not safe for work” content.
A preliminary analysis by the Stanford Internet Observatory found lots of spam but no “compelling evidence” that it was specifically intended to suppress information or dissent, said Stanford data architect David Thiel.
“I’d be skeptical of anyone claiming clear evidence of government attribution,” Thiel said in an email.
Twitter searches for more specific protest-related terms, such as “Urumqi Middle Road, Shanghai,” produced mainly posts related to the protests.
Israeli data analysis firm Cyabra and another research group that shared analysis with the AP said it was hard to distinguish between a deliberate attempt to drown out protest information sought by the Chinese diaspora and a run-of-the-mill commercial spam campaign.
Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment. It hasn’t answered media inquiries since billionaire Elon Musk took over the platform in late October and cut back much of its workforce, including many of those tasked with moderating spam and other content. Musk often tweets about how he’s enacting or enforcing new Twitter content rules but hasn’t commented on the recent protests in China.
___
AP Business Writer Kelvin Chan in London and AP Technology Writer Matt O'Brien in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this story.
___
This story corrects that the Urumqi fire was on Thursday, Nov. 24, not Friday.
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I mentioned this in the vaccines page. China has done a 180 on lockdowns since these protests. The government must have shit their pants seeing the people rise up like this.
China threatens US entities over downing of balloon
Today
BEIJING (AP) — China said Wednesday it will take measures against U.S. entities related to the downing of a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the American East Coast.
At a daily briefing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin gave no details and did not identify the targets of the measures.
China says the balloon was a unmanned weather airship that was accidentally blown off course and accuses the U.S. of overreacting in bringing it down with a missile fired from an F-22 fighter jet.
Since the Feb. 4 downing of the balloon, the United States has sanctioned six Chinese entities it said are linked to Beijing’s aerospace programs.
The U.S. House of Representatives subsequently voted unanimously to condemn China for a “brazen violation” of U.S. sovereignty and efforts to “deceive the international community through false claims about its intelligence collection campaigns.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken also canceled a visit to Beijing that many hoped would stabilize ties that have cratered amid disputes over trade, human rights, Taiwan and China's claim to the South China Sea.
While China denies the balloon was a military asset, it has yet to say what government department or company was responsible.
After initially expressing regret over the balloon's entry into U.S. airspace, China has returned spying accusations against Washington, alongside its threats of retaliation.
“China firmly opposes this and will take countermeasures in accordance with the law against the relevant U.S. entities that undermine China’s sovereignty and security,” Wang said at Wednesday's briefing.
China will “resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and its legitimate rights and interests," Wang said.
Also Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel said the Chinese balloon's intrusion was part of a pattern of aggressive behavior by Beijing.
Emanuel noted China’s recent beaming of military-grade laser on a Philippine coast guard patrol vessel, the harassment of U.S. planes by Chinese jets and China's opening of illegal police stations in the U.S., Ireland and other countries.
“The balloon to me is not an isolated incident,” Emanuel said.
If China wants to be a respected member of the international community, “then you act appropriately to certain basic premises. that is you don’t open police stations in other countries ignorant of their laws as if your laws don’t have any boundaries,” he said.
“This is not exactly the qualities and characteristics of the good neighbor policy,” the ambassador said, referring to China's outreach to countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
On Tuesday, Japan’s Defense Ministry said at least three flying objects spotted in Japanese airspace since 2019 were strongly believed to have been Chinese spy balloons. It said it has protested and requested explanations from Beijing.
Senior lawmakers in Japan’s governing party on Wednesday said they were considering expanding the Self Defense Force law to also include violations of Japanese airspace by foreign balloons.
___
Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.
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The Chinese government on Monday announced new limits on the
exportation of two rare metals necessary for the production of
semiconductors and electric vehicles.
Beginning Aug. 1., the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said exports
of the metals germanium and gallium will be allowed only if exporters
secure licenses from the ministry, a move it called essential to
“protect national security and interests.”
Although the ministry did not go into detail about the reasons for the new restrictions, an editorial
in the state-owned China Daily following the announcement blasted the
Netherlands for its export controls on semiconductor components.
The editorial also noted that the U.S. is home to the largest
germanium mines in the world but “seldom exploits them.” Russia, Belgium
and Canada also produce germanium, while Russia, Ukraine, Japan and
South Korea also produce gallium.
China leads the world in total production of both metals. The country
produces about 650,000 kilograms of gallium per year, about 94 percent
of global production. The nation has been dramatically increasing
production since 2019, when environmental measures curtailed the use of
similar metals.
The U.S., by contrast, has no current domestic source of the metal,
according to the U.S. Geological Survey. China was also the largest
germanium producer as of 2021,
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Comments
Im very aware of the potential threat China poses. But I’m also realistic in knowing that the current administration has absolutely no clue what to do about, or how to cope.
When was the last time you traveled out of the US? Did you notice anything?
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Where did you go, outside the US in 2018? Because for me, since 1997, I’ve noticed a lot more Chinese tourists and businesses in all kinds of places. You?
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/china-denies-role-in-backlash-against-tibetan-student-s-election-at-u-of-t-1.5021226?fbclid=IwAR1m9mZw3xY9augb1QrgtLrBFSL7RXZG90FS80-TlVFwGdyGPtl6_mTM9W4
Lying donkeys...
HONG KONG (AP) — China's government said Tuesday no abnormal radiation was detected outside a nuclear power plant near Hong Kong following a news report of a leak, while Hong Kong's leader said her administration was closely watching the facility.
The operators released few details, but nuclear experts said that based on their brief statement, gas might be leaking from fuel rods inside the reactor in Taishan, 135 kilometers (85 miles) west of Hong Kong.
In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian gave no confirmation of a leak or other details. He responded to reporters' questions by saying, “there is nothing abnormal detected in the radiation level surrounding the plant.”
In Hong Kong, radiation levels Tuesday were normal, according to the Hong Kong Observatory.
Framatome, a French company that helps manage the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant in Guangdong province, said Monday it was dealing with a “performance issue.” It said the facility was operating within safe limits.
That followed a report by CNN that Framatome told U.S. authorities about a possible leak.
“With regards to foreign media reports about a nuclear plant in Taishan, Guangzhou, the Hong Kong government attaches a high degree of importance to this,” said Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam.
She said her government would ask authorities in Guangdong for information and tell the public about any developments.
China is one of the biggest users of nuclear power and is building more reactors at a time when few other governments have plans for new facilities because the cost of solar, wind and other alternatives is plunging.
Chinese leaders see nuclear power as a way to reduce air pollution and demand for imports of oil and gas, which they deem a security risk. Government plans call for Hong Kong to use more mainland nuclear power to allow the closure of coal-fired power plants.
The Taishan plant, which began commercial operation in December 2018, is owned by China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group and Electricite de France, the majority owner of Framatome. A second reactor began operating in September 2019.
They are the first of a new type called European Pressurized Reactors. Two more are being built in Finland and France.
CNN reported Framatome wrote to the U.S. Department of Energy warning of an “imminent radiological threat” and accusing Chinese authorities of raising acceptable limits for radiation outside the plant to avoid having to shut it down.
U.S. officials believed there was no severe safety threat, CNN said.
The Department of Energy declined to comment. The International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. body, told The Associated Press it was aware of the issue and was awaiting information from China.
“There is nothing we can do about it," said Li Tak, a Hong Kong retiree. Justin Santini, a teacher, noted that government officials have said it isn't a problem as of yet. “Until more alarm bells are raised, it’s probably premature to be concerned about it," he said.
Electricite de France said Monday it was informed of the increase in concentration of “certain noble gases” in Taishan reactor No. 1.
That suggests fuel rods are leaking gases produced during nuclear fission, according to Luk Bing-lam, an expert on nuclear engineering at the City University of Hong Kong.
Noble gases such as xenon and krypton are byproducts of fission along with particles of cesium, strontium and other radioactive elements.
“If the leakage is more severe, then you will start seeing more radioactive material like cesium, rather than gas,” said Luk, who is chairman of the Hong Kong Nuclear Society.
Such leaks “happen every so often” in China and plants “usually can handle it themselves,” Luk said. But he said this incident might be complicated if the Taishan plant uses U.S. technology that is covered by export restrictions.
China’s state-owned nuclear power companies are on Washington’s “entity list” that bars them from obtaining U.S. technology without government approval.
The French partner might ask for permission because Framatome previously licensed technology from Westinghouse, Luk said.
“With the situation now, that becomes difficult,” he said. “For even a small problem, they need U.S. government approval.”
China has 50 operable reactors and is building 18 more, according to the World Nuclear Association, an industry group. It is largely self-sufficient in reactor design and construction but is “making full use of Western technology while adapting and improving it,” the association says on its website.
China has constructed reactors based on French, U.S., Russian and Canadian technology and has developed its own Hualong One reactor, based on Westinghouse technology, marketing it abroad since 2015.
Hong Kong gets as much as one-third of its power from the Daya Bay nuclear power plant east of the territory in Guangdong.
Luk, who has worked with Chinese nuclear power plant operators, said he asked the company for information about the leak but managers won’t talk about it.
“I suspect the leakage is far more widespread than just a single assembly,” he said. “Because of that, they probably need some special technology to resolve this leakage problem.”
Previously, the Taishan facility leaked a “small amount” of radioactive gas on April 9, the National Nuclear Safety Administration said on its website. It said the event was “Level 0,” or “without safety significance.”
Zhao, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, defended China's nuclear safety record and said the nuclear agency works with regulators in other countries and the IAEA.
“China’s nuclear power plants have maintained a good record in operation and no incidents affecting the environment or public health have occurred,” Zhao said.
___
This story corrects the spelling of Framatome and fixes the second reference to the nuclear expert to Luk throughout. Also, the translation of the quote by Chief Executive Carrie Lam has been revised to clarify that she said the Hong Kong government “attaches a high degree of importance” to the reports about the nuclear plant, not that it is “highly concerned” about them.
___
AP Business Writer McDonald reported from Beijing. AP video journalist Alice Fung in Hong Kong contributed to this report.
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JIUQUAN, China (AP) — Adding a crew to China's new orbiting space station is another major advance for the burgeoning space power.
Here's a look at key developments:
WHAT'S THE MISSION'S PURPOSE?
The three-member crew is due to stay for three months in the station’s main living module, named Tianhe, or Heavenly Harmony. They will be carrying out science experiments and maintenance, space walks and preparing the facility to receive two additional modules next year.
While China concedes it arrived late at the space station game, it says its facility is cutting-edge. It could also outlast the International Space Station, which is nearing the end of its functional lifespan.
The launch Thursday also revives China's crewed space program after a five-year hiatus. With Thursday's launch, China has now sent 14 astronauts into space since it first achieved the feat in 2003, becoming the third country after the former Soviet Union and the U.S. to do so.
WHY IS CHINA BUILDING THE STATION?
As the Chinese economy was beginning to gather steam in the early 1990s, China formulated a plan for space exploration, which it has carried out at a steady, cautious cadence. While China has been barred from participation in the International Space Station, mainly over U.S. objections to the Chinese program's secretive nature and close military connections, it's likely the country would have built its own station anyway as it sought the status of a great space power.
At a news conference Wednesday, China Manned Space Agency Assistant Director Ji Qiming told reporters at the Jiuquan launch center that the construction and operation of the space station will raise China's technologies and "accumulate experience for all the people."
The space program is part of an overall drive to put China on track for even more ambitious missions and provide opportunities for cooperation with Russia and other, mostly European, countries along with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.
POLITICS AND SECURITY
China's space program has been a massive source of national pride, embodying its rise from poverty to the world's second-largest economy over the past four decades. That has helped shore up the power of the Communist Party, whose authoritarian rule and strict limits on political activity have been tolerated by most Chinese as long as the economy is growing.
President and head of the party Xi Jinping has associated himself closely with that success, and Ji in his remarks cited Xi as setting the updated agenda for China's rise to prominence in space. The first mission to the station also coincides with the celebration of the party centenary next month, an important political milestone.
At the same time, China is modernizing its military at a rapid pace, raising concerns from neighbors, the U.S. and its NATO allies. While China espouses the peaceful development of space on the basis of equality and mutual respect, many recall that China in January 2007 sent a ballistic missile into space to destroy an inactive weather satellite, creating a debris field that continues to be a threat.
WHO ARE THE ASTRONAUTS?
Mission commander Nie Haisheng, 56, and fellow astronauts Liu Boming, 54, and Tang Hongbo, 45, are former People's Liberation Army Air Force pilots with graduate degrees and strong scientific backgrounds. All Chinese astronauts so far have been recruited from the military, underscoring its close ties to the space program.
For Nie, it is his third trip to space, and for Liu, his second following a mission in 2008 that included China's first space walk. Tang, who was recruited as one of the second batch of candidates in 2010, is flying in space for the first time.
Future missions to the station will include women, according to officials, with stays extended to as long as six months and as many as six astronauts on the station at a time during crew changeovers. With China stepping up international cooperation and exchanges, it's only a matter of time before foreign astronauts join the Chinese colleagues on missions to the station, Ji told reporters Wednesday.
WHAT ELSE IS CHINA DOING IN SPACE?
Along with its crewed space program, China has been moving boldly into exploration of the solar system with robotic space ships. It landed a probe on Mars last month that carried a rover, the Zhurong, which is conducting a range of surveys, looking particularly for frozen water that could provide clues as to whether the red plant once supported life.
Earlier, China landed a probe and rover on the moon's less explored far side, joining the Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, rover that was part of an earlier lunar exploration mission. China also brought back the first lunar samples by any country’s space program since the 1970s and officials say they want to send Chinese astronauts to the moon and eventually build a research base there.
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TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China flew 56 fighter planes toward Taiwan on Monday in the largest show of force on record, continuing the three days of sustained military harassment against the self-ruled island.
The first sortie of 52 planes included 34 J-16 fighter jets and 12 H-6 bombers, among other aircraft, according to Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense. Later, four more Chinese J-16s flew toward the southwestern part of Taiwan's air defense identification zone — a buffer outside a country’s airspace.
The Taiwanese air force scrambled its fighter planes and monitored the movement of the Chinese warplanes on its air defense system, the ministry said.
China claims democratically ruled Taiwan as its own territory, to be brought under its control by force if necessary. It refuses to recognize the island’s government and has increasingly sought to isolate the independence-leaning administration of President Tsai Ing-wen.
Experts have called the flights and other military maneuvers by Beijing gray zone warfare, or any type of military action short of direct combat. Many say they do not believe the display of force and aggressive rhetoric, much of which is repetitive, will lead to war.
“We are very concerned that China is going to launch a war against Taiwan at some point, even though the threat may not be imminent at this point,” Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corp. broadcast on Monday.
Taiwan and China split during a civil war in 1949, and Beijing opposes Taiwan’s involvement in international organizations. Taiwan announced on Sept. 23 that it had applied join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, a week after China submitted its own application to join the trade pact.
Starting last Friday, on China's National Day, the People's Liberation Army sent 38 warplanes into the area and 39 aircraft on Saturday, previously the most in a single day since Taiwan began releasing reports on the flights in September 2020. China sent an additional 16 planes on Sunday.
The latest maneuvers by the Chinese air force bring the total to 814 flights.
In Washington on Monday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said: “We remain concerned by the People’s Republic of China’s provocative military activity near Taiwan, which is destabilizing, risks miscalculations and undermines regional peace and stability. We urge Beijing to cease its military, diplomatic and economic pressure and coercion against Taiwan.”
In response to a similar statement over the weekend from the U.S. State Department, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs had said that the U.S. selling weapons to Taiwan as well as ships navigating the Taiwan Strait were “provocative action that harmed U.S-China relations.”
continues
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Taiwan president warns of 'catastrophic' consequences for peace if it falls to China
SHANGHAI (AP) — Protesters pushed to the brink by China's strict COVID measures in Shanghai called for the removal of the country's all-powerful leader and clashed with police Sunday as crowds took to the streets in several cities in an astounding challenge to the government.
Police forcibly cleared the demonstrators in China's financial capital who called for Xi Jinping's resignation and the end of the Chinese Communist Party's rule — but hours later people rallied again in the same spot, and social media reports indicated protests also spread to at least seven other cities, including the capital of Beijing, and dozens of university campuses.
Largescale protests are exceedingly rare in China, where public expressions of dissent are routinely stifled — but a direct rebuke of Xi, the country’s most powerful leader in decades, is extraordinary.
Three years after the virus first emerged, China is the only major country still trying to stop transmission of COVID-19 — a “zero COVID” policy that regularly sees millions of people confined to their homes for weeks at a time and requires near-constant testing. The measures were originally widely accepted for minimizing deaths while other countries suffered devastating wavs of infections, but that consensus has begun to fray in recent weeks.
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Then on Friday, 10 people died in a fire in an apartment building, and many believe their rescue was delayed because of excessive lockdown measures. That sparked a weekend of protests, as the Chinese public’s ability to tolerate the harsh measures has apparently reached breaking point.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered late Saturday in Shanghai, which experienced a devastating lockdown in the spring in which people struggled to secure groceries and medicines and were forcefully taken into centralized quarantine.
On a street named for the city in China's far west where the fire happened, one group of protesters brought candles, flowers and signs honoring those who died in the blaze. Another, according to a protester who insisted on anonymity, was more active, shouting slogans and singing the national anthem.
In a video of the protest seen by The Associated Press, chants sounded loud and clear: “Xi Jinping! Step down! CCP! Step down!” Xi, arguably China’s most dominant leader since Mao Zedong, was recently named to another term as head of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, and some expect him to try to stay in power for life.
The protester and another, who gave only his last name, Zhao, confirmed the chants. Both insisted on having their identities shielded because they fear arrest or retribution.
The atmosphere of the protest encouraged people to speak about topics considered taboo, including the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in which the ruling Communist Party had ordered troops to fire on pro-democracy student demonstrators, the unnamed protester said. Some also called for an official apology for the deaths in the fire in Urumqi in the Xinjiang region. One member of the Uyghur ethnic group that is native to Xinjiang and has been the target of a sweeping security crackdown shared his experiences of discrimination and police violence.
“Everyone thinks that Chinese people are afraid to come out and protest, that they don’t have any courage,” said the protester, who said it was his first time demonstrating. “Actually in my heart, I also thought this way. But then when I went there, I found that the environment was such that everyone was very brave.”
Initially peaceful, the scene turned violent in the early hours of Sunday. Hundreds of police surrounded the protesters and broke up the first more active group before they came for the second as they tried to move people off the main street. The protester said that he saw multiple people being taken away, forced by police into vans, but could not identify them.
The protester named Zhao said one of his friends was beaten by police and two were pepper sprayed. He said police stomped his feet as he tried to stop them from taking his friend away. He lost his shoes in the process, and left the protest barefoot.
Zhao said protesters yelled slogans, including one that has become a frequent rallying cry: “(We) do not want PCR (tests), but want freedom.”
On Sunday afternoon, crowds returned to the same spot and again railed against PCR tests. People stood and filmed as police started shoving at people.
A crowdsourced list on social media showed that there were also demonstrations at 50 universities. Videos posted on social media that said they were filmed in Nanjing in the east, Guangzhou in the south, Beijing in the north and at least five other cities showed protesters tussling with police in white protective suits or dismantling barricades used to seal off neighborhoods. The Associated Press could not independently verify all the protests.
In Beijing, students at the nation's top college, Tsinghua University, held a demonstration Sunday afternoon in front of one of the school's cafeterias. Three young women stood there initially with a simple message of condolence for the victims of the Urumqi apartment fire, according to a witness, who refused to be named out of fear of retribution, and images of the protest the AP has seen.
Students shouted “freedom of speech” and sang the Internationale, the socialist anthem. The deputy Communist Party secretary of the school arrived at the protest, promising to hold a schoolwide discussion.
Meanwhile, two cities in China’s northwest, where residents have been confined to their homes for up to four months, eased some anti-virus controls Sunday after public protests Friday.
Meanwhile, Urumqi, where the fire occurred, as well as the smaller city of Korla were preparing to reopen markets and other businesses in areas deemed at low risk of virus transmission and to restart bus, train and airline service, state media reported.
___
Wu reported from Taipei, Taiwan.
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HONG KONG (AP) — Videos of hundreds protesting in Shanghai started to appear on WeChat on Saturday night. Showing chants about removing COVID-19 restrictions and demanding freedom, they would stay up only a few minutes before being censored.
Elliot Wang, a 26-year-old in Beijing, was amazed.
“I started refreshing constantly, and saving videos, and taking screenshots of what I could before it got censored,” said Wang, who only agreed to be quoted using his English name, in fear of government retaliation. “A lot of my friends were sharing the videos of the protests in Shanghai. I shared them too, but they would get taken down quickly.”
That Wang was able to glimpse the extraordinary outpouring of grievances highlights the cat-and-mouse game that goes on between millions of Chinese internet users and the country’s gargantuan censorship machine.
Chinese authorities maintain a tight grip on the country’s internet via a complex, multi-layered censorship operation that blocks access to almost all foreign news and social media, and blocks topics and keywords considered politically sensitive or detrimental to the Chinese Communist Party’s rule. Videos of or calls to protest are usually deleted immediately.
But images of protests began to spread on WeChat, a ubiquitous Chinese social networking platform used by over 1 billion, in the wake of a deadly fire Nov. 24 in the northwestern city of Urumqi. Many suspected that lockdown measures prevented residents from escaping the flames, something the government denies.
The sheer number of unhappy Chinese users who took to the Chinese internet to express their frustration, together with the methods they used to evade censors, led to a brief period of time in which government censors were overwhelmed, according to Han Rongbin, an associate professor at the University of Georgia’s International Affairs department.
“It takes censors some time to study what is happening and to add that to their portfolio in terms of censorship, so it’s a learning process for the government on how to conduct censorship effectively,” Han said.
In 2020, the death from COVID-19 of Li Wenliang, a doctor who was arrested for allegedly spreading rumors following an attempt to alert others about a “SARS-like” virus, sparked widespread outrage and an outpouring of anger against the Chinese censorship system. Users posted criticism for hours before censors moved to delete posts.
As censors took down posts related to the fire, Chinese internet users often used humor and metaphor to spread critical messages.
“Chinese netizens have always been very creative because every idea used successfully once will be discovered by censors the next time,” said Liu Lipeng, a censor-turned-critic of China’s censorship practices.
Chinese users started posting images of blank sheets of white paper, said Liu, in a silent reminder of words they weren't allowed to post.
Others posted sarcastic messages like “Good good good sure sure sure right right right yes yes yes,” or used Chinese homonyms to evoke calls for President Xi Jinping to resign, such as “shrimp moss,” which sounds like the words for “step down,” and “banana peel," which has the same initials as Xi's name.
But within days, censors moved to contain images of white paper. They would have used a range of tools, said Chauncey Jung, a policy analyst who previously worked for several Chinese internet companies based in Beijing.
Most content censorship is not done by the state, Jung said, but outsourced to content moderation operations at private social media platforms, who use a mix of humans and AI. Some censored posts are not deleted, but may be made visible only to the author, or removed from search results. In some cases, posts with sensitive key phrases may be published after review.
CHINA
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A search on Weibo on Thursday for the term “white paper” mostly turned up posts that were critical of the protests, with no images of a single sheet of blank paper, or of people holding white papers at protests.
It's possible to access the global internet from China by using virtual private networks that disguise internet traffic, but these systems are illegal and many Chinese internet users access only the domestic internet. Wang does not use a VPN.
“I think I can say for all the mainlanders in my generation that we are really excited,” said Wang. “But we’re also really disappointed because we can’t do anything. … They just keep censoring, keep deleting, and even releasing fake accounts to praise the cops.”
But the system works well enough to stop many users from ever seeing them. When protests broke out across China over the weekend, Carmen Ou, who lives in Beijing, initially didn’t notice.
Ou learned of the protests only later, after using a VPN service to access Instagram.
“I tried looking at my feed on WeChat, but there was no mention of any protests,” she said. “If not for a VPN and access to Instagram, I might not have found out that such a monumental event had taken place.”
Han, the international affairs professor, said censorship “doesn't have to be perfect to be effective.”
"Censorship might be functioning to prevent a big enough size of the population from accessing the critical information to be mobilized,” he said.
China’s opaque approach to tamping down the spread of online dissent also makes it difficult to distinguish government campaigns from ordinary spam.
Searching Twitter using the Chinese words for Shanghai or other Chinese cities reveals protest videos, but also a near-constant flood of new posts showing racy photos of young women. Some researchers proposed that a state-backed campaign could be seeking to drown out news of the protests with “not safe for work” content.
A preliminary analysis by the Stanford Internet Observatory found lots of spam but no “compelling evidence” that it was specifically intended to suppress information or dissent, said Stanford data architect David Thiel.
“I’d be skeptical of anyone claiming clear evidence of government attribution,” Thiel said in an email.
Twitter searches for more specific protest-related terms, such as “Urumqi Middle Road, Shanghai,” produced mainly posts related to the protests.
Israeli data analysis firm Cyabra and another research group that shared analysis with the AP said it was hard to distinguish between a deliberate attempt to drown out protest information sought by the Chinese diaspora and a run-of-the-mill commercial spam campaign.
Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment. It hasn’t answered media inquiries since billionaire Elon Musk took over the platform in late October and cut back much of its workforce, including many of those tasked with moderating spam and other content. Musk often tweets about how he’s enacting or enforcing new Twitter content rules but hasn’t commented on the recent protests in China.
___
AP Business Writer Kelvin Chan in London and AP Technology Writer Matt O'Brien in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this story.
___
This story corrects that the Urumqi fire was on Thursday, Nov. 24, not Friday.
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BEIJING (AP) — China said Wednesday it will take measures against U.S. entities related to the downing of a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the American East Coast.
At a daily briefing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin gave no details and did not identify the targets of the measures.
China says the balloon was a unmanned weather airship that was accidentally blown off course and accuses the U.S. of overreacting in bringing it down with a missile fired from an F-22 fighter jet.
Since the Feb. 4 downing of the balloon, the United States has sanctioned six Chinese entities it said are linked to Beijing’s aerospace programs.
The U.S. House of Representatives subsequently voted unanimously to condemn China for a “brazen violation” of U.S. sovereignty and efforts to “deceive the international community through false claims about its intelligence collection campaigns.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken also canceled a visit to Beijing that many hoped would stabilize ties that have cratered amid disputes over trade, human rights, Taiwan and China's claim to the South China Sea.
While China denies the balloon was a military asset, it has yet to say what government department or company was responsible.
After initially expressing regret over the balloon's entry into U.S. airspace, China has returned spying accusations against Washington, alongside its threats of retaliation.
“China firmly opposes this and will take countermeasures in accordance with the law against the relevant U.S. entities that undermine China’s sovereignty and security,” Wang said at Wednesday's briefing.
China will “resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and its legitimate rights and interests," Wang said.
Also Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel said the Chinese balloon's intrusion was part of a pattern of aggressive behavior by Beijing.
Emanuel noted China’s recent beaming of military-grade laser on a Philippine coast guard patrol vessel, the harassment of U.S. planes by Chinese jets and China's opening of illegal police stations in the U.S., Ireland and other countries.
“The balloon to me is not an isolated incident,” Emanuel said.
If China wants to be a respected member of the international community, “then you act appropriately to certain basic premises. that is you don’t open police stations in other countries ignorant of their laws as if your laws don’t have any boundaries,” he said.
“This is not exactly the qualities and characteristics of the good neighbor policy,” the ambassador said, referring to China's outreach to countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
On Tuesday, Japan’s Defense Ministry said at least three flying objects spotted in Japanese airspace since 2019 were strongly believed to have been Chinese spy balloons. It said it has protested and requested explanations from Beijing.
Senior lawmakers in Japan’s governing party on Wednesday said they were considering expanding the Self Defense Force law to also include violations of Japanese airspace by foreign balloons.
___
Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.
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China imposes export controls on rare minerals used to make semiconductor chips
The Chinese government on Monday announced new limits on the exportation of two rare metals necessary for the production of semiconductors and electric vehicles.
Beginning Aug. 1., the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said exports of the metals germanium and gallium will be allowed only if exporters secure licenses from the ministry, a move it called essential to “protect national security and interests.”
Although the ministry did not go into detail about the reasons for the new restrictions, an editorial in the state-owned China Daily following the announcement blasted the Netherlands for its export controls on semiconductor components.
The editorial also noted that the U.S. is home to the largest germanium mines in the world but “seldom exploits them.” Russia, Belgium and Canada also produce germanium, while Russia, Ukraine, Japan and South Korea also produce gallium.
China leads the world in total production of both metals. The country produces about 650,000 kilograms of gallium per year, about 94 percent of global production. The nation has been dramatically increasing production since 2019, when environmental measures curtailed the use of similar metals.
The U.S., by contrast, has no current domestic source of the metal, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. China was also the largest germanium producer as of 2021,
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14