Why China's Foreign Minister Suddenly Wants Stronger Sino-US Relations

San Francisco — 

A Chinese official’s pitch this week for stronger Sino-U.S. relations could indicate that Beijing wants to edge away from Russia and repair economic relations, some analysts say.

In a speech Monday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged Washington to “reinstate a reasonable and pragmatic China policy” and “promote putting bilateral ties back on the right track,” the state-run China Daily news website reported.

A breakthrough in Sino-U.S. relations would mark a turning point since the two powers began sparring in 2017 over trade, technology transfers and growing Chinese military might around Asia. U.S. President Joe Biden’s government said in a report Tuesday it still sees China as a competitor that’s “unfair” in trade.

Trade ties, distance from Russia

China has tried to avoid siding openly with Russia on its invasion of Ukraine last week despite a long, deepening friendship with Moscow.

China did not join Russia in vetoing a U.S.-backed U.N. Security Council resolution against the attack, and its U.N. ambassador suggested that Ukraine form a “bridge” between the East and West .

Washington has blasted its former Cold War rival Russia over the invasion.

Wang is “trying to make nice” in view of China’s “increasingly” close ties with Russia, said Sean King, vice president of Park Strategies political consultancy in New York. “These are perilous times when we see who’s who and what’s what,” King said.

Chinese officials are hoping the U.S. side will welcome their appeal for better relations as the United States faces “mounting inflation” among other economic issues, said Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow at the Singapore Institute of International Affairs.

Wang said Monday that China was willing to work with the United States on a G-7-led global infrastructure plan called Build Back Better World and welcomes Washington in its Belt and Road Initiative aimed at opening trade routes by building new infrastructure. Biden happens to be pushing the U.S. Senate for a $2-trillion social spending bill, which also is called Build Back Better.

“Now that the U.S. is embroiled in the confrontation with Russia, the U.S. will need friends and allies, and China has been adopting a rather ambivalent attitude with regards to the Ukraine invasion, so that creates a window of opportunity for the U.S. and China to come closer together,” Oh said.

China could offer the United States “cost effective technology” for railways and prefabricated bridges, said Eduardo Araral, associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s public policy school. But he said Washington may be “too proud” to accept that support.

He said that bickering between the two powers has eased already. “Now it’s either no news or positive news, which is good news,” Araral said. “At least there’s no more shouting match or megaphone diplomacy.”

Momentum from 50 years ago

Wang spoke Monday at a video ceremony marking the 50-year anniversary of the Shanghai Communique. Former Chinese leader Mao Zedong and former U.S. President Richard Nixon signed the statement as a prelude to normalizing two-way relations.

“History tells us that by seeking common ground while reserving differences, we can attain peaceful co-existence between countries with different social systems,” the foreign minister said.

“The older generation of leaders in both countries realized that despite the differences, neither side had the intention to change the other,” he said. “Both sides hoped to see that the two countries could grow in parallel and conduct cooperation based on shared interests.”

No deal yet

The Chinese foreign minister’s comments, however, offer no actual deal. Wang criticized Washington on Monday as not “earnestly complying with the principles and spirit” of the Shanghai Communique, China Daily reported.

“It should abandon its mania for zero-sum games, give up its obsession with encircling and containing China, and break free from the shackles of political correctness,” he told the video ceremony.

Americans continue to worry about China. Some point to China’s growing use of big data analytics and its links to COVID-19. The coronavirus was first reported in China in late 2019.

“Unfortunately, with the virus, everybody blames China, so I don’t think it’s going to change,” said Sylvia Rampi, general manager for an association of mostly Chinese-operated businesses in Oakland, California.

Chinese Netizens Deliver Mostly Positive Verdict on China’s Foreign-Origin Olympians

WASHINGTON — 

China’s social media users have responded mostly positively to the sporting performances of their largest-ever contingent of foreign-born Olympic athletes, while appearing to keep mum on the sensitive issue of whether those athletes were allowed to keep their foreign nationalities.

The Chinese Olympic Committee fielded 30 foreign-born and -raised athletes in its 176-strong delegation for this month’s Winter Games in Beijing, 28 of them in its men’s and women’s ice hockey teams. The two other athletes are the highest-profile members of China’s foreign-origin contingent: freestyle skier Eileen Gu and figure skater Zhu Yi, both U.S.-born.

Eighteen-year-old Gu has won adulation in China by securing two golds and a silver, with her second gold coming in Friday’s freeski halfpipe final. Zhu did not win a medal and the Chinese men’s and women’s ice hockey teams did not reach the quarterfinal knockout stages of their tournaments.

Canadian-born ice hockey player Ethan Werek is one of the Chinese men’s team’s 15 foreign-born players, of whom 11 hail from Canada, three from the U.S. and one from Russia. Most of them have Chinese ancestry, while Werek is one of five who do not.

Speaking by phone to VOA in Istanbul on Thursday as he was en route back to North America, Werek said he had seen only positive comments about his ice hockey team role as he translated posts made on his Weibo account. Weibo is the most popular Chinese microblogging site.

“There were lots of positive messages from Chinese fans thanking me and thanking our team. I just wish I knew how to respond properly and thank them truly for the opportunity to represent China,” said Werek, who does not read Mandarin.

Werek’s observation was consistent with posts seen by VOA on the Weibo accounts of two of his U.S.-born teammates Jeremy Smith and Jake Chelios, who also are not of Chinese origin.

Goalkeeper Smith, who injured his leg in China’s 7-2 loss to Canada in Tuesday’s qualification playoff and had to be taken to a hospital, posted a Chinese-language farewell message to his fans later that day. It elicited hundreds of comments, some in English, expressing admiration for his efforts and wishing him a speedy recovery.

Screenshot of Chinese ice hockey player Jeremy Smith’s farewell message to fans on his Weibo account, Feb. 17, 2022.

Screenshot of user comments on Jeremy Smith’s Weibo account, Feb. 17, 2022.

Screenshot of user comments on Jeremy Smith’s Weibo account, Feb. 17, 2022.

Chelios, a defender, had posted a Chinese message to his Weibo account a day earlier, describing his team’s initial 5-0 loss to Canada in a February 13 preliminary round group game as unfortunate and saying “we must do our best” in the qualification playoff.

“Winning or losing is not important, but you let us see the future of China’s ice hockey,” replied one Weibo user in English. “We will pay attention to you and love you.”

Screenshot of Chinese ice hockey player Jake Chelios’ message to fans on his Weibo account, Feb. 17, 2022.

Screenshot of user comments on Jake Chelios’ Weibo account, Feb. 17, 2022.

The foreign-origin ice hockey players likely endeared themselves to Chinese fans by respecting Chinese people and conventions, said Susan Brownell, an American research specialist on Chinese sports and an anthropology professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

“They demonstrated a commitment to China just by moving there several years ago to play for a Chinese club. Under circumstances like this, I do think that Chinese people can be honored and flattered that you have chosen to represent China,” Brownell told VOA.

Brownell said Chinese fans also likely did not expect the men’s or women’s ice hockey teams to be medal contenders. They were the lowest-ranked teams in their respective tournaments and secured automatic berths by virtue of China being the host nation.

China’s Mi Le (34) celebrates with Wang Yuting (49) after scoring a goal against Czech Republic during a preliminary round women’s hockey game at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 3, 2022, in Beijing.

The Chinese women’s team won two and lost two of its preliminary round group games. The men’s team lost its three preliminary round group games and its qualification playoff, but its preliminary round loss to Germany was by a narrow 3-2 margin.

VOA did not observe any Chinese social media posts criticizing the foreign-origin ice hockey players, but Brownell said there is a possibility that such comments may have been censored.

Zhu Yi, of China, reacts in the women’s team free skate program during the figure skating competition at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 7, 2022, in Beijing.

Zhu, the 19-year-old figure skater, drew a deluge of harsh comments from Chinese netizens after falling during her team and single skating events, some telling her to “go back to America.” U.S. and Chinese news reports said China’s internet censors responded by blocking the Mandarin hashtag “Zhu Yi has fallen” and removing some of the most incendiary posts.

Zhu is the only one of the 30 foreign-origin Chinese Olympic athletes whom the International Olympic Committee has confirmed to have renounced foreign citizenship. She switched her allegiance from the U.S. to China in 2018.

It does not appear that any of the other 29 athletes have done the same, despite Article 8 of China’s Nationality Law saying that a person naturalizing as a Chinese citizen “shall not retain foreign nationality.” Athletes must be a national of the country they represent under IOC Rule 41.

VOA did not observe any Weibo posts discussing the sensitive question of whether Chinese authorities bent the law to allow foreign athletes to compete for China as dual nationals.

Ice hockey player Chelios told The Wall Street Journal last week that he and several of his teammates still have U.S. passports. Smith, in an interview with U.S. outlet ESPN earlier this month, said he “told China” that he would “never” give up his U.S. passport and “they said that’s fine.”

In a sign that Chinese two-time Olympic champion Gu also has not renounced her U.S. citizenship, an Olympics.com article published last year in multiple languages, ‘Five things you didn’t know about Eileen Gu,’ ends with a sentence saying that she has “dual nationality.”

China’s Eileen Gu competes during the women’s halfpipe finals at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 18, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China.

The “dual nationality” reference can be seen in the Arabic, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese and Spanish versions of the article. It also had appeared in the English version of the article until it was removed on Feb. 9 or 10, shortly after Gu won her first gold and shot into the international spotlight. The Chinese version ends with a sentence saying Gu is “active in both China and the U.S.” rather than referring to her as a dual national.

The International Olympic Committee did not answer a VOA question about why it removed the reference from the English version of the Gu profile.

Gu has not responded directly to reporters seeking confirmation of whether she is a dual national. In a February 8 Beijing news conference, she repeated a statement that she has made before, saying that she is Chinese when she is in China, and American when she is in the United States.

When asked by VOA if he has renounced his Canadian citizenship, Chinese ice hockey forward Werek also did not respond directly, instead saying “when I’m in China, I’m Chinese.” Smith made a similar statement later when German news agency Deutsche Welle asked him to clarify his U.S. citizenship status following the Chinese men’s team’s 8-0 loss to the U.S.

U.S. news reports cited other North American-origin Chinese ice hockey players as telling reporters in Beijing that they were not allowed to comment on the issue.

“I think this is an experiment for China,” Brownell said, referring to its recruitment of the foreign-origin athletes. “If it works, then a government document declaring an official change in [naturalization] policy will come out in future,” she predicted.

Werek said he sees more work with the Chinese men’s national team in his future. Its next big challenge will be trying to qualify for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy, where China will not have an automatic berth as it had this time.

The disappointment of the Chinese men’s team with its Beijing 2022 result shows that it believes it can do better, Werek said.

“There were games that we could have won. So our expectation going into 2026 is that we’re going to be a team that will compete, and we’re excited for that.”

This report was a collaboration between VOA’s News Center and Mandarin Service.

2 Olympics and China's Love of Big

Tiananmen Square. The Forbidden City. The Great Wall. The Three Gorges Dam. Dozens of high-end malls in Beijing.

China has thousands of years of doing things in a really big way, reinforcing its perceived place in the world and the political power of its leaders — from emperors to Mao Zedong to the current leader, Xi Jinping.

Beijing becoming the first city to hold both the Winter and Summer Olympics may not be a feature on the actual landscape. But it’s in the same realm for the world’s most populous country, which has long framed itself at the center of the world, evident in its name in Chinese, “Zhongguo,” or “middle country.”

This affinity for bigness isn’t new. It goes back to a dozen dynasties that ruled China for thousands of years — one of which re-created an entire army of terra cotta warriors to be buried with an emperor. It’s a tradition of projecting large-scale power that was adopted by the Chinese Communist Party when it took over in 1949.

Writing in his book “Mandate of Heaven,” U.S. China scholar Orville Schell explained how Mao, who led China’s communist revolution, expanded Tiananmen Square in the 1950s to make it the largest public square in the world — 100 acres.

That’s five times larger than Moscow’s Red Square. And Mao even went the Russians one better by adorning the square with Soviet-style architecture, the most famous of which is the Great Hall of the People. Eventually, after Mao’s death in 1976, the square came to include his imposing mausoleum.

Schell wrote of Tiananmen, calling it “a propagandist’s dream come true. Everything about it was gargantuan.”

The colossal begins with the country’s population of 1.4 billion and extends to public buildings all around China. Towering apartment blocks — some Soviet-inspired, others thrown up in a binge of modern development in the last few decades — are typically set far back from 10-lane avenues, shrinking the size of pedestrians on road-size sidewalks.

The vastness reaches to shopping malls, commercial spaces and to buildings like the Bird’s Nest stadium, a 91,000-seat colossus put up for the 2008 Olympics and used a week ago for the opening ceremony of these Winter Games.

A shopping mall in the western city of Chengdu, the New Century Global Center, is billed as the largest building on Earth. How big? Three Pentagons could fit inside. Or at least 300 football fields.

The seven-story, block-long media center for these Olympics — a convention center in normal times — replaces another outsized building that’s a block away and was used as the media center for the 2008 Games.

Add the Beijing headquarters of China Central TV, a 768-foot (234-meter), two-leg tower known around town as “Big Underpants” for its unusual design. Architect Rem Koolhaas famously said the building “could never have been conceived by the Chinese and could never have been built by Europeans. It is a hybrid by definition.”

Then there’s 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) of high-speed rail lines, and the Belt and Road Initiative — often described as the New Silk Road. Many view it as the largest building project in history, stretching from China and East Asia to Europe and consisting of rail lines, ports, highways and other infrastructure projects to expand China’s trade and influence. Critics warn of the unsustainable debt burden for many participating countries.

China’s attack on COVID-19 is fittingly mammoth, too, capable of locking down millions in a show of state power built partly on Orwellian surveillance architecture. Need a medical facility? During the pandemic, China built 1,000-bed hospitals in 10 days.

Maria Repnikova, a China specialist at Georgia State University, termed China’s policy of going large as the “politics of grandeur,” something that reaches beyond concrete to include scholarships for foreign students, exchanges, training, and economic aid.

“The idea is to give more to impress upon external audiences that we have so much to give you, that nobody else can compete with that,” Repnikova said in an interview.

“The first thing you see (in China) is the intensity of the scale, whether it’s the presidential buildings or whether it’s other sites or Olympic venues. That’s something that at first catches someone’s eye, and then it makes one wonder — how have they done it?”

But in the China context, what does big really mean? It’s impressive and can literally change the landscape. Yet there’s massive meaning, too, in the thinking behind it — particularly for a government that has long prized the projection of control outward to its sometimes disobedient hinterlands.

“Authoritarian use of political symbols and propaganda can serve two purposes: to persuade audiences of the regime’s legitimacy, and to demonstrate state power,” Sheena Greitens, who researches China at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote in an email.

“I suspect that Beijing will use both during the Olympics, presenting domestic and international audiences with humanizing stories about ordinary Chinese people while also making sure they witness impressive displays of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and state power.”

Diana Fu, a China expert at the University of Toronto, said authoritarian states often build in a systematic way that she terms “spatial governance,” which helps them put down any protests or insurrections.

“Small, winding streets and dense neighborhoods can foster a sense of neighborly feelings and trust, which is critical for collective action,” Fu wrote to AP. “In contrast, large boulevards and predictably geometric patterns of streets and districts allow the state to better surveil and control its population. Authoritarian states like contemporary China are able to do so while facing little opposition from civil society.”

For the 2008 Olympics, China even tried to control the weather, claiming to make rain to clear the polluted skies, and then drive rain away when it was called for. The rainmakers had installations outside Beijing, where peasants donned military fatigues and helmets and used anti-aircraft guns and rocket launchers to blast the sky with silver iodide, hoping to coax rain from the clouds.

That’s going big.

Sixty years ago, during the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong made extravagant claims about new agricultural techniques that could lift China out of starvation. His plans to beat nature were based mostly on ideology and pseudo-science and caused widespread famine.

“Authoritarian parties and leaders try to create a sense of unassailability,” Alexander Dukalskis, who teaches international relations at the University of Dublin, wrote to AP. “Through symbols and displays of state power they communicate that their rule is inevitable and that challenges are bound to be fruitless.”

He added: “Projections of state power are also useful for an international audience: They can convince other states or companies that if they step out of line, then they can be punished.”

Olympic Websites Scrub Conflicting Citizenship Info on China’s Star Winter Athlete

Washington — 

The mystery surrounding the citizenship of U.S.-born Chinese Olympic team star Eileen Gu has deepened, with VOA learning that two Olympic websites scrubbed contradictory information about her status shortly after she won her first gold medal of the Beijing Winter Games.

The 18-year-old freestyle skier fueled speculation about her status during a post-victory news conference Tuesday when she declined to respond directly to several reporters’ questions about whether she remains a U.S. citizen. She had just won gold in the women’s freeski big air event.

The San Francisco native, who was born a U.S. citizen to a Chinese immigrant mother and an American father, switched her sporting allegiance from the U.S. to China in 2019, making the announcement on Instagram But the manner in which she made the switch has remained unclear.

Under Rule 41 of the Olympic Charter, Gu must be a Chinese national in order to compete for China. But for a person to successfully naturalize as a Chinese citizen, Article 8 of China’s Nationality Law says that person “shall not retain foreign nationality.”

U.S. authorities have not commented on whether Gu has renounced her U.S. citizenship, a decision they typically treat as a private matter.

Gold medalist Eileen Gu of China celebrates during the medal ceremony for the women’s freestyle skiing big air at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 8, 2022, in Beijing.

In recent days, the lack of clarity about Gu’s loyalties has been a hot topic for social media users in the U.S. and China, two global powers navigating an increasingly tense relationship.

Many of those commentators did not appear to have noticed that the website of the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Winter Games, Beijing2020.cn, had an English-language profile page for Gu with a biographical section containing the following sentence: “After her first World Cup win in Italy in 2019, she renounced her United States citizenship for Chinese citizenship in order to represent China at the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games.” British news site Independent first reported that information about her profile page on February 2.

The reference to Gu renouncing her U.S. citizenship remained on her profile page when VOA reviewed it on Wednesday, indicating that it had been online for at least a week.

Eileen Gu profile screenshot, Feb. 9, 2022.

When VOA reviewed the same page on Thursday, the sentence had been rewritten to say: “After her first World Cup win in Italy in 2019, she made the decision to compete for China.”

Eileen Gu profile screenshot, Feb. 10, 2022.

Also removed from the updated version of her profile was a quote that she gave to her Austrian sponsor Red Bull in December and that she has since repeated in various forms, including at Tuesday’s news conference: “When I’m in America, I’m American. When I’m in China, I’m Chinese.”

The Mandarin version of Gu’s profile on the Beijing Organizing Committee’s website contains only her basic personal, event and schedule information without any of the lengthy background details of the English version.

Also apparently overlooked by many social media users was a contradictory piece of information about Gu’s citizenship that had been on the International Olympic Committee’s website, Olympics.com, in the opening days of the Beijing Games.

In a report published Wednesday, the Taiwan News site noted that an Olympics.com article titled “Five things you didn’t know about Eileen Gu” ended with a sentence referring to Gu as having “dual nationality.”

That sentence disappeared from the article on Thursday, according to a cached view of it from that date as seen by VOA. An earlier cached view of the article reviewed by VOA shows that the sentence was visible online going back to at least February 5.

Eileen Gu profile screenshot, Feb. 5, 2022.

Eileen Gu profile screenshot, Feb. 10, 2022.

VOA emailed the Beijing Organizing Committee and the International Olympic Committee early Friday asking why the details about Gu’s citizenship were scrubbed from their respective websites sometime Wednesday or Thursday. No immediate responses were received.

VOA also messaged Gu on Instagram and emailed the management companies evolution management + marketing and IMG, which represent her sporting and fashion activities respectively for comment, without response.

Susan Brownell, an American research specialist on Chinese sports and an anthropology professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, told VOA that she does not believe that either of the scrubbed statements about Gu, regarding renouncing her U.S. citizenship and having dual nationality, is more definitive than the other.

Speaking in a Friday interview, Brownell also said she believes there are two main reasons for the silence on citizenship questions from China’s Olympic organizers, Gu and many of the other 29 foreign-born and foreign-raised athletes on the Chinese Winter Games team.

China has never before fielded so many foreign-born or foreign-raised athletes on an Olympic team for either the Summer or Winter Games. It recruited the 30 athletes with foreign ties to its current Olympic team, 28 of them ice hockey players, to try to improve its relatively weak performance in winter sports as it hosts the Winter Games for the first time.

“After the Beijing Games, they’re going to assess public opinion about having those athletes in the team: Was it good for Chinese sports, patriotism and the government’s image, or was there a negative nationalist backlash?” Brownell said. “It’s a politically sensitive matter that they would want to keep a lid on at this point,” she added.

Brownell said China also is wary of publicly declaring that it may have granted Gu or any of the other foreign-born and foreign-raised athletes rare exceptions to its nationality law to enable them to naturalize as Chinese citizens without giving up their dual nationalities.

“You’ve got hundreds of thousands of people in China that really want dual citizenship. If you give it to athletes, the other people immediately are going to start saying, ‘What about me?’ I think that’s why you have the silence,” she said.

Lin Yang and Adrianna Zhang of VOA’s Mandarin service contributed to this story.

China's Loans to Sub-Saharan Africa Outweigh Those of Western Nations

Chinese banks provided more loans to fund developmental projects in sub-Saharan Africa than some of the world’s greatest economies combined from 2007 to 2020, according to a new study.

The Washington- and London-based Center for Global Development on Thursday also reported that Chinese development banks provided a whopping $23 billion to finance public-private partnerships in the region.

The figure is more than double the combined amount of $9.1 billion lent by banks in the U.S., Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, France and South Africa, the report found.

“This is well short of what the region needs for roads, dams and bridges,” said Nancy Lee, lead author of the study.

The global think tank examined more than 500 infrastructure projects in the region with a private sector component that reached financial closure during the period.

“There’s a lot of criticism of China, but if Western governments want to boost productive and sustainable investments to meaningful levels, they need to deploy their own development banks and press the multilateral development banks to make these investments a priority,” Lee said.

FILE – A worker works on the electrified light rail transit construction site in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa, Dec. 16, 2014. The project was built by China Railway Engineering Corporation (CREC) and mostly financed through a loan from China’s Exim Bank.

The report also found that despite the 2015 “billions to trillions” vision launched by multilateral development banks, institutions such as the World Bank provided only $1.4 billion per year to fund infrastructure projects in sub-Saharan Africa from 2016 to 2020.

The lack of transparency and use of collateralized loans by China has been of great concern to stakeholders in recent years.

Economists at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have warned that several low-income countries face or are already in debt distress.

Lee, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, said Western countries have been slow to hike investments despite “much rhetoric.”

“There’s a real opportunity for the U.S. to provide more leadership on infrastructure finance in Africa,” Lee noted.

Some information for this report came from Reuters.

China's UN Envoy Says Choice of Uyghur Torchbearer Not Meant to Deflect Western Criticism

China’s United Nations envoy has rejected his U.S. counterpart’s remark that China’s choice of an ethnic Uyghur as a torchbearer for the Olympic flame at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics was an attempt to distract from his country’s alleged rights abuses against Muslim minorities.

Ambassador Zhang Jun said in a statement on the embassy’s website that China “sternly refutes” the “unwarranted accusations” made by U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield in an interview with CNN.

Zhang said that Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a cross country skier born in Xinjiang, is “among the best” of the 20 athletes from nine ethnic minorities competing for Team China at the Winter Games.

“She is the pride and excellent representative of the Chinese people. Where does the U.S.’ inexplicable anger over this come from, and what intentions does it harbor?” Zhang said.

Dinigeer was selected as one of the last two torchbearers at the opening ceremony. Many Western nations have imposed a diplomatic boycott of the Games over China’s treatment of Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang.

U.N. experts and rights groups estimate more than a million people, mainly from the Uyghur and other Muslim minorities, have been detained in camps in Xinjiang since 2016.

China rejects accusations of abuse, describing the camps as vocational centers designed to combat extremism, and in late 2019 it said all people in the camps had “graduated”.

International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams said on Saturday that Dinigeer was not chosen because of where she comes from.

Chinese organizers of the Games said the torchbearers who entered the stadium with the flame had been picked based on their birth dates, with each having been born in a different decade, starting from the 1950s through to the 2000s.

US Counters China's 'Economic Coercion' Against Lithuania in Taiwan Dispute

london — 

A senior U.S. delegation visited Lithuania this week in a show of support for the Baltic state in its growing dispute with China involving Taiwan.

Beijing effectively blocked imports of Lithuanian goods last month after Taiwan was allowed to open a representative office in the capital, Vilnius. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory. The dispute has rapidly escalated into a trade tussle between the West and Beijing.

Jose W. Fernandez, undersecretary for economic growth, energy and the environment, met Lithuanian government ministers in a visit described by the U.S. State Department as showing “continuing strong support for Lithuania in the face of political pressure and economic coercion from the People’s Republic of China.” The two sides discussed the implementation of a $600 million agreement on boosting trade.

Lithuania welcomed the intervention. “We permanently feel U.S. strong political and practical support in our dispute with China over its systemic violations of international trade rules,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a press release.

Taiwan

The dispute began in 2020 when Lithuania’s new government pledged to support what it called “freedom fighters” in Taiwan and criticized Beijing’s human rights record in Hong Kong and Tibet.

In May 2021, Lithuanian lawmakers approved a resolution that described China’s treatment of its Uyghur minority as “genocide.” China has rejected such accusations.

In November of last year, Taiwan officially opened the representative office in Vilnius. Its director, Eric Huang, said the goal was the “strengthening of [the] bilateral relationship comprehensively between Taiwan and Lithuania.”

Lithuania said the opening did not affect its policy toward China or imply any official recognition of Taiwan as independent from Beijing. The move, however, stoked fury in Beijing.

“From the perspective of Beijing, it’s crossing a line, a real red line on how they approach Taiwan. And this is what led later to Beijing downgrading its embassy in Lithuania,” Grzegorz Stec of the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies said in a recent interview with VOA.

Import blockade

In December, China effectively blocked Lithuanian imports by delisting it as a country of origin, meaning goods can’t clear Chinese customs, while pressing multinational businesses to sever ties with the Baltic country.

“And that works not only in some cases for goods that are produced in Lithuania but also goods that include in their supply chain components produced in Lithuania. Also, the European exports that have been transited through Lithuanian ports, they have also been affected,” Stec said.

FILE – EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis speaks during a press conference in Brussels, on Dec. 7, 2021.

EU challenge

The European Union accuses China of threatening the integrity of its single market and has launched a challenge at the World Trade Organization.

“We are stepping forward to defend the EU’s rights,” EU Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis told reporters January 27.

“Since December 1, Chinese customs are banning Lithuanian imports from the Chinese market. … Chinese companies are canceling orders from Lithuania. China is also cutting its exports to Lithuania. Moreover, China is putting pressure on international companies to abandon the use of Lithuanian components in their production,” Dombrovskis said.

It likely will take years for the WTO challenge to be resolved. In the meantime, the EU is working on legal instruments to counter coercive practices.

“This could include really targeting or restricting access for companies from a specific country from the single market. Right now, we don’t really have a clear instrument for doing that,” Stec told VOA.

Lithuanian lifeline

The Taiwan government has offered Lithuania a $1 billion credit program and a separate $200 million fund to boost trade. Lithuania has donated hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 vaccines to Taiwan.

The United States has also stepped in to make up the shortfall caused by China’s blockade. The U.S. Export-Import Bank signed a $600 million export credit agreement with Lithuania, focusing on manufacturing, business services and renewable energy.

But it’s not just about money, Stec said. “Symbolic involvement [by the U.S.] of course supports Lithuania by showing that it’s not isolated in its moves. At the same time, it also makes it harder to unravel the situation because it once again puts it in the spotlight.”

U.S. officials also held talks in Brussels on joint measures to tackle economic coercion.

FILE – Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian gestures as he speaks during a daily briefing at his ministry in Beijing, Feb. 24, 2020.

‘Betrayal’

China, meanwhile, accuses Lithuania of “betrayal.”

“The issue between China and Lithuania is a bilateral issue between China and Lithuania, not between China and Europe. We urge Lithuania to correct its mistakes immediately, and not act as a pawn of Taiwan independence separatist and anti-China forces. We also remind the EU to distinguish right from wrong and be alert to Lithuania’s attempts to hijack China-EU relations,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters January 27.

US Counters China’s ‘Economic Coercion’ Against Lithuania Over Taiwan Dispute

A U.S. delegation visited Lithuania this week to show support for the Baltic state in its growing dispute with China over Taiwan. Beijing has blocked imports of Lithuanian goods, and as Henry Ridgwell reports, it has escalated into a trade tussle.
Producer: Mary Cieslak. Camera: Henry Ridgwell.

US Olympians Prepped on China’s Extensive COVID Protocols

Top athletes from around the world are preparing to pursue their dreams and compete in the Winter Olympics, which start February 4. But this year is unlike any other, as athletes are coached on specific pandemic protocols they must follow. For some, it creates uncertainty, for others, a sense of relief. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti spoke with three U.S. Olympians before they left for Beijing.

China's Freestyle Medal Hope Is American-born skier-model Eileen Gu

WASHINGTON — 

The glamour-girl-next-door image of Eileen Gu holding Lunar New Year treats illuminates bus stop ads throughout Beijing.

If you didn’t see those, you can hear China’s medal hopeful narrating a commercial for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics in Mandarin.

And on newsstands, the freestyle skier is the cover model of this month’s Vogue Chinese edition.

Gu, China’s unofficial face of the Winter Olympics, is everywhere. And that omnipresence belies her origins in the United States, which raises questions about her citizenship as China does not allow dual citizenship.

Born on September 3, 2003, in San Francisco, California, to an American father and a Chinese mother who emigrated from China, Gu started training in the U.S. at the age of 8 and began competing in major skiing events in 2018 as an American.

On June 7, 2019, however, Gu announced her decision on Instagram to represent her mother’s homeland in the 2022 Winter Olympics.

“I am proud of my heritage, and equally proud of my American upbringings,” Gu wrote. “The opportunity to help inspire millions of young people where my mom was born during the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help to promote the sport I love.”

Eileen Gu, of China, makes a run in the slopestyle finals, Dec. 17, 2021, during the Dew Tour freestyle skiing event at Copper Mountain, Colo.

Some experts say the reason behind Gu’s decision may not be that simple.

Besides her sports career, Gu is also a model who has appeared on the cover of Vogue Hong Kong and Vogue China. She has deals with luxury brands including Louis Vuitton and Tiffany.

Lisa Pike Masteralexis, professor in the Mark H. McCormack Department of Sport Management at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, told VOA Mandarin in an email, “Considering her goal of being a decorated Olympian, a role model, a fashion model, and with the growing market conditions in China, it appears to be a savvy move by Eileen Gu and her agency, IMG.” The agency represents top fashion industry names such as Alek Wek and Bella Hadid.

Susan Brownell, an anthropology professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis with expertise in Chinese sports and the Olympic Games, told VOA Mandarin during a virtual interview, “What’s interesting about her is that she does have a number of major sponsorships, and so it appears that representing China is actually appealing to those sponsors, which is a rather new development that you would have, you know, a Chinese American athlete who chose to represent China and was still appealing to sponsors.”

IMG did not respond to a request for comments by VOA Mandarin.

Gu’s decision to represent China stirred questions about her citizenship status.

One of Gu’s main sponsors, Red Bull, used to have a message on its website that read: “At the age of 15, US-born Gu decided to give up her American passport and naturalize as a Chinese citizen in order to compete for China in Beijing – because Chinese law doesn’t recognize dual nationality.”

Eileen Gu, of China, looks toward the crowd following the halfpipe finals, Dec. 17, 2021, during the Dew Tour freestyle skiing event at Copper Mountain, Colo.

After the Wall Street Journal attempted to confirm Gu’s citizenship status in January, Red Bull removed the message.

VOA Mandarin messaged Gu and her sports agent but neither responded.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected VOA Mandarin’s request for comments.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and General Administration of Sports of China directed VOA Mandarin to the Chinese Olympic Committee (COC). But VOA Mandarin’s emails to the COC bounced back.

According to Rule 41 of the IOC Charter, “1. Any competitor in the Olympic Games must be a national of the country of the NOC which is entering such competitor. 2. All matters relating to the determination of the country which a competitor may represent in the Olympic Games shall be resolved by the IOC Executive Board.”

Gu also needs to comply with International Ski Federation (FIS) and National Olympic Committee rules. The FIS lists her as a Chinese athlete.

“A skier must be licensed by their home country to represent that nation, so Eileen Gu must have officially changed her license. According to Chinese media reports she did this in 2019 when she was 15,” Masteralexis said.

Although Masteralexis thinks Gu is following both the IOC and FIS rules, she said, “It has been reported in Chinese media going back 2-3 years that Eileen Gu was granted Chinese citizenship and China does not recognize dual citizenship. The US does recognize dual citizenship, so one does wonder if China has created an exception for Gu.”

In an interview with ESPN in 2020, Gu said, “Since I was little, I’ve always said when I’m in the U.S., I’m American, but when I’m in China, I’m Chinese.”

According to Brownell, all the foreign-born athletes who are representing China at the Olympics have refused to answer questions about the status of their citizenship.

She said it is not unusual for athletes to represent countries other than their birth countries at major sports events.

An article she co-authored with Niko Besnier, professor of cultural anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, points out that in the past few years, the U.S. offered fast-tracked citizenship for some athletes who were in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

The article notes, “Because the program involves enlisting in the U.S. Army, athletes who were born in other countries do not have to comply with the normal five-year residency rule that is strictly upheld for all other immigrants seeking citizenship.”

“The U.S. track and field squad going to Rio includes four Kenyan-born athletes who benefited from this program,” it says.

Heidi Grappendorf, associate professor of sport management at Western Carolina University, says seeking out athletes to compete for a country other than their birth country is against the Olympics’ true meaning and needs to be addressed by the IOC.

“When countries try to poach athletes from other countries to compete for them to make themselves look better, there certainly appears to be a violation of the Olympic spirit,” she said.

Despite Beijing's Baby Boosterism, China's Population Growth Hits New Low

WASHINGTON — 

For the past 10 years, China’s domestic policy changes have carried a growing sense of demographic urgency. A strictly enforced one-child mandate changed to a two-kids-in-some-cases option (2013), which morphed into two children for all (2016), which rolled over to the current government push for three offspring (2021).

But where are the babies? Why aren’t playgrounds as jammed as Beijing’s notorious 3rd Ring Road? The workers of tomorrow are nowhere to be found.

Despite the government’s best efforts, the data released last week by China’s National Bureau of Statistics show that in 2021 in a nation of 1.4 billion people, there was a net population growth of only 480,000 people — against 10.1 million deaths and 10.6 million births — suggesting a disconnect between China’s policy goals and its people.

FILE – Families with young children pose for photos in Beijing, Feb. 13, 2021.Struggling with an aging population and declining birth rates, China is trying to shift its population policies to avert a demographic crisis.

“Working overtime night and day and facing the ridiculous cost of goods … who wants your children to grow up in such an environment?” said a poster on Weibo, China’s microblogging platform.

“You can’t have both mortgage and formula,” another joked.

A third quipped, “Let’s guess … will this year’s Spring Festival gala be promoting the three kid policies?” The Spring Festival Gala, a TV production from the state-owned China Media Group, was recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s most watched TV program since 1983. And, according to state-controlled CCTV, it is an annual must-watch New Year’s Eve extravaganza of dancing, singing and comedy.

China’s birthrate has declined swiftly over the past five years, from 12.4 births for every 1,000 citizens in 2017 to 7.52 births for every 1,000 citizens in 2021, the lowest in nearly 60 years, according to statistics bureau records. The time span is significant because the Great Chinese Famine began in 1959 and ended in 1961, three years before China conducted its benchmark second census. “Some 30 million Chinese starved to death, and about the same number of births were lost or delayed,” according to an article about the famine in the National Institutes of Health archive.

Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Big Country With an Empty Nest, told VOA Mandarin that “as China’s economic miracle has been heavily based on its inexhaustible labor force, an inflection point in its population will inevitably mean an inflection point in its economic model.”

n this June 1, 2017 photo, women walk with children wearing matching hats as they cross a bridge at a public park on International Children’s Day in Beijing.

Has population already peaked?

Although scholars have already referred to China’s demographic crisis as a ticking time bomb, China’s population may have peaked much earlier than projected given a rapidly aging population coupled with the rapidly declining birth rate, Yi said.

China’s National Population Development Plan (2016-2030) estimated that the fertility rate between 2020 and 2030 would hover around 1.8 babies per woman of childbearing age, and that the country would start to experience negative population growth in 2031. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a public policy think tank, a nation needs a fertility rate of 2.1 to maintain a stable population.

China’s true fertility rate may be lower than the official estimate, Yi said. “We will start to see the population decline in 2022, nine years earlier than expected,” he added.

Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics, wrote last week on his company’s website that “the most likely scenario is that slowing productivity growth and a shrinking workforce prevent China ever passing the U.S.”

China’s seventh census, released in 2020, found that there were 880 million between the ages of 16 and 59 in the workforce, a sharp drop of more than 40 million compared with 2010 figures. You Jun, vice minister of China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said in March that China’s labor force would continue to decline, shrinking by as many as 35 million people in the next five years. In about 25 years, one-third of China’s population will be retirees, according to the 2020 census report by China’s National Bureau of Statistics.

Global issue

China is not alone in facing this issue. A study published in October 2020 in The Lancet, a medical journal, warns of the “jaw-dropping” economic, social and geopolitical effects on nearly every country as fertility rates fall and populations shrink. “Our findings suggest that continued trends in female educational attainment and access to contraception will hasten declines in fertility and slow population growth,” said the authors of the study.

Thomas Duesterberg, a senior fellow who specializes in economics at the Hudson Institute, said population growth is one of the most important sources of economic growth because as the workforce declines, so does the rate of innovation.

“The innovativeness and ingenuity of human beings is reduced because a large part of the creativity of people comes in the first part of their career,” he told VOA Mandarin. “So, if you have an aging population and a declining population, you’re likely to see less of that ability to innovate, which is another key element of growth going forward.”

Ning Jizhe, head of China’s National Bureau of Statistics, acknowledged after the release of the 2020 census that “the country’s economic structure and technological development need to be adjusted and adapted” as the country’s population structure changes.

Bill Conerly, an economist and the author of The Flexible Stance: Thriving in a Boom/Bust Economy, said the declining birth rate would not have an immediate impact on China’s economy.

“A baby is a net drain on the economy for 15, 25 years and sometimes even longer. So I don’t put a lot of importance in this,” he told VOA Mandarin.

But in the long term, the declining birth rate will eventually affect the labor market. “Actually, the birth rate has been coming down for quite some time,” he said. “So maybe China’s only 10 years away from having a very tight labor market. It will eventually come.”

China’s Financial Diplomacy Wins Influence in Central Asian Countries

WASHINGTON — 

This year marks the 30th anniversary of China having established diplomatic ties with five central Asian countries. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan gained independence.

Three decades later, in the first week of January 2022, President Xi Jinping exchanged congratulatory messages with the presidents of the five states.

China’s influence in Central Asia has grown exponentially in recent decades as the five nations seek Chinese financing for everything from infrastructure projects to educational endeavors, according to Samantha Custer, director of policy analysis at AidData, a research lab at the College of William and Mary in Virginia.

She told VOA the main goal of Chinese financial diplomacy in the region is to gain “access to energy supplies and strategic positioning for transit routes.”

Custer said the five countries are of interest to Beijing for two main reasons: First, they offer access to ready supplies of energy via oil, natural gas, or hydropower; and secondly, potential Belt and Road initiative trade routes from China to Europe and the Middle East run through them.

“In keeping with this strategy, most of China’s financial diplomacy has been focused on the energy and transportation sectors,” Custer said.

Last month, in a new report titled Corridors of Power, Custer and her coauthors analyzed how China used massive financial assistance to win friends and allies across Central and South Asia.

According to the report, the Chinese government directed $127 billion in financial assistance across 13 countries in Central and South Asia over nearly two decades. The five countries in Central Asia are among the biggest recipients of Beijing’s financial assistance.

“Kazakhstan alone attracted 26% ($33 billion) of Beijing’s financial assistance dollars,” Custer said, adding these investments were heavily focused on the China-Central Asia Gas Pipeline. “Turkmenistan was the second-largest Central Asian recipient of Chinese financing, worth $9 billion.”

Soft power investments

Even as Beijing emphasizes economics over soft power in Central Asia, it recognizes that these tools are most formidable when employed in concert, according to Custer.

“In this vein, Chinese leaders doubled down on soft power overtures via education, culture, exchange and media to foster people-to-people ties with Central Asian students and professionals over the last two decades,” Custer said, adding these efforts are important avenues to cultivate future markets for Chinese goods, services and capital in Central Asia.

In its bid to become a premier study-abroad destination for students from Central Asia, China offers less burdensome visa requirements than its competitors and financial assistance for education, according to the report.

“Kazakh and Kyrgyz students were top recipients of Chinese state-backed scholarships, and both countries received a large share of Beijing’s language and cultural promotion efforts in the form of Confucius Institutes at the university level and Confucius Classrooms at the primary and secondary school level,” Custer said.

Chinese leaders have also practiced city-level diplomacy to cultivate relationships with public and private sector leaders at the local level, according to the report.

“As a case in point: Turkmenistan’s Mary province received more money from Beijing over two decades than seven of the 13 countries in South and Central Asia,” Custer said. “Kazakhstan’s Atyrau, which received $5 billion, was the second-largest district-level recipient of Chinese state-backed financing in the entire region.”

Investing in security

China has also been investing in security in Central Asia, according to Emil Avdaliani, director of Middle East Studies at the Georgian think tank Geocase.

“Before, Russia was seen as the only and irreplaceable security provider,” Avdaliani said. “China has also penetrated the region. It operates a military base in Tajikistan, funds a new semi-military one there and has increased the number of drills with separate states in the region.”

Avdaliani said that even though China’s position in central Asian countries has evolved quite successfully, China still faces obstacles such as nationalism in the Central Asian states and political elites’ distrust of Beijing.

But the elite also sees that “the five states need China. They need investment, and in the longer run, they need China as a balancer against Russia,” Avdaliani told VOA in an email.

Beijing successfully uses this opportunity, and it is likely to continue in the future, he said.

China's 'Belt and Road' Risk in Syria May Reap Big Rewards

WASHINGTON — 

Syria, a country torn by civil war, recently joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a move analysts say reflects China’s growing interest in the Middle East.

Through BRI, China has been investing in and building infrastructure on several continents to realize its vision of land and sea trade routes linking Asia to the rest of the world.

By staking its claim in Syria, experts contend, China can increase its influence in the Middle East, realize its goal of reestablishing its ancient Silk Road trade route and perhaps gain additional energy sources.

The agreement between China and Syria, finalized January 12 in a ceremony in Damascus, “would help [Syrian President Bashar] Assad to break out of its diplomatic isolation. It would help Assad get more investments, said Ibrahim Al-Assil, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.

China’s Middle East interests

Syria’s admission to BRI is part of a larger Chinese strategy to ascertain influence in the Middle East, experts say.

“Syria’s location offers a huge leverage for China. When any international player, if they have a leverage in Syria first, they can get some leverage over so many of its neighbors. We’re talking about Turkey which is important for China. We’re talking about Iraq, where more than 10% of China’s oil comes from. We’re talking about Israel. We’re talking about Jordan. We’re also talking about some global powers in Syria like Russia and the United States. So it’s more of geo-economic interests than just the pure economic interests for China to increase its investments in Syria,” Al-Assil told VOA.

FILE – Syria’s Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, right, receives his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi at the airport in the capital Damascus, July 17, 2021.

As of December, 17 countries in the Middle East and North Africa have joined the BRI. Experts say the inclusion of the Middle East in the initiative is rooted in Chinese history and is a symbolic move for Beijing.

“China is trying to reconstitute the ancient Silk Road, and Syria was part of the Silk Road, so that was something that was emphasized in the announcement that China had with Syria,” David Sacks, research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told VOA.

There are also economic interests.

“China has become a net importer of energy in 1993, and in 2017, it became the largest crude oil importer in the world, and almost half of that oil, 47% to 48%, comes from the Middle East. And that’s why the Middle East is going to just rise in significance in the next decade for China,” Al-Assil said.

Filling the US gaps

Syria’s participation would help China’s Middle Eastern strategy as the United States leaves a smaller footprint in the region. In December, the U.S. ended its combat mission in Iraq and transitioned to an “advise, assist and enable” role for Iraqi forces.

“For China to have more leverage in the region, it needs to look at where the U.S. is disengaging and try to increase its diplomatic presence and economic presence in those gaps, or those subregions of the Middle East, and that’s where Syria comes in,” Al-Assil told VOA.

Syria-China relations

The diplomatic relationship between Beijing and Damascus dates to 1956, and ties between the two countries continued during the Syrian civil war.

China, along with Russia, has repeatedly exercised its permanent veto power on the U.N. Security Council to block resolutions imposing sanctions on the Syrian government concerning the use of chemical weapons.

In 2016, the Chinese military agreed to support the Assad government with training and humanitarian assistance, according to China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency.

Syria and China also share intelligence because of China’s fears of radicalized Muslim Uyghurs from China fighting in Syria.

The inclusion of Syria in BRI “provides the greatest contribution to the economic reconstruction and social development in Syria,” stated Feng Biao, China’s ambassador to Syria, according to Xinhua.

China’s risky investment

Any form of Chinese investment in Syria, however, is a risk because of the country’s dire financial situation, analysts say.

“I don’t think the Chinese will be able to get any real return on any investments inside Syria. The economy is still shattered, the country is fragmented, the corruption is deep within the Syrian state institutions, and that is not going to change anytime soon with the current conditions,” Al-Assil said.

“It seems highly unlikely Syria would be in any position to repay major loans for infrastructure in the future,” Sacks told VOA.

Geopolitical consequences

Some analysts say Syria’s participation in BRI reveals how China and its longtime ally Russia are showcasing a united foreign policy front. Moscow entered the Syrian conflict in 2015 in support of the Assad regime.

“I don’t think that this will force a rethink of U.S. policy towards the country,” Sacks said. “But clearly what it does show is that China and Russia are increasingly acting in lockstep on the global stage, and that’s becoming increasingly clear in Europe, in Central Asia and now in the Middle East as well.”

Others, however, including Al-Assil, say closer ties between China and Syria could create a rift between Beijing and Moscow, referencing the Chinese foreign minister’s high-profile visit in July to Syria and Russia’s adverse reaction to it.

“The Russian reaction wasn’t encouraging because they felt that the regime didn’t coordinate with them and that the regime was trying to seek other great power support,” Al-Assil told VOA.

Russian media, Al-Assil added, criticized the Chinese move and emphasized that the future of Assad was linked only to Russia and that “Russia would have the upper hand.”

Whether it is investing in diplomacy or infrastructure, China is taking a risk in Syria, experts say, but it’s all part of Beijing’s larger strategic calculus in the region.

VOA’s Elizabeth Lee contributed to this report.

China's Success Taming Virus Could Make Exit Strategy Harder

TAIPEI, TAIWAN — 

The sweeping “zero-tolerance” strategy that China has used to keep COVID-19 case numbers low and its economy functioning may, paradoxically, make it harder for the country to exit the pandemic.

Most experts say the coronavirus around the world isn’t going away and believe it could eventually become, like the flu, a persistent but generally manageable threat if enough people gain immunity through infections and vaccines.

In countries like Britain and the U.S., which have had comparatively light restrictions against the omicron wave, there is a glimmer of hope that the process might be underway. Cases skyrocketed in recent weeks but have since dropped in Britain and may have leveled off in the U.S., perhaps because the extremely contagious variant is running out of people to infect. Some places already are talking about easing COVID-19 precautions.

China, which will be in the international spotlight when the Beijing Winter Olympics begin in two weeks, is not seeing the same dynamic.

FILE – In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, a staff member disinfects parcels at a community where a locally transmitted COVID-19 case was found, in Haidian district, Beijing, China, Jan. 18, 2022.

Find and isolate

The communist government’s practice throughout the pandemic of trying to find and isolate every infected person has largely protected hospitals from becoming overwhelmed and staved off the deaths that have engulfed most of the world.

But the uncompromising approach also means most people in China have never been exposed to the virus. At the same time, the effectiveness of China’s most widely used vaccines has been called into question. New studies suggest they offer significantly less protection against infection from omicron, even after three doses, than people get after booster shots of the leading Western vaccines.

Together, those factors could complicate China’s effort to get past the pandemic. Experts say if the country of 1.4 billion people were to relax restrictions, it could face a surge similar to what Singapore or Australia experienced, despite a highly vaccinated population.

“China’s susceptibility to outbreaks is likely to be more because most people have not been exposed to the virus due to the stringent measures that were put in place, thus lacking hybrid immunity, which is supposed to prove better protection than vaccination alone,” said Dr. Vineeta Bal, an immunologist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research.

“It is risky for China to reopen right now because omicron is spreading globally, and even if the variant doesn’t cause major illness, it’ll spread like wildfire,” she added.

Dali Yang, a professor who studies Chinese politics at the University of Chicago, said, “It’s a big challenge, for leaders, especially their rhetoric on saving lives. How do you justify opening up and then having tens of thousands of people dying in the process?”

Workers from the restaurant industry line up for their covid tests in Beijing, China, Jan. 22, 2022. Chinese authorities have called on the public not to travel during the Lunar New Year.

Tough-minded strategy

Chinese President Xi Jinping has cited China’s approach as a “major strategic success” and evidence of the “significant advantages” of its political system over Western liberal democracies.

The world’s most populous nation was the only major economy to grow in 2020, and it accounted for a fraction of global deaths and infections.

As part of the country’s tough-minded strategy for keeping the virus at bay, residents in Chinese cities must display their infection status on a government-monitored app to enter supermarkets, offices or even the capital.

But weeks ahead of the Olympics, omicron is testing this approach with outbreaks in the southern province of Guangdong, as well as Beijing.

Organizers of the Olympics announced they will not sell tickets locally and will allow only select spectators in. Foreign fans are not allowed.

A man takes a photo at an overlook in Wuhan, in central China’s Hubei Province, Jan. 22, 2022.

Stay home for the new year

Authorities have also asked people to not visit their hometowns around the Lunar New Year at the start of February, a move that will dampen spending during China’s most important family holiday. And the major city of Xi’an in the west and parts of Ningbo, a busy port south of Shanghai, are under lockdown.

With the Communist Party gearing up for a major meeting this fall, at which Xi is expected to be appointed to a third term as party leader, China is unlikely to relax its policies in a major way any time soon.

“If the numbers from COVID start to skyrocket to big levels, then this will reflect badly on his leadership,” said Willy Lam, an expert on Chinese political leadership at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

China relies heavily on its own Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines, along with several others made domestically. It has not approved the Pfizer shot, even though a Chinese company bought distribution rights in 2020.

Instead, the focus is on developing China’s own mRNA vaccines, like the Pfizer and Moderna formulas. One such vaccine is in late trials.

Another option for China may be to track how the virus is evolving and put off opening its borders until it becomes even milder. But it’s anyone’s guess when or if that might happen.

“What will the next variant be? How serious will it be? You can’t tell,” Bal said.

French Parliament Passes Motion Calling China’s Treatment of Uyghurs Genocide

Citing “crimes against humanity and genocide” against the Uyghur Muslim minority in China’s Xinjiang province, the French Parliament on Thursday passed a non-binding motion urging French authorities to condemn Beijing.

The measure, which passed 169-1, was led by the Socialist and other opposition parties.

In addition to condemning China, the motion urges the government to protect France’s Uyghur immigrant community from harassment by China.

The Chinese Embassy in France called the move absurd and said it would harm relations between the two countries.

“The French side is fully aware of the absurdity and harmfulness of this resolution. It must show coherence between word and deed and take concrete actions to safeguard the healthy development of Sino-French relations,” the embassy said in a statement.

China is accused of carrying out genocide and forced labor against the province’s large Uyghur Muslim population. It denies the accusations.

The move comes on the eve of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Several western countries, including the United States, Britain and Australia have announced “diplomatic boycotts” of the games and will not send delegations to attend.

French President Emmanuel Macron in December questioned the effectiveness of such boycotts and said he didn’t want to “politicize” the games.

Last year, the Dutch Parliament passed a similar resolution which earned a sharp rebuke from Beijing. Italy and Belgium have condemned China over Xinjiang but did not use the term genocide.

Some information in this report comes from Reuters.

China's Worldwide Dragnet Forces Fugitives to Return Home

WASHINGTON — 

“China’s long arm is everywhere in its own society, and it’s now coming abroad,” said Li Gang, a former real estate developer in China’s central city of Wuhan.

Involved in planning disputes with local authorities, Li told VOA Mandarin that the Wuhan officials accused him of corruption and threatened him with prison.

The disputes, starting in 2002, lasted five years, and in 2009, Li moved to an undisclosed location in the United States with his family. In 2017, Chinese authorities formally charged him with corruption and inciting subversion of state power, a move that required him to return to China to stand trial.

Li refused. And once the charges had been filed, men claiming to be from the FBI showed up at his home. Li told VOA Mandarin in a 2020 interview that FBI officials had told him they had done no such thing.

Li is one target of Sky Net, Beijing’s global crackdown on Chinese officials suspected of corruption, financiers suspected of wrong dealings and citizens suspected of money laundering. Beijing launched Sky Net in 2015, and according to China’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the number of “voluntarily returned” people has increased annually, from 1,023 in 2015 to 1,229 in 2020.

A new report says Sky Net uses methods outside the international legal framework to identify and repatriate individuals targeted by Chinese authorities.

The report, titled Involuntary Returns: China’s Covert Operation to Force ‘Fugitives’ Overseas Back Home, was published Tuesday by Safeguard Defenders, a Madrid-based group focused on promoting human rights in Asia. Last year, the nongovernmental organization spoke out against China’s airing of forced confessions on TV.

‘Involuntary returns’

China claims that from 2014-21, more than 10,000 “fugitives” have “voluntarily returned” to China from 120 countries, according to the Safeguard Defenders report. In its Sky Net campaign, Beijing almost never uses formal legal procedures, such as requesting extradition.

“Instead, these involuntary returns (IR) account for the vast majority of Sky Net’s track record: in 2018, IR stood for some 64% of the claimed successful returns, while extradition — the appropriate judicial channel for such returns — represented but 1%,” the report said. As used in the report, the term “involuntary returns” refers to people who have been forced through nontraditional means to come back to China.

And although Sky Net’s official targets are businesspeople and officials suspected of economic crimes, the report said it found many cases of Beijing using extrajudicial tactics to repatriate dissidents and human rights defenders.

China’s tactics are like those used by the U.S. During the 1980s, U.S. officials “developed an alternative approach to circumvent the proper diplomatic channels” to accomplish renditions, according to the Human Rights Policy Lab at the University of North Carolina School of Law. After the 9/11 attacks, the practice transformed “into what is now referred to as the extraordinary rendition program,” which has drawn international condemnation.

Russia also operates a rendition program.

Preferred strategies

China favors three tactics: threatening family in China, targeting victims outside China by using threatening agents in the target’s country, and kidnapping the people it wants repatriated, according to Safeguard Defenders, whose report examined 62 cases of attempts, successful and unsuccessful, to engineer involuntary returns.

Chen Yen-Ting, an author of the report, told VOA Mandarin in a phone interview on Monday that these tactics might be carried out separately or together to pressure the targeted individual. “In some cases, the Chinese government sends agents to the host country and at the same time puts pressure on the targeted individual’s family in China,” he said.

The report cited the case of Xie Weidong, a onetime Supreme Court judge who resigned in 2000 and ended up in Canada in 2014, the year the Huanggang Municipal Public Security Bureau charged him with accepting a bribe of 1.4 million yuan ($221,000) to settle a 1999 civil case in favor of a particular company, according to a 2019 article by Canada’s National Post.

Xie claimed Beijing targeted him “when he failed to abide by government interventions in cases he heard. Then after leaving China he spoke out about problems in its legal system,” according to an Interpol ruling dismissing China’s request. The Post reported that Interpol found China’s request for Xie’s arrest was politically motivated.

To persuade Xie to return to China voluntarily, Chinese police detained his sister and then his son, according to the Safeguard Defenders report. Chinese authorities also contacted his ex-wife and his former business partner, hoping to use them as leverage.

Li Jinjin, a New York-based lawyer who represents some targets of the Sky Net operation, told VOA Mandarin on Monday that the Chinese government often freezes the property in China of the target’s family members.

In other cases, Li said, Beijing will send its police or hire agents to visit an overseas target. Using promises or threats, their goal is to force the target to return to China.

In 2020, this tactic backfired when the U.S. Justice Department charged eight people with conspiring to act as illegal agents for the Chinese government and force U.S. residents to return to Beijing. These people were “allegedly acting at the direction and under the control of PRC (People’s Republic of China) government officials, conducted surveillance of and engaged in a campaign to harass, stalk, and coerce certain residents of the United States to return to the PRC,” the Justice Department said.

Safeguard Defenders expect China will intensify its Sky Net efforts in 2022 if the Western governments fail to act against Beijing, Chen told VOA Mandarin. “It will be a significant obstacle to legitimate judicial cooperation to counter cross-border crime,” he said.

The Chinese government has hailed Sky Net’s success. The Xinhua News Agency, a state-controlled news outlet, published on Saturday a piece saying that the operation was recovering people and stolen goods, even during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The legal net is vast, you can escape the country, but you can’t escape the law,” Xinhua said.

Li Gang decided to talk to the media to counter reports on Beijing-controlled outlets. “I used to be very fearful of the Chinese government’s retaliation, so I refused all media interviews before,” Li said told VOA Mandarin in 2020.

“But now I realize the more fearful I am, the more power they have on me,” he said. “So that’s why I decide to stand out and tell my story.”

How China’s National Security Law for Hong Kong Could Extend to Taiwan and Beyond

SAN FRANCISCO — 

Analysts increasingly fear that Beijing’s national security law, initially aimed at quelling dissent in Hong Kong, may be used to target people of any nationality or ethnicity who offend Chinese leaders.

The law took effect in June 2020 after a year of sometimes violent Hong Kong pro-democracy protests against the government. The measure prohibits acts of “separatism, subversion, terrorism, and colluding with foreign forces.”

At least 117 people have been arrested and 60 charged in the former British colony and world financial center in the 13 months since the law took effect.

Violations carry a sentence of up to life in prison.

But experts say the law’s open-ended wording, along with the Chinese government’s wider ambitions, leaves open the possibility that it will be used against anyone with known anti-China or pro-Hong Kong independence sentiments who sets foot in a Chinese territory such as Hong Kong or the former Portuguese colony of Macao.

“As long as China can execute their jurisdiction within Chinese territory, Hong Kong and Macao, people who violate (the) national security law could be extradited to China for the trial, even if just transferring at Chinese airports,” said Chen Yi-fan, assistant professor of diplomacy and international relations at Tamkang University near Taipei.

Taiwanese scholar under fire

Wu Rwei-ren, a research fellow at Taipei-based Academia Sinica, last year became the first Taiwanese person to be accused of breaking the law. A Beijing government-backed media outlet, Takungpao, called out the 60-year-old scholar over an article advocating for Hong Kong independence.

University officials could not be reached for comment.

People in Taiwan will be particularly suspected as time goes on, analysts say.

China claims Taiwan as part of its territory despite the island’s sometimes defiant self-rule of 80 years and has not ruled out using force to reunite it with the mainland.

Democratic Taiwan has an independent media scene and according to a National Chengchi University Election Study Center survey, more than half of Taiwan’s residents want to keep the status quo indefinitely or decide later on the question of unification with China.

Beijing regularly flies military planes into Taiwan’s airspace.

“Usually moves like these are meant to send a message,” said Sean Su, an independent political analyst in Taiwan. “It could be used as sort of a weapon in order to try to intimidate people in Taiwan, but I think the after effect, I think is going to be negative.”

Broad language

Wording of the law covers residents of Hong Kong as well as people who have never visited, according to New York-based advocacy group Amnesty International.

Amnesty said in July 2020 that anyone on Earth, “regardless of nationality or location, can technically be deemed to have violated this law and face arrest and prosecution if they are in a Chinese jurisdiction, even for transit.”

China says its Hong Kong policy is aimed at protecting the territory’s stability and legal system. “Anti-China forces who seek to destabilize Hong Kong must be resolutely excluded” from any positions of power in Hong Kong, said Xia Baolong, head of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office.

Xia Baolong, director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, attends the opening session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China on March 4, 2021.

Hong Kong residents abroad

Hong Kong native Joey Siu, who works in Washington, assumed she would be arrested “immediately” if she showed at the airport in the former British colony. She hasn’t been back to Hong Kong since the law took effect. Siu works for the UK-based human rights group Hong Kong Watch, organizing protests and rallies while doing international advocacy work.

“Since the law was implemented in 2020, I have felt that I am no longer safe in Hong Kong, because I figured that I was being followed by people who I don’t know if they are security guards or they are Hong Kong police officers, so I felt like my personal safety is no longer guaranteed in Hong Kong and obviously my international advocacy effort is going to lead me to being charged under the name of colluding with foreign forces,” Siu told VOA.

At least four other Hong Kong activists are now staying in the United States and Europe for the same reason, she said.

Siu says writing about dissent will also lead to arrest, although the law lays down no “solid red line” about what’s criminal. The law may extend as well to people who support the political causes of disenchanted Tibetans and Uyghurs, two Chinese ethnic minority groups that have clashed with Beijing’s objectives, she said.

Protesters from Hong Kong in Taiwan and local supporters protest the recent arrests at a news outlet (Stand News) in Hong Kong outside the Bank of China in Taipei, Taiwan, Dec. 30, 2021.

Wider reach?

China has extradition treaties with 37 countries and uses them. The government in Beijing has requested the extradition of ethnic Uyghurs in Malaysia – a request that was denied – for example, according to the Washington-based Center for Advanced China Research.

An offender of the national security law who is based in a China-sympathetic country such as Cambodia would face high odds of extradition, said Stephen Nagy, senior associate professor of politics and international studies at International Christian University in Tokyo.

Individuals who use Mandarin or Cantonese to spread their ideas counter to the Communist Party “narrative” are more likely to be targeted, Nagy said.

“Retroactively charging an (overseas-based) Hong Kong (native), or a Taiwanese scholar, or actions they may have done is very worrisome because it’s an extension of domestic law, and it’s not recognizing the various identities that exist in the Chinese, greater China sphere,” he said.

For this reason, Nagy says, foreign governments are warning their citizens to avoid visiting China, including Hong Kong. The U.S. Department of State, for example, urges U.S. citizens to “reconsider” travel to Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland because of “arbitrary enforcement of local laws.”