Month: July 2022

Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged this week to help advance four economic powers, despite pandemic problems at home and knock-on effects from Russia’s war in Ukraine. Analysts expect the pledges to take time, with no immediate results.

Xi made his remarks Thursday at the virtual BRICS Summit hosted by Beijing.

The other countries are Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa, which together with China make up the grouping known as BRICS. These large emerging economies see themselves as an alternative to the U.S.-led world order.

The leader of China advocated BRICS cooperation in cross-border payments and credit ratings, the official Xinhua News Agency in Beijing reported Thursday. The report says he further recommended “facilitation” of trade, investment and financing.

Xi as host of the group’s 14th summit said he would work with the BRICS countries to support global development that is “stronger, greener and healthier,” Xinhua added.

The leader urged more countries to join the New Development Bank, a concessional lender founded by BRICS countries in 2015. He called, too, for improving the group’s emergency balance-of-payments relief mechanism, the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, Xinhua added.

View toward future deals

Substantive progress on these goals will likely take time, analysts say, as the member countries do not always get along with one another and China’s ambitions may take time to evolve given issues at home and abroad.

“At the highest level, there’s a little bit of a discussion, then that may lead to further opportunities to be further engaged down the road,” said Song Seng Wun, a Singapore-based economist in the private banking unit of Malaysian bank CIMB.

China’s economy has outgrown the others after decades of export manufacturing for much of the world. But the keeper of a $17.5 trillion GDP has teetered this year amid lockdowns to contain a COVID-19 surge — which snarled world supply chains originating in China.

BRICS member Russia faces economic sanctions from the West over its war in Ukraine, which has sparked food shortages and inflation. China still faces tariffs on goods shipped to the United States, fallout from a bilateral trade dispute.

India and China have their own differences. The world’s two most populous countries contest sovereignty over mountain territories between them, and China bristles at India’s geopolitical cooperation with the West.

Developing countries, including those among the BRICS, can easily turn to Japan, the European Union and other alternatives to China for economic support, said Stuart Orr, School of Business head at Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia. Those choices will slow China’s ambitions to sow BRICS cooperation as developing states prefer not to over-rely on Beijing, he said.

“There’s a lot of talk but probably not so much real progress in that regard and I suspect things will probably end up sort of getting pushed back to the next BRICS meeting for further progress once the dust has settled,” Orr said.

China still “struggles with health issues” while its historic political rival the United States is finding new suppliers and customers for soy exports, Orr said.

Officials in Beijing want to expand cooperation with other countries as the United States sanctions Russia over the war and China over trade, said Huang Kwei-bo, associate professor of diplomacy at National Chengchi University in Taipei.

The BRICS countries might reassure one another over energy and food shortages linked to the war, Song said. Later, he said, they could “flesh out” substantive agreements.

Anti-West position

China regularly offers economic aid, investments and COVID-19 vaccines to friendly developing countries from Africa into Central Asia. Its flagship is the Belt and Road Initiative, a 9-year-old, $1.2 trillion list of foreign infrastructure projects aimed at opening China-linked trade routes.

Chinese officials feel the BRICS nations will welcome their support, and in turn, accept some of their political views, analysts say. Of the BRICS states, only Brazil voted against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the United Nations earlier this year. China, India and South Africa abstained.

India, despite its West-leaning political activity and reservations about China’s Belt-and-Road, still takes Russian oil.

“India-China relations are very sensitive, but outside these existing relations, like in the Caribbean and Latin America, those spots are where India and China wouldn’t have clashes of interest,” Huang said.

Brazil in particular is looking for more international support to overcome the “devastating impacts” of COVID-19 in the country, Orr said.

“There should be some other countries that would think about joining this kind of regime,” Huang said. “Then, if a lot of those countries don’t have such good relations with the U.S. side, doesn’t that mean it’s one more thing causing a headache for the United States in terms of geopolitics?”

A declaration issued at the summit Thursday says the five countries support talking further about expanding their group. 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday told Sweden and Finland that he could still block their drives to join NATO if they fail to implement a new accession deal with Ankara.

Erdogan issued his blunt warning at the end of a NATO summit at which the U.S.-led alliance formally invited the Nordic countries to join the 30-nation bloc.

The two nations dropped their history of military nonalignment and announced plans to join NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Their bids were headed for swift approval until Erdogan voiced concerns in May.

He accused the two of providing a haven for outlawed Kurdish militants and promoting “terrorism.”

Erdogan also demanded they lift arms embargoes imposed in response to Turkey’s 2019 military incursion into Syria.

A 10-point memorandum signed by the three sides on the sidelines of the NATO summit on Tuesday appeared to address many of Erdogan’s concerns.

Erdogan lifted his objections and then held a warm meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden that was followed by a promise of new warplane sales to Turkey.

Yet Erdogan told reporters at an impromptu press conference held as the summit ended that the memorandum did not mean Turkey would automatically approve the two countries’ membership.

New countries’ applications must be approved by all members and ratified by their respective parliaments.

Erdogan warned that Sweden’s and Finland’s future behavior would decide whether he forwarded their application to the Turkish parliament.

“If they fulfil their duties, we will send it to the parliament. If they are not fulfilled, it is out of the question,” he said.

A senior Turkish diplomat in Washington said the ratification process could come at the earliest in late September and may wait until 2023, with parliament going into recess from Friday.

One Western diplomatic source in the hallways of the NATO summit accused Erdogan of engaging in “blackmail.”

’73 terrorists’

Erdogan delivered his message one day after Turkey said it would seek the extradition of 12 suspects from Finland and 21 from Sweden.

The 33 were accused of being either outlawed Kurdish militants or members of a group led by a U.S.-based preacher Turkey blames for a failed 2016 coup.

But Erdogan appeared to up the ante on Thursday by noting that Sweden had “promised” Turkey to extradite “73 terrorists.”

He did not explain when Sweden issued this promise or provide other details.

Officials in Stockholm said they did not understand Erdogan’s reference but said that Sweden strictly adhered to the rule of law.

“In Sweden, Swedish law is applied by independent courts,” Justice Minister Morgan Johansson said in a statement to AFP.

“Swedish citizens are not extradited. Non-Swedish citizens can be extradited at the request of other countries, but only if it is compatible with Swedish law and the European Convention,” Johansson said.

Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said Wednesday that Erdogan appeared to be referring to cases that had already been processed by officials and the courts.

“I would guess that all of these cases have been solved in Finland. There are decisions made, and those decisions are partly made by our courts,” Niinisto told reporters in Madrid.

“I see no reason to take them up again.”

Most of Turkey’s demands and past negotiations have involved Sweden because of its more robust ties with the Kurdish diaspora.

Sweden keeps no official ethnicity statistics but is believed to have 100,000 Kurds living in the nation of 10 million people.

The Brookings Institution warned that Turkey’s “loose and often aggressive framing” of the term “terrorist” could lead to problems in the months to come.

“The complication arises from a definition of terrorism in Turkish law that goes beyond criminalizing participation in violent acts and infringes on basic freedom of speech,” the U.S.-based institute said in a report.

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Lawmakers investigating the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol last year are signaling they could send referrals to the Justice Department for prosecution of illegal tampering with witnesses who have testified to the panel.

Representative Liz Cheney, vice chairperson of the House of Representatives investigative panel, displayed Tuesday two messages from notes sent to hearing witnesses saying that former President Donald Trump was keeping a close eye on the hearings and was counting on continued loyalty. The senders of the notes weren’t identified.

The panel is probing how the insurrection unfolded and Trump’s role in trying to upend his 2020 reelection defeat.

Cheney’s disclosure of the notes came after two hours of explosive testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, the former top assistant to Mark Meadows, who was Trump’s last White House chief of staff.

Hutchinson described in detail how Trump became angry and volatile in the last weeks of his presidency as the reality of his loss to Democrat Joe Biden sank in and his own associates dismissed his repeated claims that he had been cheated out of reelection.

CNN quoted unidentified sources Thursday saying Hutchinson was one of the witnesses who had been contacted by someone attempting to influence her testimony.

In an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” show Thursday, Cheney said the attempted influencing of witnesses is “very serious. It really goes to the heart of our legal system. And it’s something the committee will certainly be reviewing.”

She added, “It gives us a real insight into how people around the former president are operating, into the extent to which they believe that they can affect the testimony of witnesses before the committee. And it’s something we take very seriously, and it’s something that people should be aware of. It’s a very serious issue, and I would imagine the Department of Justice would be very interested in, and would take that very seriously, as well.”

At Tuesday’s hearing, Cheney did not say which of the committee’s witnesses had been contacted but displayed two text messages on a large television screen.

One said, “What they said to me is as long as I continue to be a team player, they know I’m on the team, I’m doing the right thing, I’m protecting who I need to protect, you know, I’ll continue to stay in good graces in Trump World.”

“And they have reminded me a couple of times that Trump does read transcripts and just to keep that in mind as I proceed through my depositions and interviews with the committee,” that witness continued.

In another example, a second witness said, “[A person] let me know you have your deposition tomorrow. He wants me to let you know that he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal, and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.”

Representative Zoe Lofgren, another member of the investigative panel, told CNN, “It’s a concern, and anyone who is trying to dissuade or tamper with witnesses should be on notice that that’s a crime, and we are perfectly prepared to provide any evidence we have to the proper authorities.”

A third committee member, Representative Jamie Raskin, said after the hearing, “It’s a crime to tamper with witnesses. It’s a form of obstructing justice. The committee won’t tolerate it. And we haven’t had a chance to fully investigate or fully discuss it, but it’s something we want to look into.”

Some global companies could be “unknowingly supporting” China’s use of Uyghur forced labor from the Xinjiang region by importing goods from Chinese companies headquartered in other parts of China, according to a new report.

Shifting Gears: The Rise of Industrial Transfer into the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, published Thursday by the Washington-based nonprofit Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS), says a new U.S. law banning the import of goods produced by Uyghur forced labor in China includes loopholes that allow some products to enter global supply chains.

On June 21, the U.S. government began enforcing the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), a law meant to ensure goods made “wholly or in part with forced labor” in Xinjiang do not enter the U.S. market.

But enforcement is complicated by a Chinese policy that encourages companies located elsewhere in the country to open operations or manufacturing centers in Xinjiang. The so-called Xinjiang Pairing Assistance Program incentivizes companies to move their manufacturing operations into the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), according to Nicole Morgret, human security analyst at C4ADS and the author of the report.

“This means that many companies in XUAR are linked to eastern China, whether as subsidiaries of a conglomerate or through investment and corporate officer overlap,” Morgret told VOA.

According to Morgret, global corporations doing business with Chinese companies that have corporate or manufacturing ties to Xinjiang risk “unknowingly” supporting forced labor.

“[Chinese] manufacturing corporations in the Uyghur region closely collaborate with the local government entities carrying out repression,” Morgret said. “As such, global stakeholders will have to improve their due diligence practices to better assess the domestic Chinese corporate networks to identify ties to forced labor in XUAR.”

These corporate connections are purposefully obscured and can be hard to track, meaning businesses that source from companies headquartered in other Chinese cities may unknowingly be importing goods produced by forced labor in Xinjiang, according to the report.

Global brands under scrutiny

Tesco, a British grocery and general merchandise chain, and Esprit, a Hong Kong- and Germany-based clothing manufacturer, may be “inadvertently” buying and selling products tainted by Uyghur forced labor, the report stated.

“According to our analysis, Esprit and Tesco source products from Xinxiang Chemical Fibre, a major chemical fiber manufacturer and state-owned conglomerate based in Xinxiang, Henan,” Morgret said. “Xinxiang Chemical Fibre has two subsidiaries based in the Uyghur region, which means there is a significant risk that it relies on forced labor in its manufacturing process.”

According to Fred Corb-Nathan, media manager at Tesco, the company takes “allegations of human rights abuses” in its supply chain extremely seriously and conducts regular and thorough checks to ensure workers are treated fairly.

“We have not made any orders connected to this site for more than 12 months and have removed it from our approved list of sources,” Corb-Nathan told VOA in an email.

Esprit did not respond to VOA’s multiple inquiries.

While the U.S. government is easily able to identify and block goods imported directly from Xinjiang, it is much harder for relevant agencies to identify goods from Xinjiang that are transshipped through eastern China or third countries, according to Morgret.

“The U.S. government needs to develop better methods to map complex supply chains and can benefit from using methodologies showcased in our report,” Morgret said.

President Joe Biden signed UFLPA into law in December after it passed with majority bipartisan support in Congress. Biden accused Beijing of “widespread state-sponsored forced labor” of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.

The U.S. government has accused Beijing of rights abuses including genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang. U.S. officials estimate that since at least 2017, China has detained more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang, subjecting detained individuals to forced labor, forced sterilization, torture, separation of children from parents and near-constant surveillance.

China’s response

Beijing dismisses the U.S. accusations as lies, insisting that the country’s policies in the Xinjiang region are aimed at combating what it calls the “three evil forces” of separatism, terrorism and extremism.

According to Liu Pengyu, spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy in Washington, the “allegations of ‘forced labor’ in Xinjiang are nothing but vicious lies concocted” by anti-China forces.

“We admonish the U.S. to correct the mistake immediately, and stop using Xinjiang-related issues to spread lies, interfere in China’s internal affairs and contain China’s development,” Liu told VOA in an email. “China will take necessary measures to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises and workers.”

History of Uyghur forced labor

In the past five years, China has established “a massive state-sponsored system of forced labor” in the Xinjiang region, according to a report published two weeks ago by Sheffield Hallam University.

“Uyghur and other minoritized workers from the region are unable to refuse or voluntarily exit jobs assigned to them by the government,” said the report, Built on Repression.

The report said the Chinese government’s “labor transfers and surplus labor employment transfers” programs in Xinjiang meet the standards of forced labor under international law.

Goods made by forced labor

According to Laura Murphy, professor of human rights and contemporary slavery at Sheffield Hallam University and one of the authors of Built on Repression, the U.S. government has identified products with tomatoes, cotton and polysilicon, a key raw material in solar panels, as being at particularly high risk for being made with Uyghur forced labor.

Products tainted with Uyghur forced labor also include “apparel and shoes made of all fabrics, all new energy technologies, extractive industries such as coal, copper, and rare earth materials, electronics, building materials and machinery,” Murphy told VOA. “And the government has now told companies it is their responsibility to ensure that they are not bringing those forced-labor-made goods into the homes of consumers in the U.S.”

Ecuador’s government and Indigenous groups’ leaders on Thursday reached an agreement to end more than two weeks of protests against the social and economic policies of President Guillermo Lasso that left at least eight dead, Indigenous leaders said.

Protests organized by Indigenous organization CONAIE erupted across Ecuador June 13, with demonstrators’ demands including lower fuel prices and limits to further expansion of the mining and oil industries.

The protests also led to food and medicine shortages and severely affected the oil industry, Ecuador’s main source of income, costing the country $213 million, according to Energy Ministry figures.

“We have achieved the supreme value to which we all aspire: peace in our country,” Lasso said in a tweet that celebrated the end of the protests.

As part of the deal, the government agreed to again lower fuel costs, including on the most used gasoline and diesel, by an extra 5 cents, following previous cuts of 10 cents per gallon.

The total price cut of 15 cents on both fuels will cost $340 million a year, the Finance Ministry said.

Lasso also offered to scrap a decree for oil projects and reform a similar one for mining projects. The reform will ensure communities have the right to be consulted on such developments.

“We’re going to keep fighting,” said CONAIE leader Leonidas Iza, though adding that protests would be suspended following the agreement. Some leaders disagreed over certain points of the deal.

Lasso’s adversarial relationship with Ecuador’s National Assembly deteriorated during the protests. Opposition lawmakers pushed a vote to oust him earlier this week, which he narrowly survived.

Protesters complained of police violence during the demonstrations, and the government reported scores of injured security force members, while one soldier was killed during an attack on a convoy carrying fuel to Ecuador’s largest oil field.

Energy Minister Xavier Vera said Thursday that the country expected to begin recovering oil wells closed during the protests, aiming to return the majority to production within a month.

Ecuador’s pre-crisis oil production of 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) had fallen to 234,310 bpd as of Wednesday after more than 1,200 wells were shut.

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