Month: September 2022

Pew Survey: Global Opinion of China Has Deteriorated Under Xi 

As Chinese President Xi Jinping prepares to accept a precedent-breaking third term in office at a Communist Party summit in October, a new study of global public opinion trends shows how views of China in the United States and other advanced economies have declined throughout his tenure.

In recent years, those declining views worsened following Beijing’s mishandling of the coronavirus outbreak, according to the Pew Research Center.

Xi took office in 2012, when global public opinion of China had been relatively consistent. Then in 2017, polls indicated that opinion started to significantly worsen, with the most dramatic declines coming from 2019 to 2020. Researchers attributed the drop in favorability to concerns about military power and human rights issues.

“The places where people are particularly concerned about China’s involvement in their domestic politics; or China’s neighbors, which are particularly concerned about China’s military; or places that view China’s human rights as a particular problem tend to have more negative views of China,” Laura Silver, co-author of the report and senior researcher at the Pew Research Center, told VOA Mandarin.

Views of Xi’s leadership

Xi, 69, appears set to win another term as China’s top leader at the Chinese Communist Party congress that begins in Beijing on October 16.

Views of Xi started as quite negative in 2014, just a year after he took office, and have become increasingly negative in recent years, Washington-based Pew said.

Xi’s tenure has involved a number of controversies, including China’s military expansion in the South China Sea, the suppression of mass pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, human rights abuses against Uyghurs and the increasing consolidation of Xi’s personal power.

By 2022, majorities in all but two advanced economies surveyed by Pew had little to no confidence in his approach to world affairs. In Australia, France, Sweden and Japan, more than half of respondents had no confidence at all in Xi. But in Malaysia and Singapore, more than 60 percent of respondents said they had confidence in Xi.

“He’s not doing particularly well relative to the other leaders that we asked about,” Silver said. “We asked on this particular survey about [American] President Biden, [French] President Macron and [German] Chancellor Scholz. What we found is that he is much less popular than those three leaders in almost every country that we surveyed. The only leader he’s quite a bit more popular than is [Russian President] Putin.”

China’s zero-COVID pandemic policy is also blamed for negative views of China and the lack of confidence in Xi. In 2020, around half or more in every country surveyed thought China had handled the pandemic poorly. In the U.S., Sweden, Denmark, Australia, South Korea and Japan, two-thirds or more of respondents felt this way.

Silver noted that since the original survey, although China’s strict COVID policies appear to have been more effective in containing the spread of COVID-19, this has not led to an overall positive view of China among respondents.

China as an economic superpower

Despite China’s economic rise and growing overseas investments, Beijing’s international image has not become more positive, according to Pew.

In Australia, for example, 53 percent of respondents in 2020 considered China to be one of the world’s dominant economic powers. This does not seem to correlate with popularity, with this year’s poll showing that 86 percent of those surveyed held unfavorable views of China.

China is a top trading partner for the U.S., but 82 percent of the U.S. respondents held a negative view of China this year, up from 79 percent in 2020. This number was higher than in most countries surveyed.

For many advanced economies, including the U.S. and Australia as well as Japan and South Korea, economic competition with China was seen as a “serious problem,” according to Pew.

China’s human rights was the issue that concerned people most. In the U.S., Canada, Australia, South Korea, Japan and every European country surveyed, a majority of respondents has consistently said, since the question was first asked in 2008, that the Chinese government does not respect the personal freedoms of its people.

In nearly all places surveyed, those who see China’s human rights policies as a very serious problem are more likely to favor promoting human rights regardless of economic consequences.

Countries that are geographically close to China generally have a more negative view of China, citing China’s military expansion and its interference in their domestic politics.

More than 80 percent of respondents in the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan and South Korea said they were very or somewhat concerned about military conflict with China.

Most respondents, however, did not conflate their attitudes toward the Chinese government with their attitudes toward the Chinese people.

The survey noted that respondents are generally referring to China’s leadership or government, not the people, when thinking about China.

“The people are basically good, but leader Xi is too controlling and should not be in power this long,” said a U.S. respondent to Pew.

UN Report Targets Racism Against People of African Descent

A report by the U.N. human rights office finds systemic racism against people of African descent is deep-rooted and says urgent measures are needed to dismantle discriminatory systems.

It took the death of a Black man, George Floyd, 46, at the hands of a police officer in the United States in May 2020 to draw global attention to the problem of systemic racism. There was a groundswell of global support in the immediate aftermath of the event, which has since largely fizzled out. 

 

The United Nations reports some countries have taken steps to address racism. But those, for the most part, have been piecemeal. They fall short of what is needed to dismantle the entrenched, societal racism that has existed for centuries. 

 

U.N. human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani says people of African descent in many countries have less access to health, food and education, and they often are victims of enforced disappearance and violence. 

 

She says the U.N. report finds African migrants and migrants of African descent are victims of excessive use of force and killings by law enforcement officials. She says they are subject to punitive drug policies and arrests and are overly represented in prisons.

“Where available, the data continues to point to disproportionately high rates of death of people of African descent by law enforcement in different countries,” Shamdasani said. “And families of African descent continue to report the immense challenges, barriers and protracted processes that they face in their pursuit of truth and justice for the deaths of their relatives.”

The report focuses in detail on seven cases of police-related fatalities of people of African descent. They include the cases of Floyd and Breonna Taylor, an African American medical worker shot and killed by police in March 2020. 

 

Shamdasani said their families are still seeking justice, as are the families of five other people of African descent killed by police agents in France, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Colombia. 

 

“A year later, the report states that while there has been some progress toward accountability in some of these emblematic cases, unfortunately, not a single case has yet been brought to a full conclusion,” she said.

Shamdasani said the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has been mandated by the U.N. Human Rights Council to follow the issue. She said the office would be producing annual reports on progress and on new violations that come to light.

FLASHPOINT UKRAINE: What Impact will Putin’s Annexation of Ukrainian Territory Have on the War?

Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed four additional Ukrainian regions Friday. It’s a move that Ukraine said it will never accept and goes against the United Nations Charter and international law. What impact will it have on the war moving forward? Plus, living under Russian occupation.

Thai Court Gives Prime Minister Three More Years in Office

Thailand’s top court ruled Friday that Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha can keep his job at least until next year’s elections, settling a legal dispute that echoes the country’s deep political fault lines and dashing the opposition’s latest bid to remove the 2014 coup leader from office. 

The military-drafted constitution of 2017 caps a prime minister’s time in the job at eight years. 

In a 6-3 decision, the Constitutional Court said the clock on Prayut’s time in office started ticking Aug. 6, 2017, the day the charter took effect. The court had suspended him from the job when it took up the case last month.  

Friday’s ruling both reinstates Prayut and clears the way for the ex-general to run for reelection in polls set for May and, should he win, to serve until 2025. He won a disputed vote for prime minister in parliament in 2019 thanks to the votes of senators appointed by his own junta. 

“The tenure of the accused [Prayut] from April 6, 2017, to August 24, 2022, has not reached its limit and the court rules by a majority vote that his premiership has not ended in accordance with the 2017 constitution,” the court said Friday. 

August 24, 2022, was the day the opposition parties that filed the court case say Prayut’s term should have ended. That’s exactly eight years after he was officially endorsed by then-King Bhumibol Adulyadej as prime minister of the military leadership that toppled an elected government months earlier. The parties argued that his years at the helm of the junta should count toward the eight-year cap. 

Legal experts in the opposition’s corner also pointed to a clause in the constitution that says the cabinet in place just before the charter takes effect — the prime minister included — will remain the cabinet just after it takes effect and until the next election, implying continuity. 

Prayut’s boosters disagreed. They argued that the years before the constitution took effect could not count toward the eight years and that his official time in office started either in 2017 with the new constitution or in 2019, after the elections. 

In a Facebook post just after the ruling, Prayut thanked his supporters and said he would focus his efforts on developing the country. 

Prayut’s legal adviser, Wira Rojanawas, said his client would return to his full duties as prime minister Monday and urged his critics to respect the court’s verdict, according to local media. 

Spokespersons for the government did not immediately answer VOA’s calls or answer requests for comment. 

‘Disappointed but not surprised’

Pita Limjaroenrat, the leader of Move Forward, one of the parties that filed the case, told VOA he was “disappointed but not surprised” by the court’s decision. He counts three prior occasions in which the court, most of whose members were appointed since the coup, has saved Prayut from having to step down. 

In 2019 it rejected a case claiming Prayut was a state official while heading the junta, which would have disqualified him from running for prime minister earlier that year. It also upheld his right to live in army housing even after leaving the military and bowed out of deciding whether he was a legitimate prime minister despite failing to recite the full oath of office after the 2019 elections. 

Prayut’s critics accuse him of toppling a legitimate government in 2014 and ruling with an iron fist even after the 2019 polls. 

In the wake of that election, several pro-democracy activists were beaten in public by masked men in a spate of attacks that have yet to be solved. Academics, advocates and activists especially critical of the government have reportedly had their phones hacked with sophisticated Israeli spyware — only other governments are believed to possess— though the Thai government has denied any involvement. 

Through much of 2020, mass protests rocked the capital, Bangkok, with calls for Prayut to resign and for reform of the monarchy, which critics accuse of helping to prop up his military and civilian governments. Police repeatedly used rubber bullets, water cannons and pepper spray to push back protesters. Hundreds have been arrested and charged with crimes. Authorities said they were using proportionate force to maintain order. 

But Pita said the court’s decision Friday portends more of the same. 

“If nothing is done … it’s total chaos in terms of abuse of power, in terms of rule of law, as well as economic conditions here in Thailand,” he said. “It means that a majority of politicians are too concentrated or focused on remaining in power.” 

Focus on upcoming elections

Analysts say anti-government protests, which died down as the COVID-19 pandemic dragged on, may pick up again, but only slightly, and won’t reach the pitch of 2020. 

Titipol Phakdeewanich, dean of the political science faculty at Thailand’s Ubon Ratchathani University, said opposition parties will not want to encourage the protests either, for fear of triggering another coup. 

“The opposition, like Pheu Thai and Move Forward, they are also focusing on elections, so I don’t think they would want to put too much energy [into] mobilizing a large-scale protest … because it could also set a pretext for military intervention like what we have seen in the past,” he said. 

But Khemthong Tonsakulrungruang, a lecturer and constitutional law expert at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University, said opposition parties could still use the court’s decisions from Friday and earlier to build support. 

“The opposition parties [are] going to capitalize on all these decisions and ask the people to vote Prayut out,” he said. 

That assumes Prayut will run, as some analysts expect him to. While his party, Palang Pracharath, has not yet named its candidate for prime minister, Prayut himself has hinted at making another run. 

It won’t help his case that he will be able to serve only half the four-year term, Khemthong said. Then again, he added, the same junta-appointed Senate that helped vote Prayut into office in 2019 could help either keep him there or vote in someone else of the military’s liking in 2023. 

“So, a change in [the] government is not like a shift or a change in the regime,” he said.