Teachers, Medical Workers Stage Protests in China | China In Focus 2023-11-08 02:45

Fresh waves of protests breaking out in China. Demonstrators ranging from teachers to medical professionals. A gym collapses in northeast China, killing three and injuring one. Money and professionals flowing out of mainland China and toward Hong Kong. What's causing the exodus? And over one trillion dollars. That's how much developing countries owe Chinese lenders. But how and why is China handing out the loans? What do you think? Let us know below and subscribe if you haven't already. Welcome to China In Focus, I'm Tiffany Meyer. Public dissent in China is on the rise. Protests breaking out in different parts of the country from medical workers to teachers. Citizens are now demanding that authorities pay back their delayed wages. Here's more. In southern Jiangxi province, hundreds of teachers gathered in front of a local government building last Thursday, chanting. NTD contacted the school, but calls didn't go through. A local resident said the local economy isn't doing well. The local government is struggling financially. Many factories also aren't paying their workers on time. Exports aren't doing well these days. Many factories have shut down and a lot of news has been censored because authorities are afraid of social instability. Elsewhere in central Henan province, medical workers gathered in front of a hospital to protest, saying their wages have been delayed for over a year. We can't live like this. Local authorities say they've run out of money to pay the workers. Another county in Henan province is also struggling. Called Xinye, the area is known for textile manufacturing, but many factories there have shut down. That's according to a logistic worker who delivers goods to those factories. The economy is reeling. Companies don't have much money on hand and money isn't flowing. Our business with them has shrunk to less than one tenth of what it used to be. Most of the textile factories have shut down. Our people went down south to southeastern China to find work. Our county doesn't have much of a labor force left. Yang added the logistics industry was dealt a heavy blow over the past three years due to Beijing's strict pandemic lockdown measures. He said those who accepted Beijing's propaganda that the economy was on the mend and expanded their businesses are now struggling with heavy financial losses. Two Democratic senators encouraging the U.S. to become a leader in next generation battery making, according to Reuters, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner and Energy Committee Chair Joe Manchin sent a letter to the Energy Department calling for faster development, more manufacturing and securing supply chains. Why the push? The lawmakers wrote that the U.S. is 10 to 20 years behind Asia, noting that China accounts for more than 75 percent of battery cell production. They also cited Beijing's decision to restrict graphite exports last month. The material is critical to manufacturing battery anodes. The Pentagon has said lithium ion batteries are essential to thousands of military systems, from handheld radios to unmanned submersibles and to future capabilities like lasers, directed energy weapons and hybrid electric tactical vehicles. The letter calls for a committee briefing on the matter by December 1st. The world's biggest creditor now handing out discounts on its sky high lending. Beijing has loaned over one point three trillion dollars to other nations through its Belt and Road Initiative. Most of the 165 borrowers are low to middle income countries. Many report that Beijing's overseas infrastructure projects have brought them more debt than economic growth. Now, after more than two decades of Beijing's Belt and Road, over half of its borrowers are facing looming repayment due dates. And according to Finance Institute aid data, the financial environment in China and high interest rates are only making those debt problems worse. But how is Beijing handling it by issuing rescue loans? Data shows Chinese rescue funds have climbed from just five percent to 58 percent within 10 years. But is China really losing? Beijing says China has gained more friends globally, though, as certain nations tighten their friendships with China. Things seem to be getting political. And one example ties into the seaports that the Belt and Road helped to build. Beijing owns or operates nearly 100 foreign ports, often taking control of them when host countries prove unable to pay off their Chinese debt. The network covers virtually every ocean and continent, with some of them located in the globe's most strategic waterways. Experts have raised concerns that China could use the infrastructure to spy on U.S. military activities or station warships there. In one case, a Chinese naval fleet entered a Nigerian port four months ago. More wealth is flowing from mainland China to Hong Kong. This is according to Noel Quinn, CEO of the HSBC Group. Quinn spoke at the Global Financial Leaders Investment Summit Tuesday, hosted by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. If you look at the flow of wealth from mainland China into Hong Kong just this year, we're seeing growth in that activity of three to four times growth in activity. Quinn also said new retail banking activity has risen 70 percent since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic in China's Greater Bay Area. The area refers to Hong Kong, Macau and parts of China's southeastern Guangdong Province alongside the Pearl River. But it's not just money that's flowing from mainland China to Hong Kong. A new exodus is also underway. Let's take a look. Hong Kongers fleeing Beijing are now being offset by new arrivals. Mainland Chinese keen to move to the former British colony. When I came to Hong Kong for the first time in 2006, you could see so many different magazines. There were just so many different voices. You weren't just hearing one voice. Like Monica Wang, the financial hub has attracted tens of thousands of mainland Chinese through a program that recruits global talents. Nine in ten successful applicants are from China. But that's as concerns rise about an erosion of freedoms in the city. Leading activists in Hong Kong have been detained and prosecuted since 2020 when Beijing enacted the city's national security law and outspoken pro-democracy media outlets like Apple Daily and Stan News have been forced to shut down. The political shift contributed to a decline in Hong Kong's population, with hundreds of thousands of them moving to Britain, while many others took up permanent residency in Canada under special policies. International companies and banks there have also been moving away. Now, Beijing's talent scheme is meant to help plug that brain drain. According to the Immigration Department, about 37,000 applications from mainland Chinese have already been approved. The makings of a diplomatic thaw between Australia and China. The two held a previously annual leaders meeting on Tuesday for the first time in seven years. That's where Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Beijing. Albanese said dialogue between them will continue as long as the trading relations remain stable. China has lifted trade restrictions on most Australian exports. The bans were put in place in 2020 over Australia's request for a global inquiry into COVID-19 pandemic origins. Another point of contention between the two is Beijing's influence in the Pacific Islands. These disputes had led to the suspension of their annual meetings. Over in Japan, concerns are growing over North Korea's missile test launches, and authorities are getting prepared. For the first time in five years, Tokyo held an evacuation drill Monday. Around 60 residents took part in the drill. One of the groups simulated an evacuation scenario inside a subway train station. North Korea fired 59 missiles in 2022. The regime most recently fired two short range ballistic missiles into the sea on September 13th. North Korea has missiles ranging from short range and cruise missiles to intercontinental warheads with the potential to reach the continental United States. Reports of a tragic incident in northeast China. Three are dead and another injured after a gym collapsed Monday night. Authorities said seven people were inside the building when it collapsed. Police detained the gym's owner. It was not immediately clear what caused the collapse. Authorities are currently investigating. It marks the second gym collapse in the province in recent months. At least 11 people were injured last July after the concrete roof of a school gymnasium collapsed. Those reports come as an unexpected blizzard hit northeast China on Monday. Several cities issued weather alerts, while one of them mobilized over 700 snowplows to clear roads. The heavy snowfall totaled around half of what the area usually gets all winter. Northern China has seen some untimely weather in the past week, from smog in some areas to the second warmest October in decades and then a sharp temperature drop over the weekend. Is the Chinese Communist Party trying to remove the name Tibet from public memory? Whistleblowers from the U.S. Congress are ringing alarm bells about the issue, something that's already appeared in diplomatic documents from Beijing. What's Beijing's goal and what could it mean for the Tibetan people? Let's dive in. Replacing Tibet with Shizhong, China's top diplomat Wang Yi made the first attempt to publicize Beijing's name for the area in an October speech. One major factor is pushing the change. The Chinese regime is looking to prevent the Dalai Lama from reestablishing the independent state of Tibet. What does Shizhong mean? The word is a romanized Chinese term referring to the Tibet autonomous region known as Tibet. Chairman of the U.S. Selected Committee on the CCP, Congressman Mike Gallagher showed support for Tibet in a joint statement released last month on October 18th. The Chinese Communism Party, or CCP, deployed troops to invade Tibet in the 1950s. After that point, Tibet's highest spiritual and political leader, the Dalai Lama, was forced to flee to India. I think there's a very systematic and in some ways a devious kind of a way of dismantling, you know, layer by layer, piece by piece, different components of Tibetan culture, Tibetan identity. The Tibetan plateau and its people have been ruled by the Chinese communist regime since then. For almost a century, the CCP has tried to convert and integrate Tibetan people into China's majority ethnic group, the Han group. That's in order to tighten its control of the disputed region. Reports show a series of measures have been imposed on Tibetans in China, including religious, cultural and language suppression, while one Chinese policy even directly encouraged Tibetans to marry Han Chinese, promising benefits for their careers and daily lives. That's all for today's China In Focus on YouTube. We're now sharing a shortened version of our program here after being demonetized for more than two years. Last month, YouTube removed our demonetization status, but reimposed it within days. China In Focus makes no revenue on YouTube, something that has continued since the beginning of 2021. Despite these challenges, we are devoted to bringing truthful news about China to our audience. If you'd like to support us, subscribe to our partner platform, Epic TV, where you can watch our full episodes. To sign up, click the link down below or consider donating. Find us at donorbox.org slash China dash in dash focus or just follow the link in the description box below. Here's what to look out for in our second half on Epic TV. As the Israel-Hamas war continues, Beijing's cloud is growing in the Middle East. President Biden received a briefing on Chinese efforts to establish a military base in Oman, while over in the Indo-Pacific, nine ships in the Chinese carrier strike group are heading toward the South China Sea. What might Beijing's actions signal to the region and beyond? And what's the current state of the U.S.-China rivalry on the international stage? Retapped General Robert Spalding, retired U.S. Air Force Brigadier General and author of War Without Rules for Insight. Thanks for watching China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. See you tomorrow.