Fires Break Out in Residential Buildings Across China | China In Focus

Welcome to China in Focus, I'm Tiffany Meyer. Our top story... Major fires taking over residential buildings in China. One mother managed to flee one of the burning buildings with her teenage son from her 20th floor apartment. She tells us about their harrowing escape. A new tech rivalry is on the horizon. Washington and its allies have endorsed joint efforts to boost 6G technology. This as nations fear China could dominate the sector if they get ahead of the game. China's ousted Foreign Minister Qin Gan suddenly resigning from the national legislature. He has yet to reappear publicly. What we know about his resignation and mysterious disappearance. And five Chinese coast guard ships vacate restricted waters after a warning about getting too close to Taiwan's frontline islands. At least nine major fires have sparked across China in the past three days, most of them engulfing residential buildings. In one of the most severe cases reported, a mother successfully escaped the fire with her middle school aged son, fleeing their 20th floor apartment. She told us more from the site and how she made it out of the burning building. Let's take a closer look. One of the most severe fires in recent days last Friday. At least 15 people died, with dozens more injured. When it broke out around 4 a.m. local time, Li and her son were asleep. At that time, I heard someone downstairs shouting for help and then saying there was a fire. I was sleeping at the time, and I was suddenly confused. I said to myself, is someone shouting for help and saying there's a fire? Then I opened the curtains and saw thick smoke rising from the bottom of the building. I live on the 20th floor. Li said the entire first floor was designed for charging e-bicycles and had rows of electric charging piles. According to the official statement, the bicycles hooked up to those ports caused the fire. The flames climbed up 34 floors, affecting more than 500 residents. Li and her son evacuated with other neighbors, using an escape route staircase in hopes of getting to safety. At that time, I felt very dizzy. My legs felt weak, and I couldn't walk anymore. I was thinking about who could get my son out of here. Li said her son was calmer. They called the fire department for help and guidance on what to do. There were some scars on my arms and upper body, and even today I still feel pain in my legs and body. When I came out, my whole body was black, and I saw the flames burning the building. I was covered in ash. My face and body were all black. It was too terrifying, really very terrifying. Li added that she watched some of her neighbors perish. I saw someone had died when we went to the community center to rest. He wasn't burned to death but had inhaled too much smoke. I don't want to live there anymore. Many people don't want to live there anymore. A number of fires in residential buildings in China have sparked from e-bike charging ports. Especially during the winter, batteries can easily overheat under the cotton covers and gloves used with them. Many Chinese apartments are densely populated and very tall, meaning fires can spread quickly and are more difficult to put out and harder to escape from. Just two days after the blaze in Li's building, four more fires ignited on the same day in different parts of a different city, Nanjing. Several others appeared in different parts of China. That's on top of severe mountain fires that raged in the southern province of Guizhou earlier this month. Official satellite images reveal that nearly half of the province was engulfed in flames. Overall, more than 200 fires total have sparked in the country within the span of just under two weeks. But it's news of the fires getting censored inside China. Searching words like fire on the country's biggest search engine, Baidu, turns up shockingly few reports. It's the same on Chinese social media platforms. Now, Chinese authorities are taking heavy criticism from citizens over the lack of reports. An innovation rivalry is in full swing between the West and Communist China. Washington along with nine allied nations have rolled out new principles to bolster 6G technology. The effort is joined by Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, and the UK. Its goals include using systematic approaches to cyber security, protecting privacy, and making innovations available to developing nations. The 6G technology is being designed to outperform its predecessor, said to be 50 times faster. It's also expected to surpass 5G in terms of connections, mobility, and efficiency. Experts and top U.S. officials have long voiced concern over China's 5G dominance, which they said could be leveraged by the CCP for espionage purposes. What's more, earlier this month, China said it had launched the world's first satellite designed to test the new 6G technology. U.S. fears are rising about cheap cars from China. Concerns are growing over Chinese-made auto parts making their way across the border from Mexico. And now a group is calling to stop them. The Alliance for American Manufacturing warns Chinese-made parts could threaten American car companies and lead to plant closures and job losses. Chinese companies are able to sell their goods at much lower prices than their foreign rivals because the Chinese Communist Party subsidizes domestic companies. What's more, the alliance believes China is trying to take advantage of a trade deal between the U.S. and Mexico, which gives preferential treatment to vehicles and parts made in Mexico. The renewed concern comes after China-based BYD announced plans to open an EV factory in Mexico. The group is calling on the U.S. government to block the imports of low-cost Chinese autos and parts from Mexico. China's former foreign minister is back in the headlines after vanishing last summer. Chinese media reporting that diplomat Qin Gan has resigned from the country's national legislature. Qin disappeared from public view last June. It caught many by surprise as he was scheduled to meet with U.S. diplomats at the time. Beijing didn't give specifics but said he missed some meetings due to quote health reasons. He was dismissed from the post a month after disappearing from public view. Beijing tapped Qin's predecessor Wang Yi to replace him. A report from Politico said Qin allegedly died from suicide or torture. Qin's disappearance piqued public interest partly because high-level Chinese officials in Xi Jinping's cabinet have been disappearing one after another. Speculation has run rampant as to why they've gone missing. The officials' ousters are believed to be signs of political friction inside the Communist Party. China also removed former Defense Minister Li Shanfu's name from the Defense Ministry's website Monday. Like Qin Gan, Li disappeared last year for two months and was fired afterwards. The U.S. ambassador to Japan poked fun at the string of events on social media, posting on X, formerly known as Twitter. He compared the missing officials to Agatha Christie's mystery novel and then there were none, saying first Foreign Minister Qin Gan goes missing, then the rocket force commander goes missing, and now Defense Minister Li Shanfu hasn't been seen in public for two weeks. Who's going to win this unemployment race? What does Qin Gan's resignation reveal about the internal dynamics of the Chinese Communist Party? Plus, what's next for the electric vehicle and technology competition between Washington and Beijing? To discuss, we sat down with General Robert Spalding, retired U.S. Air Force Brigadier General and author of War Without Rules. General Spalding, thank you so much for joining us. Great to have you back on the show. Thank you. Great to be back. Now, the U.S. and nine allies have rolled out new principles to bolster 6G, including ways to protect end-users. Meanwhile, China says it has launched a satellite, the world's first satellite, to test 6G. How do you see this fitting into geopolitics, especially given the tensions we are seeing around the world? I think what we're starting to see is really just a ramping up of increasing attacks on infrastructure. And I think that that's something that we haven't been focused on as a nation. You know, we spend a lot of money on F-35s and B-21s and ICBMs and nuclear submarines, but we don't spend a lot of time and money from a federal defense perspective on protecting our networks. And those are the things that make us most vulnerable. The ability to take our data and then begin to manipulate that data in terms of how our population is being influenced is a big challenge from a national security perspective, but we don't actually look at it that way. So as we enter this second Cold War, our infrastructure is going to come under much more pressure from our enemies like China, like Russia, like North Korea and Iran, and we haven't kept pace with that challenge. So that's something that we're going to have to devote our time and effort and money towards protecting. Switching gears a bit, former Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gan, who disappeared and made headlines, has reappeared and made headlines again, this time because he has resigned from the national legislature. Now, how do you read this in terms of China's internal party dynamics? I think you're going to see this go on and on throughout the Chinese Communist Party because it is really just Xi encountering resistance within the party and then cleaning that up. Or it could be, and in the case of Qin, it could be that he was deemed a problem for the party in that any outside exposure to foreigners for a senior party member is just not allowed and not accepted. Tesla's rival BYD, China's EV maker, is set to open an EV factory inside Mexico. Now, this would skirt a bunch of trade agreements between Mexico, the US and Canada called USMCA. That would help China get into this market and avoid all these tariffs. So now there's a group of automakers raising alarms about this. How do you read this move? Well, it's smart on the part of China. It's really dumb on our part in that we allow the Chinese, and it's not the only thing they're taking advantage of. Anything under $800, there's all these warehouses on the Canadian border and the Mexican border where they're shipping goods in tariff-free. We need to do a much better job and go back to those Cold War rules, which prevented the Soviet Union from taking advantage of our economies and do the same thing to China. We've already done it to Russia and Iran and North Korea. We don't do it to China because of the enormous financial and US corporate lobby in Washington, DC. But this is our national security. This is our political independence. This is our sovereignty, and it's something that we have to do. General Spalding, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Chinese ships spotted in Taiwanese waters again. Monday, five Chinese Coast Guard ships entered prohibited waters around Kinmen, a group of Taiwanese islands just miles away from mainland China. The Chinese ships left after a warning. I hope this matter will be handled smoothly, and I hope it won't escalate. Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China despite never having ruled it. The Chinese regime has also pledged to take it under control by force if necessary. The US doesn't have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, but it's bound by law to sell weapons to the island so it can defend itself. One of Southeast Asia's largest military exercises kicks off Tuesday on Thailand's east coast. Over 9,000 troops from 30 countries participated in the drills, including co-hosts Thailand and the US. With activities ranging from amphibious shore landings to command and control exercises and combined arms exercise training, from full cyber and space integration to humanitarian relief, this year's Cobra Gold will prepare us for a future multinational crisis response to new and emerging challenge. This year's exercise will last until March 8th. China will join humanitarian assistance training drills. Cobra Gold is now on its 43rd year. It's a war games event that serves as a key platform for the US to shore up alliances in Asia. Staying in the Pacific, the Philippine Air Force has sent a plane to monitor its border with Taiwan. This comes as both islands are battling a round of confrontations with China over sovereignty claims. Footage shows an aircraft flying over the Luzon Strait, the Philippines' northernmost region. In recent years, China has been ramping up its claims in the South China Sea. The regime says the seas the entire region as part of its own territory. That's despite a United Nations-backed tribunal having denied that claim. Before you go, we have a special announcement. We're excited to announce our new documentary Hollywood Takeover China's Control in the Film Industry is premiering on the red carpet in Los Angeles on March 6th at 6.30 p.m. To celebrate, we're hosting a sweepstakes for our China-focused audience. Take a look. Enter to win two tickets to the event in Hollywood. Please use the link in the description down below to enter before this Wednesday, February 28th. For more information about the documentary, please visit hollywoodtakeover.com. The film will release globally on March 8th on Epoch TV. 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 three years. If you'd like to support us, consider donating. Find us at donorbox.org slash china-in-focus or subscribe to our partner platform, Epoch TV, where you can watch our full episodes. Here's what to look out for in our second half. Beijing lashing out at the U.S., European Union, and the U.K. That's over their decisions to levy new sanctions on Chinese companies doing business with Russia. Is China back on the map for American tourists? Chinese airlines are gearing up to soar with 50 weekly round trips to and from America, up from 35. Are Chinese authorities pulling the strings behind Hollywood blockbusters? Find out in the new documentary, Hollywood Takeover. Find out what audiences had to say about the film at CPAC, its first public showing before its debut in Hollywood. That and more after the break here on China In Focus. Thanks for watching China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. See you tomorrow.