In this week’s Chinascope, we look at the replacement of Chen Quanguo as Party Secretary of Xinjiang, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s remarks on foreign policy, a $210 million tax fine for a live-streaming celebrity, and other top stories from China – and the world.
China over the week
Chen Quanguo is a name in Chinese politics that is still relatively unknown to most people. But experts know his role in Xinjiang very well.
Chen will step down as the Party Secretary of Xinjiang, according to Xinhua News Agency. Chinese state media confirmed that Ma Xingrui will be appointed as his successor, who will be moved to a still-undecided new position.
Chen is a central figure in Xi Jinping’s Xinjiang policy, including mass incarceration of the Uyghur Muslim minority for which he has been sanctioned by the US and other Western countries.
The new Party Secretary, Ma Xingrui, is an aerospace engineer and currently serving as the governor of Guangdong province. The swap didn’t happen in a vacuum.
US President Joe Biden on Thursday signed into law a legislation banning all imports from Xinjiang province. The bill assumes that all the imports originating from Xinjiang are made by forced labour, considering the evidence for mass detention and forced labour camps in the region. There is growing pressure on international brands to stop sourcing cotton from Xinjiang.
The decision to replace Chen — who has become the face of Beijing’s Xinjiang policy and the criticism related to mass incarceration — might be an attempt to revamp China’s image ahead of the Beijing Olympics 2022.
Chinese foreign policy gained little success in 2021. Instead, its growing efforts to counter the backlash contributed to further criticism.
This past week, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke on the nation’s foreign relations at the Symposium on the International Situation and China’s Foreign Relations in 2021.
In his long speech, Wang mentioned India only once and spent more time talking about other regions of the world, including the US and Russia.
“China and India have maintained dialogue through diplomatic and military channels, and effectively managed and controlled frictions in certain border areas, under a shared commitment to improving and developing the bilateral relations,” he said.
Wang hailed China’s success in Afghanistan as a victory.
“We have encouraged the new Afghan administration to follow a policy of inclusiveness, counter-terrorism, and good-neighborliness and to resolutely fight all terrorist organisations including the East Turkistan Islamic Movement. We have supported Afghanistan in preventing chaos, maintaining stability, fighting terrorism, ending violence, and developing in the right direction,” he added.
Meanwhile, Chinese scholar Liu Zongyi believes that India’s new ambassador to China, Pradeep Kumar Rawat, will be welcomed in Beijing.
“An important reason for Rawat’s appointment is his understanding of China and the potential of promoting effective communication in the face of the current stalemate,” wrote Liu Zongyi, secretary-general of the Research Center for China-South Asia Cooperation at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies.
Rawat will replace Vikram Misri as India’s next ambassador to Beijing. Rawat is a seasoned ‘China-hand’, proficient in Mandarin Chinese.
Qin Gang, China’s ambassador to the US, is considered to have a close relationship with President Xi Jinping. His appointment has created a direct channel between Xi and DC. Nowadays, whenever Qin gets a chance, he speaks Beijing’s mind.
Qin said “China will not lose” if there is a new Cold War. “China is not the former Soviet Union, and the US is not the US of 30 years ago, and the interests of the two countries are closely intertwined.”
Live streaming is a multi-billion-dollar industry in China that attracts people from all age groups. But this week, live-streaming influencer and celebrity Huang Wei was asked to pay a whopping $210 million fine for unpaid taxes. Huang is known by her online name ‘Weiya’ and has over 18 million Weibo followers and more than 80 million followers on the online shopping platform Taobao.
Huang avoided paying the taxes by setting up sole-proprietorships for the commission income and spot fees taxed lightly as business income. In 2018, another Chinese celebrity, Fan Bingbing, was asked to pay $129 million for tax evasion.
Following the fine, Huang’s Weibo and Taobao accounts were blocked.
Chinascope recently told you about Beijing’s plan to merge its major rare earth companies into a giant conglomerate.
This past week, China Rare Earth Group Co Ltd was announced by merging three companies, including Aluminum Corporation of China, China Minmetals Corporation, and Ganzhou Rare Earth Group Co Ltd. Two research firms, China Iron & Steel Research Institute Group and Grinm Group Corporation Ltd, were also merged into China Rare Earth Group Co Ltd.
“The newly launched company will operate under the direct supervision of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council,” said Xinhua News Agency.
China has a relative advantage with its vast rare earth mines. Beijing seems to be trying to consolidate the edge with the merger.
“Considering the global geopolitical tension and intensified competition for resources, such a move will enhance domestic control,” Galaxy Securities analyst Yan Yulu was quoted as saying.
Also read: China land law to new acquisition, why 2022 is a critical year for Indian military
China in world news
This past week, a high-profile case involving Harvard University professor Charles Lieber concluded an investigation. Lieber, part of the US Department of Justice’s China Initiative, was found guilty of lying about the research funding from Chinese institutions. He is a former chair of Harvard’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology department, receiving $50,000 per month from the Wuhan University of Technology. The US Department of Justice also alleged that Lieber received $1.5 million to establish a research lab.
“There is now no question that Charles Lieber lied to federal investigators and Harvard in an attempt to hide his participation in the Chinese Thousand Talents Program,” said acting US attorney Nathaniel Mendell in a statement.
But critics believe that the US has conducted a ‘witch-hunt’ by singling out academics for merely maintaining research ties with China.
“The China Initiative claims to be centred on countering economic espionage, yet our database finds that only 19 of the 77 cases (25 per cent) include charges of violating the Economic Espionage Act (EEA),” wrote Eileen Guo, Jess Aloe and Karen Hao in MIT Technology Review.
What you must read this week
The birth of China’s most famous beer – James Carter
Is China Building a New String of Pearls in the Atlantic Ocean? – Bonny Lin, Jude Blanchette, Joseph Bermudez and Mvemba Dizolele
Experts this week
“In today’s world where there are ‘non-Christian civilisations’ such as Chinese civilisation, Islamic civilisation and Indian civilisation at the same time, ‘Christian civilisation’ is just one of the civilisations that exist in the world and cannot represent the entire human society. In the new era of the revival of Chinese civilisation, ‘Christian civilisation’ has increasingly exposed the limitations of its ‘small kingdom’,” wrote Wen Yang, a researcher at China Research Institute of Fudan University.
The author is a columnist and a freelance journalist, currently pursuing an MSc in international politics with focus on China from School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He was previously a China media journalist at the BBC World Service. He tweets @aadilbrar. Views are personal.
This is a weekly round-up that Aadil Brar writes about what’s buzzing in China. This will soon be available as a subscribers’-only product.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)