The China Thread

[Tonitrus]

That is indeed the flaw in that idea...but that only means the PRC needs to consider that risk.  Balanced with simple resource denial and every other factor they'd consider to justify grabbing Taiwan, they might still make a go at it.

[Sheilbh]

The Prince podcast by the Economist - also the first podcast project they've had as their front page - on Xi is worth a listen.

[Jacob]

That is indeed the flaw in that idea...but that only means the PRC needs to consider that risk.  Balanced with simple resource denial and every other factor they'd consider to justify grabbing Taiwan, they might still make a go at it.

For sure. There are three main factors I think:

- The fabs themselves, which I understand to be very delicate. While China could potentially seize them, the question is how vulnerable the fabs themselves are to damage  from a the companies, the Taiwanese government, hostile American action, or acts of resistance from individual or small group of Taiwanese guerillas.

- The skills needed to run the fabs (and continue pushing towards the cutting edge of development). As Biden's new sanctions appear to demonstrate, these may be non-trivial to source and maintain by a potentially isolated China.

- The process inputs - from raw materials (probably the least challenging thing to manage), to chemicals, processes, and complex component parts for both chips and machines. I understand chip development and manufacturing to be complex, highly international, and with a limited number of actors along a number of key stages.

This is based on a fairly limited knowledge, but I don't think controlling the fabs themselves is sufficient.

[Sheilbh]

Aren't those chip factories a marriage between the high-tech machinery and the skilled workforce; make the worker refugees and with a modest amount of damage/sabotage the plant is useless, where as the South Asian oil fields the Japanese went for could be re-built?

I think the other complication is the tech side of it and my understanding is that while China's done very well at moving up the tech ladder - it is clear it's less further along than it had perhaps understood (or than the West understood). I think that's part of why there's been a purge/measures in the industry is because it is, from the party's perspective, a national security issue not just a useful industry.

Also I know there's stuff about the different types of chips I don't understand - so the Netherlands is a world leader in the really super-advanced stuff, Taiwan in its sector, the chip factory in Newport a Chinese company was tring to buy makes power silicon chips (which are really important - in every charger, most of the chips in an EV etc) which are really different from the Taiwanese or Dutch etc - and I'm sure there are others. They're all jumbled up in all the talk about this generally and I'd expect that actually China's technical ability and focus varies a lot within different types.

[Sheilbh]

Small in the context of everything with the party congress etc - but minor scandal in the UK.

There's been footage and eyewitness accounts from a protest of mainly Hong Kongers outside the China's Consulate General in Manchester -from local reporter:

Big story: Shameful scenes at the Chinese consulate

Top line: Chinese government officials in Manchester are facing calls for their expulsion from the country after videos emerged yesterday that show consular staff beating a protester and dragging him inside the grounds of the consulate.

What happened: The incident occurred during a peaceful protest outside the consulate in Rusholme by pro-democracy activists from Hong Kong. Around 30 minutes after the protest began, staff from the consulate appear to rush out of the gates and grab signs and placards made by the protesters. Videos taken at the event then show:
    A protester being pulled inside the gates by his hair, while a Greater Manchester Police officer attempts to pull him back.
    A group of men, some wearing protective vests and helmets, beating the protester inside the consulate grounds, before police manage to get him out.
    According to police, the man "suffered several physical injuries and remained in hospital overnight for treatment".


Staff from the consulate pull the hair of a protester at the gate. Photo by Matthew Leung/Chaser News.

Police say they are investigating "the assault of a man following a protest outside the Chinese Consulate in Manchester yesterday". They say that shortly before 4pm, "a small group of men came out of the building and a man was dragged into the Consulate grounds and assaulted. Due to our fears for the safety of the man, officers intervened and removed the victim from the Consulate grounds." The statement goes on: "Detectives from our Major Incident Team are investigating the incident and we are liaising with national policing and diplomatic partners. No arrests have been made and our ongoing and complex enquiries continue."

'Shock and concern': In a statement released at lunchtime today, Assistant Chief Constable Rob Potts said:
    We understand the shock and concern that this incident will have caused not just locally, but for those much further afield who may have connections with our communities here in Greater Manchester. A full and comprehensive investigation is underway by our experienced Major Incident Team detectives, and I can assure the public that all viable avenues will be explored to bring to justice anyone we believe is culpable for the scenes we saw outside the Chinese Consulate on Sunday.

The response: Last night, we asked both Andy Burnham and Manchester's council leader Bev Craig for a comment on the incident and continued to push them for a statement all morning. Manchester City Council eventually said it "would always condemn violence of any kind during a planned demonstration," but that it would be "inappropriate to comment further at this stage." Andy Burnham released the following statement just before we sent this briefing:
    What took place yesterday outside the Chinese Consulate in Manchester was deeply worrying and has no place in a city region like ours that prides itself on peoples' right to protest peacefully. Greater Manchester Police immediately started a full investigation and are in close touch with the Home Office and Foreign Office. It is important that the full facts surrounding this incident are established and for that we will need to wait for the investigation to conclude. However, on the basis of what I have seen, I want to make clear that it is never acceptable for peaceful protestors to be assaulted and those responsible need to be held to account for their actions.

National politicians, in contrast to their counterparts in Greater Manchester, reacted swiftly to the videos yesterday. Alicia Kearns MP, chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, has tweeted that the Chinese ambassador should be summoned and "if any official has beaten protesters, they must be expelled or prosecuted".

    Kearns also said: "The CCP [Chinese Communist Party] will not import their beating of protestors and denial of free speech to British streets."

    Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith tweeted: "The UK government must demand a full apology from the Chinese ambassador to the UK and demand those responsible are sent home to China".

Eyewitnesses: This morning The Mill has spoken to two people who witnessed the incident first-hand. One of them, a 30-year-old man who goes by the name Luci, says he saw a group of men coming out of the consulate to grab the protest signs, one of which satirises Xi Jingping by suggesting he is trying to rule Hong Kong, Taiwan and Ukraine. Luci told us:
    Two of them were wearing riot gear — some kind of bullet proof vest and helmets. The others were plain clothed. They managed to get it [the Xi sign] inside the territory of the consulate and destroyed it.

    They tried to grab one of us inside the consulate, but the police managed to get everyone out. So none of us were grabbed inside before the gates closed. But the painting was already inside the territory.

Luci was taking photos when the incident took place. When the violence began, his first thought was: "I can't sit by and watch some of my friends and people get dragged into the Chinese territory. Once the gate is closed, they are within the Chinese territory and that's it."


A photo taken by Luci shows consulate staff just inside the gates.

The protesters: According to people we've spoken to, most of the people at the protest were from Hong Kong and came to Manchester in the past year or two via the BNO visa scheme. Earlier in the protest, they were told by a police officer that they were allowed to protest on the pavement as long as their banners didn't touch the consulate walls or block prams and wheelchairs from passing.

Consul general: It's been suggested by various Twitter users — including a reporter from the US news organisation Axios — that the smartly-dressed man seen in the videos with grey hair and a blue and red scarf (on the left of the first photo above) is Zheng Xiyuan, the consul general and the most senior Chinese official in Greater Manchester, a man who has met Andy Burnham on multiple occasions. The videos and photos show him dragging a protester by the hair. We put this claim to the consulate this morning but have not heard back yet.

    A consulate spokesperson told the BBC that protesters "hung an insulting portrait of the Chinese president at the main entrance".

    They went on: "This would be intolerable and unacceptable for any diplomatic and consular missions of any country. Therefore, we condemn this deplorable act with strong indignation and firm opposition."

Fear and anger: "I am very angry," Luci told us. "This strengthens our resolve to do this [protest] further. I'm quite shocked. How can they do that?"


Staff from the consulate approach the image of Xi Jinping on the pavement outside. Photo by Matthew Leung/Chaser News.

Another eye-witness, who is still going through the asylum process from Hong Kong, told us the actions of the consulate's officials have left him feeling scared: "I didn't expect that China would do this in front of UK and Hong Kong people. I'm really worried about it. I don't want to go out. I'm really scared of Chinese officials watching me."

The backstory: As we reported in a detailed long read last year, Greater Manchester's leaders and universities have become deeply enmeshed with China — working hard to attract Chinese students and businesses. "We've always had very good relationships with the Chinese consulate," a senior source at Manchester City Council was quoted saying in that piece, which reported that top council officials attend regular dinners and meetings at the magnificent Denison House in Rusholme.

A key question: It was at the gates of Denison House that yesterday's shameful incident took place, in which the officials of a foreign power are seen destroying protest signs and assaulting a demonstrator in plain view. What would have happened if the police officer hadn't intervened and the protester had been trapped inside the consulate's grounds? The key line from GMP today — "Due to our fears for the safety of the man, officers intervened and removed the victim from the Consulate grounds" — is a shocking line to read in a police statement in this country.

Bottom line: The thuggish behaviour of Chinese diplomatic officials yesterday is a major scandal that demands an urgent response. Local politicians and business leaders, both of whom have regular dealings with the consulate, should be urgently raising it with the consul general today, even if that comes at a commercial cost.

Again this is small in the general scheme of China, but I find the way that they assume a right to police the entire Chinese diaspora (including Hong Kong or Malay origin Chinese) really objectionable. Similarly there's a point in The Prince podcast I mentioned where the Economist correspondent (Australian of Chinese heritage, through Malaysia) where she talks about how she was targeted by state media and nationalist bloggers as a "race traitor" (using a slur tied to collaborators with the Japanese) for her reporting.

And it seems fairly unique - I can think of other regimes who monitor and police dissidents/emigres but I can't think of another regime that treats all people of Chinese descent as their remit like the CCP does.

[Jacob]

IMO the UK should expel Chinese diplomats over this. That's completely disgraceful.

[grumbler]

IMO the UK should expel Chinese diplomats over this. That's completely disgraceful.

IMO the UK government has a duty to arrest or expel the Chinese personnel involved.  You cannot allow thugts to claim diplomatic immunity without punishing the government protecting them as well as the thugs themselves. Adding a one-year suspension of the power to replace them is optional but recommended.

[Admiral Yi]

I suggest the British police look the other way while Chinese-British storm the consulate and hold the staff hostage.

Is there something about Britain that makes thug regimes act like dick heads there?

[Josquius]

It reminds me of all those theoretical scenarios like what happens if somebody gets shot across a border.
Surely in order to have grabbed someone and dragged them into the consulate their hands at least had to have been in the UK-proper and its those hands that broke the law?
Or is it where your feet are that counts?

[ulmont]

It reminds me of all those theoretical scenarios like what happens if somebody gets shot across a border.

Theoretical?

There's no dispute on whether Jesus Mesa Jr. killed 15-year-old Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca.

He did. And there's a video of it.

In 2010 Mesa, an on-duty U.S. Border Patrol agent who was at the border in El Paso, Texas, shot Hernández at least twice — once in the face. At the time, the boy, a Mexican national, was on the southern side of the border in Ciudad Juarez.

https://www.npr.org/2020/02/25/809401334/supreme-court-rules-border-patrol-agents-who-shoot-foreign-nationals-cant-be-sue

[The Minsky Moment]

The Prince podcast by the Economist - also the first podcast project they've had as their front page - on Xi is worth a listen.

Very disappointing.  Hours and hours about Chinese politics and not a single minute of funk.  False advertising.

[Sheilbh]

IMO the UK should expel Chinese diplomats over this. That's completely disgraceful.

Second urgent question on this in parliament today. Government are saying the police are still establishing facts and they'll give an update next week.

If the police establish there are chargeable offences they "expect" China to waive the diplomatic immunity of the consulate staff. If that doesn't happen there will be "serious diplomatic consequences" - it'll be interesting to see what they are but it feels like it should be expulsions.

Especially as the consul general did this sit down with Sky News. Which doesn't really tally with the video footage, photos and eyewitness accounts:

Chinese consul-general defends actions after being seen pulling protester's hair in Manchester
In a letter sent to Greater Manchester Police, Zheng Xiyuan stated that the banners being used by protesters featured a "volume of deeply offensive imagery and slogans", including a picture of the Chinese president with a noose around his neck.
Inzamam Rashid
Thursday 20 October 2022 09:14, UK

The Chinese consul-general accused of attacking a protester has denied the claims and said his alleged victim was "abusing my country, my leader".

Senior diplomat Zheng Xiyuan was pictured pulling Bob Chan's hair before yanking him into the Chinese consulate in Manchester.

Mr Zheng told Sky News that it was his "duty" and he was at the demonstration "peacefully".


Image: Chinese consul-general Zheng Xiyuan was seen pulling a protester's hair

What happened outside and on the grounds of the consulate is now the centre of a diplomatic incident.

The pro-democracy protest by Hong Kongers started off peacefully but banners and posters, which the Chinese say they found deeply offensive, were torn down by officials including the consul-general.

That led to a violent clash which saw Bob Chan apparently dragged into the consulate grounds and beaten by its staff - leaving him with cuts and bruises all over his body.

But these claims have been refuted by Mr Zheng, who said: "I didn't beat anybody. I didn't let my people beat anybody. The fact is, the so-called protesters beat my people."

However, when asked about the hair-pulling incident, he said: "He (Bob Chan) was abusing my country, my leader, I think it's my duty."

Mr Zheng added: "I think it's an emergency situation - that guy threatened my colleague's life, and we tried to control the situation. I wanted to separate him from my colleagues - that's a very critical point."

'They used very rude words - unacceptable'

Asked why the peaceful demonstration turned violent, Mr Zheng claimed it was because of the "rude banners" that had been put on display.

In a letter sent to Greater Manchester Police, he stated the banners featured a "volume of deeply offensive imagery and slogans", including a picture of the Chinese president Xi Jinping with a noose around his neck.

"I think the most serious reason for this incident is because they used very rude banners. They used very rude words, unacceptable. Everybody never accepts these kinds of words," Mr Zheng told Sky News.

"It's not right to put such banners close to my gate. After I advised them to remove very politely, they refused."

'I was under attack'

In his letter, the consul-general also said he was disappointed police didn't do more to help and claimed one of the protesters grabbed a member of his staff "by the neck and refused to let go" during the ensuing scuffle.

"I was under attack by the protesters and my colleagues were under attack and at that time, we didn't receive any protection from the policeman, so we had to do something to protect ourselves," Mr Zheng said.

He added some of his staff were injured during the incident, with video footage showing a man allegedly from the consulate being kicked by protesters whilst on the floor.

"It's a very serious harassment for me, the consulate and China," he added.

Protester was 'kicked and punched'

The protester at the centre of the controversy, Bob Chan, fled Hong Kong to the UK for his safety last March, but explained how he thought he was going to die during the incident.

"I held onto the gate where I was kicked and punched. I could not hold on for long and was eventually pulled into the grounds of the consulate," he said.

"I'm shocked and hurt by this unprovoked attack. I'm shocked because I never thought something like this could happen in the UK."

But it did happen here, and it's now an issue on the agenda of the foreign secretary, James Cleverly.

It'll be down to police to decide if any criminal justice action is needed - and for the government to determine whether there are diplomatic consequences.

[Sheilbh]

This seems weird - Hu being made to leave the party congress while the media are there:
https://twitter.com/dansoncj/status/1583663702896967680?s=20&t=L7Y8cOtAQV_2UzT5ZcyfVA

Edit: This angle - set of cuts is even worse:
https://twitter.com/FridaGhitis/status/1583752083605684225?s=20&t=dn8OA4Q9YILMC2W2TDKH3w

[Zanza]

It shows that even the highest-ranking, most honored persons are not safe from the wrath of the dear leader. Very effective.

[Jacob]

Yeah I'm guessing Hu and his patronage network presented on of the larger centres of power within the CCP not beholden to Xi. So taking Hu out is a strong signal that those folks should get on the Xi wagon immediately.