Asia
Thai man gets 2-year term for calendar said to mock king
A Thai man was sentenced to two years in prison Tuesday for selling calendars featuring satirical cartoons of yellow ducks that a court said mocked the country’s monarch, a legal aid group said.
Bangkok’s Criminal Court ruled that the calendar for 2021 containing pictures of yellow ducks in poses resembled and ridiculed Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn, diminishing his reputation, the group Thai Lawyers for Human Rights said.
Yellow rubber ducks were at one point a tongue-in-cheek symbol of Thailand’s pro-democracy protest movement.
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Narathorn Chotmankongsin was charged under Thailand’s lese majeste law, which calls for three to 15 years’ imprisonment for anyone who defames, insults or threatens the king, the queen, the heir apparent or the regent.
The court declared that six illustrations in the calendar were made to mock the king.
The legal aid group said the 26-year-old defendant, whom it identified by the nickname Ton Mai, had his sentence reduced to two years because he cooperated with the court.
Human Rights Watch issued a statement Wednesday asking Thai authorities to “quash the sentence and promptly release Narathorn Chotmankongsin."
Also Read: 50 years of ties with Thailand: Dhaka calls for regional cohesion
“The prosecution and three-year sentence of a man for selling satirical calendars shows that Thai authorities are now trying to punish any activity they deem to be insulting the monarchy,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “This case sends a message to all Thais, and to the rest of the world, that Thailand is moving further away from — not closer to — becoming a rights-respecting democracy.”
The lese majeste law has long drawn criticism for its harshness and a provision allowing anyone to file a complaint, allowing its use for partisan political purposes. In recent years, it has become a focus of pro-democracy activists, who have called for it to be amended or abolished.
Two young female activists seeking its repeal and other judicial reforms are reportedly in critical condition after hunger striking for more than six weeks.
At least 233 people have been charged with lese majeste since November 2020 according to Thai Lawyers for Human Rights. Before that, prosecutions had been informally suspended, bThaut they were revived as the protest movement gained strength and made increasingly strong criticisms of the monarchy.
The demands to reform the monarchy have been controversial because by tradition, the institution has been considered untouchable and one of the main foundations of Thai nationalism.
Chinese minister warns of conflict unless US changes course
China's foreign minister has warned Washington of “conflict and confrontation” if it fails to change course in relations with Beijing, striking a combative tone amid conflicts over Taiwan, COVID-19 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Qin Gang's language appeared to defy hopes China's might abandon confrontational “wolf warrior” rhetoric. It followed an accusation by Chinese leader Xi Jinping that Western governments led by the United States were trying to encircle and suppress China.
Washington's China policy has “entirely deviated from the rational and sound track,” Qin said at a news conference Tuesday during annual meeting of China’s ceremonial legislature.
China's relations with Washington and Japan, India and other Asian neighbors have soured as Xi's government has pursued assertive policies abroad.
Also Read: US sees China propaganda efforts becoming more like Russia’s
“If the United States does not hit the brake, but continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent derailing and there surely will be conflict and confrontation,” Qin said in his first news conference since taking up his post last year. “Such competition is a reckless gamble, with the stakes being the fundamental interests of the two peoples and even the future of humanity.”
On Monday, Xi accused Washington of hurting China's development.
“Western countries led by the United States have implemented all-round containment, encirclement and suppression of China, which has brought unprecedented grave challenges to our nation’s development,” Xi was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.
In the face of that, China must “remain calm, maintain concentration, strive for progress while maintaining stability, take active actions, unite as one and dare to fight,” he said.
A State Department spokesman, Ned Price, said Washington wants to “coexist responsibly” in a global trade and political system and denied the U.S. government wants to suppress China.
“This is not about containing China. This is not about suppressing China. This is not about holding China back," Price said in Washington. “We want to have that constructive competition that is fair” and “doesn’t veer into that conflict.”
U.S. officials are increasingly worried about China's goals and the possibility of war over Taiwan, the self-ruled island democracy claimed by Beijing as part of its territory. Many in Washington have called for the U.S. government to make a bigger effort to counter Chinese influence abroad.
Concerns about Chinese spying on the U.S. and Beijing's influence campaigns there have drawn particular concern.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a planned visit to Beijing after Washington shot down a Chinese balloon suspected of being used for spying on U.S. territory. Its electronics and optical equipment are being analyzed by the FBI.
Then last week, Beijing reacted with indignation when U.S. officials raised the issue again of whether the COVID-19 outbreak that first was detected in southern China in late 2019 began with a leak from a Chinese laboratory. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused the U.S. of “politicizing the issue" in an attempt to discredit China.
The two countries have traded angry words over Taiwan as Xi's government tried to intimidate the island by firing missiles into the sea and flying fighter planes nearby.
Qin was ambassador to Washington until last year and in a previous stint as Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman was known for cutting condemnation of foreign critics.
On Tuesday, he criticized Washington for shooting down the balloon. He repeated claims that its appearance in U.S. skies was an accident.
“In this case the United States' perception and views of China are seriously distorted. It regards China as its primary rival and the most consequential geopolitical challenge," Qin said. “This is like the first button in a shirt being put wrong and the result is that the U.S.-China policy has entirely deviated from the rational and sound track."
Qin called Taiwan the first “red line” that must not be crossed.
China and Taiwan split in 1949 after a civil war. The mainland's Communist Party says the island is obliged to unite with China, by force if necessary.
Washington doesn't public support either unification or formal independence for Taiwan but is obligated by federal law to see that the island has the means to defend itself.
“The U.S. has unshakable responsibility for causing the Taiwan question,” Qin said.
He accused the U.S. government of “disrespecting China's sovereignty and territorial integrity,” by offering the island political backing and furnishing it with weapons in response to Beijing's threat to use force to bring it under Chinese control.
"Why does the U.S. ask China not to provide weapons to Russia, while it keeps selling arms to Taiwan?" Qin asked.
In Taipei, Taiwan's defense minister said the armed forces weren't seeking outright conflict with China's military, but nor would they back away in the event of Chinese aircraft or ships entering Taiwanese coastal seas or airspace.
“It is the nation’s armed forces’ duty to mount an appropriate response,” Chiu Kuo-cheng told legislators.
Beijing has also accused the West of “fanning the flames” by providing Ukraine with weaponry to fend off the Russian invasion. China says it is neutral but said before the invasion that it had a )“no-limits friendship” with Russia. It has refused to criticize Moscow’s attack or to call it an invasion.
A Chinese call for a cease-fire in Ukraine that has drawn praise from Russia but dismissals from the West has done nothing to lessen tensions. U.S. officials accuse China of considering providing weapons to Moscow for use in the war.
“Efforts for peace talks have been repeatedly undermined. There seems to be an invisible hand pushing for the protraction and escalation of the conflict and using the Ukraine crisis to serve a certain geopolitical agenda,” Qin said.
The annual meeting of the National People's Congress is due to endorse the appointment of a new premier and government chosen by the Communist Party in a once-a-decade change.
The meeting also is expected to name Xi to a third term in the ceremonial post of Chinese president after he broke with tradition and awarded himself a third five-year term as ruling party leader in October, possibly preparing to make himself leader for life.
Chinese ships cut internet of Taiwan's outlying islands
In the past month, bed and breakfast owner Chen Yu-lin had to tell his guests he couldn't provide them with the internet.
Others living on Matsu, one of Taiwan’s outlying islands closer to neighboring China, had to struggle with paying electricity bills, making a doctor's appointment or receiving a package.
For connecting to the outside world, Matsu's 14,000 residents rely on two submarine internet cables leading to Taiwan's main island. The first cable was severed by a Chinese fishing vessel some 50 kilometers (31 miles) out at sea. Six days later, on Feb. 8, a Chinese cargo ship cut the second, according to Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan’s largest service provider and owner of the cables.
The islanders in the meantime were forced to hook up to a limited internet via microwave radio transmission, a more mature technology, as backup. It means one could wait hours to send a text. Calls would drop, and videos were unwatchable.
“A lot of tourists would cancel their booking because there’s no internet. Nowadays, the internet plays a very large role in people’s lives,” said Chen, who lives in Beigan, one of Matsu’s main residential islands.
Also Read: US approves selling Taiwan munitions worth $619 million
Apart from disrupting lives, the loss of the internet cables, seemingly innocuous, has huge implications for national security.
As the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has shown, Russia has made taking out internet infrastructure one of the key parts of its strategy. Some experts suspect China may have cut the cables deliberately as part of its harassment of the self-ruled island it considers part of its territory, to be reunited by force if necessary.
China regularly sends warplanes and navy ships toward Taiwan as part of tactics to intimidate the island’s democratic government. Concerns about China's invasion, and Taiwan's preparedness to withstand it, have increased since the war in Ukraine.
The cables had been cut a total of 27 times in the past five years, according to Chunghwa Telecom.
Taiwan's coast guard gave chase to the fishing vessel that cut the first cable on Feb. 2, but it went back to Chinese waters, according to a person who was briefed on the incident and was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
So far, the Taiwanese government has not pointed a direct finger at Beijing.
“We can’t rule out that China destroyed these on purpose,” said Su Tzu-yun, a defense expert at the government think tank, Institute for National Defense and Security Research, citing a research that only China and Russia had the technical capabilities to do this. “Taiwan needs to invest more resources in repairing and protecting the cables.”
Internet cables, which can be anywhere between 20 millimeters to 30 millimeters (0.79 inches to 1.18 inches) wide, are encased in steel armor in shallow waters where they’re more likely to run into ships. Despite the protection, cables can get cut quite easily by ships and their anchors, or fishing boats using steel nets.
Even so, “this level of breakage is highly unusual for a cable, even in the shallow waters of the Taiwan Strait," said Geoff Huston, chief scientist at Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, a non-profit that manages and distributes Internet resources like IP addresses for the region.
Without a stable internet, coffee shop owner Chiu Sih-chi said seeing the doctor for his toddler son's cold became a hassle because first they had to visit the hospital to just get an appointment.
A breakfast shop owner said she lost thousands of dollars in the past few weeks because she usually takes online orders. Customers would come to her stall expecting the food to be ready when she hadn't even seen their messages.
Faced with unusual difficulties, Matsu residents came up with all sorts of ways to organize their lives.
One couple planned to deal with the coming peak season by having one person stay in Taiwan to access their reservation system and passing the information on to the other via text messages. Wife Lin Hsian-wen extended her vacation in Taiwan during the off-season when she heard the internet back home wasn't working and is returning to Matsu later in the week.
Some enterprising residents went across to the other shore to buy SIM cards from Chinese telecoms, though those only work well in the spots closer to the Chinese coast, which is only 10 kilometers (6.21 miles) away at its closest point.
Others, like the bed and breakfast owner Tsao Li-yu, would go to Chunghwa Telecom’s office to use a Wi-Fi hot spot the company had set up for locals to use in the meantime.
“I was going to work at (Chunghwa Telecom),” Tsao joked.
Chunghwa had set up microwave transmission as backup for the residents. Broadcast from Yangmingshan, a mountain just outside of Taipei, Taiwan's capital, the relay beams the signals some 200 kilometers (124 miles) across to Matsu. Since Sunday, speeds were noticeably faster, residents said.
Wang Chung Ming, the head of Lienchiang County, as the Matsu islands are officially called, said he and the legislator from Matsu went to Taipei shortly after the internet broke down to ask for help, and was told they would get priority in any future internet backup plans.
Taiwan's Ministry of Digital Affairs publicly asked for bids from low-Earth orbit satellite operators to provide the internet in a backup plan, after seeing Russia's cyberattacks in the invasion of Ukraine, the head of the ministry, Audrey Tang, told The Washington Post last fall. Yet, the plan remains stalled as a law in Taiwan requires the providers to be at least 51% owned by a domestic shareholder.
A spokesperson for the Digital Ministry directed questions about the progress of backup plans to the National Communications Commission. NCC said it will install a surveillance system for the undersea cables, while relying on microwave transmission as a backup option.
Many Pacific island nations, before they started using internet cables, depended on satellites — and some still do — as backup, said Jonathan Brewer, a telecommunications consultant from New Zealand who works across Asia and the Pacific.
There's also the question of cost. Repairing the cables is expensive, with an early estimate of $30 million New Taiwan Dollars ($1 million) for the work of the ships alone.
“The Chinese boats that damaged the cables should be held accountable and pay compensation for the highly expensive repairs,” said Wen Lii, the head of the Matsu chapter of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party.
Wang, the head of Lienchiang County, said he had mentioned the cables on a recent visit to China, where he had met an executive from China Mobile. They offered to send technicians to help. But compensation, he said, will require providing hard proof on who did it.
China's Taiwan Affairs Office did not respond to a faxed request for comment.
For now, the only thing residents can do is wait. The earliest cable-laying ships can come is April 20, because there are a limited number of vessels that can do the job.
A month without functional internet has its upsides too. Chen Yu-lin, the bed and breakfast owner, has felt more at peace.
It was hard in the first week, but Chen quickly got used to it. “From a life perspective, I think it’s much more comfortable because you get fewer calls,” he said, adding he was spending more time with his son, who usually is playing games online.
At a web cafe where off-duty soldiers were playing offline games, the effect was the same.
“Our relationships have become a bit closer," said one soldier who only gave his first name, Samuel. “Because normally when there’s internet, everyone keeps to themselves, and now we’re more connected."
Pakistan's ex-PM Imran Khan no-show in court, avoids arrest
Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan failed to appear before a court in Islamabad on Tuesday to answer charges in a graft case against him. The no-show was apparently a legal maneuver by the ex-premier to avoid arrest.
The hearing was set by Judge Zafar Iqbal and Khan was required to appear in person to respond to charges of selling state gifts while in office. The same judge last week issued an arrest warrant for Khan but only the government of Khan’s successor, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, can order the police to take him into custody.
However, Khan's legal team petitioned a top court on Tuesday, requesting the suspension of the arrest warrant for him and seeking more time to appear before judge Iqbal for a pre-trial hearing.
Also Read: Suicide bombing in southwestern Pakistan kills 10 policemen
After hearing arguments from Khan's lawyer and the prosecution, the chief justice of the Islamabad High Court, Aamer Farooq, suspended the arrest warrant and ordered Khan to appear before Iqbal on March 13. It was unclear whether Khan will comply with the latest court order.
The 70-year-old former cricket star and now opposition leader is embroiled in a string of court cases against him, including terrorism charges raised by police. He has so far avoided arrest and claims the legal imbroglio has been orchestrated by the government in an attempt to discredit him.
Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote in Parliament last April but has claimed, without providing evidence, that his removal was illegal and a conspiracy by Sharif and Washington. Both the United States and Pakistan's government have denied those allegations.
The charges in Tuesday's case accuse Khan of unlawfully selling state gifts he had received as premier and concealing the earnings from those sales from the country's election tribunal. In October, the tribunal disqualified him from holding public office for five years. Khan automatically lost his seat in Parliament because of the disqualification, which he has since challenged in court.
Mohsin Ranjha, a lawyer from the ruling Pakistan Muslim League party, criticized Khan for not appearing in court and said the former premier is mocking the legal system.
“Imran Khan only appears before the courts when he wants to,” said Ranja.
Fawad Chaudhry, a close aide of Khan and a senior leader in his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, claimed Khan could not travel to Islamabad for health reasons. He also said Khan had been threatened with violence. However, Khan was expected to lead an election rally in Lahore on Wednesday, despite threats to his life.
Khan has been living in the eastern city of Lahore since November, when he was shot in the leg by a gunman during a protest rally. Since then, he has only once traveled to Islamabad — last week — for court appearances in other cases against him.
His party has threatened nationwide protests if Khan is arrested while the former prime minister claims there are serious threats on his life. Since his ouster, he has been campaigning for early elections — another demand that Sharif dismisses, saying the vote would be held as scheduled later this year.
Pakistan's election tribunal on Tuesday issued arrest warrants for Khan, and Chaudhry, who is a top leader from his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, on charges of making insulting speeches against Sikandar Sultan Raja, who is the head of the elections overseeing body. The tribunal has asked police to produce Khan and Chaudhry before it on March 14.
Student gets 8 years in prison for criticizing Ukraine war
A court in Moscow sentenced a student activist to 8 1/2 years in prison for social media posts criticizing Russia’s war in Ukraine, the latest step in a sweeping crackdown on dissent unleashed by the Kremlin.
Dmitry Ivanov, 23, was convicted of spreading false information about the Russian army, which was made a criminal offense under a new law that Russian lawmakers rubber-stamped a week after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine.
The legislation has been used to prosecute individuals who deviate from the government’s official narrative of the conflict that the Kremlin insists on calling “a special military operation.”
Prominent opposition politicians, such as Ilya Yashin, who is serving an 8 1/2 prison term, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is in jail awaiting trial, also were charged with spreading false information about the military.
Also Read: A year into Ukraine war, bodies dug up in once occupied town
Ivanov was charged over a number of social media posts in his Telegram channel that called Russia’s campaign in Ukraine a “war” and talked about Russian forces attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, committing war crimes in the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha and Irpin, and targeting the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Most were reposts from other sources.
At the time of his April 2022 arrest, Ivanov was a student at Lomonosov Moscow State University, one of Russia’s top universities also known as the MSU. He ran a popular Telegram channel called Protest MSU, which was launched in 2018 to cover student protests against the construction next to the university’s main building of a fan zone for the Russia-hosted World Cup soccer tournament.
Ivanov initially was jailed for 10 days on the charge of organizing an unauthorized rally. Authorities jailed him again on the same charge for 25 days, and then he was arrested over the social media posts.
Also Read: Russians mark Ukraine war anniversary with flowers, arrests
While in custody, the student missed his final exams and failed to submit his final dissertation. He was expelled from the university.
During Ivanov’s trial, in an unusual twist the court approved a defense request to subpoena Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov and Russia’s ambassador to the U.N., Vasily Nebenzya.
Ivanov’s lawyers argued that since the authorities had used the officials’ statements to prove that Ivanov’s social media posts contained false information, they should be deposed in court.
However, neither of the three complied with the subpoenas to appear in court.
In his final address to the court last week, Ivanov rejected the charges against him as “looking absurd” and said the crime he was prosecuted for “shouldn’t exist at all.”
“The investigation, in trying to accuse me of spreading ‘fakes,’ has built one big fake (itself). Literally the entire indictment, from the first to the very last word, contradicts the reality,” Ivanov said. “I, in the meantime, stand by every word I wrote a year ago.”
5th body found in Malaysia floods; over 40,000 displaced
Malaysian police have found the body of a young woman trapped in a car that was swept away by rushing waters, the fifth death of seasonal floods that have also forced more than 43,000 people to flee their homes.
Police said in a statement Monday that a 23-year-old woman reported missing was believed to be driving to work earlier in the day on a flooded road in southern Johor state when her car was washed away. Rescuers retrieved the car hours later and found her body.
A man driving to work in a palm oil plantation in Johor was similarly found dead recently after rescuers retrieved his car from floodwaters. Three older people also drowned.
Johor, the country’s second-largest state bordering Singapore with four million people, is the worst affected with over 40,000 evacuated to schools and community centers. The number of evacuees has dropped from over 50,000 a few days ago.
Several other states including remote areas on Borneo island were also hit.
Also Read: Study: 15 million people live under threat of glacial floods
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim visited flood victims Sunday in Johor and vowed to speed up flood mitigation projects in the state. “This matter cannot be delayed and should be dealt with more seriously so that (flooding) does not happen again,” he tweeted.
The Meteorological Department has said the country was experiencing its sixth episode of continuous heavy rain from the annual monsoon season that started in November. In December, tens of thousands of people were also evacuated due to flooding.
Images posted by police in Johor showed roads and homes disappearing under muddy waters, with only rooftops visible.
Further rain and storms are predicted Tuesday in parts of Johor and eastern Malaysian states on Borneo, which could cause more flash floods. Authorities also warned waters in over a dozen rivers nationwide have reached dangerous levels.
Qatar’s top diplomat is sworn in as new prime minister
Qatar’s top diplomat was sworn in as the country’s prime minister on Tuesday, replacing another member of the ruling family who had held the post since 2020, state news reported.
The Qatar News Agency says Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani was sworn in as the new head of government, without providing further details.
Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, appoints the holders of top offices, usually from members of the ruling family. As in other Gulf Arab countries, politics is largely confined to the ruling family and developments are rarely aired in public.
Sheikh Mohammed has served as foreign minister since 2016 and was the public face of Qatar as it navigated a 3 1/2-year economic boycott by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt that only came to an end in January 2021.
He replaces Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani, who had served as prime minister and interior minister — responsible for domestic security — since 2020. He was replaced as interior minister on Tuesday by Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.
Gas-rich Qatar, one of the wealthiest countries on earth, supported Islamist groups across the region during and after the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, bringing it into conflict with its Gulf Arab neighbors, who view such groups as a threat to hereditary rule.
Relations have improved over the last two years. The rulers of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt visited Qatar as it hosted soccer’s World Cup last year.
Sri Lanka leader says IMF deal imminent after China’s pledge
Sri Lanka’s president said Tuesday that China has given crucial debt restructuring assurances that mean the bankrupt Indian Ocean nation could get its $2.9 billion bailout package approved soon.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe told Parliament that a letter from China’s EXIM bank with the necessary assurances was received on Monday night and immediately he and the Central Bank governor sent a letter of intent to the International Monetary Fund for the final approval.
“Now we have done our part, and I expect the IMF will do its share by the end of this month, by the third or fourth week,” Wickremesinghe said.
China owns about 10% of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt, which exceeds $51 billion. Its delayed assurances were seen as the last hurdle in securing the bailout deal after India and other creditors gave early pledges.
Wickremesinghe said he expects financial assistance from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank to start coming soon after the IMF deal is reached.
He said, however, that difficult economic reforms needed to be carried out as agreed with the IMF and Sri Lanka can’t afford to sidestep from them as it has done with 16 past agreements.
“We must stress one fact: We don’t repay foreign debt at the moment, we only repay loans to the multilateral financial institutions. If we break the agreement with the IMF, we will be compelled to repay loans to foreign countries and private banks,” Wickremesinghe said.
Read more: IMF team due in Dhaka to discuss financial sector reform
“We have approximately $ 6-7 billion to repay every year until 2029. We don’t have foreign currency to do that, and therefore it is imperative that the IMF keeps engaging with our creditors on the agreements reached on debt sustainability.”
Wickremesinghe did not reveal what has been agreed with the IMF but said he will present details before Parliament for approval. He also warned he will crush any street protests trying to derail reform efforts.
Professionals and workers in many other sectors have been protesting for months over sharp increases in electricity charges and income taxes to strengthen state revenue, a prerequisite for the IMF package. Opposition parties have been demanding elections for village and town councils that were postponed by authorities citing a lack of funds.
Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis caused severe shortage of food, medicine, fuel, cooking gas and electricity last year, leading to angry street protests that forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee from the country and resign.
The economy has shown signs of improvement since Wickremesinghe took over as president last July with shortages reduced, power cuts ended and the Sri Lankan rupee starting to strengthen.
US sees China propaganda efforts becoming more like Russia’s
China has long been seen by the U.S. as a prolific source of anti-American propaganda but less aggressive in its influence operations than Russia, which has used cyberattacks and covert operations to disrupt U.S. elections and denigrate rivals.
But many in Washington now think China is increasingly adopting tactics associated with Russia — and there’s growing concern the U.S. isn’t doing enough to respond.
U.S. officials and outside experts cite recent examples of China-linked actors generating false news reports with artificial intelligence and posting large volumes of denigrating social media posts. While many of the discovered efforts are amateurish, experts think they signal an apparent willingness from Beijing to try more influence campaigns as part of a broader embrace of covert operations, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.
“To us, the attempt is what stands out,” one U.S. intelligence official said.
An increasingly pessimistic mood in Washington about Beijing’s expansive political and economic goals and the possibility of war over Taiwan is driving calls for the U.S. to make a stronger effort to counter Chinese influence abroad.
Lawmakers and officials are particularly concerned about countries that comprise the “Global South” in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where both the U.S. and China have huge economic and political interests. Many of those countries have populations that support both sides — what an official called “swing states” in the narrative battle.
“This should be a whole of government effort,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, who is the top Democrat on a newly formed House committee focusing on the Chinese Communist Party.
“The CCP is going around the world bad-mouthing the U.S., bad-mouthing our institutions, bad-mouthing our form of government,” Krishnamoorthi said in an interview. “We have to counter this because ultimately it’s not in the best interests of the United States.”
China’s embassy in Washington said in a statement that Beijing “opposes the fabrication and dissemination of false information” and blamed the U.S. in turn for making social media “into its tool to manipulate international public opinion and its weapon to stigmatize and demonize other countries.”
“On this issue, it is for the U.S. side to reflect on itself and stop shouting ‘catch a thief,’” said embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu.
Chinese state media and affiliated channels, as well as social media influencers with vast followings, routinely spread ideas that the U.S. labels exaggerated, false or misleading. In recent weeks, China’s foreign ministry has called attention to the train derailment that released toxic chemicals in Ohio as well as allegations the U.S. may have sabotaged pipelines used to transport Russian gas.
The Biden administration has strongly rejected the allegations about the Nord Stream pipelines and defended its response in Ohio.
China has long been seen as less willing than Russia to take provocative steps that could be exposed and more concerned about being publicly blamed. U.S. intelligence judged that Russia tried to support Donald Trump in the last two presidential elections, while China in 2020 considered but did not try to influence the election.
But some U.S. officials believe China is now undertaking or considering operations it would not have in the past, according to the two people familiar with the matter. That’s partly due to fears in Beijing that they are losing a battle of narratives in many countries, one of the people said.
Officials noted public examples identified in recent weeks by groups that track disinformation and influence.
The research firm Graphika recently identified AI-generated videos that it linked to a pro-Chinese influence operation. One video attacked the U.S. approach to stopping gun violence; another “stressed the importance of China-U.S. cooperation for the recovery of the global economy,” according to Graphika. And threat analysts at Google said they disrupted more than 50,000 instances of posts and other activity last year linked to a pro-China influence operation known as “Dragonbridge.”
The AI-generated videos are clearly fictitious, and Graphika said none of them had more than 300 views. Most Dragonbridge posts, Google said, also reached a tiny audience.
The U.S. intelligence official said Chinese tradecraft on social media was “uneven” and less sophisticated than what’s normally associated with the Kremlin. But that tradecraft — both in terms of social media operations and efforts to hide any linkage to Beijing — can be expected to improve over time and with practice, the official said.
And there are longstanding concerns in Washington about TikTok, the viral video-sharing app whose U.S. operations are currently undergoing a national security review. There’s no public evidence that Beijing has used its sweeping powers over businesses in China to direct content on the app or launch government-sanctioned influence operations, but there’s a belief that China could do so quickly enough not to be caught or stopped.
China is increasingly viewed unfavorably in the U.S., much of Europe, Australia, South Korea and Japan, according to Pew Research Center data published last year.
But in other countries in Asia as well as in much of Africa and Latin America, there are more positive attitudes about the Chinese government, often driven by Beijing’s economic investments and offers of infrastructure and security assistance.
Last year’s Africa Youth Survey, which was composed of 4,500 interviews of 18- to 24-year-olds in 15 countries, found that 76% of respondents believed China had a positive influence in their country. Of the U.S., 72% said they believed American influence was positive.
In the event of a war over U.S.-backed Taiwan, experts believe shaping global attitudes and narratives will be key in ensuring military and diplomatic support for either side.
Rep. Mike Gallagher, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the new congressional committee on China, said in a statement after recently visiting Taiwan that Chinese influence operations are part of a broader strategy of “cognitive warfare.” He added that the committee would “work to expose the truth about the (Chinese Communist Party’s) pattern of aggression against America and our friends.”
The State Department’s Global Engagement Center is charged with countering Chinese messaging outside of both the U.S. and China. Speaking on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the department, a State Department official responded to concerns that the U.S. doesn’t directly counter many lines of attack from Beijing.
“There was a decision made that we were not going to get in the business of playing whack-a-mole with specific lines of Chinese messaging,” the official said. “Frankly, there’s just too much of it. It would be like trying to put your finger in the dam to stop the leak.”
The State Department instead tries to fund programs exposing facts and ideas that China wants to suppress. The Global Engagement Center has funded third-party research of China’s crackdown in Xinjiang province against Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups. Beijing has long tried to frame its operations in Xinjiang as countering terrorism and radicalism in the face of international criticism about its network of detention camps and its restrictions on movement and religious expression in the province.
State has also funded training for investigative journalists in countries that have received Chinese investment and a project that tracked Chinese dam construction along the Mekong River, which is a key source of water for Southeast Asian countries downstream from China.
The U.S. also uses direct investment as a tool for countering Chinese influence, though critics have questioned whether some funded programs are effective.
In one instance, the U.S. Agency for International Development last year proposed using funding from an annual fund for countering Chinese influence to support bakeries in Tunisia. According to two other people familiar with the matter, officials wanted to buy software for bakery owners to help them determine which of their products were most marketable. The people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal agency deliberations.
In a statement, USAID said the Tunisia program was intended to “create sustainable demand-driven jobs” and promote Western software over Chinese programs that “might be easily accessible” but “less efficient.”
“We know that our grants-based assistance can go even further when put together with public and private investments, which far outstrip the resources that the PRC has brought to the table to date,” the statement said.
Residents say Myanmar army killed 17 people in 2 villages
Soldiers in Myanmar rampaged through several villages, raping, beheading and killing at least 17 people, residents said, in the latest of what critics of the ruling military say are a series of war crimes since the army seized power two years ago.
The bodies of 17 people were recovered last week in the villages of Nyaung Yin and Tar Taing — also called Tatai — in Sagaing region in central Myanmar, according to members of the anti-government resistance and a resident who lost his wife. They said the victims had been detained by the military and in some cases appeared to have been tortured before being killed.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military’s February 2021 seizure of power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi prompted nationwide peaceful protests that security forces suppressed with deadly force. The violence triggered widespread armed resistance, which has since turned into what some U.N. experts have characterized as a civil war.
The army has been conducting major offensives in the countryside, including burning villages and driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. It has faced some of its toughest resistance in Sagaing, in Myanmar’s historic heartland.
The soldiers involved in last week’s attacks were in a group of more than 90 who were brought to the area by five helicopters on Feb. 23, said local leaders of the pro-democracy People’s Defense Forces and independent Myanmar media.
They said the bodies of 14 people, including three women, were found Thursday on a small island in a river in Nyaung Yin. Three more male victims were found in Tar Taing, including two members of the local resistance. One of the two was dismembered, with his head cut off, they said.
The neighboring villages are about 45 kilometers (28 miles) west of the major city of Mandalay.
Tar Taing resident Moe Kyaw, 42, survived the attack but said his 39-year-old wife, Pan Thwal, and 18-year-old nephew were among those killed. Contacted by phone, he said Friday they were among 70 villagers detained in the middle of the night last Wednesday by soldiers who shot into the air as they herded their captives from their homes to the local Buddhist monastery.
Moe Kyaw said the soldiers stole beer and other items from his aunt’s small shop, and as they beat her, he fled for his life, escaping two soldiers who shot at him.
He said his wife and other villagers were tortured at the monastery and then taken away from the village, apparently as hostages against any attack. He said his wife and two other women were beaten, raped and shot dead on Thursday by the soldiers, who also took his spouse’s earrings, His two sons, 9 and 11 years old, were released when the soldiers departed, he said.
Moe Kyaw did not explain how he knew the details about his wife’s treatment.
Myanmar’s underground National Unity Government — the main organization opposed to military rule that describes itself as the country’s legitimate government — said in an online news conference on Monday that the soldiers were from the 99th Light Infantry Division based in Mandalay Region.
A leader of a Sagaing resistance group called the Demon King Defense Force said his group attacked the better-armed government troops on Wednesday in a failed effort to rescue the detained villagers.
When they went Thursday morning to the small island where the soldiers had taken about 20 villagers they found 14 bodies in three spots, said the resistance leader, who asked not to be identified because of fear of reprisals by the military.
Acknowledging that he had not seen the killings, he said he also believed the women had been raped.
In an earlier incident apparently involving the same army unit, two boys aged 12 and 13 assisting the People’s Defense Force were captured by government troops on Feb. 26 and beheaded after being forced to show the locations of their camps, according to independent Myanmar media. Photos said to be of their bodies, found at Kan Daw village, about 12 kilometers (7 miles) northwest of Tar Taing, were circulated on social media.
A separate group, the Sadaung Lighting People’s Defense Force, has said that two of its older teenage members were also killed and beheaded in fighting at Kan Daw on the same day.
The military government has not responded to the allegations. In the past, it has denied documented abuses and said that casualties occurred in the course of fighting against armed anti-government guerrillas. Online media supportive of the military government have made the same claim about the recent incidents in Sagaing or suggested that they were the result of factional fighting within the resistance.
Myanmar’s military has long been accused of serious human rights violations, most notably in the western state of Rakhine. International courts are considering whether it committed genocide there in a brutal 2017 counterinsurgency campaign that caused more than 700,000 members of the Muslim Rohingya minority to flee to neighboring Bangladesh for safety.
Last week, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk accused the ruling generals of carrying out “a scorched earth policy in an attempt to stamp out opposition.”
His agency said credible sources have verified the deaths of at least 2,940 civilians and 17,572 arrests by the military and its allies since the 2021 takeover.