• Indonesia is preparing to impose tariffs and use other means to protect its textile industry from imports from China, the latest in a series of countries and blocs such as the US and the European Union, which are responding to the flood of goods out of the world’s largest manufacturing nation.

• After the government in Jakarta rolled back some import restrictions earlier this year, protests from thousands of textile workers are pushing the government to introduce new curbs. Indonesia imported almost 29,000 tons of imports of woven fabrics made from artificial filament yarn last year. Goods from China accounted for most of that.

• It’s unclear whether the government is considering imposing only safeguard duties or also other tariffs. "We have actually provided many fiscal instruments to protect the textile industry, including safeguard duties and anti-dumping duties, which are usually related to unfair trade that harm the domestic industry,” said Febrio Kacaribu, head of fiscal policy agency at the finance ministry.

• Indonesia has maintained an overall trade surplus for the last four years. However, the surplus with China flipped to a deficit in May, driven by imports of machinery and plastic goods.

• Indonesia is preparing to impose tariffs and use other means to protect its textile industry from imports from China, the latest in a series of countries and blocs such as the US and the European Union, which are responding to the flood of goods out of the world’s largest manufacturing nation.

• After the government in Jakarta rolled back some import restrictions earlier this year, protests from thousands of textile workers are pushing the government to introduce new curbs. Indonesia imported almost 29,000 tons of imports of woven fabrics made from artificial filament yarn last year. Goods from China accounted for most of that.

• It’s unclear whether the government is considering imposing only safeguard duties or also other tariffs. "We have actually provided many fiscal instruments to protect the textile industry, including safeguard duties and anti-dumping duties, which are usually related to unfair trade that harm the domestic industry,” said Febrio Kacaribu, head of fiscal policy agency at the finance ministry.

• Indonesia has maintained an overall trade surplus for the last four years. However, the surplus with China flipped to a deficit in May, driven by imports of machinery and plastic goods.

• Indonesia is preparing to impose tariffs and use other means to protect its textile industry from imports from China, the latest in a series of countries and blocs such as the US and the European Union, which are responding to the flood of goods out of the world’s largest manufacturing nation.

• After the government in Jakarta rolled back some import restrictions earlier this year, protests from thousands of textile workers are pushing the government to introduce new curbs. Indonesia imported almost 29,000 tons of imports of woven fabrics made from artificial filament yarn last year. Goods from China accounted for most of that.

• It’s unclear whether the government is considering imposing only safeguard duties or also other tariffs. "We have actually provided many fiscal instruments to protect the textile industry, including safeguard duties and anti-dumping duties, which are usually related to unfair trade that harm the domestic industry,” said Febrio Kacaribu, head of fiscal policy agency at the finance ministry.

• Indonesia has maintained an overall trade surplus for the last four years. However, the surplus with China flipped to a deficit in May, driven by imports of machinery and plastic goods.

Archived version

• Nepal has shied away from signing a plan to implement China’s ambitious Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) in the Himalayan nation. Resisting immense pressure from Beijing, Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal refused to greenlight the signing that would have paved the way for the implementation of nine mega and more than a dozen major BRI projects in Nepal.

• That’s because soon after Nepal signed the BRI framework agreement in May 2017, India launched a massive but silent campaign to educate and explain Nepal’s political leadership, economists, bureaucrats, diplomats, academia, media and civil society leaders the pitfalls of China’s BRI to them, making Nepal’s top politicians and others fully aware of China’s sinister plan to ensnare nations into a debt trap through the BRI.

• PM Deuba eventualky told China that Nepal would only agree to a small component of the cost of BRI projects in the form of loans. However, the interest on such loans should not be more than what multilateral lending agencies like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) charge for their loans (one per cent per annum).

• This was not acceptable to China which charges more than two per cent on the loans it gives to other countries to finance BRI projects. Also, China insists on the contracts for these projects being awarded only to Chinese companies and refuses to do away with or water down penalty clauses (in case of failure to repay the loans on time).

What also worked against China was Nepal’s experience with the Pokhara International Airport which cost US $ 305 million. China’s Exim Bank provided a loan of about US $ 215 million at 2 per cent interest. Chinese firms were awarded contracts for construction and technical works.

Allegations of shoddy construction, inflated costs and mismanagement by the Chinese have fuelled public anger against China in Nepal. The airport has turned into a huge liability (read this) since no commercial and scheduled flights are operating from there.

Archived version

• Nepal has shied away from signing a plan to implement China’s ambitious Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) in the Himalayan nation. Resisting immense pressure from Beijing, Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal refused to greenlight the signing that would have paved the way for the implementation of nine mega and more than a dozen major BRI projects in Nepal.

• That’s because soon after Nepal signed the BRI framework agreement in May 2017, India launched a massive but silent campaign to educate and explain Nepal’s political leadership, economists, bureaucrats, diplomats, academia, media and civil society leaders the pitfalls of China’s BRI to them, making Nepal’s top politicians and others fully aware of China’s sinister plan to ensnare nations into a debt trap through the BRI.

• PM Deuba eventualky told China that Nepal would only agree to a small component of the cost of BRI projects in the form of loans. However, the interest on such loans should not be more than what multilateral lending agencies like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) charge for their loans (one per cent per annum).

• This was not acceptable to China which charges more than two per cent on the loans it gives to other countries to finance BRI projects. Also, China insists on the contracts for these projects being awarded only to Chinese companies and refuses to do away with or water down penalty clauses (in case of failure to repay the loans on time).

What also worked against China was Nepal’s experience with the Pokhara International Airport which cost US $ 305 million. China’s Exim Bank provided a loan of about US $ 215 million at 2 per cent interest. Chinese firms were awarded contracts for construction and technical works.

Allegations of shoddy construction, inflated costs and mismanagement by the Chinese have fuelled public anger against China in Nepal. The airport has turned into a huge liability (read this) since no commercial and scheduled flights are operating from there.

Archived version

• Nepal has shied away from signing a plan to implement China’s ambitious Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) in the Himalayan nation. Resisting immense pressure from Beijing, Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal refused to greenlight the signing that would have paved the way for the implementation of nine mega and more than a dozen major BRI projects in Nepal.

• That’s because soon after Nepal signed the BRI framework agreement in May 2017, India launched a massive but silent campaign to educate and explain Nepal’s political leadership, economists, bureaucrats, diplomats, academia, media and civil society leaders the pitfalls of China’s BRI to them, making Nepal’s top politicians and others fully aware of China’s sinister plan to ensnare nations into a debt trap through the BRI.

• PM Deuba eventually told China that Nepal would only agree to a small component of the cost of BRI projects in the form of loans. However, the interest on such loans should not be more than what multilateral lending agencies like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) charge for their loans (one per cent per annum).

• This was not acceptable to China which charges more than two per cent on the loans it gives to other countries to finance BRI projects. Also, China insists on the contracts for these projects being awarded only to Chinese companies and refuses to do away with or water down penalty clauses (in case of failure to repay the loans on time).

What also worked against China was Nepal’s experience with the Pokhara International Airport which cost US $ 305 million. China’s Exim Bank provided a loan of about US $ 215 million at 2 per cent interest. Chinese firms were awarded contracts for construction and technical works.

Allegations of shoddy construction, inflated costs and mismanagement by the Chinese have fuelled public anger against China in Nepal. The airport has turned into a huge liability (read this) since no commercial and scheduled flights are operating from there.

Archived version

Emails sent to a Chinese dissident living in the Netherlands over his petition for asylum for his family members detained last year in Thailand were apparently fake, Dutch authorities said Friday.

The announcement was the first public statement from officials in the Netherlands in the unusual case of Gao Zhi, whose family members were stranded for months at a Thai immigration center while en route to the Netherlands and allegedly accused of sending bomb threats.

Based on emails he said he received, Gao at the time alleged that the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service had revoked his family’s visas, which would have allowed them to travel to the Netherlands.

He showed purported screenshots of the emails to the media, including one that ultimately said visas for his family members were revoked as they were being investigated for bomb threats made in Thailand. It remains unclear who sent the emails.

Gao declined to forward the emails to The Associated Press at the time, saying he feared this could jeopardize his family’s asylum case. The AP could not verify the authenticity of his claims.

On Friday, Britt Enthoven, a spokesperson for the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service, said the “message indeed doesn’t seem to be from” the service.

“I cannot give you any further information about the message,” Enthoven said.

Gao, though critical of the Chinese government online, had never been an activist back home. But his story at the time raised concerns that Chinese authorities may have made the bomb threats in the name of Gao’s family to try and control his political activities abroad.

Gao’s wife and two children were traveling to the Netherlands to join him in June and July last year, and transiting through Thailand. His wife, Liu Fengling, and daughter Gao Han were detained by Thai police for overstaying their visitors visa. His son was not detained.

A spokesperson for the Royal Thai police at the time did not respond to AP queries about the case.

Gao turned to public advocacy to try and get his family out, and was helped by Wang Jingyu, another Chinese dissident living in the Netherlands who had gained prominence after being detained in Dubai for questioning the Chinese death toll figures in the 2020 border clashes with Indian soldiers in the Karakoram mountains.

Gao’s family was released last October, but only managed to travel to the Netherlands with a proper visa earlier this month, he said.

Separately, Gao has since claimed that Wang defrauded him of thousands of dollars while allegedly trying to help him during this process — claims that Wang dismissed as “nonsense” in a message to the AP.

Bob Fu, a U.S.-based activist who runs ChinaAid, a Christian rights organization, and who helped Wang when he was detained in Dubai, said that the group was forced to pay thousands of dollars of phone bills Wang allegedly made while in the Netherlands.

Archived link

Original article behind paywall

China has long sought to discredit Chinese critics abroad, but targeting a 16-year daughter of a Chinese dissident in the United States by falsely portraying her as a drug user, an arsonist and a prostitute, is an new escalation, one security expert says.

• U.S. Federal law prohibits severe online harassment or threats, but that appears to be no deterrent to China’s efforts.

• "They’re exporting their repression efforts and human rights abuses — targeting, threatening and harassing those who dare question their legitimacy or authority even outside China, including right here in the U.S.,” Christopher A. Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told the American Bar Association in Washington in April.

• Mr. Wray said China was exerting “intense, almost Mafia-style pressure” to try to silence dissidents now living legally in the United States, including activities online and off, like posting fliers near their homes.

• Deng Yuwen, a prominent Chinese writer who now lives in exile in the suburbs of Philadelphia in the U.S., has regularly criticized China and its authoritarian leader, Xi Jinping. China’s reaction of late has been severe, with crude and ominously personal attacks online.

• A covert propaganda network linked to the country’s security services has barraged not just Mr. Deng but also his teenage daughter with sexually suggestive and threatening posts on popular social media platforms, according to researchers at both Clemson University and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.

• The content, posted by users with fake identities, has appeared in replies to Mr. Deng’s posts on X, the social platform, as well as the accounts of public schools in their community, where the daughter, who is 16, has been falsely portrayed as a drug user, an arsonist and a prostitute.

• Vulgar comments targeting the girl have also shown up on community pages on Facebook and even sites like TripAdvisor; Patch, a community news platform; and Niche, a website that helps parents choose schools, according to the researchers. As soon as these posts are deleted, Chinese trolls switch to new accounts to leave attacking text and language again.

• The harassment fits a pattern of online intimidation that has raised alarms in many countries where China’s attacks have become increasingly brazen. The campaign has included thousands of posts the researchers have linked to a network of social media accounts known as Spamouflage or Dragonbridge, an arm of the country’s vast propaganda apparatus.

• China has long sought to discredit Chinese critics, but targeting a teenager in the United States is an escalation, said Darren Linvill, a founder of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson, whose researchers documented the campaign against Mr. Deng.

• Federal law prohibits severe online harassment or threats, but that appears to be no deterrent to China’s efforts.

Here is the original link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgjyHwQOUoo

"Last night in Donald Trump's first debate appearance since January 6th, the debate moderators did not ask him what the January 6th committee very much wanted to ask him, what were you doing for those 187 minutes?"

"Instead ... the very first question to Donald Trump was:"

CNN: You want to impose a 10% tariff on all goods coming into the U.S. How will you ensure that that doesn't drive prices even higher?'

TRUMP: It's not going to drive them higher.

Archived version

This is the result of an investigation by DoubleThink Lab, a research organization in Taiwan.

Beijing assaults Taiwan with a nonstop barrage of conspiracy theories and lies to undermine people’s faith in democracy — and China’s efforts are getting more sophisticated. Taiwan must do even more to fight back, DoubleThink Lab concludes.

Undermining the ruling Democratic Progressive Party DPP’s electoral chances is only one of the objectives of the CCP’s information-manipulation efforts. There are at least three others:

1. “Selling” the CCP’s governance model to make the prospect of unification more attractive.
2. Inducing anxiety about Taiwan’s strategic situation and making resistance seem futile by flexing the asymmetry in military power with China and eroding faith that Taiwan’s allies will come to its aid.
3. Unraveling the fabric of Taiwan’s democracy by undermining people’s attachment to the status quo, driving polarization, and chipping away at trust in institutions and government.

[...] the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been making significant progress on two of its main objectives. But the news isn’t all bad.

The CCP has utterly failed to sell Taiwanese voters on its governance model. [...] the majority of people in Taiwan identify as Taiwanese, as opposed to Chinese or both Taiwanese and Chinese, and that they overwhelmingly prefer Taiwan’s independent status quo. Furthermore, less than 10 percent view China as trustworthy. Even the Kuomintang (KMT, or Chinese Nationalist Party), Taiwan’s former authoritarian ruling party, took steps to distance itself from Beijing before the election.

Why did the CCP fail in attracting Taiwanese voters to its governance model? No doubt certain hard realities of recent years were simply too difficult to overcome: The CCP government locked covid patients in their apartments and left them to die in building fires; it committed horrific human-rights violations against China’s Uyghur minority and crushed civil society in Hong Kong; and it persistently lobs military threats and engages in diplomatic bullying against Taiwan and others, all while the Chinese economy continues to slide. This makes for a tough sell.

But that is no cause for complacency. CCP-controlled social-media platforms may offer a new avenue for appealing to Taiwanese citizens. Research has correlated TikTok use with increased pro-China views among apolitical audiences and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) supporters, who had previously been independent or swing voters. [...] Additionally, Doublethink’s research on WeChat influencers found that instructions provided to apolitical-content creators in Taiwan trying to sell products to China advise that 10 percent of their feeds should consist of pro-unification content for algorithmic optimization. We believe that the CCP is using its control of lucrative social-media algorithms to encourage influencers to slip what is essentially propaganda into otherwise apolitical content. [...] The CCP’s information-manipulation narratives strike at Taiwan’s democracy in numerous ways: Narratives about government corruption undermine faith in democracy as a system that delivers for society; narratives about election fraud cast doubt on electoral processes and democracy’s legitimacy; and emotionally manipulative content helps to polarize society. Polarization, in turn, can undermine the legislative process — encouraging lawmakers to grandstand for partisan audiences, close space for discussion and concessions, and ride roughshod over democratic processes. [...] In the aggregate, Taiwan’s voters report satisfaction with democracy and trust in electoral processes. [...] The polarization that Taiwan is now seeing has been driven in part by long-running CCP information-manipulation campaigns pushing disinformation and conspiracy theories about government corruption and antidemocratic behavior. [...] [Taiwan's] resilience has rightly been credited to a tireless and dynamic whole-of-society response. Doublethink Lab commissioned an international-elections expert to develop a model capturing the key components of this approach. The result is expressed with the acronym “POWER”: Taiwan’s response is purpose driven, with a diverse range of citizens rallying around an existential threat; organic, driven from the bottom-up and decentralized [...]

• Bing’s translation and search engine services in China censor more extensively than Chinese competitors’ services do, according to new research.
• Microsoft has maintained its heavy censorship of China-based services despite growing scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers.
• Chinese tech firms are motivated to censor less severely, experts say.

Bing’s censorship rules in China are so stringent that even mentioning President Xi Jinping leads to a complete block of translation results, according to new research by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab that has been shared exclusively with Rest of World.

The institute found that Microsoft censors its Bing translation results more than top Chinese services, including Baidu Translate and Tencent Machine Translation. Bing became the only major foreign translation and search engine service available in China after Google withdrew from the Chinese market in 2010.

“If you try to translate five paragraphs of text, and two sentences contain a mention of Xi, Bing’s competitors in China would delete those two sentences and translate the rest. In our testing, Bing always censors the entire output. You get a blank. It is more extreme,” Jeffrey Knockel, senior research associate at Citizen Lab, told Rest of World.

Temu—the Chinese shopping app that has rapidly grown so popular in the US that even Amazon is reportedly trying to copy it—is "dangerous malware" that's secretly monetizing a broad swath of unauthorized user data, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin alleged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

Griffin cited research and media reports exposing Temu's allegedly nefarious design, which "purposely" allows Temu to "gain unrestricted access to a user's phone operating system, including, but not limited to, a user's camera, specific location, contacts, text messages, documents, and other applications."

"Temu is designed to make this expansive access undetected, even by sophisticated users," Griffin's complaint said. "Once installed, Temu can recompile itself and change properties, including overriding the data privacy settings users believe they have in place."