US State Department: US – China Talks ‘Candid’
Just wondering what the US State Department means by ‘candid’ discussions – did they, for instance, talk about US involvement in Hong Kong’s student movements and helping to strategize the current ‘Occupy Central’ trouble-making. A number of posts on this blog point to a plethora of US activities in cahoots with anti-mainland forces in the territory, not even to mention the longstanding shenanigans of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and other organizations.
But, it appears everyone is happy that the talks, a primer for Obama’s side meeting with Xi at the APEC summit in Beijing next month, were “unprecedented and substantial”.
US Secretary of State John Kerry and a top Chinese official had “candid exchanges” over several contentious issues dogging relations between Washington and Beijing, an American diplomat said.
The pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, human rights, cyberspying and disputes in the South China Sea — all areas where the two nations have clashed — were on the weighty agenda in talks between Kerry and visiting Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi.
Yang’s trip to Kerry’s hometown of Boston and the two days of talks on Friday and Saturday were also aimed at paving the ground for US President Barack Obama’s trip to China next month.
A senior State Department official hailed the talks — which took place in what was described as an unusually informal atmosphere — as “unprecedented and substantive.”
The pair covered bilateral and global issues, such as Ebola, North Korea and Iran’s nuclear program, where the United States and China hold broadly common views.
But they did not shy away from “a set of candid exchanges on areas of disagreement, problem areas, aimed at narrowing differences and finding ways to manage them effectively,” the official said.
“And that includes human rights, and secretary Kerry, as he always does with the Chinese, raised both the basic universal principles at stake and very specific cases -– the situation in Hong Kong, which is very much in the news and on people’s minds.”
Kerry and Yang made brief statements to reporters before they sat down on Saturday.
Obama travels to Beijing in November for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit and is expected to hold talks with President Xi Jinping on the sidelines.
– AFP
Hong Kong Student Protestors Must be Prudent: Cato Institute
Never thought I’d see merit in comments coming from the libertarian Cato Institute but despite misleading references to June 4th and others, this piece makes some sense in calling for prudence and pragmatism on the part of the Hong Kong student protestors.
Negotiations commence with the government on Tuesday (unless something else goes amok like blocking more major thoroughfares) so let’s hope student demands come back down to earth.
http://www.cato.org/blog/promoting-democracy-hong-kong-combining-prudence-idealism
Foreign Meddling in Hong Kong Protests: media reports
The concerns of the mainland and Hong Kong authorities about foreign involvement in the Hong Kong student protests have been ridiculed by the Western press as paranoia coupled with conspiracy theory and yet recent media revelations make for interesting reading, to say the least.
The political donations to Hong Kong’s ‘pan-democratic bloc’ made by infamously anti-China media mogul Jimmy Lai have virtually become common knowledge in Hong Kong and the mainland (and mentioned in previous posts) but are further spelled out below.
As well, the background of Mark Simon, Lai’s media point man, is interesting, too. Recently, he appeared on CNBC International to deny his boss’s financial and other support of the Hong Kong student Occupy Central’s street blocking strategies, likening it to “leading a bunch of cats”.
Here are excerpts from a Morning Star article:
….(A)s Wikileaks documents have shown, the US consulate in Hong Kong devotes enormous time and energy to monitoring Hong Kong’s political life. There’s money too, of course.
To take one example, the National Democratic Institute, the US Democratic Party-controlled wing of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), allocated $460,000 (US dollars) in 2012 alone to programmes directed at student activism on the contentious issue of the chief executive election.
Since 1997, the NED has funnelled millions of dollars into the territory to support supposedly independent human rights groups and trade unions affiliated with the opposition. The latter funds are channelled through the Solidarity Center, NED’s labour wing run by the AFL-CIO, and go to “democratic unions” — that is opposition ones. This is in addition to funds earmarked for general China projects that also include the mainland.
Money plays a big part in Hong Kong politics and the local pro-Beijing forces are no strangers to donations from the city’s wealthy elite. However, it is the internationalisation of the Hong Kong political scene that concerns Beijing.
It fears that foreign forces seek to interfere in what it considers China’s sovereign affairs to polarise Hong Kong society and become a source of internal instability and international finger wagging.
The regular international tours by Hong Kong Democratic Party founder Martin Lee and former Chris Patten deputy Anson Chan to the United States and Britain have been followed up by pleas from the pair to the US and British governments to intervene — actions the Chinese government sees as at best unpatriotic and at worse verging on treachery.
Just some months ago, startling revelations appeared in the Hong Kong media about the largesse of Hong Kong millionaire Jimmy Lai, owner of Hong Kong’s main anti-Beijing newspaper Apple Daily and who has substantial interests in Taiwan.
Hackers had copied some 900 emails and documents from the computer systems of one of Lai’s senior executives. As the daily Hong Kong Standard reported on July 22: “Leaked documents showed Lai has donated more than $40 million (Hong Kong dollars, £3.2m) to the pan-democratic camp and legislators since 2012, of which $9.5m was made to four political parties in April 2012.
“Lai also gave the Democratic Party $10m in two payments — $5m in October 2013 and $5m in June 2014. The Civic Party also got an additional of $6m during the period.
“Alliance for True Democracy convener Joseph Cheng Yue-shek and Occupy Central organiser Reverend Chu Yiu-ming received $300,000 in June 2013 and $400,000 in April 2013 and April 2014, respectively.
“Former chief secretary Anson Chan Fang On-sang got $3.5m — more than twice the $1.3m she received from Lai between 2007 and 2009. “Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun received $6m and Democratic Party founder Martin Lee Chu-ming got $300,000.”
Perhaps more surprising were donations to League of Social Democrats lawmaker “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung $1 million and donations to the Hong Kong Labour Party’s Lee Cheuk-yan. Long Hair is a charismatic semi-Trotskyist known for sporting a seemingly endless collection of Che Guevara T-shirts. Lee is the General Secretary of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU), the major partner of the Solidarity Center in the territory, which issued the rather hollow call for a general strike on October 1, the first day of a two-day holiday.
Millionaire Lai’s dodgy connections don’t end there. The payments were made by Lai’s US financial aide Mark Simon, former head of the Hong Kong branch of US Republicans Abroad.
Simon is the son of a career CIA agent and is himself a former US naval intelligence officer. For the sum of $75,000 (US dollars), Lai also hired Paul Wolfowitz as a special adviser in 2013 on his business projects in Burma.
Wolfowitz has served on the board of the NED and is the author of the Wolfowitz doctrine, whose core idea was how to prevent the rise of any rival power to the US in a post-Soviet world. He was also the scandal-prone head of the World Bank and served in the US Defence Department in the administrations of George HW Bush and George W Bush. Wolfowitz visited Hong Kong on May 27 this year and held a five-hour meeting with Lai onboard his yacht.
Here is more stuff on Simon floating around on the Chinese Internet:
Ta Kung Pao report in July quoted Simon as admitting (re-translated back into English): “My father worked for the CIA for 35 years….” “I’ve interned at the CIA and worked for 4 years in the Intelligence Department of the (US) Navy…” Talking about his spying experience, he said, “I’ve never hidden the fact that I’ve worked for the US Navy; in fact, I feel proud of it. However, since leaving the service in 1991, I never worked again for any government intelligence agency, and I’ve never cooperated with them or accepted an remuneration from them…”
Ta Kung Pao continued with its expose of Simon: Simon moved to Hong Kong in the 1990s working for Sea-Land Service Co. At a Wall Street Journal function for commentators, former Bush Junior speech writer and conservative columnist Bill McGurn introduced him to Jimmy Lai and soon after Simon went to work for Lai in 2000.
Talking about his work for Lai, Simon said, “My work is to make money for Next Media and Mr Lai. I do my best and in spite of the pressure, I benefit from it…”. His other tasks include managing Lai’s private donations and shareholdings, real estate and hotel investment, along with Next Media’s advertising and marketing strategies.
In one disclosed email, he said, “At Next Media I am responsible for handling human rights cases, and often fight against Asian non-democratic regimes…”. “We support democracy….this is my job and we like to work for democracy…Mr Lai is firm in his convictions and respectful of others….Other than hardcore pro-China types, nobody believes we are doing anything wrong…”
Simon insists he’s not anti-mainland and anti-CPC (should be taken with a grain of salt): “The global situation has changed. China wants equal treatment from other countries. This means raising its level of openness and transparency….If we use a glass of water to describe China’s freedom, it isn’t half empty but half full and more is being added. China will develop its own political system and I believe it will work smoothly. Imagine the kind of China our children will see which will certainly be surprising…”
Jimmy Lai Gets a Taste of His Own Medicine
Next Media boss Jimmy Lai Chee-ying is considering seeking a court order to bar people from blockading Apple Daily newspaper’s headquarters, Next Media’s host Li Wei-ling said.
Delivery of Apple Daily newspapers was delayed for a couple of hours yesterday after several dozen anti-Occupy protesters blocked all three entrances of its offices in Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate and prevented trucks from entering or leaving the premises.
That came a day after protesters appeared at Next Media’s headquarters on Chun Ying Street to rail against what they regarded as biased coverage of the Occupy movement by its newspaper.
Unable to clear the protesters by force, as there were children, the company used two cranes mounted on trucks to move the newspapers.
A vendor in Mong Kok said he got just 30 copies of the paper, compared with 100 on a normal day.
– The Standard (HK)
US Opposes China’s Proposed Asian Infrastructure Bank
While the Western press has been fixated with trying to magnify Hong Kong’s ‘storm in a teacup’ to typhoon levels, the world has failed to notice a small yet highly contentious facet of US-China competition, this time over multilateral financial institutions. Over the past few months, the US has mounted a quiet, steady and determined diplomatic effort against China’s proposal to set up the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). The new bank could rival multilateral development banks such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) headed by key US ally Japan and in which the US and Japan dominate in subscribed capital and voting power.
About a year ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping first mentioned the idea of a new bank to help ease the cash crunch for many of Asia’s much needed infrastructure projects. Registered capital for the proposed bank would be US$50 billion at the outset but could/would be raised as needs dictated. By comparison, the ADB has about US$78 billion in capital, including retained earnings and borrowings. The World Bank (WB) estimates developing country infrastructure needs at US$1 trillion a year with Asia taking up a considerable chunk of that which, according to the ADB’s 2009 projections, could total as much as US$8 trillion by 2020. .
As of late September, 21 countries have expressed interest in the plan at a meeting held in Beijing, including close US allies Australia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Singapore as well as large Asian countries India and Indonesia. Rich Middle Eastern states Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been persuaded to pitch in. Normally cautious about joining anything proposed by China, India said it had some concerns but would most likely join, especially because the AIIB would provide low-cost funds and geopolitically, its arch rival Pakistan and closest neighbours Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are expected to put their lot in with the bank. In terms of voting rights structure, India may get as much as 19% based on the size of its economy and China about 42%, both much more than their rights within the ADB. Currently, Japan and the US hold 15.67% and 15.56% respectively compared to China’s 6.47% and 6.357% for India.
So, what’s the American tantrum about?! Well, the US Treasury Department blasted the bank as a deliberate attempt by China to undermine the multilateral financial structure represented by the WB, IMF, and ADB since after WWII and in so doing exerting its geopolitical ‘soft power’ within the region in a bid to pull more countries into its orbit. Quoted recently in the New York Times, a senior Obama Administration Treasury official who wished to remain anonymous questioned the added value such a new institution would bring to the current policy apparatus, citing a litany of issues/concerns: undercutting environmental and other standards in a race to the bottom; lowering procurement requirements and other safeguards; lifting restrictions on coal-fired power plants put in place by the WB due to global warming concerns; and similarly undermining restrictions on dam building where local residents are displaced, and so on. .
But policy specialists are unsure about many of the assumptions underlying the Obama Administration’s objections. Calling American opposition “churlish”, Peter Drysdale, a Australia National University economist who has advised the Australian government, was quoted by CNBC as saying the suggestion that the bank would be prone to adopting looser standards or approving loans with fewer (WB instituted) ‘hindrances’ is sheer “nonsense” since “the Chinese are inviting participation in funding and governance”. Clay Lowery, a former US Treasury official in the second Bush Junior Administration indicated the Chinese plan “could be a positive development – potentially a great way to get Asian countries to work together on significant financial needs in the region.”
Meanwhile, over the weekend, commenting on the state of global economic malaise and “paltry job creation” around the world, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde emphasized that infrastructure investment serves as a great booster for job generation. “Infrastructure and investment in infrastructure can be a good way to support growth in the short term, by putting people to work, by launching major construction efforts…”, she said. Last July, in contrast to the slant in Obama Administration rhetoric, WB Group President Jim Yong Kim welcomed the Chinese proposal stressing that there was a “massive need” and underscoring, “in order to fight poverty, you need to build infrastructure”.
America’s tiff against the AIIB could heighten over the coming weeks/months as China hosts the APEC summit in Beijing in November. At the conclave, Obama most likely will hold side meetings with his South Korean and Australian counterparts in part to urge them to abstain from joining the AIIB. Last summer, on a state visit to South Korea, President Xi had invited the host country to join in. President Park Geun-hye publicly praised the plan, saying it would consider joining it, but it was later disclosed that South Korea had lingering concerns over the bank’s key decision-making. A White House Korea specialist had openly criticized the proposed bank in an interview with the Yonhap News Agency, adding that the WB and ADB are taking steps to increase their lending capacity. A ADB official had earlier intimated that the planned AIIB would constitute competition for his bank and those worries are prompting the ADB to look at ways to streamline its approval procedures.
Well, at least the American attacks are generating some impetus for reform!