30/05/2020
- Chinese groups calling for more ‘fighting spirit’ are getting the upper hand on those who favour calm and cooperation, government adviser says
- From Hong Kong to Covid-19, trade to the South China Sea, Beijing and Washington are clashing on a growing number of fronts and in an increasingly aggressive way
Efforts to promote dialogue and cooperation between the US and China are failing, observers say. Photo: AFP
Moderates who favour dialogue and cooperation as a way to resolve China’s disputes with the
United States are losing ground to hardline groups bent on taking the fight to Washington, according to political insiders and observers.
“There are two camps in China,” said a former state official who now serves as a government adviser and asked not to be named.
“One is stressing the combat spirit, the other is trying to relieve tensions. And the former has the upper hand.”
Relations between China and the US are under intense pressure. After Beijing moved to introduce a national security law for Hong Kong, US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington would begin eliminating the special policy exemptions it grants the city, as it no longer considers it autonomous from mainland China.
Beijing’s decision to enact a national security law for Hong Kong was met with anger from the US and other Western countries. Photo: Sam Tsang
The two nations have also clashed over trade, Xinjiang, Taiwan and the South China Sea, with the US passing several acts denouncing Beijing and sanctioning Chinese officials.
China has also experienced turbulence in its relations with other countries, including Australia and members of the European Union, mostly related to the Covid-19 pandemic
and Beijing’s efforts to position itself as a leader in the fight against the disease with its policy of “mask diplomacy”.
After Canberra appealed for an independent investigation to be carried out to determine the origins of the coronavirus, Beijing responded by imposing tariffs on imports of Australian barley, showing it is prepared to do more than just trade insults and accusations with its adversaries.
Pang Zhongying, a professor of international relations at Ocean University of China in Qingdao, said there was a worrying trend in China’s relations with other nations.
“We need political and diplomatic means to resolve the challenges we are facing, but … diplomatic methods have become undiplomatic,” he said.
“There are some who believe that problems can be solved through tough gestures, but this will never work. Without diplomacy, problems become confrontations.”
said during his annual press conference on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress last weekend that China and the United States must work together to prevent a new Cold War.
His words were echoed by
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, who said during a press conference after the closure of the legislative session on Thursday that the many challenges facing the China-US relations could only be resolved through cooperation.
However, the government adviser said there was often quite a chasm between what China’s leaders said and what happened in reality.
“Even though we say we do not want a Cold War, what is happening at the working level seems to be different.” he said. “The implementation of policies is not properly coordinated and often chaotic.”
Tensions between China and the US have been in a poor state since the start of a trade war almost two years ago. After multiple rounds of negotiations, the sides in January signed a phase one deal, but the positivity that created was short-lived.
In February, Beijing expelled three reporters from The Wall Street Journal over an article it deemed racist, while Washington has ramped up its military activity in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait, and threatened to revoke the visas of Chinese students studying science and technology in the US over concerns they might be engaged in espionage.
Beijing has also used its state media and army of “
Wolf Warrior” diplomats to promote its narrative, though many Chinese scholars and foreign policy advisers have said the latter’s nationalistic fervour has done more harm than good and appealed to Beijing to adopt a more conciliatory tone.
However, Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of Chinese tabloid Global Times, said China had no option but to stare down the US, which regarded the world’s most populous nation as its main rival.
“Being contained by the US is too high a price for China to pay,” he said. “I think the best thing people can do is forget the old days of China-US ties”.
Jin Canrong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, wrote in a recent newspaper article that Beijing’s actions – notably enacting a national security law for Hong Kong – showed it was uncompromising and ready to stand its ground against the US.
Wu Xinbo, dean of international studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, agreed, saying relations between the two countries were likely to worsen in the run-up to the US presidential election in November and that Beijing should be prepared for a fight.
But Adam Ni, director of China Policy Centre, a think tank in Canberra, said the issue was not that the moderate camp had been sidelined, but rather Beijing’s perception of the US had changed.
“Beijing has woken up to the idea that America’s tough policy on China will continue and it is expecting an escalation of the tensions,” he said.
“The centre of gravity in terms of Beijing’s perception of the US has shifted, in the same way the US perception of China has shifted towards a more negative image”.
Beijing was simply responding in kind to the hardline, assertive manner of the US, he said.
Source: SCMP
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03/04/2020
- ‘As two of the great countries on Earth, cooperation between China and the US could, and should, be used to bring a more positive outcome for all humankind,’ academics say
- ‘Political bickering does nothing to contribute to the healthy development of Sino-US relations, nor will it help the people of the world to rationally and accurately understand and cope with the pandemic,’ they say
Chinese academics have urged nations to cooperate to find a solution to the global public health crisis. Photo: AFP
A group of 100 Chinese scholars has signed an open letter calling on the
and China to put an end to their political blame game and work together to fight the
.
The signatories, who include former diplomats and academics from various fields, including political science, international relations and sociology, said that while the origins of the coronavirus remained unknown, hurling accusations achieved nothing but hurt.
Nations should stop “complaining, finger-pointing and blaming one another” and instead cooperate to find a solution to the global public health crisis, they said.
“Political bickering does nothing to contribute to the healthy development of Sino-US relations, nor will it help the people of the world to rationally and accurately understand and cope with the pandemic,” the scholars said in the letter published on Thursday in online news magazine The Diplomat.
“As two of the great countries on Earth, cooperation between China and the US could, and should, be used to bring a more positive outcome for all humankind,” it said.
The scholars also urged the two sides to put aside their bickering over where and how the disease originated.
“At this stage of the pandemic, the exact source and origin of Covid-19 remain undetermined, but these questions are unimportant and finger-pointing is demeaning and hurtful to everyone,” they said.
US and Chinese officials have sparred for weeks over the origins of the coronavirus, which was first detected in the central Chinese city of
Wuhan but has since spread around the world, infecting more than 1 million people and killing close to 53,000.
Donald Trump has repeatedly referred to the pathogen as the “Chinese virus”. Photo: Bloomberg
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly referred to the pathogen as the “Chinese virus”, while other US politicians have said it was created in a Chinese laboratory. For China’s part, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian suggested the coronavirus
might have been carried into the country by US soldiers.
China’s ambassador to the US
Cui Tiankai said in an interview on American television last month that speculating about the origin of the virus was “harmful”, but the finger-pointing on both sides has plunged relations between the two countries to a new low.
The open letter was the idea of Wang Wen, executive dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, who said its aim was not only to show the willingness of China’s intellectual elite to promote solidarity and reduce tensions, but to make clear that the priority right now was saving lives.
“We did not criticise anyone in the letter, or mention any names. We did not want to fuel the current disputes and confrontations,” he said.
“Most Chinese intellectuals are peaceful, rational and constructive, and thankfully we quickly reached consensus on the content of the letter.”
China to stage day of mourning for thousands killed by Covid-19
The scholars said that after months of battling the coronavirus and seeing the situation at home improve, China now wanted to share its experience and knowledge with other countries as they seek to contain its spread.
“Chinese people have made unimaginable efforts and sacrifices to achieve hard-won results,” Wang said.
“We are grateful for the support of the international community, including donations from American friends, during the most critical stage of the fight … and we are willing to share our experiences with other countries and provide all available assistance to them.”
Wu Sike, a former Chinese special envoy to the Middle East, was among the signatories to the open letter. Photo: Xinhua
Among the other signatories were Wu Sike, a senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies and former special envoy to the Middle East, and Wang Yiwei, an international relations professor at Renmin University, who described the Covid-19 pandemic as a “global issue that overrides geopolitics concerns”.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump agreed in a telephone call last week to work together to contain the spread of Covid-19, but critics have questioned how long their cordiality can last against a backdrop of rising China-US tensions over trade, the media and regional security.
Source: SCMP
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22/05/2019
- Researchers say history of China’s biggest ethnic group is more complex than many believe
- DNA study involving 20,000 unrelated people points to three river origins
The study of Han DNA by the team from the Kunming institute challenges a long-held view of the early origins of Chinese civilisation. Photo: Xinhua
The origins of China’s biggest ethnic group can be traced back to three river valleys, deposing the Yellow River as the sole cradle of Chinese civilisation, according to a new study.
The Yellow has long been hailed as the mother river of Han Chinese, who make up nearly 92 per cent of the country’s population today.
But research published in the online journal Molecular Biology and Evolution on Wednesday said the Yangtze and Pearl rivers – as well as the Yellow – gave rise to genetically separate groups about 10,000 years ago. Those ancestors then mingled to become the largest ethnic group in the world today, it said.
“The history of Han Chinese is more sophisticated than thought,” said Professor Kong Qingdong, a researcher with the Kunming Institute of Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and lead scientist in the study. “Many details need investigation.”
A DNA study suggests the Yellow River (above) may have to share its place as a cradle for Han Chinese with the Yangtze and the Pearl. Photo: Xinhua
After analysing DNA samples from more than 20,000 unrelated Han Chinese, examining their dialects and family geography and comparing those to archaeological DNA records, scientists concluded that the Yangtze and Pearl had equal claim with the Yellow to Han origins.
Progenitors from the three river valleys evolved independently, the Kunming team said, and distinctions found in the mitochondrial DNA (the mother’s line) of study volunteers added weight to their assertion.
Who are you? DNA tests help Chinese retrace ancient steps
About 0.07 per cent of the DNA examined in the Han Chinese study differed according to river valley origin. By comparison, the difference was much lower – 0.02 per cent – when the study volunteer data was assessed by dialect, the researchers said.
Earlier studies of genetic markers and microsatellite data that mapped the prevalence of DNA revealed that Han Chinese can be generally divided into two groups: North and South. The latest study found that the genetic variation between North and South Han Chinese is 0.03 per cent, considerably less significant than the distinction by rivers.
Dr Li Yuchun, lead author of the paper, said the findings helped trace the history of Han to the dawn of civilisation, the emergence of agriculture and the sustainable growth of population.
The earliest migrants from Africa to China arrived in what is now the southwest between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago, studies said. The genes of this group of hunter-gatherers were largely unchanged for tens of thousands years.
About 10,000 years ago, agricultural practices began to emerge in the valleys of the three rivers. Archaeologists found evidence of millet cultivation around the Yellow River, rice in the Yangtze, and roots and tubers in the Pearl.
The busy Yangtze River flows through Chongqing in southwest China. Photo: Xinhua
“Increasing food led to a population boom in these areas. We can see it in the separate path of gene evolution,” Li said.
The research also found that women were able to preserve their genetic story better than men as they stayed at home to tend the fields, while men went to explore, trade or wage war.
“Females are resilient to invasion,” she said.
The cultural significance of knowing one’s ancestry
The research team planned to examine the Y-chromosome, which passed from father to son, to study the expansion of the Han civilisation, Li said.
“It will be interesting to hear the story from a male perspective,” she said.
As the Han empires expanded, many ancient ethnic groups such as Huns, Siberians, Khitan in northern China and the Thai-Khadai speaking peoples in the south, passed from the record.
Some researchers think these minorities become extinct, but others believe they were absorbed into the Han Chinese population.
Source: SCMP
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