Video: Eric Li: China🇨🇳 The Only Nation To Become Powerful Without Wars, Genocide & Colonialism in human history makes the Western Empires like US looks really bad. 李世默: 中國🇨🇳在人類歷史上唯一一個沒有戰爭、種族滅絕和殖民主義而變得強大的國家，讓美國這樣的西方帝國看起來很糟糕. https://vimeo.com/583652561 https://youtu.be/2BbuRfA8Xy0 https://www.facebook.com/100036400039778/posts/542308773659119/?d=n Eric Li in his interview with Going Underground discusses the encirclement of China with 400 US military bases and how China has been the only nation in history to rise so quickly without foreign wars, genocides and imperialism. He goes on to say that the West, instead of encouraging this peaceful development, is encouraging confrontation.
Did the US Government mouthpiece has a change of heart? Professor John Walsh in San Francisco: The NYT ONLY tells the story of China’s success (The Times has not used that word before as best I can recall.) on the occasion of a possible failure under the assault of the delta variant. 美國政府喉舌變心了嗎？ 良心發現! 舊金山的約翰·沃爾什教授：《紐約時報》只講述了中國在 delta 變種病毒攻擊下可能失敗的情況下的成功故事（據我所知，《紐約時報》之前沒有使用過這個詞。）
The third paragraph reads: “That model is now looking increasingly fragile in a world that passed a grim milestone on Wednesday: the 200 millionth recorded case of infection.”
(China has had 95,000 cases and under 5000 deaths most all in the first month or two of the outbreak.
On top of that theNYT found only three people to interview on the ground and they all had complaints – like standing in line to get tested. (They could be in the US, wait in line to get tested and die a few days later. The last outcome has rarely been seen in China.)
China still has fewer than 5000 fatalities since the beginning of the pandemic with no deaths yet in the delta “outbreak” of 483 cases.
Let us wish China well. They have put human life first to the point where even the NYT begrudgingly admits it. However the admission is not a big deal now since the world knows full well of China’s success -it has become undeniable.
PLA holds large drills amid military threats by Liu Xuanzun Aug 05 2021
A naval fleet comprised of the guided-missile destroyers Ningbo (Hull 139) and Taiyuan (Hull 131), as well as the guided-missile frigate Nantong (Hull 601), steams in astern formation in waters of the East China Sea during a maritime training drill in late January, 2021.
At a time when the US is holding large-scale military exercises targeting China, and several countries including the UK, Germany and India plan to send or have already sent warships to the South China Sea, China announced it will hold a military exercise from Friday to Tuesday in the South China Sea, setting up a vast navigation restriction zone some observers said resembles a drill conducted last year in which the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) reportedly conducted live-fire “aircraft carrier killer” anti-ship ballistic missiles exercises.
While details on the upcoming drill remain speculative, it will serve as a response to the recent provocations, demonstrating that China has “hunting rifles ready against the wolves” that hunger for China’s core interests, experts said.
China will hold a military training in the South China Sea from Friday to Tuesday, and other vessels are prohibited from entering the navigation restriction zone, read a notice released by the Maritime Safety Administration on Wednesday.
The coordinates provided in the notice show that the exclusion zone stretches from waters off the southeast of Hainan Island to a majority of waters around the Xisha Islands, meaning that the exercise area is larger than even the Hainan Island, the National Defense Newspaper reported on Thursday.
The notice did not give more details on the exercise, but a Taipei-based news agency reported that the PLA launched anti-ship ballistic missiles in the South China Sea in a similar exercise last year.
Last year’s exercise, conducted from August 24 to 29, also featured a navigation restriction zone in almost the same location and of similar size announced by the Maritime Safety Administration.
US media outlets then quoted US defense officials as saying that China launched four medium-range ballistic missiles into the South China Sea in that exercise, landing in an area between Hainan Island and the Xisha Islands. This was widely interpreted by overseas media as the PLA testing anti-ship ballistic missiles, presumably “aircraft carrier killers” – the DF-21D and the DF-26.
Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Senior Colonel Wu Qian said at a regular press conference on August 27, 2020 that recent Chinese military exercises were routine and did not target at any country.
Based on publicly available information, it could be said this year’s PLA drill in the South China Sea will likely feature anti-ship exercises, Xu Guangyu, a senior adviser to the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, told the Global Times on Thursday.
Both ship-based and land-based anti-ship missiles, including the missiles in the DF series, have a long range, and that is why the exercise requires such a large area, Xu said, noting that this year’s exercise could be an enhanced version based on the one conducted last year.
Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Thursday that the PLA is advocating the concept of joint operations featuring multiple military services, which could include the PLA Rocket Force, and another live-fire anti-ship ballistic missile exercise is possible this year.
If not, the exercise would likely feature joint maritime and aerial forces, Song said.
“These exercises have already become routine near Chinese waters, with the aim of honing the PLA’s capabilities to fight and win wars under realistic combat scenarios,” Song said.
Fu Qianshao, a Chinese military aviation expert, told the Global Times on Thursday that while another “aircraft carrier killer” test is possible, it is still difficult to tell only by the navigation restriction notice.
It could instead feature ship-based, submarine-based or aircraft-based anti-ship missiles, or ship-based air defense missiles, Fu said, noting that the number of participating warships and warplanes could also be a factor to the large exercise zone.
China’s second aircraft carrier, the Shandong, was in the South China Sea for exercises last week, US media outlet thedrive.com reported, citing foreign satellite images.
File photo taken on Sept. 3, 2015 shows DF-26 missiles attending a military parade in Beijing, capital of China. It has been a big year for China’s military as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is to celebrate its 90th birthday. As Aug. 1, the birthday of the PLA, approaches, the country’s army has shown how much its military capacity has grown and how committed it is to maintaining world peace. The PLA has come a long way since its birth during the armed uprising in the city of Nanchang on August 1, 1927, when it had only 20,000 soldiers. Ninety years later, the country boasts 2 million servicemen, according to a national defense white paper titled China’s Military Strategy, published in 2015. Besides the growth in numbers, the PLA has armed its soldiers with world-class equipment. As of June 2017, the Chinese military had participated in 24 UN peacekeeping missions, sending 31,000 personnel, 13 of whom lost their lives in duty. Since 2008, the Navy has dispatched 26 escort task force groups, including more than 70 ships for escort missions in the Gulf of Aden and off the coast of Somalia. More than 6,300 Chinese and foreign ships have been protected during these missions. (Xinhua)
File photo taken on Sept. 3, 2015 shows DF-26 missiles attending a military parade in Beijing, capital of China. It has been a big year for China’s military as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is to celebrate its 90th birthday. As Aug. 1, the birthday of the PLA, approaches, the country’s army has shown how much its military capacity has grown and how committed it is to maintaining world peace. The PLA has come a long way since its birth during the armed uprising in the city of Nanchang on August 1, 1927, when it had only 20,000 soldiers. Ninety years later, the country boasts 2 million servicemen, according to a national defense white paper titled “China’s Military Strategy,” published in 2015. Besides the growth in numbers, the PLA has armed its soldiers with world-class equipment. As of June 2017, the Chinese military had participated in 24 UN peacekeeping missions, sending 31,000 personnel, 13 of whom lost their lives in duty. Since 2008, the Navy has dispatched 26 escort task force groups, including more than 70 ships for escort missions in the Gulf of Aden and off the coast of Somalia. More than 6,300 Chinese and foreign ships have been protected during these missions. (Xinhua)
Pointed warning
No matter what training subjects will be featured in the upcoming exercise, it comes at a time when China is facing military provocations from the US and several other countries.
The US kicked off on Tuesday the Large Scale Exercise 2021 naval and amphibious exercise billed as the largest of its kind in 40 years, US military media outlet the Stars and Stripes reported, saying that it aims to send a message to Russia and China.
Featuring units in 17 different time zones, the exercise attempts to show that the US can simultaneously address challenges in the Black Sea, eastern Mediterranean Sea, South China Sea and East China Sea and shut down efforts to spread US military forces thin, and that the US can prevent China from reunifying the island of Taiwan or landing on the Diaoyu Islands, the report quoted a US scholar as saying.
The US has also been holding the Large Scale Global Exercise 21 with UK, Australian and Japanese forces since Monday, the US Indo-Pacific Command said.
A UK aircraft carrier strike group led by the HMS Queen Elizabeth carrier sailed through the South China Sea on Monday, with a German warship, the Bayern frigate, setting sail on the same day also for the South China Sea.
India is another country that plans to send warships to the South China Sea, as four Indian destroyers and a frigate will be deployed for a two-month period to Southeast Asia, the South China Sea and the western Pacific, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing the China-India border question since clashes last year.
Against this backdrop, China’s large-scale exercise in the South China Sea is a pointed response that warns these provocateurs, Song said.
They are like hungry wolves that have been frequently stirring up troubles and challenging China’s core interests, Song said.
“China holding military exercises is like readying a hunting rifle and striking back at the wolves,” Song said, noting that a good rifle is necessary.
Xu said that the PLA’s exercise has perfect timing, as it will show on a strategic level that China is not afraid of anyone, and even warships from a hundred countries coming to the South China Sea will not shake its determination to safeguard national sovereignty and security.
Of all those countries, the PLA exercise is a warning to the US, which is the one that rallied the gang, Xu said.
It is a common understanding among foreign and Chinese military analysts that the PLA has the upper hand if a war breaks out on China’s doorsteps, be it in the South China Sea, the East China Sea or the Taiwan Straits, even against powerful opponents like the US and its allies.
The large-scale exercise in the South China Sea is not the only drill the PLA will conduct, as the Maritime Safety Administration has announced several more drills in the Bohai Strait, the Yellow Sea, and other locations in the South China Sea.
From Monday to August 13, China and Russia will hold the Zapad/Interaction-2021 exercise in the Qingtongxia Combined Arms Tactical Training Base in Northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, which will feature more than 10,000 personnel, multiple types of aircraft, artillery pieces and armored equipment with the aim of testing joint reconnaissance, early warning, electronic information attack and strike capabilities.
In addition to displaying China’ and Russia’s roles as major powers in jointly safeguarding regional peace and stability in Central Asia following the US’ irresponsible troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, the joint exercise will also enhance military cooperation under the context that both countries are facing suppression by the US, a Chinese expert on international affairs who requested anonymity told the Global Times.
China to provide 2 billion doses of vaccine to world this year by Leng Shumei and Hu Yuwei Aug 05 2021
China on Thursday vowed to make efforts to provide the world with 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines this year and donate $100 million to COVAX to promote global vaccine provision amid the rampaging Delta variant, which is bringing about more challenges for developing countries to access vaccines and combat the pandemic while the West continues to drag its heels in fulfilling its promises.
Chinese President Xi Jinping made the announcement Thursday night in a written address to the first meeting of a forum on international cooperation on COVID-19 vaccines.
Xi said he expects the forum to further boost fair vaccine accessibility worldwide, boost solidarity among developing countries and contribute to the success in the fight against the novel coronavirus.
Developing countries are facing three main challenges: the low accessibility to vaccines, the declining efficacy of existing vaccines against mutations, and the competition between different producers on the international market, making it more difficult for developing countries to choose vaccines, Zha Daojiong, a professor of international political economy in the School of International Studies and Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development at Peking University, told the Global Times on Thursday.
“Cooperation on vaccines is limited not only in providing finished products, but also jointly producing vaccines,” Zha noted. He said that the Thursday conference will promote more cooperation between Chinese and foreign producers, leading to overseas production of China-developed vaccines in order to increase production capacity, and save time and costs for international transportation.
Chinese experts noted that the conference served as an opportunity for developing countries to communicate with each other and come up with solutions to the challenges they are facing in accessing vaccines.
China is able to produce 5 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines per year and only needs half of them to vaccinate its 1.4 billion people. This means China is able to provide the world with a large amount of vaccines, Tao Lina, a Shanghai-based vaccine expert, told the Global Times on Thursday.
The key work in the current stage is to unite the international community and put aside ideological divergences to combat the pandemic to provide the world with vaccines of the highest efficacy, Tao noted.
Key global support
The international community has been working together to ensure accessibility and equity of vaccine distribution in developing countries. However, inequity between rich and poor regions in access to vaccines continues to worsen due to unbalanced resource distribution and the West’s slowness in realizing its promise to assist poor regions.
To date, 82 percent of all COVID-19 vaccine doses that have gone into arms worldwide have been administered in high-income and upper-middle-income countries. By contrast, less than 1 percent have been administered in low-income countries. Meanwhile, COVAX, the multinational vaccine facility, is struggling to meet this challenge, having distributed only 153 million doses out of 4.1 billion administered worldwide, according to data tracked by the Duke University.
While more than half of all Americans have had at least one dose and dozens of rich countries aren’t far behind, less than 1 percent of people across the world’s low-income countries have been vaccinated.
Meanwhile, the African continent’s vaccination rates are still painfully low: Just 16 million, or less than 2 percent, of Africa’s 1.3 billion people are now fully vaccinated, according to AP.
While rich countries are hoping to vaccinate 70 percent of their populations, most developing countries are struggling with the vaccine demand-supply gap – they still lack about billions of shots needed to vaccinate 30 percent of their population by the end of this year, Feng Duojia, president of the China Vaccine Industry Association, told the Global Times on Thursday.
China will become the world’s most important vaccine provider with the largest number and the most selection of products, Feng noted.
In addition to expanding production, Chinese authorities and producers have also been accelerating research and development of vaccines to deal with the rapidly mutating virus as the world is dragged into a third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic due to the rampaging Delta variant, which has been found to be much more infectious than the original variant.
West slow to fulfill promise
US President Joe Biden said Tuesday that the US, which has been accused of hoarding many more doses than it needs, has shipped more than 110 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to 65 countries and regions, following regulatory and logistical setbacks. The figures come about one month behind the White House’s June goal of delivering 80 million doses overseas, part of a greater vaccine-donation drive by the US in the coming months.
In addition to the slow move to make good on their promises, US producers are also increasing prices for their products while the shots are becoming more and more urgently needed amid the rampaging Delta variant, putting more pressure and worries on developing countries seeking access to vaccines.
Pfizer has raised the price of its COVID-19 vaccine by more than one-quarter and Moderna by more than one-tenth in the latest EU supply contracts, as Europe battled supply disruptions and concerns over side effects from rival products, Financial Times reported on August 1.
Even though the US said it would donate vaccines to developing countries, they will be donating products that can’t be sold in their domestic market or that have not been approved for domestic use such as the AstraZeneca vaccine, a Beijing-based immunologist told the Global Times on condition of anonymity.
Without Chinese vaccines, there would be fewer choices for developing countries and regions, and more inequity in global vaccine distribution, the expert said.
China has taken important steps to close the global vaccine gap, including the acceleration of large-scale production, boosting fair distribution and licensing local production in more countries.
Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi attended the ASEAN Plus Three Foreign Ministers’ Meeting on Tuesday via video link. At the meeting he revealed that China had provided more than 750 million doses of vaccines overseas and will provide another 110 million shots to COVAX in the following four months. China will also provide 3 billion dollars to the international community in the next three years.
So far, the shots and semi-finished shots China provided to the world account for one-sixth of the total administered worldwide. China has exported 227 percent of that of Europe and 84 times that of the US, according to a report on the Global Use of COVID-19 Vaccines (Report), release by the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China on July 29.
China has mainly provided vaccines to four geographical regions – a total of 104 countries and regions around the world. Out of these four regions, the Asia-Pacific has received the largest number of Chinese vaccines, with 38 countries receiving vaccines from China. Latin America has received the second largest number, with only 19 countries receiving these vaccines. There are 37 countries in Africa that have received vaccines from China.
According to officially released data, China has donated 304.9 million doses to the Asia-Pacific regions, 180.9 million doses to Latin America and 45.5 million doses to Africa, while the US had donated only 23.8 million, 27.5 million and 18.3 million to these regions respectively.
At the 73rd World Health Assembly held in May, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that China would make its vaccines global public goods, the earliest commitment made in the world to narrowing the vaccine gap. As early as November 2020, Sao Paulo in Brazil received the first batch of Chinese vaccines. By March 2021, China had provided or was providing vaccine aid to 53 countries.
Meanwhile, the US prioritized their domestic needs in the early stages of the pandemic and refused to provide help to India, a major source of vaccines at that time, to facilitate its vaccine production. The US did not start assisting other countries with shots until March 18 amid a flood of international accusations over its failure to assume its responsibility as a great power.
China has also been transferring technology to developing countries and has been helping them establish domestic production lines.
According to the website of the Chinese government, Chinese vaccine producers have built production lines in the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Indonesia, Turkey and Brazil, with total production capacity at these lines exceeding 200 million doses per year.
For developing countries, the difficulty in accessing vaccines not only lies in finance but also storage and transportation. “Some developing countries have very complex topography and bad traffic, which will prevent vaccines from being smoothly delivered. Some countries also need help in training and hiring doctors and nurses,” Zha noted.
Unlike Western countries, China is not only giving developing countries fish but also teaching them how to fish. Zhan warned that there could possibly be another pandemic after COVID-19, so it is very important for developing countries to increase their ability in producing and using vaccines themselves.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – US President Joe Biden has signed a memorandum that provides a temporary safe haven to the residents of Hong Kong, the White House spokesperson Jen Psaki announced on Thursday.
Really? Is it for 80, 80,000 or 800,000 and why not for all 8,000,000 Hongkongers. It is straightly for show only kind of BS!
If US care so much about the Muslims in Xinjiang, why not provide safe haven for the 12,000,000 Xinjiang Muslims in the US? If US love the Muslims so much, why bomb them throughout the Middle East.
Kiji Noh in San Francisco: Yes, token, dainty, microscopic actions. But he won’t do more, just as the US–and all other Western nations–will not pass legislation for Uighur immigration, even though they shriek “genocide”. Odd, isn’t it?
Professor Ling-chi Wang of UC Berkeley: Agree. What Biden just signed is hypocrisy. Why limit to an unspecified, imaginary, possibly non-existent number? To be honest and truthful, assuming the political conditions of Hong Kong is as bad and repressive as he imagines and claims, he should open the door to all the people in Hong Kong!
Video: The New York Times, mouthpiece for US Government: You Are Wrong Again! The New York Times Accused China of being a machine to reap as many gold medals as possible. China has a different answer. 紐約時報，美國政府喉舌：你又錯了！ 《紐約時報》指責中國是一台收穫盡可能多金牌的機器。 中國有不同的答案. 🇨🇳 China rank#1 by Official Olympic Website (ignore New York Times ranking, it is not accurate) 中國在奧運官方網站排名#1（不要看紐約時報排名, 並不准確） https://vimeo.com/583356007 https://youtu.be/hUZuJpMAZ9c https://www.facebook.com/100036400039778/posts/541941707029159/?d=n
Video: Taiwan Province is China territory. China start levying sanctions against companies and people selling military hardwares to Taiwan including stop exporting rare earth to US. It is just the beginning. US like to play with fire, China is not afraid, let’s play! 台灣省是中國領土。 中國開始對向台灣出售軍事硬件的公司和個人實施制裁，包括停止向美國出口稀土。 這只是開始。 美國喜歡玩火，中國不怕，來玩吧！中国强势制裁美国军企，导致美国空军遭受重创，主力战机接连报废. https://vimeo.com/583230911 https://youtu.be/ICC_72rscPQ https://www.facebook.com/100036400039778/posts/541755700381093/?d=n
Video: BBC and New York Times report on first Hong Kong National Security Law case with misleading headlines and contents BBC和紐約時報報導首宗香港國家安全法案件，標題和內容具有誤導性. 中英字幕
The first case to be tried under Hong Kong’s new National Security Law has concluded. A 24-year-old man will be jailed for 9 years for ramming his motorbike into a group of police officers while carrying an independence flag.
Western media have been frothing at the bit to use this case to paint Beijing in a bad light, but their ability to downplay the man’s potentially deadly actions should be limited, right? Wrong!
@The New York Times and @Wall Street Journal seem to be purposefully manipulating readers by implying the man was jailed simply for protesting, while @BBC News did a surprisingly “OK” job. @Associated Press? Absolute fail.
Come with me as I analyze how the world Reports on China.
By Andy’s Shanghai Life (from New Zealand live in China)
In collaboration with US using fake freedom democracy human rights and rules of laws that US don’t even practice them at home to demonize and promoting hatred towards Chinese and China selling to American when 98% knew nothing about China or ever visited China before. 與美國合作，利用在美國也不實行的自由民主人權和法律規則來妖魔化中國和中國人, 當98%的美國人對中國一無所知或從未曾訪問過中國的情況下向美國人沒完無了地作仇中宣傳.
Exclusive: How BCI’s predetermined guilty report on Xinjiang was made up? by Liu Xin and Fan Lingzhi Aug 03 2021
Photo taken on September 28 shows a harvester picking cotton in a field in Yuli county, Bayinguolin Mogolian Autonomous Prefecture in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
Editor’s Note:
The Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), a Switzerland-based nongovernmental organization, was at the center of the campaign smearing the cotton industry of Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, which was started by some Western countries. How did the BCI headquarters come to the conclusion that there was the so-called forced labor in Xinjiang?
The Global Times has learned exclusively from national security department of the details of the organization’s “investigation” with the US-based Verite, a self-proclaimed “independent and nonprofit” civil society organization. The investigation was commissioned to a company in Shenzhen in South China with affiliations to Verite. Not surprisingly, no one in the group responsible for the task went to Xinjiang. The report submitted to the BCI, which cited untenable claims from anti-China organizations and a predetermined guilty conclusion, was based on materials collected online and written under the guidance of Yao Wenjuan, the legal representative of the Shenzhen company.
Colluding together
According to the introduction on its website, Verite was established in 1995 and has “partnered with hundreds of corporations, governments, and NGOs to illuminate labor rights violations in supply chains.”
In 2006, the company sent its Chinese employee Yao Wenjuan to set up a workshop in Shenzhen, which was later registered as a company in Verite’s name and dealt with Verite’s businesses in China. In April, the national security department conducted an investigation into the company and found that the Shenzhen company has more than 20 employees, with Yao being the legal representative.
The Global Times has learned that the BCI headquarters invited Verite to join the investigation into whether “forced labor” is being used in cotton-related industries in Xinjiang. The Shenzhen Verite’s report, entitled “Research on Forced Labor in Cotton Production in China with a Specific Focus on Xinjiang,” was written under the direction of Yao, Quinn and Michael, and was carried out by the team in the Shenzhen company.
The budget for the project was $88,200 with the Verite headquarters taking $51,950 and the Shenzhen company $18,250, while the fees for the organization was $18,000. According to a copy of an account statement viewed by the Global Times, on April 15, May 13, June 1 and September 11 in 2020, respectively, the Shenzhen company submitted expense accounts four times for $4,562.5 each to Anne Cormier of the Verite headquarters in the US. On June 13, August 22 and October 31 in 2020, the headquarters sent the money to the Shenzhen company via its bank account in Hong Kong.
There is no record on this BCI project in the Shenzhen company’s financial reimbursement records of any employee going to Xinjiang to conduct a field survey.
Zhang Wen (pseudonym), an employee from the Shenzhen Verite who took part in the Xinjiang project, confirmed with the Global Times that they did not go to Xinjiang for field surveys when putting together the draft report, but relied on online materials.
Liu Min (pseudonym), another employee from Shenzhen Verite who also took part in the Xinjiang project, told the Global Times that Yao assigned Zhang and her to the project in February 2020, and were asked to “collect” evidence on “forced labor” in Xinjiang. The project’s plan had five parts, including the land system in Xinjiang, history of cotton planting, poverty alleviation policies, and anti-terrorism measures.
Liu said that “the outline of the report was full of tendentiousness.” Each time she finished one part, she sent it to Yao for modification, and the draft would be edited according to Yao’s requests. Meanwhile, Yao provided a large number of “materials” for Liu to refer to, including the report by the infamous anti-China “scholar” Adrian Zenz on “forced labor” in Xinjiang. This was put together with overseas biased reports on Xinjiang’s vocational training and education centers to form what they would call “sources.’
Folk artisans play drums as people dance at the Corban Festival.
Catering to rumors
“When Zhang and I were collecting information, we found no proof that Xinjiang has forced labor,” Liu told the Global Times. She noted that all the overseas information in the Chinese version of the report were given to them by Yao, who also oversaw their analysis on “forced labor.”
Liu said that in May 2020, she handed in the first draft of the report to Yao, which “she was not satisfied with” and wrote in the email that she felt it was “hard to submit it after comparing ours with the report written by our colleagues in the US.”
“The report from the US concluded that there was forced labor in Xinjiang, which was a big contrast with ours which found no evidence of such activities,” Liu said. “That was the problem.”
But the second version of the report came to a different conclusion, which Liu did not agree with. Edited by Yao, the polished version took an opposite approach to normal research, first arriving at a conclusion then trying to find points to support the conclusion.
As the report progressed, they were unable to find any evidence of “child labor” in cotton production either. However, Yao insisted on looking into the BCI review to see whether they could find “records” of “child labor” being used and to put it in their report.
Although no evidence was found, Yao insisted on concluding in the report that “it is of very low possibility that students were organized on a large-scale to pick cotton, but there are still risks for underaged children in a family taking in cotton-picking after school or on weekends.”
“So can we conclude that ‘child labor’ is being used in every family that has an underage child because their kid helps with cotton production?” Liu asked.
Nevertheless, the draft was submitted to Yao in June 2020. On August 2, 2020, Yao shared the final draft put together by the Verite headquarters and reviewed by the BCI.
Zhang said that there are many “presumptions of guilt” in the report. For example, the version given to the headquarters says, “Existing research indicates the possibility of coercion by local government officials of rural poor laborers to take part in cotton picking under the poverty alleviation program.”
Zhang told the Global Times that the BCI headquarters seemed to be satisfied with the use of the words “pressure” and “coercion” to describe the poverty alleviation program. On July 10, 2020, a BCI reviewer named Damien Sanfilippo praised it by saying, “Thanks, this is typically the sort of analysis which adds value.”
“This is the first time I saw a report which should have been objective, but was tampered with and distorted. This is abnormal,” Zhang said.
“The research to make the draft was very limited because we had used second-hand information, making its conclusion flawed,” Liu told the Global Times.
Although Yao herself used to say the situation in Xinjiang was complicated and could not be interpreted in a simple way, “the information we collected was both negative and positive, but the report never showed this complexity,” said Liu. “We had a part to give a positive and objective review on Xinjiang, which was the pretext of the report we submitted, but it was removed from the beginning and included as attachments to the final report.”
“Who pays attention to the attachments? When readers begin reading the final report, they will see the analysis of forced labor in Xinjiang and then this idea has been planted in their heads. The positive information on Xinjiang is hard to get into their heads,” Liu said.
Two girls dress up for the Corban Festival in Hotan Prefecture.
Pale, weak explanations
The Global Times learned from several employees of the Shenzhen company that after learning that the company was under investigation for the BCI report, Yao sent an email to employees of the Shenzhen company on April 11 to defend herself.
Yao claimed in the email that the project on the BCI report is a “desk research” and the information on it was only supposed to be shared with a limited number of people in Verite and BCI due to its confidentiality, therefore most people in the company knew nothing about the project.
Yao explained that she guided the project on Xinjiang due to her “affection for Xinjiang.” She also claimed that she considered not taking on the project since she understood its complexity and the difficulty in explaining it in way so that Westerners can understand. “But the affection for Xinjiang drove me to help Xinjiang with my professional knowledge,” Yao wrote in the email.
Employees in the Shenzhen company did not buy Yao’s remarks. “This is her one-sided story,” Liu said. If Yao indeed embarked on the project out of love for Xinjiang, she should have been truthful and showed that there is no forced labor in the region. Instead, she paraded a fake report, Liu noted.
In Liu’s eyes, Yao’s persistent demands on collecting information and materials on “forced labor” risks in Xinjiang were made out of wanting to please the client and make more money.
“Among the BCI headquarters, Verite headquarters in the US, and employees who took part in the project in the Shenzhen company, Yao had played as a crucial role, coordinating and leading the project,” Liu said, noting that the final report displayed Yao’s viewpoints and she never challenged her clients when they were wrong. “Instead, all she was doing was catering to them,” said Liu.
Zhang and Liu, as the chief members to make the draft report, told the Global Times that “getting involved in the project confused themselves.”
“I love my country. I never wanted to be involved in anything that undermines our national security. This is a huge blow to me,” Zhang said.
Liu said she is considering to sue Yao for getting them involved in the case.
Johnson Choi Biz 