Germany denies VW investment guarantees as Xinjiang police files leaked, US investigates new PRC firms for blacklist & Beijing foils UN human rights investigation -- China Boss News 6.6.22
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Germany denies VW investment guarantees as Xinjiang police files leaked
Germany's Economy Ministry will no longer give national champion automaker Volkswagen (VW) investment guarantees to cover new China business “because of concerns over human rights violations in the Xinjiang region,” Reuters said citing a May 27 Der Spiegel report.
Reuters:
The ministry confirmed it had turned down four applications from a company over human rights concerns in Xinjiang but declined to name the company. Der Spiegel said, without naming sources, that Volkswagen was the company in question.
"The human rights situation in Xinjiang has become worse in recent years and involves forced labour and mass internment of Uyghurs," the ministry said.
"The German government has therefore decided not to give guarantees for projects in China that are 1) in Xinjiang or 2) have business ties to entities operating there."
VW opened a factory in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province in western China, in 2012 and has “vehemently defended its presence in the region" despite international outrage over human rights abuses against ethnic minorities there, DW said. The company also came “under pressure” in 2019 “to justify its presence in Xinjiang after a report by the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) claimed it was operating Urumqi at a loss in order to secure contracts with the Chinese government for more lucrative sites in eastern China.”
In an interview with German newspaper Handelsblatt last week, CEO Herbert Diess doubled down on the company’s presence in Xinjiang, saying “the joint-venture partner SAIC Volkswagen would not close its factory there,” news staff added.
But the interview came “shortly after the release of the ‘Xinjiang Police Files’ which document the scale and brutality with which the Chinese state oppresses the Uyghur people,” and “German government ministers” have since called “for Germany to reduce its dependence on China in response,” DW said.
Now, in a dramatic policy reversal for one of the most pro-China business countries in the EU, analysts say China’s “persecution of the Uyghurs” and diplomatic support of Russia's war in Ukraine is “prompting Berlin to rethink its relations with Beijing.”
DW:
As painful and costly as Germany's wakeup to its energy dependence on Russia was, German economic ties with China are far tighter and more intensive. Strategic conflicts are emerging, for example over Germany's goal of phasing out fossil fuels. Berlin is planning to greatly expand rooftop solar panels to replace oil, gas, and coal as power sources. One important commodity used in making these panels is polysilicon. But 40% of global production takes place in China — and especially in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, the homeland of the persecuted Uyghurs.
Wolfgang Niedermark, executive board member and China expert at the Federation of German Industry (BDI) lobby group, said: "We have a dependency on China in the strategically important field of mineral resources. We must quickly get these input dependencies under control and invest in new partnerships."
The BDI is rethinking business relations with dictatorships.
"We want to continue cooperating economically, including with states that are not liberal democracies. That is the only way the EU can be a strong and internationally relevant player. But we cannot allow ourselves to become dependent," Niedermark told DW.
For the rest of Reuters update, Germany denies VW China investment guarantees over human rights concerns - Spiegel, click here. Fore DW’s 2019 report, Volkswagen defends presence in China's Xinjiang amid uproar over Uighur abuses, click here.
For DW’s update, China: Volkswagen defends Xinjiang operations amid reports of human rights abuses | DW | 30.05.2022, click here, and for DW’s report, The China shock: Germany turns away from its biggest trading partner | DW | 27.05.2022, click here.
Law and International Xi
Biden “actively considering” adding more Chinese companies to entity list
The Biden administration “is actively considering adding new Chinese companies to the government's economic blacklist as it investigates what it calls efforts by China to evade U.S. sanctions,” Reuters reported. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo gave a press conference on Tuesday in which she discussed ongoing efforts to sanction Chinese companies and expressed “that when possible she wants to work with U.S. allies to align their trade restrictions with U.S. export controls.”
Reuters:
Raimondo told reporters the administration was working to "get information around bad actors in China and adding those companies to the Entity List ... We are in the middle of a number of investigations."
She added: "I don't see us relaxing sanctions any time soon."
China is not standing still, she said. "They are coming up with we know new ways to evade our sanctions, setting up new (companies) and the like. We have a very aggressive and vigilant effort under way."
On Wednesday, MOFA spokesman Zhao Lijian responded to those claims at a press conference in Beijing, saying the “United States is ‘over-stretching’ the concept of national security by imposing supply chain sanctions on China to stymie its growth,” Bloomberg staff noted.
Bloomberg:
“Such moves gravely undermine the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies and deprive China of its right to development,” he said Wednesday at a regular press briefing in Beijing. Zhao added that such a strategy would only push the world’s two largest economies to “confrontation and conflict.”
For the rest of Reuters’ update, U.S. investigates Chinese companies over export sanction issues, click here. For Bloomberg’s report of China’s response, Beijing Says US Supply Chain Curbs Sabotage China’s Development, click here.
UN human rights investigation thwarted as huge cache of Xinjiang police files leaked
Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said last week that “she had been ‘unable to assess the full scale’ of the notorious system of so-called education and training centres in Xinjiang, undermining her landmark investigation of China’s crimes against Uyghur Muslims,” Financial Times reported. Bachelet’s official visit to Xinjiang lasted only two days where she was accompanied by Chinese government officials and staff at each site.
FT:
In Ürümqi, the capital, and Kashgar, another big city, Bachelet met senior Communist party and security officials and visited a prison and a former “vocational education and training centre”, among other facilities. Beijing has for years insisted that the VETC system was necessary as part of its response to terrorism and poverty in the region.
“The government assured me that the VETC system has been dismantled,” she told reporters in Guangzhou.
Prior to her visit, both, government representatives and human rights activists had urged the senior UN human rights delegate not to legitimize China’s official narratives by visiting Xinjiang where independent investigation into the detention of over a million Uyghurs would be hindered by Beijing. “But Bachelet ignored those warnings,” and “ended up helping China deny its genocide against Uyghur Muslims and other repressive policies, harming the cause of human rights accountability in the process,” Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin said.
Rogin, WaPo:
On Saturday, Bachelet completed her six-day trip to China, the first in 17 years by someone with her title, with a statement to the media that summed up a visit many observers view as a tragic failure. As Human Rights Watch U.N. director Louis Charbonneau rightly observed, she grotesquely praised China’s “tremendous achievements” in human rights by pointing to poverty alleviation — which is exactly how Beijing defines human rights these days. The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Bachelet is supposed to be following, calls for a higher standard.
Meanwhile, and probably intentionally timed to coincide with Bachelet’s visit, “[a] trove of internal and confidential police photos and documents, known as the ‘Xinjiang Police Files’ [was released] from within China.” The leak “has been described as the ‘largest and most significant leak’ to date by the Washington-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation,” the VOA said.
In a press statement, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) said that the leak came “directly” from “within Xinjiang police networks” and “consists of tens of thousands of files containing extensive incriminating details from inside China’s internment camp system.” The information has been authenticated by “a research team led by Dr. Adrian Zenz from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation as well as through peer-re viewed scholarly research and investigative research teams from several major global media outlets,” VOC said.
To view the Xinjiang Police Files online, click here.
For the rest of FT’s report, UN envoy ‘unable to assess’ scale of Xinjiang repression, click here. For Josh Rogin’s op-ed in the Washington Post, Opinion | How the U.N. became a tool of China’s genocide denial propaganda, click here. For the VOA’s report, Interview: 'Xinjiang Police Files' Hack and Its Significance, click here.
Geopolitics
China fails to reach consensus with 10 Pacific nations on “sweeping security and trade deal”
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