Tag: Chinas

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How China’s Outrage Machine Kicked Up a Storm Over H&M

How China’s Outrage Machine Kicked Up a Storm Over H&M

When Swedish fast fashion giant H&M announced in September that it was ending its relationship with a Chinese supplier accused of forced labor, some Chinese social media accounts dedicated to the textile industry took note. But on the whole the moment passed without fanfare.

Six months later, Beijing’s online outrage machine went into action. This time his anger was ruthless.

The Communist Party’s youth wing condemned H&M on social media and posted an archive photo of slaves at a Mississippi cotton plantation. Official news outlets piled up with their own outraged memes and hashtags. Patriotic web users carried the message across far and wide corners of the Chinese Internet.

In a matter of hours, a tsunami of nationalist anger hit H&M, Nike, Uniqlo and other international apparel brands and became the latest outbreak of Chinese politics in the western region of Xinjiang, a major cotton producer.

The crisis that apparel brands are now facing is well known to many overseas companies in China. The Communist Party has been using the country’s vast consumer market for years to force international corporations to march in line with their political sensibilities, or at least not to openly deny them.

However, the latest episode has shown that the Chinese government is increasingly able to unleash storms of patriotic anger to punish companies that violate this pact.

In the case of H&M, the timing of the uproar seemed to be dictated not by anything the retailer had done, but by sanctions imposed on Chinese officials last week by the United States, the European Union, the UK and Canada related to Xinjiang were imposed. China has taken hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in the region to indoctrination camps and harshly pushed them into jobs at factories and other employers.

“The part of the hate festival is not subtle. It’s the same logic they’ve followed for decades, ”said Xiao Qiang, a researcher at the University of California’s School of Information at Berkeley and founder of the China Digital Times, a website that tracks Chinese internet controls. But “their ability to control it is getting better,” he said.

“They know how to make these pro-government, nationalist users shine,” Xiao continued. “You will be very good at it. You know exactly what to do. “

On Monday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian rejected the idea that Beijing had led the boycott campaign against H&M and the other brands.

“These foreign companies refuse to use Xinjiang cotton just because of lies,” Zhao said at a press conference. “Of course, this will spark the resentment and anger of the Chinese people. Does the government even have to encourage and guide this? “

After the Communist Youth League sparked outrage on Wednesday, other government-backed groups and state news outlets lit the flames.

They posted memes suggesting new meanings after the letters H and M: mian hua (cotton), huang miu (ridiculous), mo hei (smears). Official Xinhua News Agency released an illustration of the Better Cotton Initiative, a group raising concerns about forced labor in Xinjiang, as a blindfolded puppet controlled by two hands patterned like an American flag.

The enthusiasm quickly caught the attention of Beijing’s highest levels. A State Department spokeswoman held up a photo of slaves in American cotton fields during a press conference Thursday.

The messages were reinforced by people with a large fan base but largely apolitical presence on social media.

Squirrel Video, a Weibo account devoted to silly videos, shared the Communist Youth League’s original post on H&M with its 10 million followers. A gadget blogger in Chengdu with 1.4 million followers shared a clip in which a worker removes an H&M sign from a mall. A user in Beijing who writes about TV stars highlighted entertainers who had terminated their contracts with Adidas and other target brands.

“Today’s China cannot bully everyone!” He wrote to his nearly seven million followers. “We don’t ask for trouble, but we are not afraid of trouble either.”

A fashion influencer named Wei Ya hosted a live video event on Friday trading products made from Xinjiang cotton. In her Weibo post announcing the event, she made sure to tag the Communist Youth League.

By Monday, news sites circulated a rap video combining the cotton issue with some popular recent lines of attack on Western powers: “How can a country where 500,000 have died of Covid-19 claim the hill?”

A Weibo user posted a lush animated video that he’d been working on all night. It shows men with white hoods pointing guns at black cotton pickers and ending with a lynching.

“These are your foolish deeds; we would never, ”reads a caption.

Less than two hours after the user shared the video, it was republished by Global Times, a party-controlled newspaper known for its nationalist tone.

Many web users who speak out during such campaigns are motivated by genuine patriotism, even if the Chinese government pays some people to post comments on party lines. Others, like the traffic-hungry blog accounts ridiculed as “marketing accounts” in China, are likely to be more pragmatic. You just want the clicks.

In these moments of mass glow, it can be difficult to tell where official propaganda ends and the search for opportunistic gains begins.

“I think the line between the two is becoming increasingly blurred,” said Chenchen Zhang, assistant professor of politics at Queen’s University in Belfast who studies Chinese Internet discourse.

“Nationalist issues are selling; They bring a lot of traffic, ”said Professor Zhang. “Official accounts and marketing accounts come together and everyone participates in this ‘market nationalism’.”

Chinese officials are making sure the anger doesn’t get out of hand. According to tests by the China Digital Times, Internet platforms have been carefully monitoring search results and comments on Xinjiang and H&M since last week.

An article in the Global Times urged readers “to be firm in criticizing those like H&M who intentionally provoke, but at the same time remain rational and beware of pretend patriots joining the crowd to incite hatred.” “.

The Communist Youth League has been at the forefront of optimizing party messages for viral engagement. Its influence is growing as more voices in society seek ways to show loyalty to Beijing, said Fang Kecheng, assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Hong Kong University of China.

“They have more and more fans,” said Professor Fang. “And whether it’s other government departments, marketing accounts, or those nationalist influencers, they all pay closer attention to their positions and follow immediately.”

The H&M riot had the presumably unintended effect that more Chinese internet users discussed the situation in Xinjiang. For many years, people generally avoided the topic, knowing that comments dealing with the harsh aspects of Chinese rule could get them into trouble. In order to avoid detection by censors, many Internet users did not designate the region with its Chinese name, but with the Roman letter “xj”.

But in the past few days, some have found out firsthand why it is still worth being careful when talking about Xinjiang.

A beauty blogger told her nearly 100,000 Weibo followers that she was contacted by a woman who said she was in Xinjiang. The nameless woman said that her father and other relatives were imprisoned and that the foreign news about mass internment was all true.

Within a few hours, the blogger apologized for the “bad effects” her post had made.

“Support not only Xinjiang cotton, but also Xinjiang people!” Another Weibo user wrote. “Support Xinjiang people who walk the streets without having their phones and IDs checked.”

The post later disappeared. The author declined to comment, citing concerns about its safety. Weibo did not respond to a request for comment.

Lin Qiqing contributed to the research.

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World News

China’s authorities bonds are in a ‘candy spot’ after unload, says portfolio supervisor

China’s government bonds are in a ‘sweet spot' after sell off, says portfolio manager

Chinese Treasuries are in a “sweet spot” after last year’s sell-off – and now offer higher yields and much lower volatility compared to US Treasuries, a portfolio manager said.

The yield on China’s 10-year government bond rose nearly 1 percentage point last year to a high of around 3.4% in November as the country was “way ahead” in getting the Covid-19 outbreak under control, said Wilfred Wee, portfolio manager at asset management firm Ninety One on Friday.

The yield on 10-year Chinese government bonds has settled at 3.2% to 3.3% in the past few weeks. In contrast, the yield on 10-year US Treasuries ranged from 1.65% to 1.75% despite the recent surge.

“I think China Fixed Income is in a (a) sweet spot for this part of the cycle,” Wee told CNBC’s Street Signs Asia.

China is clearly … way ahead in terms of treating Covid and is now facing some structural issues like debt overhang, trying to revitalize consumption, etc.

Wilfred Wee

Portfolio manager, ninety-one

“The Chinese bond market sold out last year and that was due to a better economy that came first during the crisis … I think China is clearly, and is, clearly ahead of the game when it comes to dealing with Covid. ” Now we are dealing with some structural problems like debt overhang, trying to stimulate consumption, etc., “he said.

China was the first country to report the coronavirus outbreak and the only major economy to grow over the past year when it expanded 2.3% year over year. According to estimates by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the US economy contracted 3.5% in 2020 compared to the previous year.

The prospect of better growth rates – and a pick-up in inflation – has led to higher US Treasury bond yields in recent weeks, narrowing the gap to their Chinese counterparts.

China’s “cleverness”

Still, China’s fiscal and monetary “caution” adds to the attractiveness of government bonds, said Daryl Ho, an investment strategist from Singapore Bank DBS.

“China set an example of fiscal caution by being one of the first economies to hold back further lost spending and launch debt relief efforts to curb systemic debt accumulation,” Ho said in a statement Thursday.

“This position is expected to continue through 2021, when the economy continues to recover, in stark contrast to countries that continue to spend wastefully due to poorer virus management results,” he added.

On the money front, Chinese policymakers have started tightening policies – “against the grain of restrained policies around the world,” said Ho.

With both fiscal and monetary policy in the US still loose, the Chinese yuan could appreciate, the strategist said. This would help investors protect the higher yields on Chinese bonds from currency fluctuations, added Ho.

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World News

China’s Sharp Phrases in Alaska Sign its Extra Assured Posture

China's Sharp Words in Alaska Signal its More Confident Posture

ANCHOR – The Biden government’s first face-to-face meeting with China ended Friday after a vivid demonstration of how the world’s two largest economic and technology powers are facing a growing gap of suspicion and disagreement over a range of issues affecting the global Will shape the landscape for years to come.

After an opening session on Thursday marked by mutual public accusations, the two sides left an Anchorage hotel on Friday without jointly expressing their willingness to work together, even in areas where both say they share common interests, from climate change until the rollback of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken argued that it was valuable to hear how differently Chinese President Biden and President Xi Jinping, who celebrated a cautious friendship a decade ago, now pursue their priorities.

“We know and knew that there are a number of areas where we are fundamentally at odds,” Blinken told journalists after the Chinese diplomats left the venue without making public statements or answering questions. “And it’s no surprise that when we addressed these issues clearly and directly, we received a defensive response.”

The extraordinary resentment exuded by China’s top diplomats in Alaska reflected a new militant and unapologetic China that was increasingly deprived of diplomatic pressure from the American presidential administrations.

Just as Washington’s views of China have changed after years of promoting the country’s economic integration, so have Beijing’s perception of the United States and the privileged place in the world it has long held. The Americans, in their view, have neither an overwhelming reservoir of global influence nor the power to use it against China.

This has made China more confident in pursuing its goals openly and blatantly – from human rights issues in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, to territorial disputes with India and Japan and others in the South China Sea, to the most controversial fate of Taiwan’s self-governing democracy, which China claims for itself.

While China still faces tremendous challenges at home and around the world, its leaders now pretend history is on their side.

“These strategic exchanges were open, constructive and helpful,” said China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi in comments that were broadcast on Chinese state television. “Of course there are big arguments between us. China will vigorously defend national sovereignty, security and development interests, and China’s development and growing strength are unstoppable. “

Although most of the discussions in Anchorage took place behind closed doors, the video of the opening session provided ample evidence of the tense start to the meetings. Mr. Yang held a 16-minute ceremony accusing Mr. Blinken and Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s National Security Advisor, of condescension and hypocrisy.

China’s more aggressive diplomatic stance is likely to fuel tension with the United States, which has declared China itself a national security rival. China’s persistent views have already surfaced on its borders and in the surrounding waters, where it fought Indian troops and threatened ships from several countries including Japan, Malaysia and Vietnam over the past year.

The American delegation, Blinken said, had arrived in Alaska to discuss issues that China considered taboo because they concerned the country’s internal affairs. These included American objections to human rights violations against minority Uyghurs in China’s western Xinjiang province – which Mr. Blinken has described as “genocide” – and China’s application of a new national security law to suppress political disagreements in Hong Kong.

Mr Blinken and Mr Sullivan tried to downplay the sharpness that flared up in front of television cameras on Thursday evening at the opening hour of the two-day event.

“We knew we were coming in, we knew we were going out,” said Mr. Sullivan. “And we’re going back to Washington to take stock of where we are.”

Blinken said a discussion of China’s cyber activities also generated an irritated reaction: while the United States has not yet identified a country as responsible for a giant Microsoft Exchange system hack used by tens of thousands of government agencies and corporations, Microsoft has said It was a Chinese government sponsored operation.

Mr Blinken said “our interests overlap” on diplomacy with Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan, as well as on climate change. However, there was no shared declaration of determination to work together on any of these issues, the diplomatic friendliness that routinely seals such high-level meetings.

Afterward, senior Biden government officials insisted the talks would be useful in gaining insight into Beijing’s views, which could help develop a new American strategy to compete with China in a variety of areas. The officials, who informed journalists on condition that they could not be identified, called the private conversations civil.

A senior official said Mr Blinken focused Friday’s closing talks on human rights as well as detaining foreigners in China and using a practice known as travel bans to prevent them from leaving the country.

While this was not the first irritable meeting between Chinese and Americans, the balance of power between the two countries has changed.

For decades, China turned economically and militarily from weak positions to American governments. This sometimes forced it to comply with American demands, even when it was reluctant to release imprisoned human rights activists or to accept Washington’s terms for joining the World Trade Organization.

China today feels much more confident in its ability to challenge the United States and press for its own vision of international cooperation. It is a trust that China’s leader since 2012, Xi Jinping, has welcomed, who used the phrase, “The East is rising and the West is falling.”

Beijing’s view has been fueled by the coronavirus epidemic, which has largely tamed China at home, and internal political divisions in the United States. Mr. Yang highlighted both in his remarks on Thursday.

“The human rights challenges facing the United States are deeply ingrained,” Yang said, citing the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality. “It is important that we manage our respective affairs well rather than diverting the guilt away from someone else in this world.”

The change in China’s strategy isn’t just rhetorical or “stellar” to a domestic audience, as suggested by a senior official traveling with Mr. Blinken.

Regarding the litany of issues Mr Blinken raised before and during the talks – from Hong Kong to Xinjiang, from human rights to technology – China’s leaders have refused to give a reason. They have done so despite international criticism and even tightened the punitive measures of the Trump and now the Biden administrations.

In the last round, the State Department announced this week that it would sanction 24 Chinese officials for their role in eroding Hong Kong’s electoral system. The timing of the move, just as the Chinese were preparing to leave for Alaska, added to the sharpness.

“This is not the way you greet your guests,” said China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi in remarks in Alaska that were as clear as Mr. Yang’s.

The Biden government’s stated strategy for dealing with China was to form coalitions of countries to confront and deter their behavior. Mr Biden’s team has argued that while President Trump correctly diagnosed China as a growing threat, its erratic policies and ill-treatment of allies are undermining efforts to counter it.

How successful the new strategy will be remains to be seen, but for the past few years China has pretended to be impervious to outrage at its measures, which makes the task all the more difficult.

For example, the expansion of international condemnation last year over the introduction of a new national security law to curb disagreement in Hong Kong did nothing to stop a new law dismantling the territory’s electoral system this year.

China also opted Friday to begin its legal proceedings against two Canadians arrested more than two years ago and charged with espionage in general in retaliation for American efforts to extradite an executive from telecommunications giant Huawei for fraud-related charges Sales was viewed in Iran.

It was noticed that Mr. Yang, a seasoned diplomat and a member of the ruling Politburo of the Communist Party of China, used what he said to say that neither the United States nor the West by and large had a monopoly on international public opinion .

This is reflected in China’s successful efforts to use international forums such as the United Nations Human Rights Council to counter condemnation of measures such as mass detention and re-education programs in Xinjiang, the predominantly Muslim region of western China.

“I don’t think the vast majority of countries in the world would recognize that the universal values ​​held by the United States or that the opinion of the United States could represent international public opinion,” Yang said. “And these countries would not recognize that the rules serve as the basis for international order for a small number of people.”

Mr. Yang also questioned Mr. Blinken’s allegation that he had recently heard concerns from American allies about forced Chinese behavior. He noted that the two countries Mr. Blinken was visiting – Japan and South Korea – were China’s second and third largest trading partners, showcasing the growing influence of its economic power.

The confrontation played a good role among local audiences in China, as measured by reactions to the country’s carefully censored social media sites. “Who but China would dare to put the United States in such a corner on American territory these days?” A Weibo user wrote approvingly under a video of Mr. Yang’s remarks.

While American officials said the temperature of meetings in Alaska had dropped behind closed doors, few officials or experts on either side are hoping for a significant improvement in relations. “By and large, this negotiation is only for the two sides to put all the cards on the table, for the two sides to see how big and deep the differences are,” said Wu Qiang, an independent political analyst in Beijing. In fact, however, it will not help bring about reconciliation or mitigation. “

Chris Buckley contributed to the coverage from Sydney, Australia, and Claire Fu contributed to the research.

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World News

China’s growing older inhabitants is greater downside than ‘one-child’ coverage: Economists

China's aging population is bigger problem than 'one-child' policy: Economists

A medical worker takes care of a newborn baby lying in an incubator at Jingzhou Maternity & Child Healthcare Hospital on the eve of Chinese New Year, the year of the ox, on February 11, 2021 in Jingzhou, Hubei Province.

Huang Zhigang | Visual China Group | Getty Images

BEIJING – China’s decade-long one-child policy attracted renewed attention in recent weeks after authorities gave mixed signals as to whether they were any closer to lifting limits on the number of children people can have.

The authorities have withdrawn the controversial one-child policy in recent years to give people the opportunity to have two children. However, economists say other changes are needed to spur growth as births decline and China’s population ages rapidly.

“There are two ways to address this. One way is to loosen birth control. Something (that) helps on the verge, but even if you loosen control completely it is likely to be difficult to reverse the trend,” said Zhiwei Zhang, Chief Economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.

“The other way to deal with it from an economic policy perspective is to make industry more dependent on other sectors,” he said.

China’s economy has relied heavily on industries such as manufacturing, which require large amounts of cheap labor. However, rising wages make Chinese factories less attractive, while workers need higher skills to make the country more innovative.

The bigger problem for China is that an aging population feeds into an existing problem: slower labor productivity growth, said Alicia Garcia-Herrero, Natixis’ chief economist for the Asia-Pacific region. She watches whether China will grow faster in capital-intensive sectors, which can be attributed more to investments in automation.

Births will fall by 15% in 2020

China introduced its one-child policy in the late 1970s to curb population growth. According to official figures, the country had doubled in size from more than 500 million people in the 1940s to over 1 billion in the 1980s.

Over the next 40 years, the population grew by only 40% – to 1.4 billion, more than four times the US today.

I don’t think the easing of birth policies could have much economic repercussions as the slow population growth is not due to political restrictions, not in the last 20 years.

Dan Wang |

Chief Economist Hang Seng China.

Similar to other major economies, high housing and education costs in China have deterred people from having children in recent years.

Despite a change in 2016 that allowed families to have two children, births fell for the fourth year in a row in 2020, falling 15% to 10 million, according to analysis of a public safety report.

“In general, I don’t think the birth policy easing could have a big economic impact as the slow population growth is not due to political restrictions, not in the last 20 years,” said Dan Wang, Shanghai chief economist at Hang Seng China.

She said, based on the experience of other countries, the most effective policy for a country the size of China would be to accept more migrants, but that would be an unlikely change in the short term.

Other options that policymakers are already pursuing include raising the retirement age, improving the skills of the existing workforce through more education, and using more machines and artificial intelligence to replace human workers, Wang said.

Policy changes are only a matter of time

The one-child policy received renewed attention last month when the National Health Commission issued a statement authorizing research into the economic benefits of lifting restrictions on birth in a northeastern region. The three-province area known as Dongbei has economic problems and the lowest birth rates in the country.

Two days later, the commission issued another statement saying that, despite much online speculation, the news was not a test for the complete repeal of family planning policy.

However, according to economists polled by CNBC, lifting the limits is likely only a matter of time.

Yi Fuxian, critic of the one-child policy and author of “Big Country with an Empty Nest,” said he expected a decision by the end of the year after China released census results once in a decade in April.

Challenges posed by China’s aging population

The Chinese government has also stated that implementing a strategy to respond to an aging population will be a priority for its next five-year plan, which will be formally approved at a parliamentary session starting this week.

Meanwhile, the generations born before the one-child policy was implemented in the 1980s are becoming a significant segment. Over the next 10 years, 123.9 million more people will be entering the age bracket of 55 and over. This is the largest demographic increase among any age group, according to Morgan Stanley.

This demographic shift will create its own economic demands, said Liu Xiangdong, deputy director of the economic research department at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges in Beijing.

Liu said more workers are needed to care for the elderly, while retirement communities and other infrastructures tailored to an older population will see greater demand.

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Business

A Spreadsheet of China’s Censorship Exhibits the Human Toll

A Spreadsheet of China's Censorship Shows the Human Toll

In China, don’t ask the heroes.

At least seven people were threatened, detained or arrested in the past week for expressing doubts about the government’s account of the deaths of Chinese soldiers in a clash with Indian troops last year. Three of them are held for between seven and 15 days. The other four are being prosecuted, including a man who lives outside of China.

“The Internet is not a lawless place,” the police said in their cases. “Blasphemies from heroes and martyrs will not be tolerated.”

Her punishment might have gone unnoticed had it not been for an online database of language crimes in China. A simple google spreadsheet that everyone can see. She lists nearly 2,000 times when people were fined by the government for their online and offline statements.

The list, which is directly linked to public judgments, police notices, and official news reports from the past eight years, is far from complete. Most of the punishment takes place behind closed doors.

Still, the list paints a grim picture of a government punishing its citizens for the slightest hint of criticism. It shows how random and merciless China’s legal system can be when it punishes its citizens for what they say despite freedom of expression being enshrined in the Chinese constitution.

The list describes dissidents who have been sentenced to long prison terms for attacking the government. It is about petitioners who appeal directly to the government to correct the injustice against them, are locked up for shouting too loudly. It includes nearly 600 people fined for testifying about Covid-19 and too many others cursing the police, often after receiving parking tickets.

The person behind the list is a bit of a mystery. In an interview, he described himself as a young man with the surname Wang. Of course, if the government found out more about him, he could end up in jail.

Mr. Wang said he decided to compile the list after reading about people punished for allegedly insulting the country during the celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic in October 2019. Although he is young, he told me he remembers having more freedom of expression before Xi Jinping became the top leader of the Communist Party in late 2012.

“I knew there was language crime in China, but I never thought it was that bad,” wrote Mr. Wang on his Twitter account in August, writing in both English and Chinese. He wrote that after more than 1,000 judgments, he became depressed.

“Big Brother is watching you,” he wrote. “I tried to look for Big Brother’s eyes and found them everywhere.”

The list, bluntly titled “An Inventory of Language Crimes in China in Recent Years,” contained details of the events that challenged Beijing’s official report of the clash between Chinese and Indian forces at its controversial Himalayan border in June. The Indian government said at the time that 20 of its soldiers had died. Last week, the Chinese government finally said four of its troops had died.

State media in China called them heroes, but some people had questions. One, a former journalist, asked if more had died, a matter of great interest both inside and outside the country. According to the clue to which the chart is linked, the former journalist has been accused of engaging in disputes and provoking trouble – a common accusation by authorities against those who speak up – and faces a prison sentence of up to five years.

Updated

Apr. 25, 2021, 9:43 p.m. ET

Reading the list, it becomes clear how well Mr. Xi and his government have tamed the Chinese Internet. People once thought the internet was uncontrollable, even in China. But Mr. Xi has long seen the Internet both as a threat and as a tool to control public opinion.

“The internet is the biggest variant we face,” he said in a 2018 speech. “Whether we can win the war over the internet will have a direct impact on national political security.”

Liberal voices and media were among the first to be silenced. Then the internet platforms themselves – including the Chinese versions of Twitter and YouTube – were punished for what they allowed.

Now, Chinese internet companies are bragging about their ability to control content. Nationalist online users report speeches that they find offensive. Of the seven people who were accused of insulting the heroes and martyrs, six were reported by other users, according to police. In a way, the Chinese internet is self-monitoring.

China’s police force, disliked for their extensive powers to indefinitely detain people, is a big beneficiary. According to the table, people were arrested for calling the police “dogs”, “bandits” and “bastards”. Most are only locked up for a few days, but one man is there Liaoning Province was sentenced to 10 months in prison for posting five offensive posts on its WeChat timeline.

Petitioners are among those who suffer the most. In one case in the table, a woman in Sichuan Province whose son died suddenly in school and whose husband committed suicide was sentenced to three years in prison for disseminating false information. The ruling listed the headlines of 10 articles she posted and the pageviews they had garnered. Most of them have 1,615 page views, the least only 18.

Perhaps the most depressing things are about people who have been punished for what they said about the Covid-19 pandemic. At the top of the list is Dr. Li Wenliang, who was reprimanded on January 1, 2020, along with seven others who have tried to warn the country about the coronavirus. He died of the virus in early February last year and is now known as a whistleblower who tried to warn the world about the coronavirus outbreak. However, 587 other cases are listed in the table.

Even cheesy skits by aspiring online influencers can be viewed as obnoxious. Two men in northwest Shaanxi Province streamed a funeral they held for a sheep. In the video, one man cried over a photo of the sheep while the other was digging the grave. They were detained for 10 days for violating social norms.

But the table also shows inspiring cases in which people spoke out to challenge authority.

In 2018, a 19-year-old man in the northwestern city of Yinchuan decided to test the newly passed law prohibiting questioning and criticizing heroes and martyrs. He wrote on Weibo that two famous martyrs died meaningless deaths and that he wanted to see if he would be arrested, indicating a lack of freedom of speech in China. He was detained for 10 days and fined $ 70.

A man, Feng Zhouguan, criticized Mr. Xi and was charged with disputes by the local police in Xiamen City. He was detained for five days, but after his release he appealed and alleged that the police had illegally interfered in possible defamation cases between two people. The local police, he argued, were “not the military bodyguards or family militias of the national leader”. The court upheld the verdict.

Still, many people pay a steeper price.

Huang Genbao, 45, was a senior engineer with a state-owned company in the eastern city of Xuzhou. He was arrested two years ago and sentenced to 16 months in prison for insulting the national leader and damaging the national image on platforms such as Twitter. He shared a cell with more than 20 people and had to follow a strict routine, including toilet breaks. He and his wife have lost their jobs and he is now delivering meals to support his family.

“My life in the detention center reminded me of the book ‘1984’,” he said in an interview. “Many of the experiences are likely worse than the storylines in the book.”

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World News

Biden says U.S. and Europe should push again in opposition to China’s financial abuses

Biden says U.S. and Europe must push back against China's economic abuses

President Joe Biden said Friday that the US and its international partners must hold China accountable for explaining its economic practices.

“We must defend ourselves against the abuses and coercions of the Chinese government, which undermine the foundations of the international economic system,” said Biden in a speech at the Munich Security Conference, which was practically delivered by the White House.

“Everyone has to play by the same rules,” he said at the annual international policy meeting.

Biden’s appearance, his debut to an international audience since taking office as president, came as his administration tried to maintain a tough stance on China as it moved away from former President Donald Trump’s militant relationship with Beijing.

The Trump administration sought to reshape trade relations between the US and China, with an emphasis on encouraging Beijing to buy US goods while addressing issues such as intellectual property protection and forced technology transfers.

After reaching the first “phase” of a deal, Trump canceled an additional round of trade talks with China in 2020, to which he attributed the full spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump’s “America First” policies also alienated some European leaders long allied with the United States. Biden has made it clear that he intends to improve relations with America’s international partners.

“I know that the last few years have strained and tested our transatlantic relationship. But the United States is determined to reconnect with Europe,” said Biden at the beginning of his speech on Friday.

Before making his presentation, Biden met with leaders of the G7, the group of nations that includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the US, to develop a global response to the Covid pandemic discuss.

In a joint statement following that meeting, the G7 vowed to “work together and work with others to make 2021 a turning point for multilateralism”.

The G7 statement also announced that member states would allocate US $ 7.5 billion to COVAX, an international initiative aimed at improving access to Covid vaccines. The White House said Thursday that the US would pledge $ 4 billion to global vaccination efforts through 2022.

According to the statement, the G7 meeting also touched China. “With the aim of promoting a fair and mutually beneficial global economic system for all people, we will work with others, especially with G20 countries, including large economies like China,” it said.

Biden went on in his speech.

“US and European companies are required to publicly announce corporate governance structures … and to adhere to rules to prevent corruption and monopoly practices. Chinese companies should adhere to the same standard,” said the president.

“We have to stand up for the democratic values ​​that make it possible to achieve all of this and defend ourselves against those who would monopolize and normalize oppression,” said Biden.

The Chinese embassy in the United States did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request to comment on Biden’s speech.

The President noted that “in this way we too can counter the threat from Russia”, which seeks to “weaken the European project and our NATO alliance”.

“The challenges with Russia may be different from those with China, but they are just as real,” said Biden.

“It’s not about playing East against West. It’s not about we want a conflict. We want a future in which all nations can freely determine their own path without the threat of violence or coercion,” said Biden. “We cannot and must not return to the reflexive opposition and rigid blocks of the Cold War.”

Read the full G7 joint statement:

“We, the leaders of the Group of Seven, met today and decided to work together to beat and rebuild COVID-19 better. Because of our strengths and values ​​as democratic, open economies and societies, we will work together and work with others. ” Make 2021 a turning point for multilateralism and create a recovery that promotes the health and prosperity of our people and our planet.

“We will step up collaboration on the health response to COVID-19. The dedication of key workers everywhere represents the best of humankind, while the rapid discovery of vaccines shows the power of human ingenuity. Working with and collaboratively strengthening the World Health Organization (WHO ) and support their leading and coordinating role, we will: Accelerate the global development and use of vaccines, work with industry to increase production capacity, including through voluntary licensing, improve the exchange of information, for example in the sequencing of new variants, and promote transparent and responsible practices and trust in vaccines. We reaffirm our support for all pillars of access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A), its COVAX facility and affordable and equitable access to vaccines, therapeutics a and diagnostics, reflecting the role of comprehensive vaccination as a global public good. Today, with increased financial commitments of over $ 4 billion for ACT-A and COVAX, co. G7 support comes to $ 7.5 billion. We invite all partners, including the G20 and international financial institutions, to join us in increasing support for ACT-A, including providing developing countries with access to WHO-approved vaccines through the COVAX facility.

“COVID-19 shows that the world needs stronger defense against future risks to global health security. We will work with the WHO, the G20 and others, particularly at the Global Health Summit in Rome, on the global health and health security architecture pandemic preparedness, including through health funding and rapid response mechanisms, strengthening the One Health approach and universal health coverage, and exploring the potential value of a global health contract.

“We have provided more than $ 6 trillion in unprecedented support to our economies in the G7 over the past year. We will continue to support our economies in protecting jobs and supporting a strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive recovery. We reaffirm our support for high-risk countries, our commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals and our partnership with Africa, including support for a stable recovery, and we will work together through the G20 and the international financial institutions to increase support for countries’ responses by examining all available tools, including through full and transparent implementation of the Debt Service Suspension Initiative and Common Framework.

“The recovery from COVID-19 needs to get better for everyone. With UNFCCC COP26 and CBD COP15 in mind, we will focus our plans on our global ambitions for climate change and reversing biodiversity loss. We will make progress in containment, adaptation and funding in line with the Paris Agreement and providing a green transformation and clean energy transition that will reduce emissions and create good jobs on the way to net zero by no later than 2050. We strive to align our economies in this way that no geographic region or person, regardless of gender or ethnicity, will be left behind. We will: Promote open economies and societies that promote global economic resilience, Use the free flow digital economy with confidence, participate in a modernized, freer and g More honest rules-based multilateral trade system that reflects our values ​​and delivers balanced growth with a reformed World Trade Organization at its center and a consensus-based international solution that seeks taxation by mid-2021 under the OECD. With the aim of supporting a fair and mutually beneficial global economic system for all people, we will work with others, especially G20 countries, including large economies like China. As leaders, we will deliberate on collective approaches to address non-market strategies and practices, and we will work with others to address important global issues that affect all countries.

“We resolve to agree concrete actions on these priorities at the G7 UK summit in June, and we support Japan’s commitment to safely host the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games this summer as a symbol of world unity Overcoming COVID-19. “

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World News

China’s digital yuan must beat Alipay, WeChat Pay first: PIIE

China's digital yuan needs to beat Alipay, WeChat Pay first: PIIE

China’s digital yuan must first dethrone the country’s domestic e-payment giants before it can think about competing against the greenback internationally, says Martin Chorzempa of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

“A lot of people talk about (the digital yuan) as a driver of renminbi internationalization,” Chorzempa, senior fellow at PIIE, told CNBC’s Street Signs Asia on Wednesday. “I think they have to beat Alipay and WeChat Pay in China before they can contain the US dollar.”

“It will essentially be the central bank versus the big tech companies, and that will be very interesting to watch,” he said.

“It’s going to be essentially the central bank versus the big tech companies, and that’s going to be pretty interesting to watch.”

Martin Chorzempa

Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics

China’s central bank developed the digital yuan and is expected to work in a similar way to transactions through existing payment apps. The country’s capital, Beijing, recently spent $ 1.5 million on a digital currency test during the New Year celebrations after similar experiments were conducted in Shenzhen and Suzhou.

Photo taken on Feb. 12, 2021 shows a digital red RMB envelope during the Digital Wangfujing Snow and Ice Shopping Festival in Beijing, capital of China.

Costfoto | Barcroft Media via Getty Images

Chorzempa said one of the main reasons behind the push for the digital yuan was the desire for a government-sponsored and controlled alternative to established giants like the Alibaba-affiliated Alipay app and Tencent’s Wechat Pay, which currently process about 95% of digital payments in China.

Unlike most of the other major economies around the world, mobile payments – primarily through the Alipay app and Wechat Pay – have ousted cash as the predominant form of consumer payment in China in recent years.

“(The digital yuan) is something that is truly unprecedented in the major economies,” said Chorzempa. “China is … by far the most advanced in digital currency and it’s exciting to see.”

“Nothing like Bitcoin or Ethereum”

However, Chorzempa said China’s digital yuan has very little to do with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which are known for their high price volatility.

“I would say that the level of security (the digital yuan) is very high and the risk is low,” he said. “It’s the same value as any regular renminbi, so there shouldn’t be any fluctuations in price to worry about.”

Intermediaries selling the digital currency in China are also likely to be “fairly safe and carefully regulated” as long as they are approved by the government, Chorzempa said.

“I wouldn’t worry about the safety of a digital renminbi in a central bank regulated wallet,” he added.

According to the PIIE researcher, Sweden is expected to be among the first advanced economies after China to adopt a digital currency.

Ever since Facebook first proposed the launch of the Libra cryptocurrency, which has now been renamed Diem, there has been a “great surge of interest” among central banks fearing that a private tech company “might take over their currency,” much like Alipay and WeChat Pay payments dominate in China, he said.

“I assume that the central bank’s digital currencies will continue to expand worldwide,” said Chorzempa.

– CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report.

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World News

China’s Crackdown on Muslims Extends to a Resort Island

China’s Crackdown on Muslims Extends to a Resort Island

SANYA, China – The call to prayer still echoes through the alleys of Sanya’s nearly 1,000-year-old Muslim quarter, with minarets with crescent moons rising over the roofs. The government’s crackdown on the tiny, deeply devout community in this southern Chinese city has been subtle.

Signs on shops and houses that read “Allahu akbar” – “God is the greatest” in Arabic – have been fitted with stickers an inch wide to advertise the “China Dream,” a nationalist official slogan. The Chinese characters for Halal, which means permissible in Islam, have been removed from restaurant signs and menus. The authorities have closed two Islamic schools and tried twice to exclude female students from wearing headscarves.

The Utsuls, a community of no more than 10,000 Muslims in Sanya, are among the recent targets of the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign against foreign influences and religions. Their problems show how Beijing is working to undermine the religious identity of even its smallest Muslim minorities in order to achieve a unified Chinese culture, the core of which is the Han ethnic majority.

The new restrictions in Sanya, a town on the holiday island of Hainan, mark a reversal of government policy. Until a few years ago, officials supported the Utsuls’ Islamic identity and ties to Muslim countries, according to local religious leaders and residents, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid government retaliation.

The party has stated that its restrictions on Islam and the Muslim communities are designed to curb violent religious extremism. She has used this rationale to justify cracking down on Muslims in China’s westernmost region, Xinjiang, after a series of attacks seven years ago. But Sanya saw little unrest.

The tightening of control over the Utsuls “reveals the real face of China’s communist campaign against local communities,” said Ma Haiyun, an associate professor at Frostburg State University in Maryland who studies Islam in China. “The point here is to strengthen state control. It is purely against Islam. “

The Chinese government has repeatedly denied that it is against Islam. But under Xi Jinping, its supreme leader, the party has demolished mosques, old shrines, and Islamic domes and minarets in northwestern and central China. The crackdown focused heavily on the Uighurs, a Central Asian Muslim minority of 11 million in Xinjiang, many of whom were held in mass detention camps and forced to renounce Islam.

Efforts to “sinize” Islam accelerated in 2018 after the State Council, China’s cabinet, issued a confidential policy instructing officials to prevent the belief from interfering with the secular life and functions of the state. The directive warned of “Arabization” and the influence of Saudi Arabia or “Saudiization” in mosques and schools.

In Sanya, the party is persecuting a group with a significant position in China’s relations with the Islamic world. The Utsuls have hosted Muslims from across the country seeking the mild climes of Hainan Province, and they served as a bridge to Muslim communities in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

The Islamic identity of the Utsuls has been celebrated by the government for years as China pushed for stronger ties with the Arab world. Such connections were key to Mr. Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative, a program to fund infrastructure projects around the world and strengthen Beijing’s political influence.

The Utsuls have become “an important base for Muslims who have moved abroad to find their roots and investigate their ancestors,” according to a 2017 government release that highlighted the role of Islam in Hainan in the belt- and street map was highlighted. “To date, they have welcomed thousands of scholars and friends from more than a dozen countries and regions and are an important window for cultural exchanges between people around the South China Sea.”

Although the Utsuls have been officially classified as part of China’s largest ethnic minority, the Hui, they see themselves as culturally different from other Muslim communities in the country.

These are Sunni Muslims believed to be descended from Cham, the long-distance fishermen and sea traders of the Champa kingdom that ruled the central and southern coast of Vietnam for centuries. As early as the 10th century, Cham refugees fled the war in what is now central Vietnam and traveled to Hainan, a tropical island the size of Maryland.

Over the centuries, the Utsuls maintained close ties with Southeast Asia and practiced Islam largely without restriction. But during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s, wandering Red Guard groups devoted to Mao Zedong destroyed mosques in Utsul villages as they did across China.

When China opened to the world in the early 1980s, the Utsuls began to revive their Islamic traditions. Many families have reconnected with long-lost relatives in Malaysia and Indonesia, including a former Malaysian Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, whose maternal grandfather was a Utsul who grew up in Sanya.

To this day, many Utsuls, also known as Utsats, speak a particular Chamic language similar to the language used in parts of Vietnam and Cambodia, in addition to Chinese. A sour tamarind fish stew with Southeast Asian flavors remains the local specialty, and the elders pass on stories of their ancestors’ migration to Hainan. Women wear colored headscarves, sometimes beaded or embroidered, that cover their hair, ears and neck. This type is similar to headgear worn by Muslim women in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Yusuf Liu, a Malaysian-Chinese writer who has studied the Utsuls, said the group was able to maintain a distinct identity because they were geographically isolated and clinging to their religious beliefs for centuries. He noted that the Utsuls were similar to the Malaysians in many ways.

“They share many of the same qualities, including language, clothing, history, blood ties, and food,” said Mr. Liu.

As Sanya’s tourism economy boomed over the past two decades, so did the Utsuls’ relations with the Middle East. Young men traveled to Saudi Arabia to study Islam. Community leaders built schools for children and adults to learn Arabic. They began building domes and minarets for their mosques and turned away from traditional Chinese architectural styles.

Although there have been some clashes between the Utsuls and neighboring Han in the past few decades, they have largely lived in peace, with both groups benefiting from the recent surge in tourism. In contrast, Beijing has long tried to suppress Uighur resistance to Chinese violence, which has been violent at times. The party has said that its policies in Xinjiang have curbed what it calls terrorism and religious extremism.

But for the past two years, even in Sanya, authorities have been pressing to curtail overt beliefs and links with the Arab world.

Local mosque leaders said they should remove the speakers that broadcast the call to prayer from the minaret tops and place them on the floor – and, more recently, turn the volume down. The construction of a new mosque was halted after a dispute over its imposing dimensions and supposedly “Arab” architectural elements. The concrete skeleton is now collecting dust. The city has banned children under the age of 18 from studying Arabic.

Utsul residents said they wanted to learn Arabic not only to better understand Islamic texts but also to communicate with Arab tourists who came to their restaurants, hotels and mosques before the pandemic. Some residents expressed frustration at the new restrictions and questioned China’s promise to respect its 56 officially recognized ethnic groups.

A local religious leader who studied in Saudi Arabia for five years said the community had been told they were no longer allowed to build domes.

“The mosques in the Middle East are like that. We want to build ours so that they look like mosques and not just like houses, ”he said on condition of anonymity because some residents had recently been briefly arrested for criticizing the government. (As a sign of the sensitivity of the problem, half a dozen plainclothes police in Sanya questioned us about our reporting in mosques.)

The church has resisted at times. In September, Utsul parents and students protested outside schools and government offices after several public schools banned girls from wearing headscarves to class. Weeks later, authorities reversed the order, a rare bow to public pressure.

Still, the government sees the assimilation of China’s various ethnic minorities as the key to building a stronger nation.

“We need to use ethnic differences as a foundation to build a unified Chinese consciousness,” said Xiong Kunxin, professor of ethnic studies at Minzu University in Beijing. “This is the direction for China’s future development.”

The Utsuls are currently in an uncomfortable coexistence with the authorities.

In the center of the courtyard of the Nankai Mosque, a red Chinese flag flies at almost the same height as the tops of the minarets.

Keith Bradsher reported from Sanya and Amy Qin from Taipei, Taiwan. Amy Chang Chien contributed to coverage from Taipei.

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Business

Clubhouse Cracked China’s Firewall. A Folks Shined By way of.

Clubhouse Cracked China's Firewall. A People Shined Through.

In the clubhouse, up to 5,000 users can join audio chat rooms that disappear when the conversation ends. Some users said their format made them feel more willing to share personal stories and hear different opinions. A user said in a chat room about censorship that anyone could see that all of the people who have been classified as dissidents in the mainland, like Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters, are real people. They no longer heard their voices filtered through official media.

Since Saturday, I’ve spent almost all of my waking hours wandering from one clubhouse chat room to another. In one room, a documentary filmmaker shared his thoughts on making a film about a subculture of young migrant workers called Smart who try to stand out in a conformist culture through wild hair and piercings. In another case, a graduate student in sociology shared his experience as a food delivery company. A group of feminists read works by feminist writers. More than 3,000 people joined a chat room parodying Hu Xijin, possibly the Communist Party’s most notorious propagandist. (A favorite line: “As long as we have enemies everywhere, we have no enemies.”)

A chat room with more than 100 people from northwest China that I am from focused on their interactions with ethical minorities. A woman from Gansu Province talked about how Muslims were portrayed as troublemakers in her hometown and how she learned to understand why it was offensive to hang the Chinese national flag in a mosque.

I learned of the de-Islamization of my home, the Ningxia Muslim Autonomous Region, after several people shared testimony. Jin Xu, an art history assistant at Vassar College who grew up there, talked about how his drawing of the Nanguan Mosque, a landmark in Ningxia, won a national award as a sixth grader and how the mosque had been brutally reconstructed into what he said in an interview me that it was an ugly concrete building that got rid of its external elements of Islamic art and architecture.

In a chat room, participants were asked to criticize the governments in which they live, be it China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan or the United States. Inviting each speaker, the moderator asked, “So which government would you like to criticize?” In China, where open criticism is treated as treason, it felt like performance art.

Several chat rooms were devoted to the bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square in 1989, a heavily censored topic on the Chinese Internet. Cai Chongguo, a student leader during the protests, spoke for about four hours, sharing his stories, and answering questions from thousands of people. He said he didn’t expect so many people to be interested.

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Business

HNA Was As soon as China’s Largest Dealmaker. Now It Faces Chapter.

HNA Was Once China’s Biggest Dealmaker. Now It Faces Bankruptcy.

HONG KONG – Lenders are pushing for bankruptcy. Its chairman and co-founder has been tacitly stripped of power. Almost $ 10 billion of his money was misappropriated.

HNA Group, the giant Chinese conglomerate that has thrown tens of billions of dollars in trophy deals around the world, is nearing the biggest corporate collapse in recent Chinese history. The downsizing is an extraordinary twist for the company, which began as a regional airline in southern China’s Hainan Province and owned large stakes in Hilton Hotels, Deutsche Bank, Virgin Australia, and others. At that time, HNA employed 400,000 people worldwide.

For China’s leadership, HNA is now a cautionary story. Its story offers a glimpse of how Beijing treats its most powerful entrepreneurs. China has got its economy tighter, and regulators recently conquered another empire – that of China’s most famous billionaire, Jack Ma.

“It is a sharp reminder to China’s private sector and big soaring corporations and executives that you are never more important than the Communist Party,” said Jude Blanchette, a China scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Narrowing down large companies isn’t exactly central planning, but it certainly sets guidelines for how companies behave to make sure they’re going in the right direction.”

The pressure on companies whose behavior could pose a risk to the Chinese financial system is mounting. Xi Jinping, China’s leader, told a meeting of senior officials from the country’s Communist Party late last month that the government must foresee and anticipate risks even if it seeks growth. He urged officials to make plans to deal with the “gray rhino” events, highlighting major and obvious problems in the economy that are being ignored until they become urgent threats. Chinese media had often referred to HNA as a gray rhinoceros before its demise.

The party has strengthened its hand in private business in recent months and urged entrepreneurs to identify “politically, intellectually and emotionally” with their goals. It has also pledged to prevent something called “disorderly capital expansion,” an indication of the type of lavish spending on borrowed money that HNA had become known for.

The party’s recent high profile targets include Chinese online shopping giant Alibaba Group. In December, the authorities launched an antitrust investigation into the company Mr. Ma co-founded. A month earlier, days before a planned IPO of Mr. Ma’s financial giant Ant Group, regulators stepped in to stop this.

HNA was once the face of modern enterprise China, leading the first wave of private Chinese companies with political backing to make large global acquisitions. His propensity to fund borrowed money to buy shares in global famous names was expensive and risky, and seemed to dare regulators in Beijing and around the world to turn it upside down.

As HNA’s creditors wait for a Chinese court to approve their bankruptcy and reorganization petition, questions about the extent of the conglomerate’s problems arise. It has $ 200 billion in debt that it can’t pay off, and those owed money have to sift through dozens, possibly hundreds, of its subsidiaries, said Michelle Luo, a bankruptcy attorney at Hui Ye law firm.

The task became even more daunting when three of HNA’s subsidiaries announced late last month that HNA shareholders and dozen of subsidiaries had embezzled nearly $ 10 billion in corporate funds to repay their own debts. The HNA Group was one of dozens of shareholders and subsidiaries listed in the alleged allegedly money embezzled. Hainan Airlines, one of HNA’s subsidiaries, said some funds were used to pay for wealth management products but did not disclose specific details.

HNA’s bankruptcy is the largest China has seen since the country first implemented its bankruptcy law in 2007, Ms. Luo said. It will also test the strength of the law – only 76 publicly traded companies have gone through bankruptcy proceedings in China.

Much of HNA’s restructuring is likely to take place behind closed doors and with strong government involvement. Officials from China’s Civil Aviation Administrator and the China Development Bank, the country’s main political bank, took over management of some of the company’s affairs last year, and two government officials joined the board of directors.

The fate of Chen Feng, chairman and co-founder of HNA, has been in doubt since he was removed from a list of members of the HNA Communist Party Committee, the company’s main decision-making body, according to an official release late last month.

While building HNA, Mr. Chen shaped his corporate culture with his own personal interests as a Buddhist and calligrapher. Mr. Chen, a former People’s Liberation Army pilot, said he was different from other entrepreneurs. “I don’t drink, smoke, do banquets, go to karaoke or get massages,” he once told the South China Morning Post. He had the company headquarters in Hainan built to look like a Buddha.

For years, doors opened for the company. It was cheaply funded by China’s state-sponsored banks. The executives had the kind of political connections that private companies in China could only dream of.

On his first state visit to the UK, China’s top leader Xi Jinping performed at an event in Manchester for HNA’s Hainan Airlines. Mr. Chen was once an advisor to Wang Qishan, China’s vice president. Another HNA manager partnered with the son of Wen Jiabao, the former prime minister of China, the New York Times reported in 2018.

HNA also had an influence abroad. One of the earliest supporters was George Soros, the billionaire. Executives mingled with Wall Street power brokers at black-tie galas and met with leaders in Washington. You have a business deal with Governor Jeb Bush. They attempted to buy Skybridge Capital, an investment firm co-founded by Anthony Scaramucci who at the time expected to create a link between the White House and the US business community. (The deal was canceled after companies realized regulators weren’t going to approve it.)

But the glory days of HNA were numbered as the authorities in China began to question the enormous debt that HNA and some of its politically affiliated counterparts such as Anbang Insurance Group, Fosun International and Dalian Wanda took up to fuel their global shopping spree.

Authorities took control of Anbang, a troubled insurance conglomerate that owned the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, and sentenced its founder, Wu Xiaohui, to 18 years in prison for fraud. Wanda, the former owner of AMC Entertainment, and Fosun, which owns Club Med and luxury fashion house Lanvin, quickly sold some of their overseas acquisitions.

As HNA turned to its own growing bill, it began to lose some of its businesses. She also tried to borrow money from her own employees by offering them high-yield investment products.

The Chinese government has not commented on the decryption of the HNA. The China Securities Regulatory Commission and the Hainan Supervision Bureau of the China Securities Regulatory Commission did not respond to a faxed request for comment. HNA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

China’s state-controlled news media has tried to portray HNA’s bankruptcy process as a measure aimed at protecting the company’s assets rather than trying to get to the heart of them.

“The focus of bankruptcy and restructuring is not on ‘destruction’ but on ‘building’,” said a comment in Shanghai Security News. “It can also be seen as ‘rebirth’.”

On Chinese social media, some customers of HNA’s airlines asked if their tickets would be refunded, while people who had invested in its investment products complained that the company would repay the banks before returning any money it received from normal Had borrowed people. Others said they weren’t surprised at the company’s ultimate fate.

“In the end, the HNA Group still failed,” wrote Chen Haijian, a finance professional in Nanjing, on his personal page on WeChat, a Chinese social media platform.

“It feels like people have been saying this phrase for over 10 years.”

Cao Li contributed to the coverage from Hong Kong.