World

A senior Chinese diplomat’s scuffle with protesters in Britain as well as a recent victory at the United Nations have put the spotlight back on China’s more assertive foreign policy under President Xi Jinping.

Bolstered by China’s economic and military rise over the past decade, Xi — who is expected to secure a norm-breaking third term after this week’s Communist Party Congress — has swerved decisively away from the “keep a low profile” foreign policy mantra espoused by his predecessors.

Over the last 10 years, as well as encouraging a brand of headline-grabbing “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy, Beijing has created alternative trade and security blocs to Western-led groupings, and courted support within organisations such as the UN through cheque-book diplomacy.

“When I went back to China in 2012, it was clear that Chinese diplomats had been given new marching orders by Xi Jinping,” Guy Saint-Jacques, who was posted to Beijing in the mid-80s and mid-90s before serving as Canada’s ambassador until 2016, told AFP.

“It became gradually more difficult to raise difficult issues with Chinese diplomats, especially on issues related to the treatment of minorities… freedom of expression and so on.”

China’s foreign policy is devised by elite groups within the Communist Party — groups that “unlike his predecessors, Xi directly controls”, said Jennifer Hsu from the Australian think tank Lowy Institute.

Xi has chastised moderates in the foreign ministry for lacking “a fighting spirit” and books on his ideology are now mandatory reading for diplomats.

On Thursday, at a press conference on Chinese diplomacy during the Congress, Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu signalled Beijing would not be changing tack. 

“Daring to fight and being good at fighting are the fine traditions and distinctive features of China’s diplomacy,” Ma told reporters.  

– ‘Territorial expansionism’ – 

Under Xi, China has taken a distinctly more muscular approach when it comes to territorial claims.

It has ramped up its military presence in contested areas of the South China Sea, while a longstanding border dispute with India erupted into violence that left at least 24 dead in June 2020.

“China’s territorial expansionism has coincided with the ascension of Xi,” James Char from Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies told AFP.

All this has been cheered on by “Wolf Warrior” diplomats — the name coined after a nationalist action film.

Using notably undiplomatic language, high-ranking representatives have attacked both leaders — such as dismissing Canada’s Justin Trudeau as a “boy” — and individuals, like when the Chinese ambassador to France blasted a researcher as a “little thug” for commenting on parliamentarians visiting Taiwan. 

On Sunday, footage of a Hong Kong pro-democracy protester being assaulted on the grounds of the Chinese consulate in the British city of Manchester sparked outrage, with the consul-general himself caught up in the fracas.

Zheng Xiyuan told Sky News that getting physically involved was “my duty”, adding that any diplomat would have acted that way to “maintain our dignity”.

But while such verbal and physical skirmishes are eye-catching, observers suggest their main aim may be to satisfy nationalists at home rather than effect change abroad.

In 2021, Xi even appeared to try and roll back the aggression, urging political leaders to cultivate a “reliable, admirable and respectable” international image. 

State propaganda machinery has spent billions of dollars portraying the image of a “cute” China on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook — both blocked to regular Chinese behind the “Great Firewall” — according to an analysis by the US think tank Freedom House. 

– Economic power –

Beijing has increasingly leveraged its economic and soft power to get its way on the global stage. 

China-led initiatives such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and security grouping Shanghai Cooperation Organisation have been presented as alternatives to Western-led bodies such as the World Bank and NATO. 

The UN Human Rights Council voted this month against holding a debate on its own high commissioner’s report that found China’s actions against the Muslim Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang region could constitute possible crimes against humanity. 

Beijing had launched an all-out offensive to dismiss the report, with observers saying African countries faced particularly heavy lobbying.

China is the leading creditor in many of those nations after making massive infrastructure investments through the trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, though analysts say China is slowly winding down the programme after billions of dollars in loans went sour.

Beijing has similarly poured money into Pacific Island, South Asian and Latin American nations — the traditional spheres of influence of rival powers — as well as into rival powers themselves.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is facing a backlash after being accused of planning to push through Chinese investment in a Hamburg port despite grave reservations from his own government.

Chinese censors on Friday scrubbed reports that a teenager had died in a quarantine facility, after the case sparked anger and prompted citizens to question the country’s zero-Covid policy.

China is the last major country committed to a zero-tolerance Covid strategy, responding to dozens of outbreaks with lockdowns and sending entire neighbourhoods out to makeshift quarantine facilities.

But the public has chafed against virus restrictions, sometimes responding to fresh lockdowns with protests, while scuffles have broken out between citizens and officials.

Posts circulated on Chinese social media this week saying a 14-year-old girl had died in the central city of Ruzhou after falling ill in a quarantine facility and being denied prompt medical care.

The reports caused renewed anger, at a sensitive time for the country’s rulers.

China’s political elite are holding a key Communist Party meeting in Beijing this week, expected to secure a historic third term for President Xi Jinping, with the country’s propaganda and security apparatus on high alert for any source of instability.

Unverified videos on the Chinese version of TikTok appeared to show a person lying in a bunk bed suffering seizures, while others in the room screamed for help.

“At the start the kid was fine… then she went (into quarantine) for four days and had a high fever and now she’s gone,” a woman — described in other videos as the child’s aunt — tells viewers, crying.

The woman says the girl “had convulsions, vomiting and a high fever, and didn’t get medical attention in time”, complaining that local health authorities did not respond to calls while the child was in critical condition.

AFP could not independently verify the videos, and calls to Ruzhou city’s propaganda, health and Covid prevention departments on Friday were not answered.

– Hashtags disabled –

Chinese media, which have given cursory attention to similar lockdown-related scandals in the past, were noticeably silent this week on the Ruzhou case.

By Friday afternoon, censors had removed nearly all traces of the incident from the Chinese internet, disabling Weibo hashtags for “Ruzhou Girl” and “Girl from Ruzhou dies in quarantine”, and removing most of the videos mentioning the girl’s alleged death.

The hashtag page for “Ruzhou Girl” had recorded 255,000 views and 158 posts on Friday morning, according to the official statistics at the top of the page, though only four posts remained visible before the page was blocked completely later in the day.

“Have the lessons of Shanghai been forgotten so completely?” one of the last remaining posts on the page asked, referring to the megacity’s lockdown in the spring that left people without adequate food and supplies.

The poster demanded to know why “there wasn’t even a doctor to care for a girl who needed to see one”.

The incident comes a month after 27 people died in a traffic accident while they were being ferried before dawn to a quarantine facility in rural Guizhou province.

And in the lead-up to the Congress, censors removed virtually all references to reports of a rare protest in Beijing, that involved banners denouncing President Xi, as well as the Covid policies.

The United States charged seven Chinese nationals on Thursday for participating in an alleged campaign to force a US resident back to China as part of an “international extralegal repatriation” operation run by Beijing.

The Justice Department said the defendants were engaged in Beijing’s Operation Fox Hunt, which US authorities have said involves extra-judicial “repatriation squads” that clandestinely attempt to force expatriates to return to China.

Beijing has defended the operation as part of an anti-corruption campaign and said its law enforcement agencies follow international laws when abroad.

The seven people charged on Thursday allegedly surveilled and harassed the family of an “elite” overseas Chinese national they called John Doe-1 as part of a forced repatriation campaign against him. 

“The defendants engaged in a unilateral and uncoordinated law enforcement action on U.S. soil on behalf of the government of the People’s Republic of China, in an effort to cause the forced repatriation of a U.S. resident to China,” Justice Department attorney Breon Peace said in a statement. 

“The United States will firmly counter such outrageous violations of national sovereignty and prosecute individuals who act as illegal agents of foreign states.”

Two of those charged — lead defendant, Quanzhong An, 55, and his daughter Guangyang An, 34, — were arrested Thursday, while the other five accused remain at large. 

The Justice Department said Quanzhong An, described as a New York businessman, was Beijing’s key US-based liaison.

“Quanzhong An admitted that he was acting as an agent of the Provincial Commission to increase his standing in the PRC,” the Justice Department said, adding that he met with the targeted expatriate’s son several times to “cause the return of John Doe-1.”

The campaign also saw one of John Doe-1’s relatives sent from China to the US in 2018 to convey threats to his son “that were intended to coerce” his return.  

Spanish-based rights group Safeguard Defenders released a report in January citing government data to estimate that almost 10,000 Chinese nationals had been forcibly returned since 2014.

Through two programs, Operation Fox Hunt and Operation Sky Net, those targeted were pressured to return to China against their will using a combination of non-judicial methods — including kidnappings, harassment and intimidation, according to the report.

In July, the US charged nine people with “acting as and conspiring to act as unregistered agents” of China under Operation Fox Hunt. 

In October, five people were arrested for targeting an unnamed Chinese person living in the US.

Iranian campaigners arrested in a crackdown over protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini are at risk of being tortured or even dying behind bars, rights groups warn.

Amini, 22, died in September three days after her arrest by the morality police in Tehran for allegedly violating the Islamic republic’s strict dress code, triggering protests that have been running for more than a month.

Shocking images emerged on Thursday of the arrest of freedom of expression activist Hossein Ronaghi who was put into a chokehold and hauled away when he presented himself at a prosecutors’ office.

Since his arrest on September 24, he has been held in Tehran’s Evin prison and his family says he risks dying due to a kidney condition.

They also say his legs have been broken.

Ronaghi is just one of several prominent rights activists, journalists and lawyers who have been arrested and who supporters fear may never emerge alive from the notorious facility, where most political detainees are held.

A fire at Evin on October 15 killed eight inmates, according to authorities.

It only amplified concerns about prisoners’ welfare, with activists accusing authorities of firing tear gas and metal pellets inside the jail, even if none of the political prisoners were reported to have been harmed.

“Detainees who are often forcibly disappeared are at serious risk of torture and death. Urgent action by the international community is crucial at this point,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights.

IHR said thousands had been arrested nationwide in the crackdown, including at least 36 journalists, 170 students, 14 lawyers and more than 580 civil society activists, including workers and teaching union officials.

– ‘Could barely speak’ –

Roya Boroumand, director of the Washington-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, said the situation was compounded by the sheer number of new prisoners being brought to jails including Evin and the Fashafouyeh Greater Tehran prison.

“We are very concerned about the treatment of detainees,” she told AFP.

Overcrowding means there is “no choice but to sit or sleep in turn” in areas including prison gyms.

Analysts say the mass arrests are a key strategy under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in seeking to combat the nationwide wave of protests, which represent one of the biggest challenges to Iran’s Islamic system since the 1979 revolution.

Ronaghi, a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, has for years been one of the most fearless critics of the Islamic republic still living in the country.

Security forces made a first attempt to arrest him on September 22 while he was giving a live interview to Iran International TV but he managed to slip out of his apartment, he said at the time.

He came out of hiding two days later but was immediately arrested along with his lawyers.

After the fire that ripped through the jail, Ronaghi “had a short call with my mother but could only say a few words and could barely speak” due to his ill health, his brother Hassan Ronaghi wrote on Twitter.

“Hossein’s life is in danger,” Hassan wrote in his latest tweet on Wednesday.

After the Evin fire, Amnesty International urged access for independent monitors “to protect prisoners from further unlawful killings, torture and other ill-treatment”.

– ‘Severely beaten’ –

Activist Majid Tavakoli, who has been repeatedly imprisoned in Iran in recent years, including after disputed 2009 elections, remains in jail after his arrest on September 23.

His family says they have had no news of him since the fire. “Why can’t a person be free whose only tool is his brain? Is thinking a crime?” his wife tweeted.

Arash Sadeghi was only released from prison after serving several years last May. He was jailed in Evin on October 12, despite suffering from chondrosarcoma, a rare type of bone cancer.

His father tweeted a picture of a dozen boxes of medicine he needs.

“You can imprison his body but his soul is always with the people and the prisoners he does not know,” he wrote.

IHR expressed concern that several activists were still incommunicado behind bars, including the journalist and campaigner Golrokh Iraee and prominent tech blogger Amir Emad Mirmirani, known as Jadi.

The rights group said some detainees had given “self-incriminating televised confessions under duress and torture” and had also been subjected to verbal insults while in custody.

Prisoners have “testified to being severely beaten, tortured during interrogations, and deprived of food and clean drinking water,” Boroumand said.

“Detainees are left with shotgun pellets and broken limbs (and) without medical care.”

Belarusian teenager Gleb Gunko left the front line in Ukraine with shrapnel in his legs, constant nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder — but no regrets about volunteering to fight the Russians.

“I wanted to stay on but the doctor said no,” the 18-year-old said. “I lost many friends there. My commander too.”

The soft-spoken Minsk native is among many ordinary Belarusians who — unlike their Kremlin-aligned leader — chose to put their lives on the line to defend Ukraine.

“Before war I thought I was at peace with the fact that death is death and everyone dies eventually. But it was all too much,” he told AFP in Grojec, Poland, where he is now living in exile. 

When AFP first spoke to Gunko in early March, the day he left to go to war, he said he had volunteered in order to “fight for Ukraine but also to fight for Belarus.

“Because our freedom also depends on the situation there.”

Gunko, whose knuckles are tattooed with the words “Born Free”, left his homeland in 2020 after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko launched a ferocious crackdown on opponents.

The veteran leader, who has been in power for decades, has since drawn international condemnation for actively supporting and enabling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Even though he is opposed to the regime in Minsk, Gunko said he still feels responsible as a Belarusian citizen for what is happening. 

– Guilt –

“I bear guilt for the fact that rockets are being fired on Kyiv from Belarus. I feel guilty about that,” he said.

“I could have done more,” he added of his four-month stint in Ukraine, which ended in July.

Gunko went to war through the Belarusian House Foundation in Warsaw, which helps Belarusian volunteers to go to Ukraine to fight. 

“Belarusians cannot help Ukraine with weapons… but they cannot stand aside, so they are going to fight for (our) brotherly country’s independence,” the group said on Facebook.

After arriving in Ukraine, Gunko received two weeks of military training. He then fought alongside other international volunteers in Kyiv as well as in the trenches around Kherson. 

He said he saw many dead civilians in Bucha, the Kyiv suburb where hundreds of bodies were discovered after the Russian army was driven out in March.

“We were driving in and I saw children at a bus stop… A child waves, smiles and I see that right alongside there’s a person lying there with no head,” Gunko said.

“That was hard,” he added.  

He recalled other traumatic moments, like being pinned down for hours under fire from the cannon of a Russian BMP-3 fighting vehicle, with shrapnel from one explosion still lodged in his limbs. 

He also witnessed Russian troops pick off a volunteer British sniper outside Kherson, a comrade whose body he then helped carry.  

Noticeably thinner and more subdued than when he left for war, Gunko recounted his experiences to AFP on a park bench in Grojec, the city just south of Warsaw where he has led a quiet life since returning in July. 

“The military makes you a better person,” said the teenager, who wore his combat fatigues for the interview. “I’ve changed, yeah. Everyone says so. I’m calm. I think a lot,” he added.

“It’s just like in war. I observe people, wait to see what happens. And I guess I expect it to be bad.”

Satoko Nagamura and her girlfriend conceived their son with donated sperm, but new legislation in Japan could effectively outlaw the procedure for lesbian couples and single women.

For decades, anonymous sperm donation has existed in a legal grey zone in Japan, with no law explicitly prohibiting it, but no framework to govern it either.

Legislation expected to be presented this year would regulate the procedure, including protecting the rights of children to know their biological parents and capping recipients from a single donor.

But a draft seen by AFP shows the law would only authorise the process for legally married couples, mostly those affected by male infertility. Japan does not recognise same-sex marriage, so lesbian couples and single women would be excluded.

To Nagamura, the draft is “tantamount to robbing women — whether same-sex couples or single — of their reproductive rights, and their desire to give birth to and raise children”.

For nearly two decades, the 39-year-old dreamed of being a mother and the chance to “give birth with my body”.

She and her partner Mamiko Moda, 42, initially considered overseas sperm banks, before turning to a male friend, encouraged by his willingness to have a relationship with the future child.

They are now the proud parents of a 10-month-old son, who smiles freely as his parents spoonfeed him with encouraging exclamations of “well done”, as the family’s two dogs look on jealously.

Institutions that offer sperm donation and insemination generally follow the guidelines of the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (JSOG) — which serve as the basis for the new legislation restricting the process to married couples.

JSOG’s guidelines are non-binding, but already carry enough weight that only a handful of doctors defy them to accommodate lesbians and single women.

If the law is enacted, “the few hospitals that have accepted us will no longer be able to do so”, said Nagamura.

“There is a big difference between just going against the guidelines and doing something illegal”, added Moda.

The couple also fears the new legislation could mean their child, conceived through artificial insemination using a sperm donor, could be stigmatised. 

“Even though the way we achieved our pregnancy was not illegal at the time, the impression that we did something wrong, that this kid is somehow ‘illegal’, could emerge if that’s how the law sees it,” Moda said.

– ‘Double-edged sword’ –

Kozo Akino, a ruling-coalition lawmaker involved in drafting the legislation, argues that children’s rights are most easily protected by “legally married parents with joint custody”.

“Assisted reproductive technology should not be pursued at the expense of the well-being of children,” he told AFP.

And some doctors think the law could help make the unregulated treatment more socially accepted, despite being limited to heterosexual married couples.

“My hope is that with the law, our treatment will be seen as more legitimate and become mainstream,” said Mamoru Tanaka, an obstetrics professor at Tokyo’s Keio University Hospital.

Keio is thought to have been the first medical institution in Japan to perform donor insemination in 1948, but it is no longer accepting new patients because of a donor shortage that followed an internal policy shift.

Since 2017, it has warned donors that their anonymity could be waived if children conceived from their sperm file legal suits. The resulting shortage of applicants means it carried out just 481 procedures for existing patients in 2019, down from 1,952 in 2016.

Patients would “hopefully be able to benefit from (a legal framework), but it’s easier said than done”, Tanaka said.

“There is a possibility that more people will be pushed underground, and in that sense, it’s a double-edged sword,” he told AFP. 

– ‘Whatever it takes’ –

Already, some women and couples turn to unvetted sperm donors to avoid the complexities and restrictions of the existing system.

A casual Twitter search turns up hundreds of accounts touting the handsomeness, college degrees and athletic talent of would-be donors, who typically offer recipients either cups of semen for self-insemination, or impregnation via intercourse.

Many do not expect payment beyond transport costs, which has helped fuel debate over their motives, including claims they are simply after sex.

One man advertising his services online told AFP he considered it like donating blood.

“I happen to have a healthy body, so why not put it to good use?” said the 34-year-old freelance illustrator, declining to be named.

The man’s wife, a 32-year-old doctor, told AFP she supported her husband’s donations, in part because as a bisexual person she wants to help others in the LGBTQ community conceive.

But social media sperm donation raises health and safety issues in terms of verifying donor profiles.

And Nagamura fears that these riskier donations will only become more common if legislation excludes single women and lesbians.

“There will be those who do whatever it takes to have children,” she said.

“It’s not that easy, giving up on childbirth.”