Asia

The Chinese government claims cyber sovereignty, or control, over all its digital assets,including servers, user data, technological infrastructure, and IT companies operatingthere both domestically and internationally.As a result, the Chinese government has access to resources like Apple's China-basediCloud data. China's 2017 Cybersecurity Law mandates businesses that provideessential information infrastructure in China (broadly defined) to keep their data onChinese government-run servers. About crimes against China's national securitycommitted outside of Hong Kong, especially those involving data protection, the 2020Hong Kong National Security Law extends that oversight outside of China.Finally, China's Data Security Law of 2021 gives the Chinese government the authorityto inspect forei...

A Chinese businesswoman known in Ghana as “the queen of illegal gold mining” will remain behind bars in the capital Accra until next month when she and three co-accused will face court again. An Accra Circuit Court on Tuesday dismissed a bail application by lawyers for En Huang, also known as Aisha Huang, and three other Chinese nationals accused of mining, selling and buying minerals without a licence. All four have denied the charges. Arguing against bail, prosecutors said the accused might interfere with investigations and pose a flight risk. The court ordered Huang and her co-accused to remain in police custody until October 12 when they will again appear. The case is being closely watched in the West African nation, where Chinese players have revolutionised small-scal...

The World Bank has joined a growing list of agencies and private sector forecasters downgrading their expectations of China’s growth rate this year. For the first time in more than 30 years China is expected to grow at a lower rate than the other economies in East Asia. The World Bank this week lowered its forecast for China’s GDP growth from the 5 per cent it forecast in April to 2.8 per cent. Earlier this month the Asian Development Bank cut its forecast from 5 per cent in April to 3.3 per cent. The International Monetary Fund’s July forecast was for a similar 3.3 per cent growth rate, but there has been evidence of further slowing in China’s economy since then. Even though Chinese president Xi Jinping has pledged to meet economic targets, economists are sceptical that the Chin...

The fall of the yuan despite best efforts of the People’s Bank of China speaks volumes of the kind of economic stability the Chinese Communist Party boasts of. Coming as it does in the run-up to the 20th Party Congress, it is not something President Xi Jinping would like as he prepares to get a third term of power. Worse, the situation is also embarrassing because China always associates a strong yuan as evidence of its economic power being comparable to that of rival United States. The yuan fell to 7.2301 to the dollar, its lowest level since January 2008. One yuan was worth about 13.8 cents, down 15% from this year’s March high, Associated Press said. The media paints a grim picture for the coming future: “What’s likely to be worse is the dismal picture for China’s economy next ye...

On its journey towards progress, a developing country requires support of its international peers in the form of capital, industrial goods and technology. Various African countries going though the development phase have to rely on the support of their more developed counterparts for finance, technical knowhow and sophisticated products. In present times, many of them are heavily sourcing from China to augment their defense, economy, infrastructure and delivery of public services. However, in many cases the immense trust placed by these countries is not reciprocated by Beijing in the same spirit. Kenya is one such country which is facing serious problems on this count. During the last few years, it has established significant trade ties with China by actively sourcing from it to fulfil...

As political pressure on the iPhone maker over the agreement increases, US senators have ordered the intelligence agency to investigate the threat that a potential agreement between Apple and the Chinese chipmaker Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. poses to national security. Just days after it was reported that Apple was considering purchasing memory chips from YMTC for the new iPhone 14, the Democratic chair of the Senate intelligence committee, Mark Warner, and the Republican vice chair, Marco Rubio, wrote to the director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, requesting a review. Under the state-owned chipmaker Tsinghua Unigroup, YMTC was founded in 2016. It is said that Beijing's significant subsidies helped it grow quickly. According to U.K. research firm Omdia, YMTC's share of the gl...

Beijing, China:  China’s published statistics for foreign direct investment show that it is gradually rising overall. But the bulk of what China counts as foreign investment is money arriving from Hong Kong, which tends to be composed of mainland money that has been briefly routed through Hong Kong as a tax-minimisation measure. A new analysis by Rhodium, a New York research firm, shows that so-called greenfield investments from the European Union and Britain in new factories and other installations have plunged, reported The Straits Times. These investments fell to just under USD 2 billion in the first half of this year, compared with USD 4.8 billion in the first half of last year, according to Rhodium. A handful of German manufacturers, like Volkswagen, account for the...

Geo-strategically located on the Horn of Africa, Sudan is deemed as one of the mostimportant country of Africa, having access to Red Sea and further to theMediterranean Sea via Suez Canal. One would wonder why Sudan has so far notbeen able to exploit the world’s busiest sea-lane to its advantage. The country’s onlymajor port, Port Sudan, has so far been unable to generate the revenue it wassupposed to. Plagued with infrastructure challenges and ethnic strifes, Port Sudan’soperational capabilities are severely affected, leading Sudan further into economicslump. Sudan is in dire need of a port, which would provide an alternative yeteffective means of channelling the export-imports imbalances currently faced by it.Since the ouster of Omar al Bashir in April 2019, Sudan has been consistently ...

Beijing, China:   In 2016, China and Kyrgyzstan set up a new media outlet in Bishkek, and a veteran journalist, Murat, with more than 30 years of experience, was one of the dozens of professionals hired to run it, reported Nikkei Asia. The veteran journalist recalled how undue pressure from directors was constant to avoid criticism of initiative projects and to publish only stories that portrayed China in a positive light. Given a top editing role, he was dealing with the newspaper which is published in Kyrgyz, Russian and Chinese. Though at the start he thought that this is an opportunity to promote understanding between the neighbours. However, the truth soon surfaced for him. Another rhetoric that the Chinese asked the outlet to carry was the charity work done by Chine...

Last month, China’s foreign ministry announced that Beijing would waive 23 interest-free loans that matured by the end of 2021 for African countries. However, it did not reveal which countries would benefit or the total amount waived. In a study released on Monday, Boston University’s Global Development Policy Centre reported it had compiled a database containing 212 interest-free loans totalling US$2.22 billion between 2000 and 2020 in 38 African countries. The study noted that of the US$159.98 billion China had advanced to African countries in the past two decades, interest-free loans accounted for only 1 per cent. Authors Jyhjong Hwang, a research fellow, and Oyintarelado Moses, a data analyst and database manager, both at the Boston University centre, estimated that Beijing’s...