THE GLOBAL DAILY WATCH
Timeline Links: June 18, 2020
https://quandiemvietnam.blogspot.com/2020/06/us-china-politics-chinh-tri-hoa-ky_18.html
World
HSBC warned over Huawei role in Chinese government-backed website column
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hsbc-warned-over-huawei-role-083429837.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese government-backed website took aim at HSBC Holdings PLC on Tuesday, accusing the Asia-focussed lender of "maliciously" playing a role in the arrest of Huawei Technologies' chief financial officer.
Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou's is fighting against extradition from Canada to the United States, where she is accused of bank fraud for misleading HSBC about Huawei's relationship with a company operating in Iran, putting HSBC at risk of fines and penalties for breaking U.S. sanctions on Tehran.
Anger in China over the treatment of Meng and Huawei, the world's biggest telecoms equipment maker, has led to criticism of London-headquartered HSBC intensifying in recent days, with the latest salvo fired by website China.com.cn.
"The role of HSBC in the Meng Wanzhou incident is already clear. HSBC's credibility has also been wiped out," said the commentary http://www.china.com.cn/opinion/2020-07/28/content_76319622.html posted on the site backed by the State Council Information Office and the China International Publishing Group.
"In the U.S. government's political pursuit of Huawei, HSBC was the one who 'handed the knife'," it said in a column written under the byline Tang Hua, and signed by three editors.
HSBC had issued a statement on Saturday saying it had not participated in the decision by the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Huawei and that it had no "malice" against the company.
The Chinese website article dismissed HSBC's denial as "meaningless".
"Now, wallowing in degradation and with its reputation at rock bottom, HSBC may struggle to continue to enjoy treatment in China where it can break the pot it eats food from," the column said.
A spokeswoman for HSBC in China declined to comment on the article.
HSBC, which last month broke from its usual political neutrality to back Beijing's imposition of a controversial national security law in Hong Kong, generates the bulk of its revenue in Hong Kong and mainland China.
Other official Chinese media outlets including the People's Daily newspaper and the China Global Television Network have also targeted HSBC in the past week.
(Reporting by Cheng Leng and Gabriel Crossley; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Simon Cameron-Moore)
----
World
Alarm over discovery of hundreds of Chinese fishing vessels near Galápagos Islands
 |
| Photograph: Adrian Vasquez/AP |
Ecuador has sounded the alarm after its navy discovered a huge fishing fleet of mostly Chinese-flagged vessels some 200 miles from the Galápagos Islands, the archipelago which inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
About 260 ships are currently in international waters just outside a 188-mile wide exclusive economic zone around the island, but their presence has already raised the prospect of serious damage to the delicate marine ecosystem, said a former environment minister, Yolanda Kakabadse.
“This fleet’s size and aggressiveness against marine species is a big threat to the balance of species in the Galápagos,” she told the Guardian.
Kakabadse and an ex-mayor of Quito, Roque Sevilla, were on Monday put in charge of designing a “protection strategy” for the islands, which lie 563 miles west of the South American mainland.
Related: Diego the tortoise, father to hundreds and saviour of his species, finally retires
Chinese fishing vessels come every year to the seas around the Galápagos, which were declared a Unesco world heritage site in 1978, but this year’s fleet is one of the largest seen in recent years.
Sevilla said that diplomatic efforts would be made to request the withdrawal of the Chinese fishing fleet. “Unchecked Chinese fishing just on the edge of the protected zone is ruining Ecuador’s efforts to protect marine life in the Galápagos,” he said.
He added that the team would also seek to enforce international agreements that protect migratory species. The Galápagos marine reserve has one of the world’s greatest concentrations of shark species, including endangered whale and hammerhead varieties.
Kakabadse said efforts would also be made to extend the exclusive economic zone to a 350-mile circumference around the islands which would join up with the Ecuadorian mainland’s economic zone, closing off a corridor of international waters in between the two where the Chinese fleet is currently located.
Related: Shark finning: why the ocean's most barbaric practice continues to boom
Ecuador is also trying to establish a corridor of marine reserves between Pacific-facing neighbours Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia which would seal off important areas of marine diversity, Kakabadse said.
Ecuador’s president, Lenín Moreno, described the archipelago as “one of the richest fishing areas and a seedbed of life for the entire planet”, in a message on Twitter over the weekend.
The Galápagos Islands are renowned for their unique plants and wildlife. Unesco describes the archipelago – visited by a quarter of a million tourists every year – as a “living museum and a showcase for evolution”.
The Ecuadorian navy has been monitoring the fishing fleet since it was spotted last week, according to the country’s defence minister, Oswaldo Jarrín. “We are on alert, [conducting] surveillance, patrolling to avoid an incident such as what happened in 2017,” he said.
The 2017 incident he referred to was the capture by the Ecuadorean navy within the Galápagos marine reserve of a Chinese vessel. The Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999, part of an even larger fleet than the current one, was found to be carrying 300 tonnes of marine wildlife, mostly sharks.
“We were appalled to discover that a massive Chinese industrial fishing fleet is currently off the Galápagos Islands,” said John Hourston, a spokesman for the Blue Planet Society, a NGO which campaigns against overfishing.
---
Politics
U.S. targets all Chinese Communist Party members for possible travel ban: source
By Matt Spetalnick
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration is considering banning travel to the United States by all members of the Chinese Communist Party and their families, a person familiar with the matter said on Thursday, a move that would worsen already tense U.S.-China relations.
Senior officials discussing the matter have begun circulating a draft of a possible presidential order, but deliberations are at an early stage and the issue has not yet been brought to President Donald Trump, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The discussions, first reported by the New York Times, center on whether to deny visas to tens of millions of Chinese in what would be one of Washington's toughest actions yet in a widening feud with Beijing that some have likened to a new Cold War.
Such a ban, if implemented, could hit the ruling Communist Party from the highest levels down to its rank-and-file and would be certain to draw retaliation against Americans who travel to China. This could include not only diplomats but also business executives, potentially harming U.S. interests in China.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said earlier such action by the United States, if true, would be "pathetic."
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stopped short of confirming it was under consideration but said: "We're working our way through, under the president's guidance, about how to think about pushing back against the Chinese Communist Party."
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters: "We keep every option on the table with regard to China."
Relations between the world's two largest economies have sunk to the lowest point in decades as they clash over China's handling of the coronavirus outbreak, its tightening grip on Hong Kong, its disputed claims in the South China Sea, trade and accusations of human rights crimes in Xinjiang.
U.S. officials across multiple agencies are involved in the process, which includes consideration of whether to block Communist Party members' children from attending American universities, said the source, who has been briefed on deliberations.
The fact that such a sweeping ban is being discussed shows the lengths to which Trump's aides may be prepared to go as they make the tough-on-China theme a thrust of his campaign for re-election in November.
Trump and prospective Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden have competed to outdo each other on which can take the strongest stand against China.
Trump's aides have made the Communist Party a main target for what they call Beijing's "malign" activities. But Trump has held off on direct criticism of Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he has praised as a friend.
Among the options is to base such a visa moratorium on immigration laws used by the Trump to justify his 2017 travel ban from a group of predominantly Muslim countries, according to the person familiar with the discussions.
Trump could also have authority to make exceptions for certain individuals or categories, the source said.
One difficulty would be determining which Chinese nationals are party members, since U.S. authorities do not have full lists, the source said.
(This story corrects typo in first paragraph)
(Reporting By Matt Spetalnick, additional reporting by Makini Brice, Humeyra Pamuk and David Brunnstrom in Washington and Cate Cadell in Beijing; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Tom Brown and Jonathan Oatis)
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét