Tag: China

IAF Jets Scrambled, Bomb Threat On China-Bound Iranian Plane Over India

By LokMarg

Indian Air Force fighter jets were scrambled to intercept an aircraft with its origin in Iran and headed to China, which was moving towards New Delhi airspace.

According to sources, inputs were received at 9:20 am by Delhi Police about a bomb threat on board a Mahan Air flight headed to Guangzhou in China from Tehran in Iran.
It triggered an alert and permission was not granted for the plane to land in Delhi and the plane was instructed by Air Traffic Control (ATC) to divert to Jaipur. Reportedly the pilot refused to divert the plane following which Indian Air Force jets were scrambled to intercept and escort the plane.

The aircraft was headed to China as its final destination, had entered Indian airspace when the alert from Indian Air Traffic Control was shared with the plane. Indian Air Force Su-30MKI fighter jets from Punjab and Jodhpur airbases were scrambled to intercept the plane, sources told ANI.

Data from Filghtradar24 showed the plane reducing altitude over the Delhi-Jaipur airspace for a brief period before it was seen making its way out of Indian airspace.

According to ATC sources, Mahan Air requested for immediate landing at Delhi airport but Delhi ATC directed it to head to Jaipur Airport. The pilots of the Iranian carrier did not do so and eventually left Indian airspace.

The nature of the bomb threat is still unclear.

The plane was seen continuing on its flight path towards China. (ANI)

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Global Protests China National Day

Global Protests Mark China’s National Day

By LokMarg

As China prepares to hold the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CCP) which is widely expected to approve a third term for President Xi Jinping, anti-China protests were held all across the world to mark the National Day of China on October 1.

In Tokyo, hundreds of Japanese citizens came out on the streets to express solidarity with the oppressed people of Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Early morning joggers around the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo city were greeted by slogans criticizing China for its brutal crackdowns in all minority regions. This was the protest against the continuing denial of basic human rights that they promised even in the Chinese constitution.

Posters also spoke of the damage China has caused to Japan in the past fifty years, despite Japanese companies having helped establish China’s modern industrial foundations.

Later in the day, activists from across Japan, as well as representatives of the minority ethnic communities in China, walked to the center of Tokyo carrying banners, flags, and posters denouncing China.

They urged the rest of the world to wake up to the harm China is causing.

The demonstration was held around the twin themes of – ‘nothing to celebrate and ‘day of shame’, both sentiments that echo strongly not just in Japan, but increasingly across the world.

Just a couple of weeks ahead of the 20th National Congress of the CCP, such a gathering showed unequivocally that despite businesses continuing to rely on China, the people of Japan wanted to send out a strong message to China and the CCP: respect the people and their rights. Without these, your power has no legitimacy, and your leadership will have no legacy worth the name.

A small protest was also organized in front of the Chinese Embassy in Vienna, Austria. Protesters were carrying anti-CCP posters and the Tibetan flag.

The Tibetan Diaspora, along with President Nawang Lobsang Taglung of the Tibetan organization in Vienna, held a symbolic protest. Nawang said, “The fight for the freedom of Tibet will continue in the future.”

In Paris, multiple civil society organizations opposed to the Chinese government came together to protest against the Chinese government’s human rights violations and policy of aggression against various ethnic groups.

At a large demonstration near the Chinese embassy, more than 100 people from organizations like Students for Free Tibet (SFT), the Committee for Liberation of Hong Kong, and the Association of Uyghurs in France, as well as Mongolian, Taiwanese, and Vietnamese groups, joined this protest.

Marking the day as the Global Day of Action, the protesters carried placards with slogans against China and demanded that China end the Uyghur genocide and other violations against the people of Tibet, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

They also called on the global community to unite to prevent China from committing these crimes against humanity.

In Amsterdam city of Netherlands for the first time, several Chinese organizations-Chinese Democratic Party Overseas Committee, Netherland for Hong Kong, Southern Mongolian Congress, The Church of Almighty God, Stitching Nederland Service Centre Voor het verlaten van de Chinese Communistische (END CCP Service Center Netherlands), and Human Rights Watch in China participated along with Tibet Support Group in condemning the Chinese Communist Party.

Protests were witnessed in major States across the United States, including New York and California, as well as in Canada.

In Istanbul city of Turkey, the Uyghur community marked the 73rd National Day of China as the beginning of an era of occupation, persecution, starvation, and inhuman crimes against the peoples of East Turkestan.

Uyghur NGOs protested near the Chinese Consulate in the Sariyer district of Istanbul against the Chinese policies of assimilation and genocide.

Uyghur leaders spearheading the protest included Hidayetullah Oghuzhan – President of East Turkestan Education and Solidarity Association (ETESA), Abduselam Teklimakan – President of East Turkestan New Generation Movement (ETNGM), Nur Muhammad Majid – visiting representative/ lawyer from East Turkestan Australia Association, Rushan Abbas – noted Uyghur activist and Founder & Executive Director of Campaign for Uyghurs, members of Uyghur Academy and several others.

The protest started with the recitation of the verses of the holy Quran and the national song of East Turkestan. Protestors raised slogans against Chinese policies and Chinese President Xi Jinping, including ‘China Stop Genocide’, ‘Release our relatives’, “Where are our relatives?”, and ‘Stop Starvation’.

Protestors also displayed photographs of their family members missing in Chinese internment camps whom they have not been able to contact for many years.

A motorbike rally of around fifty Uyghur activists carrying flags of Turkiye and East Turkestan passed near the protest site. A signature campaign on a large banner appealing for the support of the United Nations was also showcased.

According to Amnesty International, the human rights situation across China continues to deteriorate. Human rights lawyers and activists reported harassment and intimidation; unfair trials; arbitrary, incommunicado, and lengthy detention; and torture and other ill-treatment for simply exercising their right to freedom of expression and other human rights.

In its 2021 report, Amnesty International stated that the CCP government continued a campaign of political indoctrination, arbitrary mass detention, torture, and forced cultural assimilation against Muslims living in Xinjiang.

The Amnesty report compiled data collected between October 2019 and May 2021. It relied on interviews with 128 people, including 55 former internment camp prisoners, and 68 family members of people either missing or presumed detained. (ANI)

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Jamtara of Jharkhand

Chinese National Shot Dead In Pakistan’s Karachi

By LokMarg

A Chinese national was killed while two others were injured in Pakistan’s Karachi on Wednesday, local media reported, citing authorities.

Quoting a police official, Dawn newspaper reported that an unidentified man opened fire inside a dental clinic in Karachi’s Saddar area.
SSP South Asad Raza said that one person was killed and two people were injured who were shifted to a hospital for treatment. He confirmed that the three were Chinese people.

Taking to twitter, Pakistan Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah condemned the attack. (ANI)

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Meta Influence Campaigns

Meta Shuts Down Russia, China-Based Influence Campaigns

By LokMarg

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, on Tuesday took down two separate covert influence networks operating from China and Russia.

Meta publicly detailed the takedown as it remains on high alert for foreign interference in the US midterm elections, a Meta spokesperson told CNN.
The Chinese network was small and received barely any attention, but it did include some accounts that posed as Americans on both sides of the political spectrum, according to a Meta report.

Ben Nimmo, Meta’s global threat intelligence lead, told CNN it was the first time the company had seen Chinese accounts targeting Americans in this way.

“They were running fake accounts that pretended to be Americans and try to talk like Americans and they were talking about really divisive domestic issues like abortion and gun control,” he said.

The company has shared details of the Chinese accounts with the FBI, a Meta spokesperson said.

The Russian campaign, on the other hand, was vast. It pushed pro-Kremlin narratives about the war in Ukraine, included thousands of accounts and pages across multiple social media platforms and spent more than USD 100,000 on ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Meta did not attribute either campaign to specific entities within China or Russia, or to the Chinese and Russian governments, instead saying only the accounts that were part of the campaigns were run out of the respective countries, reported CNN.

Meta said the network of Russian accounts it had taken down was the “largest and most complex Russian operation we’ve disrupted since the war in Ukraine began, it ran a sprawling network of over 60 websites impersonating news organizations, as well as accounts on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Telegram, Twitter,” and other sites, according to the report.

The operation included websites that were designed to mimic real Western news outlets, including The Guardian. According to a list of website addresses included in the Meta report, the Russian campaign also registered fake sites designed to look like The Daily Mail and the German outlets Bild and Der Spiegel, reported CNN.

The sophistication of the effort was demonstrated in its attempts to promote disinformation about the Bucha massacre.

The Chinese effort only consisted of about 80 Facebook accounts and barely had any following. Meta said the accounts primarily targeted audiences in the United States and the Czech Republic but posted during working hours in Beijing.

Meta said, “these accounts largely stuck to a shift pattern that coincided with a nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday work schedule during working hours in China — 12 hours ahead of Florida and six hours ahead of Prague,” according to the report. (ANI)

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Nuclear Modernization Ambitions

China’s Penchant For Nuclear Modernization Ambitions

By LokMarg

Chinese intentions to expand its nuclear and militaristic power are its methods of wolf-warrior portrayals that are on a path of wreaking havoc in and around its neighbourhood.

These aspirations, however, have already entered their next phase and are currently under execution. Therefore, it seems quite relevant and plausible to discuss Chinese implementation plans, as per Global Strat View analysis.
Political and bureaucratic competition has ensured that the discussion around the issue remains as important as China’s global vision for hegemony.

In its Defence White Paper from 2006, China resolutely asserted its “Self Defence Nuclear Strategy,” proclaiming an assured retaliatory measure leading to inflicting unacceptable damage to the attacker.

However, Beijing’s nuclear stand over the years has only deteriorated towards a far more hawkish view of the global world, reported Global Strat View.

In 2013, their Defence White Paper excluded mentions of a lifelong nuclear principle of ‘No First Use policy.’ This led many scholars to conclude that China was perhaps on its path to shedding an instrumental principle that had ensured peace and stability in the region and the world for decades.

Since then, China has been on a war footing to diversify and modernize its nuclear-armed forces. It is on the verge of attaining the nuclear triad status, defined as all three military forces consisting of land-launchable nuclear missiles, nuclear missile-armed submarines, strategic fighter jets, and aircrafts powered with nuclear warheads.

Chinese intentions to expand its nuclear and militaristic power are not a distant event that can be tackled later, said Global Strat View.

Such acts require immediately thought-out foreign policy objectives, which can also lead to regional cooperation amongst members who find themselves at the forefront of such intimidating tactics.

If China doubles its arsenal by 2029 as predicted, in the coming years, the People’s Liberation Army will field as many as 24 DF-41’s with a staggering 144 warheads leading to many consequential security threats to the region, reported Global Strat View.

China’s actions in the South-China Sea, Taiwan, and its boundaries with India have made it clear that the leadership is willing to provoke skirmishes and clashes in and around the area of contention.

Moreover, given Chinese reoccurring behaviour, it would be wise to state that as much as the Chinese nuclear capabilities and weapons increase and improve, Beijing will attempt to adopt an offensive nuclear posture, advised Global Strat View.

Thus, the region which is witnessing such threatening nuclear augmentations must come together to tackle such challenges that China, as a nuclear state, wishes to pose in front of other peaceful countries of the continent and the world. (ANI)

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China In Air Defence

US Losing Out To China In Air Defence Superiority: Report

By LokMarg

Ageing and fewer US fighters flown by undertrained pilots have already fallen behind China’s rapid fleet expansion, giving air superiority to Beijing in the Pacific region.

Gabriel Honrada, writing in Asia Times said that China’s jet fighter force may have already caught up with the quality and quantity of the US, prompting new urgent calls in Washington to build up and modernize the US fighter fleet.

US Air Combat Command Chief General Mark Kelley said that America’s combat air forces are 12 squadrons short of multiple aircraft types at the US Air Force Association’s annual Air, Space, and Cyber Conference this month, as reported by the Air and Space Forces Magazine.

He cautioned that the US had departed the era of conventional overmatch, with US combat air forces less than half of what they were during the 1991 Gulf War, reported Asia Times.

However, exact aircraft numbers are highly classified; fighter squadrons generally consist of between 18 and 24 jets.”When you have conventional overmatch, strategic risk is low. But that’s not where we’ve arrived in terms of conventional deterrence,” Kelly said.

He noted that while the US Air Force needs 60 fighter squadrons, it has only 48 of those to carry out its missions for homeland defence, overseas contingencies, overseas presence and crisis response, said Honrada.

He added that while the US Air Force has nine A-10 ground-attack aircraft squadrons, they lack air-to-air and multirole combat capability.

Kelly said these fighter shortages are most acutely felt in the Pacific, noting that the US needs 13 fighter squadrons in the region but now has only 11.

Apart from squadron shortages, Kelly mentions that only three out of eight squadrons are transitioning to new aircraft, resulting in a fighter force that is smaller, older and less capable, reported Asia Times.

He pointed out that the US fighter fleet is, on average, 28.8 years old compared to 9.7 years in 1991, with readiness levels plummeting as pilots get only 9.7 flight hours a month, compared to 22.3 just before the 1991 Gulf War.

Kelly makes a case for a fighter force that will dissuade any opponent from contemplating war with the US, making the case that no country in its proper frame of mind would pick a fight with a country with 134 modernized, well-trained and well-equipped fighter squadrons.

To achieve these force numbers, Kelly states that the US must maintain a production target of 72 fighters per year and keep its allies at a comparable level of capability, as the latter will be critical force multipliers, said Honrada.

He proposes a 4+1 fighter force mix for the 2030s, consisting of F-22s, F-35s, F-15EXs, F-16s, and A-10s. The F-22 will be the primary air superiority platform to be supplanted by the upcoming Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter.

Moreover, in terms of qualitative improvements to its fighter jets, China has been steadily improving the quality of its jet engines, which were a significant handicap for its fighters, and substantially improving its air-to-air missiles to the point of exceeding Western models in some cases. (ANI)

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Massive Fire

Massive Fire At Commercial Building In China’s Hunan

By LokMarg

A major fire broke out in a high-rise commercial building in China’s Hunan province, local media reported on Friday.

However, no casualties have been reported so far, as per the China Telecom building where the fire incident occurred, state media CGTN reported.
The commercial building is more than 200 meters tall and is located in Changsha, it added.

An investigation is underway into the matter. More details are awaited. (ANI)

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Nepali Traders

Nepali Traders Dying Due To Undeclared Blockade By China

By LokMarg

For the last two years, Beijing has imposed an undeclared blockade at the transit points on the Nepal-China border, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused economic hardships for Nepali traders and deaths by suicide.

Sudarshan Ghimire, the owner of Sweet Baraha Enterprises, who created the image of a good businessman on New Road, chose the path of suicide. He died by suicide on September 6, 2022, reported local media EPARDAFAS.
China, for the last two years, has been allowing only a few containers to cross the transit points on the Nepal-China border.

Hare Ram Paudel, a young entrepreneur from Sindhupalchowk involved in the import and supply of Chinese goods in the Nepali market, committed suicide on October 13, 2020, due to frustration when his goods got stuck on the Nepal-China border for months.

The entrepreneurs were in a double trap, their goods were lying at the border for many months, and they also had a massive amount of loans, reported the Nepali publication.

On one hand, they had been going through a financial crisis, and on the other hand, banks and other moneylenders were demanding the installments or the dues cleared on a regular basis.

The Nepali trader committed suicide under stress as his financial condition worsened since the containers with his goods got stuck at the Chinese border for a long time.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in China in December 2019, Nepal’s trade through the China border has been affected.

Many meetings and discussions between the two countries were held to ease smooth trade for Nepali traders, there was an agreement to operate the border completely in two directions, but it has not been implemented yet, reported EPARDAFAS.

Chinese Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi, who recently visited Nepal, assured us that arrangements would be made soon so that imports and exports could be done easily from both northern ports. However, the border restrictions have not been eased till now.

Foreign Minister of Nepal Dr. Narayan Khadka, who was on a visit to China last August, also said that discussions have been held with China on the border issue but the outcome of that visit and meeting has not been seen as fruitful till now.

Similarly, at present, the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China Li Zhanshu is on an official visit to Nepal.

Nepalese leaders are again urging the Chinese side to facilitate the opening of the transit points on the Nepal-China border, including the Tatopani and Rasuwagadhi checkpoints, so that the China-imported goods can enter Nepal in time for big festivals like Dashain, Tihar, and others that are approaching in the country reported EPARDAFAS. (ANI)

Air pollution reducing life expectancy of Chinese

By LokMarg


By Gaurav Sharma

Worsening air pollution has reduced the average life expectancy in China by over two years, said a report released here this week.

The report, launched by the International Energy Agency, also stated that outdoor pollution could be the cause of as many as one million premature deaths while air pollution was claiming a total 1.2 million lives every year in the country.

“Average life expectancy in China is reduced by almost 25 months because of poor air quality,” said the report released on Monday.

The report pointed out that nearly half of China’s population was living in areas where air quality targets were still not met.

It warned that deaths due to outdoor air pollution and household air pollution could soar up to 1.5 million and 1 million, respectively, if air quality does not improve.

“Growth in energy demand has gone hand-in-hand with economic transformation and social development, but there has been a high cost for the environment,” observed the 266-page report.

It lamented that “only 8 of the 74 major Chinese cities that are currently subject to air quality monitoring met the national standard for clean air in 2014”.

Air pollution is one of the biggest problems in China. Unchecked growth of industries and factories over the past two decades has led to massive pollution in the country.

Beijing is one of the most polluted cities in the world. Its neighbouring province Hebei, which accounts for 25 percent of China’s steel production, is heavily polluted.

In 2015, China issued 97,000 administrative orders, shutting down 20,000 polluting plants and recovered $654 billion in fines — an increase of 34 percent over 2014.