BEIJING — President Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader in decades, increased his dominance when he was named Sunday to another term as head of the ruling Communist Party in a break with tradition and promoted allies who support his vision of tighter control over society and the struggling economy.
Xi, who took power in 2012, was awarded a third five-year term as general secretary, discarding a party custom under which his predecessor left after 10 years. The 69-year-old leader is expected by some to try to stay in power for life.
On Saturday, Xi’s predecessor, 79-year-old Hu Jintao, abruptly left a meeting of the party Central Committee with an aide holding his arm. That prompted questions about whether Xi was flexing his powers by expelling other party leaders. The official Xinhua News Agency later reported Hu was in poor health and needed to rest.
The party also named a seven-member Standing Committee, its inner circle of power, dominated by Xi allies after Premier Li Keqiang, the No. 2 leader and an advocate of market-style reform and private enterprise, was dropped from the leadership on Saturday. That was despite Li being a year younger than the party’s informal retirement age of 68.
Xi and the other Standing Committee members appeared for the first time as a group before reporters Sunday in the Great Hall of the People, the seat of China’s ceremonial legislature in central Beijing.
Xi announced Li Qiang, a former Shanghai party secretary who is no relation to Li Keqiang, was the No. 2 member and Zhao Leji, a member of the previous committee, was promoted to No. 3. The No. 2 committee member since the 1990s has become premier while the No. 3 heads the legislature. Those posts are to be assigned when the legislature meets next year.
Leadership changes were announced as the party wrapped up a twice-a-decade congress that was closely watched for signs of initiatives to reverse an economic slump or changes in a severe “zero-COVID” strategy that has shut down cities and disrupted business. Officials disappointed investors and the Chinese public by announcing no changes.
The lineup appeared to reflect what some commentators called “Maximum Xi,” valuing loyalty over ability. Some new Standing Committee members lack national-level government experience that typically is seen as a requirement for the post.
The promotion of Li Qiang was especially unusual because it puts him in line to be premier despite not having experience as a Cabinet minister or vice premier. However, he is regarded as close to Xi after the two worked together early in their careers in Zhejiang province in the early 2000s.
Li Keqiang is the top economic official but was sidelined over the past decade by Xi, who put himself in charge of policymaking bodies and wants a bigger state role in business and technology development.
Li Keqiang was excluded Saturday from the list of the party’s new 205-member Central Committee, from which the Standing Committee is picked. He is due to step down as premier next year.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has formally stepped into his third term ruling China with an iron grip on power, breaking with recent precedent to secure another five years in power, as he revealed a top leadership body stacked with loyal allies.
On Sunday, following the close of the Communist Party Congress, seven men – namely Xi Jinping, Li Qiang, Zhao Leji, Wang Huning, Cai Qi, Li Xi and Ding Xuexiang – were announced as members of the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s top ruling body.
They now compose the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s most powerful decision-making body, and will sit atop of the party to drive the world’s second-largest economy over the coming half decade.
The line-up was more stacked with staunch Xi loyalists that some watchers of elite Chinese politics had predicted – making clear that Xi has consolidated his power both in the public eye and in the closed-door meetings where leadership decisions are made.
Noticeably absent from the line-up was Hu Chunhua, 59, a vice premier outside Xi’s orbit who had previously been touted as a potential successor to Xi and a candidate for the Standing Committee.
Instead, Xi had filled the four open spots on the seven-member body with Xi long-time allies and proteges, Li Qiang, Cai Qi, Ding Xuexiang and Li Xi, clearing the path for him to rule for a third term with minimal internal resistance – and underlining that affinity to Xi trumps all else in China’s current political landscape.
“The current situation is something unprecedented … this new line-up is not a product of power sharing or horse trading among different factions, but basically it is the result or consequence from Xi’s authority,” said Chen Gang, senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s East Asian Institute.
“For the party’s decision-making, I think that we have entered a really a new era, as Xi now controls almost every aspect concerning policy making and decision making … we’re seeing a kind of re-centralised bureaucracy in China, which will definitely impact the future China’s economic foreign policy trajectory,” he said.
Jolie’s nerves were running high as she walked into the campus of Goldsmiths, the University of London, last Friday morning. She’d planned to arrive early enough that the campus would be deserted, but her fellow students were already beginning to filter in to start their day.
In the hallway of an academic building, Jolie, who’d worn a face mask to obscure her identity, waited for the right moment to reach into her bag for the source of her nervousness – several pieces of A4-size paper she had printed out in the small hours of the night.
Finally, when she made sure none of the students – especially those who, like Jolie, come from China – were watching, she quickly pasted one of them on a notice board.
“Life not zero-Covid policy, freedom not martial-lawish lockdown, dignity not lies, reform not cultural revolution, votes not dictatorship, citizens not slaves,” it read, in English.
The day before, these words, in Chinese, had been handwritten in red paint on a banner hanging over a busy overpass thousands of miles away in Beijing, in a rare, bold protest against China’s top leader Xi Jinping.
Another banner on the Sitong Bridge denounced Xi as a “dictator” and “national traitor” and called for his removal – just days before a key Communist Party meeting at which he is set to secure a precedent-breaking third term.
Both banners were swiftly removed by police and all mentions of the protest wiped from the Chinese internet. But the short-lived display of political defiance – which is almost unimaginable in Xi’s authoritarian surveillance state–has resonated far beyond the Chinese capital, sparking acts of solidarity from Chinese nationals inside China and across the globe.
Over the past week, as party elites gathered in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People to extoll Xi and his policies at the 20th Party Congress, anti-Xi slogans echoing the Sitong Bridge banners have popped up in a growing number of Chinese cities and hundreds of universities worldwide.
In China, the slogans were scrawled on walls and doors in public bathrooms – one of the last places spared the watchful eyes of the country’s ubiquitous surveillance cameras.
Overseas, many anti-Xi posters were put up by Chinese students like Jolie, who have long learned to keep their critical political views to themselves due to a culture of fear. Under Xi, the party has ramped up surveillance and control of the Chinese diaspora, intimidating and harassing those who dare to speak out and threatening their families back home.
CNN spoke with two Chinese citizens who scribbled protest slogans in bathroom stalls and half a dozen overseas Chinese students who put up anti-Xi posters on their campuses. As with Jolie, CNN agreed to protect their identities with pseudonyms and anonymity due to the sensitivity of their actions.
Many said they were shocked and moved by the Sitong Bridge demonstration and felt compelled to show support for the lone protester, who has not been heard of since and is likely to face lifelong repercussions. He has come to be known as the “Bridge Man,” in a nod to the unidentified “Tank Man” who faced down a column of tanks on Beijing’s Avenue of Eternal Peace the day after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989.
Few of them believe their political actions will lead to real changes on the ground. But with Xi emerging triumphant from the Party Congress with the potential for lifelong rule, the proliferation of anti-Xi slogans are a timely reminder that despite his relentless crushing of dissent, the powerful leader may always face undercurrents of resistance.
As China’s online censors went into overdrive last week to scrub out all discussions about the Sitong Bridge protest, some social media users shared an old Chinese saying: “A tiny spark can set the prairie ablaze.”
It would appear that the fire started by the “Bridge Man” has done just that, setting off an unprecedented show of dissent against Xi’s leadership and authoritarian rule among mainland Chinese nationals.
The Chinese government’s policies and actions have sparked outcries online and protests in the streets before. But in most cases, the anger has focused on local authorities and few have attacked Xi himself so directly or blatantly.
Critics of Xi have paid a heavy price. Two years ago, Ren Zhiqiang, a Chinese billionaire who criticized Xi’s handling of China’s initial Covid-19 outbreak and called the top leader a power-hungry “clown,” was jailed for 18 years on corruption charges.
But the risks of speaking out did not deter Raven Wu, a university senior in eastern China. Inspired by the “Bridge Man,” Wu left a message in English in a bathroom stall to share his call for freedom, dignity, reform, and democracy. Below the message, he drew a picture of Winnie the Pooh wearing a crown, with a “no” sign drawn over it. (Xi has been compared to the chubby cartoon bear by Chinese social media users.)
“I felt a long-lost sense of liberation when I was scribbling,” Wu said. “In this country of extreme cultural and political censorship, no political self-expression is allowed. I felt satisfied that for the first time in my life as a Chinese citizen, I did the right thing for the people.”
There was also the fear of being found out by the school – and the consequences, but he managed to push it aside. Wu, whose own political awakening came in high school when he heard about the Tiananmen Square massacre by chance, hoped his scribbles could cause a ripple of change – however small – among those who saw them.
He is deeply worried about China’s future. Over the past two years, “despairing news” has repeatedly shocked him, he said.
“Just like Xi’s nickname ‘the Accelerator-in-Chief,’ he is leading the country into the abyss … The most desperate thing is that through the [Party Congress], Xi Jinping will likely establish his status as the emperor and double down on his policies.”
Chen Qiang, a fresh graduate in southwestern China, shared that bleak outlook – the economy is faltering, and censorship is becoming ever more stringent, he said.
Chen had tried to share the Sitong Bridge protest on WeChat, China’s super app, but it kept getting censored. So he thought to himself: why don’t I write the slogans in nearby places to let more people know about him?
He found a public restroom and wrote the original Chinese version of the slogan on a toilet stall door. As he scrawled on, he was gripped by a paralyzing fear of being caught by the strict surveillance. But he forced himself to continue. “(The Beijing protester) had sacrificed his life or the freedom of the rest of his life to do what he did. I think we should also be obliged to do something that we can do,” he said.
Chen described himself as a patriot. “However I don’t love the (Communist) Party. I have feelings for China, but not the government.”
So far, the spread of the slogans appears limited.
A number of pro-democracy Instagram accounts run by anonymous Chinese nationals have been keeping track of the anti-Xi graffiti and posters. Citizensdailycn, an account with 32,000 followers, said it received around three dozen reports from mainland China, about half of which involved bathrooms. Northern_Square, with 42,000 followers, said it received eight reports of slogans in bathrooms, which users said were from cities including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Wuhan.
The movement has been dubbed by some as the “Toilet Revolution” – in a jibe against Xi’s campaign to improve the sanitary conditions at public restrooms in China, and a nod to the location of much of the anti-Xi messaging.
Wu, the student in Eastern China, applauded the term for its “ironic effect.” But he said it also offers an inspiration. “Even in a cramped space like the toilet, as long as you have a revolutionary heart, you can make your own contribution,” he said.
For Chen, the term is a stark reminder of the highly limited space of free expression in China.
“Due to censorship and surveillance, people can only express political opinions by writing slogans in places like toilets. It is sad that we have been oppressed to this extent,” Chen said.
For many overseas Chinese students, including Jolie, it is their first time to have taken political action, driven by a mixture of awe and guilt toward the “Bridge Man” and a sense of duty to show solidarity.
Among the posters on the notice boards of Goldsmiths, the University of London, is one with a photo of the Sitong Bridge protest, which showed a plume of dark smoke billowing up from the bridge.
Above it, a Chinese sentence printed in red reads: “The courage of one person should not be without echo.”
Putting up protest posters “is the smallest thing, but the biggest I can do now – not because of my ability but because of my lack of courage,” Jolie said,pointing to her relative safety acting outside China’s borders.
Others expressed a similar sense of guilt. “I feel ashamed. If I were in Beijing now, I would never have the courage to do such a thing,” said Yvonne Li, who graduated from Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands last year.
Li and a friend put up a hundred posters on campus and in the city center, including around China Town.
“I really wanted to cry when I first saw the protest on Instagram. I felt politically depressed reading Chinese news everyday. I couldn’t see any hope. But when I saw this brave man, I realized there is still a glimmer of light,” she said.
The two Instagram accounts, Citizensdailycn and Northern_square, said they each received more than 1,000 submissions of anti-Xi posters from the Chinese diaspora. According to Citizensdailycn’s tally, the posters have been sighted at 320 universities across the world.
Teng Biao, a human rights lawyer and visiting professor at the University of Chicago, said he is struck by how fast the overseas opposition to Xi has gathered pace and how far it has spread.
When Xi scrapped presidential term limits in 2018, posters featuring the slogan “Not My President” and Xi’s face had surfaced in some universities outside China – but the scale paled in comparison, Teng noted.
“In the past, there were only sporadic protests by overseas Chinese dissidents. Voices from university campuses were predominantly supporting the Chinese government and leadership,” he said.
In recent years, as Xi stoked nationalism at home and pursued an assertive foreign policy abroad, an increasing number of overseas Chinese students have stepped forward to defend Beijing from any criticism or perceived slights – sometimes with the blessing of Chinese embassies.
There were protests when a university invited the Dalai Lama to be a guest speaker; rebukes for professors perceived to have “anti-China” content in their lectures; and clashes when other campus groups expressed support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests.
But as the widespread anti-Xi posters have shown, the rising nationalistic sentiment is by no means representative of all Chinese students overseas. Most often, those who do not agree with the party and its policies simply choose to stay silent. For them, the stakes of openly criticizing Beijing are just too high. In past years, those who spoke out have faced harassment and intimidation, retaliation against family back home, and lengthy prison terms upon returning to China.
“Even liberal democracies are influenced by China’s long arm of repression. The Chinese government has a large amount of spies and informants, monitoring overseas Chinese through various United Front-linked organizations,” Teng said, referring to a party body responsible for influence and infiltration operations abroad.
Teng said Beijing has extended its grip on Chinese student bodies abroad to police the speech and actions of its nationals overseas – and to make sure the party line is observed even on foreign campuses.
“The fact that so many students are willing to take the risk shows how widespread the anger is over Xi’s decade of moving backward.”
Most students CNN spoke with said they were worried about being spotted with the posters by Beijing’s supporters, who they fear could expose them on Chinese social media or report them to the embassies.
“We were scared and kept looking around. I found it absurd at the time and reflected briefly upon it – what we were doing is completely legal here (in the Netherlands), but we were still afraid of being seen by other Chinese students,” said Chen, the recent graduate in Rotterdam.
The fear of being betrayed by peers has weighed heavily on Jolie, the student in London, in particular while growing up in China with views that differed from the party line. “I was feeling really lonely,” she said. “The horrible (thing) is that your friends and classmates may report you.”
But as she showed solidarity for the “Bridge Man,” she also found solidarity in others who did the same. In the day following the protest in Beijing, Jolie saw on Instagram an outpouring of photos showing protest posters from all over the world.
“I was so moved and also a little bit shocked that (I) have many friends, although I don’t know them, and I felt a very strong emotion,” she said. “I just thought – my friends, how can I contact you, how can I find you, how can we recognize each other?”
Sometimes, all it takes is a knowing smile from a fellow Chinese student – or a new protest poster that crops up on the same notice board – to make the students feel reassured.
“It’s important to tell each other that we’re not alone,” said a Chinese student at McGill University in Quebec.
“(After) I first hung the posters, I went back to see if they were still there and I would see another small poster hung by someone else and I just feel really safe and comforted.”
“I feel like it is my responsibility to do this,” they said. If they didn’t do anything, “it’s just going to be over, and I just don’t want it to be over so quickly without any consequences.”
In China, the party will also be watching closely for any consequences. Having tightened its grip on all aspects of life, launched a sweeping crackdown on dissent, wiped out much of civil society and built a high-tech surveillance state, the party’s hold on power appears firmer than ever.
But the extensive censorship around the Sitong Bridge protest also betrays its paranoia.
“Maybe (the bridge protester) is the only one with such courage and willingness to sacrifice, but there may be millions of other Chinese people who share his views,” said Matt, a Chinese student at Columbia University in New York.
“He let me realize that there are still such people in China, and I want others to know that, too. Not everyone is brainwashed. (We’re) still a nation with ideals and hopes.”
India and Pakistan are set to resume their cricket rivalry when they meet in their T20 World Cup opener in Melbourne on Sunday.
It will be the 12th time that both teams will face each other in cricket’s shortest format.
India hold a clear lead in the head-to-head record, with nine wins against Pakistan’s three.
However, Pakistan have won two of the last three matches between the two sides.
Here is a look at five of the most thrilling T20 matches between these two.
Final, World T20 2007 (Johannesburg)
A World Cup final between India and Pakistan, a last-over finish, an improvised shot gone wrong.
It was as good as a cricket final could get.
The match brought unbridled joy to India and heartbreak to Pakistan, this encounter from the first ever T20 World Cup in South Africa is arguably their most epic match in the shortest format of the game.
MS Dhoni chose to bat first against Pakistan’s much-fancied bowling lineup. His team ended up setting a target of 158, thanks to a 54-ball 75 from Gautam Gambhir and a late blitz by Rohit Sharma. Pakistan’s chase was staggered with a regular loss of wickets before Younis Khan and Misbah-ul-Haq managed to put it back on track.
With six needed off the last four balls, Misbah scooped Joginder Sharma but was caught at short fine-leg. It resulted in one of the most iconic images in cricket history: Misbah crouched on the pitch in disbelief as Indian players erupt in joy around him.
It was the match that endeared the T20 format to millions of Indian cricket fans and subsequently bankrolled millions of dollars into the game in the form of the Indian Premier League in 2008.
India’s players celebrate their victory as Pakistan’s Misbah-ul-Haq walks off the field after the World Twenty20 cricket final [Mike Hutchings/Reuters]
Group match, T20 World Cup 2021 (Dubai)
Pakistan went into this game with the ignominious record of having never beaten India in a World Cup match.
The pre-match analysis placed India as favourites based on this record and India’s ranking.
With a strong bowling lineup led by Shaheen Shah Afridi, Babar Azam chose to field first.
Afridi, who has a knack for picking up wickets in his first over, got rid of KL Rahul off the fourth delivery and Rohit Sharma in his second over. India managed to reach 157.
Pakistan’s batting boasted the top T20-opening pair of Babar and Mohammad Rizwan. The openers lived up to their reputation and took Pakistan home for an astonishing 10-wicket win that left the fans and pundits befuddled.
Pakistan had finally broken the World Cup curse against India.
Shaheen Afridi ran rampage against the Indian top order in their 2021 T20 World Cup [Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters]
Group match, T20 World Cup 2007 (Durban)
The inaugural T20 World Cup produced two thrilling finishes in cricket’s most intense rivalry. While the final took the limelight, India and Pakistan played another closely fought match in the group stages. In fact, it was as close as it could get – a tie.
India’s total of 141 was built around Robin Uthappa’s half-century, and contributions from captain MS Dhoni and all-rounder Irfan Pathan. Mohammad Asif, Pakistan’s wily fast-bowler, took four wickets for 18 runs.
For Pakistan, most of the runs came from Misbah-ul-Haq and captain Shoaib Malik. Pakistan drew level on runs with two balls to go, when Misbah was runout.
Instead of a super over, the rules then stipulated that a tie be broken with a bowl-out – cricket’s version of penalties. India’s bowlers hit the stumps on their first three attempts while Pakistan missed all three, handing India a rare bowl-out win of 3-0.
India beat Pakistan 3-0 in a five-ball bowl-out to decide their match after the match had finished in a tie [Rogan Ward/Reuters]
Super Four, Asia Cup 2022 (Dubai)
This was the teams’ second meeting in the Asia Cup 2022, with India recording a five-wicket win in the group stages.
Both teams advanced to the Super Fours, where they had to win two matches to have a chance of qualifying for the final.
In the 2021 World Cup win, Pakistan were aided by the brilliance of Shaheen Shah Afridi’s bowling, and the unbreakable Babar-Rizwan partnership. This time around Afridi was injured and Babar was facing a dip in form.
India looked comfortable against Pakistan’s pace attack until Haris Rauf dismissed Rohit Sharma. It was then down to Pakistan’s spinners to restrict India, who finished at 181-7.
Pakistan had to rely on their lower-order lineup of all-rounders and big hitters in order to avenge their group-stage loss in the tournament. Mohammad Nawaz came to the rescue with a 20-ball 41 as Pakistan got home with one ball to spare in a tense finish.
Pakistan’s Mohammad Nawaz’s rear guard action took Pakistan home [Satish Kumar/Reuters]
Asia Cup 2016 (Mirpur)
India came into this match as favourites with a star-studded lineup and good recent form.
When MS Dhoni put Pakistan into bat, he wouldn’t have predicted his opponents to fold as quickly as they did. Apart from Khurram Manzoor’s 10 and Sarfaraz Ahmed’s 25, none of the Pakistan batters reached double figures.
India had a seemingly easy task in front of them, chasing Pakistan’s 83. But Mohammad Amir, the left-arm fast bowler making his international return after serving his spot-fixing ban, had other plans. He dismissed both Indian openers in his first over and then Suresh Raina in his second, to leave India at 8-3 in three overs.
This was when Virat Kohli took over the job of rebuilding India’s chase and saw out Amir. Kohli was dismissed on 49, but he had taken India within eight runs of the total. India ended up winning by five wickets.
India won the 2016 Asia Cup match by five wickets [Adnan Abidi/Reuters]
Disclosure of the documents’ contents could expose US intelligence-gathering methods, people familiar with the matter told the Post. At least one of the documents describes Iran’s missile program and others described highly sensitive intelligence involving China.
The Post’s sources characterized the documents as among the most sensitive recovered by the FBI since it began its investigation of the former President and his aides into the potential mishandling of classified information.
A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment to the Post on Friday morning.
The people familiar with the matter who spoke to the Post said many of the more sensitive documents taken to the resort are analysis papers that do not contain sources’ names, though they can still provide insight to foreign adversaries. Some of the documents are only available to the highest-level officials in the US government, such as the President or Cabinet members.
CNN has reported that since the FBI search in August, the US intelligence community has restarted work on both the classification review and the so-called damage assessment related to Trump’s storage of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago.
The damage assessment is a long-term analytic product that will study what the risk would be to US national security if the material stored at Mar-a-Lago were to be exposed. The classification review is designed to review each document to establish that its classification markings are current.
On Thursday, CNN reported that Trump’s legal team is weighing whether to allow federal agents to return to the former President’s Florida residence, and potentially conduct a supervised search, to satisfy the Justice Department’s demands that all sensitive government documents are returned, sources tell CNN.
In private discussions with Trump’s team as well as court filings, the Justice Department has made clear that it believes Trump failed to comply with a May subpoena ordering the return of all documents marked as classified and that more government records remain missing.
Some in Trump’s inner circle aren’t convinced there are any remaining government documents, after the FBI seized nearly 22,000 pages when they executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in August.
China’s former top leader, Hu Jintao, was unexpectedly led out of Saturday’s closing ceremony of the Communist Party Congress, in a moment of drama during what is typically a highly choreographed event.
Hu, 79, was seated in a prominent position at the front table in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, directly next to his successor, current leader Xi Jinping, when he was approached by a staff member, video of the meeting shows.
While seated, Hu appeared to talk briefly with the male staff member, while China’s third most senior leader, Li Zhanshu, who was seated to his other side, had his hand on the chair behind Hu’s back.
Hu then appeared to rise after being lifted up by the staff member, who’d taken the former leader by the arm, while Kong Shaoxun, head of the party’s secretariat came over. Hu spoke with the two men briefly and initially appeared reluctant to leave.
Hu was then escorted by the two men from his seat, with the staff member holding his arm, as other party members seated behind the main table looked on. The circumstances surrounding Hu’s exit are not clear.
On his way out, Hu was seen to pause and appeared to say something to Xi and then patted Premier Li Keqiang on the shoulder. Both Xi and Li appeared to nod. It was not clear what Xi said in reply.
At one point, while Hu was still seated, Xi appeared to place his hand over a document that Hu was attempting to reach for preventing him from doing so.
In another moment, after Hu was standing and apparently remonstrating with the two men before making his exit, Li Zhanshu appeared to try and rise from his seat, but was directed back down by a tug on his suit jacket by fellow Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Huning, seated next to him.
Hu, who retired in 2013, has been seen in increasingly frail health in public in recent years.
Due to the opacity of Chinese elite politics, the party is unlikely to offer a public explanation on Hu’s sudden exit. The dramatic moment has not been reported anywhere in Chinese media, or discussed on Chinese social media, where such conversation is highly-restricted. But it has set off a firestorm of speculation overseas.
CNN was censored on air in China when reporting on Hu’s exit from the meeting Saturday.
Hu’s departure came after the Congress’s more than 2,000 delegates had rubber-stamped the new members of the party’s elite Central Committee during a private session, and before delegates were called on to endorse the party’s work report during a session open to journalists.
The newly announced 205-member Central Committee did not include Li Keqiang and fellow Standing Committee member Wang Yang, who are both considered Hu’s proteges. This means neither will retain their seats in the Standing Committee, the party’s top-decision making body, though both are 67, one year short of the unofficial retirement age. Xi, who is 69, is included in the list of new Central Committee members.
The line-up of the Standing Committee will be revealed Sunday, one day after the close of the Congress. Xi, who is widely seen to have cemented power by eliminating rivals and dampening the lingering influence of party elders, is expected to be re-confirmed as party chief in a norm-breaking move and surround himself with allies.
BEIJING — A major weeklong meeting of China’s ruling Communist Party was expected to approve changes to the party constitution on Saturday that could further enhance Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s hold on power.
The closing session was underway with about 2,000 delegates — wearing blue surgical masks under China’s strict zero-COVID policy — in the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing.
They formally elected a new Central Committee of about 200 members to govern the party for the next five years, state media said. Xi is expected to retain the top spot when the new leadership of the party is unveiled Sunday.
Foreign media were not allowed into the first part of the meeting, presumably when the voting was taking place.
Police were stationed along major roads, with bright red-clad neighborhood watch workers at regular intervals in between, to keep an eye out for any potential disruptions.
An individual caught authorities by surprise last week by unfurling banners from an overpass in Beijing that called for Xi’s removal and attacked his government’s tough pandemic restrictions.
The party congress sets the nation’s agenda for the coming five years. A report read by Xi at the opening session a week ago showed a determination to stay on the current path in the face of domestic and international challenges.
Xi has emerged during his first decade in power as one of China’s most powerful leaders in modern times, rivaling Mao Zedong, who founded the communist state in 1949 and led the country for a quarter-century.
An expected third five-year term as party leader would break an unofficial two-term limit that was instituted to try to prevent the excesses of Mao’s one-person rule, notably the tumultuous 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, under which Xi suffered as a youth.
Xi has put loyalists in key positions and taken personal charge of policy working groups. In contrast, factions within the party discussed ideas internally under his two immediate predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin, said Ho-fung Hung, a professor of political economy at Johns Hopkins University.
“Right now, you don’t really see a lot of internal party debates about these different policies and there is only one voice there,” he said.
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Associated Press writer Kanis Leung in Hong Kong contributed to this report.
Chinese national flags flutter on the Great Hall of the People on October 16.
(VCG/Getty Images)
For more than two decades, a new general secretary has been appointed at every other Communist Party Congress.
But since the last Congress in 2017, Xi Jinping has signaled plans to keep a firm grip on all aspects of what’s considered a trifecta of power in China: control over the party, the state and the military.
At the last Congress in 2017, he broke with tradition and did not elevate a potential successor to the Standing Committee.
Then, months later, China’s rubber-stamp legislature eliminated the term limits for President of China. This was widely seen as enabling Xi to continue to a third term as head of state, while also retaining his control of the Communist Party – where the true power lies.
While there are no formal term limits for general secretary, staying in the top party role would also require Xi to break with another unwritten rule: the party’s informal age limit.
Abandoning term limits: The norm is that senior officials who are 68 or older at the time of the Congress will retire. At 69, Xi would flout this recent convention by staying in power.
What’s less clear is whether he will seek to give other Politburo allies exemptions, disrupting one of the few neutral methods the party has to ensure turnover, or whether, in contrast, he could lower the retirement age for others to oust some existing members.
Changing the constitution: Xi is also expected to strengthen his legacy, likely through amendments to the party constitution — a regular feature of each Congress.
Last month, the Politburo discussed these changes during a scheduled meeting, according to a government statement that did not include specifics.
In 2017, Xi became the first leader since Mao Zedong — Communist China’s founder — to have his philosophy added to the constitution while still in power. Oservers have suggested Xi’s key principles could be further enshrined this time around.
These details will be signs of how much power Xi holds within the upper echelons of the party – and how strong his backing is as he steps into his expected, norm-breaking third term leading one of the world’s most powerful countries.
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s elections commission on Friday disqualified former Prime Minister Imran Khan from holding public office for five years, after finding he had unlawfully sold state gifts and concealed assets as premier, officials said.
The move is likely to deepen lingering political turmoil in the impoverished Islamic country struggling with a spiraling economy, food shortages and the aftermath of unprecedented floods this summer that killed 1,725 people, displaced hundreds of thousands and triggered a surge in malaria and other flood-related disease.
The announcement by the commission comes as Khan, who was ousted in a no-confidence vote in the parliament in April, has been rallying supporters against the new government and calling for early elections.
Dozens of angry Khan supporters gathered Friday outside the commission headquarters in the capital, Islamabad, chanting slogans against its decision. Security forces and paramilitary troops cordoned off the compound, blocking the crowd from getting inside.
Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan, who is not related to the former premier, hailed the decision and said that Imran Khan would now be tried in a court of law. Law Minister Azam Nazir Tarar said the commission’s disqualification would last for five years and that the body had also recommended that Khan be tried on charges of concealing assets.
“You have never earned so much money in your whole life than you did by selling the gifts given to you” by heads of foreign countries, the interior minister said, addressing Khan.
Officials and legal experts said Friday’s decision meant Khan would automatically lose his seat in the National Assembly. Under Pakistani law, the commission has the authority to disqualify politicians from office but is separate from the judiciary.
Khan cannot appeal the commission’s decision except in court.
A senior leader in Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party, Fawad Chaudhry, condemned the decision and urged Khan’s supporters to rally in the streets. He said there was no ban on Khan from leading his party. Khan’s lawyers have denied the allegations against him, saying he “bought back” the gifts from the state and later sold some of them lawfully.
Another senior party leader, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, said that their legal team would challenge the commission’s decision.
Earlier Friday, Balkh Ser Khosa, a prominent lawyer, said the disqualification happened because Khan unlawfully sold state gifts given to him by other countries when he was in power. Khosa also said Khan hid the profits he earned from those sales from tax authorities.
Elsewhere, hundreds of Khan supporters blocked a key road in the northwestern city of Peshawar, disrupting traffic. There were also small rallies in the port city of Karachi and in other places.
In Rawalpindi, Khan’s supporters briefly clashed with police but dispersed when security forces swung batons and fired tear gas, according to local media reports. The government deployed additional security forces in Islamabad to maintain law and order.
The developments came days before Khan was expected to announce another march on Islamabad to force the government of Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif to hold snap elections.
After his ouster, Khan led a march on Islamabad in May but called off the rally after violence erupted and his supporters clashed with police. He has since been promising to hold the final round of his political fight in Islamabad.
The commission’s decision followed a petition from Sharif’s coalition government, seeking action against Khan over allegations that he unlawfully sold state gifts he had received from heads of other states when he was in power. Such gifting is not uncommon in many countries but while in Pakistan, leaders are allowed to buy back the gifts, they are not usually sold. If they are sold, individuals have to declare that as income.
Khan has claimed that his government was toppled by Sharif under a U.S. plot — claims that both the premier and Washington have denied. Sharif’s government has also rejected Khan’s demand for early elections, saying the vote will be held as scheduled, next year.
Sharif tweeted later Friday that no one was above the law. Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said on Twitter that Khan, “who would spread lies about alleged corruption of his political opponents has been caught red-handed.”
Khan, who came to power after the 2018 elections, initially enjoyed excellent ties with army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa. The military has directly ruled Pakistan for more than half of its 75 years.
Later, Khan openly resisted the appointment by Bajwa of a new spy chief to replace Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed, a Khan favorite. Bajwa eventually removed Hameed, which caused a rift between Khan and Bajwa that eventually led to the prime minister’s ouster.
Former prime minister disqualified from being a member of parliament over ‘corrupt practices’.
Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan’s election commission, in a unanimous decision, has found former Prime Minister Imran Khan guilty of “corrupt practices” and disqualified him from being a member of parliament.
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party immediately rejected Friday verdict. It said it would file an appeal to the Islamabad High Court to challenge the verdict and called on supporters to take to the streets.
The case against Khan was filed in August by a member of the Pakistan Muslim Nawaz, contending that the former prime minister had bought gifts given from foreign dignitaries from the state gift depository (also called Toshakhana) but did not disclose the assets in the declarations submitted to the commission.
China’s economy is faltering. Unemployment is skyrocketing. Endless Covid lockdowns are wreaking havoc on businesses and people’s lives. The property sector is in crisis. Ties between Beijing and major global powers are under strain.
The list of problems faced by the world’s second-largest economy goes on – and many of those long-term challenges have only worsened under a decade of Xi Jinping’s rule. Yet the Chinese leader’s grip on power is unwavering.
In the past decade, Xi has consolidated control to an extent unseen since the era of Communist China’s strongman founder, Mao Zedong. He’s the head of the Chinese Communist Party, the state, the armed forces, and so many committees that he’s been dubbed “chairman of everything.” And now, he is poised to step into a norm-breaking third term in power, with the potential to rule for life.
But absolute power can often mean absolute responsibility, and as problems mount, analysts warn Xi will have less room to avoid blame.
“I think the worst enemy of Xi Jinping’s longevity in ruling China is Xi Jinping himself,” said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London. “It is when he makes a huge policy mistake that causes havoc in China that could potentially start the process of unraveling Xi Jinping’s hold to power.”
Mao’s rule from 1949 until 1976 was marked by rash policy decisions that led to tens of millions of deaths and destroyed the economy. After those decades of turmoil, the Communist Party developed a system of collective leadership designed to prevent the rise of another dictator who could make arbitrary and dangerous decisions.
China’s next leader, Deng Xiaoping, set an unwritten rule and precedent that the Communist Party’s General Secretary – the role from which China’s leader derives true power – would step down after two terms.
From Mao to Xi: A history of China’s leadership
When Xi assumed power in 2012, China’s economy was booming as it integrated more closely with the rest of the world. Just four years before, China had stunned the world with the extravagant Beijing Summer Olympics. But to Xi, the party was in a state of crisis: overrun by corruption, infighting, and inefficiencies.
Xi’s solution was to return to dictatorial and personalistic rule. He purged political enemies in a sweeping anti-corruption campaign, silenced internal dissent, abolished presidential term limits and enshrined “Xi Jinping Thought” into the party’s constitution.
According to analysts, many dictatorships fall into a pattern of abuse of power and poor decision-making when a lack of critical advice reaches the leader. They point to Vladimir Putin’s increasingly costly war against Ukraine as a concern that Xi’s similarly unquestionable power to the Russian President could one day lead to equally disastrous consequences.
Putin and Xi “suffer from the same strongman-syndrome problem, which is that they turned their policy advice circles into echo chambers, so people are no longer able to speak their mind freely,” Tsang said. “We are seeing big mistakes being made because that internal policy debate has been reduced or indeed eliminated in terms of its scope.”
In recent history, no country has modernized as rapidly as China. The Communist Party claims its leadership helped lift hundreds of millions out of poverty, turning backwater villages into stunning megacities. But that growth miracle has slowed. And many longstanding challenges in China’s economy have only been exacerbated by Xi’s policies.
Xi has made it his mission to strengthen the party and its control over business and society. He unleashed a crackdown on the once-vibrant private sector that’s led to mass layoffs. Beijing claims the tougher regulations restrict overly powerful corporations and protect consumers, but the measures have suffocated private businesses, sending chills through the economy and sparking fears about future innovation.
China’s once vibrant private sector suffocating under Xi’s crackdown
Beijing started clamping down on easy credit for property firms in 2020, which led to cash crunches and defaults for many developers, including giant conglomerate Evergrande. Housing projects have stalled and desperate homebuyers across the country are refusing to pay mortgages on unfinished homes. Disruptions in the property sector have an outsized impact on China’s broader economy, as it accounts for as much as 30% of the country’s GDP.
But during Xi’s leadership, nothing has rocked China’s economy and society as much as zero-Covid. In year three of the pandemic, China has clung to the harsh policy, which relies on mass testing, extensive quarantines and snap lockdowns to stamp out infections at all costs, even as the rest of the world has learned to live with the virus.
The country continues to lock down entire cities over a handful of infections, while sending all positive cases and close contacts to government quarantine facilities. Lining up for Covid tests and scanning a tracking health code to enter any public space have become normalized. Beijing argues the policy has prevented China from spiraling into a health care disaster like the rest of the world, but zero-Covid is wielded at enormous and growing costs.
Artist wears 27 hazmat suits to protest China’s policies
Constant lockdowns have dramatically shrunk the pace of growth in China’s economy. Record youth unemployment has reached nearly 20%. Pocketbooks are shrinking. Heavily indebted local governments are forced to spend on mass Covid testing. Experts say resources would be better spent on increasing vaccination rates rather than building costly testing sites and quarantine facilities. China has still not approved any foreign mRNA vaccines proven to be more effective against the highly contagious Omicron variant than the inactivated vaccines used in China.
At the start of the pandemic, Beijing censored – and in some cases punished – doctors, experts, and citizen journalists who tried to warn of a deadly in virus in Wuhan.
Nearly three years on, as most international experts advise China to find a way to live with the virus, Beijing has doubled down. Earlier this year, Shanghai – a metropolis with a population more than three times that of New York City – was locked down for two months. People struggled to get enough food and basic necessities. Desperate residents broke out of home confinement and clashed with enforcement workers in rare street protests. Many patients were denied life-saving health care.
When the World Health Organization criticized the zero-Covid policy as “not sustainable,” China censored the statement on social media.
Susan Shirk, director of the 21st Century China Center and author of “Overreach,” a book on Xi’s leadership, says China’s leaders “compete with one another to prove how loyal they are to him because Xi promotes loyalists, not the most competent people.” That leads to subordinates going over the top in executing policies to try to please Xi, she said.
Shirk said this has played out with zero-Covid, as Xi has directly tied his leadership to the strategy, so local officials have zealously followed it to show loyalty to the leader and protect their careers.
“A lot of the pain in China’s economy has been self-inflicted by China’s leader,” Shirk said.
“So what this suggests, and this is a pretty disturbing idea, is that the Chinese Communist Party no longer brands itself as a developmental party, putting economic development as its primary objective. But instead, it’s Xi Jinping’s hold on power.”
More than 60 years after Anna May Wong became the first Asian American woman to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the pioneering actor has coined another first, quite literally.
With quarters bearing her face and manicured hand set to start shipping Monday, per the U.S. Mint, Wong will be the first Asian American to grace U.S. currency. Few could have been more stunned at the honor than her niece and namesake, Anna Wong, who learned about the American Women Quarters honor from the Mint’s head legal consul.
“From there, it went into the designs and there were so many talented artists with many different renditions. I actually pulled out a quarter to look at the size to try and imagine how the images would transfer over to real life,” Anna Wong wrote in an email to The Associated Press.
The elder Wong, who fought against stereotypes foisted on her by a white Hollywood, is one of five women being honored this year as part of the program. She was chosen for being “a courageous advocate who championed for increased representation and more multi-dimensional roles for Asian American actors,” Mint Director Ventris Gibson said in a statement.
The other icons chosen include writer Maya Angelou; Dr. Sally Ride, an educator and the first American woman in space; Wilma Mankiller, the first female elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation; and Nina Otero-Warren, a trailblazer for New Mexico’s suffrage movement.
Wong’s achievement has excited Asian Americans inside and outside of the entertainment industry.
Her niece, whose father was Anna May Wong’s brother, will participate in an event with the Mint on Nov. 4 at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles. One of Wong’s movies, “Shanghai Express,” will be screened, followed by a panel discussion.
Arthur Dong, the author of “Hollywood Chinese,” said the quarter feels like a validation of not just of Wong’s contributions, but of all Asian Americans’. A star on the Walk of Fame is huge, but being on U.S. currency is a whole other stratosphere of renown.
“What it means is that people all across the nation — and my guess is around the world — will see her face and see her name,” Dong said. “If they don’t know anything about her, they will … be curious and want to learn something about her.”
Born in Los Angeles in 1905, Wong started acting during the silent film era. While her career trajectory coincided with Hollywood’s first Golden Age, things were not so golden for Wong.
She got her first big role in 1922 in “The Toll of the Sea,” according to Dong’s book. Two years later, she played a Mongol slave in “The Thief of Bagdad.” For several years, she was stuck receiving offers only for femme fatale or Asian “dragon lady” roles.
She fled to European film sets and stages, but Wong was back in the U.S. by the early 1930s and again cast as characters reliant on tropes that would hardly be tolerated today. These roles included the untrustworthy daughter of Fu Manchu in “Daughter of the Dragon” and a sex worker in “Shanghai Express.”
She famously lost out on the lead to white actor Luise Rainer in 1937’s “The Good Earth,” based on the novel about a Chinese farming family. But in 1938, she got to play a more humanized, sympathetic Chinese American doctor in “King of Chinatown.”
The juxtaposition of that film with her other roles is the focus of one day in a monthlong program, “Hollywood Chinese: The First 100 Years,” that Dong is curating at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles in November.
“(‘King of Chinatown’) was part of this multi-picture deal at Paramount that gave her more control, more say in the types of films she was going to be participating in,” he said. “For a Chinese American woman to have that kind of multi-picture deal at Paramount, that was quite outstanding.”
By the 1950s, Wong had moved on to television appearances. She was supposed to return to the big screen in the movie adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Flower Drum Song” but had to bow out because of illness. She died on Feb. 2, 1961, a year after receiving her star.
Bing Chen, co-founder of the nonprofit Gold House — focused on elevating representation and empowerment of Asian and Asian American content — called the new quarter “momentous.” He praised Wong as a star “for generations.”
But at the same time, he highlighted how anti-Asian hate incidents and the lack of representation in media still persist.
“In a slate of years when Asian women have faced extensive challenges — from being attacked to objectified on screen to being the least likely group to be promoted to corporate management — this currency reinforces what many of us have known all along: (they’re) here and worthy,” Chen said in a statement. “It’s impossible to forget, though, as a hyphenated community, that Asian Americans constantly struggle between being successful and being seen.”
Asian American advocacy groups outside of the entertainment world also praised the new quarters. Norman Chen, CEO of The Asian American Foundation, plans to seek the coins out to show to his parents.
“For them to see an Asian American woman on a coin, I think it’d be really powerful for them. It’s a dramatic symbol of how we are so integral to American society yet still seen in stereotypical ways,” he said. “But my parents will look at this. They will be pleasantly surprised and proud.”
To sum it up, Chen said, it’s a huge step: “Nothing is more American than our money.”
———
Terry Tang is a member of The Associated Press’ Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ttangAP
As a new, deadly virus overtook the central city of Wuhan and spread throughout China in early 2020, the country’s ruling Communist Party and its leader Xi Jinping were faced with a crisis on a scale not seen in decades.
In Wuhan, there was chaos.The city shut itself off from the outside world, while hospitals were overrun with the sick and dying – but it was too late to stop the virus’ advance. Huge swaths of China, too, locked down, grinding the country to a halt. Online, public outrage over apparent delays in the official release of information – and the silencing of whistleblowers – lit up social media faster than the censors could repress it.
Outside China, observers watching the start of what would become the Covid-19 pandemic began to ask: could this be a catastrophe so big it calls into question the legitimacy of the Communist Party and its leader?
Nearly three years later, however,Xi is poised to cement his place as China’s most powerful leader in decades, when he is anointed with a likely norm-breaking third term as the party chief on Sunday.
In the months following that initial outbreak, Xi oversaw the assembly of a toolbox of brute-force lockdowns, enforced quarantines, and digital tracking. All that was used to bring the virus to heel and largely keep it outside China’s shuttered borders – an approach that initially appeared to earn broad public support as China lived largely virus-free and the pandemic raged overseas.
But, now, as Xi steps into an expected new era of his rule, that system – known today as the “dynamic zero-Covid” policy – is facing both social and economic pushback.
Public frustration – the true scale of which is difficult to gauge – appears to be rising over lockdowns that can shutter people in their homes for weeks on end with fleeting advance notice, digital health codes that dictate where people can move, and the constant threat of being sent to centralized quarantine. Meanwhile, the country’s economy is faltering, with both the IMF and World Bank recently downgrading China’s GDP growth forecasts, citing zero-Covid as one of the major drags.
As China’s Communist Party National Congress meets this week to approve the party’s priorities for the next five years, many are watching for signs restrictions could be loosened. But with Xi having personally tied himself to the policy, any change would need to come straight from the top – and from a leader, who throughout his rule, has sought to extend, not curtail, the party’s control on daily life.
China’s advanced online ecosystem – run on mobile phone superapps and ubiquitous QR codes – has offered arguably unrivaled convenience for consumers to shop, dine and travel. Now, those technologies play a role in constraining daily life.
Mobile phone health codes are the backbone of a system designed to track citizens and designate whether they are cleared to enter various venues, upping state control on people’s movement to an extent never before seen in China.
Across the country, basic activities like going to the grocery store, riding public transport, or entering an office building depend on holding an up-to-date, negative Covid test and not being flagged as a close contact of a patient – data points reflected by a color code.
Going out in public can be a risk in itself, as being placed under quarantine or barricaded by authorities into a mall or office building as part of a snap lockdown could simply depend on whether someone in the general vicinity ends up testing positive.
“(You see) all the flaws of big data when it has control over your daily life,” said one Shanghai resident surnamed Li, who spent a recent afternoon scrambling to prove he didn’t need to quarantine after a tracking system pinned his wife to a location near to where a positive case had been detected.
Li, who’d been with his wife at the time but received no such message, said they were eventually able to reach a hotline and explain their situation, ultimately returning her health code to green.
“If you don’t complain, the next step is your neighborhood committee seals up your door,” he said.
The clear message from Beijing is that these steps are necessary to prevent large-scale loss of life and overwhelmed medical systems.
“The essence of persisting with dynamic zero-Covid is putting people first and prioritizing life,” read a recent editorial in the People’s Daily – one of three along similar lines released by the party mouthpiece last week in an apparent bid to lower public expectation about any policy changes ahead of the Party Congress.
But as local officials pursue Beijing’s edict of stopping the spread of the virus above all other considerations – the system too, over and over again, has led to human tragedy.
The past year is marked by grim examples well-known across China: the expectant mother in Xi’an who miscarried after being denied treatment due to expired test results, the off-duty nurse who died from an asthma attack in Shanghai as a hospital branch was closed for Covid-19 disinfection, and, last month, the 27 passengers who died in a crash in the middle of the night as they were bussed into a different jurisdiction for compulsory quarantine.
“What makes you think that you won’t be on that late-night bus one day?” read a viral comment, which garnered more than 250,000 likes before it was censored – one of a number of glimpses into rising frustration with the cost of the policy.
Last week, a rare political protest in Beijing saw banners hung from a bridge along the capital’s busy Third Ring Road that zoned in on social controls under the policy.
“Say no to Covid test, yes to food. No to lockdown, yes to freedom. No to lies, yes to dignity. No to cultural revolution, yes to reform. No to great leader, yes to vote. Don’t be a slave, be a citizen,” one banner read, while the other called for the removal of “dictator and national traitor Xi Jinping.”
Speaking before some 2,300 mostly surgical-mask clad Communist Party members at the opening of the party’s five-yearly leadership reshuffle on Sunday, Xi gave a sweeping endorsement of China’s Covid controls, saying the party had “protected the people’s health and safety to the greatest extent possible” and “made tremendous, encouraging achievements in both epidemic and social development.”
The impact of those controls is becoming sharper, as lockdowns – which have repeatedly left people struggling for access to food and medicine and grappling with lost income and a mental toll – have become more frequent.
Last month, CNN counted more than 70 Chinese cities placed under full or partial Covid lockdowns in a period of a couple weeks, impacting more than 300 million people.
In the run up to the Party Congress, controls amplified – as local authorities around the country sought to tamp down on outbreaks coinciding with the major political event.
“Maintaining the zero-Covid strategy is now substantially more costly than it was a year ago, because the latest (viral) strains are so much more transmissible and outbreaks are occurring more frequently,” said epidemiologist Ben Cowling of the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health.
“At the same time, the threat posed by Covid is reduced because of the higher vaccine coverage and the availability of antivirals. Taken together, I think the point has already been crossed where continuing zero-Covid could be considered a cost-effective strategy,” he said, adding that maintaining high vaccine coverage was key for a planned transition away from zero-Covid.
Xi’s proclaimed success over the virus and China’s accompanying propaganda campaign is one reason why it may be difficult for China to change course.
“The issue is Xi Jinping already associated himself with the ‘successful’ model of fighting Covid, so the zero-Covid policy now is a de facto Xi Jinping policy,” said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, adding that China’s handling of the virus in comparison to other countries remains a point of national pride for many Chinese.
And backing away from the policy will come with significant consequences. Allowing the virus to spread within the country of 1.4 billion would likely increase Covid-19 deaths to unseen levels in the country, experts say – and China so far has staked its policy around preventing those outcomes at all costs.
Outside experts say that, since the virus will stay in circulation beyond China, keeping tight controls and closed borders is just delaying the inevitable, and the focus should be on preparing, for example through raising elderly vaccination rates and increasing ICU capacity, as well as getting or expanding access to the most effective vaccines and treatments.
While China backed a massive vaccination campaign since early 2021, it has relied on homegrown shots, which produce lower levels of protective antibodies than mRNA vaccines developed in the West.
So far, however, China has appeared most focused on bolstering the pillars of zero-Covid: mass testing capacity and mass quarantine facilities.
“The vaccines take time, the ICU expansion takes time – and if you don’t see effort to prepare for the change, that implies that they are not planning to change the policy any time soon,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
And while experts say it’s possible economic and other considerations could see China loosen certain controls in the coming year, an eventual end to zero-Covid may not see an end to all of its vestiges – especially as Xi, including in his Sunday address, has made clear his focus on increasing “security” in China.
Already the health code system has been used to diffuse social protest – with petitioners who lost their savings in rural banks barred from protesting after their health codes inexplicably turned red.
“One scenario is that (China) might drop the zero-Covid policy, but some of the key components of the policy might be retained and repurposed,” said Huang, pointing to Xi’s focus on maximizing security in China, including via high tech means.
“Zero-Covid has provided a proof of concept – this actually works,” he said.
BERLIN — Lawmakers from two of Germany’s governing parties on Thursday slammed plans for Chinese shipping company Cosco to take a major stake in the operator of the country’s biggest container terminal, warning that they pose a national security risk.
Public broadcaster NDR reported that Chancellor Olaf Scholz has asked officials to find a compromise that would allow the investment to happen, after several ministries initially rejected it on the grounds that Cosco, already the port’s biggest customer, could get too much leverage.
Neither the ministries nor Scholz’s office immediately responded to requests for comment. But lawmakers from the Green party and the Free Democrats, which formed a coalition last year with Scholz’ Social Democrats, criticized the plan.
“Our critical infrastructure must not become a plaything for the geopolitical interests of others,” Green party lawmaker Marcel Emmerich said. Citing a past government decision by one of Scholz’s fellow Social Democrats to let Russia buy German natural gas storage facilities, he accused the chancellor of wanting to “flog off parts of the port of Hamburg to China, whatever it takes.”
The pro-business Free Democrats likewise expressed opposition to the deal.
“The Chinese Communist Party must not have access to our country’s critical infrastructure,” the party’s general secretary, Bijan Djir-Sarai, told German news agency dpa. “That would be a mistake and a risk.”
“China is an importing trading partner but also a systemic rival,” he was quoted as saying. “We should act accordingly.”
Another Free Democrat lawmaker, Reinhard Houben, told news portal t-online that the chancellery should respect the decision by six ministries opposing the sale.
The government dispute over Germany’s stance toward Chinese investments comes days after Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Berlin must avoid repeating with China the mistakes it made with Russia over recent years, leading to a dependence on Russian energy imports.
German intelligence agencies also warned this week of China’s rising might and how it could become a risk for Germany, particularly because of the strong economic and scientific ties between the two countries.
In a hearing with lawmakers, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, Thomas Haldenwang, made a comparison with the current geopolitical turmoil over the war in Ukraine, saying that “Russia is the storm, China is climate change.”
Indonesia has halted the sale of all syrup and liquid medicines following the deaths of nearly 100 children and an unexplained spike in cases of acute kidney injuries.
The ban, announced by the country’s Health Ministry on Wednesday, will remain until authorities complete an investigation into unregistered medical syrups suspected of containing toxic ingredients.
Health Ministry spokesperson Mohammad Syahril said 99 deaths and 206 cases of acute kidney injuries in children, mostly under the age of 6, were being investigated.
“As a precaution, the ministry has asked health workers in health facilities not to prescribe liquid medicine or syrup temporarily,” he said. “We also ask that drug stores temporarily stop all sales of non-prescription liquid medicine or syrup until our investigations are completed.”
WHO suspects that four of the syrups made by Maiden Pharmaceuticals Limited – Promethazine oral solution, Kofexmalin baby cough syrup, Makoff baby cough syrup and Magrip N cold syrup – contained “unacceptable amounts” of chemicals that could damage the brains, lungs, livers and kidneys of those who take them.
The syrups being used in The Gambia were not available in Indonesia, according to the Southeast Asian country’s food and drugs agency.
However, on Thursday, Indonesian Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said ethylene glycol and diethylene glycol – which are more usually found in products like antifreeze, paints, plastics and cosmetics – had been detected in syrups found in the homes of some child patients.
“(The chemicals) should not have been present,” Budi said.
He added that the number of acute kidney failure cases could be higher than reported and his ministry was taking a conservative approach by banning the sale of all syrups.
PENYABANGAN, Indonesia — It took a broken air conditioner for Tom Bowling to figure out — after nearly eight months of failure — how to breed the coveted pink-yellow tropical fish known as blotched anthias.
Bowling, an ornamental fish breeder based in Palau, had kept the fish in cool water, trying to replicate the temperatures the deep-water creatures are usually found in. But when the air conditioner broke the water temperature rose by a few degrees overnight — with surprising results. “They started spawning — they went crazy, laying eggs everywhere,” said Bowling.
Experts around the world tinker over water temperature, futz with lights, and try various mixes of microscopic food particles in hopes of happening upon the particular and peculiar set of conditions that will inspire ornamental fish to breed. Experts hope to steer the aquarium fish trade away from wild-caught fish, which are often caught with poisons that can hurt coral ecosystems.
PROPER AMBIANCE REQUIRED
Most of the millions of glittering fish that dart around saltwater aquariums in the U.S., Europe, China and elsewhere are taken from coral reefs in the Philippines, Indonesia and other tropical countries.
Trappers often stun them using chemicals like cyanide. They are then transferred to middlemen and then flown across the globe, ending up in aquariums in homes, malls, restaurants and medical offices. Experts estimate “large percentages” die on the way.
Part of the problem: only about 4% of saltwater aquarium fish can be bred in captivity, largely because many have elaborate reproductive cycles and delicate early life stages that require sometimes mysterious conditions that scientists and breeders struggle to reproduce.
For decades experts have been working to unlock the secrets of marine fish breeding. Breakthroughs don’t come quickly, said Paul Andersen, head of the Coral Reef Aquarium Fisheries Campaign, which works to support sustainable coral reef aquarium fisheries.
“It requires years of investment, research and development, oftentimes to make incremental steps,” he said. And then even longer, he said, to bring newly captive-bred species to market.
The Moorish idol, a black-and-yellow striped fish with a mane-like dorsal fin spine, requires lots of space. Squiggle-striped green mandarins prefer to spawn just before the sun sets, requiring very particular lighting cycles to breed in captivity. As Bowling discovered in Palau, blotched anthias require very specific temperatures.
“You’ve got to pay attention to all the parameters that will make a fish happy,” said Andersen. “Some species are really gentle, delicate and sensitive to these kinds of things.”
FRAGILE EARLY DAYS
After fish spawn, breeders often find themselves facing the most challenging part of the process: the larval period, which is the time just after the fish hatches, before it develops into a juvenile. The flow of water has to be just right, but they are so fragile they have to be protected from filters and even tank walls.
The first feeding is also crucial, said Andrew Rhyne, a marine biology professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. During the first days many larval fish don’t have eyes or mouths, instead living off their yolk.
“When they finally do form eyes or mouths it’s so important to have created an environment that allows them to get a first bite of zooplankton so they can get a little stronger and continue to grow,” said Rhyne. “That’s kind of been the magic for all of this.”
Often that first bite is a critical part of the ocean food system that harbors its own mysteries: called copepods, they are microscopic crustaceans that provide vital nutrients to larval fish and are key for breeders around the world.
At the University of Florida Tropical Aquaculture Laboratory in Ruskin — where the blue tang “Dory” fish popularized by the movie Finding Nemo was successfully bred for the first time — associate professor Matt DiMaggio and his students have been working to produce copepods. But even the copepods haven proven to be difficult to raise.
Mort than 10,000 miles away from the Florida lab, on the tropical northern coast of Bali, Indonesia, renowned fish breeder Wen-Ping Su walks between large cement fish tanks, his own zooplankton recipe churning in a circular tank nearby.
Su said he has 10 different keys to success that he’s been developing for nearly two decades. Those keys have enabled him to breed fish that no one else has, including striped regal angelfish and frilly black-bodied, orange-rimmed pinnatus batfish.
VALUABLE SECRETS
But asking Wen-Ping Su if he’ll share details, his answer comes quickly, with his hands crossing to form an X in front of his big smile: “No.”
It’s the same sentiment echoed by Bowling, who pauses when asked about sharing the secrets to his most high-profile successes. “That’s the part I really don’t want to tell you,” he laughs.
Those secrets are their livelihoods. The blotched anthias Bowling bred after the broken air conditioner are listed for $700 on his company’s website. Fish bred by Su also sell for hundreds of dollars online.
But in the past five years there are some organizations — such as Rising Tide Conservation, a non-governmental organization dedicated to developing and promoting aquaculture — that have worked to promote information sharing, said DiMaggio.
“That’s helped to accelerate the number of species that we’ve been able to raise in during that time and the variety of species too,” he said, highlighting species such as wrasses, butterflyfish and tangs.
Rhyne’s research lab — which includes breeding toothy queen triggerfish and red-striped yasha gobies— has been working to share his research with breeders as well.
But Rhyne and other breeders concede that it’s unlikely all aquarium fish will be raised in captivity because some are just too difficult, while others are so abundant in nature.
And breeding a fish doesn’t guarantee it will make it to or do well on the market, said Rhyne. Captive bred fish cost more, and experts in the fish industry recognize that it will take time to convince consumers should pay more for them.
“How do we market aquaculture fish the way that we market organic foods, you know, and demand that premium price point?” said Andersen, from the Coral Reef Aquarium Fisheries Campaign. “The marketing is really important.”
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Associated Press video journalist Marshall Ritzel reported from Florida. Kathy Young contributed to this report from New York. Andi Jatmiko, Edna Tarigan and Tatan Syuflana contributed from Indonesia.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Many Asian countries introduced tougher Covid-19 restrictions than in other continents, a reality that has caused concerns about elevated levels of stress, anxiety and isolation. Now, a number of young entrepreneurs are leveraging technology to provide greater access to mental healthcare there.
In July, Singapore-based Intellect raised $20 million in its Series A funding, the largest amount raised by a mental health start-up in Asia.
Founded in 2019, Intellect runs a mobile app that regularly checks in on users’ mood, provides rescue sessions and exercises that tailor to their needs, and allows them to connect with therapists in real time if needed.
“The traditional form of therapy is in-person and on-on-one, and it is hard to scale,” said Theodoric Chew, the 26-year-old co-founder of Intellect. “When technology comes in, we can scale access to mental care to everyone.”
The start-up now serves more than 3 million users across the Asia-Pacific region in 15 languages since services began in early 2020.
Chew said he was inspired to try to popularize mental healthcare after battling a panic attack when he was 16 years old.
“I saw first-hand how therapy and working with professionals helped me become better,” he said. “On the flip side, I saw a lot of people struggling across the region – not clinically, but not having the right tools or know-how to access care.”
While Intellect was founded before the pandemic, it quickly grew in popularity as companies became aware of their employees’ mental health as Covid-19 related lockdown and quarantine measures were imposed.
“A lot of people were thrown into an array of things – anxiety of the pandemic, being locked up, and getting stay-home notices,” he said. “What has changed fundamentally was that mental health is no longer just a nice-to-have element that companies should consider, it’s something that’s needed across the board today.”
“It does benefit companies in very real ways … because if you’re not feeling well mentally, you tend to not perform as well,” he said.
Justin Kim, CEO and co-founder of Ami, another digital mental healthcare start-up based in Singapore and Jakarta, agreed that there’s a need to scale mental health offerings.
“Many companies are spending millions of dollars a year and paying for gym memberships. But why don’t people invest into their mental health the same way? It’s because there are no resources that are being offered to them, that’s just as accessible and affordable,” he added.
Since the start-up was founded in January this year, it has raised at least $3 million from a number of investors, including Meta, the owner of Facebook.
Kim’s team has been working on developing an app that would allow users to text or call mental health coaches confidentially at any time – without having to make prior appointments. He said this allows users to seek professional help whenever they need it in the most efficient way.
Both Chew and Kim are targeting employers in their business models – companies can pay for a subscription and workers will have unlimited access to their services, which are kept private from their bosses.
Alistair Carmichael, an associate partner at McKinsey & Company, said employers will benefit from better mental health in their workforce. “The impacts of poor mental health outcomes are significant. … If we focus on the employment and organizational level, those impacts can be things like presenteeism, absenteeism, lost productivity, lost engagement and attrition,” he said.
Depression and anxiety disorders have cost the global economy $1 trillion each year in lost productivity, the World Health Organization has estimated. And a report by the WHO in March showed the global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25% during the first year of the pandemic.
Chew said Intellect is attempting to close the gap by proactively safeguarding mental wellbeing before symptoms get worse. When employees open the app, the system asks them how they feel at the moment. Mini “rescue sessions” are also provided to users who are experiencing a rough time, while live therapy sessions are also available for those who require them.
The app features numerous learning programs for users to overcome mental roadblocks, such as self-esteem issues, depression or procrastination. A journal function guides users through writing what’s on their mind, while a “mood timeline” keeps track of their stress levels.
Since launching the app, Intellect has served a number of high-profile corporate clients such as Dell, Foodpanda, and Singaporean communications conglomerate Singtel, Chew said, which allowed Intellect to expand from a team of two to 80.
Kim, whose start-up has been building a prototype, said employers could also benefit by identifying trends and general concerns among their workforces.
“With employees’ consent, we do share aggregated levels of data. And that offers employers a birds’ eye perspective of what their employees are actually struggling with, that they need to deep dive on,” he said.
“But we never identify who said that, because we don’t want employees to feel like this isn’t a safe space where they can freely address concerns they have.”
Karen Lau, a Hong Kong-based clinical psychologist with mental health initiative Mind HK, said addressing mental health in Asia comes with unique challenges.
“In Asian contexts, many cultures tend to uphold values such as honor, pride, and a concept of face,” she said. “Mental illness is usually viewed and judged as a sign of weakness and a source of shame for the family.”
“I think when it comes to mental health, just like your physical health, every issue is easier to prevent than fixed,” Kim said. “If people get out there and admit and celebrate the fact that they’re receiving coaching or services to invest in their mental health, it’s going to normalize the practice.”
Chew said one of his goals is to break social stigma and build a new mental healthcare system for the Asia-Pacific region.
“Mental health has long had a stigma across Asia, whereby traditionally we’ve seen it as a clinical issue, a crisis,” he said. “We see mental health just as important as physical health. You and I face things like stress, burnout, sleep issues, and relationship struggle as well. That’s where actually a lot of us should start working on our mental wellbeing.”
BEIJING — While Xi Jinping is primed to receive a third term as head of China’s ruling Communist Party on Sunday, it is unknown who will join him for the next five years on the party’s leading bodies, the Central Committee and the Politburo.
Analysts will scrutinize who joins, and who leaves, for any clues about the future direction of policy as well as just how much power the 69-year-old Xi has been able to amass as one of China’s most influential figures in the country’s modern political history.
Most closely watched will be the Politburo Standing Committee, whose size fluctuates but has stood at seven members under Xi. Based on past practice, the new lineup will be revealed when the members walk out from behind a curtain Sunday, one day after the end of a weeklong party congress.
The positions they take on stage, to Xi’s left and right, will indicate their rank within what is considered the inner circle of power. Leading contenders include both current members and newcomers:
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PREMIER LI KEQIANG
One major question is the future of the party’s No. 2 official, Premier Li Keqiang, who has been on the Standing Committee since 2012 and is primarily responsible for heading the cabinet and managing the world’s second-largest economy.
The 67-year-old Li is regarded as an advocate of market reforms and private enterprise, in contrast to Xi, who favors state-led development with an emphasis on technological self-reliance and reducing the large gap between rich and poor.
Li has had little impact on policymaking since Xi sidelined him politically, but he has led efforts to promote consumption-led economic growth and reduce reliance on exports and investment, employing tactics that some other countries say violate China’s free-trade commitments.
Though he has said he will step down as premier next year, he is still eligible to stay on the Standing Committee. If he remains, analysts say that might indicate that supporters of a more market-driven economy have tempered Xi’s push for greater state control.
ADVISORY BODY HEAD WANG YANG
Other possible holdovers include Wang Yang, who joined the Standing Committee in 2017 and is also regarded as a member of the wing that favors markets, private enterprise and economic experimentation.
Wang heads the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a party-controlled advisory body made up of representatives from various sectors such as religious groups, professional organizations and chambers of commerce.
He won plaudits in 2011 for defusing protests by residents of the fishing village of Wukan over land sales by local officials.
POLITICAL THEORIST WANG HUNING
Longtime party political theorist Wang Huning is seen as likely to stay on the Standing Committee. He may move up to head of the National People’s Congress, the largely ceremonial legislature, which would make him one of the top three party officials.
VICE PREMIER HU CHUNHUA
Among possible newcomers, Vice Premier Hu Chunhua is considered one of those with the best chance. He was a top official in Guangdong province from 2012 to 2017, where he led a crackdown on “naked officials” who work in China but have sent their families to live abroad, considered an indication of corruption.
Hu rose through the party’s Communist Youth League, which is seen as a separate faction from Xi’s circle and politically close to Xi’s predecessor, former party leader and President Hu Jintao.
Hu Chunhua is known as a boy wonder who ranked first in China’s national university entrance examinations and became the youngest person to hold several official posts.
He spent the first two decades of his career in Tibet, where he promoted economic development and oversaw efforts to suppress pro-independence sentiment. He was thereafter appointed party secretary for the Inner Mongolia region.
SHANGHAI CHIEF LI QIANG
Li Qiang has been party secretary of Shanghai, China’s largest city and financial hub, since 2017. The post was previously held by Xi, former President Jiang Zemin and former Premier Zhu Rongji.
Li is regarded as being close to Xi after serving under him in the southeastern province of Zhejiang, a center for export-oriented manufacturing and private enterprise.
His reputation was dented by a lengthy lockdown of Shanghai earlier this year that confined 25 million people to their homes, disrupted the economy and prompted scattered public protests.
CHONGQING LEADER CHEN MIN’ER
Chen Min’er, another Xi ally who worked under him in Zhejiang province, has served as party secretary of the vast southwestern city of Chongqing since 2017.
The 62-year-old Chen is regarded by analysts as a rising star whom Xi might want to promote in order to secure his legacy in the next generation.
Chen has never held a national-level position but is seen as a capable leader who made Chongqing’s government more responsive and efficient after a turbulent period under the now-imprisoned Bo Xilai, who was a Xi rival.
He previously held the top post in Guizhou, a relatively poor southern province, from 2012 to 2017.
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The guessing game aside, some question how much the makeup of the Standing Committee matters given Xi’s steely hold on power and the lack of significant policy or ideological differences.
With his combative approach, Xi is more of a politician in the mold of communist China’s founder Mao Zedong than his more collegial predecessors, who sought to encourage the private sector and maintain good relations with the West.
MANILA, Philippines — Philippine officials say they have shut down at least 214 illegal Chinese offshore gambling operations and deported the first six of nearly 400 Chinese workers who have been detained under a renewed crackdown.
A spate of crimes victimizing Chinese workers at illegal online gambling businesses, including kidnappings and sexual abuses, sparked the crackdown and calls for the banning of even legitimate operators in the lucrative industry.
Called Philippine offshore gaming operators, or POGOs, the Chinese-run gambling firms are based in the Philippines, but their customers are overseas. They began growing rapidly in 2016, generating about 30 billion pesos ($508 million) in gambling revenues and fees from 2016 to this year, officials said.
The current crackdown is directed against Chinese operators who have not paid taxes or revenue shares or have committed other violations of the law. The visas of their estimated 48,000 mostly Chinese workers will be canceled, and they can either leave on their own or face mass deportations, Justice Assistant Secretary Jose Dominic Clavano said by telephone.
“All of these illegal POGOs cannot operate in the country and the people who work for them are violating our laws and we should make sure that they leave our country,” Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla told reporters at Manila’s international airport, where the six deported Chinese workers boarded a commercial flight on Wednesday back to China.
Beijing has backed the crackdown on online gambling operations, which cater to clients in China despite Beijing’s ban on gambling.
“Crimes induced by and associated with POGO not only harm China’s interests and China-Philippines relations, but also hurt the interests of the Philippines,” the Chinese Embassy said in a statement last week.
“It is, therefore, widely believed that social costs of POGO far outweigh its economic benefits to the Philippines in the long run,” the embassy said.
The six deported Chinese were among 372 mostly Chinese workers who have been detained by Philippine authorities starting in September from different offshore gambling sites, Clavano said.
The identities of the other Chinese are still being verified with Chinese authorities in an often-tedious process prior to their deportation, Clavano said.
Remulla said authorities are also checking how many of the more than 48,000 Chinese workers currently remain in the country because some may have left.
More than 200,000 to 300,000 Chinese were believed to have worked in the online gambling operations when the business peaked starting in 2016, boosting real estate, transport and food businesses in cities where they were based. But a considerable number were forced to leave due to sporadic government crackdowns, a more stringent tax law and the coronavirus pandemic, officials said.
Philippine legislators have debated whether to ban the online Chinese gambling industry altogether.
“It is true that they contribute to the coffers, but it comes at significant social costs, which in turn pose a reputational risk that can affect our business and investment climate,” Sen. Grace Poe told a Senate hearing on the issue early this month.
The United States government is pulling out all the stops to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing, injecting billions of dollars into the beleaguered sector and flexing all policy muscles available to give it a leg up over competition from Asia.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, firms initially curtailed orders for these micro building blocks needed for smartphones, computers, cars and many other products. Then, as people began working from home, demand soared for information and communication technology – and the chips that power them. A chip shortage ensued, and auto plants had to stop production because they could not obtain chips. This contributed to skyrocketing new and used vehicle prices, a major driver of the painful inflation Americans were feeling.
In a statement earlier this year, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo dubbed the semiconductor shortage a “national security” issue because it exposed the dependency of US manufacturing on imports of semiconductors from abroad. Chips also serve critical military applications and are necessary for cybersecurity tools.
The Biden administration and lawmakers rallied in response, passing the CHIPS and Science Act into law in August. The legislation includes $52 billion to strengthen semiconductor manufacturing in the United States. Of this, $39 billion is earmarked for manufacturing incentives, $13.2 billion for research and development and workforce training, and $500 million for international information communications technology security and semiconductor supply chain activities.
Against that backdrop, several prominent companies have announced significantinvestments in US manufacturing. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), a powerhouse in the industry committed at least $12 billion to build a semiconductor fabrication plant in Arizona, with production expected to begin in 2024. At the start of the year, Intel said it planned to build a $20 billion semiconductor manufacturing plant in Ohio, and groundbreaking for the new chip plant took place just last month. And this month, Micron said it would invest up to $100 billion over the next two decades to build a massive semiconductor factory in upstate New York.
In a flurry of tweets earlier this month President Joe Biden pledged: “America is going to lead the way in microchip manufacturing.”
But the US has much catching up to do. US-based fabs, or chip manufacturing plants, currently only account for 12% of the world’s modern semiconductor manufacturing capacity, according to data from the Semiconductor Industry Association trade group. Some 75% of the world’s modern chip manufacturing is now concentrated in East Asia – a majority of that in geopolitically-vulnerable Taiwan. And even with these renewed efforts, the United States does not currently have the same talent and supply chain pipeline as some Asian markets do to support a robust homegrown industry.
To complicate matters, the surge in public and private investments comes at a questionable time, as concerns over the global chip supply shortage have eased. Pandemic-related supply chain blockages are letting up somewhat and a worsening economic outlook has hampered demand.
In an earnings call last week, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei warned it expects the “semiconductor industry will likely decline” in 2023. “TSMC also is not immune,” Wei added, but said it expects “to be more resilient than the overall semiconductor industry.”
Promoting semiconductor manufacturing in the United States now may risk leading to overcapacity and excess supply. And with demand weakening, it isn’t immediately clear if government subsidies will be enough to overcome other obstacles the country faces in developing a competitive semiconductor manufacturing hub.
To understand the latest US efforts, it’s important to be clear on where the country stands – not just in the overall chip industry, but in relation to specific, valuable pockets of it.
“The US is very unlikely to increase its share of global production because even as the US brings online more fab capacity; TSMC, Intel and others are announcing fabs in other places and building them even more quickly,” said Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“But I don’t necessarily think that’s really a huge problem,” he added. He noted that measuring manufacturing based on pure output lumps together the lower-end chips and the cutting-edge, higher-end chips that are a more realistic and significant measure of chip manufacturing success. “The US does need to expand chip production for a specific kind of chips, that are directly related to American national security,” he said.
While only “about 10% to 14% of chips sold [globally] come from US manufacturing facilities,” according to Columbia Business School professorDan Wang, the United States does have other strengths. “In terms of design expertise, a lot of that still resides in the U.S.”
Still, the shortcomings are real. “When it comes to foundries, which are the manufacturing side of semiconductors, the U.S. has not really been a major player for many, many years,” said Wang. While it very much used to be, manufacturing began migrating to Asia during the 1980s and ’90s, Wang said. “One of the big reasons for this is that the cost of labor is lower, and it’s just far cheaper to produce at a very massive scale, integrated circuits and chips, in those parts of the world,” Wang added. Morris Chang, the founder of TSMC, said that it costs 50% more to manufacture chips in the U.S. than in Taiwan.
Now, simply having the facilities already set up to produce or expand chip manufacturing gives Asia a big advantage. Wang said he thinks that might be why you see the U.S. “axe-throwing so much money at companies to set up plants in the United States.” It’s not just to respond to demand and become more self-reliant, “but also because you need to get these things up and running very, very quickly, in order to even be in the race at all.”
Building new chip fabs itself is a costly and time-consuming endeavor. “A modern fab is something like half a million square feet,” said Bob Johnson, an analyst at Gartner, and requires “monstrous clean rooms that have massive air handling capabilities.” He added that these massive buildings require “exceptionally strong foundations.” As he put it, “you cannot have any vibration in the fab because it can wreck themanufacturing process.”
In addition, a single extreme ultraviolet lithography machine, required to map out the circuitry of chips, costs about $150 million, and Reuters reports “a cutting-edge chip plant needs 9-18 of these machines.”
Moreover, the manufacturing of semiconductors requires a range of specialized inputs, including pure chemicals such as fluorinated polyimide,and etching gas, chip etching machines, and more. In places like Taiwan and Fukuoka, Japan, supply chains have developed where the providers of these products are located close to the semiconductor factories. There are also one or two companies that produce vital inputs and that have been trustworthy suppliers to companies in Asia for a long time. This is not yet the case in places like Arizona and Ohio, where plans to build massive chip manufacturing plants are already underway.
You also need a labor force willing and able to do the work.
In the United States, there is both a shortage of new graduates and experienced workers with the technical and engineering knowledge necessary to manufacture semiconductors. Many of those who might have the right experience instead prefer to work in trendier industries, according to Kennedy.
“If we were to today, snap our fingers and have ten new fabs with the world’s leading chips, we probably wouldn’t have enough people to staff them,” Kennedy said. “That’s the biggest bottleneck to the expansion of America’s fab capacity, not capital.”
Intel has tried to establish close relations with Arizona State University to recruit engineers, but it is unclear whether it and other companies building fabs in America will be able to hire enough trained engineers and technicians. If not, even the billions of dollars committed by the private and public sector may not be enough to reshore semiconductor manufacturing.
