Tag: China

Here is an interesting video published by the FBI warning Americans of how Chinese intelligence recruits people to work for them:

I thought the video was pretty well done and the lessons learned from it are applicable to more than just intelligence recruitment by the Chinese.

This provided photo shows Kim Jeong-ah (L), leader of Tongil Mom, a group comprised of North Korean refugee women working to be reunited with their children, holding a rally in front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington on Oct. 31, 2016, to urge China not to deport North Korean defectors. (Yonhap)

The Chinese government has quite the nerve to complain about the use of firearms in law enforcement operations when they are the same people that gunned down thousands of protesters in Tiananmen Square:

China called in a senior South Korean diplomat to lodge a formal protest against the use of a machine gun to crack down on Chinese fishing boats, Beijing’s foreign ministry spokesperson said Friday.

On Tuesday, South Korea’s Coast Guard fired 600-700 bullets from a ship-mounted M60 toward Chinese vessels that were violently interfering in the capture of two fishing boats operating illegally off the western port city of Incheon. No injuries or damage were reported.

China’s foreign ministry protested the “violent law enforcement methods used” via its spokesperson Hua Chunying during a regular press briefing.

“China is strongly against any use of violent measures by South Korea that threatens the safety of Chinese fishermen,” she said. The official added that illegal fishing should not be a reason for South Korean authorities, including its Coast Guard, to use firearms.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Via a reader tip comes this news of Chinese tourists behaving badly in Jeju again:

Jeju airport is grappling with overflowing garbage from Chinese tourists.

Gates for international flights on the third floor of Jeju International Airport are teeming with rubbish from duty free goods purchased by Chinese tourists, according to Jeju newspaper Jemin Ilbo.

When tourists purchase duty free goods outside the airport, they have to pick them up from a designated area at the departure gate. The problem arises when the tourists rip the wrapping from the items at the gate before boarding, to reduce their size and weight. Then they leave the rubbish on the floor.

Staff from duty free shops and cleaners have asked Chinese tourists to use dumpsters, and even gave them garbage bags. The Korea Airports Corporation in Jeju has also taken action by increasing the number of cleaners at the gate from two to three.

“We will keep reinforcing the sanitation team at the gates for international flights,” an official from the airport told The Korea Times.  [Korea Times via reader tip]

You can read more at the link.

The Pirates of the Yellow Sea were in action again this week and the ROK Coast Guard decided to use warning shots to disperse them:

South Korea’s Coast Guard said Wednesday it has launched an investigation into two Chinese fishing vessels that were captured with the help of a large gun after the fishing boats illegally operated in the country’s exclusive economic zone earlier this week.

The boats were brought into the western port city of Incheon Wednesday afternoon. They were captured a day earlier in the Yellow Sea after the Coast Guard fired a M60 machine gun in warning.

The authorities said the gun was used to fight off some 30 other fishing boats nearby that interfered in the Coast Guard’s attempt to seize the two vessels, with some even threatening to collide with the patrol boats. No Chinese fishermen were injured and nothing was damaged in the process, according to the authorities.

The decision to use the weapon was made to safeguard the officers who had already boarded the Chinese vessels, and would have been cut off if other Chinese vessels succeeded in ramming the patrol boats that took part in the seizure operations, the Coast Guard said.

The Chinese boats had iron bars installed around the hulls and the gates to the steering house were closed to avoid entry, the authorities said.

The Coast Guard said it will interrogate the two captains and some 20 other crew members from the vessels to find out the details of the illegal fishing. It will also look into their relation with the other boats that got away.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Lee Jung-hyun, head of South Korea’s ruling Saenuri Party, looks at various weapons used by Chinese fishermen against the South Korean coast guard’s crackdowns on their illegal fishing inside the South Korean waters during a visit to the Coast Guard in Incheon, west of Seoul, on Oct. 21, 2016. (Yonhap)

A Chinese boat carrying the North Korean flag enters the dock of the Korean Coast Guard in Incheon, west of Seoul, on Oct. 18, 2016. The boat was seized by the coast guard the previous day, while catching fish illegally after crossing a western inter-Korean maritime border into the South Korean side. Cash-strapped North Korea has reportedly sold the rights to its western territorial waters to Chinese fishermen. Chinese illegal fishing is a chronic headache to South Korea. (Yonhap)

Under pressure: Can Beijing really change Pyongyang’s mind? https://t.co/yf50i22wJK

— NK NEWS (@nknewsorg) October 18, 2016

In the latest email leak involving the Hillary Clinton campaign her private views on China have been revealed and it is nothing surprising though I do like her comment about calling the Pacific Ocean the “American Sea”:

Hillary Clinton privately said the U.S. would “ring China with missile defense” if the Chinese government failed to curb North Korea’s nuclear program, a potential hint at how the former secretary of state would act if elected president.

Clinton’s remarks were revealed by WikiLeaks in a hack of the Clinton campaign chairman’s personal account. The emails include a document excerpting Clinton’s private speech transcripts, which she has refused to release.

A section on China features several issues in which Clinton said she confronted the Chinese while leading the U.S. State Department.

China has harshly criticized the U.S. and South Korea’s planned deployment of a missile-defense system against North Korea, which conducted its fifth nuclear test this year. But Clinton said she told Chinese officials that the U.S. might deploy additional ships to the region to contain the North Korean missile threat.

If North Korea successfully obtains a ballistic missile, it could threaten not just American allies in the Pacific, “but they could actually reach Hawaii and the west coast theoretically,” Clinton said.

“We’re going to ring China with missile defense. We’re going to put more of our fleet in the area,” Clinton said in a 2013 speech. “So China, come on. You either control them or we’re going to have to defend against them.”

China is North Korea’s economic lifeline and the closest thing it has to a diplomatic ally, and has been criticized by the U.S. and others for not doing enough to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions. Chinese officials and state media have responded by saying that North Korea is not solely China’s responsibility, and that Beijing has limited influence with secretive leader Kim Jong Un’s hard-line communist regime.

Clinton also privately criticized China’s position on another sensitive issue, the South China Sea. China claims almost the entirety of the strategically vital waterbody and has lashed out at an international tribunal’s July ruling rejecting its claims.

Clinton told a different audience in 2013 that by China’s logic, the U.S. after World War II could have labeled the Pacific Ocean the “American Sea.”

“My counterpart sat up very straight and goes, ‘Well, you can’t do that,'” she said. “And I said, ‘Well, we have as much right to claim that as you do. I mean, you claim (the South China Sea) based on pottery shards from, you know, some fishing vessel that ran aground in an atoll somewhere.”  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

The Incheon Coast Guard conducts a firing drill against violent Chinese fishermen and boats catching fish illegally in the South Korean waters off Incheon, west of Seoul, on Oct. 13, 2016. Six patrol boats joined the drill, which followed the government’s recent decision to use force and firearms against violence by illegal Chinese fishermen. The stern measure came about after a Coast Guard speedboat was sunken by a Chinese boat which rear-ended it in defiance of a crackdown on illegal fishing inside the South Korean waters on Oct. 7. (Photo courtesy of Coast Guard) (Yonhap)