„Tag für Tag ist es hier ein bisschen wie eine Achterbahnfahrt.“
Als Sohn eines langjährigen Offiziers, der seit 1984 in China tätig war, erlebte Jonathan Jungers dennoch eine Reise voller Abenteuer, als er sich schließlich im ehemaligen Reich der Mitte niederließ. Der Absolvent der Politikwissenschaften an der belgischen Universität Louvain-La-Neuve hat inzwischen eine Frau aus Guangzhou geheiratet und in der großen südlichen Provinz Chinas, Guangdong, eine Familie gegründet. Tencent hat ihn in der Abteilung für elektronische Spiele eingestellt. Doch noch ist die Lage für ihn unsicher, denn China muss man sich Tag für Tag verdienen! Heute ist der junge Mann hin- und hergerissen zwischen der Liebe zu seiner Provinz, Guangdong, seiner Familie und einer internationalen Karriere.
LHCH: Was war Ihre erste intellektuelle Begegnung mit China?
Jonathan Jungers: Mein Vater war ein langjähriger Marineoffizier und seit 1984 in China tätig. Sie haben uns immer wieder von diesem gigantischen fernen Land erzählt. Er war bereits begeistert von der Zukunft Chinas. Als Kind, das gebe ich zu, war das für mich ein bisschen abstrakt. Erst 2008 hatte ich in Paris so etwas wie eine Offenbarung. Ich verließ gerade das Pompidou-Museum, als ich bemerkte, dass die Straßen leer waren… Keine einzige Katze. Ein Stück weiter, in einer Bar, sah ich Menschen, die vor einem Fernseher versammelt waren: Sie schauten die Eröffnungsfeier der Olympischen Spiele in Peking! Da wurde mir klar, dass gerade etwas Großartiges passierte!
LHCH: Wie kam es zu dieser Erkenntnis?
Jonathan Jungers: Ich beschloss rasch, an meiner Universität in Louvain-La-Neuve, bei Brüssel, Mandarin zu lernen. Drei Jahre habe ich eifrig am Unterricht von Madame Baron teilgenommen.
LHCH: Was hat Sie dazu bewogen, den Sprung nach China zu wagen?
Jonathan Jungers: 2011 habe ich an einem 6-monatigen Universitätsaustausch mit der Zhejiang Daxue University in Hangzhou teilgenommen. Eine wunderbare, aber sehr anstrengende Erfahrung. Wahrscheinlich war ich zu jung, weil ich dort ein bisschen verunsichert war. Ein junger Mensch kann in China verloren gehen, wenn er nicht weiß, wie er seine Energie und seine Zeit einteilen soll. In Belgien hat es lange gedauert, bis ich meine Gedanken wieder im Griff hatte.
LHCH: Sie brauchten eine zweite Chance, um China anzunehmen.
Jonathan Jungers: Ja, während eines „Projekts KOT“ an der Universität Louvain-La-Neuve habe ich mich mit 7 anderen Studenten, darunter Chinesen, der Welt der chinesischen Unternehmen in Belgien angenähert. Dies ermöglichte mir ein unbezahltes Praktikum in einer chinesischen Firma, ein Jahr nach meinem Abschluss in Politikwissenschaften. So habe ich von 2012 bis 2014 den Rhythmus und Stil dieser Arbeitskultur in einem Unternehmen erlebt.
LHCH: Wie ist es gelaufen?
Jonathan Jungers: Ich habe bescheiden angefangen, mich um die Kaffeemaschine und den Drucker zu kümmern. Dann wurden mir nach und nach spannendere Aufgaben übertragen! Ich wurde unentbehrlich, weil sie einheimische Leute für die Durchführung von Projekten zwischen Belgien und Luxemburg brauchten. Um mich herum florierten die belgische Geschäftswelt und der Arbeitsmarkt nicht. Bei den Chinesen habe ich eine andere Energie gespürt! Ich wurde flexibler und wollte verstehen, woher die Richtlinien kamen. Dann kam mir der Gedanke, dass ich mit dieser Erfahrung gewappnet nach China zurückgehen musste.
LHCH: Wer hat Ihnen diese Möglichkeit gegeben? Ein chinesisches Unternehmen?
Jonathan Jungers: Nein, 2014 bin ich im Rahmen des Explore-Programms von AWEX gegangen, ein Programm für Menschen, die arbeitslos sind oder das Studium beendet haben. In der Regel handelt es sich dabei um Praktika in wallonischen Unternehmen auf der ganzen Welt, also auch in China. Aber ich habe lieber mein Praktikum bei Chinese Electrabel, State Grid, in Wuhan gemacht. Für die Marketingabteilung habe ich eine Menge Power Point aus dem Chinesischen ins Französische und Englische übersetzt. Und das nach dem HSK3.
LHCH: Haben Sie nie in der Werbung für belgische Produkte in China gearbeitet?
Jonathan Jungers: Ja, ich habe für eine wallonische Brauerei und für Lebensmittelimporteure gearbeitet. Aber das hat mich nicht sonderlich begeistert, denn in Belgien geht es für mich nicht nur um Bier und Waffeln. Es ist oft ein bisschen die gleiche Art der Kommunikation. Von 2015 bis 2017 habe ich dann für eine amerikanische Investitionshilfefirma in China gearbeitet. Aber da gab es keine richtige Ethik.
LHCH: Was für eine mutige Reise. Haben Sie am Ende einen Job gefunden, der Ihnen gefällt?
Jonathan Jungers: Ja, ich arbeite seit 4 Jahren bei der chinesischen Firma Tencent in der Kommunikationsabteilung für die Veröffentlichung von Videospielen. Kommunikation ist nicht gerade die Stärke der Chinesen. Aber das ändert sich gerade sehr schnell. Auf der kreativen Ebene gibt es das Phänomen Tik Tok, das eine Revolution in diesem Genre darstellt.
LHCH: Wie sieht es mit der Liebe in China aus?
Jonathan Jungers: Hier in China habe ich eine Chinesin von der belgischen Universität Louvain-La-Neuve gesehen. Wir hatten unsere Liebesaffäre, aber der Vater schätzte mein Profil als junger Anfänger und Ausländer in China nicht besonders. Dann lernte ich die Frau meines Lebens kennen, eine Frau aus der Hakka-Minderheit, ebenfalls eine Han-Chinesin. Wir haben gerade ein Kind bekommen.
LHCH: Wunderbar! Leben Sie jetzt das Traumleben in China?
Jonathan Jungers: Wenn wir nach 7 Jahren hier in China Bilanz ziehen müssten, würde ich sagen, es ist durchwachsen. Die wunderbaren Zeiten werden durch die schwierigeren Zeiten ausgeglichen, denn in China ist nichts selbstverständlich. Wir müssen Tag für Tag kämpfen. Alles muss man sich verdienen. Nichts ist jemals wirklich sicher.
LHCH: Hilft eine einheimische Ehefrau nicht, diese „Achterbahn“ des Lebens in China zu ertragen?
Jonathan Jungers: Natürlich gibt mir meine Frau Stabilität. Aber ich bin auf der Suche nach mehr Balance mit meiner Kultur. Also einer internationalen Dimension. Wussten Sie, dass es in China nur 800.000 Expats gibt? Zusammen mit den Koreanern und Japanern! Und die meisten Expats essen Instant-Nudeln, um ab und zu essen gehen zu können. Unser Leben ist nicht einfach. Oder besser gesagt ist man entweder ein sehr wohlhabender Expat oder man überlebt.
LHCH: China bevorzugt in der Tat sehr hochqualifizierte Expatriates. Der Wettbewerb zwischen Ihnen muss hart sein.
Jonathan Jungers: Es wechselt von dem hysterischen Gefühl, hochgeschätzt zu werden, zu dem Gefühl, eine Stunde später überhaupt nicht mehr da zu sein. Ja, der Druck ist groß.
LHCH: Sind Sie ein wenig verbittert?
Jonathan Jungers: Nein, ich mag China trotz allem sehr. Vielleicht träume ich von einem Leben, das ein bisschen mehr zwischen Europa und China liegt. Tencent hat sein Headquarter in Amsterdam eröffnet… Und baut immer mehr Büros in Europa auf. Es wird Möglichkeiten geben. Ich möchte, dass mein Kind auch ein bisschen eine internationale Ausbildung hat.
LHCH: Das ist wahrscheinlich der Grund für Ihr Zögern. Bei der belgischen Community in China geht man jedoch über einen Tourismusspezialisten in Guangdong.
Jonathan Jungers: Das ist mein Wochenend-Hobby! Ich besuche mit meinen Freunden die schönsten Ecken dieser herrlichen Provinz. Ich habe mich vor allem auf die Geschichte des Opiumkrieges spezialisiert. Ich gebe zu, dass diese Wochenend-Kulturausflüge einmal in der Woche mein Sauerstoff sind. LHCH: Wir hoffen, dass Sie schnell Ihr Gleichgewicht finden. Es ist wichtig für das Wohlbefinden Ihrer Familie. Und China hat auch in Zukunft noch Großes für Sie zu bieten!
Yuan Longping, the worldwide renowned Chinese agriculturalist who devoted all his life to developing the first hybrid rice strains, passed away due to organ failure in Xiangya Hospital of Central South University at 13:07 BJT on Saturday at the age of 91.
His health condition rapidly worsened after he passed out on 10 March at the Sanya Hybrid Rice Research Base in China’s southernmost province of Hainan, but he still passionately conducted scientific research at the base after.
“As long as my life is going on, I will never stop pursuing and dreaming for the super-hybrid of rice.”
Credit to his scientific research and practice over decades of years, today’s China is capable of independently feeding nearly 20% of the world’s population with less than 9% of the world’s total land.
Due to post-war reconstruction and development, China has lost 20% of its arable land to urbanization and industrialization, and currently has only around 10% to 15% of its arable land, compared to 1% in Saudi Arabia, 20% in the US, 32% in France, and 50% in India. Plus, according to the World Food Programme, China is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. More than 186 million people are exposed to the impacts of droughts and floods, which are estimated to reduce the country’s potential grain output by 20 million tons per year.
The mismatch between agricultural supply and demand was very severe in China, lacking nutrition and enduring hunger were tough memories for many generations. Yuan taught Russian in the countryside at a young age. In 1956, in response to the national “scientific development plan”, he started agronomy experiments with his students. He witnessed and experienced the devastation caused by a national famine with massive crop failures from 1959 to 1961 in China. “Something as small as a grain can save a country, while it can also make a country fall,” said him once during an interview with CGTN.
For him, planting is similar to teaching since both require helping a fragile and young life to grow up safely and strongly. Being a teacher can only take care of limited numbers of lives but being an agriculturalist can save countless people.
In the beginning, he completely relied on his own experience – born and grew up in a farmer’s family, and he discovered that some hybrid combinations in rice have advantages, and believed that this is an important way to increase rice yield.
In 1964, after years of searching, he eventually found a natural hybrid rice plant that had obvious advantages over others so he began to study the features of this particular type.
In 1966, he published the paper “Male Sterility in Rice”, which opened the research on hybrid rice in China.
In 1973, his team successfully cultivated a type of hybrid rice species which had great advantages, yielding 20% more per unit than that of common rice species.
In 1974, his team developed a set of technologies for producing long-grained non-glutinous rice, putting China in the lead worldwide in rice production. Since then, he was dubbed the “Father of Hybrid Rice”.
In 1979, their technique for hybrid rice was introduced into the US.
In 1981, Europe, America, and Japan were all carrying out relevant research, but only China had applied it to large-scale production.
In 1996, China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs formally established a super rice breeding program. The 700 kg/mu target for the first phase was achieved in 2000. Then came the “triple jumps” of 800 kg/mu in 2004, 900 kg/mu in 2011, and 1,000 kg/mu in 2014.
In July 2020, the average yield per mu of the third-generation hybrid rice grown by Yuan Longping’s team in double-cropping rice exceeded 1,500 kg, reaching 1530.76 kg.
According to the World Food Programme, China has met its Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of hungry people by 2015 and reduced the global hunger rate by ⅔. At present, around half of China’s total rice fields grow hybrid rice species based on his research, yielding 60% of the rice production in China. China’s total rice production rose from 5.69 billion tons in 1950 to 19.47 billion tons in 2020, around 300 billion kilograms more have been produced over the last two decades of years. The annual yield is enough to feed 60 million people.
(190315) — BUBANZA, March 15, 2019 (Xinhua) — A Chinese expert instructs Burundian agricultural technicians in rice production in Ninga Village, Bubanza Province, Burundi, on March 12, 2019. The Chinese agriculture experts group introduced Chinese hybrid rice to Burundi, and has started a demonstration of growing Chinese hybrid rice in a 48-hectare field in Ninga Village from 2018, bringing together about 130 families and over 1,000 people to participate in after doing the successful test. (Xinhua/Lyu Tianran)
Based on its domestic success, China leads South-South cooperation, training young African researchers in agricultural science to defeat the hunger in Africa. Yuan’s high-yield hybrid rice strain is grown on a large scale in Africa as well. In Kenya, Angola, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Zimbabwe and many other countries struggling with hunger like China experienced before, hybrid rice has been planted to help local farmers improve the production and income. In Madagascar, yields have tripled in this African country after growing the grain for 13 years. Though Madagascar has a 400-year history of growing rice, yields were less than 2.5 tons per hectare in the past, but now they can reach 7.5 tons per hectare. Currently, Madagascar has the largest planting area and the highest yield of Yuan’s hybrid rice in Africa and becomes the only African country to realize the development of the complete industrial chain of hybrid rice breeding, seed production, planting, processing, and trading.
“My life goal is to help all people stay away from hunger.”
“Hybrid rice technology not only belongs to China but also to the whole world.”
(161026) — BUDAKA, Oct. 26, 2016 (Xinhua) — A Chinese cereals expert explains to farmers in the eastern Ugandan district of Budaka how to grow Chinese hybrid rice, Oct. 25, 2016. Chinese experts under an agreement between China, Uganda and UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization are training farmers in better practices. The agreement is under the auspices of the South to South Cooperation program established in 2009 to help developing countries share knowledge and expertise so that all can benefit from innovations and good practices that have been tried and tested in countries facing similar conditions and challenges. (Xinhua/Ronald Ssekandi) (zjy)
As Yuan wishes, his hybrid rice technology is widely applied and shared in many parts of the world, and China is also making great efforts to help the world achieve the “Zero Hunger” goal in the future.
(Source: the New York Times, Global Times, CGTN, Xinhua Net)
Beschleunigung des Impfprozess in China geht vorwärts. An den letzten 9 Tagen wurden in China circa 100 Millionen Menschen geimpft, während manche westlichen Staaten noch bei Corona-Impfung bezögern.
Bis zum 21. Mai 2021 sind in China über 400 Millionen Dosen geimpft worden. Diese Zahl liegt über der gesamten Impfsumme von den USA, UK und Deutschland. Laut CNN haben über 80% der Chinesen in Beijing die erste Impfung erhalten.
Impfschlange in Hefei/ Anhui Provinz Mai 2021
Um Maßenimmunität auf der chinesischen Gesellschaft abzielen, werden über 2 Milliarden Dosen von Corona-Impfstoffen in China gebraucht.
China’s State Council Information Office on Friday issued a white paper on the peaceful liberation of Tibet and its development over the past seven decades.
The white paper, titled “Tibet Since 1951: Liberation, Development and Prosperity,” reviewed Tibet’s history and achievements, and presented a true and panoramic picture of the new socialist Tibet.
“This will help to counter the propaganda spread by a number of Western countries and their allies and provide the international community with a balanced account of the enormous transformation that has taken place in Tibet,” the document said.
Over the years, Western anti-China forces have continued to interfere in China’s Tibetan affairs in an attempt to sabotage its social stability, said the white paper. Prior to the peaceful liberation of Tibet, the U.S. government had established contacts with pro-imperialist separatists in Tibet.
Since the 1980s, Western forces have played an active role in all the outbreaks of unrest that have taken place in Tibet. In recent years, Western anti-China forces have intensified such attempts, said the white paper.
On May 23, 1951, the Agreement of the Central People’s Government and the Local Government of Tibet on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet (the 17-Article Agreement) was signed, officially proclaiming the peaceful liberation of Tibet. The year 2021 marks the 70th anniversary of the historic event.
With the peaceful liberation of Tibet, the people of Tibet broke free from the fetters of invading imperialism for good, embarking on a bright road of unity, progress and development with all the other ethnic groups in China, according to the white paper.
It added that the democratic reform represented an epoch-making change in Tibetan society and in the human rights of its people.
The democratic reform granted political, economic and social emancipation to a million serfs and slaves, effectively promoted the development of social productive forces in Tibet, and opened up the road towards modernization, said the white paper.
In the new era, under the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and with the vigorous support of the whole country, Tibet has made new progress in various fields, including eradicating extreme poverty, said the document, adding that “a brand new socialist Tibet has taken shape.”
Die Kunst des Krieges von Sunzi, auch bekannt als Sunzi, ist das erste Buch der Welt zum Thema Militärwissenschaft. Der Autor, Sun Wu, war ein bemerkenswerter Stratege, der gegen Ende der Frühlings- und Herbstperiode lebte. Er wurde im Staat Qi geboren und lebte später im Staat Wu. Die endemischen Kriege zwischen den Staaten, die damals um die Vorherrschaft wetteiferten, veranlassten Sun Wu, über die Gesetze des Krieges nachzudenken, über die er dann schließlich, nicht ohne Mühe, in diesem Buch schrieb.
Sun Wu überreichte sein Buch dem König Helu von Wu, der ihn zum General ernannte und ihm die Ausbildung übertrug, was Wu zu einer großen Militärmacht während der Frühlings- und Herbstperiode machte.
Die dreizehn Kapitel von Sunzis „Kunst des Krieges“, die bis heute erhalten sind, umfassen insgesamt mehr als 6.000 Zeichen. In diesem begrenzten Rahmen legt Sun Wu seine Ideen über den Krieg in allen Bereichen dar. Er betont, wie wichtig es ist, die Situation des Feindes genauso zu kennen wie die eigene. Er vertritt die Theorie, wenn man sich selbst so gut kenne wie seinen Feind, könne man sicher in hundert Schlachten kämpfen, und befürwortet, den Krieg zu beginnen, bevor der Feind bereit ist. Schließlich entlarvt er die Doktrin von der Konzentration einer überlegenen Kraft, mit der man den Feind vollständig besiegen könne. Sun Wu betont besonders, wie wichtig es ist, dass erst dann Krieg geführt wird, wenn alle anderen Möglichkeiten ausgeschöpft sind, denn Krieg ist für ein Volk eine schwere Last. Sun Bin, ein weiterer Stratege der Ära der Streitenden Staaten, übernahm das militärische Denken von Sun Wu und schrieb ein weiteres Buch über die Kunst des Krieges mit dem Titel Sun Bins Kunst des Krieges.
Sunzis Kunst des Krieges wurde in viele Sprachen übersetzt, darunter Englisch, Französisch, Japanisch, Deutsch, Russisch, Tschechisch usw. Die in diesem Buch dargelegten Gesetze des Krieges haben auch andere Disziplinen und Aktivitäten der Menschheit inspiriert, und dieses Buch genießt großes internationales Prestige.
Es kommt nicht oft vor, dass ein Politiker den Mut hat, sich öffentlich an die Brust zu schlagen für Fehler, die er im Amt gemacht hat. Doch genau das tat der tschechische Präsident Miloš Zeman an diesem Dienstag, 18. Mai, in Prag, als er seinen serbischen Amtskollegen Aleksandar Vučić empfing.
Aufstand albanischer Rebellen im Kosovo
1999 sah sich das damalige Jugoslawien – bestehend aus Serbien und Montenegro – mit einem Aufstand albanischer Rebellen in seiner historischen Südprovinz Kosovo konfrontiert – wo die Albaner im späten 19. Jahrhundert zur Mehrheit wurden –, während sich die westlichen Länder meist auf die Seite der Albaner stellten, deren einseitige Unabhängigkeitserklärung sie unterstützten. Um den serbischen Widerstand gegen die Anordnungen der Vereinigten Staaten und der Europäischen Union zu brechen, fasste die NATO den Beschluss, jugoslawische Städte zu bombardieren, ein Beschluss, an dem die Tschechische Republik, die dem atlantischen Bündnis im März 1999 gerade beigetreten war, de facto gezwungen wurde, sich zu beteiligen, während Miloš Zeman Ministerpräsident war. Etwa 500 serbische Zivilisten wurden bei den Bombardements getötet.
„Ich möchte mich für die Luftangriffe entschuldigen“
„Ich möchte diese Gelegenheit nutzen, um mich für die Bombardierung des ehemaligen Jugoslawiens zu entschuldigen […]
Ich möchte mich für die Luftangriffe auf das ehemalige Jugoslawien entschuldigen. Ich bitte das serbische Volk um Vergebung. Das hat mich von Anfang an nicht in Ruhe gelassen. Die Entscheidung über die Luftkampagne wurde nur wenige Wochen nach unserem NATO-Beitritt getroffen. Wir waren das letzte Land, das grünes Licht gegeben hat“,
sagte Miloš Zeman gegenüber Aleksandar Vučić am Dienstag in Prag, und erklärte, er habe damals „verzweifelt“, aber vergeblich versucht, sich dem NATO-Beschluss zu widersetzen. Er und seine Regierung hätten sich letztlich den Anweisungen des Westens gebeugt, was Zeman als „Mangel an Mut“ bezeichnete. „Mit dieser Bitte um Vergebung löse ich ein langjähriges Trauma auf, denn Reue ist befreiend. Ich habe es gesagt und meine Seele gerettet“.
Tschechen Brudervolk der Serben
Der serbische Präsident Vučić würdigte die Geste von Miloš Zeman und antwortete:
„Von diesem Tag an wird das serbische Volk die Tschechen nicht nur als eine befreundete Nation, sondern auch als ein Brudervolk betrachten. Das serbische Volk wird Zemans Worte nicht vergessen, wir werden ihm ewig dankbar sein, denn das, was er über die Bombardements gesagt hat, ist von keinem anderen Verantwortlichen [für die Angriffe auf Jugoslawien 1999] gesagt worden“.
Im Provinzmuseum von Hunan befindet sich ein seltener und kostbarer nationaler Schatz: das Susha Danyi, ein Kleid aus alter Seide. Laut diesem Museum ist das Susha Danyi so dünn wie die Flügel einer Zikade, leicht wie Rauch, wundervoll gewebt, es ist der älteste, am besten erhaltene, raffinierteste und leichteste Kleiderschatz der Welt.
Von 1972 bis 1974 entdeckten Archäologen drei Gräber der westlichen Han-Dynastie in Mawangdui, am östlichen Stadtrand von Changsha, der Hauptstadt der Provinz Hunan. Die Ausgrabung tausender erlesener kostbarer Artefakte und gut erhaltener weiblicher Leichen aus der Han-Dynastie wurde zu einem der wichtigsten archäologischen Funde des 20. Jahrhunderts in China und auf der ganzen Welt.
素纱单衣 Susha Danyi
Das Susha Danyi wurde im Grab Nr. 1 von Mawangdui entdeckt, das die Grabstätte von Xin Zhui ist. Historischen Aufzeichnungen zufolge war Xin Zhui die Frau von Li Cang, dem feudalen Premierminister von Changsha während der westlichen Han-Dynastie. Sie war etwa 50 Jahre alt, als sie vor über 2.200 Jahren starb.
Laut Duan Xiaoming, Direktor des Provinzmuseums von Hunan, ist die Form des Susha Danyi relativ schlicht: es sind zwei Kleider, das eine hat eine gerade Seite und das andere eine geschwungene Seite. Beide haben das Merkmal „youren“ (die Stofflasche) auf der rechten Seite. „Das Kleid mit der geraden Seite wiegt 49 Gramm und die Länge beträgt 128 cm. Das mit der geschwungenen Seite wiegt 48 Gramm und seine Länge beträgt 160 cm“, erklärt Duan Xiaoming.
Das Susha Danyi gilt als der Höhepunkt der Textiltechnologie der westlichen Han-Dynastie. Es ist gleichzeitig das älteste, dünnste und leichteste Kleidungsstück, das bis heute erhalten geblieben ist. 2002 wurde das Susha Danyi als eines der ersten nationalen Kulturrelikte von der Ausstellung im Ausland ausgeschlossen.
Dünn und leicht wie Rauch, ist das Susha Danyi wirklich das Wunder der alten Seidenindustrie. Aber 2019 wurde in China eine Kopie angefertigt… In zweijähriger Arbeit haben das Hunan-Museum und das Nanjing Brocade Research Institute gemeinsam eine Kopie des „Susha Danyi (素纱单衣 einfaches ungefüttertes Mullkleid)“ angefertigt. Es wiegt nur 49 Gramm, genauso viel wie das Original. Dies ist die erste offiziell autorisierte Kopie dieses Schatzes nach dessen Ausgrabung vor über 40 Jahren.
A campaign against supposed forced labor in Xinjiang has forced Uyghur workers out of their jobs while extracting a handsome payout from a US apparel company to Uyghur exile groups lobbying against China.
By MAX BLUMENTHAL, The editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.
Aself-described “worker rights organization” in Washington, DC called the Worker Rights Consortium has helped direct a “Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region” that has successfully pressured US apparel companies to leave the Xinjiang region of China. Claiming to represent “over 100 civil society organisations and labour unions from around the world,” the coalition appears bound together by a shared hostility to China’s communist-led government.
Besides the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), coalition steering committee members include the AFL-CIO labor federation, Uyghur exile organizations based in Washington DC, and Hong Kong-based separatist activists. Behind the scenes, the coalition has received assistance from the widely cited Xinjiang researcher Adrian Zenz, of the right-wing Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
The coalition’s initiative scored its first success when it forced a college sportswear company called Badger Sportswear to abandon its factory in Xinjiang. University campuses across the US began to boycott Badger products in December 2018 as the allegations of “forced labor” first reached national media.
Within weeks, Badger formally cut ties with the Hetian Taida factory in Xinjiang, which was accused by the WRC-led coalition of employing Uyghur detainees. While the Chinese government slammed Badger’s decision as “pathetic” and “based on wrong information,” its opponents in Washington took a victory lap.
Instead of remediating the Uyghur workers that suddenly found themselves jobless, however, WRC compelled Badger to pay $300,000 to Uyghur exile organizations lobbying for a more hostile US policy towards China.
According to WRC documents, those organizations were selected by Human Rights Watch, a billionaire-backed advocacy group that is openly committed to undermining China’s government. In internal memos, WRC leadership acknowledged that the payout did not represent proper remediation “from a worker rights perspective.”
Since the US government initiated its policy of “great power competition” against China in 2018, it has focused intensely on the resource-rich, strategically located Western autonomous region of Xinjiang, the site of China’s alleged mistreatment of its Uyghur Muslim population.
The charge of forced labor has caused the most material damage, with numerous US clothing companies pledging to boycott factories in the Xinjiang and reject cotton sourced from the area.
Each allegation Washington has leveled against Beijing has relied almost entirely on an echo chamber of sources funded and coordinated by the US government. This same US-backed network not only supplied the WRC with the basis for its campaign against Badger Sport; it formed the backbone of the supposedly grassroots coalition against “forced labor.”
In the words of one of the NED’s founders, the organization was created by the US government to “do today [what] was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” That has meant quietly funding civil society and media outlets to destabilize states where the US seeks regime change.
WRC director Scott Nova would not respond to questions about whether or not its Xinjiang “forced labor” campaign was underwritten by a NED-backed organization.
Whoever sponsored the WRC’s advocacy, its outcome raises questions about the moral concerns that US human rights NGOs have expressed for Uyghur workers inside China. Rather than directly assisting the supposed victims of Chinese government abuses, self-proclaimed human rights groups appear to be eliminating their jobs in droves on the basis of dubious allegations – and at least in one case, shaking down their former employers for a lucrative payout.
Constructing a crisis and cashing in
The Worker Rights Consortium’s campaign to pressure businesses to disinvest from Xinjiang began in December 2018, just as the US State Department started formally accusing China of subjecting Uyghur Muslims in the region to forced labor and mass internment. Its initiative appeared to have been coordinated with an interlocking network of advocacy groups, corporate media outlets, and US government interests dedicated to containing China.
A December 17 AP article alleging that the Hetian Taida Apparel factory in Xinjiang was the site of forced labor provided the impetus for the WRC campaign. The AP homed in on Badger Sport, a North Carolina-based clothing manufacturer that produced sportswear out of the factory. One day later, in what appeared to be a coordinated action, WRC Executive Director Scott Nova fired off a lengthy press release calling for Badger Sport to leave Xinjiang.
As with most US mainstream media reports alleging Chinese government abuses in Xinjiang, the AP relied entirely on partisan sources outside the country. To paint Hetian Taida as a de facto slave camp, the AP turned to testimony by Uyghur exiles in Kazakhstan and Google Earth analysis of the factory by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a right-wing think tank funded by the US State Department, the Australian Ministry of Defense, and several arms manufacturers.
Articles alleging forced labor in Xinjiang by the New York Times and the Financial Times appeared the same week as the AP’s report, and also relied largely on analysis by ASPI, as well testimony gathered in Kazakhstan by an exile organization called Atajurt.
Among the Uyghurs interviewed by the AP about allegations of forced labor in Xinjiang was Rushan Abbas, whom it identified simply as “a Uighur in Washington, D.C.” In fact, Abbas was the director of the Campaign For Uyghurs, a major separatist organization funded by the US government which lobbies aggressively for sanctions on China.
A former translator at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, Abbas has boasted in her bio of “extensive experience working with US government agencies, including Homeland Security, Department of Defense, Department of State, and various US intelligence agencies.”
In June 2019, the WRC issued a 37-page paper accusing Badger of profiting from supposedly forced labor in the Hetian Taida factory in Xinjiang. The document was comprised largely of claims by a tightly coordinated network of US-backed Uyghur activists, US state media outlets, US-funded think tank pundits, and Human Rights Watch – the same virulently anti-China elements that shape Western media’s coverage of Xinjiang.
WRC’s key sources included the following:
Adrian Zenz, the far-right Christian fundamentalist fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation who has declared that he was “led by God” to antagonize China’s government. Despite Zenz’s extensive and well-documented record of statistical manipulation and retractions, and lack of scholarly credentials on China, the WRC described him as “a leading scholar on the government’s repression of ethnic Muslim minorities.” As we will see later, Zenz joined WRC’s campaign in a formal capacity.
“Credible reports by Radio Free Asia,” the US government-sponsored news service that the New York Times once deemed, “A Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the CIA.” While the WRC’s report described Radio Free Asia as “credible,” it branded China Central Television (CCTV) as “government propaganda.”
The US government, whose accusations against China the WRC cited repeatedly and without a shred of skepticism. This same government may have funded the WRC’s campaign on Xinjiang, and finances many of its key coalition partners through the National Endowment for Democracy.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), the US State Department- and arms industry-funded think tank notorious for satellite analysis that has labeled government buildings,primary schools, and senior high schools in Xinjiang as “concentration camps.” Among the ASPI researchers cited by WRC was Vicky Xu, an anti-China activist and attempted comedian who has reportedly declared, “I’m in a real war with China.” An investigation by Michael West Media found that a substantial sum of ASPI’s donations came from corporations that rely on prison labor.
The Uyghur American Association (UAA), a US-government funded exile lobbying organization based in Washington DC. As The Grayzone has reported, UAA leadership organized a car caravan in April 2021 that interrupted and heckled a demonstration against anti-Asian racism, maintain close relations with anti-Muslim legislators like Rep. Ted Yoho, and host a right-wing militia-style gun club.
Human Rights Watch, the billionaire-funded international lobbying outfit that ultimately identified Uyghur exile groups that receive payouts from Badger Sportswear.
The WRC’s accusation of forced labor hinged on the connection between the Hetian Taida factory and the adjacent Hotan Vocational Education and Training Center, claiming that workers in the former facility were “detainees” in the latter.
The Chinese government has insisted that vocational training centers like the one at Hotan are an integral part of the nationwide campaign to eradicate extreme poverty. When the Chinese state-backed Global Times visited Hetian Taida’s satellite handcrafts facility in Hotan, workers told the paper they were there voluntarily.
Hetian Taida’s own data showed that some 30% of its workers at the facility had been previously registered as extremely poor, and were now earning wages that allowed them a measure of independence.
In lieu of any damning video testimony from workers employed at Taida, the WRC spun positive comments by a female worker to state-backed China Central Television as proof of “a brutal regime of extra-judicial detention.” The worker had declared, “The Communist Party and the government discovered me and saved me.”
Similarly, the WRC attempted to reinforce its accusation of forced labor with a photo of Badger executive Ginny Gasswint inside the Hetian Taida complex in January 2018, surrounded by female workers.
“I am surprised the Hotan people are friendly, beautiful, enthusiastic and hardworking. I believe our cooperation will become larger,” Gasswint proclaimed, according to the WRC paper. Oddly, the WRC framed Gasswint’s positive impressions of the workforce she met at the factory, and the apparently cheerful photo they took together, as clear evidence of abuse.
A photo from WRC’s report on Hetian Taida, showing Badger executive Ginny Gasswint (center) inside the factory
The WRC bluntly dismissed Badger’s own assessment of the situation at Hetian Taida, which rejected the allegations of “forced labor.” (A Badger spokesperson responded to an interview request by The Grayzone with a boilerplate statement affirming the company’s “respect for international labor and human rights standards.”)
It also discounted the certification that Taida received following an on-site inspection by Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production, an international auditing body established by American Apparel to “certify socially responsible factories in the sewn-products sector.”
When Wu Hongbo, the owner of Hetian Taida, complained to Badger Sport that he had been misquoted by AP and did not “have a factory inside the HVETC that used ‘trainees’ provided by the camp,” the WRC batted away his claim on the grounds that AP’s reporters “have won a series of awards for their work on Hetian Taida.”
Finally, the WRC admitted that it “did not attempt to interview workers as part of its inquiry.” It justified its failure to independently confirm any of the allegations by outside, US government-funded sources by claiming “the climate of fear and repression in Xinjiang made it very unlikely that workers could testify freely…”
In the end, the coordinated media and lobbying campaign forced Badger to end its contract with Hetian Taida, leaving its workforce unemployed. Instead of offering the workers any help, the WRC demanded that Badger “contribute $300,000 to an organization or organizations, providing assistance to or combatting the abuses against the Uyghur population of Xinjiang province, identified by independent human rights experts.”
The WRC conceded in a summary of its report that its campaign had not benefited Uyghur workers in any meaningful way, and may have even harmed them.
“It is important to understand that full remediation, from a worker rights perspective, is not achievable in this case. As explained in our report, any attempt to aid and support the affected workers runs the risk of subjecting them to retaliation by the Chinese authorities,” the NGO claimed without evidence. “The best available substitute is for Badger to contribute to organizations working broadly to aid victims of the repression in Xinjiang.”
Those organizations appeared to have been some of the same advocacy groups that provided WRC with the sourcing for its “forced labor” report, and which are dedicated to advancing US government’s hostility towards China.
Under Human Rights Watch’s watch, Uyghur exiles profit from “forced labor” shakedown
Asked by The Grayzone which “independent human rights organizations” received the payout by Badger, WRC director of strategic research Penelope Kyritsis claimed, “When forced labor is uncovered, the typical remedy is to pay workers back wages. But the prevailing circumstances made it such that contacting workers in a place that’s as surveilled as that region would just put them in a lot more risk. So the Badger money went to Uyghur groups in the diaspora.”
When pressed to identify those groups, Kyritsis fumbled for an answer. “Um, there was one group in Kazakhstan,” she said, but claimed she could not recall its name.
In an emailed response to questions from The Grayzone, WRC director Scott Nova refused to name the Uyghur exile groups that received the lucrative payout from Badger. “We are not disclosing the names of these organizations because doing so could jeopardize the security of the refugees they assist,” he claimed.
Minutes from an October 25, 2019 WRC board meeting published on the WRC’s website show Kyritsis and WRC executive director Scott Nova giving Human Rights Watch the responsibility for identifying Uyghur exile groups to receive the Badger money.
The selection of Human Rights Watch (HRW) as an arbiter highlighted the ulterior, belligerent agenda of the Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region. Far from an independent organization, HRW has historically functioned as force multiplier for US imperial goals, advancing regime change against politically independent and socialist states behind the guise of moral concern.
Human Rights Watch was founded in 1978 as Helsinki Watch, a US outfit dedicated to undermining the governments of socialist Eastern Bloc countries with an unrelenting stream of abuse allegations. With offices across the West, including in New York City’s Empire State Building, HRW has grown thanks to a $100 million cash injection from George Soros, an anti-communist hedge fund billionaire who has deemed China a “mortal danger” to humanity.
For the past 27 years, HRW has been led by Kenneth Roth, an obsessive antagonist of China’s government and cheerleader for regime change operations against virtually any state that defies Washington. As Ben Norton reported for The Grayzone, Roth has posted a meme comparing Beijing to Nazi Germany and spread a fake video that he claimed depicted Chinese “killer robots,” but which turned out to show a special effects training. Roth has also repeatedly speculated that Covid-19 was brewed in a Chinese laboratory.
Under Roth’s watch, HRW justified the NATO military intervention in Libya, after neglecting to oppose the US invasion of Iraq. It has also refused to call for an end to the US-Saudi assault on Yemen that has produced the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
HRW has campaigned ceaselessly for toppling leftist governments across Latin America, celebrating US sanctions on Nicaragua, advancing Washington’s economic strangulation of Venezuela, and endorsing the far-right military coup in 2019 that removed Bolivia’s democratically elected Indigenous president, Evo Morales.
While Bolivia’s military massacred unarmed Indigenous protesters, Roth celebrated the right-wing takeover as an “uprising” in a tweet featuring an image of Morales shooting himself in the face with a tank cannon.
After HRW documented the abusive labor practices of a Saudi billionaire, the tycoon arranged a $470,000 grant to the group, essentially buying its silence. The hush money was kept secret until an insider leaked it to the media, forcing Roth to take credit for arranging the payment.
Though HRW appears to have selected Uyghur exile groups to receive the $300,000 extracted from Badger Sportswear, an HRW spokesperson told The Grayzone that their organization received none of the money.
Teaming up with far-right researcher “led by god” against China, hiring Uyghur exile activist
The Worker Rights Consortium brands itself as a progressive organization that defends Global South laborers against corporate exploiters. Its director, Scott Nova, has appeared at Netroots Nation, the annual gathering of left-liberal online influencers, and worked with anti-sweatshop activists on campuses across the country.
When the WRC launched the Xinjiang “forced labor” campaign, however, its director forged an alliance with a right-wing extremist who has stated that he was “led by God” against China’s government.
On March 9, 2020, Nova co-authored a letter with Adrian Zenz that addressed international labor monitoring bodies, demanding they cancel all future audits inside Xinjiang. The two insisted to potential auditors that “worker interviews, which are essential to the methodology of any credible auditor or certification body, cannot generate reliable information about labor conditions.”
As seen at Hetian Taida, where Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production certified the factory following an in-person visit, any testimony by independent observers to Xinjiang threatened to disrupt the campaign of demonization waged from Washington by the WRC.
By pushing outside auditors to pledge to avoid factories in the region, WRC seemed determined to eliminate any threats to the official US narrative about Chinese “forced labor,” while ensuring that the hyper-partisan, US government-funded organizations it relied on for its own report enjoyed a monopoly over the debate.
The WRC’s jointly authored letter referred to Zenz as an “Independent Researcher and Expert o[n] China’s Minority Policies,” omitting mention of his fellowship at the right-wing Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and overlooking serious issues relating to his credibility.
From Scott Nova and Adrian Zenz’s March 9, 2020 letter to potential auditors of Xinjiang factories
As The Grayzone has documented in extensive detail, Zenz is a Christian extremist whose first published book, “Worthy to Escape: Why all believers will not be raptured before the Tribulation,” urged Christian believers to punish unruly children with “scriptural spanking,” denounced homosexuality as “one of the four empires of the beast,” and argued that Jews who refuse to convert to evangelical Christianity during the End Times would either be “wipe[d] out” or “refined” in a “fiery furnace.”
Like his employer, Zenz has exhibited a penchant for manipulating statistics to further his ideological agenda. He based his widely cited estimate of 1 million Uyghur Muslims in “internment camps” on a single, highly dubious study published by a Uyghur separatist outlet in Turkey.
After The Grayzone exposed glaring falsehoods and outlandish claims in Zenz’s paper alleging “forced sterilization” of Uyghurs, the supposed expert quietly corrected his absurd claim that Uyghur women have been forced to undergo anywhere from 4 to 8 IUD surgeries per day, while tweaking the language of other blatant falsehoods to make them seem more plausible. (Zenz appears to have fabricated the date of his retraction as well.)
The WRC’s de facto partnership with right-wing anti-Chinese elements extended beyond Adrian Zenz. In August 2020, the WRC published ads seeking a coordinator for its “project to combat forced labor” in Xinjiang, promising a $70,000 salary plus benefits for a year-long term.
To fill the job, the non-profit hired Jewher Ilham, a former “Uyghur human rights fellow” at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, and therefore, an ex-colleague of Zenz.
Ilham’s bio page at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. WRC’s Scott Nova told The Grayzone she has asked the group to delete it.
Jewher Ilham is the daughter of Ilham Tohti, a former academic sentenced by China to life in prison for allegedly promoting separatism and advocating violent militancy. His imprisonment has made him a cause celebre among Western human rights organizations, helping to earn his daughter a meeting with President Donald Trump in July 2019.
The WRC’s Nova insisted that Ilham is no longer associated with Victims of Communism, and therefore “that association is disingenuous.” However, he did not respond to direct questions about his open partnership with Zenz, who remains a fellow at the notoriously Sinophobic organization.
“Your bad faith is readily apparent and we see no value in answering your questions,” Nova remarked to The Grayzone.
A grassroots labor coalition, brought to you by the US government
A month before advertising the job eventually taken by Ilham, the WRC announced the formation of the Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region. Most of the organizations on the coalition’s steering committee were anti-China lobbying outfits funded by the US government through the National Endowment for Democracy, or directly by the US Department of State. Key members included:
The World Uyghur Congress (WUC): The WUC is the major umbrella organization of the Uyghur separatist movement seeking an independent, NATO-oriented ethno-state in the Xinjiang region of China. As Ajit Singh reported for The Grayzone, the NED has provided the WUC with millions of dollars in funding, including over $1,284,000 since 2016. The WUC lobbies Western politicians to isolate and “increase the pressure on China,”ratchet up economic sanctions, curb ties with China, and pull Western companies out of Xinjiang. As Singh reported, the WUC enjoys historic ties to the far-right Gray Wolves movement in Turkey and was founded by a right-wing ideologue who called for “the dismemberment of the Chinese empire.”
The Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP): The UHRP is a World Uyghur Congress subsidiary that is almost entirely sponsored by the US government, with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) serving as its principal source of funding. The NED granted the UHRP a whopping $1,244,698 between 2016 and ’19. As The Grayzone has reported, the NED was founded under the watch of the Reagan administration’s CIA to fund and train opposition media outlets and NGO groups to undermine governments that Washington opposed. Louisa Coan Greve, the former vice president of the NED, today serves as UHRP’s director of global advocacy.
Clean Clothes Campaign/Johnson Yeung: Listed by the WRC as the media contact for the Clean Clothes Campaign, Johnson Yeung is a Hong Kong separatist activist whose career has been nurtured by the National Endowment for Democracy. Yeung’s Civil Human Rights Front played a leading role in the protests and riots that consumed Hong Kong throughout 2019; it was disbanded following a Chinese government investigation into its alleged US financing. For its part, the Clean Clothes Campaign has been funded largely by the Dutch Foreign Ministry, as well as an unnamed “US-based philanthropic fund.”
International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF): Claiming to “hold global corporations accountable for labor rights violations,” the ILRF is sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Rights and Labor. The coordinator of the ILRF’s China program, Kevin Lin, has been on the international committee of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Anti-Slavery International: A celebrity-oriented NGO that claims to consist of “small and powerful changemakers delivering freedom now,” Anti-Slavery International is funded by the US Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; the UK Home Office, the European Commission, and wealthy foundations.
On September 17, select members of the “Coalition to End Forced Labor” testified before Congress, providing a campaign funded and guided by the US government with the patina of grassroots activism.
Besides the WRC’s Scott Nova, Congress heard from Rushan Abbas, the former Gitmo translator and Pentagon contractor who heads the US government-funded Campaign for Uyghurs. “It horrifies me to see China continue to be allowed to become a power able to strong-arm the world,” Abbas proclaimed.
The AFL-CIO’s international director, Cathy Feingold, also addressed Congress on behalf of the coalition. With little record of labor organizing to speak of, Feingold is the ex-foreign policy director for the Ford Foundation, a billionaire-backed non-profit that assisted CIA destabilization operations in Indonesia and Chile during the Cold War. She went on to lead the Dominican Republic and Haiti offices of the Solidarity Center.
The ironically named Solidarity Center operates out of the AFL’s offices in Washington, but is funded heavily by the US government through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). In fact, the NED’s longtime director, Carl Gershman, is the former research director for the AFL-CIO. And the AFL sits on the steering committee of the Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region.
Sociologist Kim Scipes has researched the history of international operations by the AFL-CIO spanning almost a century, demonstrating how the union federation has helped the US government subvert socialist revolutions around the world while assisting right-wing dictatorships.
In his book “The AFL-CIO’s Secret War Against Developing Country Workers,” Scipes documented the AFL-CIO’s role in backing opposition unions working for regime change in states including Jacobo Arbenz’s Guatemala, Salvador Allende’s Chile, Sandinista-controlled Nicaragua, and Venezuela since its socialist Bolivarian Revolution.
“I believe their understanding is that the US should run the world,” Scipes said of the AFL-CIO’s leadership.
Given the labor federation’s history, he commented, “I don’t think they’re doing [the forced labor campaign] out of any concern for Uyghurs. From everything I know, I’d say that the AFL-CIO is operating to consciously hurt China, and you can see it line up with the entire US foreign policy apparatus.”
The Solidarity Center was the outcome of the AFL-CIO’s consolidation of its foreign operations into a central node in 1997. Though it has attempted to soften the image the AFL earned for destabilizing socialist governments during the Cold War, academic Tim Gill obtained Solidarity Center documents from 2006 to 2014 that show the center flush with NED money and “coordinat[ing] concerted resistance actions” against the worker’s councils established by Venezuela’s socialist government.
A PhD thesis by George Nelson Bass exploring the Solidarity Center’s post-Cold War work concluded that it “indicates continuity with past AFL-CIO foreign policy practices whereby the Solidarity Center follows the lead of the U.S. state.”
The funding the Solidarity Center has received from the regime-change arm of the US government, together with its record of “contributions” to the Worker Rights Consortium, raises questions about its role in the Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region. Asked whether the Solidarity Center financed the WRC’s work on the campaign, Penelope Kyritsis claimed, “I don’t know what the different groups in the coalition’s funding sources are.”
According to Scipes, the lack of transparency around the forced labor coalition is consistent with AFL-related campaigns over the years. “They’re not being open and honest. They’re not telling anybody out outside of a closed circle. It’s carried out behind the backs of the members,” he maintained, noting that he is a union member himself. “And yet they’re acting as though they’re acting in our name.”
Marketed as a grassroots initiative, the WRC and its partners in the “Coalition Against Forced Uyghur Labor” appear to be answering primarily to the US government. Inside Xinjiang, they have not only rejected any communication with the Uyghur workers whose jobs they have eliminated, they have refused to remediate them.
While providing a new Cold War with progressive cover, these supposed human rights advocates are rewarding themselves with the lost wages of those they claim to be defending.
Um bessere Fahrerlebnisse in China anzupassen, setzt Mercedes-Benz das Huawei HMS in der neuen S-Klasse ein, das heißt, dort wird die S-Klasse nur mit den Huawei Mobile Services ausgeliefert.
Die S-Klasse soll die neuen Modelle S400L, S450L und S500L umfassen. Die Preise beginnen mit 899.000 YUAN (chinesiche Währung, umgerechnet auf circa 112.475 EUR) für S400L Business, und springen bis zu 1.818.800 YUAN (circa 227.350 EUR) für S500L 4MATIC. Der zentrale Steuerbildschirm des Fahrzeugs verwendet einen massiven 12,8-Zoll-OLED-2K-Bildschirm mit einer Auflösung von 1888 × 1728 Pixel. Das fahrzeuginterne HMS an Bord enthält auch einen Sprachassistenten, und alle Software können per OTA-Push online aktualisiert werden.
Vor einigen Wochen hat BYD-CEO Zhao Changjiang auch bekannt gegeben, dass Huawei Hicar (HMS) auf dem BYD Han eingesetzt wird. BYD wird der zweite Autohersteller, der die Cloud-Lösung von Huawei einsetzt. Wir erwarten, dass bald weitere Marken an Bord kommen.
BYD Han-EV mit 600 Km Reichweite
In Europa setzt Mercedes-Benz bisher auf Android OS. Vielleicht öffnet es einen Einstieg für Huawei Hicar in den europäischen Fahrzeugen.
On 21 April, The famous French conservative magazine Valeurs Actuelles published an open letter entitled “for a return of the honor of our rulers”, written by 20 veterans. The positions of most of them were from brigadier general to lieutenant general level, covering navy, land force, air force, and even French Foreign Legion.
France is one of several European countries struggling with the increasing terrorism, police violence, racial discrimination, anti-Semitism, Islamic separatism, and terrorism for decades of years, which gets worse during the COVID-19 epidemic. These influential veterans believe that “The hour is serious, France is in peril.”
Subsequently, these veterans pointed out that most of the social chaos in France are firstly due to separatism in the name of anti-racialism, and secondly due to the rising integration among politics, society, and religion promoted by Islamic extremists, and the two causes have very tight connections. Without immediate, necessary and determined measures, they believe that France will no longer be the French Republic.
“Who would have predicted ten years ago that a teacher would one day be beheaded when he left college?” questioned by the veterans, and they criticized the over-tolerance and inaction from the current French government since “those who run our country find the courage to eradicate these dangers. To do this, it is often enough to apply existing laws without weakness. Remember that, like us, a large majority of our fellow citizens are overwhelmed by your dawdling and guilty silences.” And they commented that “if nothing is done, laxity will continue to spread inexorably in society, ultimately causing an explosion and the intervention of our active comrades in a perilous mission of protecting our civilizational values and safeguarding our compatriots on the national territory.”
Their warning is not nonsense, although French soldiers have a long tradition of non-interference in political affairs, and even have the nickname “La Grande Muette”. But just over 60 years ago, the French army once launched the famous “May 1958 crisis,” which directly led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic.
In 1958, French governance in Algeria began to loosen. At that time, the French army stationed in Algeria suspected that the government would abandon them, so they began to prepare for a political replacement and threatened to launch a civil war.
To avoid the outbreak of a full-scale civil war, the French government finally compromised with the soldiers and handed over the power of the government to General de Gaulle, who was trusted by the army. France has since entered the period of the Fifth Republic, under the consistent monitoring from the military force.
However, after that, de Gaulle not only failed to contain Algeria’s crisis but also accelerated the process of Algeria’s independence, making Algeria finally declared its independence in 1962, which disappointed soldiers who wished to strengthen the national influence and cultural integration, therefore they even formed an assassination team and launched at least four assassinations against the de Gaulle.
Because of the above period of history, the publication of this letter causes an uproar in French society since in reality, the French government not only doesn’t contain well the development of separatism and Islamic extremism but also always gives the late response and ineffective solution after the attacks, therefore, to the public, the soldiers may want to correct the direction of the country again like last time.
According to an investigation conducted by French media Le Parisien, besides the 20 veterans, there are other 100 senior military officers and more than a thousand other military personnels signed the open letter as well, and their names can be found on a military blog called Place d’Armes. Le Pen is the first politician to give a response to the letter, and with a positive attitude.According to an investigation conducted by French media Le Parisien, besides the 20 veterans, there are other 100 senior military officers and more than a thousand other military personnels signed the open letter as well, and their names can be found on a military blog called Place d’Armes. Le Pen is the first politician to give a response to the letter, and with a positive attitude.
The French Minister of the Armed Force, Florence Parly, condemning the actions of these veterans is an insult to all serving soldiers, inciting rebellion, or at least spreading a sense of division. And she claimed that If she finds serving soldiers on the signed list, sanctions will be imposed.
Pali also condemned Le Pen’s welcome to the open letter, emphasizing that the military does not exist for elections, but to defend the country. French Finance Secretary Agnès Pannier-Runacher said that the May 1958 crisis years ago was also promoted by extreme rightists like Le Pen and warned her not to act rashly.
At a press conference on 28 April, the French Prime Minister Castel strongly condemned this open letter as violating all republican principles and the honor and duty of military personnel. He also emphasized that this letter can only represent the views of their signatories, not the entire army.
Finally, the French Minister of the Interior Darmanin, also attended the press conference, mainly talking about anti-terrorism issues. He produced a draft anti-terrorism law, which provides a series of counter-terrorism measures, including monitoring certain prisoners who have been released from prison, or closing places of worship that are considered problematic. The new law aims to strengthen network surveillance to identify potential terrorists.
However, nearly a week after the publication of this open letter, as the president of the French Republic, Macron, who was regarded as the target of public criticism, did not give a comment at all, which also caused many people’s doubts and dissatisfaction.
With the increasing amounts of extreme Islamists in the country, the current French republic hardly maintains its core values as decades years before, and doesn’t want to accept the religious influence to the society and country, making the nation stuck in this dilemma – can’t go where it wants to go, and can’t leave where it wants to leave.
(Source: Valeurs Actuelles, New Statesman, Mark Armstrong Illustration, Le Parisien)
