• Tibet, the Uygurs, the South China Sea and even Hong Kong are among the concerns for groups that insist Beijing is a threat not only to Vietnam, but the world at large

David Tran has dedicated most of his life to campaigning for the fall of the communist party-controlled government in Vietnam.

Like many members of the Vietnamese diaspora in the United States, Tran, who immigrated as a teenager more than three decades ago, has long dreamed of the day when his homeland embraces liberal democracy.

These days, though, Tran, who runs the Texas-based Vietnam Democracy Centre, increasingly has another one-party state in his sights: China.

“We look at the vision of the future, a future led by the Chinese Communist Party through the images of Tibet and Xinjiang and the South China Sea and even Hong Kong … and we don’t accept that future for our children and our grandchildren,” said Tran, who works as a medical doctor.

For many Vietnamese-Americans who spent years or even decades involved in advocacy against Hanoi, China’s rise has refocused their efforts to raise awareness of democracy, human rights and the dangers of communism.

While sharing many of the same concerns as activists elsewhere, such as the treatment of Uygurs in Xinjiang, the diaspora’s opposition to Beijing has often honed in on grievances affecting the homeland, including the territorial dispute between China and Vietnam over the South China Sea.

Earlier this year, more than 80 Vietnamese diaspora groups, many of them based in the US, carried out an unofficial “referendum” through social media to give the Vietnamese public a chance to air their views on Beijing’s expansive claims and military build-up in the waters.

Ninety-five per cent of respondents said they favoured taking legal action against Beijing in international courts, according to the poll, which organisers claimed reached some 1.2 million Vietnamese inside the country. Hanoi has hinted at but so far not pursued international arbitration to resolve the dispute over the strategic waterway, which is home to valuable fish stocks and energy reserves and carries an estimated one-third of global shipping. In 2016, the Philippines successfully argued that Beijing’s claims over most of the waterway – where Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei also have competing claims – were without basis in law at an international tribunal at The Hague.

Tran, who helped organise the poll, said Hanoi would never defend the country’s sovereignty from an encroaching Chinese presence.

“Vietnam and China shared the same communist ideology,” he said. “Taking a stronger stance means a break from that ideology, which may lead to a disruption of that same political order and governance structures. Vietnam and China are police states, with close cooperation between the two internal security apparatuses.”

Tuong Vu, a professor of political science at the University of Oregon, said that diaspora activists had begun taking a particular interest in issues such as the South China Sea after the killing of nine Vietnamese fishermen accused of piracy in 2005.

“They have influenced many activists inside Vietnam who call for the Vietnamese government to undertake a stronger position vis-à-vis China as well as legal means to defend Vietnam‘s sovereignty claims,” Vu said. “Their influence may be direct through personal networks or indirect through their writings and their efforts to publicise the issues, identify strategies, and make available materials.”

Nonetheless, central to the advocacy of groups such as Vietnam Democracy Centre is the insistence that Beijing poses a threat not just to Vietnam, but the world at large.

Some activists involved in the South China Sea campaign have set about lobbying to have the Chinese Communist Party designated as a transnational criminal organisation, a cause taken up by Republican Congressman Scott Perry, who on October 1 introduced a related bill in the US House of Representatives.

“This bill speaks up for all victims of coronavirus spreading throughout the world,” said Tran Anh, a supporter of the bill who immigrated to the US in 1979 and runs the Viet 2000 Foundation in Dallas, Texas. “It is time for us to raise our voice before it is too late.”

Vietnam’s relations with China have been historically fraught, with the sides fighting a string of border conflicts before normalising ties in 1991. In a 2017 Pew survey, just 10 per cent of Vietnamese said they had a positive view of their larger neighbour.

Those historical grievances have been aggravated in recent years by repeated confrontations in the South China Sea, including a weeks-long stand-off in 2014 after a Chinese company deployed an oil rig in the waters, sparking riots across the Southeast Asian country.

Will Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American democracy activist based in the United States, said anti-Chinese expansionism was “deeply ingrained in the minds of nearly every Vietnamese person.”

“Many activists abroad are hawkish on China because it dovetails with their dislike of the Vietnamese Communist Party,” said Nguyen. “Historically, this makes sense as both parties share similar origins and obviously run very similar one-party authoritarian states today.”

But Nguyen said efforts by the diaspora to pressure China had limited potential as the same activists stood in opposition to the Vietnamese government.

“Thus, any kind of unified effort to curb China‘s actions – and it must be unified – is dead on arrival,” Nguyen said.

Ahead of the US presidential election on November 3, many politically-engaged Vietnamese-Americans are hoping for the re-election of Donald Trump, favouring his and the Republican Party’s hawkish stance on China. In a survey carried out last month by APIAVote, AAPI Data and Asian Americans Advancing Justice, 48 per cent of Vietnamese-Americans said they favoured Trump, compared to 36 per cent who preferred his Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

“President Trump and his current administration are aware that the dragon has awakened,” said Linh Nguyen of the Minh Van Foundation. “The others are still hoping that China is acting in good faith.”

Nguyen-vo Thu-huong, an associate professor of Asian-American Studies at University of California, Los Angeles, said traditional opposition toward China and communism among the diaspora was now being conflated by some activists with support for Trump and his wider agenda.

“Rallies may still be anti-China, but that has now become part of the message about why Vietnamese in the diaspora should be pro Trump and against any perceived enemies to Trump and his vision of America,” she said. “Since the pandemic and George Floyd, anti-China sentiments have been mobilised for Trump, against pandemic restrictions, against other Democratic politicians.”

Tran, the head of the Vietnam Democracy Centre, said he was not focused on the outcome of the election, but on continuing to spread his message to the world.

“We are not in the business of forecasting winners and losers,” he said. “We know that, regardless of who wins, our task is still the same. Our job is to inform the public and our elected representatives from all levels of government and from all governments, that communism is bad and evil.”

By John Power. Read original post on SCMP

The United States said on Friday it would add 33 Chinese firms and institutions to an economic blacklist for helping Beijing spy on its minority Uighur population or because of ties to weapons of mass destruction and China’s military.

The U.S. Commerce Department’s move marked the Trump administration’s latest efforts to crack down on companies whose goods may support Chinese military activities and to punish Beijing for its treatment of Muslim minorities. It came as Communist Party rulers in Beijing on Friday unveiled details of a plan to impose national security laws on Hong Kong.

Seven companies and two institutions were listed for being “complicit in human rights violations and abuses committed in China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, forced labor and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs” and others, the Commerce Department said in a statement.

Two dozen other companies, government institutions and commercial organizations were added for supporting procurement of items for use by the Chinese military, the department said in another statement.

The blacklisted companies focus on artificial intelligence and facial recognition, markets that U.S. chip companies such as Nvidia and Intel have been heavily investing in.

Qihoo, NetPosa and CloudMinds could not be immediately reached for comment.

Xilinx, which makes programmable chips, said at least one of its customers was on the list but that it believes the business impact will be negligible.

“Xilinx is aware of the recent additions to the Department of Commerce’s Entity List and is evaluating any potential business impact,” the company said. “We comply with any new U.S. Department of Commerce rules and regulations.”

The new listings follow a similar October 2019 action when Commerce added 28 Chinese public security bureaus and companies — including some of China’s top artificial intelligence startups and video surveillance company Hikvision — to a U.S. trade blacklist over the treatment of Uighur Muslims.

The actions follow the same blueprint used by Washington in its attempt to limit the influence of Huawei Technologies for what it says are national security reasons. Last week, Commerce took action to try to further cut off Huawei’s access to chipmakers.

@ Reuters/ CNBC

Is there any meat to the rumors that Vietnam would lease Cam Ranh Bay to the United States?

Rumors are circulating that Vietnam is considering leasing Cam Ranh Bay or some of its islands in the East Sea of Vietnam (South China Sea) to the United States on a long-term basis as a supply base and/or stop over point as a counter to recent aggressiveness in the South China Sea.

Related: Vietnam protests China’s sinking of the East Sea boat

Assessment of the Situation

Vietnam has a long-standing defense policy of “three no’s” dating back to its first Defense White Paper in 1998. This White Paper, entitled Vietnam Consolidating National Defense Safeguarding the Homeland stated:

The national defense of Vietnam contributes to the policy of openness, diversification and multilateralization of external relations, without aligning with one country against another, without confrontation and offensive against any country…

Vietnam neither joins any military alliances nor engages in any military operations contrary to the spirit of safeguarding peace, nor in any operations of deterrence.

The spirit of the “three no’s” was reiterated in Vietnam’s next two Defense White Papers of 2004 and 2009. Vietnam’s most recent Defense White Paper published in late 2012 states:

Viet Nam consistently advocates neither joining any military alliances, siding with one country against another, giving any other countries permission to set up military bases or use its territory to carry out military activities against other countries nor using force or threatening to use force in international relations. Viet Nam also promotes defence cooperation with countries to improve its capabilities to protect the country and address common security challenges. (emphasis added)

On the face of it, Vietnam’s official defense policy precludes leasing Cam Ranh Bay or islands in the South China Sea to the United States or any other foreign country. Vietnam also has a policy of permitting foreign navies to make one port call a year. Several ships can make a port call at the same time. For example, U.S. Navy ships are permitted to call in at the Tien Sa military port in Da Nang and then visit Cam Ranh Bay. Military hospital ships, such as the USS Mercy that participates in Pacific Partnership humanitarian visits, are not included in this restriction.

According to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Washington, D.C., based Center for Strategic and International Studies, which tracks developments in the South China Sea:

Vietnam occupies between 49 and 51 outposts (the status of two construction projects on Cornwallis South Reef is unclear) spread across 27 features in the South China Sea. These include facilities built on 21 rocks and reefs in the Spratly Islands.

Truong Son island is the largest of the 21 rocks with an area of 15 hectares. It has a small harbor and an airstrip of 1,200 metres. Vietnam’s other features are around eight hectares or less in area. In sum, it seems unlikely that any of Vietnam’s outposts and rocks in the Spratly Islands could provide a “supply base and/or stop over point” for U.S. Navy ships transiting the area due to their inadequate infrastructure and location near heavily militarized Chinese artificial islands.

A better prospect for the United States arose in the Philippines with the conclusion of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) between the Philippines and the United States in April 2014. The EDCA has provisions for the United States to build and retain ownership of the physical infrastructure located on Philippine military bases. However, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s announcement of his termination of the Visiting Forces Agreement in February this year appear to have scuttled EDCA.

Duterte’s actions now make access to facilities in Vietnam by the United States Navy more attractive. There have been some straws in the wind over the past decade.

U.S. Returns to Cam Ranh

In 2009, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung dramatically announced that Vietnam’s commercial repair facilities would be open to all navies of the world. The U.S. was the first country to take up the offer. The first repair was conducted on the USNS Safeguard in the port of Saigon in September 2009.

The following year, the United States and Vietnam signed a contract for the minor maintenance and repair of U.S. Navy Sealift ships. Five ship voyage repairs were subsequently completed. The USNS Richard E. Byrd underwent repairs in Van Phong Bay in February-March 2010. The other four voyage repairs were carried out at civilian facilities in Cam Ranh Bay: USNS Richard E. Byrd in August 2011 and June 2012; the USNS Walter S. Diehl in October 2011 and the USNS Rappahannock in February 2012. The cost of the repairs was minor, just under a half million U.S. dollars each.

It should be noted that Cam Ranh Bay is divided into a military port and a civilian facility. Russia has special access rights to the military port because of its servicing and support of Vietnam’s largely Russian constructed naval fleet, including six Varshavyanka-class conventional submarines.

Cam Ranh International Port, a civilian facility, was officially established in March 2016. Three U.S. warships visited the commercial port that year – USS John S. McCain (DDG-56) and USS Frank Cable (AS-40) in October 2016) and the USS Mustin (DDG 89) in December 2016.

Vietnam’s 2019 White Paper raised the tantalizing prospect that Vietnam might consider altering its “three no’s” defense policy. The following passage sparked intense speculation that such was the case:

Depending on circumstances and specific conditions, Viet Nam will consider developing necessary, appropriate defence and military relations with other countries… (emphasis added)

For the U.S. side, however, the mantra of “places not bases” is a long-standing one. Bases are fixed locations vulnerable to attack, while places provide access at critical times, such as a natural disaster or crisis. It is more likely that the United States will seek more frequent access to Vietnamese ports by U.S. Navy ships than renting facilities for a supply base.

There is no operational imperative for the U.S. to acquire a “stop over point” between Singapore and Taiwan. The United States 7th Fleet is home ported in Yokosuka, Japan. The U.S. maintains Naval Base Guam, a major naval facility. Some of the U.S. Navy ships that visit the South China Sea are based in San Diego and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. U.S. warships are capable of at-sea replenishment.

Vietnam and the United States have held on and off again discussions about raising their Obama era comprehensive partnership to a strategic partnership. In light of China’s persistent bullying of Vietnam over sovereignty, maritime disputes and oil exploration in the South China Sea some analysts argue that the “circumstances and specific conditions” may have arisen for a change of policy.

No doubt Vietnam’s leaders will be extremely cautious in their adoption of any changes to long-standing foreign and defense policies at the 13th national congress of the Vietnam Communist Party scheduled for the first quarter of 2021.

If the past is prologue, Vietnam likely will continue its policy of “diversification and multilateralization” of relations with the major powers. Vietnam will not align itself with the United States against China.

If Vietnam decides to loosen up on its present restrictions it will do so gradually and in line with the following prescription in the 2019 Defence White Book that follows immediately after the passage quoted above, “on the basis of respecting each other’s independence, sovereignty, territorial unity and integrity as well as fundamental principles of international law, cooperation for mutual benefits and common interests of the region and international community.”

In sum, Vietnam is highly unlikely to lease Cam Ranh Bay or some of its islands in the South China Sea to the United States on a long-term basis as a supply base and/or stop over point.

By Carl Thayer @ The Diplomat

Despite president’s rhetoric that the US would not rely on foreign nations for help, the administration has approached European and Asian partners.

The US has been appealing to its allies for help in obtaining medical supplies to overcome critical shortages in its fight against coronavirus.

In his public rhetoric Donald Trump has been talking up the domestic private sector response to the crisis.

“We should never be reliant on a foreign country for the means of our own survival,” Trump said at a White House briefing on Tuesday evening. “America will never be a supplicant nation.”

However behind the scenes, the administration has approached European and Asian partners to secure supplies of testing kits and other medical equipment that are in desperately short supply in the US.

The official White House account made no mention of the request, but according to the South Korean presidency, the Blue House, the call was made at Trump’s “urgent request”.

Trump praised the South Korean testing programme, which has helped contain the outbreak there. Moon told Trump that he would support South Korean exports of critical supplies to the US “if there is a domestic surplus”.

Foreign Policy reported that the third-ranking diplomat in the state department, David Hale, had asked for a list of countries that might be able to sell “critical medical supplies and equipment” to the US.

“Depending on critical needs, the United States could seek to purchase many of these items in the hundreds of millions with purchases of higher end equipment such as ventilators in the hundreds of thousands,” an email sent to embassies in Europe and Eurasia said.

The email underlined that the request applied to host countries “minus Moscow”.

On 15 March, German officials said they had fended off a Trump administration offer to buy exclusive access to a potential vaccine being developed by a German company, CureVac.

The US has scaled up its diagnostic testing after a slow start and Trump boasted on Tuesday that the country had performed more tests in eight days than South Korea had managed in eight weeks.

As of last week, South Korea had tested 270,000 people (one in 19 of the population) since the beginning of the outbreak while the US has performed 266,000 tests (one in 1,230) in the past eight days. Seoul also started testing much earlier in the country’s outbreak.

Some of the critical components of the diagnostic test are in short supply globally, including the reagents needed to identify the presence of the Covid-19 virus, and nasal swabs used for taking the samples.

The shortages will constrain the US ability to carry out mass testing in the near term, and the administration’s medical experts have been urging that tests are restricted to patients who have already been hospitalised.

On March 18, the Defense One military news site reported that the US air force had quietly flown half a million nasal swabs from Italy to Memphis, where they were distributed around the country.

The US is turning its allies at a time when it has strained relations with many of them. Trump has been demanding South Korea pay much more, reportedly up to $5 bn a year, to cover the costs of US troops based on its soil and the US military has threatened to lay off thousands of Korean employees if Seoul does not agree to a deal.

“It’s almost like we shouldn’t have used alliances as protection rackets, shaking down a close and highly-capable partner for $5 billion, imagining there would be no consequences for transactional unilateralism,” Mira Rapp-Hooper, senior fellow for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, commented on Twitter.

The US is by far the largest buyer of pharmaceuticals and medical supplies from China, and is seeking to import Chinese face masks and protective gear, but negotiations have been complicated by growing acrimony between the country, over what Trump has insisted until very recently on calling the “China virus”.

Severe disruptions in international air links caused by the outbreak have also disrupted US imports.

“It’s a supply chain which has multiple dynamically shifting bottlenecks and the administration is trying to overcome them one at a time, as they pop up,” Prashant Rao, visiting fellow at the Center for Global Development, said. “What we need is a far more comprehensive approach.”

Source: The Guardian

Cheryl Man is usually the only one wearing a face mask on her New York City subway train. She notices this, but other people on the train notice, too. Usually she just gets odd stares from other commuters. But on Tuesday morning, when she was walking to school, a group of teens jeered at her and coughed in her direction.

“I felt very humiliated and misunderstood,” says Man, a 20-year-old student and research assistant who is ethnically Chinese.

Man also feels the stigma at her workplace, where she keeps her mask on. None of her colleagues wear a face mask, and some of them have asked her if she is sick.

“Why do they think it’s about me? It’s a civic duty,” she says. “If I have a mask on, and if—touch wood—I’m infected, I could cut the chain off where I am. That could save a lot of people.”

That’s what health experts in Hong Kong, where Man was born and raised, say, and it’s advice she trusts. Nearly everyone on Hong Kong’s streets, trains and buses has been wearing a mask for weeks—since news emerged of mysterious viral pneumonia in Wuhan, China that was later identified and named COVID-19. The Hong Kong government and leading health experts also recommend wearing masks as a way to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, which the WHO declared a global pandemic on Wednesday.

Office workers wearing masks carry take-out lunch orders while walking towards in Admiralty, Hong Kong, on Mar. 2, 2020. Paul Yeung—Bloomberg/Getty Images

While wearing a mask has become the norm in many places in Asia, the mask frenzy has hit nowhere as hard as Hong Kong. At the height of COVID-19 panic, residents lined up overnight outside drugstores to buy face masks. South Korea, Singapore and Japan have distributed face masks to residents. Taiwan and Thailand have banned the export of masks to meet soaring local demand.

Yet, in the U.S., wearing a face mask when healthy has become discouraged to the point of becoming socially unacceptable. The U.S. government, in line with World Health Organization recommendations, says only those who are sick, or their caregivers, should wear masks.

A tweet from Surgeon General Jerome Adams sums up the argument: “Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”

Two schools of thought, not enough research
As COVID-19 continues to spread globally, it has become clear there are two schools of thought in regards to face masks for the public.

On the one hand is the view shared by Dr. William Schaffner, a professor in Vanderbilt University’s Division of Infectious Diseases, who says that medical masks commonly worn by members of the public do not fit snugly around the nose, cheeks and chin.

“And if there’s a general recommendation that people wear face masks, we won’t have enough supply for healthcare workers,” he says, adding that his colleagues have already been reporting shortages. “The priority should be face masks to use in the healthcare environment, rather than in our community.”

A man wears a medical mask on the subway in New York City, New York on Mar. 11, 2020. Spencer Platt—Getty Images

He calls the evidence supporting the effectiveness of the general public wearing masks “scanty.”

But, David Hui, a respiratory medicine expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who studied the 2002 to 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) extensively, says it’s “common sense” that wearing a mask would protect against infectious diseases like COVID-19.

“If you are standing in front of someone who is sick, the mask will give some protection,” Hui says. “The mask provides a barrier from respiratory droplets, which is predominantly how the virus spreads.”

He also says that the role of a face mask may be especially important in the epidemic due to the nature of the virus. Patients with COVID-19 often have mild or even no symptoms, and some researchers believe it can also be transmitted when patients are asymptomatic—meaning patients can be contagious and don’t know they’re sick.

Hui adds that the lack of solid evidence supporting the effectiveness of masks against the virus is no reason to dismiss its use, because there may never be definitive scientific proof. A properly controlled study would be impossible to conduct ethically, he explains. “You can’t randomize people to not wear a mask, and some to wear a mask, and then expose them all to the virus,” he says.

Different cultural norms

But even before the coronavirus outbreak, masks were a common sight across East Asia—worn for a variety of reasons. It’s common for people who are ill and want to protect the people around them to wear masks. Others wear masks during cold and flu season to protect themselves.

In Japan, people wear masks for non-medical reasons ranging from wanting to hide a swollen lip or a red nose during allergy season, to keeping warm during the winter, says Mitsutoshi Horii, a sociology professor at Japan’s Shumei University, who works in the United Kingdom. Masks in Japan come in cloth and printed variations, and can also be worn for style. They can also be seen on the streets of Hong Kong.

The difference in perception of the mask comes down, in part, to cultural norms about covering your face, he says. “In social interactions in the West, you need to show your identity and make eye contact. Facial expression is very important.”

Japanese trainee teachers he hosted at the U.K. campus where he works at had a first taste of the cultural difference when they arrived. Horii says the university explicitly advised them not to wear face masks when teaching at local schools.

“If they wear masks, the kids could get scared,” he says.

Carl Court—Getty Images

The shadow of SARS 17 years ago also helps to explain the prevalence of masks, especially in Hong Kong. Perhaps nowhere in the world was hit as hard as Hong Kong, where almost 300 died of the virus—accounting for over a third of official SARS fatalities worldwide.

“It was largely the shock of SARS that shaped this local etiquette,” Ria Sinha, a senior research fellow at the University of Hong Kong’s Center for the Humanities and Medicine, tells TIME. “Although the younger generation do not remember SARS, their parents and grandparents did experience the fear and uncertainty of a novel infectious disease, and the loss of daily normality.”

Wearing a mask, she explains, has become a “symbol and a tool of protection and solidarity”—even if research proving their efficacy is lacking. “Mask wearing is not always a medical decision for many people, but bound up in sociocultural practice,” she adds.

The social pressures of wearing a mask (or not)

But Man and others in the West are finding that wearing a masks represents can also draw unwanted attention, and even make them targets. Even as COVID-19 cases in the U.S. have surged to more than 1,300 (Hong Kong currently has 129 confirmed cases, about 100 fewer than the New York area), Man says about a quarter of her friends from Hong Kong, mainland China and South Korea won’t wear masks over concerns about racism and xenophobia that has risen with the virus.

And while most people in Hong Kong are masked up, there are outliers. Andy Chan, 29, says he thinks city-wide mask-wearing is fueling unnecessary panic.

“People look at me funny because I don’t wear a mask,” Chan says. “But I think the only thing that’s laughable is everyone buying into this excessive fear. People are being led by emotion, not science.”

Still, Charlotte Ho, a 55-year-old stay-at-home mother in Hong Kong, represents the majority view. She says she wouldn’t even leave her building to buy groceries without a mask. If she sees somebody not wearing a mask, she says she would stay away—”just in case.”

“Wearing a face mask is just common sense. It creates a barrier, so nothing can touch your nose and mouth. Why wouldn’t I wear a face mask?” Says Ho.

Source: Time