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Simone McCarthy
 

Why the sparsely-populated South Pacific islands have become the next US-China contest
 

The island nations that stretch across the South Pacific — sparsely populated atolls and volcanic archipelagos, known more for tourism than lucrative natural
resources — may not seem, at first glance, to be a major geopolitical prize.
 
Yet, Pacific Island countries have become the latest arena for a great power contest between the United States and China. 
 
That contest was thrown into sharp focus in recent days, as China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi completed a 10-day tour of eight countries to promote cooperation
and a sweeping, regional security and economic proposal with the potential to significantly ramp up Beijing's role in the South Pacific.
 
Wang's trip, and news of that proposed deal, sent the powers with longstanding relationships in the South Pacific — Australia, New Zealand, and the United
States — scrambling, with Washington pledging last week to intensify its own support of the region and Canberra dispatching its foreign minister on a dueling
diplomatic tour. 
 
China's bid for a larger, regional pact ultimately didn't win backing at a 10-country meeting last week, but Wang did leave behind a clear message of China's
interest in the region — and heightened concerns that these island nations, which carry a history of strategic importance, will have little choice but to navigate the
rising tensions between major powers. 
 
Island hopping
 
From the vantage point of Washington and Canberra, Beijing is bolstering ties with capitals across the South Pacific, so it can potentially seek to parlay
infrastructure deals, or even seemingly modest security agreements, into a military foothold. 
 
That would drive a wedge into the two countries' military presence in the South Pacific, where the US maintains military bases and a Compact of Free Association
with the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), and the Republic of Palau, which gives it military operating rights over
the airspace and waters of these nations. 
 
Australia operates its own navy in the region and has long maintained defense and security ties with neighboring island governments, including on peacekeeping
and military training. Both Australia and New Zealand are part of regional and bilateral security pacts in the Pacific.
 
"The islands sit astride a key passageway for US and Australian naval ships and merchant ships," said Timothy Heath, a senior international defense researcher
at the RAND Corporation in Arlington.
 
"If China could establish (military) basing rights, it could deploy warships and aircraft temporarily to the islands. (Its) ships and airplanes could threaten US and
Australian ships and aircraft that passed by," he said, adding that even a boosted presence, short of a military one, could help China "collect sensitive intelligence
on US and Australian military operations."
 
Winning friends 
 
China's interest in building rapport with the Pacific Islands countries is not new. In the early 2000s, as the US was turning its attention toward perceived threats in
the Middle East, a newly outward-looking China was starting on a path to become an economic and diplomatic partner for Pacific island countries — not least of
all as it sought to win friends away from Taiwan, which is now only formally recognized by four of 14 South Pacific nations, after the Solomon Islands and Kiribati
switched allegiance to China in 2019.
 
In recent years, China has backed widely publicized projects in some Pacific Island countries — a national sports stadium to host the Pacific Games in the
Solomon Islands, highways in Papua New Guinea, bridges in Fiji — and sent high-level envoys to the region, including two visits from Chinese leader Xi Jinping,
once in 2014 and again in 2018. It's also become a major trading partner for Pacific Island economies.
 
And while Australia has remained the top aid donor in the region for the past five years, according to data collected by the Australian think tank Lowy Institute,
experts say that in some parts, perceptions are that China is a more expedient partner than traditional donors.
 
"There is an assumption that China will do more," said Celsus Talifilu, a political adviser based in Solomon Island's Malaita Province, who has been an outspoken
critic of how the national government has handled its recent relations with China. 
 
"It may be that our politicians are thinking that it's easier to deal with China in terms of implementing things on the ground quickly, in comparison to other donors,"
he told CNN.
 
Containment concerns
 
Beijing's aggressive behavior in the South China Sea and its steadily expanding navy have changed how Washington views China's diplomacy and outreach,
including in the South Pacific. 
 
Concerns that Beijing may have military ambitions in the region were fueled in April after China and the Solomon Islands signed a security agreement, sparking
fears of creating an opening for China to establish a military presence in the country.
 
Wang, the foreign minister, has been quick to deny China's latest moves have had a military angle, saying flatly of the Solomons deal that Beijing did not intend to
build military bases and calling on observers "not to be too anxious" about China's overall aims in the region, where he said it has "no intention of scrambling for
influence."
 
Many observers say Beijing may be a long way from a military foothold, but agree that expanding its presence overseas would be a logical next step for an
ambitious power like China.
 
"As China grows it is little wonder that the Chinese security interest in the (South Pacific) region will also grow," said Denghua Zhang, a research fellow at The
Australia National University's Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs in Canberra.
 
One driver may be concerns, often discussed by Chinese scholars and strategists, of China being enclosed by the US and its allies. 
 
In an analysis the US Indo-Pacific strategy published last year, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences senior researcher Liu Ming and co-authors expressed this
concern, writing: "The [American] principle of containment is to politically isolate China throughout the region by expanding a network of allies and partners, so as
to draw more "Indo-Pacific" countries into the US camp." 
 
Read the full story here.
 
— By CNN's Simone McCarthy

Lift off!

Three Chinese astronauts blasted into space aboard the Shenzhou-14 spacecraft on Sunday morning from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi
Desert, Inner Mongolia in the third crewed mission to China’s new space station.
 
The team, which includes two veteran astronauts and one who is taking his inaugural mission to space, will continue construction on the  Tiangong Space
Station for six months before returning to Earth in December.
 
China plans to have Tiangong station, which launched last year, fully crewed and operational by December 2022, in what will be a major step for the country's
young space program, which is rapidly becoming one of the world's most advanced.
 

China's censorship of top livestreamer introduces fans to Tiananmen Square massacre 

For decades, the Chinese government has sought to erase all memories of its bloody military crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests, especially around the
anniversary on June 4.
 
But this year, those attempts backfired, drawing attention to and prompting questions about the massacre from previously oblivious young Chinese internet users.
 
The fiasco started on Friday evening when a show by Li Jiaqi, the country's top e-commerce livestreamer, ended abruptly after he and his co-host presented the
audience with a plate of Viennetta ice cream from the British brand Wall's.
 
The layered ice cream, garnished with Oreo cookies on its sides and what appeared to be a chocolate ball and a chocolate stick on top, resembled the shape of a
tank — an extremely sensitive icon to be displayed in public just hours before midnight June 4.
 
On the eve of June 4, 1989, Chinese leaders sent in tanks and heavily armed troops to clear Beijing's Tiananmen Square, where student protesters had gathered
for weeks to demand democracy and greater freedoms.
 
The crackdown, which killed hundreds, if not thousands, of unarmed protesters, is shunned in classrooms and strictly censored in the media and online. Censors
are particularly vigilant in the lead-up to its anniversary, swiftly scrubbing even the vaguest references — from candle emojis to coded phrases like "May 35" —
from the internet.
 
As a result, many young Chinese — especially those born after the massacre — have grown up with little knowledge of the tragedy.
 
So it is perhaps no surprise that many of Li's mostly young fans were puzzled by the sudden suspension of his Friday show, during which he sold a wide range of
snacks and drinks from cookies to sodas.
 
"What on earth happened to Li Jiaqi? All of a sudden his livestream is gone. Can anyone who knows about it tell us?" a user asked on Weibo, China's Twitter-like
platform.
 
It is not unlikely that Li himself, born in 1992, was also unaware of the symbolism. Having made his name as the "Lipstick King" after selling 15,000 lipsticks in just
five minutes in 2018, Li had been careful to stay in the good books of authorities. As many of his peers have found out, a careless political mistake risks losing
business sponsorships or worse.
 
Shortly after his livestream was cut, Li told his 50 million followers on Weibo that his team was fixing a "technical glitch" and asked them to "wait for a moment."
Two hours later, he apologized in another post that the live broadcast could no longer resume that evening due to "a failure of our internal equipment."
 
"Everybody please go to bed early. We will bring you the products that have not been broadcast (tonight) in future livestreams," he wrote.
 
But the promised livestreams never came. On Sunday, Li failed to show up for another scheduled show, further confounding and worrying fans.
 
On Monday, a search for Li's name no longer returned relevant results on Taobao, the online shopping site where Li's show was live streamed. He boasts 60
million followers on the site.
 
CNN has reached out for comments from Mei One, Li's agency; Unilever, the British multinational that owns Wall's; and Alibaba, the Chinese tech giant that owns
Taobao.
 
On Weibo, posts and comments linking the suspension of Li's broadcast to the tank-shaped ice cream started to proliferate. Some fans said they found out about
the sensitivity of the tank symbol by circumventing China's Great Firewall of online censorship, alluding to the massacre as "that event." The discussions
happened in veiled terms under the watchful eyes of censors, and many of them disappeared soon after they were posted.
 
Among the posts that remained visible were those that vowed to "trust our (Communist) Party and trust our state" despite learning about the crackdown. Others
said they believed Li was framed by "capitalists" or "foreign forces."
 
Eric Liu, an analyst at China Digital Times, a US-based news website tracking censorship in China, said the Chinese government was caught in an awkward
position -- if it censors Li's name entirely, it risks drawing even more attention to the case. Therefore, Weibo had to deploy a large amount of human power to
manually censor every post that mentions Li's name, Liu said.
 
"This is the Streisand effect," he said, referring to the unintended consequence of drawing attention to information by trying to have it censored.
 
"Censorship is all about keeping the truth from the public. But if people don't know about it, they are bound to keep making 'mistakes' like this," he said.
 
Similar incidents have happened before. Last year, Xiaohongshu, a Chinese social app similar to Instagram, had its Weibo account shut down after the company
asked in a post on June 4: "Tell me loudly, what is the date today?"

Nectar Gan is China Reporter for CNN International in Hong Kong. She covers the changes taking place in China, and their impact on the world.

Starbucks is reopening in Shanghai, a sign of hope as the city slowly emerges from its strict Covid restrictions.
 
Shanghai lifted its two-month lockdown on Wednesday. So far the  coffee chain  has reopened about 600 of its 940 stores in the city, according to Starbucks
spokesperson Jaime Riley.
 
Employees "are eager to be serving customers, reconnecting with their local communities, and contributing to the city's gradual return to normalcy," Riley said,
adding that "we are also working with the local authorities to gradually resume indoor dining as soon as possible."
 
China's biggest city was under some form of lockdown from late March until this week, leaving tens of millions of people confined at home, upending business in
virtually every sector and bringing the city to a standstill.
 
In the days since the city lifted its restrictions, residents have tried to return to normalcy. Photos provided by Starbucks show customers milling into Starbucks
Reserve Roastery in Shanghai, which reopened Friday.
 
Still, the city's reopening process may not be so smooth. Just a day after the official lifting of restrictions,  several Shanghai neighborhoods were locked
down again after Covid cases were discovered.
 
China's reopening is important to Starbucks, which sees the region as key to its future growth.
 
During the company's most recent earnings call in May, interim CEO Howard Schultz said he remains "convinced Starbucks' business in China will be eventually
larger than our business in the US."
 
He noted that "our aspirations around China have never been greater," but described the lockdowns as "unprecedented," adding that "conditions in China are
such that we have virtually no ability to predict our performance in China in the back half of the year."
 
Belinda Wong, the chairman of Starbucks China, added at the time that about a third of Starbucks Chinese restaurants were closed or open only for delivery and
pickup, and that most of the remaining stores were "operating under strict safety protocols that interfere with our traffic and operations."
 
There are currently about 5,600 Starbucks in China. The company wants to have 6,000 Chinese locations by the end of the year.
 
— By CNN's Danielle Wiener-Bronner
 Around Asia

South Korea and the United States responded to North Korea’s launch of eight missiles Sunday by firing eight more missiles into waters off the east coast
of the Korean peninsula Monday morning.
At least 49 people have been killed and more than 300 injured, after a fire tore through a container depot in southeastern Bangladesh over the weekend.
India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party said it suspended its spokeswoman Nupur Sharma in response to comments she made during a TV debate about
the Prophet Mohammed.
Two men will be executed in Myanmar by the military junta after their death sentence appeals were denied, the junta said Saturday, in what would mark
the first judicial executions in the country in decades.

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