In Hong Kong, students and teachers have been seeing a change in the classrooms this school year as a part of the National Security Law implemented by Beijing. Some – such as the two teachers in this story – are expressing concern and anxiety. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports on changes inside Hong Kong classrooms.
Camera: Bonnie Au Producer: Henry Hernandez
Teaching in Hong Kong ‘Risky Profession,’ Some Teachers Say
Hotel sector continues to face challenges in Asia Pacific
In the third quarter, the hotel sector continued to face challenges in Asia Pacific as the Delta variant infiltrates countries. Locally transmitted cases sprouted in China, impacting the market mostly led by domestic demand.
Demand remained subdued with Delta still very present
Further south, in Singapore, the rising number of new cases has led to several ‘Heightened Alerts’ and restrictions. However, demand remained relatively strong during school holidays and the Mid-Autumn festival, driven by domestic tourism.
The quarter was also marked by the partial reopening of Thailand to international visitors with the launch of the Sandbox initiative in Phuket and Koh Samui.
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New supply expected towards the end of the year
New supply remained limited in the region during the quarter, especially in markets with stricter border restrictions and controlled interstate movements such as in Hong Kong and Malaysia. We expect more supply to complete by the end of the year as owners and developers may want to coordinate the opening of the hotels with the announced reopening of borders. Meanwhile, in China, close to 3,000 keys should open by the end of 2021.
Growth in RevPAR remains driven by Chinese markets
As at YTD September 2021, the sector’s activity was mostly led by markets in China on the back of a strong domestic demand – both from the leisure and business segments. RevPAR in the country continued its impressive rise with a boost in both occupancy and ADR with the Mid-Autumn festival. In contrast, markets such as Bangkok witnessed a RevPAR decline year-on-year due to a lack of international travellers.
Growing optimism over plans of reopening borders
With higher vaccination rates, the region shows more and more confidence in…
Philippines retains GSP status under EEU
The Philippines continues to enjoy lower tariffs when exporting certain products to member states of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).
The EEU, which includes Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz and Armenia, retained the Philippines among the developing beneficiary countries subject to preferential tariffs under its Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) starting October 12.
This, even after the EEU Council decided to reduce the number of developing countries subject to preferential tariffs, which are preferentially applied to 75 percent of the basic tariff rate, from 103 countries/regions to just 29 countries.
Countries/regions that have transitioned from preferential tariffs to basic tariffs include Brazil, Vietnam, Hong Kong, India, China, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey and South Africa.
Compared to these countries, the Philippines continued to enjoy lower tariffs when exporting to EEU members.
In an earlier statement, the Department of Trade and Industry-Export Marketing Bureau (DTI-EMB) said products covered by the EEU GSP are eligible for a 25-percent discount on customs duties. These include food, furniture, and industrial goods.
Food products include meat, fish, fruits, coffee, cacao, coconut products, sauces, and condiments. Furniture, gifts, and houseware in the list are articles of wood, basket ware, artificial flowers, statuettes, ceramics, and imitation jewelry. Also included are industrial goods like natural rubber.
Meanwhile, the least developed countries that apply preferential tariffs, which are exempt from tariffs, have also been reduced from 50 to 48.
Vanuatu has moved to a regular favored country and Equatorial Guinea has been removed from the list.
The EEU includes high-income countries with gross national income (GNI) per capita of over $12,535 and high- and middle-income countries ($4,046- $ 12,535) classified by the World Bank as criteria for preferential countries/regions.
November 09, 2021
Report Indicates Greater Huawei Involvement in Surveillance
WASHINGTON —
The Chinese telecom giant Huawei has consistently claimed it does not actively partner with the Chinese government in gathering intelligence on individuals within China, but a report by The Washington Post this week showing the company appears to have marketed surveillance technology to government customers calls the company’s assertions into question.
The report comes as major parts of the large company’s operations remain severely restricted by sanctions imposed by the United States under former President Donald Trump, which were renewed, and in some cases tightened, by President Joe Biden.
The newspaper obtained more than 100 PowerPoint presentations that were briefly posted to a public page of the company’s website. The trove of documents suggests the company was marketing various surveillance-related services, including voice recognition technology, location tracking and facial-recognition-based area surveillance.
The presentations indicate the company also marketed systems meant to monitor prisons, like those in which China is currently believed to be holding an untold number of Uyghurs in the Western province of Xinjiang. The system tracked prisoners’ labor productivity, as well as their time spent in reeducation classes and data that might indicate the effectiveness of those classes.
Additionally, the materials appeared to market workplace surveillance tools, meant to monitor employees’ workplace performance and to spot workers who spend time resting or using personal electronics on the clock.
Huawei denial
In a statement provided to VOA, a Huawei spokesperson said, “Huawei has no knowledge of the projects mentioned in The Washington Post report.”
It continued, “Like all other major service providers, Huawei provides cloud platform services that comply with common industry standards. Huawei does not develop or sell systems that target any specific group of people and we require our partners comply with all applicable laws, regulations and business ethics. Privacy protection is our top priority and we require that all parts of our business comply with all applicable laws and regulations in the countries and regions where we operate.”
The Post, in its article, noted the company’s official watermark appeared on the pages of the PowerPoint presentation, and that several included a page noting a “Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.” copyright.
FILE – Mobile network phone masts are visible in front of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, Jan. 28, 2020. Britain is among countries that, because of security concerns, have begun removing Huawei equipment that already had been installed.
Electronic security experts said the revelation of the PowerPoint presentations linking Huawei to state security wasn’t surprising, despite the company’s denials.
“Huawei has been closely linked to the security services from the start,” Jim Lewis, senior vice president and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA.
Lewis said the warnings about the company have been coming from American officials since George W. Bush was president but had not been taken seriously until the past few years, when China became more aggressive about asserting itself on the world stage.
“What’s changed is the audience,” Lewis said. Between China’s and [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s behavior, people are willing to hear now about the problems with Huawei in a way they weren’t before.”
Punishing sanctions
The United States has, for several years, been warning that Huawei represents a security risk to the interests of the U.S. and its allies. Despite the company’s claims to the contrary, U.S. officials say they believe the company has close ties to Chinese state security agencies and that its telecommunications products could be used to gather information on, or disrupt the activities of, China’s rivals.
Officials also point to a law in China that obligates private companies to cooperate with government agencies in the collection of data deemed important to state security.
In 2019 and 2020, the U.S. began aggressively moving against Huawei on a number of fronts.
The Trump administration fought against the company’s effort to market the networking equipment necessary to roll out 5G wireless technology. 5G is the next generation of mobile connectivity and is expected to greatly enhance the ability of internet-connected devices to communicate, facilitating everything from self-driving vehicles to remote surgery.
The U.S. declared, among other things, it would cease sharing intelligence with allies who allow Huawei to supply critical pieces of their nations’ telecommunications infrastructure, arguing the company presented too much of a security risk.
As a result, a number of countries have barred the company’s technology from their 5G systems and others, including Britain, have begun the expensive process of removing Huawei equipment that already had been installed.
FILE – A smartphone with a Huawei logo is seen in front of an EU flag in this illustration taken Sept. 28, 2021.
Smartphone setback
Until recently, Huawei was one of the biggest sellers of smartphones in the world and enjoyed near-complete dominance in the Chinese market. Other sanctions levied against the company, however, have severely damaged that business.
The U.S. barred firms from licensing or selling the company technology critical to some of its products. That included Google, which in 2019 said it would no longer license its Android operating system — the world’s most popular — for use in new phones made by the company.
Intel and Qualcomm, two major makers of microchips, were banned from selling their most advanced technology to Huawei. The ban extended to contract chipmakers, like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., the world’s largest.
The result has been a drastic decline in the sale of Huawei smartphones, both globally and within China.
“The core of their devices business was smartphones, and their market share has just continued to decline,” Ryan Reith, a vice president with International Data Corporation, told VOA.
Reith said the prospects for recovery do not look good for the company’s smartphone business.
“We don’t see any way that the brand itself turns around,” he said. “So, it’s probably on its way out.”
US Builds New Software Tool to Predict Actions That Could Draw China’s Ire
U.S. military commanders in the Pacific have built a software tool to predict how the Chinese government will react to U.S. actions in the region like military sales, U.S.-backed military activity and even congressional visits to hotspots like Taiwan.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks was briefed on the new tool during a visit to the United States Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii on Tuesday.
“With the spectrum of conflict and the challenge sets spanning down into the grey zone. What you see is the need to be looking at a far broader set of indicators, weaving that together and then understanding the threat interaction,” Hicks said in an interview aboard a military jet en route to California.
The tool calculates “strategic friction,” a defense official said. It looks at data since early 2020 and evaluates significant activities that had impacted U.S.-Sino relations.
The computer-based system will help the Pentagon predict whether certain actions will provoke an outsized Chinese reaction.
In October, the Chinese military condemned the United States and Canada for each sending a warship through the Taiwan Strait, saying they were threatening peace and stability in the region.
The incident and others like it have fueled demand for the tool, the U.S. official said, to ensure the United States does not inadvertently upset China with its actions.
While relations between the United States and China are already at low point, the tool provides visibility across a variety of activities such as congressional visits to Taiwan, arms sales to allies in the region, or when several U.S. ships sailing through the Taiwan Strait could provoke an outsized or unintended Chinese reaction.
China claims democratically ruled Taiwan as its own territory, and has mounted repeated air force missions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) over the past year, provoking anger in Taipei.
The new software will allow U.S. officials to look forward at planned actions as far as four months in advance, the official said.
Hicks is touring U.S. bases this week while the Biden administration’s draft 2023 budget takes shape. The Department of Defense hopes to move budget dollars toward a military that can deter China and Russia.
Thai Hom Mali Rice Named World’s Best Rice for Second Consecutive…
BANGKOK (NNT) – Thailand’s fragrant jasmine rice has won the World’s Best Rice Award for the second consecutive year. The 13th World’s Best Rice award ceremony was held from December 7-9 in Dubai by t
TAT marks THAI’s new Sydney-Phuket flight with special marketing initiatives
Bangkok, 9 December, 2021 – The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has launched a host of special marketing initiatives to mark Thai Airways International’s (THAI) new three times weekly direct service between Sydney and Phuket, with the inaugural flight arriving at Phuket International Airport on 8 December, 2021.
Mr. Tanes Petsuwan, TAT Deputy Governor for International Marketing – Asia and the South Pacific, said,“This is the first time a direct Sydney-Phuket-Sydney route has been operated, and it represents a great opportunity to grow the Australian market not only to Phuket, but also to other picturesque destinations around Southern Thailand.”
THAI’s new Sydney-Phuket service, scheduled to depart from Sydney each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, is expected to carry about 90-140 passengers per flight during December 2021 and January 2022.
To mark the start of THAI’s new Sydney-Phuket, TAT arranged a warm welcome at Phuket International Airport. On hand for the arrival of the inaugural flight TG478 from Sydney on 8 December, 2021, was a welcoming souvenir and a special welcoming committee of high-ranking tourism officials. This included Mr. Tanes Petsuwan, TAT Deputy Governor for International Marketing – Asia and the South Pacific; Mr. Natthapong Phokairat, THAI Managing Director of the Ground Services Department;…
Several mask brands do not meet standards: TCC
BANGKOK (NNT) – An independent consumer protection agency said only a few face masks sold in the market are up to standards, with only 3 out of 14 brands tested meeting the quality criteria. Thailand
