China’s Soybean Diplomacy Makes a Comeback Ahead of Biden-Xi Meeting

Isis Almeida, Jennifer Jacobs and Jenny Leonard
Fri, November 10, 2023 


(Bloomberg) -- China is bringing back soybean diplomacy as the world’s second-largest economy seeks closer ties with the US ahead of a meeting between President Xi Jinping and his American counterpart Joe Biden.

The Asian nation, the world’s top soybean importer, bought more than 3 million metric tons of the commodity from the US just this week, a volume that surprised the market. The move is a gesture of goodwill ahead of Biden-Xi talks scheduled to take place in San Francisco next week, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named discussing governmental decisions.

This isn’t the first time China used the soybean for geopolitical leverage. Beijing bought and halted purchases of US supplies of the oilseed — used to make animal feed and cooking oil — several times throughout Donald Trump’s trade war. But recently, China has been scooping up cheaper Brazilian supplies instead.

As China seeks closer ties with the US — with various meetings between the two nations taking place recently — soybeans are again taking center stage. Just last month Chinese grain buyers including Cofco International Ltd. and Sinograin signed 11 agreements with crop traders such as Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., Bunge Ltd. and Cargill Inc. during a forum in Iowa, the first such deal since since the Trump-era trade dispute.

“There has certainly been a lot of ‘shuttle diplomacy’ over the past six months or so between the two countries,” said Stephen Nicholson, a global strategist for grains and oilseeds at Rabobank, one of the top lenders to the agriculture industry. “And of course, Biden is going to meet with Xi next week.”

Spokespeople for the Chinese embassy in Washington didn’t immediately comment. The White House declined to comment.

The latest purchases, which surprised the market this week, were led by state-owned Sinograin and will help bolster Chinese inventories. They also come the same week as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen hosted People’s Republic of China Vice Premier He Lifeng and ahead of the Nov. 15 Biden-Xi meeting on the sidelines of next week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

China bought American soybeans even though they are more expensive than Brazilian supplies, and processing margins are weak. The nation is purchasing more than it needs for domestic use, signaling it’s seeking to build stockpiles, said Alex Sanfeliu, head of world trading at Cargill, the world’s largest agricultural commodities trader.

“Xi’s visit is the only logical explanation why Sinograin would pay a big premium over Brazil beans,” said Ken Morrison, an independent commodity trader in St. Louis. “Sinograin has a dual role; they crush beans and they manage reserve stocks for the government. Crushing is very competitive in China as it is everywhere. Crushers don’t pay above-market prices.”

Purchase Politics

While there is “a little politics” to the purchases, US soybeans are also better to store than supplies from Brazil, said Dan Basse, president of Chicago-based consultants AgResource Co. That’s because Brazilian soybeans usually contain too much moisture and have a higher soyoil content, he said.

There are also some concern about the weather in Brazil, and long lines at the country’s ports. Falling prices in the US may also have lured buyers, said Chris Robinson, managing director of agriculture and commodities at TJM Institutional Services in Chicago.

“It certainly looks like the Chinese saw that six-month low as an opportunity,” he said.

China is seeking also closer ties with the Biden administration ahead of the 2024 presidential elections, two of the people said. There’s some anxiety in the country about the possibility of Trump returning to power when the Chinese economy isn’t as robust as it was during the trade war, the people said.

“The Chinese are pragmatic and they know in the long run, the US is too valuable of trading partner to leave behind,” Rabobank’s Nicholson said.

--With assistance from Michael Hirtzer, Tarso Veloso and Gerson Freitas Jr..


China just bought 3 million metric tons of American soybeans

Phil Rosen
Fri, November 10, 2023 


China purchased more than 3 million metric tons of US soy this week, reports said.

The move nods to a bigger appetite than expected for the commodity as top-producer Brazil faces headwinds.

Reuters reported that Tuesday saw China make the biggest one-day purchase of US soybeans in months.

China this week purchased more than 3 million metric tons of American soy, good for the biggest single-day purchase in at least three months.

Reuters reported on Tuesday that traders said Chinese importers secured roughly 10 cargoes of soybeans, or about 600,000 metric tons, for shipments coming from the Gulf Coast and Pacific Northwest to be delivered between December and March.

Bloomberg on Friday reported that China had nailed down orders of 3 million metric tons on Tuesday and Wednesday. The volume suggests a larger than expected appetite for the grain.

"China is stocking up, buying more quantities than everyone thought," the head of trading at Cargill, the world's largest crop trader, told Bloomberg.

The big purchase of the key agricultural commodity from the US comes as Brazil, the world's biggest soy supplier, faces production obstacles from a bout of unfavorable weather that could potentially diminish crop yields.

US producers have also faced headwinds of their own amid shipping disruptions and competition with Brazil, which despite recent weather concerns ,ultimately harvested a record soy crop this year.

Per Reuters, the US Department of Agriculture forecasts a 12% year-over-year decline for US sales to China of the commodity. October sales to China were 35% lower compared to the same month last year.

Xi Jinping’s ‘Old Friends’ from Iowa Get a Dinner Invitation

Jennifer Jacobs
Sat, November 11, 2023 a


(Bloomberg) -- A group of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “old friends” from Iowa have been invited to a dinner he will attend in California next week — 38 years after they welcomed the then-unknown party official for a hog roast, farm tours and a Mississippi River boat ride as they showed him how capitalists do agriculture.

“This has been a heck of a journey — we can’t figure it out. We don’t even know why he likes us!” said Sarah Lande, an 85-year-old Muscatine resident who has maintained connections with Xi since he made his first visit to the US as the leader of a food processing delegation from China’s Hebei Province in 1985.

“But we’re eager to meet with him, too. We’re regular, everyday people,” Lande added.

Xi’s warm and enduring bond with the Midwesterners he first encountered nearly four decades ago stands in contrast with the suspicions and acrimony that have characterized relations between the two largest economies over the last few years.

Both Xi and President Joe Biden, who plan to meet Wednesday during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, have taken recent diplomatic steps to ease the strains.

The Iowans’ invitations for the reception and dinner, on the sidelines of APEC, came through the the National Committee on US-China Relations and the US-China Business Council, in coordination with China’s embassy, Lande said.

The Iowans haven’t been told if they’ll get a private audience with Xi, who was 31 when they met him.

Terry Branstad, a former Iowa governor and US ambassador to China, has also been invited, according to an aide.

Earlier: China’s Soy Diplomacy Makes a Comeback Ahead of Biden-Xi Meeting

In 1985, Gary Dvorchak’s parents gave Xi his bedroom, decorated with Star Trek items, in their Muscatine home. Dvorchak and his sister Paula, who talked to the future Chinese leader about American movies, are on next week’s guest list.

So is Luca Berrone, then an Iowa economic development official, who drove Xi around to company sites including Monsanto Co., Cargill Inc. and Quaker Oats, grain and livestock farms, the Amana Colonies — a religious community known for its farming heritage and communal living — and Iowa State University in Ames.

“He wanted to learn how to feed his people,” Lande said in a telephone interview. Xi had read Mark Twain “and he really wanted to see the Mississippi,” she said. She hosted him for a potluck at her home overlooking the river.

Berrone’s stops with the four-member delegation and their interpreter included a farm in Coggon, a spot where Twain had hidden manuscripts in a wall. Berrone arranged hotels as well as home stays where none were available.

“We had a really good time in two weeks,” he said. “We were like the road movie — five or six guys on a road trip.”

‘You Are America’

The Iowans made an impression on Xi, said Ken Quinn, the former president of the World Food Prize Foundation, who is planning to attend the Bay Area dinner.

“He was not anyone special and the friendship they showed him touched him personally,” said Quinn, who met Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun, an architect of China’s economic opening, when he himself traveled to Iowa in 1980.

When Xi Jinping returned to the United States in 2012, as vice president and about to ascend to the presidency, he gathered with the “old friends” in Lande’s Muscatine home again. “He said, ‘You were the first people I met in America, and to me, you are America,’” she said.

That year, Xi invited more than a dozen of the Iowans to China, and “they had the whole thing set up in two months,” Lande said. “He was the top-down boss and he made it happen.”

Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan — a famous Chinese folk singer in her own right — threw a banquet for them. “She said, ‘Well, I just had to meet the people from Iowa,’” Lande recalled. “By the way, she is a lovely, beautiful lady. Her last remark was, ‘If we ever retire, I’m going to gather my daughter and we’re coming to Muscatine.’”

China’s embassy in Washington and the dinner’s organizers didn’t respond to requests for comment on Friday night.

The reunion aside, Iowa, a major soybeans and corn producer, has an interest in better relations between Washington and Beijing.

This week, China, a top soybean importer, bought more than 3 million metric tons of the commodity from the US, a volume that surprised the market. China had been buying cheaper Brazilian supplies and the move is a goodwill gesture ahead of the Biden-Xi talks, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named discussing governmental decisions.

Biden and Xi will meet in bid to ‘stabilise’ China-US relationship

Andrew Feinberg
Fri, November 10, 2023

President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will meet for the first time in a year next week, capping months of diplomacy by top US officials to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies and manage what Mr Biden has described as “strategic competition” between Washington and Beijing.

According to White House officials who briefed reporters on plans for the bilateral meeting, the two leaders will have their first sit-down since last year’s G20 summit during next week’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ meeting in San Francisco.

One senior administration official said the meeting would take place next Wednesday (15 November) in an unspecified location in the San Francisco Bay Area, but declined to offer further details, citing security considerations.

The official described the US position going into the leaders’ confab as one of relative strength, with the US economy booming thanks to “game-changing investments in American strength at home” delivered in bills signed by Mr Biden last year, including the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the bipartisan infrastructure law the president continues to tout as he pursues re-election.

“The United States has had the strongest recovery and lowest inflation of any leading economy. We've created 14 million jobs more in two years than any president in a four year term, we've had 21 straight months of unemployment under 4 percent for the first time in half a century and the US economy grew by 4.9 per cent in the third quarter,” the official said.

“Large scale investments in semiconductors and clean energy production are up 20 fold since 2019, we're estimating 3.5 trillion in public and private investment over the next six decades, construction spending on manufacturing has doubled”.

The official also pointed out that the US has spent the last year “having deepened our alliances and partnerships abroad in ways that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago” as Mr Biden has executed a long-touted refocusing of US foreign policy on shoring up alliances in the Indo-Pacific region.

Since he last met with Mr Xi in Indonesia last year, Mr Biden has hosted heads of state or government from Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, India and Australia for meetings at the White House, as well as a historic trilateral summit with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kashida at Camp David in August.

Mr Biden has also overseen the launch of expanded partnerships with Indo-Pacific allies, including the joint Australian-British-American agreement to enable the Royal Australian Navy to acquire and operate nuclear-powered, conventionally-armed submarines based on US and British technology.

The official also noted that Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin, UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US climate envoy John Kerry and the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have each visited the Indo-Pacific during the last week, and pointed out that Mr Biden will also meet with Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Monday before he leaves for San Francisco.

“After investing at home in strengthening ties with allies and partners abroad, now is precisely the time for high-level diplomacy,” said the official, who stressed that the “steady and consistent” approach the Biden Administration is taking towards China does not mean America is “stepping back from our interests and values” in favour of smoother relations with Beijing.

Indeed, the official noted that the Biden Administration has implemented new export controls on semiconductors and related manufacturing technology, as well as restrictions on Chinese investment in the US.

“We've taken actions against PRC entities involved in human rights abuses or slaver nonproliferation and supporting Russia's war in Ukraine, and we've continued to uphold freedom of navigation in the region by flying sailing and operating wherever international law allows,” the official said, adding the caveat that Mr Biden and his advisers are “clear-eyed” in their belief that “intense competition requires and demands intense diplomacy to manage tensions and to prevent competition from verging into conflict or confrontation”.

That “intense diplomacy” has involved months of high-level work by Mr Biden’s top aides, many of whom have made the trek to Beijing in efforts to restart bilateral communications after diplomatic and military tensions were inflamed by the US discovery and shootdown of an errand Chinese-owned spy balloon off the American east coast in February.

The last eight months have seen three separate meetings between Mr Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and his Chinese counterpart, as well as visits to Beijing by Mr Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

In turn, China’s vice president, foreign minister, vice-premier and other top PRC officials have trekked to Washington for reciprocal sit-downs, as the US and China have launched what a senior US official described as “working-level consultations ... in discreet, carefully-chosen areas” such as “arms control, maritime issues, and macro economic and debt issues”.

The planned meeting between Mr Biden and Mr Xi, who have known each other for roughly 12 years — since both men served as their respective countries’ vice presidents — will be the seventh interaction between the two leaders since Mr Biden took office in January 2021.

A senior White House official said the leaders are expected to “discuss strategic direction of the bilateral relationship the importance of maintaining open lines of communication,” including restarting the direct military-to-military communications channels that have been cut off since the spy balloon incident.

“We expect they'll cover a range of regional and global issues ... such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict. And they'll consider how we can work together where our interests align, particularly on transnational challenges that affect the international community such as climate and counter-narcotics,” they said.

In response to a query from The Independent, one of the officials who briefed reporters on Thursday said Mr Biden is also expected to offer a warning to Mr Xi against undertaking any influence operations or other efforts to interfere in the upcoming 2024 presidential election.

While White House officials took pains to stress that Mr Biden would surely raise “issues where we have differences” with Beijing — including human rights, the South China Sea, and relations with Taiwan, they also stressed that the dialog Mr Biden and Mr Xi will undertake is necessary, despite the failure of US efforts to encourage China to make changes in their political and economic system.

“We know efforts to shape or reform China, over several decades have failed, but we expect China to be around and to be a major player on the world stage for the rest of our lifetimes,” the official said. “We think diplomacy is how we clear up misperceptions signal, communicate, avoid surprises and explain our competitive steps. It is also how we work together where and when our interests align ... and deliver on key priorities for the American people”.

Biden's meeting with Xi: Details emerge of what leaders will discuss in San Francisco

Ukrainska Pravda
Fri, November 10, 2023 


US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will discuss restoring communication channels between the armed forces of their countries in San Francisco on 15 November.

Source: European Pravda, citing Financial Times

Details: The two sides are seeking to resume efforts to stabilise relations amid growing tensions over issues such as China's military activity near Taiwan and US efforts to prevent China from gaining access to the latest US technology.

US officials say the leaders will discuss a range of issues, including the prospect of restoring military communication channels that China closed last year after then-House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan.

"The president has been determined to take the necessary steps to restore what we believe are central communications between the US and China on the military side," one of the US officials stated.

Biden will express concern to Xi about China's "dangerous" and "provocative" military activity around Taiwan, he said.

Officials emphasised that the summit does not mean a change in US policy towards China but is a recognition that the states need effective communication channels.

Background:

Media reports suggested that Biden and Xi Jinping plan to hold bilateral talks in San Francisco on 15 November, when Asia-Pacific leaders will gather for their annual economic meeting.

On 27 October, Biden met with Wang Yi, China's Foreign Minister and Head of the Foreign Affairs Commission Office of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee. Before that, China's top diplomat also met with US State Secretary Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

These meetings were the latest in a series of high-level contacts between the US and China in an attempt to stabilise the fragile relationship between the two countries, which has been strained by the Taiwan dispute, China's aggressive actions at sea, the incident with the Chinese balloon shot down over US territory, and concerns about Chinese role in Russia's war against Ukraine.




Biden, Xi meeting set for next week in California

Morgan Chalfant
Fri, November 10, 2023 


The News

U.S. President Joe Biden will meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in California next week, senior Biden administration officials confirmed, and will urge China to restore military-to-military communications with the U.S. and discourage interference in Taiwan’s upcoming elections.

The meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit on Wednesday will be the first engagement between Biden and Xi since their talks in Bali about a year ago. It will cover a large range of issues, including matters of disagreement, like human rights, and areas where the U.S. hopes to work with China, like climate change.

One senior administration official told reporters the U.S. had communicated to the Chinese that “basically every element” of the bilateral relationship will be on the table for discussion, acknowledging that fentanyl and artificial intelligence may be among the topics discussed.

The Biden administration’s overarching goal going into the meeting is to stabilize relations between the U.S. and China at a time of high tensions on a range of issues, and administration officials are setting low expectations for any outcomes.

“We’re not talking about a long list of outcomes or deliverables,” a second senior administration official said. “The goals here really are about managing the competition, preventing the downside risk of conflict and ensuring channels of communication are open.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry also confirmed Friday that Xi would travel to San Francisco to attend APEC at Biden’s invitation.
Know More

While the meeting next week looks unlikely to result in major announcements, one area where there could be progress is the resumption of military-to-military communications, which China severed in protest of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last year. Axios reported this week that Biden and Xi planned to announce the resumption of military-to-military communications.

Biden and Xi will meet as the world grapples with two wars, and Biden administration officials said the U.S. president would raise both Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza war. Biden will ask China to use its influence with Iran to communicate to Tehran that it should not escalate the conflict in the Middle East, the first senior administration official said.

With the Taiwan elections approaching in January of next year, officials said they would make clear to the Chinese that the U.S. does not support Taiwan’s independence and that China should not meddle in Taiwan’s elections.
Step Back

Relations between the U.S. and China are at a low point, exacerbated by the Chinese spy balloon that traversed the U.S. at the beginning of the year and was shot down by the U.S. military. The incident forced Secretary of State Antony Blinken to delay a planned trip to China.

The U.S. has been stepping up engagement with China in the months since, sending multiple Cabinet officials to Beijing to meet with Chinese officials in hopes of opening up more lines of communication between the two countries.
Notable

The Biden administration hopes to reach an agreement with China to curb the flow of fentanyl into the U.S., according to NBC News.


The top Democrat on the House select committee on China told Semafor that Biden should press Xi on human rights and economic issues, while working to restore the Fulbright student exchange program and increase commercial flights between both countries.

Xi, Biden to meet in US next week for first talks in a year

Danny KEMP
Fri, November 10, 2023 

US President Joe Biden and China's President Xi Jinping last met in Bali in November 2022 (SAUL LOEB)

US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will hold their first meeting in nearly a year next week on the sidelines of the APEC summit in San Francisco, officials from the rival superpowers said Friday.

The meeting will be held Wednesday and the two leaders will discuss a range of bilateral, regional and global issues as well as ways to "responsibly manage competition," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Xi will travel to San Francisco from November 14-17 for the "China-US heads of state meeting," while also confirming for the first time that he plans to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' gathering.

The Xi-Biden summit follows a series of meetings in recent months between high-level officials in Beijing, Washington and elsewhere, but will be the leaders' first encounter since November 2022 in Bali.

Wednesday's meeting will aim to "stabilize" relations that have since plunged into deep freeze, a senior US official said, cautioning not to expect major outcomes.

Biden and Xi will also discuss pressing global crises such as the Israel-Hamas war and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as well as tensions over the flashpoint island of Taiwan, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

While Biden, 80, and Xi, 70, are both attending the APEC summit in San Francisco, officials would not say whether their meeting would happen in the city itself.

"Our goal will be to try to take steps that indeed stabilize the relationship between the United States and China, remove some areas of misunderstanding and open up new lines of communication," added the official.

"We are in competition with China, but we do not seek conflict, confrontation or a new Cold War. We're for managing the competition responsibly."

- 'Nothing held back' -

Washington and an increasingly assertive China have been at odds in recent years with both countries vying for global influence, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.

Biden and Xi made encouraging noises after the Bali talks but tensions have repeatedly flared since, with the United States protesting earlier this year what it described as a Chinese surveillance balloon over US soil.

China in turn has been outraged by growing US pressure including restrictions on high-tech chips, which Washington fears Beijing will put to military use.

Tensions are particularly high over Taiwan, the self-ruled democracy that Beijing claims and has not ruled out taking by force.

Biden was expected to warn Xi against any attempt to meddle in Taiwan's elections next year and to urge against further military exercises of the kind China staged near Taiwan last year after a visit by members of the US Congress.

"Interference in the Taiwan election is something we're extremely concerned about. And of course, we'll plan on delivering that message again," a second US official said.

US officials said the Biden-Xi talks would be "very broad" and that they were "not talking about a long list of outcomes or deliverables" at the end.

"Nothing will be held back, everything will be on the table," the first US official said.

But Biden and Xi were expected to discuss the "absolutely crucial" issue of restoring a US-China military hotline to prevent any escalations between the two countries.

"We expect they'll cover a range of regional and global issues too, such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict," the second US official said.

dk/caw/des/pbt

China has a sweeping vision to reshape the world — and countries are listening

Simone McCarthy, CNN
Thu, November 9, 2023 

Xi Jinping has a plan for how the world should work, and one year into his norm-shattering third term as Chinese leader, he’s escalating his push to challenge America’s global leadership — and put his vision front and center.

That bid was in the spotlight like never before last month in Beijing, when Xi, flanked by Russian President Vladimir Putin, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, and some two dozen top dignitaries from around the world, hailed China as the only country capable of navigating the challenges of the 21st century.

“Changes of the world, of our times, and of historical significance are unfolding like never before,” Xi told his audience at the Belt and Road Forum. China, he said, would “make relentless efforts to achieve modernization for all countries” and work to build a “shared future for mankind.”

Xi’s vision — though cloaked in abstract language — encapsulates the Chinese Communist Party’s emerging push to reshape an international system it sees as unfairly stacked in favor of the United States and its allies.

Viewed as a rival by those countries as its grows increasingly assertive and authoritarian, Beijing has come to believe that now is the time to shift that system and the global balance of power to ensure China’s rise — and reject efforts to counter it.

In recent months, Beijing has promoted its alternative model across hefty policy documents and new “global initiatives,” as well as speeches, diplomatic meetings, forums and international gatherings large and small — as it aims to win support across the world.

For many observers, this campaign has raised concern that a world modeled on Beijing’s rules is also one where features of its iron-fisted, autocratic rule — like heavy surveillance, censorship and political repression — could become globally accepted practices.

But China’s push comes as American wars overseas, unstable foreign policy election-to-election, and deep political polarization have intensified questions about US global leadership. Meanwhile pressing issues like climate change, Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s assault on Gaza have sharpened discussion over whether the West is taking the right approach to respond.

All this coincides with longstanding calls from countries across the developing world for an international system where they have more say.

Many of those countries have substantially enhanced their economic ties with Beijing during Xi’s rule, including under a decade of his up to $1 trillion global infrastructure building drive, which leaders gathered to celebrate last month in the Chinese capital.

It remains to be seen how many would welcome a future that hews to China’s worldview — but Xi’s clear push to amplify his message amid a period of unrelenting tensions with the Washington elevates the stakes of the US-China rivalry.

And as the procession of world leaders who have visited Beijing in recent months, including for Xi’s gathering last month, make clear: while many nations may be skeptical of a world order pitched by autocratic China — others are listening.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders pose for a group photo during the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing last month. - Shen Hong/Xinhua/Getty Images

‘Shared future’

A more than 13,000-word policy document released by Beijing in September outlines China’s vision for global governance and identifies what it sees as the source of current global challenges: “Some countries’ hegemonic, abusive, and aggressive actions against others … are causing great harm” and putting global security and development at risk, it reads.

Under Xi’s “global community of shared future,” the document says, economic development and stability are prioritized as countries treat each other as equals to work together for “common prosperity.”

In that future, they’d also be free of “bloc politics,” ideological competition and military alliances, and of being held responsible for upholding “‘universal values’ “defined by a handful of Western countries,” the document says.

“What the Chinese are saying … is ‘live and let live,’ you may not like Russian domestic politics, you might not like the Chinese political regime — but if you want security, you will have to give them the space to survive and thrive as well,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington.

This vision is woven through three new “global initiatives” announced by Xi over the past two years focusing on development, security and civilization.

The initiatives echo some of Beijing’s long-standing talking points and are largely short on detail and heavy on rhetoric.

But together, analysts say, they present a case that a US-led system is no longer suited for the current era — and signal a concerted push to reshape the post-World War II order championed by it and other Western democracies.

That current international framework was designed to ensure, in theory at least, that even as governments have sovereignty over their countries, they also share rules and principles to ensure peace and uphold basic political and human rights for their populations.

China has benefited from that order, supercharging its economy off World Bank loans and expanded opportunities under the World Trade Organization, which Washington backed Beijing to join in 2001 in the hope it would help liberalize the Communist country.

Just over two decades later, Beijing is chafing under it.

The US and its allies have watched warily as Beijing has not only grown economically competitive, but increasingly assertive in the South China Sea and beyond and more repressive and authoritarian at home.

This has driven Washington’s efforts to restrict Chinese access to sensitive technology and impose economic sanctions, which Beijing sees as bald-faced actions to suppress and contain it.

The US and other nations have decried Beijing’s intimidation of the self-ruling democracy of Taiwan and tried to hold it to account for alleged human rights violations in Tibet, Hong Kong, and Xinjiang, the latter of which a UN human rights office last year said could amount to “crimes against humanity” — a charge Beijing denies.

Riot police stand guard during a June 2019 protest in Hong Kong against a proposed extradition law that would have allowed extradition of fugitives to mainland China. - Sanjit Das/Bloomberg/Getty Images

In response, Xi has ramped up longstanding efforts to undercut the concept of universal human rights.

“Different civilizations” had their own perceptions of shared human “values,” Xi told leaders of political parties and organizations from some 150 countries earlier this year as he launched China’s “Global Civilization Initiative.” Countries wouldn’t “impose their own values or models on others” if China were setting the agenda, he implied.

This builds on Beijing’s argument that governments’ efforts to improve their people’s economic status equates to upholding their human rights, even if those people have no freedom to speak out against their rulers.

It also links to what observers say is growing confidence among Chinese leaders in their governance model, which they see as having played a genuinely positive role to foster economic growth globally and reduce poverty — in contrast to a US that has waged wars, sparked a major global financial crisis and faces fraught politics at home.

“All this makes China think America is quickly declining,” said Shanghai-based foreign policy analyst Shen Dingli, who says this feeds Xi’s drive not to overturn the existing world order, but revamp it.

Beijing, he added, sees the US as merely “paying lip service” to the “liberal order” to hurt other countries.

“(China asks) ‘who is more prone to peace and who is less capable of leading the world?’ This has beefed up China’s self-image, (and this idea that) ‘We are great and we should be greater — and we should let the world realize it’s our time,’” he said.
Who’s listening?

For strongmen leaders and autocratic governments, Xi’s vision has obvious appeal.

While Russia’s Putin, accused of war crimes and continuing his brutal invasion of neighboring Ukraine, and Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders are shunned in the West, both were welcomed to Xi’s table of nations in Beijing last month.

Just weeks earlier, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad — who has been accused of using chemical weapons against his own people — was feted at the Asian Games in Hangzhou, where he arrived on a Chinese-chartered jet and visited a famous Buddhist temple.

A headline in the state-run Global Times portrayed Assad’s visit as one from the leader of a “war-torn country respected in China amid Western isolation” — providing a glimpse into the through-the-looking glass scenarios that could become the norm if Xi’s world view gains traction.

But Beijing’s broader argument, which implies that a handful of wealthy, Western countries hold too much global power — resonates with a wider set of governments than just those at loggerheads with the West.

Those concerns have come into sharper focus in recent weeks as global attention has focused on Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza following the October 7 attack on its territory by Hamas. The US has been in the minority opposed to broad global backing for an immediate humanitarian truce — and its support of Israel is seen in much of the world as enabling the country to continue its retaliation, despite mounting civilian casualties.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is welcomed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a ceremony at the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing last month. - Sergei Savostyanov/Sputnik/Reuters

In recent years, even some countries that have for decades embraced a close partnership with the US have drawn closer to China and its vision.

“Pakistan aligns with Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s view that a new global era is emerging, characterized by multipolarity and a departure from Western dominance,” said Ali Sarwar Naqvi, a former Pakistani ambassador, now executive director of the Center for International Strategic Studies in Islamabad.

But there are also many governments that also remain wary of its politics and ambitions, or of appearing to side with Beijing over the West.

“We’ve kept our relationship with all nations open,” Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape told CNN on the sidelines of the Belt and Road Forum last month, where he delivered a speech calling for more green energy investment in his country under the China-led initiative.

“We relate to the West, we relate to the East … We maintain a straight line, we don’t compromise our friendship with all people,” he said.

And while others may be ready to back China in calling for a more representative international system — there are questions about what that means under Beijing’s leadership.

“China can count on Brazil day and night to say that multilateralism is important, and we have to revisit global governance … however, there’s a very important ‘but,’” according to Rubens Duarte, coordinator of LABMUNDO, a Brazil-based research center for international relations.

He points to questions circulating within some countries, like Brazil, about why China is now championing concepts promoted in the Global South for 70 years — and claiming them as its own.

“Is China really trying to promote multipolarity — or does China just want to (become a) substitute (for) US influence over the world?” he asked.

A passenger gets off a Chinese-funded high-speed train after its commercial operations launched last month in Indonesia. - Li Zhiquan/China News Service/VCG/Reuters
Expanding ambitions

For decades, China has built its international influence around its economic clout, using its own rapid transformation from a deeply impoverished country to the world’s second largest economy as a model it could share with the developing world.

It was in this vein that Xi launched his flagship Belt and Road financing drive in 2013, drawing dozens of borrowing nations closer to Beijing and expanding China’s international footprint a year after he became leader with the pledge to “rejuvenate” the Chinese nation to a place of global power and respect.

“China’s traditional (foreign policy) thinking was very heavily focused on economic capability as the foundation for everything else. When you become an economic power, you also naturally acquire greater political influence and soft power, et cetera — everything else will fall in line,” said Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank in Washington.

But as China’s economic rise has come alongside geopolitical friction with the US and its allies, Beijing has seen the need to expand its vision “and tackle geopolitical issues as well,” Zhao added.

The war in Ukraine has only heightened this dynamic. China’s key economic partners in Europe tightened ties with the US and reassessed their relationships with Beijing after it refused to condemn the Kremlin’s invasion, while at the same time Washington shored up relations with allies in Asia.

This “served as a wake-up call to the Chinese that the great power competition with the United States, ultimately, is about (winning over) the rest of the world,” said Sun from the Stimson Center in Washington.

A Chinese vessels operate near Scarborough Shoal in a disputed area of the South China Sea. - Ted Aljibe/AFP/Getty Images

Then, faced with mounting pressure from the West to condemn Moscow’s invasion of a sovereign country, Beijing instead used the moment to argue its own view for global security.

Two months after Russian troops poured into Ukraine, Xi announced China’s “Global Security Initiative,” declaring at an international conference that “bloc confrontation” and “Cold War mentality” would “wreck the global peace framework.”

It was an apparent reference not to the Russian aggressor, but to NATO, which both Moscow and Beijing have blamed for provoking the war in Ukraine.

Xi’s words were far from new for Beijing, but Chinese diplomats in the following months ramped up their promotion of that rhetoric, for example calling on their counterparts in Europe’s capitals, as well as the US and Russia, to build a “sustainable European security architecture,” to address the “security deficit behind the (Ukraine) crisis.”

The rhetoric appeared to catch on, with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva days after returning from a state visit to China this spring calling on Washington to “to stop encouraging war.”

This gets to the heart of Beijing’s aims, which experts say are not to build its own alliances or use its military might to guarantee peace in volatile situations, as the US has done.

Rather, it looks to cast doubt on that system, while projecting its own, albeit vague, vision for countries ensuring peace through dialogue and “common interests” — a phrasing that again pushes back against the idea that countries should oppose one another based on political differences.

‘“If a country … is obsessed with suppressing others with different opinions it will surely cause conflicts and wars in the world,” senior military official Gen. Zhang Youxia told delegations from more than 90 countries attending a Beijing-led security forum in the capital last month.

Beijing has said its model is already successful, pointing to its role brokering a restoration of ties between longtime rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran in March. It also dispatched an envoy to the Middle East following the outbreak of the latest conflict, pledging to “make active efforts” to de-escalate the situation — though Beijing’s readouts of his trip made no mention of any stop in Israel or Palestine.

But Xi’s rhetoric falls flat for many countries that see China and its rapidly modernizing military as the leading aggressor in Asia and which question its support for Russia despite Moscow’s flagrant violation of international law as it invaded Ukraine.

Speaking to CNN in September, Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. accused China of bullying smaller countries as it expanded control of disputed areas of the South China Sea in violation of a ruling from an international tribunal.

“If we don’t (push back), China is going to creep and creep into what is within our sovereign jurisdiction, our sovereign rights and within our territory,” he said.
Alternative architecture

Beijing’s effort to broadcast its vision to reshape the world order is enabled by an extensive network of international organizations, regional dialogues and forums that it has cultivated in recent decades.

Bolstering those groups — and positioning them as alternative international organizations to those of the West — has also emerged as a key part of Xi’s strategy to reshape global power, experts say.

This summer both the China and Russia-founded Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) security grouping and the BRICS group of emerging economies increased their numbers – and acted as a platform for Xi to promote his brand of geopolitics.

Countries should “reform global governance” and stop others from “ganging up to form exclusive groups and packaging their own rules as international norms,” Xi told leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa after they invited Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to join BRICS — the group’s first expansion since 2010.

Weeks later, he appeared to underline his preference for his own alternative architecture — skipping out on the Group of 20 summit hosted by New Delhi, where US President Joe Biden and other Group of Seven leaders were in attendance.

But besides the splashy, high-profile events on China’s diplomatic calendar, officials are also broadcasting China’s vision and pitching its new initiatives throughout ministerial or lower-level regional dialogues with counterparts from Southeast Asia to Latin America and the Caribbean — as well as topical forums on security, culture and development with international scholars and think tanks, official documents show.

So far, China has appeared to have little trouble getting dozens of countries to at least cursorily back aspects of its vision — even if it’s typically not clear who all these supporters are or whether their backing comes with any tangible commitment.

BRICS leaders gather in Brazil in 2019. - Sergio Lima/AFP/Getty Images

China’s Foreign Ministry earlier this year claimed more than 80 countries and organizations had “expressed approval and support” for the Global Security Initiative.

According to Beijing, the economic-focused “Global Development Initiative,” launched in 2021 to support United Nations sustainability goals, boasts some 70 countries in its “Group of Friends” — hosted under the auspices of the UN.

This chimes with China’s long-held strategy to win broad backing for its position against that of Western countries in the UN and other international organizations, where Beijing has also been pushing for a bigger role.

But in addition to how much tangible support Beijing can garner, a key hanging question also remains over whether Xi’s ambitions are limited to efforts to dominate the global narrative and shift the rules in China’s favor or if he wants to truly assume a role as the world’s dominant power.

There is a broad gap between China’s power and military capacity relative to that of the US — and the potential for an ailing economy to slow its rise.

For now, experts say, China appears focused on shifting the rules to undercut American credibility to intervene or hold countries to account for domestic issues — be they civil conflicts or human rights violations.

Success doing that could have implications for how the world responds to any potential future move it could take to gain control of Taiwan — the self-ruled, democratic island the Communist Party claims.

But China’s actions in Asia, where its military has become increasingly assertive, while decrying US military presence, suggest to many observers that Beijing does hope to dominate the region.

They also raise questions about how a more militarily and economically powerful China would behave globally, if left unchecked.

China, however, has denied ambitions of dominance.

“There is no iron law that dictates that a rising power will inevitably seek hegemony,” Beijing said in its policy document in September. “Everything we do is for the purpose of providing a better life for our people, all the while creating more development opportunities for the entire world.”

Then, in an apparent reference to its own belief, or hope, for the trajectory of the US, it added: “China understands the lesson of history — that hegemony preludes decline.”

Detained, missing or under investigation: Business leaders in China face an ‘aggressive’ crackdown

Analysis by Laura He, CNN
Fri, November 10, 2023 at 4:57 PM MST·6 min read

Business leaders in China are under immense pressure, as the country’s leader Xi Jinping intensifies a regulatory crackdown on companies and strengthen s its control of the economy.

This year, more than a dozen top executives from sectors including technology, finance and real estate have gone missing, faced detention or been subjected to corruption probes.

Even international consulting firms have been caught up in the sweep. They face rising risks, including the possibility of police raids and detentions of staff, in the world’s second largest economy.

The crackdown, driven by the Communist Party’s desire for control and its heightened concerns about national security, has continued even though the Chinese economy is on wobbly ground with private investments plunging since June.

Even though Beijing has sought to reassure entrepreneurs and foreign investors that China is open for business, experts say the steady stream of investigations — including cases of detention — are unsettling executives.

“Over the last decade, China has entered a new phase of regulatory control over the private sector and foreign investors,” said Doug Guthrie, a professor and the director of China Initiatives at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management.

“The message was clear: Regardless of global financial status, if you are a Chinese company, you will work with the Chinese government first and foremost; and if you do not, you will suffer significant consequences,” Guthrie added.
A sudden disappearance

Just this week, the Cover News, a state-owned media outlet, reported that the founder and CEO of DouYu, a Chinese live-streaming service backed by Tencent, had been unreachable in recent days, citing unconfirmed reports that he was being investigated.

It didn’t say which authorities were behind the possible investigation.

Another state-owned outlet, the Paper, reported that Chen had been missing since October.

A DouYu spokesperson told CNN that its “business operations remain normal,” adding that it would announce “any significant news or material activities” in a “timely manner.”

Chen’s disappearance came five months after the Cyberspace Administration of China launched an onsite inspection of Douyu to investigate what it called “serious” problems related to the platform, including alleged pornography and “vulgar” content, according to a May statement from the internet watchdog.

Another executive, Zhao Bingxian, a business man dubbed “China’s Warren Buffett” because of his reputation for making lucrative investments, was detained by authorities, his company, Wohua Pharmaceutical, said on Monday.

Zhao was assisting supervisory and anti-corruption agencies in investigations, the Shenzhen-listed company said in an exchange filing, without elaborating. The investigation was not related to the company, it said.

Zhao is chairman of Wohua Pharmaceutical and several other listed companies. A former banker, he has invested in a series of Chinese companies since 2000 and brought their shares to the public markets in mainland China and Hong Kong.

Earlier this year, Chinese officials had signalled that they would wind down their campaigns against tech and financial companies as part of a policy shift intended to focus on economic growth.

But Guthrie said this type of “aggressive corporate governance” was still going on and would continue into the future.

“Beijing will use selective cases to send signals to the market that behaviours and practices that do not fit with the central government’s goals will not be tolerated,” he said. “The cases of DouYu and Shandong Wohua are very clearly part of this continuing trend.”

Other top business leaders have also been facing scrutiny.

In a brief statement on Wednesday, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) and the National Supervisory Commission said Zhou Zheng, former deputy general manager of COFCO Group, China’s largest state-owned food manufacturer and processor, was being investigated.

Zhou was “suspected of seriously violating rules and laws,” the two anti-corruption watchdogs said, without giving further details.

The probe into Zhou follows a similar investigation into Zhang Hongli, a former senior executive at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, one of China’s “Big Four” lenders, according to the CCDI.

Bao Fan, a star investment banker and tech dealmaker, was also caught up in the sweep. In May, Chinese state media reported that Bao had been in the custody of the anti-graft agency since his disappearance in February.

So far this year, the commission has already investigated more than a dozen senior executives at the country’s most important financial institutions, according to a previous CNN analysis of statements posted on the CCDI’s website.
No end in sight

The crackdown this year has spooked the business community in China, but it is not unfamiliar. Xi launched a sweeping regulatory crackdown on the private sector in 2020, which wiped trillions of dollars off the market value of Chinese companies worldwide. Five years earlier, there was a spate of top executives going missing.

The decline in business sentiment is apparent. Recent official data showed that private sector investment had dropped 0.6% in the first nine months of this year, compared to growth of 7.2% growth in the state sector.

In the third quarter, a gauge of foreign direct investment slipped into negative territory for the first time since 1998, underscoring the outflow of capital.

Beijing has rolled out a spate of measures to try to restore confidence, including a 31-point plan in July pledging to improve the business environment, but experts say those may not be enough to undo the damage.

People wear protective masks as they walk across a bridge over the Liangma River on May 24 in Beijing. - Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

The latest cases of missing or detained executives will not boost investors’ sentiment.

“For foreign companies that are largely trying to gain access to China vast consumer markets, and in particular attempting to do so through closely regulated sectors — namely, technology, finance, and education — some will undoubtedly be scared away,” Guthrie said.

Mauro Guillen, a professor of multinational management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said it will further harm China’s investment outlook.

Global investors are already weary about rising tensions between China and the West, as well as the country’s sluggish growth and large corporate debt, he said.

“President Xi is prioritizing geopolitical influence over the economy, not fully realizing that you need a strong economy to have influence in the world,” Guillen said. “[He] should focus on growth for a couple more decades.”

Electric heavy lorries poised to overtake hydrogen truck

Pierre-Henry DESHAYES
Sat, 11 November 2023 

Mercedes Benz Trucks' eActros 600 electric long-distance lorry (Daniel Bockwoldt)

Hydrogen-powered heavy lorries were once seen as the future of emissions-free road transport but they could soon be relegated to niche markets in Europe, overtaken by electric trucks.

On the outskirts of Trondheim in western Norway, food wholesaler Asko has since 2020 been testing four hydrogen fuel cell trucks supplied by Swedish truckmaker Scania.

The experience has been mixed so far.

Integration problems, defective parts and a forced stoppage after the explosion of a charging station near Oslo have meant the vehicles have been available for use only 30 to 40 percent of the time.

"They're not on the road as much as we would have liked. That's the least we can say," admits Asko project head Roger Saether.

"But we're convinced that it will all work out in the end."

When they're running, the trucks, which have a range of up to 500 kilometres (310 miles), supply supermarkets spread across a vast region.

For closer deliveries, the group uses battery-run vehicles, which today have a shorter range.

That distribution of roles -- hydrogen lorries for heavy loads over long distances, electric ones for lighter loads on short distances -- has long been accepted as standard among industry experts due to the advantages and disadvantages of each technology.

But things are changing.

"Now what we're seeing is that contrary to a few years ago, electric trucks and buses are actually playing an increasingly big role and we also see a very important role for them to play in the decarbonisation (process)," said Fedor Unterlohner, freight manager at NGO Transport and Environment.

- Electric Avenue -

Heavy duty vehicles account for six percent of the European Union's greenhouse gas emissions.

Brussels has called for the industry to reduce its emissions by 45 percent compared to 2019 levels by 2030, and by 90 percent by 2040.

According to a study conducted last year by German authorities, truckmakers expect 63 percent of new lorries sold in Europe in 2030 to be "zero emission" vehicles.

Electric trucks are expected to make up the lion's share, with 85 percent.

That's because previous concerns about electric trucks have been eliminated as, unlike hydrogen, the technology for electric trucks has benefitted from advances made in the electric car industry.

Range?

Most heavy trucks in Europe drive fewer than 800 kilometres a day, a distance that could soon be within reach of electric batteries -- especially given drivers' strictly regulated breaks, during which they can recharge their vehicles.

Payload limited by the batteries' weight?

The amount of energy batteries can store continues to improve, to the point where the weight difference compared to a diesel truck is expected to become insignificant.

Infrastructure?

So-called megawatt charging stations are currently being developed and should soon be able to provide 10 times more power than the fastest charging stations currently available.

- Economies of scale -

When it comes to cost -- a crucial factor, given the narrow margins in the transport sector -- electric trucks hold the advantage.

Purchase prices benefit from economies of scale generated by the rapid development of electric car batteries.

Operating costs are also modest, with e-trucks requiring little maintenance and electricity normally much less expensive than green hydrogen.

However, in some cases hydrogen lorries could be the wiser choice.

"For example, if you are driving with two drivers in Europe -- which allows drivers to skip regulated breaks.

"Or when you are in very peripheral regions. Or on islands where you don't have any connection to the grid," said Unterlohner.

"Or if you're transporting an 80-tonne wind turbine through Germany, where you have to block the roads in the night and you have to work all night. Then it may make sense," he said.

But even Scania, which has supplied the four hydrogen trucks to Asko, has chosen to focus on electric heavy trucks "due to their cost advantage in total operation economy and fuel efficiency".

"For some geographies and operations ... we see that the hydrogen-fuelled vehicles might be a viable technology," Scania senior official Peter Forsberg said.

"Therefore we have initiated some activities in order to learn how the hydrogen eco system might play out."

phy/po/gil

An EU plan aimed at fighting climate change will go to final votes, even if watered down

Fri, November 10, 2023


BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union institutions and conservationists on Friday gave a conditional and guarded welcome to a major plan to better protect nature and fight climate change in the 27-nation bloc.

The plan is a key part of the EU’s vaunted European Green Deal that seeks to establish the world’s most ambitious climate and biodiversity targets and make the bloc the global point of reference on all climate issues. Yet it has had an extremely rough ride through the EU's complicated approval process and only a watered-down version will now proceed to final votes.

Late Thursday's breakthrough agreement between parliament and EU member states should have normally been the end of the approval process. But given the controversy the plan had previously stirred, the final votes - normally a rubberstamp process - could still throw up some hurdles.

The plan has lost some of its progressive edge during negotiations over the summer because of fierce opposition in the EU's legislature, particularly from the Christian Democrat EPP, the largest of the political groups.

"The final text on this law has little to do with the original proposal,” said EPP legislator Christine Schneider. The EPP opposition also highlighted the core struggle in Europe over how to deal with climate issues. Despite the succession of droughts, floods and heat waves that have swept through many areas in Europe, the EPP wants to hit the pause button on environmental action and concentrate on economic competitiveness first over the next five years.

Under the plan, member states would have to meet restoration targets for specific habitats and species, with the aim of covering at least 20% of the region’s land and sea areas by 2030. But the negotiations were plagued by quarrels over exemptions and flexibility clauses allowing member states to skirt the rules.

“Negotiators have hollowed out the law to the point that it risks being toothless in practice and prone to abuse,” said Ioannis Agapakis, a lawyer at the ClientEarth conservation group. He said the weakening of provisions “have set a very frightening precedent for EU law-making, rather than cementing the EU at the forefront of biodiversity conservation.”

But the EPP, other conservatives and the far right have insisted the plans would undermine food security, fuel inflation and hurt farmers.

The EU's main agricultural group, COPA-COGECA, said that despite the concessions in the new plan, “the overall final compromise reverts to a totally unrealistic proposal for farmers and forest-owners.”

The group said that with the plan as it stands, “no MEP can now say that the text proposed for ratification will not have major impacts on our production, our competitiveness, the EU trade balance, or the consumption price for millions of Europeans.”

The EPP's Schneider still did not give the plan the wholehearted support of her group for the last votes in parliament, leaving the final adoption of the EU plan in doubt.

“The EPP Group will now seriously check the outcome of today’s negotiations," Schneider said, "keeping in mind that nature restoration and achieving our climate goals go hand-in-hand with agriculture and forestry. Only then we can secure Europe’s food security.”

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Raf Casert, The Associated Press

Danica Roem breaks through in Virginia Senate by focusing on road rage and not only anti-trans hate

The Canadian Press
Sat, November 11, 2023 


WASHINGTON (AP) — Lonely, poor and quite lost, Danica Roem thought she had nothing going for her back in 2016 except toned calves from toting kabobs up the stairs of apartments in Arlington, Virginia, in her dead-end food delivery job.

“Picture it," Roem, now a groundbreaking politician who also was a journalist back then, wrote later about that time: "a five-foot- eleven, long-haired brunette metal-head trans lady reporter wearing a rainbow bandana, an A-line skirt, and a black hoodie ... screaming obscenities behind the wheel of her four-door ’92 Dodge Shadow America."

Not the usual gauzy pitch to voters. But in Tuesday's election, the onetime scribe and heavy metal singer scored her fourth election victory, breaking through to the state Senate and overcoming a pitched effort from Republicans and their allies to use her transgender identity as a cudgel.

In one of the latest battles in America's culture wars, Republicans across the country tried in this year's voting to make the embrace of trans rights a powerful, emotional argument against Democratic candidates who they said had violated social norms. Against Roem, it didn't work.

Roem, 39, already had two comfortable reelection victories in her northern Virginia House of Delegates district. Now, Roem has helped Democrats achieve full legislative control in an election that broadly repudiated the far right and promises to stall the social conservative agenda of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

“The only difference between this campaign and my three campaigns for the House of Delegates is they put a lot more money into promoting a transphobic message that lost as opposed to a moderate amount or a little amount of money into a transphobic message that lost,” Roem told The Associated Press. “They will keep losing by doing this over and over and over again.”

Despite the limited races in the off-year elections, the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund lists 148 openly LGBTQ+ candidates who won across the country Tuesday. The lesson from this “rainbow wave,” said Annise Parker, the fund’s president and a former Houston mayor: “Equality wins elections — not culture war scare tactics.”

Roem “faced an unprecedented deluge of anti-trans hate on the campaign trail, but she was not phased nor distracted." Parker said.

That deluge included some 30 negative mass mailings, several “fake positive” ones and ads accusing of her of wanting to allow “boys to play in girls' sports.” One national organization distributed mass mailers giving out her personal cellphone number and imploring people to use it to “put the heat on Danica Roem."

No flood of hostile callers followed, she said. Only two folks who saw the mailers phoned her and she’s having lunch with one of them to talk things through.

“The other side decided that their closing message was going to be to double, triple and quadruple down on transphobia,” she said.

But she had brought to the campaign her secret sauce for success, learned from days reporting on local politics: “No matter what office you run for, always run like you’re running for mayor. That’s what I did.”

___

‘TORCHING DOUBTS’

By 2016, Roem had slept in more than 60 parking lots across the country from meandering road trips and gigs as a moonlighting metal rocker with day jobs in local journalism.

In that time she carefully ranked the 40 best lots for free overnight parking, choosing a Delaware rest stop off Interstate 95 as tops because of the always open bathrooms, the vending machines and lights that weren't too bright for sleep.

“Nothing about my life screams ‘electable’ (or even ‘hygienic’) on paper,” she observed in her 2022 memoir, “Burn the Page: A True Story of Torching Doubts, Blazing Trails, and Igniting Change.”

Yet she had caught the eye of Democrats and activists in her frequent trips to the Capitol in Richmond to advocate against anti-gay bills from Republicans, and they sounded her out about running.

While engaging a variety of lawmakers in Richmond, she judged the deeply conservative delegate from her own district, Bob Marshall, a lost cause. After all, he had once proudly called himself Virginia’s “chief homophobe.”

Instead of lobbying him, she defeated him. Her victory in a 2017 House of Delegates race made her the first openly transgender candidate to win and take a legislative seat in the United States.

___

HER INNER MAYOR

As a trailblazer for trans politicians, Roem is celebrated in Democratic and cultural circles. But as a legislator with a solid record of writing bills and getting some big ones passed, she is known for her passion for the prosaic, such as traffic congestion.

Perhaps channeling the road rage that once made her unleash swear words from her 24-year-old Dodge, Roem has been in the thick of the debate over roads since she first ran. She calls Route 28, snaking through her area’s suburban sprawl past Dulles Airport, an obsession.

Her slogan for the 2023 campaign was “Fixing roads, feeding kids.” Much of Roem’s social media feed reads like a transportation diary — or the work of a mayor.

“Update,” she says in a typical post, “all three of the southbound lanes are now all open in Centreville from 29 to just before the Bull Run bridge, so if you’re taking Route 28 home to Manassas from I-66, you won’t get stuck in that right turn lane in front of the movie theater.”

This year, pushing initiatives she's already fought for as a delegate, she pitched voters on improving storm water management. On keeping the tech sector’s data centers away from parks and homes. On putting new transmission lines underground. She counts Virginia's expansion of Medicaid under the former Democratic governor as a key accomplishment.

It’s a long way from her kabob-shop days and from her short-lived mobile yoga studio venture, where clients did their moves to a head-banging Swedish metal soundtrack.

___

DIGGING FOR DIRT

Many U.S. campaigns employ an “opposition research” team to poke through an opponent’s past. In her first two campaigns, Roem had her own past investigated, to avoid being blindsided.

Oh that hurt, she writes.

“For those of us who grew up in the age of social media, it can be an exercise in demented self-loathing to figure out just how much of your history the public can truly stomach.”

Sure enough, Marshall's 2017 campaign surfaced a suggestive music video from Roem's metal band, Cab Ride Home. “Lewd,” Marshall told voters.

Insisting on calling his opponent by male pronouns, he also played up Roem's comment in a radio interview when asked if she would support teaching kindergarteners about gender identity. Yes, she said, if the instruction were age-appropriate.

She defeated Marshall with 54% of the vote to his 46% and posted similar margins in the next two elections before taking a narrower victory Tuesday over a former police detective, Bill Woolf III, with 52%.

In a phone interview, Roem rattled off a heavy list of legislative priorities. They include free school meals for all public school students, earmarking 10% of general fund surplus dollars to transportation safety projects, five bills to control data-center sprawl, and an initiative to secure rights for people to be buried in family cemeteries that are located on private property.

She also chronicled her sad history of car ownership. There was the ant-infested Subaru Outback given to her by her mom — “almost killed me twice in one day,” she said of the vehicle. And the “dirty Dodge” she bought from her drummer's dad for $700.

Now life for the senator-elect has improved.

“I'm driving a sweet, sweet 2004 Nissan Sentra,” she said.

Calvin Woodward, The Associated Press

'Support students': Some teachers say they won't follow Saskatchewan's pronoun law

The Canadian Press
Sat, November 11, 2023 



REGINA — Alex Schmidt says she knows she may face consequences for not following the province's pronoun law, but it's a risk she's willing to take.

The Regina public school teacher says she'd rather ensure gender-diverse children who could be put at risk by the law are safe.

"Part of the process has always been: 'No. 1, thank you for sharing this with me, and No. 2, how can I support you?'" Schmidt told The Canadian Press in an interview.

"I think that respects the rights of parents. And if children say, 'I need you to support me and not share this information until I understand how,' then that is the way that I would support students."

Schmidt and dozens of other teachers have signed an online petition calling on school divisions not to follow the law. It says the legislation harms gender-diverse students, as it could force them to come out or have teachers misgender them.

"We will continue to use the practice of letting students have autonomy over their identity and letting students determine who does and doesn’t know about their gender disclosure," the petition says.

The law, passed in October, prevents children under 16 from changing their names or pronouns at school without parental consent.

The rule was part of a provincial policy announced in August. In September, a judge granted an injunction until a court challenge could be heard, saying the protection of gender-diverse youth surpasses the interest of the government.

The Saskatchewan Party government then put the policy into legislation and used the notwithstanding clause to override sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Saskatchewan's Human Rights Code.

The province has not provided details on what the consequences may be for teachers who don't follow the pronoun law.

It said it expects all divisions and teachers to follow it.

As of Thursday, 98 people had signed the petition. Names are entered online but not listed publicly.

A spokesperson for the petition, another teacher at a Regina public school, said organizers have verified 70 of the signatories are teachers and most of them work in Regina or Saskatoon.

The spokesperson fears losing their job and asked not to be named. They said other teachers are waiting to decide what they will do.

Schmidt said her school's gay-straight alliance club is much smaller than it was before the law passed.

"They're very passionate about what's happening, the ones who are there. But I think that there is a disconnect out of fear that they don't know which teachers at their school are allies."

Schmidt said she hopes school divisions can take on some of the risk.

"We hope different decisions are made by those larger power systems," she said.

The petition, which is also being forwarded to schools divisions and trustees, calls on them to take a stand.

"We implore you to recognize that you always have a choice. You always have the option to prioritize students’ human rights," the petition says.

Education Minister Jeremy Cockrill has said the law has broad support from parents and is meant to ensure they're included in their children's lives.

If it's believed a student would be harmed because of the consent requirement, the law says the school's principal is to direct the student to a counsellor.

School divisions across Saskatchewan are reviewing their guidelines.

Regina Public Schools is reviewing its gender and sexual diversity guideline, which had allowed students to be addressed by a name or pronoun that corresponds to their gender identity.

A spokesperson for the school division said educators will be notified when changes are made.

"While Regina Public Schools administration works towards making required changes as a result of the amendments, Regina Public Schools' commitment to safe, inclusive equitable and welcoming environments for all members of the school community will not change," said Terry Lazarou.

Cockrill has said the guideline of Regina Public Schools, announced in June 2022, was the "impetus" for the province's pronoun legislation. But the school division has said the minister never asked about it.

Jennifer Lyons, a spokesperson for Saskatoon Public Schools, said it has had conversations with teachers and administrators about updated guidelines for names and pronouns.

"Any issues with implementation will be discussed at the school level," Lyons said.

Spokespeople for the catholic school divisions in Regina and Saskatoon said work continues on implementing the law.

The Saskatchewan Professional Teachers Regulatory Board, which deals with teacher complaints, declined to comment on what would happen if a teacher doesn't follow the law.

The Saskatchewan School Boards Association declined to comment, as there is still a court challenge, likely to be heard in December.

The Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation, the union representing educators, also had no comment.

The law has been criticized by the province's Human Rights Commission, which said invoking the notwithstanding clause significantly affects the rights of minors.

Heather Kuttai, a former Saskatchewan human rights commissioner, resigned over the legislation, saying it assaults the rights of gender diverse children.

A report from Saskatchewan's child advocate said it violates rights to gender identity and expression. The report by Lisa Brodaalso raised concerns that teachers may be violating their professional standards of practice if they follow it.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 11, 2023.

Jeremy Simes, The Canadian Press

Blinken urges Indian counterparts to co-operate with Canada in probing Nijjar killing

The Canadian Press
Fri, November 10, 2023 



WASHINGTON — The U.S. secretary of state urged India again Friday to assist Canada's investigation into the killing of Hardeep Singh Najjar, something Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government has been calling for "from the very beginning."

Antony Blinken wrapped up a whirlwind nine-day, eight-city overseas trip with a final stop in New Delhi, where he sat down with senior Indian government officials, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

He said he has raised the issue of Nijjar — a prominent Sikh activist who was gunned down in June outside a gurdwara in Surrey, B.C. — with his Indian counterparts on multiple occasions, including on Friday.

"These are two of our closest friends and partners, and of course we want to see them resolving any differences or disputes that they have as a friend of both," Blinken told a news conference.

"We think it's very important that India work with Canada on its investigation, and that they find a way to resolve this difference in a co-operative way. But that really does go with Canada moving its investigation forward and India working with Canada on it."

Blinken's meeting with External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar came as part of what's known as the U.S.-India "2+2" ministerial, which included Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Indian counterpart, Rajnath Singh.

Trudeau stunned the House of Commons back in September when he cited "credible allegations" linking Nijjar's killing to agents of the Indian government. Some reports have pointed to Canada's partners in the Five Eyes security alliance as the source of the intelligence.

Nijjar, 45, was at the wheel of his pickup truck when he was gunned down June 18 by a pair of masked gunmen in the parking lot of the gurdwara shortly after evening prayers. At the time, police in B.C. described it as a targeted killing.

Trudeau's allegations pose a vexing diplomatic challenge for the U.S., which has been cultivating closer economic ties with India as part of an effort to build a geopolitical bulwark in the Indo-Pacific against China's growing influence.

A joint statement released by the State Department described Friday's meeting as having made "substantial progress in transforming U.S.-India relations ... based on trust and mutual understanding."

Canada's relationship with India, however, is now on a very different footing.

"From the very beginning ... we reached out to India to ask them to work with us in getting to the bottom of this matter," Trudeau said Friday during a media event in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.

"We also reached out to our friends and allies, like the United States and others, to work on this really serious violation of international law and of sovereignty of a democracy."

India's high commission in Canada resumed processing some types of visa applications in late October after suspending the services for Canadian citizens around the world for more than a month, citing security concerns.

India also threatened last month to strip Canadian emissaries and their family members of their diplomatic immunity, an escalation that prompted Global Affairs to direct 41 of its diplomats and their dependents to leave the country.

On Friday, Trudeau called that a violation of the Vienna Convention, the 1961 UN agreement that provides diplomatic officers with certain rights and protections in order to safely operate in another country.

"That is of concern to countries around the world," he said. "If a given country can just decide that the diplomats of another country are no longer protected, that makes international relations more dangerous and more serious."

The stakes in the dispute are high, and not only for Canada, Trudeau added.

"If might starts to make right again, if bigger countries can violate international law without consequences, then the whole world gets more dangerous for everyone."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 10, 2023.

James McCarten, The Canadian Press

Israel is looking to World War II in its Gaza fight, and it risks taking lessons from the wrong war


Sam Fellman, Sonam Sheth
Updated Sat, November 11, 2023 

Israeli combat vehicles are seen near the Israeli-Gaza border on Oct. 14, 2023.

Ilia Yefimovich/Getty images

Israel faces long odds of ending Hamas, and even if it succeeds it's faced with a difficult dilemma: What comes next?


The US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan but ran into trouble when it tried to rebuild their governments.


"The Israelis have a similar problem here," a military expert with RAND told Insider.

Israel's military is leveling the tiny Gaza enclave with the overwhelming force of a nation that, much like the US in 2001, vows never again to be blindsided by a massive terrorist attack.

Hamas, Israelis feel, must be destroyed.

But beyond the certainty many Israelis feel about ending Hamas, there lies an uncertain future and a political dilemma Israel has avoided addressing — a predicament that hamstrung a superior military power, the United States, in similar conflicts.

"The Achilles heel of the US operation in Iraq and Afghanistan was that we had the game plan for the invasion more or less worked reasonably smoothly," Raphel Cohen, the director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program of RAND Project AIR FORCE, told Insider. "The problem was what came next and that was where we ran into trouble. The Israelis have a similar problem here."

Israel faces long odds of permanently ending Hamas. Even if it succeeds in doing so, its leaders have failed to clearly articulate what will replace it and why that represents a better future for Palestinians in Gaza. It's a critical question that will define whether Israel's war succeeds, experts on military strategy told Insider.

"The more important lessons from 9/11 and the wars that followed are political: Who is going to provide security in Gaza once the fighting ends?" said retired US Army Col. Peter Mansoor, an Iraq veteran and leading counter-insurgency strategist. "Because without security, nothing else will last."

In the month since Hamas carried out its terror attacks in Israel — killing at least 1,200 people, injuring thousands more, and seizing over 200 hostages, including children and seniors — Israel has unleashed an all-out war in Gaza echoing the destructive battles of World War II.

Mosques toppled. Roads ruptured. Refugee centers reduced to rubble. Civilians struggling to find enough water while hospitals go dark.

The Israel Defense Forces are taking out what they say are military targets in these civilian settings, often with overpowering force that has resulted in thousands of civilian casualties. Israel's air force has conducted nonstop bombing runs against the strip as ground forces prepare to clear Gaza's largest city of every Hamas fighter. Israeli military officials are clear that their aim is the total destruction of Hamas. What's less clear is who will lead Gaza afterward.

"I think Israel will, for an indefinite period, will have the overall security responsibility because we've seen what happens when we don't have it," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ABC News on Monday.

Likewise, an Israeli cabinet minister would only tell reporters last weekend that "there's a lot of ideas that are out there" about what comes after Hamas.

Netanyahu advisers suggest that Israeli troops will remain in Gaza at least until it is demilitarized, a process that will likely take months at best and during which they could face an insurgency supported by a radicalized population.

It remains unclear how long Israel will re-occupy the territory or if they would eventually transfer it to, for example, a peacekeeping force or another authority.

The IDF declined to comment on whether it was taking lessons from the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into consideration in its Hamas war.

They've "ping-ponged around this question of what happens next," Cohen said. "So this is clearly a problem for Israel in that they haven't been able to articulate what their goals are."

Smoke and flame rise after Israeli air forces targeting a shopping center in Gaza Strip, Gaza on October 07, 2023.

Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

'Mowing the grass'

Since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, it has had four major clashes: 2008, 2014, 2021, and now.

Israel's strategy towards Hamas-controlled Gaza has been described as "mowing the grass," which refers to Israel's policy of tolerating Hamas control until its attacks justify short campaigns to kill militants and reduce their capacity to threaten Israel from the impoverished enclave.

This strategy "failed spectacularly" during the October 7 terror attacks, Cohen argued in a recent piece published by RAND, because it showed Israel couldn't contain Hamas and its periodic operations failed to deter them. And critics say that Israeli operations in service of this strategy often result in a disproportionate number of deaths compared to those caused by Hamas attacks.

Cohen described "mowing the grass" as "strategic fatalism" in the RAND piece, adding that it "reflects a large measure of hubris." Cohen argued it has also failed to break the cycle of Palestinian radicalization that fuels the attacks.

Israel's belief that it can hit Hamas just enough to stave off any attacks but not so hard that Gaza descends into chaos is a "hard if not impossible balance to strike year after year, especially as Gaza's internal pressures mount," he wrote.

In the aftermath of the October 7 attacks, Israel has abandoned "mowing the grass" in favor of a much more far-reaching and deadly strategy.

Israeli soldiers sit on a Merkava tank as they man a position at an undisclosed location on the border with Lebanon on October 21, 2023.

Jalaa Marey/Getty Images

Israel's war with Hamas is still in its nascent stages, but modern urban battles already pale in comparison.

The long, nine-month siege of Mosul, Iraq by the Iraqi government coalition, backed by the US, in its fight to uproot the Islamic State left up to 11,000 civilians dead. The US-led effort to clear insurgents from Fallujah, Iraq in 2004 killed roughly 800 civilians in six weeks. By contrast, in a month's time, the war in Gaza has already ended the lives of over 10,800 people, 41% of whom are children, according to the Hamas-led Ministry of Health in Gaza. Although this count does not differentiate between fighters and civilians, it is nonetheless a staggering figure.

The vast majority of those deaths come from Israel's airstrikes, and the death toll will almost certainly keep climbing as Israeli troops move to strike the 30,000 Hamas militants lying in wait in Gaza city, believed to be home to hundreds of thousands of civilians.

The sheer scale of the Israeli effort may trigger a dynamic that's known to US policy makers as the Pottery Barn rule — you break it, you buy it. This was how Secretary of State Colin Powell privately warned President George W. Bush about the consequences of invading Iraq. According to this axiom, Israel must be prepared to bear the costs of rebuilding Gaza and endure its dangers unless it finds another authority to intervene.

A company of US infantry troops moves past the General Post Office building on their way to assault the walled city of Intramuros Feb. 23, 1945, in Manila, Philippines. The month-long battle laid waste to much of Manila.

Ohio Army National Guard Historical Collections

As the war takes shape, the most apt comparison for a major urban battle involving a Western military may require looking much farther back, to the last days of World War II. In 1945, American G.I.s assaulted the capital of the Philippines to root out nearly 20,000 Japanese defenders. They liberated Manila after a month but at a huge cost.

It shattered the city and claimed 100,000 civilian lives.

It's telling that Israeli leaders have directly compared their Hamas fight to World War II, the conflict that the US waged with full-force, viewing it as necessary, even existential. Netanyahu has compared the October 7 terrorist attacks to the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor that pulled the US into WWII.

The Israel-Hamas conflict is "not a war of choice for Israel," Cohen said. "The October 7 attacks made it essential that the Israelis take some sort of action to deny Hamas control of Gaza, if only to prevent another 10/7 attack."

Hamas leaders have said the militant group will try to carry out more attacks until Israel is erased. "So Israel was in some ways forced into a policy of regime change in ways that we weren't necessarily forced into with Iraq," Cohen said.

Israel faces geographical challenges with Gaza that the US did not with Iraq and Afghanistan. The US eventually withdrew from Iraq and Afghanistan, though it took years for American officials to make the decision, and about 2,500 US troops remain in Iraq.

"The Israelis can't really withdraw here by reasons of geography," Cohen said. "Gaza will always be next door to them, so they're going to have to remain engaged in Gaza, whether they like it or not, for the foreseeable future."

A Palestinian kid with an assault rifle attends the funeral of Aysar al-Amer, 25, a local commander in the Islamic Jihad militant group, and Jawad Turki, 19, in the West Bank city of Jenin.

Nasser Ishtayeh/Getty Images

Getting 'nowhere'

Peter Mansoor was a newly retired Army colonel when he arrived in Tel Aviv in 2008. He had come to speak to Israeli officers about the success of the American troop plus-up and counter-insurgency effort, known as "the Surge," that reduced the violence roiling Iraq. As executive officer to Gen. David Petraeus, the effort's architect and leader of the Multi-National Force-Iraq, Mansoor brought unique insight to his Israeli counterparts.

"The number one lesson I gave them is you gotta find willing partners among the other side," Mansoor — now a professor of military history at the Ohio State University and author of the book, "Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq war" — recalled in a phone interview with Insider.

"You don't reconcile with your friends, They're already your friends. You reconcile with people who have blood on their hands. And you've gotta find portions of the opposition that are just willing to put down their arms, at least temporarily, and give the political process a chance."

That is what US leaders sought in Iraq. Americans supported moderate Sunni tribal leaders and helped fund the militias that patrolled their communities in an effort to cut support for al Qaeda in Iraq, which was fueling violence and undermining the US-backed government. For a nation on the brink of a full blown civil war, the strategy worked.

After Mansoor's briefing, some Israeli officers came up to talk to him.

"The Israeli officers who were there back in 2008 told me, 'Well that's not possible with the Palestinians. So what else do you have for us?'" Mansoor recalled.

"And I looked at them and said, 'If you ignore the first and most far-reaching lesson of the Surge, you're going to get nowhere.'"

Israeli Merkava battle tank units regroup near the border of Gaza, in the southern part of Israel, Saturday, Oct. 14, 2023.

Marcus Yam/Getty Images

In this war, Israeli leaders have used heated rhetoric while their forces maintain a deadly bombing campaign. Israel's president has said that the "entire nation" of Gaza is "responsible" for Hamas' terror attacks. One minister even spoke about the possibility of nuking it, though Netanyahu and the defense minister criticized his comments.

Netanyahu has, however, used Western military actions in World War II to justify the killing of civilians if it results from strikes against military targets. In a late October address, he pointed to a British bombing operation near the end of the war in 1945 during which the Royal Air Force missed the intended target and struck a school.

"That is not a war crime," the prime minister said.

The wholesale slaughter of civilian populations in World War II — 45 million by one estimate — led to the creation of a new Geneva convention specifically addressing protections for civilians in war zones.

In the battle for Manila, or the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US used overwhelming force and simply accepted the mass civilian death and suffering that came with it.

Yet destruction on such a scale today, when social media and camera-equipped cell phones can capture war's costs and cruelty, risks a global backlash unlike any Israel has seen in its existence.

And even then it may not succeed in its war against Hamas in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks. A RAND study of campaigns against terror groups over four decades found that only 7% were dismantled by military force.

Should Israel beat those odds and destroy Hamas, that's still not the end of the road. The question persists: What next?

For Mansoor, the counter-insurgency expert, the long-term success of Israel's war will be driven by its willingness to empower Palestinians looking to build a better future peacefully alongside Israel.

"You're going to have to be willing to give the Palestinians what they want. Not the destruction of Israel of course, but a state on the West Bank and in Gaza," Mansoor said. "If the Israelis are not willing to do that then we're looking at something like this happening again in the future."

Once-in-a-century flooding swamps Somalia after historic drought -UN
Reuters
Fri, November 10, 2023 

Heavy rains wreak havoc in East Africa

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - The United Nations has described floods that uprooted hundreds of thousands of people in Somalia and neighbouring countries in East Africa following a historic drought as a once-in-a-century event.

Around 1.6 million people in Somalia could be affected by the heavy seasonal downpours, which have been worsened by the combined impact of two climate phenomenons, El Niño and the Indian Ocean Dipole, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement late on Thursday.

The floods, which followed heavy rains that started in early October, have already killed at least 29 people and forced more than 300,000 from their homes in Somalia, and inundated towns and villages across northern Kenya.

Camps for people displaced by an Islamist insurgency and the worst drought in four decades have also been flooded, causing people to flee for a second time, aid groups say.

Large-scale displacement, increased humanitarian needs and further destruction of property remain likely, OCHA said, with some 1.5 million hectares (3.70 million acres)of farmland potentially being destroyed.

"Extreme weather linked to the ongoing El Niño risks further driving up humanitarian needs in already-vulnerable communities in Somalia and many other places," said Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General, the UN's Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.

"We know what the risks are, and we need to get ahead of these looming crises," he said.

(Reporting by Abdi Sheikh in Mogadishu and Hereward Holland in Nairobi; Writing by Hereward Holland; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
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