People in cities across Kazakhstan took to the streets last week to protest their government’s decision to allow China to open dozens of new factories in their country. Protesters say the move by Kazakhstan’s government will deepen their country’s dependence on China and will only create jobs for imported Chinese workers rather than for native Kazakhstanis. These demonstrations are a repeat of another wave of protests in 2016, when Kazakhstan’s government gave Chinese firms the right to purchase local real estate. Resentment towards Chinese influence has only increased since 2016,…
China’s Huawei Technologies, the second-largest smartphone maker in the world, has been accused in a Washington Post report of setting up 3G wireless infrastructure within North Korea. A leak of documents from inside Huawei reveals that the company sent a team of staff into North Korea to work on “a variety of projects,” likely violating US sanctions. Huawei has already fallen under intense scrutiny from the US Justice and Commerce Departments in the past for violating sanctions on Iran, as well as for its suspected involvement in Chinese espionage. The…
A report by POLITICO that the State Department may plan to grant new waivers to China allowing for current sanctions on Iranian oil to be bypassed. The current US maximum-pressure policy has been to end all waivers and insist on zero importation of Iranian oil by all of its trade partners. However, this tactic may have reached the limits of what US soft pressure can coerce other nations to accept. China has received Iranian oil tankers as recently as June, despite the Trump administration ending sanctions waivers in May. Likewise,…