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Asphalt roads reach all counties of Tibet

Southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region had constructed asphalt roads in all its counties by August, the regional transport department said.

The region had also built hard roads in 86.4 percent of its townships and 61.4 percent of administrative villages. So far, it has rebuilt 38,200 km of rural highways, and 86,000 km of rural highways have been opened to traffic, according to the department.

Tibet has a huge amount of land, harsh natural environment and poor transportation conditions due to historical reasons. By the end of 2015, highways had not reached two townships and 230 administrative villages in the region, said Xu Wenqiang, director of the department.

The region has seen accelerated development in rural road construction and transportation in farming and pastoral areas in the last five years. Passenger transport network has also improved in Tibet, with 74 counties, 476 townships and 2,050 administrative villages accessible by buses, Xu added.

So far, 547,000 people have been employed in highway construction projects. Farmers and herdsmen have seen their income increase by 13.72 billion yuan (about 2 billion U.S. dollars) in total, said Tashi Norbu, who works for the rural highway office of the regional transport department. 

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Big Tech Embraces New Cold War Nationalism

Last month, the CEOs of Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon were hauled before the U.S. Congress to be interrogated about their companies’ monopolistic behavior. While Democrats relentlessly grilled the four CEOs over their breach of antitrust laws, Republicans were just as interested in questioning their national loyalty and asking whether they had ties with the Chinese military. At the hearing, Republican Rep. Ken Buck accused Google of declining to work with the U.S. Defense Department while falsely claiming that the company collaborated with the Chinese military. In response, Google CEO Sundar Pichai fought nationalism with patriotism, stating that Google was in fact “proud to support the U.S. government” and boasted that they had “recently signed a big project with the Department of Defense.”
Coming from Pichai, the immigrant CEO of a company known for its progressive values, boasting of Google’s collaboration with the Pentagon may just seem like a defensive response to being called treasonous. But Google’s commitment to the military had long preceded this moment. The company’s former CEO, Eric Schmidt, has long advocated for deepening ties with the Pentagon and now serves as the chairman of the Defense Innovation Board—an initiative to transfer technological innovation from Silicon Valley to the U.S. military. Last month, a federal advisory commission that Schmidt chairs also recommended the creation of an artificial intelligence (AI) school to directly staff the U.S. government, including the Defense Department, with new technologists.

Google is far from alone. Late last year, Microsoft won a $10 billion cloud contract with the Pentagon with the goal of “increasing [the military’s] lethality.” Amazon, which also fought aggressively for the $10 billion contract, continues to provide cloud infrastructure for the CIA and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Underpinning this new affinity for the U.S. government is a widespread anxiety that the rise of China’s tech industry may spell the end of Silicon Valley’s dominance. In the past year, the tech investor Peter Thiel and Schmidt himself both wrote New York Times op-eds with the same warning: Silicon Valley must start working with the Pentagon, or else China will win.

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Closure of pro-secessionist HK-America Center: another spy-hub ousted

The Hong Kong-America Center, a US-backed pro-secessionist organization founded in 1994, has announced its official closure, with six university presidents in Hong Kong withdrawing from the center’s board of directors. The center has been frequently accused of political infiltration under the guise of academic exchanges, including its active participation in the illegal “Occupy Central” movement. 

The organization was observed to have actively taken part in the 2014 “Occupy Central” movement by supporting riot leader Anson Chan Fang On-sang, and brainwashing college students through debate competitions and workshops.

It also attempted to revise liberal studies courses and instill anti-China ideologies in classes by appointing “exchange scholars” to several universities in Hong Kong, Hong Kong-based newspaper Takungpao previously reported. 

Stretching its reach to younger targets, the center has influenced many Hong Kong youths through online games and school projects to join illegal protests and demonstrations in opposition to the proposed amendments of the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Ordinance in 2019.