Media Sosial Kecoh, 'Rampasan Kuasa' Berlaku Di China Dakwa Xi Jinping Disingkir

  Tangkap layar di Twitter pada 24 September 2022 laporan mendakwa berlaku krisis politik di China

GLOBAL | Sejak malam 24 September 2022 kecoh di media sosial mengenai khabar angin mendakwa berlaku rampasan kuasa yang menyingkirkan Presiden China Xi Jinping daripada jawatannya itu.

Berita yang tular itu menyebut Presiden China itu yang sebelum ini berada di Samarkand untuk sidang Kemuncak Pertubuhan Kerjasama Shanghai atau SCO, disingkirkan sebagai Ketua Tentera Pembebasan Rakyat China atau PLA.

Ketika pergolakan di sempadan negara itu, spekulasi yang tular juga mendakwa Jinping sudah diletakkan di bawah tahanan rumah selepas disingkirkan daripada PLA.

Bagaimanapun, setakat ini masih tiada pengesahan rasmi daripada Parti Komunis China atau media kerajaan.

Spekulasi itu juga bertebaran dalam kalangan warga China di Twitter yang menyebut mengenai dakwaan penahanan rumah Xi Jinping.

Tangkap layar laporan berita melaporkan situasi politik di China

Malah ramai daripada mereka mendakwa PLA sudah mengambil alih kawalan tentera dan ada yang membuat spekulasi bahawa Li Qiaoming sudah dilantik sebagai Presiden China.

"Kenderaan tentera #PLA menuju ke #Beijing pada 22 September. Bermula dari Daerah Huanlai berhampiran Beijing dan berakhir di bandar Zhangjiakou, Wilayah Hebei. Keseluruhan perarakan sejauh 80 kilometer.

"Sementara itu, khabar angin mengatakan bahawa #XiJinping sudah ditahan selepas warga #CCP memecatnya sebagai ketua PLA," ciap seorang warga maya, Jennifer Zeng.

The Epoch Times memetik data Flight Master melaporkan sebanyak 9,583 penerbangan domestik telah dibatalkan pada 21 September lalu yang melibatkan 59.66 peratus jumlah jadual pada hari tersebut.

Selain itu, laporan itu juga menyebut tentang pembatalan lebih 50 peratus di beberapa hab pengangkutan udara Beijing. 

Tangkap layar FlightRadar24 pada malam 24 September 2022 menunjukkan banyak penerbangan dibatalkan.

Rampasan kuasa China: Jeneral Li Qiaoming dikhabarkan Bakal Menggantikan Xi Jinping

Khabar angin juga mencadangkan bahawa Li Qiaoming, Jeneral yang berkhidmat untuk PLA dan salah seorang ahli jawatankuasa pusat Parti Komunis China (PKC) sejak pendahulu Xi Hu Jintao telah menggantikan Xi sebagai Presiden.

Siapa Li Qiaoming?

Li Qiaoming ialah seorang jeneral Tentera Pembebasan Rakyat China.

Dilahirkan pada April 1961, Li berkhidmat sebagai komander Komando Teater Utara dari September 2017.

Li bersama enam pegawai tentera China yang lain dinaikkan pangkat ke pangkat jeneral, pangkat tertinggi bagi pegawai dalam perkhidmatan aktif di China pada Disember 2019. Beliau merupakan ahli jawatankuasa pusat Parti Komunis China (PKC) sejak pemimpin Xi sebelum ini, Hu. Jintao.

Kenapa berlaku khabar angin

Dua bekas menteri China dijatuhkan hukuman mati manakala empat lagi pegawai dipenjarakan seumur hidup kerana merancang 'puak politik'.

 Parti Komunis telah melancarkan usaha anti-rasuah di seluruh negara. Adalah dipercayai bahawa berita penahanan rumah Xi sedang disebarkan oleh lobi anti-Jinping dalam PKC.

Xi di Sidang Kemuncak SCO

Presiden China melawat Samarkand Uzbekistan untuk mengambil bahagian dalam sidang kemuncak SCO yang baru selesai yang turut dihadiri Perdana Menteri Narendra Modi dan Presiden Rusia Vladimir Putin. 

Dilaporkan bahawa Xi tidak mengadakan sebarang pertemuan yang dijadualkan dengan Putin dan Modi. Dikhabarkan sebaik sahaja turun dari pesawatnya di Beijing, dia diletakkan di bawah tahanan rumah.

Gerakan anti-Xi di China

Isu pengurusan cabaran domestik seperti Covid-19 dan salah mengendalikan isu luar telah menimbulkan rasa tidak selesa dalam kalangan orang terhadap Presiden Xi. 

Pertembungan yang berpanjangan dengan India di rantau Himalaya, postur yang sangat agresif terhadap negara-negara di sepanjang selatan Lautan Pasifik dan krisis terbaru dengan Taiwan telah menambah rasa tidak puas hati besar-besaran terhadap Xi.

Berikut adalah laporan NewsWeek:

Li Qiaoming: General at Center of China Coup Rumors on Social Media

Unsubstantiated reports that Chinese President Xi Jinping is under house arrest and that China is in the midst of a military coup swirled on social media on Saturday.

Among the unproven rumors circulating is that Li Qiaoming, a general for the People's Liberation Army (PLA), China's military, has replaced Xi.

Li was born in 1961 and was promoted to serve as a general—the PLA's highest rank—in 2019, according to Indian television station OdishaTV. Li is also a member of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) central committee.

Li had been considered a contender to serve as a member of China's Central Military Commission—a panel with authority over military decision—according to news outlet Nikkei Asia. Several members of the seven-member body are expected to retire next month.

Nikkei Asia reported that Li wrote an article that resonated with Xi, who has wanted to increase the communist party's control over the army.

"The Soviet Union collapsed because the party didn't have its own army," Li's article stated, according to the outlet.

Indian Twitter accounts have seemed to prominently promote the rumors about the Chinese president.

The rumor that Xi had been ousted was boosted by Indian politician Subramanian Swamy, who tweeted Saturday: "When Xi was in Samarkand recently, the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party were supposed to have removed Xi from the Party's in-charge of Army. Then House arrest followed. So goes the rumour."

Last week, Xi attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) leaders' summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In his opening remarks, Putin wished Xi success at the Chinese Communist Party's 20th National Congress next month. CCP members are expected to grant Xi an unprecedented third term as leader at the twice-a-decade event, which traditionally involves a change in leadership after two terms.

Gordon Chang, an expert on China and the author of the book, The Coming Collapse of China, tweeted Saturday that the "lack of news from #China over the last few hours suggests coup rumors are untrue, but whatever happened inside the #Chinese military during the last three days—evidently something unusual occurred—tells us there is turbulence inside the senior #CCP leadership.

https://www.newsweek.com/li-qiaoming-general-center-china-coup-rumors-social-media-1746041

Bandar Asia Tenggara Lebih Cepat Tenggelam, Jejas Puluhan Juta Penduduk

  Sumber Foto : Earth.com

GLOBAL | Bandar-bandar tepi pantai di serata Asia Selatan dan Asia Tenggara bakal tenggelam lebih cepat berbanding tempat-tempat lain di seluruh dunia, menyebabkan berpuluh-puluh juta orang lebih berisiko terhadap ancaman peningkatan paras air laut, demikian kajian baharu Universiti Teknologi Nanyang(NTU) di Singapura 

Kajian  yang diterbitkan pada minggu ketiga September 2022 dalam jurnal Nature Sustainability itu menyatakan bahawa proses urbanisasi yang pesat menyaksikan bandar-bandar pesisir pantai banyak bergantung kepada sumber air bawah tanah bagi menampung peningkatan populasinya. 

“Ini menyebabkan bandar-bandar terbabit mengalami malapetaka tanah mendap dan lebih berisiko terjejas akibat peningkatan paras laut disebabkan oleh perubahan iklim,” kata kajian tersebut.

Bandar Raya Ho Chi Minh yang merupakan pusat urbanisasi dan hab perniagaan utama Vietnam sedang tenggelam pada kadar purata 16.2 milimeter setiap tahun. Kota raya itu mengungguli senarai 48 bandar raya tepi pantai yang mendap di seluruh dunia berdasarkan kajian data satelit. 

Bandar pelabuhan Chittagong di selatan Bangladesh adalah kedua paling pantas tenggelam dengan Ahmedabad di selatan India, Jakarta yang merupakan ibu kota Indonesia dan hab komersial Myanmar, Yangon juga mendap lebih 20 milimeter setahun. 

“Banyak bandar raya tepi pantai yang mendap ini adalah yang pesat membangun dengan permintaan tinggi kepada air dalam tanah dan beban daripada struktur bangunan menyumbang kepada mendapan permukaan tanah,” kata kajian sama.

Bandar-bandar tenggelam bukan sepenuhnya berpunca daripada perubahan iklim tetapi saintis-saintis berkata, penyelidikan mereka akan memberikan lebih banyak pengetahuan tentang bagaimana fenomena tersebut akan memburukkan lagi kesan perubahan iklim yang didorong oleh peningkatan paras laut.

Lebih satu bilion penduduk dijangka tinggal di bandar-bandar tepi pantai yang berisiko tenggelam akibat peningkatan paras laut menjelang tahun 2050, demikian menurut Panel Perubahan Iklim Antara Kerajaan Pertubuhan Bangsa-Bangsa Bersatu (IPCC).

Menurut IPCC, paras laut di seluruh dunia dijangka meningkat sebanyak 60 sentimeter menjelang akhir abad ini walaupun pengeluaran gas rumah hijau dapat dikurangkan dengan banyak. 

Berikut adalah kenyataan media :

Rapid land sinking is making many coastal cities worldwide vulnerable to sea level rise, finds international group of scientists

• Land sinking linked to extraction of underground resources and rapid urbanisation

A team of international scientists led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has found that many densely populated coastal cities worldwide are vulnerable to sea level rise because large amounts of their land are sinking. 

They suggest that an increase in industrial processes such as the extraction of groundwater, oil, and gas, as well as the rapid construction of buildings and other urban infrastructure may be contributing to this vulnerability.

The team of researchers from NTU Singapore, University of New Mexico, ETH Zürich, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab managed by the California Institute of Technology, processed satellite images of 48 cities from 2014 to 2020 using a cloudbased processing system called Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR).

Sea levels are rising globally as Earth’s ice sheets melt and as warming sea water expands. However, according to scientists, sinking land, or land subsidence, can aggravate the problem.

Land subsidence varies at a neighbourhood and even block level but across the 48 cities surveyed, the team found a median sinking speed of 16.2 millimetres (mm) per year, while some of them have land that is sinking at 43 mm a year. The current global mean sea-level rise is 3.7 mm/year1. 

The results of the study were published in the scientific journal Nature Sustainability in September. 

The findings are an example of research that supports the NTU 2025 strategic plan, which seeks to address humanity’s grand challenges on sustainability and accelerate the translation of research discoveries into innovations that mitigate human impact on the environment.

This research also contributes to the Singapore National Sea Level Programme (NSLP) supported by the National Research Foundation, Singapore and Singapore’s National Environment Agency. The research programme aims to equip policy makers with the information they need to protect Singapore’s coasts.

Co-author Professor of Earth Sciences Emma Hill, Acting Chair of the Asian School of the Environment (ASE) at NTU, said: “In coastal areas, sinking land leads to higher sea level and an increased flood risk. Our findings enable affected communities and policymakers to identify which areas are at particular risk from high levels of land subsidence and take action to address their coastal risks.”

Co-author Assistant Professor Eric Lindsey, from the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at the University of New Mexico in the United States, said:

“This study highlights the value of high-resolution satellite observations for better understanding this issue – subsidence rates can vary quickly across small areas, meaning that land-based measurements often do not capture the true scale of the problem”. 

He was a Research Fellow at NTU’s Earth Observatory of Singapore when he participated in the study.

First author of the paper, Ms Cheryl Tay, a PhD student at NTU’s ASE and the Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS), who was sponsored under the NSLP Programme, said: “By estimating how much and how fast these densely populated coastal cities are subsiding, our study helps constrain projections of coastal flooding in the coming decades, as we expect more land to be flooded due to rising sea levels and land subsidence.”

Southeast Asia’s coastal cities sinking fastest

The 48 cities were selected based on the criteria of a minimum population of five million in 2020, and a maximum distance of 50 kilometres from the coast.

A comparison carried out by the researchers across coastal cities worldwide showed that the fastest velocities of relative local land subsidence are concentrated in Asia, especially in Southeast Asia (see Figure 1).

The researchers chose to use InSAR as it provides accurate measurements of coastal sinking to a tenth of a millimetre. InSAR maps the deformation of ground using radar images of the Earth's surface that are collected from orbiting satellites. 

The InSAR datasets are larger and more accurate as unlike visible or infrared light, radar waves used by INSAR penetrate most weather clouds and are equally effective in darkness.

Ms Tay said: “Rapid sinking of the land is frequently caused by groundwater extraction. This is concerning in Asia where many coastal cities are now centres of growth, and there is high demand for groundwater extraction to meet the water needs of growing populations.”

Prof Hill added: “Without serious mitigation efforts, a combination of rising seas, large populations living on low-lying coastal lands, and sinking lands will result in devastating consequences for many Asian cities.”

“Our study highlights the fact that while this is a global issue, the response in many cases must be local. Slowing the rate of groundwater extraction to a sustainable level should be a top priority for all municipalities in coastal areas,” said Asst Prof Lindsey.

The researchers hope to further their study by projecting the rates of sinking land, factoring in variabilities and sensitivities from different climate and weather scenarios.