This week, another group of senior Chinese military commanders were purged, part of what has been officially presented as a broader, years-long anti-corruption effort. An statement on Friday (June 26) said six top commanders of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) were expelled from the National People’s Congress (NPC), the national legislature.
President Xi Jinping of China also visited Prime Minister Tarique Rahman of Bangladesh in Beijing on Friday. It is Rahman’s first official foreign travel to Malaysia and China since he was elected this year.
The Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry said the leaders expressed a resolve “to build a China-Bangladesh community with a shared future in the new era, raising bilateral relations to a higher level.” Rahman’s choice to visit China, but not as the first foreign destination on his tour, is being viewed as part of a bigger plan to manage ties with both India and China.
Lastly, we look at US AI firm Anthropic, which says Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba used its chatbot, Claude, to train its own AI model through a so-called “distillation attack.”
State media outlet Xinhua reported a number of deletions from the NPC, frequently referred to in the West as a rubber stamp Parliament of China. The NPC, numbering more than 3,000 in full strength, meets once a year to decide on legislation.
The Central Committee of the Communist Party is a powerful political group of about 300 to 400 officials who mostly set the political and policy agenda for this body in advance. Nevertheless, membership in the NPC is seen as a significant political position.
Among the high number of military commanders is General Xu Xueqiang of the Equipment Development Department of the Central Military Commission (CMC). The CMC is the main military decision-making body in charge of procurement, testing and other vital duties, and in recent years almost all of its members have been investigated for corruption.
The reasons behind such extensive purges of senior officials have been disputed for a while, but it is also unclear how these moves would impact China’s military overall. They are especially important in the face of China’s ever louder claims over Taiwan.
- The China-Bangladesh Relationship
Xi said he supported the new administration of Bangladesh and was ready to work jointly on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s major infrastructure development project in the Global South, the Chinese Foreign Affairs Minister said.
He also spoke about the possibility of cooperation in green and low-carbon development and artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, Rahman called China a “valued and trusted partner”. During the four-day visit, many MoUs were signed and the two nations agreed to step up collaboration on the management of rivers like the Teesta.
The Teesta rises in north Sikkim and flows through Bangladesh and into the Bay of Bengal. Water-sharing has been a bone of contention between India and Bangladesh for years with no legal system for Teesta. There was a chance of an agreement in 2011, but West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee withdrew support, saying the state has its own criteria.
That might be a cause of concern for India, especially as India and Bangladesh have been trying to rebuild bilateral ties under the new Rahman government.
The elevation of China- Bangladesh connections also has a significance in that it has put Bangladesh into the group of countries that are members of Beijing’s “Community with a Shared Future for Mankind”. Xi originally defined the notion in 2013 and it is “China’s signature foreign policy concept,” noted Manoj Kewalramani, chairperson of the Geostrategy Programme at the Bengaluru-based think tank, Takshashila Institution.
It has been described as ‘a vision of a world in which the interests, security and growth of states are intertwined. It is presented as an alternative to what Beijing perceives as a zero-sum, bloc-based liberal order.” Kewalramani noted that this is part of China’s larger outreach to the Global South and more than 40 countries and regional organisations have signed up for cooperation with China in developing similar structures.
- Anthropic vs. Alibaba in the bigger AI battle
Anthropic told two U.S. senators about a “distillation” attempt that it said involved training a less competent model on the outputs of a more capable model, Reuters said. It stated that Alibaba trained its own AI models by using Claude’s comments in a campaign between April 22 and June 5 this year, in which it “generated over 28.8 million exchanges with Claude through almost 25,000 fraudulent accounts.”
Anthropic also made a larger national security case that such efforts converted American investment into an advantage for geopolitical adversaries in AI.
