The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, surprised everyone on Tuesday with an announcement: She will not seek a second term, the Chilean announced. She is not the first High Commissioner to quit after just one term. But the timing Bachelet chose for her announcement raises questions. Is there a connection to the UN representative’s visit to China, which was strongly criticized internationally?
Marcel Grzanna does not give Bachelet a particularly good performance review before she leaves office: The long-awaited report evaluating China’s human rights violations in Xinjiang is still pending. Thus, critics see themselves vindicated that the former Chilean President was never interested in investigating China in the first place – and rather wanted to avoid potential troubles with an important trading partner of her home country.
In recent years, Volkswagen’s business in the People’s Republic has continued to set new records, but the market is undergoing major changes. When it comes to electromobility and digitalization, software strategy will play a decisive role in determining whether VW and other German carmakers will remain ahead in China in the future. A study showing that Volkswagen could face billions in losses due to delays at its software subsidiary Cariad will leave more than a bitter taste for Wolfsburg. The China offshoot is supposed to help solve the problem of declining sales in the People’s Republic, writes Christian Domke-Seidel. Customer-oriented development – which VW lacked up to now – is also to become decisive.
With the end of her term in mind, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights assured the timely publication of a China report. By the end of August, Michelle Bachelet wants to present what many governments around the world have been waiting on for years. The paper is to provide assessments of the Human Rights Council on systematic Chinese crimes against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Other countries could then use this to formulate political consequences for their relations with the People’s Republic.
But during her four years in office, Bachelet has not yet managed to publicly assess the situation in Xinjiang. Now the time is set for August 31 at the latest. That will be her last day as UN High Commissioner. She announced her retirement on Monday. It was time to return to her homeland, the former Chilean president said.
Numerous critics of her work accuse Bachelet of deliberately delaying the publication. Early on, she never had any interest in publishing a report on China, the accusation goes. Among those critics is Emma Reilly, an Irish lawyer who worked for the Human Rights Council in Geneva for nearly a decade before she was fired last fall for publicly urging the council to change course. “Ms. Bachelet has been repeating what the Chinese government says from day one in office. And nothing is further from her mind than publicly criticizing Beijing for its dramatically poor human rights record,” Reilly tells China.Table.
Indeed, at the start of the 50th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva earlier in the week, Bachelet confirmed that she is not prepared to accept the international consensus of recognized Xinjiang researchers. They are certain, based on sources, that a seven-figure number of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are being forcefully held in internment camps where “torture, rape and other abuses are common”.
Instead, Bachelet again used the rhetoric of the Chinese government on Tuesday, speaking of training centers instead of detention camps. She justified the new delay in publishing the report by saying that the findings from her trip to China at the end of May still had to be incorporated into the document. What sounds understandable on the surface nevertheless contains a glaring contradiction. Bachelet explicitly did not describe her trip to the People’s Republic as an investigation. What content should enrich the UN report if the High Commissioner was drawn to the People’s Republic for a diplomatic exchange?
The now finally announced publication is likely to disappoint the expectations of all those who hoped for a critical evaluation by the UN Human Rights Council. Especially since Bachelet has announced that she intends to submit the document to the Chinese government “for factual comments” before its publication. In other words, Beijing can change unfavorable passages and help shape the UN report on its own human rights abuses in Xinjiang for its own purposes.
The resulting criticism is loud and clear. “Many employees within the council that I’ve spoken to recently are downright disgusted with Bachelet’s leadership. But they are powerless to change it, and no one dares to publicly revolt,” says Reilly. She, on the other hand, rebelled and paid the price with years of ostracism within the organization.
In 2013, the lawyer denounced the disclosure of names of Chinese dissidents to Chinese authorities by staff of the Human Rights Council. The names in question were those who were to be heard by the council. Reilly says this gave Chinese authorities the time to threaten family members of dissidents in the People’s Republic in advance. When the practice did not change and Reilly became increasingly isolated, she went public for the first time in 2017. When Bachelet took over as High Commissioner in September 2018, the Irishwoman launched several attempts to draw attention to her situation. “Till this day, Ms. Bachelet has ignored my case,” she says.
One of the names that were leaked to the Chinese authorities was Dolkun Isa, now President of the World Uyghur Congress (WuC), based in Munich. He first learned in 2013, thanks to Emma Reilly, that his name had been passed on to the Chinese. He had previously been assured by the Human Rights Council that everything would be done to protect him. Because his case dates back many years, he holds no personal grudge against Michelle Bachelet, he says.
However, Isa also says, “The High Commissioner has wasted a historic opportunity to investigate the Uyghur genocide and deliver justice to the Uyghur people. We are very disappointed,” says Isa. Especially since the publication of the Xinjiang Police Files a short time earlier had once again brought to light clear evidence that confirmed numerous eyewitness accounts.
Even her critics can only speculate about Bachelet’s motives. With her political roots in the Chilean socialists, she is considered a critic of the United States. Her father was an air force general under democratically elected President Salvador Allende. His term in office ended by a massively US-supported military coup in 1973. She and her family were victims of torture under dictator Augusto Pinochet. Later, Bachelet fled with her mother to the former GDR.
As a two-time president of her home country, she maintained excellent relations with Beijing. In 2017, she drummed up support for China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) throughout South America. “Chile appreciates China’s great efforts in seeking new approach mechanisms, connectivity, innovation and sustainable development,” she said at the time, referring to increasing protectionism in the United States and Europe. Her country, Bachelet said at the time, was ready to be the bridge between Asia and Latin America.
Last year, Chile was the recipient of Chinese investments worth around $13 billion – the worldwide 4th highest. Chile was the first country on the continent to sign a free trade agreement with China in 2005. Since then, the trade volume has climbed steadily to around $55 billion last year. This corresponds to one-sixth of South America’s total volume. Almost 40 percent of all Chilean exports find their way to the People’s Republic. The USA, the second-largest buyer of Chilean products, accounts for just 16 percent.
It’s not a single number that makes this McKinsey analysis so devastating for Volkswagen. It’s the sum of its parts. By 2026, the introduction of the new software architecture by VW’s Cariad subsidiary will cost around €3.5 billion more than originally estimated. Over the entire product life cycle (i.e., until 2039), it will be €9.2 billion more. In addition, there will be losses for individual brands and models. Around €2.5 billion to €3 billion will be incurred due to delays in Porsche’s new software architecture alone. Image problems and possible loss of market shares have not even been factored in.
The McKinsey analysis was actually intended for internal use only. But it found its way to the German business magazine Manager Magazin. A delicate detail: It was not Herbert Diess, Volkswagen boss and in charge of Cariad, who commissioned the analysis, it was Audi boss Markus Duesmann. He and his engineers wanted an explanation for the constant delays. And they got one. The McKinsey analysis found that Cariad’s organization was not functioning and that the decision-making structure was not target-oriented. The electronic parts required for the new platform will cost €750 more per car than originally projected.
The Cariad software division is the Group’s beacon of hope (China.Table reported). At the same time, its success will determine the fate of a company that saw the digitalization of driving coming, but was much slower to respond to the trend than its Chinese competitors.
The truth is also that the future of the Group will not be decided in Wolfsburg, but to a large extent in China. Especially when it comes to electromobility and digitalization. Business in the People’s Republic has carried Volkswagen to ever new records in recent years. Of the €15.4 billion that Volkswagen reported as profit in 2021, €3 billion came from China, despite various local crises.
But the boom seems to be over. In the first quarter of 2022, Volkswagen and Audi will have a market share of just 13 percent, according to market research company LMC Automotive. In previous years, the figure was always around 20 percent. The background to this is that Audi’s sales figures have slumped by around 28 percent, while VW’s figures are stagnating while the overall market is growing.
Cariad’s China offshoot is to help solve the problem of declining sales in the People’s Republic. With a Chinese approach. So-called “innovation sprints” are held four times a year. Representatives of the Group meet with customers and discuss what is actually needed. The focus is on driver assistance systems, intelligent cockpits and remote services – for example, monitoring the charging process via smartphone. The ideas then go to the research and development department. It may then take between three and a maximum of six months before concrete results have to be presented. In the first innovation sprint, Cariad received 80 ideas. Six of them are currently being implemented.
This is the customer-oriented development that VW has lacked so far. In addition, there are China-specific solutions, such as the “C-V2X functions”. This is a connectivity package. The vehicles receive traffic light information as part of smart city solutions. This is how green waves at traffic lights are to be created. Traffic incidents are also communicated in this way. Entertainment software and AI are now mandatory. As innovative as these developments are, Cariad and VW are massively behind their own schedules. The models that are supposed to be able to do all this are constantly being delayed.
Volkswagen had sales of a whopping €250 billion in 2021. A quarter of this is to be generated by automated driving and entertainment solutions in the future. That’s more than just a niche. Time is money because the competition never sleeps. To this end, Mercedes is cooperating with the US chip company Nvidia. BMW is working with Qualcomm on solutions. Although VW also has various partnerships – negotiations are currently underway with Huawei – the most important software is to be developed within the VW Group.
Meanwhile, Apple is also pushing onto the car market. Its own car already seems to be within reach. And the smartphone company’s new “CarPlay” oscillates between a curse and a blessing for traditional car manufacturers. Blessing, because the content of Apple smartphones is transferred to the car displays. The entire car can thus be controlled via smartphone. Traditional information such as speed and navigation then appear in Apple design. A curse, because the tech company has access to all the data in the vehicle.
Thirty years have passed since Malin Oud first backpacked to China at the age of 18. Most of her friends were going to India at the time. “But I always had to do things differently than the others,” Oud says with a smile.
On the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Swede embarks on a seven-month adventure trip to a country that, despite its slow opening since the 1980s, is still far from being open to Western mass tourism. “There were large parts of the country that you were not allowed to visit as a tourist, you slept in the corresponding hotels that were designated for tourists and paid with the tourist currency,” Oud recounts.
At the time, however, she knew hardly anything about China’s history – only that the young Chinese democracy movement had been violently suppressed in the heart of Beijing on Tiananmen Square just three years earlier. Only gradually, for example, through her studies at Yunnan University in Kunming, does she learn about China’s changing development over the past hundred years. It is the personal stories that her Chinese lecturers tell, for example about the time of the Cultural Revolution, that arouse Oud’s interest in the complicated subject of human rights in China.
Meanwhile, Oud heads the Stockholm office of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights (RWI) and serves as Director of the institute’s China program. In the early 2000s, she also built up and established a branch office in Beijing. She lived in Beijing for nine years. “This period was particularly interesting. At the beginning, China joined the World Trade Organization, and at the end, it hosted the Summer Olympics,” Oud says.
It’s also a good time for institutions like RWI, which wants to try building bridges between China and the West through partner programs with Chinese universities. “There was a relative openness and interest among the Chinese at that time to learn more about other countries and also about international human rights,” Oud says. However, the issue was sensitive even during that period.
In recent years, however, the room for this kind of cooperation in China has been shrinking, Oud says. The beginning was marked by “Document No. 9,” which was issued internally in the Party even before Xi Jinping took office. Since then, discussions about alternative government systems or independent journalism have been banned.
In response, the West has developed a strategy that separates politics from economics. Not a good idea, Oud said. “We can’t discuss human rights with China on Monday, and on Tuesday it’s business as usual.” It is important to Oud that the conflict between the West and China is not a clash between societies, but a competition of political systems.
In China, she met many people who also long for more freedom. “But change has to come from within. We can’t rely on sanctions or force respect for human rights on China,” says Oud. Face-to-face cooperation between Chinese and Western colleagues is likely to be a crucial building block, Oud is certain. David Renke
China claims to have picked up signals of extraterrestrial life, according to a now-deleted report. The Sky Eye radio telescope in Guizhou province has detected narrow-band electromagnetic signals, the report said, citing Zhang Tonjie, chief scientist of a Chinese team searching for extraterrestrial civilizations. However, the suspicious signals could also be some kind of radio interference and require further investigation, the scientist added.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, surprised everyone on Tuesday with an announcement: She will not seek a second term, the Chilean announced. She is not the first High Commissioner to quit after just one term. But the timing Bachelet chose for her announcement raises questions. Is there a connection to the UN representative’s visit to China, which was strongly criticized internationally?
Marcel Grzanna does not give Bachelet a particularly good performance review before she leaves office: The long-awaited report evaluating China’s human rights violations in Xinjiang is still pending. Thus, critics see themselves vindicated that the former Chilean President was never interested in investigating China in the first place – and rather wanted to avoid potential troubles with an important trading partner of her home country.
In recent years, Volkswagen’s business in the People’s Republic has continued to set new records, but the market is undergoing major changes. When it comes to electromobility and digitalization, software strategy will play a decisive role in determining whether VW and other German carmakers will remain ahead in China in the future. A study showing that Volkswagen could face billions in losses due to delays at its software subsidiary Cariad will leave more than a bitter taste for Wolfsburg. The China offshoot is supposed to help solve the problem of declining sales in the People’s Republic, writes Christian Domke-Seidel. Customer-oriented development – which VW lacked up to now – is also to become decisive.
With the end of her term in mind, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights assured the timely publication of a China report. By the end of August, Michelle Bachelet wants to present what many governments around the world have been waiting on for years. The paper is to provide assessments of the Human Rights Council on systematic Chinese crimes against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Other countries could then use this to formulate political consequences for their relations with the People’s Republic.
But during her four years in office, Bachelet has not yet managed to publicly assess the situation in Xinjiang. Now the time is set for August 31 at the latest. That will be her last day as UN High Commissioner. She announced her retirement on Monday. It was time to return to her homeland, the former Chilean president said.
Numerous critics of her work accuse Bachelet of deliberately delaying the publication. Early on, she never had any interest in publishing a report on China, the accusation goes. Among those critics is Emma Reilly, an Irish lawyer who worked for the Human Rights Council in Geneva for nearly a decade before she was fired last fall for publicly urging the council to change course. “Ms. Bachelet has been repeating what the Chinese government says from day one in office. And nothing is further from her mind than publicly criticizing Beijing for its dramatically poor human rights record,” Reilly tells China.Table.
Indeed, at the start of the 50th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva earlier in the week, Bachelet confirmed that she is not prepared to accept the international consensus of recognized Xinjiang researchers. They are certain, based on sources, that a seven-figure number of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are being forcefully held in internment camps where “torture, rape and other abuses are common”.
Instead, Bachelet again used the rhetoric of the Chinese government on Tuesday, speaking of training centers instead of detention camps. She justified the new delay in publishing the report by saying that the findings from her trip to China at the end of May still had to be incorporated into the document. What sounds understandable on the surface nevertheless contains a glaring contradiction. Bachelet explicitly did not describe her trip to the People’s Republic as an investigation. What content should enrich the UN report if the High Commissioner was drawn to the People’s Republic for a diplomatic exchange?
The now finally announced publication is likely to disappoint the expectations of all those who hoped for a critical evaluation by the UN Human Rights Council. Especially since Bachelet has announced that she intends to submit the document to the Chinese government “for factual comments” before its publication. In other words, Beijing can change unfavorable passages and help shape the UN report on its own human rights abuses in Xinjiang for its own purposes.
The resulting criticism is loud and clear. “Many employees within the council that I’ve spoken to recently are downright disgusted with Bachelet’s leadership. But they are powerless to change it, and no one dares to publicly revolt,” says Reilly. She, on the other hand, rebelled and paid the price with years of ostracism within the organization.
In 2013, the lawyer denounced the disclosure of names of Chinese dissidents to Chinese authorities by staff of the Human Rights Council. The names in question were those who were to be heard by the council. Reilly says this gave Chinese authorities the time to threaten family members of dissidents in the People’s Republic in advance. When the practice did not change and Reilly became increasingly isolated, she went public for the first time in 2017. When Bachelet took over as High Commissioner in September 2018, the Irishwoman launched several attempts to draw attention to her situation. “Till this day, Ms. Bachelet has ignored my case,” she says.
One of the names that were leaked to the Chinese authorities was Dolkun Isa, now President of the World Uyghur Congress (WuC), based in Munich. He first learned in 2013, thanks to Emma Reilly, that his name had been passed on to the Chinese. He had previously been assured by the Human Rights Council that everything would be done to protect him. Because his case dates back many years, he holds no personal grudge against Michelle Bachelet, he says.
However, Isa also says, “The High Commissioner has wasted a historic opportunity to investigate the Uyghur genocide and deliver justice to the Uyghur people. We are very disappointed,” says Isa. Especially since the publication of the Xinjiang Police Files a short time earlier had once again brought to light clear evidence that confirmed numerous eyewitness accounts.
Even her critics can only speculate about Bachelet’s motives. With her political roots in the Chilean socialists, she is considered a critic of the United States. Her father was an air force general under democratically elected President Salvador Allende. His term in office ended by a massively US-supported military coup in 1973. She and her family were victims of torture under dictator Augusto Pinochet. Later, Bachelet fled with her mother to the former GDR.
As a two-time president of her home country, she maintained excellent relations with Beijing. In 2017, she drummed up support for China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) throughout South America. “Chile appreciates China’s great efforts in seeking new approach mechanisms, connectivity, innovation and sustainable development,” she said at the time, referring to increasing protectionism in the United States and Europe. Her country, Bachelet said at the time, was ready to be the bridge between Asia and Latin America.
Last year, Chile was the recipient of Chinese investments worth around $13 billion – the worldwide 4th highest. Chile was the first country on the continent to sign a free trade agreement with China in 2005. Since then, the trade volume has climbed steadily to around $55 billion last year. This corresponds to one-sixth of South America’s total volume. Almost 40 percent of all Chilean exports find their way to the People’s Republic. The USA, the second-largest buyer of Chilean products, accounts for just 16 percent.
It’s not a single number that makes this McKinsey analysis so devastating for Volkswagen. It’s the sum of its parts. By 2026, the introduction of the new software architecture by VW’s Cariad subsidiary will cost around €3.5 billion more than originally estimated. Over the entire product life cycle (i.e., until 2039), it will be €9.2 billion more. In addition, there will be losses for individual brands and models. Around €2.5 billion to €3 billion will be incurred due to delays in Porsche’s new software architecture alone. Image problems and possible loss of market shares have not even been factored in.
The McKinsey analysis was actually intended for internal use only. But it found its way to the German business magazine Manager Magazin. A delicate detail: It was not Herbert Diess, Volkswagen boss and in charge of Cariad, who commissioned the analysis, it was Audi boss Markus Duesmann. He and his engineers wanted an explanation for the constant delays. And they got one. The McKinsey analysis found that Cariad’s organization was not functioning and that the decision-making structure was not target-oriented. The electronic parts required for the new platform will cost €750 more per car than originally projected.
The Cariad software division is the Group’s beacon of hope (China.Table reported). At the same time, its success will determine the fate of a company that saw the digitalization of driving coming, but was much slower to respond to the trend than its Chinese competitors.
The truth is also that the future of the Group will not be decided in Wolfsburg, but to a large extent in China. Especially when it comes to electromobility and digitalization. Business in the People’s Republic has carried Volkswagen to ever new records in recent years. Of the €15.4 billion that Volkswagen reported as profit in 2021, €3 billion came from China, despite various local crises.
But the boom seems to be over. In the first quarter of 2022, Volkswagen and Audi will have a market share of just 13 percent, according to market research company LMC Automotive. In previous years, the figure was always around 20 percent. The background to this is that Audi’s sales figures have slumped by around 28 percent, while VW’s figures are stagnating while the overall market is growing.
Cariad’s China offshoot is to help solve the problem of declining sales in the People’s Republic. With a Chinese approach. So-called “innovation sprints” are held four times a year. Representatives of the Group meet with customers and discuss what is actually needed. The focus is on driver assistance systems, intelligent cockpits and remote services – for example, monitoring the charging process via smartphone. The ideas then go to the research and development department. It may then take between three and a maximum of six months before concrete results have to be presented. In the first innovation sprint, Cariad received 80 ideas. Six of them are currently being implemented.
This is the customer-oriented development that VW has lacked so far. In addition, there are China-specific solutions, such as the “C-V2X functions”. This is a connectivity package. The vehicles receive traffic light information as part of smart city solutions. This is how green waves at traffic lights are to be created. Traffic incidents are also communicated in this way. Entertainment software and AI are now mandatory. As innovative as these developments are, Cariad and VW are massively behind their own schedules. The models that are supposed to be able to do all this are constantly being delayed.
Volkswagen had sales of a whopping €250 billion in 2021. A quarter of this is to be generated by automated driving and entertainment solutions in the future. That’s more than just a niche. Time is money because the competition never sleeps. To this end, Mercedes is cooperating with the US chip company Nvidia. BMW is working with Qualcomm on solutions. Although VW also has various partnerships – negotiations are currently underway with Huawei – the most important software is to be developed within the VW Group.
Meanwhile, Apple is also pushing onto the car market. Its own car already seems to be within reach. And the smartphone company’s new “CarPlay” oscillates between a curse and a blessing for traditional car manufacturers. Blessing, because the content of Apple smartphones is transferred to the car displays. The entire car can thus be controlled via smartphone. Traditional information such as speed and navigation then appear in Apple design. A curse, because the tech company has access to all the data in the vehicle.
Thirty years have passed since Malin Oud first backpacked to China at the age of 18. Most of her friends were going to India at the time. “But I always had to do things differently than the others,” Oud says with a smile.
On the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Swede embarks on a seven-month adventure trip to a country that, despite its slow opening since the 1980s, is still far from being open to Western mass tourism. “There were large parts of the country that you were not allowed to visit as a tourist, you slept in the corresponding hotels that were designated for tourists and paid with the tourist currency,” Oud recounts.
At the time, however, she knew hardly anything about China’s history – only that the young Chinese democracy movement had been violently suppressed in the heart of Beijing on Tiananmen Square just three years earlier. Only gradually, for example, through her studies at Yunnan University in Kunming, does she learn about China’s changing development over the past hundred years. It is the personal stories that her Chinese lecturers tell, for example about the time of the Cultural Revolution, that arouse Oud’s interest in the complicated subject of human rights in China.
Meanwhile, Oud heads the Stockholm office of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights (RWI) and serves as Director of the institute’s China program. In the early 2000s, she also built up and established a branch office in Beijing. She lived in Beijing for nine years. “This period was particularly interesting. At the beginning, China joined the World Trade Organization, and at the end, it hosted the Summer Olympics,” Oud says.
It’s also a good time for institutions like RWI, which wants to try building bridges between China and the West through partner programs with Chinese universities. “There was a relative openness and interest among the Chinese at that time to learn more about other countries and also about international human rights,” Oud says. However, the issue was sensitive even during that period.
In recent years, however, the room for this kind of cooperation in China has been shrinking, Oud says. The beginning was marked by “Document No. 9,” which was issued internally in the Party even before Xi Jinping took office. Since then, discussions about alternative government systems or independent journalism have been banned.
In response, the West has developed a strategy that separates politics from economics. Not a good idea, Oud said. “We can’t discuss human rights with China on Monday, and on Tuesday it’s business as usual.” It is important to Oud that the conflict between the West and China is not a clash between societies, but a competition of political systems.
In China, she met many people who also long for more freedom. “But change has to come from within. We can’t rely on sanctions or force respect for human rights on China,” says Oud. Face-to-face cooperation between Chinese and Western colleagues is likely to be a crucial building block, Oud is certain. David Renke
China claims to have picked up signals of extraterrestrial life, according to a now-deleted report. The Sky Eye radio telescope in Guizhou province has detected narrow-band electromagnetic signals, the report said, citing Zhang Tonjie, chief scientist of a Chinese team searching for extraterrestrial civilizations. However, the suspicious signals could also be some kind of radio interference and require further investigation, the scientist added.
