Links - 25th June 2020 (2) (China's 'Peaceful' Rise)

UK moves to drop Huawei as 5G vendor China transparency - "The US viewed Johnson’s decision on Huawei as a major blow to the “five eyes” electronic surveillance alliance among the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. US officials fear China could use Huawei to collect intelligence... White House coronavirus coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said at a recent press briefing that Chinese data in January led experts to believe the virus was less contagious, akin to the related virus SARS, leading to less concern among health officials."

Huawei development team mails an HKSP (Huawei Kernel Self Protection) Linux patch with a backdoor to Linux Foundation, Huawei denies involvement - "A perfect recipe for introducing backdoors in gadgets. Last week Huawei development team submitted a patch to the Linux Foundation with a ‘trivial vulnerability.’ When the vulnerability was discovered, Huawei, as always, denied its involvement in the patch and said that its employees may be responsible. Huawei is infamous for security relates issues. It has already been banned by the U.S. government from supplying 5G technology to US telecom providers citing security and data leak issues. Now, Huawei is trying to secretly implement a backdoor in HKSP (Huawei Kernel Self Protection) which could have been included in the next update of Linux."

Chinese ambassador threatens retaliation if Germany excludes Huawei
So China is admitting that they control Huawei? Why is China interfering with Germany's internal affairs?

Melissa Chen - "#Misinformation on #COVID19 is hitting African American, Asian, Hispanic, rural & low-income Americans hard. On May 13 @NABJ ,@IAMWILL, @VanJones68, @RolandSMartin & @EbonyJadeHilton discuss keeping Americans healthy+safe"
"The organizer, Huawei and its puppet master, the CCP, stand furthest away from the principles of "inclusion and diversity."Not only does the CCP ignore minority rights, it has a terrible record of upholding it.You're being played.This is right out of the old Soviet playbook of exploiting racial tensions in the US, but it's even more sophisticated - this time, they're using prominent black American activists and celebs."

Former Employee Discloses Huawei’s True Power - "Jin Chun obtained a master’s degree in computer science in Ireland and worked for Huawei on big data research for three years before leaving the company in April of this year. He says that Huawei is actually an agent of the Chinese communist regime, a military unit that combines commercial activities, espionage, intelligence, and technology theft in its daily operations. Li Hongyuan, who worked for Huawei for 13 years, was terminated and wrongfully imprisoned for eight months after attempting to expose corruption within the company. His story went viral on China’s social media.According to Jin, there are many victims similarly wronged by Huawei. Most of them choose to keep silent because if they speak out, nothing changes and they pay the price... “Some say Huawei is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). I would say it is [part of] the CCP itself. That is plainly obvious”... Jin revealed that Huawei not only monitors Chinese citizens living in China, but also collects information from overseas Chinese nationals... Jin’s specialty is big data analysis, so the department he worked in focused on analyzing people’s likes, preferences and personalities, and their anticipated future spending patterns.In other words, Huawei does not only use its surveillance and data analysis technologies to help China’s National Security Department monitor the Chinese people, it also makes a profit by studying consumer habits... “Many so-called innovations were actually plagiarized. As a matter of fact, Huawei does not have much innovation. More often than not, the company simply takes over the paths others are walking on, and forces competitors into a dead-end. Huawei is able to do that because it is backed by the iron-handed state apparatus—the entire judicial system always sides with Huawei. In the end, all patents belong to Huawei, even inventions by other companies eventually become Huawei’s intellectual property. This is how Huawei rose to become the number one IT company in China.”... Huawei unashamedly proclaims that the company worships and adopts an aggressive and ruthless work environment known as “wolf culture.”Jin said he prefers to call it “wolfdog culture” because employees work like a dog every day, and the company encourages them to report on and bully each other. According to Jin, most employees only have 4 days off each month. Usual working hours are 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. When a project is at a crucial stage, the engineers have one day off a month. Those who work to 3 a.m. may take a half day off the following morning.”Worst of all, when the company needs to reduce the workforce, instead of laying off employees with a severance package, management makes employees work overtime on a crazy schedule, so they will quit on their own."

Pyjamas in public: Chinese city apologises for 'shaming' residents - "Government officials in Suzhou in Anhui province released pictures of seven people wearing their nightwear, calling it "uncivilised behaviour".The online "shaming" included the pyjama picture - caught by surveillance cameras - plus the person's name, ID card and other information... Officials argued they were entering a national "civilised city" competition, and that residents were banned from wearing pyjamas in public.Other "bad behaviour" exposed online included "lying [on a bench] in an uncivilised manner", and handing out advertising flyers. But the pyjama pictures caused anger online. Some argued there was nothing wrong with wearing pyjamas in public - while others said the government had infringed residents' privacy. Officials later "sincerely apologised", adding: "We wanted to put an end to uncivilised behaviour, but of course we should protect residents' privacy."The officials said they would, in future, blur the pictures instead.Suzhou's proactive approach is not new. Last year, according to local media, the city asked residents to submit pictures of "uncivilised behaviour", offering to pay 10 yuan ($1.45; £1.10) for successful tip-offs."

The strange tale of the paid protesters supporting Meng Wanzhou at her extradition hearing - "Two people who demonstrated in support of Meng Wanzhou outside B.C. Supreme Court during her extradition hearing say they were unwittingly recruited under false pretences and paid to be there... For actor Julia Hackstaff of Vancouver it all started with a promise of $100 for two hours of work in what she understood to be an appearance as an extra in a movie shoot. Hackstaff said the offer came over Facebook from a person in the acting community she has never met."

How Xi Jinping destroyed religion and made himself God - "Catholic churches torn down or denuded of their crosses and statues. Images of the Madonna and Child replaced with pictures of “People’s Leader” Xi Jinping. Signs posted outside evangelical churches forbidding anyone under the age of 18 from entering. The Ten Commandments painted over with quotes from Xi.These are just some of the ways that the Chinese Communist Party is persecuting Christians in China... Buddhist temples are being turned into shrines celebrating Xi Jinping, China’s President For Life. His picture adorns the walls, his recorded voice booms out of the loudspeakers, and it is his “Thought” — not Buddha’s — that the monks are now required to meditate upon.Not even the Taoists, China’s ancient folk religion, have escaped this new Cultural Revolution. Temples that have stood for over 1,000 years have been closed and ancient statues smashed, all on the orders of “Religious Affairs” officials... On Feb. 1, 2020, new restrictions on all forms of religious activity came into force. The “Control Measures for Religious Groups,” as the 41 new rules are called, deal with everything from the holding of rites and rituals, to the selection of leaders and annual meetings, to the hiring of staff and the handling of funds. All of these must be reported — in advance, no less — to the comrades at the “Religious Affairs” office for their approval. In other words, without the permission of the authorities, you can’t organize a Bible study. And if you do get permission, you’d better hold it in a Party-approved religious venue, at a Party-approved time, with a Party-approved leader and using the new Party-approved Bible, which contains quotations from Confucius and, of course, Xi Jinping.No Communist directive would be complete without a Catch-22 and the “Control Measures” contain a doozy: “Religious groups must also report to the appropriate government authorities any and all other matters that should be reported.”Translation: We can shut you down at any time for any reason.The “Control Measures” are part of Xi Jinping’s New Cultural Revolution, one goal of which is to stamp out all religious groups that the Communist Party cannot co-opt and control. “A religious group cannot carry out any activities,” warns the new rules, “without registration with the Civil Affairs office and the approval of the Religious Affairs office of the people’s government.”... The new rules order all “religious groups” to “propagandize the principles and policies of the Chinese Communist Party, along with national laws and regulations, to all of their religious staff and followers” and to “educate and guide all religious staff and followers to embrace the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership, to embrace the socialist system, to uphold the path of ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’ . . . and to maintain the overall policy of sinicization of religion.”... It is a policy of replacing the worship of God with the worship of the Communist Party leadership. Hitler and the Nazis attempted something similar in the 1930s with their Nazification program, which was an effort to turn the Catholic and Protestant churches of Germany into ardent supporters of National Socialism and the Nazi leadership."

Minnesota student jailed in China over critical tweets - "China has arrested and sentenced a student that had allegedly posted tweets critical of Chinese President Xi Jinping while studying at the University of Minnesota"

Chinese video game lets players attack Hong Kong protesters - "China is ramping up the anti-protest propaganda with a new browser-based game where players can hit Hong Kong “traitors” with bats.In “Everyone Hit the Traitors,” players can assault pro-democracy protesters and grotesque caricatures of known activists with weapons like bats and shoes by repeatedly tapping on them.The free game opens with Chinese text indicating that “Hong Kong is part of China, and this can’t be meddled with by outside powers”... “Everyone hit the Traitors” also shows comic-style cartoons of Western influencers rewarding protesters with cash for killing cops or committing suicide"

China fines church for owning ‘wrong’ version of the Bible - "One branch of the Protestant Three-Self Church, located in the northeastern province of Liaoning, was fined the equivalent of $1,400 after South Korean versions of the Bible were discovered in April. Other Three-Self churches had hymnbooks, gospel pamphlets and Bibles confiscated and burned... Since March 2018, the Chinese government has banned online and retail sales of Bibles and hymnals and other spiritual books aren’t allowed in churches unless sanctioned and published by the CCP, moving the churches further and further away from any semblance of religious liberty... Sermons and speeches by pastors in religious venues that impinge on CCP’s religious policies and regulations are considered violations, according to an open letter titled “All People Must Take Action and Fully Carry Out Work to ‘Clean Up Gang Crime and Eliminate Evil’ and ‘Eradicate Pornography and Illegal Publications’ in the Religious Filed!'”... although there are no quotes saying religious material is akin to pornography, the government is essentially linking the two by putting them in the same campaign and trying to scare parents who send their kids to church or Sunday School in “the most up-to-date version of psychological warfare and propaganda.”"

Doctor who exposed Sars cover-up is under house arrest in China, family confirms - "The Chinese military surgeon who exposed the government’s cover-up of the the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) epidemic in 2003 has been under de facto house arrest since last year, according to his friends and family.The fate of 88-year-old Dr Jiang Yanyong, a retired general in the People’s Liberation Army, has been brought into the spotlight after a whistleblower doctor, Li Wenliang, who exposed the coronavirus epidemic, died last Friday at the age of 34.Since April last year, officials have cut off Jiang’s contact with the outside world and restricted his movements after he wrote to the top leadership asking for a reassessment of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement... The doctor became agitated and was given medication, which led to severe memory loss, the friend said. Officias have restricted his movement since then... Jiang became a national hero by exposing the government’s cover-up of the Sars epidemic in 2003, but was detained and forced to undergo “brainwashing sessions” after he called on the government to acknowledge that the 1989 student movement was a “patriotic movement”... AdvertisementIn a 2013 interview with Southern People Weekly, an outspoken state magazine, Jiang stressed his insistence on speaking the truth. “As a doctor, protecting patients’ health and lives is first and foremost … the most basic requirement for a doctor is to speak the truth. I have experienced numerous political movements for 50 years, I feel deeply that it is easy to lie, so I insist on never telling lies”"...

Chris Derps on Twitter - "Chinese social networking platform Douban has censored lyrics from #China's own national anthem "rise, people who do not wish to be slaves" due to "radical content" #coronavirus"

#9 China’s Hip Hop Ban is Not Really About Hip Hop - Magpie Digest - "it is not actually hip hop culture that the censors care about, but rather its foreign roots and its sudden, explosive popularity among youth. As with most censorship in China these days, what is really being managed is the scale of people coming together outside of the government’s control. Case in point: in addition to hip hop, the new regulation also banned “artists with tattoos, counterculture, and funeral culture (bourgeois decadence).” A few days later, another (alleged; see below) list of admonishments surfaced, targeting virtually every popular mobile game in China. The reasons cited range from vague (“does not adhere to socialist values,” for PUBG-like Battle Royale games), to selectively enforced (“inappropriate costumes,” for a wide array of games including Arena of Valor), to the downright bewildering (“may cause male dissatisfaction,” for our favorite boyfriend simulator Love and Producer). The only thing all of these subcultures and games have in common are the large fanbases they have amassed. Not even industry insiders can predict exactly when regulations will be announced, what they will impact, or how long they will be enforced for, but one thing is certain: nothing that catches the attention of huge numbers of young people will avoid the scrutiny of the censors forever... From the outside, it is easy to forget that the Chinese government is not a unified monolith but rather a sprawling bureaucracy made of thousands of individuals with different motives and priorities. Decisions are rarely absolute, uniformly enforced nationwide, or even executed in total consensus. A ban might be motivated by the desire of a minor bureaucrat to perform patriotism — as we saw with the boycott on Christmas in December — or it could be passed down from Xi Jinping himself. There is no real way for a bystander to know.The amorphous and inconsistent nature of cultural rulings is both a symptom of this system, and a coping mechanism that allows the system to evolve while maintaining its authority."

Yanxi Palace: Why China turned against its most popular show - "The story of Yanxi Palace, a drama about life in imperial China, broke records when it was released last year.It was streamed more than 15 billion times on China Netflix-like iQiyi and became the most watched online drama in China for 39 consecutive days.All that changed in late January when a state media article criticised the "negative impact" of imperial dramas, and it wasn't long before Yanxi Palace was taken off air... "It's not the first time something like this has happened," Prof Stanley Rosen, a China specialist at the University of Southern California, told the BBC."But I would say the censorship is certainly getting worse."Yanxi Palace was seen as promoting incorrect values, commercialism and consumerism; not the socialist core values that Beijing wants to see promoted."... Prof Zhu Ying of the Film Academy at Hong Kong's Baptist University told the BBC. "Censors tend to turn a blind eye to entertainment programs of frivolous nature."But that's only until they become too popular and threaten social norms, morally and ideologically. Yanxi is a perfect example of such a show."... Another problem might have been the attention Yanxi Palace received from international audiences."It could be that the show became too popular outside China," says Mr Rosen. "It's a contradiction of wanting to succeed overseas but also wanting to control the message."Beijing wants Chinese culture to be promoted outside of China but showing the values that the authorities want to see portrayed... President Xi Jinping is promoting the idea of the rise of China as peaceful, and that China believes in harmony.Yanxi Palace, though, paints an image of a China of intrigue and backstabbing."It flies in the face of the message that China wants to send about its peaceful rise"... "And censorship is getting tighter, I would say," Mr Rosen says. "It's not just series or movies, it's also targeting music like rap for instance." China often stands in its own way when it comes to building up its soft power.A point in case are the movies it enters into the Oscars foreign movie category.There've been plenty of strong candidates in recent years but those didn't get picked, says Mr Rosen, likely because they tell a story that Beijing thinks reflects negatively on China.The 2017 movie Angels Wear White dealt with child molestation while 2018's Dying to Survive told the story of a cancer patient illegally importing medicine from India.Both movies were successful in China and have received international praise - but they don't depict the version of China that Beijing wants to world to hear."If they tolerated a little bit more criticism, they could be much more successful when it comes to soft power," Mr Rosen sums up."But they worry that once they open the floodgates, they won't be able to retain their control anymore.""

China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia - WSJ - "China’s financial markets are probably more dangerous in the long run than China’s wildlife markets. Given the accumulated costs of decades of state-driven lending, massive malfeasance by local officials in cahoots with local banks, a towering property bubble, and vast industrial overcapacity, China is as ripe as a country can be for a massive economic correction. Even a small initial shock could lead to a massive bonfire of the vanities as all the false values, inflated expectations and misallocated assets implode. If that comes, it is far from clear that China’s regulators and decision makers have the technical skills or the political authority to minimize the damage—especially since that would involve enormous losses to the wealth of the politically connected.  We cannot know when or even if a catastrophe of this scale will take place, but students of geopolitics and international affairs—not to mention business leaders and investors—need to bear in mind that China’s power, impressive as it is, remains brittle. A deadlier virus or a financial-market contagion could transform China’s economic and political outlook at any time."

China expels 3 Wall Street Journal reporters over 'Sick Man of Asia' op-ed headline - "China on Wednesday ordered three reporters from American newspaper the Wall Street Journal to leave the country over what it deemed a racist headline, in one of the harshest moves against foreign media in years... Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the Journal op-ed — titled “China is the Real Sick Man of Asia” — had a “racially discriminatory” and “sensational” headline, and slammed the newspaper for not issuing an official apology... The three journalists are in the Wall Street Journal’s news section, which is separate from editorials and op-eds.The opinion piece, written by Bard College professor Walter Russell Mead, also criticised the Chinese government’s initial response to the new coronavirus outbreak — calling the Wuhan city government at the virus epicentre “secretive and self-serving”, while dismissing national efforts as ineffective. The February 3 piece “slandered the efforts of the Chinese government and the Chinese people to fight the epidemic”... “The editors of the Wall Street Journal have nailed themselves to the pillar of shame,” wrote the nationalistic Global Times in an op-ed on Tuesday before the reporters were expelled.The WSJ’s remarks “sound like gloating, and they disgust Chinese people”... China’s move to revoke the credentials of three WSJ journalists marks a drastic escalation in the country’s tightening media landscape, which has seen the effective expulsion of multiple foreign reporters over the past five years.The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China said revoking the press credentials of three correspondents is an unprecedented form of retaliation, adding that the country had not outright expelled a foreign correspondent since 1998... Nine journalists have been either expelled or effectively expelled through non-renewal of visas since 2013, it added.In August, China refused to renew the press credentials of WSJ journalist Chun Han Wong, after he and Wen wrote an article on one of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s cousins. In 2018, Megha Rajagopalan, the Beijing bureau chief for BuzzFeed News, was effectively expelled from China after she was unable to renew her visa as well. Prior to her expulsion, she had reported extensively from the northwest region of Xinjiang, where China has rounded up an estimated one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in internment camps.And at the end of 2015, French reporter Ursula Gauthier was also forced to leave the country after she criticised government policy in Xinjiang and the authorities refused to renew her credentials.A survey of 109 foreign journalists published in January 2019 “painted the darkest picture of reporting conditions inside China in recent memory”"