Links - 20th July 2020 (2) (China's 'Peaceful' Rise)

David Paulk 波大卫 on Twitter - "THREAD about how Douyin, the Chinese version of #TikTok, is banning livestreamers for speaking Cantonese instead of Mandarin. 1/"

TikTok Told Moderators: Suppress Posts by the “Ugly” and Poor - "The makers of TikTok, the Chinese video-sharing app with hundreds of millions of users around the world, instructed moderators to suppress posts created by users deemed too ugly, poor, or disabled for the platform, according to internal documents obtained by The Intercept. These same documents show moderators were also told to censor political speech in TikTok livestreams, punishing those who harmed “national honor” or broadcast streams about “state organs such as police” with bans from the platform."

Melissa Chen - "Zoom is looking to be a huge security risk. The company has been caught sharing data with Facebook, lying about end-to-end encryption, and routing data from calls through China.Zoom's software is written in their vast outsourced R&D offices in China.Elon Musk’s SpaceX and New York City's schools have previously banned the use of Zoom. Now Taiwan's Cabinet, in an order today, bans all official use of Zoom.All governments should too but Boris Johnson, just before being hospitalized, used Zoom for a virtual Cabinet meeting. And top officials in India and even the Pentagon are still using Zoom.Expect that whatever you say/show on Zoom is open to Chinese spies (not to mention your face - this is a techno surveillance state).My advice: Don't use Zoom."

Thais Beat China's Online Warriors - "What might at first look like a pointless spat is exposing the weaknesses of China’s propaganda efforts when they cross the firewall.Battles over national honor led by online pop fans are nothing new... Chinese keyboard warriors insulted the Thai king, the Thai prime minister, and dismissed the country as poor and backward.They were surprised to find Thais did not seem to care. In fact, many were exultant to have someone else lend a hand in disparaging their government, which many Thais despise, and even their infamously thuggish king, who is far less popular than his father despite harsh lèse-majesté laws. Soon the hashtag #nnevvy, which now has over 2 million posts, was full of Thai Twitter users making self-deprecating and often hilarious memes about themselves. In response to Chinese taunts of “NMSL,” which means something like “hope your mother dies,” Thais retorted that they have 20 mothers, a reference to the Thai king’s supposed harem. Chinese users were baffled by this, and some attempted to lecture their Thai enemies on the meaning of patriotism... Chinese fans had unearthed one of Weeraya’s Instagram posts from a few years ago in which she had responded “Taiwanese” to a commenter asking what style of clothing she was wearing. This supposed recognition of a separate Taiwan from China was taken as another piece of evidence against Bright. (Chinese media uses absurd politicized circumlocution to avoid admitting the existence of Taiwan.) Thai warriors thus became fevered supporters of the sovereignty of Taiwan and Hong Kong, both of which China claims as its own. Moved by this show of solidarity, netizens from Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, and other Asian countries that have long-standing anxieties about Chinese territorial bullying, mobilized to join the #nnevvy war. A widely shared meme took a still from the classic anime Sailor Moon and overlaid various Asian flags on each of the magical warriors. The #nnevvy war reflected a growing awareness and resentment outside the firewall, at least in Asia, of how exactly China seeks to influence public discourse. Thai users and their allies referred to their opponents as “wumao,” the word used in China for internet warriors paid by the government (supposedly 50 cents a post, thus the name) to bombard platforms like Weibo with pro-Communist Party comments. In recent years, an increasing number of reports suggest, the Chinese government has been sending wumao over the firewall to post on Twitter—although, as a new investigation by ProPublica finds, the wumao may not be people at all but a collection of algorithms. In fact, the Chinese partisans hopping the firewall to battle Thais were probably spontaneous rather than paid or organized. In the August expedition over the firewall, the keyboard warriors had enjoyed explicit encouragement and support from the Chinese government. But this time the Chinese government seemed to be encouraging netizens to hold back. On Weibo, the hashtag #ThailandInsultsChina mysteriously disappeared from the hot searches bar, and Diba, the Reddit-like forum partially responsible for organizing the August expedition, posted on Weibo explicitly discouraging Chinese from hopping the wall, saying that it would only embolden Hong Kong and Taiwan separatists. Clearly the Chinese censors felt it was a war not worth fighting, especially at a time when the authorities are trying to put out fires on multiple public relations fronts, from the mistreatment of Africans in southern China to the Communist Party’s culpability in spreading the coronavirus to articles claiming Kazakhstan for China. Regardless of the actual authenticity of their opponents, Thais cheerfully enjoyed portraying their opponents as monolithic, insincere, and humorless. One meme showed a computer lab of men in army fatigues all typing “China #1” “Democracy also has problems” “CIA plant” and other staples; another simply changed the stars in the Chinese flag to NMSL. Memes also poked fun at the fact that Chinese have to use a virtual private network, which is illegal in China, to defend their country on most social media platforms. In one cartoon, a group of Chinese keyboard warriors surreptitiously climb over the firewall, yell about China’s superiority at a Thai sipping tea unimpressed, and hurriedly climb back over. Overall, the memes painted a picture of Chinese as simply unequipped to withstand warfare outside of the firewall, having been coddled all their lives by the one-sided ideological bent of the Chinese internet. Some tweets noted Chinese trolls’ poor command of English and uncreative insults. In image after image, Chinese warriors were shown breaking down at the slightest mention of Taiwan’s independence, the Tiananmen Square massacre, or the coronavirus originating from their country... China’s sound defeat in the #nnevvy war did not go unnoticed at home. While the #ThailandInsultsChina hashtag on Weibo was full of the usual outraged nationalism, just as many posts shared the memes from Twitter, praised the Thai sense of humor, and admitted that they contained some truth. Even self-identified patriots denigrated the keyboard warriors’ “uncivilized” tactics. “When you go over the wall to defend our country and all you can say is ‘NMSL,’ who is really shaming China?” one widely shared post asked. Other posters reprimanded their compatriots for being too “glass-hearted” or thin-skinned, noting that “the world has 7 billion people, not every one of them has to love China.”The incident also prompted a degree of self-reflection on Weibo about Chinese internet culture. Many scolded the keyboard warriors for not understanding how online discourse works outside of the firewall, noting that Chinese attempts to report slanderous Thai memes to the Thai government were of no use because the outside internet is not as rigorously monitored as the Chinese internet. (“I guess we really are exporting our values,” one account reflected sarcastically about the reporting attempts.) Moreover, Chinese netizens explained, it was normal for Thais to say whatever they want about their government. Many shared “Prathet Ku Mee,” a popular Thai rap video in which the rappers curse the military government as evidence of this fact. “Only Chinese and North Koreans don’t dare to curse their government”... The self-reflection exercised by ordinary Chinese citizens on Weibo may not make it to the highest levels of the Chinese state. The Chinese government is only becoming more aggressive, and it is investing increasingly in propaganda outside the firewall. But the #nnevvy war shows that no amount of investing in propaganda is effective if not coupled with a sophisticated understanding of the dynamics of the outside internet. It may be time to bring in some meme consultants."

Drew Pavlou on Twitter - "Hey everyone, it is with a heavy heart I inform you The University of Queensland will be considering my expulsion on April 27th before a secret hearing due to my posts criticizing the university’s links to the CCP and supporting Hong Kong."

China asks India to revise new FDI rules, says they violate WTO free trade norms - "India’s new rules for foreign direct investment (FDI) violate WTO principles of non-discrimination and are against free and fair trade, a Chinese embassy spokesperson in New Delhi said"
Of course, if you criticise China for the same you're a brainwashed CIA asset

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, America's Health Insurance Hell - "Chinese media have rolled out positive footage about volunteers in Hubei, helping those who are homeless. The government has sought to assure people that they have a handle on the situation. Anyone who claims otherwise has been punished."

All the evidence suggests that China is an untrustworthy partner - "If the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different outcome, the West’s policy towards China has for many years been insane... In the midst of a global emergency, this is not the conduct of a responsible regime. But it is consistent with the actions of a state that breaks international laws and norms as a matter of policy. For while Brussels seems willing to have its silence bought by investment and trade with China, and many British advocates of “operation kowtow” stick quietly to their guns, too, an examination of Beijing’s behaviour in international institutions tells us that China cannot be considered a trustworthy partner. Take the WHO. In 2007, after the first SARS outbreak, the WHO introduced new International Health Regulations. These regulations – to which China signed up – require countries to “notify WHO … within 24 hours … of all events which may constitute a public health emergency of international concern within its territory”. And once notified, the regulations demand that countries “continue to communicate to WHO timely, accurate and sufficiently detailed health information” including test results and the number of cases and deaths. China failed to comply with these regulations – quite deliberately – and yet the WHO has remained silent. Perhaps this is because of the loyalties of its director general. China orchestrated the election of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to run the WHO in 2017. Under Tedros, who as Ethiopia’s health minister was accused of covering up cholera epidemics, the WHO has parroted China’s version of events about Covid-19, repeating Beijing’s early lines about the transmissibility of the virus and praising the Chinese response.Then there are China’s obligations as a member of the World Trade Organisation. When China joined the WTO in 2001, it agreed to participate in good faith, rejecting mercantilism and accepting the open market principles upon which the organisation was founded. Yet in practice it has done no such thing. China has engaged in state-sponsored and cyber-enabled industrial espionage, forced technology transfers from Western companies to Chinese firms and pursued policies that block foreign businesses from its markets... Then there is the United Nations, where Beijing has captured a number of key positions. Already, four of the UN’s 15 specialist agencies are led by Chinese officials. Beijing uses the International Telecommunication Union, which sets regulatory standards for communications networks, to push Huawei into different countries’ 5G networks. Critics claim Beijing also uses the Department for Economic and Social Affairs to promote its own Belt and Road Initiative under the guise of UN sustainable development goals. And there is no doubt that China uses its economic muscle to pressure countries to vote to change international human rights standards and cover up its own abuses. And those abuses go on. While the world has been focused on fighting the pandemic, China announced new “research stations” on its military bases in the South China Sea, and earlier this month sank a Vietnamese fishing vessel in disputed waters. It has sent fighter planes on sorties near Taiwan, in which its pilots reportedly “locked onto” a Taiwanese jet but did not fire their missiles. And of course it has rounded up democracy activists in Hong Kong, including many retired lawyers and politicians... that is the reality of dealing with communist China. It will abrogate its treaty responsibilities. It will cover up the truth. It will bully and intimidate its neighbours. It will capture international institutions and use them for its own purposes. It will abuse international laws and norms until it gets what it wants. It cannot be trusted, it is a danger to the world: it is time for us to get real."

Sweden Closes Its Last Remaining 'Confucius Institute' amid Strained Relations with China - "The Chinese government in 2004 launched Confucius institutes at various foreign universities, with the stated goal of promoting Chinese language and culture. However, U.S. officials have stated that the institutes are a propaganda tool meant to enhance China’s “soft power.”Sweden at one time had generally cordial relations with China, with automaker Volvo accepting Chinese ownership in 2010 and welcoming Europe’s first Confucius Institute at Stockholm University in 2005. However, Sweden closed that institute in January 2015.“Generally speaking, establishing institutes that are funded by another nation, within the framework of a university, is rather a questionable practice,” then-vice chancellor Astrid Soderbergh Widding said at the time. Sweden is now the first European country to close all of its Confucius Institutes. Sweden-China relations had already soured before the coronavirus pandemic. In November 2019 China arrested Swedish publisher Gui Minhai for printing texts critical of Communist Party premier Xi Jinping. The Swedish chapter of PEN International, a global association of writers, awarded Gui its Tucholsky Prize for persecuted writers or publishers, after which China imposed trade restrictions on Sweden.There are 86 Confucius Institutes currently operating in the U.S., including at elite institutions such as Stanford University and Tufts University. Former FBI director Christopher Wray testified to Congress in 2019 that the institutes “offer a platform to disseminate Chinese government or Chinese Communist Party propaganda, to encourage censorship, to restrict academic freedom.”"

From 'perfect Chinese daughter' to Communist Party critic, why Vicky Xu is exposing China to scrutiny - ""If something happens to me you know I've been murdered." It's a joke journalist Vicky Xiuzhong Xu makes in her stand-up comedy routine, but the reality is she's had a lot of death threats.She was, not so long ago, a model Chinese citizen; loyal to her government and its ideology... Her family has warned her not to return to China; she may never see them, the people she loves, again. It is a searing separation that causes deep conflict and pain... Being an investigative journalist criticising the Chinese Government is a lonely place to be. Her closest friends in China have cut contact.Isolation is a heavy price to pay, she says, for "just doing my job"... She was one of the first journalists in Australia to lift the lid on the incarceration of Uyghurs in China, convincing members of the Australian-Uyghur community to go on the record with their stories of missing relatives... As the lead author of a report released last week, Xu has exposed the forced labour of tens of thousands of Uyghurs and other oppressed minority Muslims, detained, "re-educated" and despatched to work in factories outside of Xinjiang that supply Nike, Apple, Adidas and 80 other well-known clothing, automotive and technology brands... For her single-minded persistence in breaking these stories, there is an emotional toll and considerable turmoil. She is trolled, called a traitor and monitored by the authorities... What led a young woman, one of her country's "best and brightest", to turn away from her government's ideology, but not her people? It's been an uneasy, sometimes agonising passage.There was a time, she says, of "cognitive dissonance" as she sought to reconcile two different worlds; childhood indoctrination about China with what she was hearing."The popular belief is that if you don't love China, you're not one of them. So, who am I anymore?"... Xu well understands why "many people are just very angry" with her. Her old self would have been angry with her too.But she says, "What they don't know is that just a few years back I was just like them."... she interviewed dissidents from China. One of them was Lebao Wu: "I thought he was a fraud and I was going to interview him and write and expose him."He had been a maths teacher who made jokes about China's leaders online and was put in prison and forced to do manufacturing labour for 14 hours a day.When he was released and settled in Australia he was diagnosed with PTSD and a variety of mental health issues.His story of injustice changed Xu's life. She was shaken. "I was very touched by his story, and it made me rethink a lot of my previous positions."... Xu received face-to-face warnings over an article she was writing that alleged government inaction following a flood. Authorities later stopped her at a train station and warned her again. When Xu returned to China to visit her sick grandmother last year, a government official told her to stop her journalism work. When she arrived at the airport to return home, her boarding pass was withheld for a worrying length of time... Xu persisted in writing stories, often about the Uyghurs. This time her father received a warning during a phone call from police. It was a call that would rupture her relationship with her family."My dad has stopped speaking to me""

Why America desperately needs a 'hard decoupling' from China - "Chinese officials said their country’s economy shrank by 6.8 percent from January to March 2020, compared with one year ago.The “China Dream” of dictator Xi Jinping is now on life support, in grave danger of succumbing to the same novel coronavirus that he and his fellow Communists have unleashed upon the world.I say we turn off the ventilator.This sentiment seems to be even more infectious than the disease itself. A Harris poll released on April 6 found that 77 percent of the US population believes China is to blame for the pandemic. Before this thing has run its course, most of the world’s 7 billion-plus people will likely agree as well. It was just three years ago that Xi made a triumphal entry into Davos, celebrated as the new champion of free trade by Europeans leery of Trump’s America First policies.Today, it is hard to imagine an invitation to Davos — or an invitation to anywhere, frankly — being extended to the Chinese dictator, whose campaign of silencing and intimidating medical whistleblowers allowed the virus to flourish and eventually spread across the world... British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is said to be furious with China as he recovers from the coronavirus, which nearly killed him... How well-disposed do you think the leaders of Spain, Turkey, the Netherlands, Australia and the Czech Republic are toward China at the moment? All of those countries have been on the receiving end of defective PPE and test kits, Chinese medical supplies that failed to contain the virus. Even an official in Iran, China’s closest ally in the Middle East, has bitterly complained about the Chinese lies that cost the lives of thousands of his fellow citizens.The epidemic has also revealed our dangerous dependence on China for many of our most common drugs and medical supplies. You might think that no country would ever threaten to withhold life-saving medications in the midst of a global pandemic. But, shockingly, China already has. We have no choice but to add such things as penicillin and PPE to the list of products that, like steel and silicon chips, we must be able to manufacture here... In the next year, the Chinese economy will suffer a death by a thousand cuts: a resumption of the Trump tariffs, supply chains relocating to other countries, factories moving to freer climes, consumers around the world rejecting China’s wares. No single cut will be fatal. But taken together, they will bleed China’s economy dry. They may also, it is to be hoped, shake the corrupt and incompetent Chinese Communist Party to its very foundations."

Coronavirus news: Dominic Raab tells China there will be NO 'business as usual'

Exclusive: Warning Over Chinese Mobile Giant Xiaomi Recording Millions Of People’s ‘Private’ Web And Phone Use - "his Redmi Note 8 smartphone was watching much of what he was doing on the phone. That data was then being sent to remote servers hosted by another Chinese tech giant, Alibaba, which were ostensibly rented by Xiaomi.The seasoned cybersecurity researcher found a worrying amount of his behavior was being tracked, whilst various kinds of device data were also being harvested, leaving Cirlig spooked that his identity and his private life was being exposed to the Chinese company. When he looked around the Web on the device’s default Xiaomi browser, it recorded all the websites he visited, including search engine queries whether with Google or the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo, and every item viewed on a news feed feature of the Xiaomi software. That tracking appeared to be happening even if he used the supposedly private “incognito” mode.The device was also recording what folders he opened and to which screens he swiped, including the status bar and the settings page. All of the data was being packaged up and sent to remote servers in Singapore and Russia, though the Web domains they hosted were registered in Beijing... cybersecurity researcher Andrew Tierney investigated further. He also found browsers shipped by Xiaomi on Google Play—Mi Browser Pro and the Mint Browser—were collecting the same data. Together, they have more than 15 million downloads, according to Google Play statistics.Many more millions are likely to be affected by what Cirlig described as a serious privacy issue, though Xiaomi denied there was a problem... there appear to be issues with how Xiaomi is transferring the data to its servers. Though the Chinese company claimed the data was being encrypted when transferred in an attempt to protect user privacy, Cirlig found he was able to quickly see just what was being taken from his device by decoding a chunk of information that was hidden with a form of easily crackable encoding, known as base64. It took Cirlig just a few seconds to change the garbled data into readable chunks of information... a spokesperson confirmed it was collecting browsing data, claiming the information was anonymized so wasn’t tied to any identity. They said that users had consented to such tracking.But, as pointed out by Cirlig and Tierney, it wasn’t just the website or Web search that was sent to the server. Xiaomi was also collecting data about the phone, including unique numbers for identifying the specific device and Android version. Cirlig said such “metadata” could “easily be correlated with an actual human behind the screen.”Xiaomi’s spokesperson also denied that browsing data was being recorded under incognito mode. Both Cirlig and Tierney, however, found in their independent tests that their web habits were sent off to remote servers regardless of what mode the browser was set to, providing both photos and videos as proof... Both Cirlig and Tierney said Xiaomi’s behavior was more invasive than other browsers like Google Chrome or Apple Safari. “It’s a lot worse than any of the mainstream browsers I have seen,” Tierney said. “Many of them take analytics, but it’s about usage and crashing. Taking browser behavior, including URLs, without explicit consent and in private browsing mode, is about as bad as it gets.” Cirlig also suspected that his app use was being monitored by Xiaomi, as every time he opened an app, a chunk of information would be sent to a remote server. Another researcher who’d tested Xiaomi devices, though was under an NDA to discuss the matter openly, said he’d seen the manufacturer’s phone collect such data. Xiaomi didn’t respond to questions on that issue... It’s the second time in two months that a huge Chinese tech company has been seen watching over users’ phone habits. A security app with a “private” browser made by Cheetah Mobile, a public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, was seen collecting information on Web use, Wi-Fi access point names and more granular data like how a user scrolled on visited Web pages. Cheetah argued it needed to collect the information to protect users and improve their experience.Late in his research, Cirlig also discovered that Xiaomi’s music player app on his phone was collecting information on his listening habits: what songs were played and when.One message was clear to the researcher: when you’re listening, Xiaomi is listening, too."