Chinese communist govt cuts off widow’s pension for refusing to renounce Christ - "“Because the Communist Party feeds you, you must only believe in it, not God,” they told her. When she refused to remove the images of Jesus, they canceled her subsidy"
Huge Chinese rocket core falling ‘out of control’ back to Earth - "A hulking, out-of-control Chinese rocket core is currently pinwheeling around the globe once every 90 minutes, and there’s no telling exactly when — or where — it will come crashing down to Earth in a potentially dangerous re-entry. The object is a 30-metre tall, 21-tonne leftover from China’s Long March 5B rocket, which carried a piece of its new Tianhe space station into orbit on Apr. 29. The rocket launched its cargo into space before its core tumbled into a chaotic temporary orbit around Earth, where it’s been rapidly circling the planet while slowly falling ever since... “What’s bad is that it’s really negligent on China’s part,” McDowell said. “Things more than 10 tonnes, we don’t let them fall out of the sky uncontrolled deliberately.”... It’s just the second time that China has launched one of these rockets, and the second time that it’s been accused of being careless with the leftovers."
Meme - "CHINA WHEN FISHING: our waters
CHINA WHEN THEIR SATELLITE IS ABOUT TO FALL: international waters"
China Defends Giving Experimental Vaccines to Thousands - Bloomberg - "China said giving coronavirus vaccines still being tested to hundreds of thousands of people outside of clinical trials is justified given the risk of Covid-19 returning through its borders and the lack of any significant side-effects so far from the shots."
Facebook - "It starts with: "you cannot express those ideas" Then it moves on to: "you cannot even think those ideas" Then: "you cannot even *know* those ideas" This is why they're removing pro-democracy books from HK libraries. Because if you're trying to de-program minds, it's way easier to prevent people from knowing forbidden ideas in the first place. They're nipping it in the bud. Parallels abound. I hope this holds up a mirror to both the reactionary Christian right (who purge books about gay penguins and young wizards) to the leftists clamoring for social justice (who purge Mark Twain and Dr. Seuss for not being woke)."
Ebola Outbreak: From the Perspective of African Migrants in China - "During the Ebola outbreak, the China Health Department deployed a temperature monitoring system to bolster surveillance of travelers. An unofficial quarantine of recent African travelers from the Ebola-affected countries was also imposed in the city of Guangzhou. For example, about 90 people from Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo were asked to leave an airplane before other passengers and submit to a health screening. They were asked to report their body temperature twice daily for the next 21 days and carry a GPS-enabled mobile phone at all times. Africans who have residency in China could return to their homes, but those with visitor status were permitted to stay in only one hotel. It is understandable to take precautionary steps to prevent the spread of the virus; however, prevention efforts ought to apply universally to people at risk for carrying the infection, including all passengers coming from the Ebola-affected countries, not only individuals with African nationalities. Racial discrimination is a major concern among African migrants living in China. Carrying foreigner status is already a barrier to access health information and services. As a result of Ebola-related stigma, the African migrants become more susceptible to discrimination"
"The United States is the most racist country in the world"
Facebook - "Discontent against the Chinese has been brewing for YEARS in many African countries which has welcomed Chinese investments and businesses. I used to spend time in South Africa every year. Sometime around 2014, I noticed the growing resentment against Chinese people among the locals. When they found out I wasn't Chinese, they would be really relieved and would air their grievances about the ways in which they were being screwed over by Chinese companies and their governments and elites. The Chinese profiteering was simply not trickling down to the locals and more than anything they were being actively discriminated against. So none of this is new. It's like a lobster in a pot where the water temperature has been slowly dialed up. It's hard to notice when the delta only shifts degree by degree. All of a sudden the pandemic shifted that dial by a huge margin and everyone is suddenly paying attention to things that have already been happening for a long time. I see this as a silver lining. Many of these issues are ones that long-time China watchers like me have been trying to sound the alarm on. We're only now finding that we have a captive audience."
Meme - "Art Nouveau w/ Brutalist Char... I refuse to say bad things about China online because yes, there are important conversations we need to have, but I will not be tweeting about it on a public platform where westerners including Asian diaspora can and will use these criticisms as fodder for the American empire"
With liberals like these, who needs white supremacists?
Facebook - "The police in China are collecting blood samples from men and boys from across the country to build a genetic map of its roughly 700 million males, giving the authorities a powerful new tool for their emerging high-tech surveillance state. Why collect DNA samples from men and boys? They commit more crimes, statistics show. Perhaps our energies are better spent interrogating Thermo Fisher Scientific for its role in establishing a surveillance state rather than worrying about how to rebrand 'racist' Aunt Jemima's pancake syrup?! But no, acquiescing to outrage in a performative branding exercise is far more important than actually addressing actual existential issues affecting the world."
China's tiny Jewish community in fear as Beijing erases its history - "For this year’s Hanukkah, Amir is lighting menorah candles and reciting blessings to celebrate the holiday’s eight nights, as many Jews are around the world. But he does so in secret, worried that Chinese officials will come around – as they often do on religious occasions – to enforce a ban against Judaism, pressuring him to renounce his faith. Sometimes, he’s even called in for interrogations... As well as Christians and Muslims, Mr Xi’s suppression has hit China’s tiny congregation of Jews, whose ancestors settled more than a millennium ago along the Yellow River in Kaifeng, then the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty. That such a small group can attract the Communist Party’s ire shows how far the crackdown has spread. Only about 1,000 people in Kaifeng claim Jewish heritage, and of those, only around 100 or are practising Jews, experts say – barely a splash in China’s sea of 1.4 billion. Even at its peak in the 1500s, the community only numbered around 5,000... In Kaifeng, stones engraved as far back as 1489 with the community’s beliefs and ancestry that used to mark a 12th-century synagogue have disappeared from a public exhibit. An ancient well, believed to be the synagogue’s last ruins, has likewise vanished under a cloak of cement. The authorities have also torn down the city’s few Hebrew signs that once marked the Teaching Torah Lane. In that same lane, a spot where a few dozen Jews – some of whom were government officials – used to meet for services is now plastered in propaganda about China’s “management of religious affairs.” They include reminders that Judaism is prohibited. A security camera is directed at the entrance. A handful of schools that taught Hebrew and Judaism – established by foreign Jews visiting Kaifeng – have been forced to shutter. Displays in a museum and historic merchant guild hall that documented the history of Jews in the city have also disappeared in favour of large pictures of Mr Xi. The crackdown is so intense that Kaifeng residents are afraid to dine together in public. “It’s a small place,” one Jewish man said. “Restaurant managers know that we are the Jews, and they will report us to the authorities.” Across the city, the remaining trace of Jewish heritage appears to be two tombstones with the star of David and epitaphs in Chinese and Hebrew – but even this, they fear, will soon be gone. Yet the Jews in Kaifeng are remarkably resilient, and have found ways to keep their faith alive underground... Unable to obtain religious materials, they buy Bibles and read the Old Testament – more or less the same content as the Torah – and disregard the New Testament. They also pass around dog-eared pamphlets with translations compiled during a brief revival when Jewish scholars, rabbis and tourists flocked to Kaifeng as China opened up in the 1990s. Now, “no print shop dares to help us copy these,” said one resident. Groups like Mr Laytner’s Sino-Judaic Institute and Shavei Israel had previously set up centres to teach Hebrew and Jewish history and traditions, and helped some to emigrate. But both groups were expelled a few years ago, among the first targets of the government crackdown."
So much for China only cracking down on terrorists
Emily Feng 冯哲芸 on Twitter - "NEW: China is questioning volunteers who staffed epidemic services - notably manning hotlines for finding open Wuhan hospital beds - over suspicions they leaked info fueling US allegations China covered up the scale of epidemic (the volunteers deny this) Update: Chen Mei and Cai Wei, who helped update a Github repository of censored coronavirus articles, have been formally arrested for “disorderly conduct”, taken to Beijing’s Chaoyang detention center, and given state appointed lawyers despite having lawyers already"
China’s Overrated Technocrats - "advocates for China’s supposed technocracy are not only wrong about the background of Beijing’s current leadership. They are also fundamentally mistaken about how their training shapes policymaking. China’s leaders today—including President Xi Jinping himself—have been molded less by their education and more by the need to consolidate control and prevail in the brutal internal power struggles of the Chinese Communist Party. It’s true that a generation of engineer-leaders once dominated the Communist Party. But they’re now mostly retired, dead, or in prison. The current crop of leaders is distinctly lacking in engineers; Xi is the only member of the party’s seven-person standing committee with an engineering or science degree... legal or economic training has become far more common. Education matters less than most observers think. China is not like the West, where a rigorous degree in law or economics often leads to a career that in turn becomes a path to politics, such as former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s days teaching law or London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s human rights work. For some Chinese officials, their schooling was cursory at best—and very rarely translated into actual work experience. As the Carnegie Mellon University professor Vivek Wadhwa and others have demonstrated, the quality of engineering education in China, especially before 2010, was well below international standards. Many engineering degrees would barely qualify as technical certificates in the United States. Although Xi nominally graduated with a degree in chemical engineering from the prestigious Tsinghua University in 1979, his curriculum contained an outsized number of classes on Marxism rather than mechanics, as was common at the tail end of the Cultural Revolution. And Xi never worked as an engineer... Like many other so-called princelings, Xi was fast-tracked to power, and his career was entirely contained within, and shaped by, officialdom. A similar trajectory holds true for four other members of the standing committee... The idea that China is governed by a class of educated mandarins goes back to an 18th-century fascination with Qing-dynasty China. The virtues of the examination system, which supposedly promoted the wise and learned, were held up by figures such as Voltaire looking for a stick to beat their own societies with. While the examination model certainly had its merits, a majority of official appointments in that era, as recent research has shown, were a result of political patronage or bribery. The determination among outsiders to see apolitical or meritocratic technocracy in the Chinese leadership—based largely on decades-old degrees—reveals more about Western fantasies about China than it does about politics in Beijing. In fact, the struggle for power inside the Communist Party is cutthroat and intense, as the number of suicides and life sentences resulting from Xi’s purges and the rampant corruption of figures such as the fallen leader Bo Xilai have shown. And that’s just the small part outsiders can glimpse: When the windows open up even a little, the blood spills out. Chinese leaders still do everything they can to promote the facade of a meritocracy... In the rare instances when reporters have been able to get ahold of leaders’ dissertations, they’ve found widespread plagiarism. In some cases, the writing of these theses was farmed out to other students at first-rank Beijing universities in exchange for a fee. It might seem strange that these degrees are faked rather than awarded as honorary titles, but there’s an ideological impetus behind the pretense that China’s leaders are scholars. The notion that science is important carries a special weight in Chinese culture thanks in part to the conviction of early 20th-century reformers that science was the way out of the country’s backwardness. To be scientific (kexue) in the 1920s was to be modern, advanced, and precise. The status of science grew further with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. Scientific communism—the belief that Marxism was a discipline as precise and objective as mathematics—was one of the cornerstones of party ideology. Although the generation of leaders before Xi had far more practical technical experience and often held actual jobs as engineers before becoming officials, those qualifications didn’t guarantee the kind of clean, technocratic leadership that Westerners assume... As the sociologists Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog examined in their research on the backgrounds of suicide bombers, engineers raised with a strong ideology, whether Islamism or communism, can be among the most rigid of thinkers. Engineering is “more attractive to individuals seeking cognitive ‘closure’ and clear-cut answers as opposed to more open-ended sciences”... If Xi is an engineer, he is what Joseph Stalin said poets should be: an engineer of the human soul."
Beijing Won’t Bow to Bluster on Taiwan - WSJ - "Permitting the erosion of the U.S. position around Taiwan was one of the great strategic blunders of modern times. The fall of Taiwan would be bad news not only for Taiwan’s democracy-loving and independence-minded residents. It would be a strategic catastrophe for Tokyo, leaving Beijing in control of the sea routes Japan needs for survival. A Chinese takeover would be such a conclusive demonstration of American weakness that no country, from India to Vietnam, could or would risk its security on U.S. ties. Given that the island also hosts the world’s most advanced semiconductor industry, controlling Taiwan would put China on the road to world technological and economic supremacy even as it became the arbiter of Asia."
Taiwan to step up efforts to prevent Chinese spies settling - "Parliament last year passed an anti-infiltration law to improve how Taiwan combats perceived threats from China. Beijing denounced the move, saying Taiwan was trying to stir up enmity towards China."
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - "An attempt to hold a panel discussion at Brandeis on the Chinese Government’s abuse of the Uigurs was disrupted by ‘Zoombombers’ who attempted to make the discussion unwatchable."
China defies Deng Xiaoping warning - "“If one day China should change her color and turn into a superpower, if she too should play the tyrant in the world, and everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression and exploitation, the people of the world should identify her as social-imperialism, expose it, oppose it and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it.” ~ Deng Xiaoping speech at the United Nations, April 10, 1974... today, China is bullying, not just the Philippines, but almost every neighbor it has... Deng did not give a message to China’s future leaders, he directed the message to the people of the world, to work directly to the people of China to overthrow the leadership of arrogance and tyranny. The wisdom of the veteran saw where China could go given its growing power, and that this rise to global superstardom could be restrained only by the wisest and firmest of leaders. Otherwise, only the people of the world helping the people of China could overthrow new Hitlers from China."
Emmersen Azalea on Twitter - "Someone suggested that there should be an organization for all in the Chinese diaspora who stand against the Chinese Communist Party. It sends 2 messages: a) To the CCP that they can't control those beyond the fire wall b) To everyone else that our values transcend ethnicity"
"there should also be an organization for the Chinese diaspora to stand against the West, in that our parents made the mistake of giving in to the allure of the West, the West is deeply racist and too overrated, we resent not having the option of obtaining citizenship of China"
Liberals and China shills hate the West so much, yet so many people want to live there. They must be doing something right
In light of this, apparently it's still going to be racist to tell people who hate the West so much to go back to their ancestral countries which they claim are so much better
China slams US 'bullying' over Tiktok, WeChat
Amazing, given that foreign apps aren't allowed in China
China’s Disinformation Effort Targets Virus, Researcher Says - Bloomberg - "An army of bot accounts linked to an alleged Chinese government-backed propaganda campaign is spreading disinformation on social media about coronavirus and other topics, including an exiled businessman, according to a London-based researcher. The accounts have been used to promote content attacking critics of the Chinese government and to spread conspiracy theories blaming the U.S. for the origins of virus, according to Benjamin Strick, who specializes in analyzing information operations on social media websites."
Meme - "China Then
-Build the Great Wall
-Invented Gunpowder
-Trained Martial Arts
China Now
-Is Scared of Winnie the Pooh"
WOKE WATCH: Millennials rejoice! China app reports 'mistaken opinions' | Toronto Sun - "Mainly, the communist party is cracking down on people who say mean things about the communist party. Included among the offences are “distorting” the party’s history, leaders, or policies. You can also land in hot water for “denying the excellence of advanced socialist culture.” CAC blamed “nihilistic false statements” in an “attempt to confuse people’s thinking.”"
Press Censorship Has Always Hurt Democracy. In the Age of COVID-19, It’s Also Killing People - "If China allowed more media freedom, the scale of the pandemic might have been reduced, and countless lives might have been saved. Indeed, a new report from Reporters Without Borders (RSF) concludes that if such freedoms existed, the COVID-19 outbreak might never have become a pandemic in the first place."
China says it has never interfered in other countries' affairs - "China has never interfered in other countries' affairs nor does it have any interest in doing so, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Friday (Nov 6), in response to Australia charging the first person under its foreign interference law. Wang Wenbin, spokesman with the ministry, was speaking to reporters at a regular news briefing in Beijing"
Hilarious. But China shills will buy it
It’s like I have a memory but without any details of the event : dankmemes - "English kids in history class: Are we the baddies?
German kids in history class: Are we the baddies?
Swedish kids in history class: Are Denmark Norway Russia Poland the baddies?
Chinese kids in history class: We are the goodies and always has and always will and nothing happened at that place at that time"
China Suspends BTS Fan Social Media Accounts as K-Pop Band Drops Single - "Weibo, a Communist Party-controlled social media outlet, had taken action to ban some of the most prominent accounts for fans of the South Korean pop group BTS from the site... The Chinese Communist Party has belied apprehension about national interest in the group, who have become cultural ambassadors for capitalist South Korea around the world, in the past. Last year, Chinese state media outlets, citing government-approved “netizens” on sites like Weibo, condemned the band after member RM thanked the government of the United States and its military for its “sacrifices” in the Korean War. The pro-American sentiment allegedly offended Chinese Communist Party supporters because it did not also thank China. China fought against South Korea in the Korean War... The Global Times claimed the bans were popular because music fans were annoying. “The chaos existing in online fan clubs, such as abusing each other, spreading rumors, cyber manhunt and improper consumption, are among the prominent problems on today’s social media,” a Chinese Communist Party official claimed this month, following the announcement of a larger, sweeping government campaign against online pop fandom called “Clear and Bright.” At the time, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) insisted the Communist Party had a responsibility to curb “irrational behaviors” by pop fans online through censorship. The announcement of the campaign did not mention BTS, however, but the fanbase of a Chinese reality television pop star competition."
Opinion | BTS RM Korean War comments: China went up against a K-pop giant — and lost - The Washington Post - "K-pop group BTS accepted the Korea Society’s James A. Van Fleet Award, which recognizes the group’s role in developing goodwill between South Korea and the United States. By all accounts, it was a harmless event focusing on diplomacy. But then band leader Kim Nam-joon, better known as RM, made a comment about the tragedies of the Korean War, saying “we need to always remember the history of pain shared by the two nations, and sacrifices of many men and women.” This immediately triggered the paranoia of the Chinese propaganda machine, which bizarrely interpreted the remark as an insult because there was no mention of Chinese lives lost during the war. State media flooded Weibo, WeChat and Twitter with misinformation and incited Chinese-nationalist sentiments while denouncing BTS, causing brands such as FILA and Samsung to remove images of the group from their Chinese sites. Yet as the dust settles on the spat, it has become increasingly clear that China picked a fight with an enemy it can’t beat... By attacking, Beijing likely thought it could curb South Korean influence and reassert its own political importance in one shot. This was a grave misstep. BTS has become one of the most popular global acts with an extremely protective fan base. Its fan battalion, called the ARMY or Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth, has members across all races, genders, creeds, ages, sexualities and nationalities — at least several million of whom are likely Chinese, based on the group’s Weibo account. And K-pop has continued to grow in China despite pressure from Beijing. When the Chinese government put an embargo on South Korean commodities in 2016 — including K-pop — because of THAAD, all of BTS’s music and promotional activities came to a halt in China. Nevertheless, its Chinese fan club was able to buy 220,000 copies of BTS’s latest album through a surrogate shopper and bring them into the country, breaking the record for fan purchases. For group member V’s birthday, Chinese fans raised $935,318 to not only support the band but also donate to charitable causes in the name of their idol. So, when the Van Fleet Award situation erupted, Chinese nationalists were met with opposition not only from fans but also from regular Chinese netizens who were confused as to why there was a controversy to begin with. This forced state newspaper Global Times to remove some of its smear pieces on BTS and the initial online furor quickly died out. Being challenged was not what Chinese authorities and state media were expecting. Unlike in previous spats — for example, with the National Basketball Association over comments by the Houston Rockets general manager, or with brands such as Marriott over their inclusion of Taiwan and Tibet in some materials — BTS was largely unaffected. Its record label Big Hit Entertainment is still sitting above its initial public offering price. And in the past few years, the group’s global promotional efforts have made them less reliant on China. The Chinese government underestimated K-pop and just how emotionally passionate fans are for their idols and what they represent — an inclusive safe space that provides a comforting escape, especially in these pandemic-ridden times. This sentiment is not something the government can strong-arm into submission, like its failed attempts to subvert and strong-arm religion. From a cultural standpoint, Beijing made a deeply unwise decision. As the demand for Korean pop culture increases around the world, China’s image continues to suffer. In the recent election to the U.N. Human Rights Council, China received the fewest votes ever since joining. And when a high-level government official such as China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian picks a fight with a boy band, the embarrassing spectacle goes against the image of invulnerability China likes to project. If Beijing cares about its image, it could take a few notes from South Korea. Since the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the South Korean government has been generally supportive of the country’s creative industries"
Xi Da Da does not want anything not under his control flourish
