Chinese President Xi confronts Trudeau for sharing details of G20 conversation - "Xi then added that there could be consequences for Trudeau — but he did not say what those might be. The translator did not convey this remark to the prime minister, but Global News confirmed the translation with three Mandarin speakers. “It’s this last phrase which has a threatening aspect to it, the way it was phrased in Chinese,” said Charles Burton, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa, who speaks Mandarin and previously worked at the Canadian embassy in China. “He normally leaves those kinds of menacing statements to members of the foreign ministry who seem to specialize in this kind of thing.” The phrase Xi used, Burton added, is the kind of thing “a mafia thug might say to someone to intimidate them.”... “I think he’s angry about the suggestion that China has been interfering in Canadian internal affairs by funding illegally funding candidates for our parliament in the 2019 election,” he said. “This is a very sensitive issue for China, because China consistently accuses the West of interfering in their affairs by raising the human rights issue. So it was a very unpleasant interaction.”"
D.Va's Thot Patrol - Posts | Facebook - "Blizzard tried so hard to please China only for them to end up exiting the Chinese market in disgrace LMFAO, hope all that boot licking when the Hong Kong scandal happened was worth it Blizz. Huge L."
BOMBSHELL: Biden's DOJ Drops Anti-Spy China Initiative — Because Racism - "In 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions started the China Initiative to counter threats of Chinese espionage and corporate secret-stealing. In the three years that the successful Chinese initiative was operational, the DOJ had accrued almost 60 cases involving Chinese spying, hacking, and lying about grant applications. This insane decision comes shortly after FBI Director Christopher Wray declared that China was “more brazen, more damaging than ever before.”... What if the FBI stopped chasing midwestern grannies who walked into the Capitol to take dangerous, insurrectionary selfies and spent those resources to intercept Chinese spooks? Nah, better to leave those Chinese spies alone so that someone can’t cry “RACISM!” Never mind those aforementioned cases against alleged Chinese spying; the DOJ had to drop charges last summer against six people in regard to their research grants and their alleged ties to China. Some people began to scream “BIAS!” Protestors gathered outside the DOJ headquarters last summer and complained that the China Initiative unfairly targeted Chinese people... First, Gen. Mark Milley called China and kindly told them he would give them notice if Trump, for some reason, decided to attack the CCP. China now seems to own our DOJ as well. Well done, Joe. Talk about an insurrection"
It's good to slam Russia, because they're white
Facebook - "There are many obituaries of Jiang Zemin being written. Read them. And then you will understand why I say that criticism of the current PRC leadership, is not criticism of the PRC, or even the CCP. Yes, China and the CCP have achieved a lot in the last 30 years , but most of it was achieved BEFORE the current leaders took over. You know the hundreds of millions lifted out of poverty? Well that started under Jiang Zemin. You know how China grew at a ferocious pace, steadily catching up with USA? Jiang Zemin. The tech giants like Alibaba , Baidu , Tencent that became the envy of the world? Started under Jiang Zemin. Do you remember a time when PRC was actually LIKED by people around the world ? Jiang Zemin... The current leader has presided over an era of slowing economic growth, destruction of entrepreneurship, and failing international relations."
Huawei, once Samsung's rival, may be deleting China protest videos - "Chinese social media users cited by @MsMelChen are reportedly claiming that their Huawei phones are automatically deleting videos of the protests in China. It’s unclear if these deleted videos were stored locally or in the cloud. But if the reports are accurate, Huawei might be able to do this by leveraging timestamps and geolocation data stored in these videos."
This is What Chinese Foreign Interference in Singapore Looks Like - "In October 2016, General Jin Yinan, a senior advisor to China’s People’s Liberation Army (P.L.A.), lambasted Singapore “for meddling in things that did not concern it” on Chinese National Radio. According to him, the city-state had to “pay the price for seriously damaging China’s interests”, and as such it was “inevitable for China to strike back at Singapore, and not just on the public opinion front”... Less than two months later, nine Singapore Armed Forces’ Terrex armoured vehicles were impounded by Hong Kong Customs on their way back from a training exercise in Taiwan... While this was happening, reports suggest that a disinformation campaign hit Singapore, with many dormant social media accounts coming alive to spread pro-China narratives. The experience seems to have profoundly affected Singaporean authorities, who started talking about the need for anti-foreign interference legislation in 2019. The process came to end last month, when the government introduced the Foreign Interference Countermeasures Act (FICA), a law that aims to counter “hostile information campaigns”. While the government insists that FICA is not aimed at any specific country and that “there are no angels” in the game of foreign interference, analysts and foreign news outlets have suggested FICA was passed in direct response to Beijing’s alleged cyberespionage activities... For Singapore, the only Chinese majority country outside of ‘greater China’, there is a lingering belief that Beijing views the island as a ‘Chinese country’. “Any experienced Singaporean diplomat should know that China, despite our consistent denials, persists in referring to Singapore as a Chinese country. In regarding Singapore as a Chinese country, the expectation may have been that we would naturally take China’s part, irrespective of our own national interests”, said Bilahari Kausikan... China asserted a pressure campaign on Singapore from 2015 to 2018. An approximate cause of this downturn in relations could be attributed to Singapore’s stance on the South China Sea. In general terms, Beijing expected Singaporean leaders to support Chinese claims in the region, or at the very least stay quiet. This was especially the case, considering that Singapore had become the ASEAN country coordinator for China in 2015. The role entailed Singapore coordinating the positions of ASEAN member states with respect to issues on China. Since Beijing viewed Singapore as a ‘Chinese country’, it seemed to have expected Singapore to coordinate the regional position on behalf of and in favour of China – a complete reversal of the role. Defying China’s expectations, the island-state advocated for the problem to be resolved in accordance to international law, while also claiming that it does not pick sides as it’s a non-claimant state... the Global Times – a hyper-nationalistic Chinese newspaper viewed to be part of the Chinese government’s propaganda apparatus – accused Singapore of having raised the South China Sea issue at a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Venezuela. In response, Singapore’s ambassador to China issued a statement claiming that the article was a fabrication, and that the Singapore delegation did not raise the issue at the conference. Nonetheless, the Global Times and other C.C.P. affiliated newspapers continued publishing articles accusing Singapore of interfering in things that did not concern it...
In response to these perceived slights, Beijing is alleged to have waged a sophisticated and multi-pronged influence operation on Singapore. According to Mr. Kausikan and the French military’s Institute for Strategic Research (ISREM), the influence operation perpetuated five weaponised narratives about Singapore:
Singapore is just a small country, which cannot afford to be arrogant and to alienate the Chinese giant
As a ‘Chinese country’, Singapore should explain China’s position on the South China Sea and other issues to the rest of ASEAN. Appeals to ethnic pride were also made, urging a “fatalistic acceptance of the inevitability and desirability of a Chinese identity for multiracial Singapore”.
The U.S. is in continual decline, while China is rising and the next regional superpower. Singapore might as well ally with China and be on the right side of history.
Without Lee Kuan Yew, the current leadership does not know how to deal with China. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, underestimates the importance of the relationship with Beijing and is too close to the United States.
Singapore has no claims in the South China Sea, as such it should not be supporting the U.S. or taking sides on the issue...
These narratives were reportedly spread through multiple means. Businessmen, academics and others with interest in China were given broad hints that their interests might suffer unless Singapore was more accommodating of Chinese interests... On social media, Singaporeans were bombarded with YouTube videos in Mandarin parroting the same, aforementioned narratives. There were also numerous pro-China messages that were being forwarded through WeChat and WhatsApp. More traditional forms of espionage were also used. In August 2017, Huang Jing, an academic who was the director of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy’s Centre on Asia and Globalisation, was accused by the Ministry of Home Affairs “of being a an agent of influence of a foreign country” and was told to leave Singapore... the massive 2018 SingHealth hack, which saw the theft of the medical records of 1.5 million patients, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s, might have been in response to the Huang Jing affair. The objective may have been to find Kompromat (compromising material) on the Prime Minister as blackmail – but the attackers discovered nothing. All of this was in addition to more explicit forms of diplomatic pressure, asserted through the seizure of the Singaporean armoured vehicles in Hong Kong and exclusion of the city-state’s representatives in some Belt-and-Road forums. Being a civilizational state, the People’s Republic of China is the embodiment of thousands of years of Chinese culture and history. As such, Beijing can effectively appeal to the ethnic pride of Chinese people outside of the mainland. In fact, according to a 2018 U.S. Congressional study, this seems to have become part of China’s foreign policy... if Beijing succeeds in making Chinese-Singaporeans believe that the island should be ruled in accordance to the wishes of ethnically Chinese people, racial minorities in Singapore would be at risk of exclusion, or worse, oppression... Singapore’s response to these influence operations have been nuanced, albeit understated. While cases of foreign interference are sometimes publicly revealed, Singapore does not explicitly name perpetrators... Intentional or not, enough secondary details are released by the Singaporean government to allow academics, journalists and experts to piece together the identity of perpetrators... By allowing journalists and academics to reveal the identity of perpetrators, Singapore retains plausible deniability, whilst indirectly informing its population of the risks it faces. This could also serve the purpose of a signalling mechanism – showing the offending country that it is aware of the operation and who is behind it. Though Singapore does not escalate these situations by naming and shaming, it also does not seem to reverse course or appease the countries conducting influence operations... For now, a vast majority of Singaporeans are unaware that they were potentially at the receiving end of an influence operation. “Our people haven’t even begun to realise what the problem is, and the nature of the problem,” said Minister K. Shanmugam in parliament during the FICA debate. While part of this can be attributed to the government’s refusal to officially acknowledge these operations, the population’s low interest in foreign or even political affairs could also be blamed. The importance of this knowledge cannot be understated. Nothing makes an influence operation less effective than knowing that you are being subjected to it"
Chinese embassy slams ex-S’pore diplomat Bilahari for ‘misinterpreting and smearing’ China’s political system - "Asked for his response to the Chinese embassy’s criticism, Mr Bilahari, who chairs the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore, told TODAY: “What else could they say? All Chinese diplomats are under pressure to respond to President Xi’s instruction to assert China’s narrative.” He added that the embassy did not address any substantive point that he made. “Instead, they raise arguments against points I did not make, which is quite typical. It is not something I can take seriously.”"
Is the U.S. Really Less Corrupt Than China? - Freakonomics - "Yuen Yuen ANG: The best way to understand China’s political system is that it is a corrupt meritocracy... Corruption in China is still of an illegal form. But corruption in [the US] has become so legalized and institutionalized, it’s hard to say that it’s “corrupt.” Some people would be really offended by the word...
I think there are many wonderful things about America. But one striking feature is the judgmentalism, and I think it has to do with a kind of narrative of America being this chosen country, to be this beacon of freedom and justice around the world. In other parts of the world, people don’t think of their country in these grand, chosen terms. This is actually quite unique to the construction of the American identity...
“Elegant bribery” means forms of bribery that became more elegant and sophisticated in China. So an example is instead of giving cash, to give works of art. Because art is valuable, but the value is subjective. And so in the event that a corrupt official is arrested, he could defend himself by saying, “Well, it’s just a useless piece of Van Gogh,” or something like that...
DUBNER: So, big question: Why has China’s economy prospered so much despite such high levels of corruption?
ANG: The short answer is that it has to do with the type of corruption that came to dominate in the economy. Growth-damaging forms of corruption were effectively contained over time, such as embezzlement, petty bribery. If you are talking about corruption in the form of extortion and embezzlement, that could never be good for any economic activity. But if you are talking about influence peddling, well, it might actually be really good for business...
ANG: The common definition of corruption is the abuse of public power for private gain, and that definition usually excludes legal forms of influence politics. My definition would be broader than that. I would say that whenever there is so much power that one is able to influence or dictate the rules of the games, you begin to have the potential for corruption. And that is a gray line. In the context of countries like the United States, advanced capitalist democracies, it’s really hard to pin down what are the boundaries of having excessive political influence... studies have found that levels of I.P.R. theft in China are not significantly higher than countries at its level of development...
Deng shifted the role of the central government from a dictator to a director. The reality is that it's best understood as an adaptive authoritarian government, that is in fact very decentralised. The most common misunderstanding is that China’s development success is a celebration of the merits of authoritarianism and of top-down control, and it is actually not true. But one very important qualifier is that after Xi Jinping became president in 2012, China has taken an authoritarian turn...
The ability of these local leaders to curtail low-level predatory corruption is also premised on the ability of this local government to pay its bureaucrats.
DUBNER: One of the facts that I found most astonishing in your book was what you call — with a bit of a wink — “profit-sharing,” this idea that roughly 70 percent of a mid- or low-level official’s pay might come in non-salary form — in gifts and meals and things like that...
ANG: That was from the 1990s to the early 2000s. The way bureaucrats are paid in China is similar to developing countries elsewhere, which is that the official salary is actually very low and in many instances below subsistence. For example, in one county that I visited, the entry pay was less than $80 U.S. dollars a month. Economists call that capitulation wages, which means that you pay so little salary that the implicit expectation is that you make up for it using bribes or extortion or by stealing.
DUBNER: I see, you want to pay real salaries so that your underlings will be satisfied enough to not worry so much about your higher-level corruption.
ANG: Exactly, if these low-level bureaucrats are not paid enough to survive, you cannot feasibly stop them from trying to steal or extract. I was surprised to discover that in fact, on top of the official salary, more than 75 percent of the actual compensation comes from this highly variable fringe component. Things like bonuses over time, various in-kind benefits, including food baskets, free vacations. And it’s systematically pegged to the ability of a local government in generating revenue. That’s why it’s called profit-sharing. It’s sharing in the profits of the government.
Ang argues that this “profit-sharing” system is one of the reasons China was able to escape the poverty trap. While other developing countries struggle to weed out low-level corruption (the toxic-drug type of corruption that limits growth), China basically incentivized away those forms of corruption — but allowed the steroid form of corruption, like access money, which tends to operate at higher levels and behind closed doors...
ANG: There are many people who ask me, “Is the anti-corruption campaign a genuine reform? Or is it just an instrument that Xi uses to eradicate his enemies?” And the answer is that, well, it’s a mixture of both. He has real concerns about corruption as a structural problem. And so wanting to tackle that is necessary both to save the party as well as to save himself... all of a sudden everyone realized, “Oh my gosh, Xi is a real socialist.” And people are shocked about that. But if you look at his signature policies from the time he took office, he has already made very clear that he is serious about socialism... Xi does not like the excesses of capitalism, and he has expressed that many times in his speeches, so this is not speculation... If you look at state-business relations in China, no matter how rich a businessman is, he is always subordinated to the politician. And that is actually almost the reverse in this country."
How the West got China so catastrophically wrong - "President Nixon's famous trip to China in 1972 kicked off decades of integration and optimism that the country could be integrated into the world liberal order. Its 50th anniversary was noted earlier this year without fanfare or enthusiasm by either side - unsurprisingly, given how badly wrong the West’s great gamble has gone... The American commentator Thomas Friedman epitomised the optimism of the age with his Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention, according to which no two nations with McDonald's restaurants would go to war. This was just a more colloquial take on the 19th century notion that high levels of economic integration would stop conflict because the economic costs would be too high. Friedman later refined this with the Dell Theory, in which no two countries that were part of the same global supply chain would fight or punish one another. This proved to be accurate in the case of America’s spats with, say, its ally Japan, but turned out to be woefully misguided with regard to autocracies and zealots... An academic in the China Centre at Jesus College, Cambridge, warned colleagues against holding debates on China’s human rights abuses in November 2020... It is not for nothing that the ‘golden era’ has sometimes been referred as the ‘golden error’... poor or questionable decisions that didn't acknowledge the risks and consequences of closer engagement with China were perhaps down to a strategy which was misguided from the start. This approach was based partly on the idea that a stable, prosperous China was preferable to one that was poor, and perhaps in political turmoil. As such it would then be less of a threat and better serve the national interests of the US and other liberal leaning democracies, and vice versa. That was probably a fair enough call, even if it turned out to be wrong. We don't know the counterfactual – for example, how things would have turned out if China had not been admitted to the WTO. The other premise, that a wealthier China was bound to liberalise, democratise and become a trusted global partner, was less forgivable and should never have guided policy – especially after XI Jinping came to power in 2012... It has over a decade taken action against Norway, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, Canada, the EU, the UK, and especially Australia, which has endured widespread export bans and political interference following its demands for an international inquiry into the origins of Covid. In the latest turn of events, a row has blown up over a secret agreement that expands Chinese influence and security arrangements in the Solomon Islands, believed to be the first such bilateral agreement with a country in the Pacific."
Xi’s Covid-Leninism has destroyed China’s bid for economic supremacy - "Three years of Covid-Leninism have done as much damage to China’s long-term growth prospects as an economic depression. A fourth year of Xi Jinping’s “precise prevention” threatens to close the historical window on China’s bid for global economic mastery, with enormous implications for the balance of geopolitical power this century. If China is to have any hope of vaulting past the US to become the world’s paramount economic and regulatory power in our lifetimes, it must achieve a decisive sorpasso before the late 2020s... By the middle of this decade, the demographic dividend will have evaporated. China has the fastest ageing society on earth. The workforce is about to shrink by seven million a year. The Lewis Point of economic development has been crossed and net urban migration from the countryside has dried up. China’s total fertility rate has dropped to 1.15 and as low as 0.78 in Shanghai, which makes Japan look fecund... It estimates that the Chinese economy is already in outright contraction under its proxy measure of output and will shrink by 1pc this year as a whole... Few in the top circles of the Communist Party think that the massacre of students at Tiananmen Square in 1989 – or the concurrent massacre of factory workers at Beijing’s Renmin Bridge – was a mistake. The doctrine taught at the party’s ideological school is that it was a successful and necessary action... it also deflates commodity prices... China is now trapped by its own Covid propaganda. It deployed the state media to deprecate western vaccines, entrenching vaccine scepticism among older Chinese already suspicious of modern medicine. It ridiculed the democracies for their chaotic response to the virus. It sacralised the total suppression of Covid as proof of China’s superior governing system and civilisation, and as irrefutable vindication of Communist Party rule. There is no easy retreat from this state hubris. Yet ever-more infectious variants raise the social cost of this policy to prohibitive levels. The latest Omicron BF.7 strain in Beijing reportedly has a reproduction number above 10 and is therefore unstoppable without even harsher repression than the barricade lockdowns and blanket testing already in force. It is hard to separate the “economic tax” of zero-Covid from all the other effects of Xi’s neo-Maoist revival, whether his assault on tech firms deemed a threat to Party control, or his renewed reliance on industrial state behemoths at the core of the Party’s patronage machine, or his wolf warrior provocation of the US and its regional allies. The overarching point is that China’s development model was already obsolete a decade ago. World Bank data shows the productivity growth rate has long since ceased to track the trajectories of Japan, Taiwan, and Korea as they became rich. It has instead collapsed to the level of mature economies but a quarter century too soon, before China has broken out of the middle income trap... If there is one lesson to draw from the ghastly totalitarian spectacle of Xi’s zero-Covid, it is that there is no mechanism to correct systemic error in an autocracy. Zero-Covid is not quite the blind ideological madness of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, but it is running a close second."
China’s frustrated millennials turn to memes to rail against grim economic prospects | South China Morning Post - "For young Chinese, especially those with a college degree, there is a growing perception that their career prospects are darkening, their social mobility shrinking and the country’s wealth gap widening – although this point of view diverges sharply from the government narrative."
From 2020
Laos' debt pressure raises specter of a China vassal state - Nikkei Asia - ""Laos also has an unusually high level of hidden public debt exposure to China -- an additional $6.69 billion," he said, or about 35% of GDP. AidData defines hidden debts as those contracted by entities wholly or partially owned by the government of Laos but without an explicit sovereign repayment guarantee. Consequently, Laos' total "debt exposure to China is worth approximately $12.2 billion, or 64.8% of GDP"... "There is no other country in the world with a higher level of public debt exposure to China as a percentage of host country GDP"... There is certainly some historical precedent for bartering land and natural resources to repay foreign debts in Laos or to support domestic infrastructure... "The word on the street among Laotians in business is that the country is becoming a failed state," a Thai investment consultant who has clients in Vientiane told Nikkei. "Never before has the Laotian public been so angry with the government. ... Its legitimacy to rule is being shredded.""
BBC World Service - The Documentary, Hong Kong: Twenty Years On - "Anson Chan: 'The thing that Hong Kong people are most unhappy about is this term that has been coined in recent years, the so called mainlandization of Hong Kong. That is you increasingly undermine and erode the rule of law, that you erode basic rights and freedoms, and you import into Hong Kong, the worst aspect of Chinese culture, which Hong Kong people do not wish to see, because you're fundamentally changing our core values and our lifestyle... The bad values are that you rely on connection, that you do what you're told, and all will be well, but if you don't, then too bad for you, it will affect your your business interests, not only in Hong Kong, but your business interest in China. There are all sorts of ways that they can coerce and intimidate people to toe the line'...
‘Warning sounded on city’s autonomy’. And it's about the legal chief of the liaison office, which is something like Beijing's embassy here in Hong Kong. The Liaison Office is the place where the strings are pulled. And this legal chief whose name is Wang Jen Min [sp?], mainlander of course, has said that Hong Kong's one country two systems policy, which is absolutely central to the strength and prosperity of Hong Kong, may be scrapped if it's used as a tool against Beijing. What it means is that the people who are calling for independence for Hong Kong are putting in danger, the whole one country, two systems policy. And I can imagine that right across Hong Kong this morning, as people read this article, there's real serious anxiety...
Freedom of speech is indeed enshrined in the Basic Law Hong Kong's constitution. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's safe. Anson Chan again.
‘In 2002, on the Freedom Index compiled by the Reporters without Frontiers, Hong Kong was number 18. This year, we have fallen to number 73.’
And for Keith, a trainee analyst and a young consumer of mass media, press freedom in Hong Kong looks disturbingly vulnerable to the process of mainlandization.
‘You see freedom of speech is under threat from the Chinese capital inflow to the local media. See, most of the newspapers have some sort of Chinese influence in it. Should be a Chinese capital, being chief editor with some sort of Chinese background influence. South China Morning Post, for example, where it has been great newspaper, but then recently bought over by Chinese firm with huge investment, but you see signs of it changing. And so that's part of how the local government ma ybe, even the Chinese government trying to influence the press. Influence, undermining the freedom of speech.’...
The arrest in 2015 of the five booksellers by mainland Chinese secret police was a real shock to the defenders of Hong Kong's freedom of speech and the rule of law. And to the one country two systems principle. The book sellers had been preparing to publish revelations about the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s private life and his financial dealings. They reckoned without the long arm of Beijing
Agnes Chow: ‘In the past, we were safe because we lived in Hong Kong instead of the mainland China. However, the circumstances have changed with the abduction. We feel that Hong Kong is not Hong Kong anymore. It's just named as Hong Kong only.’...
Now every chief executive that we've had has been squeezed between China, zzz will [?], and what Hong Kong might or might not want. And all have been soft, we think, soft towards China. But you say, well, how would you be hard towards China? Well you made a very good point yourself, what is China doing coming down here, kidnapping booksellers, or whatever they’re supposed to be, and taking them out to China? That is outrageous, we should be making huge protestation against that. Did we? There was a lot of grumbling. And so on, mumble mumble mumble. But the chief executive didn't go up and say this is outrageous, this is not going to happen. We want them back. What did he say? Nothing. Not a word...
Here I am, just about have some Dim Sum in a crowded restaurant in Mongkok, very, very elaborate menu, which also tells you what the dishes you're eating do for the body, which is rather nice, only seems to do good things as far as I can see...
The Communist Party is profoundly insecure. For a simple reason that there is no ballot box legitimacy and for the past 34 years, they only have two pillars of legitimacy. One is fast economic growth. The other one is nationalism. But we all know that the so called Chinese economic miracle ended four five years ago. But there's one other very important pillar of legitimacy. And that is nationalism. And that is why Xi Jinping, since he took office... he has been stoking the flames of nationalism in China"
From 2017 - it's been clear China has been threatening Hong Kong's autonomy for a long time
BBC World Service - The Documentary, Young in Hong Kong - "Because much of the island space is commercially owned, security guards usher away anyone whom they think might disrupt business like buskers. Many activities are regulated, like skateboarding, for example, or flying kites in parks...
‘As a singer, I'm not famous. So if I do express too much about my point of view, or politically, it can really affect my income. I did post quite a few things on my Facebook page about politics in Hong Kong, like the annual like parade, like do it in July, 1 of July. And then when I went to the occupation in the umbrella occupation, I post about that. And then like I got shut down by some brands, like I can't work with certain brands because they have a China kind of background.’...
[The umbrella movement] was shocking. It completely defied Hong Kong's image as a city that only cared about money. But the movement eventually ended without any concessions from the government. For many young activists, this was the moment they felt there was no point engaging with China anymore. Now, nearly 40% of young people feel Hong Kong should have the option of becoming independent"
From 2017
China’s Xinjiang Population Growth Report Raises Eyebrows - "A “central distortion” of the white paper is a claim that the Uyghur population in Xinjiang increased from 2010 to 2020 that ignores a decline in the population growth rate from 2017 onwards, when “Uyghur births were brutally suppressed,” wrote Rian Thum, a historian of Islam in China and the Uyghurs. “So they're hiding the crash in Uyghur population growth rates 2017-2020 by presenting all data in a block that includes a period of high Uyghur growth rates (2010-2016). They never say what happened between 2017 and 2020”... “There’s also an unusually high number of bald-faced lies for a white paper,” he said, adding that he found it telling that the Chinese government document did not disclose the current population growth rate for Uyghurs in the XUAR. “How did 2020 compare to 2019? This would seem to be crucial data for a state looking to convince the world that it is not preventing births in an indigenous group,” he said. Uyghur political commentator Asiye Uyghur also pointed out a discrepancy in the white paper’s population data. “The Xinjiang Investigative Team of China’s Statistical Bureau announced its findings on Sept. 5, 2010, and stated 3.7 million births were prevented in Xinjiang due to the enforcement of the family planning policy for more than two decades up to 2006,” he told RFA... Zenz, however, drew on government documents showing that population growth rates in the region had declined by 84 percent in the two largest Uyghur prefectures between 2015 and 2018, and declined further in several minority regions in 2019. Government documents from 2019 showed that authorities had plans for a campaign of mass female sterilization in rural Uyghur regions, subjecting women of childbearing age in the rural southern four minority prefectures to birth prevention surgery or forced sterilizations... Zenz also documented official discussion of “population optimization strategy” to dilute the Uyghur majority in southern Xinjiang by raising the proportion of Han Chinese through immigration while imposing strict birth controls on the Uyghurs... Chinese human rights lawyer Teng Biao told RFA that the government’s statistics, including the nationwide population census, are meant to serve the political aims of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). “They falsified the census statistics for many years”"
