Why China Wants South China Sea - "China faces a dilemma in the ‘Chinese Okhotsk.’ The more it seeks dominance over the international waterway, the more it invites hostilities"
RCMP commissioner says Mounties have 'credible' info about alleged Chinese 'police stations' - "The centres have been accused of acting as hubs to harass and intimidate members of the Chinese community in Canada — allegations the groups deny."
US-China: Pompeo dog photo has netizens asking if US is toying with China - "A tweet by the US secretary of state has led to speculation over whether he is trying to send a message to the Chinese government. Mike Pompeo posted a picture on his personal account of his dog Mercer, surrounded by "all of her favourite toys". The toy that sits centre stage is a stuffed Winnie the Pooh... Chinese netizens don't have a lot of love for Mike Pompeo, and regard him as "evil" and "the king of lies". However, he may be aware that they will struggle to talk about this tweet because nicknames referencing the Chinese leader are heavily censored... "Winnie Pooh" and similar references have long been censored on Chinese social media platforms. A search of the word "Winnie" on the popular Sina Weibo microblog currently only brings up government-approved media or official verified accounts. A disclaimer also appears at the bottom of Sina Weibo also indicates that "some results have been omitted" from searches. China even pulled a Taiwanese game, Devotion, back in 2019, because it contained a hidden reference linking Xi Jinping and Winnie the Pooh... State media have used some strongly worded language against him since May, calling him the "king of lies" and even "evil", because of statements he and his team have given in relation to China on Covid-19, Hong Kong and Xinjiang. He has regularly been painted in China's media as somebody not to be trusted, and Chinese media have regularly launched personal attacks on him for statements he has made. Only, he might now have found a way to attack China personally, for which the country has no answer, only silence."
From 2020
Analysis: Military elder put silent pressure on Xi at Beidaihe - Nikkei Asia - "A 94-year-old military heavyweight was sitting silently as President Xi Jinping and other top decision-makers of the Chinese Communist Party carefully listened to another retired party elder remark on the country's situation at a meeting at the seaside resort of Beidaihe this summer. The annual closed-door meeting in the Hebei province beach city usually provides a space for incumbent party leaders and selected party elders to informally exchange views on important issues. But this year was different. Only one elder spoke and incumbents just listened. Testimony by sources familiar with China's internal affairs offers a rare glimpse into the conclave: "Only several powerful and selected party elders were at Beidaihe this summer." "One of the elders was from the People's Liberation Army." "After a meeting with the elders, Xi vented his anger in front of close aides."... After taking the helm of the Central Military Commission (CMC) as its chairman, Xi came out with a slogan directing the military to "listen to and follow the party's orders." The CMC is the PLA's top supervisory body. If the new slogan -- "Listen to and follow the party's orders" -- is taken at face value, it means the military was not previously following orders. The PLA, though, was established to defend the party. In its early days, the military was the party. The military in 1989 suppressed pro-democracy student protests to protect the party, resulting in numerous deaths but maintaining one-party rule. This is an important point. In retrospect, it is safe to say Xi was using the new slogan to call for absolute loyalty to himself. Indeed, Xi was determined to drive forces close to former leaders Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin out of the military. Early in Xi's presidency, a strict investigation was launched into retired military elders, including Xu Caihou, a former vice chairman of the CMC, over corruption issues. Many of the military elders targeted by Xi were sentenced to life in prison. Xu was also detained but died in March 2015 in a hospital where he was being treated after his bladder cancer spread to other parts of his body. The purge of military dignitaries continued. In November 2017, Zhang Yang, who was head of the CMC's Political Work Department, hanged himself at home while under house arrest on suspicion of committing serious disciplinary violations. The harsh crackdown to drive old forces out of the military continues to this day. Discipline remains absolute. No matter how dissatisfied military officials might be, they cannot air grievances, partly because of their pride as defenders of the party. This has left retired military elders to convey to party leaders just how dire matters are within today's military. But Xi is now the unrivaled leader of the party's Central Committee. Even for influential military elders like Chi, it is taboo to make any critical remark directly in front of Xi. This is why Chi brought Zeng, the face of party elders, to the fore while he himself remained silent. The military heavyweight's presence was probably enough to make Xi uncomfortable as it made it impossible for Xi to ignore Zeng's advice. This year, party elders had exchanged views at length ahead of the Beidaihe meeting, most likely in the suburbs of Beijing. In the past, Xi hated seeing elders meet separately or exchange views among themselves. If critical remarks about Xi that might be made at such discussions were to become widely disseminated to the public, they could affect Xi's power base. Therefore, Xi has issued "official notices" warning elders against meeting among themselves. He has also made full use of his close aides to keep a close watch. Nevertheless, the elders' pre-Beidaihe get-together "was not so much a secret meeting," a source said. Rather, it was practically approved by party leadership, which really had no other choice. Xi is aware that China's politics, economy and society are in dire straits. With an unprecedentedly high unemployment rate, young people are already on the move. When young people's "white paper" movement spread late last year it sent shock waves through the party. To avoid turmoil, party leaders needed to listen to the elders' voices to a certain extent. Xi may have thought that the retired officials were merely being given an opportunity to "let off steam." Far from blowing off steam, though, the advice Zeng relayed from his peers apparently landed with a terrific thud, one that has been reverberating through party organizations across the nation for nearly a month... One thing is clear. The military is in some kind of turmoil. Significant unusual events hit the military around the time of the Beidaihe meeting last month and the elder's gathering just before that. It emerged on Aug. 1 that the commander of the Rocket Force, which oversees the country's nuclear and missile arsenal, had been detained."
Chinese arrests jump nearly 50% amid clampdown on ‘hostile foreign forces’ - "Chinese authorities arrested 726,000 people last year, a jump of 47.1% from the previous year, the country’s chief prosecutor told the National People’s Congress that ended Monday amid a crackdown on crimes linked to “hostile foreign forces.”... The Chinese authorities have typically employed a highly elastic definition of what constitutes a state secret, and national security charges are frequently leveled at journalists, rights lawyers and activists, often based on material they posted online... The ruling Communist Party blames "hostile foreign forces" for the "white paper" protests that spread across the country in November 2022 as people vented their anger and frustration, holding up blank sheets of paper as a symbol of what they can’t say, about Xi Jinping's three-year long zero-COVID policy. It also claims that foreign forces were behind waves of mass popular protest in Hong Kong against national security legislation, patriotic education and extradition to mainland China in recent years. Cheng Xiaofeng, a former police detective from the Zhuzhou municipal police department in the central province of Hunan, said the rise in arrests is likely linked to growing social unrest. "2024 is the year in which China is heading into a state of social unrest," Cheng told RFA Mandarin. "Various social tensions are emerging, one after the other." "The official crime data tells us that people are having a hard time, and is a true reflection of the state of society," he said. Lu Jun, who founded the Beijing-based health non-profit Yirenping, agreed. "The explosion of these numbers is either due to a rise in social resistance during the past year, or it's due to the Communist Party itself, which may be acting to maintain stability, catch spies ... to ward off a crisis." He said he knows of many volunteers in the non-profit sector who have been detained and even sentenced during the past year. "If they're like this in the public welfare sector, then it's even more likely in other fields," he said. "Of course, legally speaking, it's total nonsense."... Hui said many in Hong Kong are hotly supportive of Taiwan, and have gone out of their way to buy its produce amid an ongoing trade war with China. "In the future, you could be accused of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment if you don't side with the Chinese government," Hui warned, adding that the definition of the crimes under the draft law was overly vague. "This approach puts Hong Kongers at extreme risk," he said. The law will also allow police leave to hold a suspect for up to 14 days without charge, a stark contrast to the two days previously allowed. There are also restrictions on legal representation under the bill, Hui said. "You can't see a lawyer, and you can't specify which lawyer you see," he said. "People released on bail will also be placed under effective house arrest." Patrick Poon, a rights researcher at the University of Tokyo, said the new provisions will mean police have similar powers to their counterparts in mainland China."
Xi to Discuss China Stocks With Regulators as Rescue Bets Build - Bloomberg - "Some $7 trillion of value has been wiped off Hong Kong and China equities since their peaks in 2021, and piecemeal approaches to support the economy and stabilize markets have so far failed to lift sentiment. For policymakers, it’s important to stabilize the stock market to avoid further hurting consumer confidence as China enters the weeklong Lunar New Year holiday."
From February
US cautions after Hawaii neighbor Kiribati gets Chinese police - "Chinese police have deployed in the Solomon Islands since 2022 after a secret security pact criticized by Washington and Canberra as undermining regional stability."
The West haters claim Russia was justified in invading Ukraine because the West was trying to expand its sphere of influence. So...
Mass Casualty Event in Beijing Suppressed by Chinese Media - "At approximately 0845 EST, initial reports indicated that a motor vehicle crashed into a crowd of pedestrians in the Jiaodaokou area of Dongcheng District, Beijing, China. At least 10 people were seen on the ground amid several cars and motorcycles. However, by 0905 EST, several Sina Weibo pages concerning the incident were taken down from the popular Chinese social media platform."
Netflix blockbuster ‘3 Body Problem’ divides opinion and sparks nationalist anger in China - "A Netflix adaptation of wildly popular Chinese sci-fi novel “The Three-Body Problem” has split opinions in China and sparked online nationalist anger over scenes depicting a violent and tumultuous period in the country’s modern history... Among the country’s more patriotic internet users, discussions on the adaptation turned political, with some accusing the big-budget American production of making China look bad. The show opens with a harrowing scene depicting Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, which consumed China in bloodshed and chaos for a decade from 1966. On the campus of the prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing, a physics professor is brutally beaten to death on stage by his own students and denounced by his colleague and wife, while his daughter Ye Wenjie (played by Zine Tseng) watches in horror. Such “struggle sessions” were a frequent occurrence during the decade-long period of upheaval, where “class enemies” were publicly humiliated, beaten and tortured by Mao’s frenzied Red Guards. But some online commentators accused the show’s producers of “making a whole of tray of dumplings just for a bit of vinegar sauce,” a popular saying used to describe an ulterior motive — in this case, they argued, making a whole TV series just to paint China in a bad light... Author Liu said in an interview with the New York Times in 2019 that he had originally wanted to open the book with scenes from Mao’s Cultural Revolution, but his Chinese publisher worried they would never make it past government censors and buried them in the middle of the narrative. The English version of the book, translated by Ken Liu, put the scenes at the novel’s beginning, with the author’s blessing."
"Is there anything that doesn't spark nationalist anger in China?"
ChinaWarns - "China warns Taiwan condemns 'shameless' China's thanks for global sympathy on quake - "Taiwan on Thursday condemned China as "shameless" after Beijing's deputy ambassador to the United Nations thanked the world for its concern about a strong earthquake on the island... after the 7.2 earthquake hit eastern Taiwan, killing 10 people, China's Deputy Permanent Representative to the U.N., Geng Shuang, mentioned at a meeting about children's rights that another speaker had brought up the quake in "China's Taiwan"."
Meme - ">be me 5 minutes ago
Foreign media in China face growing harassment and restrictions on reporting - The Globe and Mail - "Within minutes of arriving outside a bank in Chengdu, capital of China’s Sichuan province, Dutch journalist Sjoerd den Daas was surrounded. Mr. den Daas, a Beijing-based correspondent for broadcaster NOS, was there with a cameraman to cover a protest by customers of Sichuan Trust, which collapsed in early 2024, taking many people’s deposits with it. In an altercation caught on camera, security guards and plainclothes police manhandled Mr. den Daas as he tried to interview protesters, eventually shoving him to the ground. His cameraman too, was accosted, and both were bundled into a police car and held for several hours. After their release, they were tailed by multiple vehicles until they left Chengdu, Mr. den Daas said. Their experience is increasingly common for foreign reporters covering China today. According to a new report from the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, while last year marked a welcome return to travel after tough COVID pandemic restrictions were lifted, that meant more reporters experienced harassment and surveillance in the field... Reporting in China has always been difficult. It was not until 2007, in the run-up to the first Beijing Olympics, that reporters were permitted to leave the capital without permission, and interview anyone who would speak to them. This didn’t mean reporters were always welcome, especially in parts of the country deemed sensitive, such as ethnic minority regions or along China’s various borders. The Globe and Mail’s Nathan VanderKlippe was detained in Xinjiang in 2017 and had his laptop seized. Visiting Inner Mongolia in 2020, Los Angeles Times correspondent Alice Su was assaulted by police and held for four hours. According to the FCCC, this type of treatment is becoming more common across the country, with four out of five survey respondents saying “they had experienced interference, harassment or violence” while in the field. “Reporting trips during which foreign journalists do not experience problems are the exception,” the report said, noting that more than a third of respondents said they had been forced to cancel trips or interviews after the authorities intervened to press subjects to withdraw consent or otherwise pull out. China’s sprawling surveillance state makes it hard for journalists to travel incognito: By law, hotels must register foreign guests with the police, and pervasive facial recognition technology means it is easy to track people through airports and train stations. Many respondents said it was not uncommon for police to be waiting for them or turn up shortly after they arrived somewhere. In two separate incidents, journalists told the FCCC they had been followed by drones as they tried to conduct interviews. More than 99 per cent of respondents to the FCCC survey said conditions in China today “rarely or never met international reporting standards.” For many journalists, even entering the country can be impossible. The Globe is one of multiple publications – from a variety of countries, including Australia, India and Britain – that has been without a correspondent in mainland China for several years after the authorities refused to issue a visa. Almost a third of respondents told the FCCC their bureau was understaffed because of difficulties securing visas for new reporters. Last year, only one U.S. outlet was successful in obtaining accreditation; all others said they had been unable to bring in replacements for departing correspondents, let alone increase the number of journalists they have working in China. The Globe covers China from Hong Kong, long a refuge of sorts for journalists who have been ejected from or unable to enter the mainland. But this too is changing. Work visas for Hong Kong have become harder to obtain – with at least one U.S. outlet being rejected this year – and last month, the city enacted a draconian new national security law known as Article 23 which press freedom groups have warned could seriously affect reporting there... Hong Kong has plummeted in Reporters Without Borders’ annual ranking of global press freedom, falling from number 70 in 2018 to 140th of 180 countries last year. At 179, China ranks even lower, ahead of only North Korea, and remains the world’s largest jailer of journalists, with at least 109 imprisoned today."
Desmond Shum on X - "Tesla reap what it sow Tesla has lost a few hundred billion in market cap YTD. Plenty of that can be attributed to Chinese competition. BYD replaced Tesla as the world’s biggest EV company at the end of last year. I say Tesla essentially groom its competitors to outcompete itself.
Bearing Witness to China’s ‘Orwellian Dystopia’ - "Patrick Wack got a boost any photographer would dream of when Kodak’s Instagram account — 841,000 followers and counting — decided to feature ten photographs from his forthcoming book. It’s called “Dust,” and it chronicles the transformation, over the past half-decade, of the Xinjiang region, the cradle of Uyghur civilization, at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. Then, a few days after Kodak shared the photos, the company deleted them. It didn’t just delete them. It replaced Wack’s haunting pictures with its corporate logo and a statement that reads, in part: “Kodak’s Instagram page is intended to enable creativity by providing a platform for promoting the medium of film. It is not intended to be a platform for political commentary.” It went on to “apologize for any misunderstanding or offense the post may have caused.” Instagram is banned in China, so Kodak put out an additional statement on WeChat, a Chinese social-media platform. This one was more abject... The photographer calls the situation in Xinjiang, in the northwest region of the country, an “Orwellian dystopia.” He would know. He traveled there six times from 2016 to 2019, documenting the province as it became, in his words, “an open-air prison.”...
Hillel Neuer on X - "BREAKING: 🇬🇧 British Parliament releases evidence China paid bribes to two heads of UN General Assembly; whistleblower reveals that top UN Human Rights Council official Eric Tistounet handed Beijing the names of Uyghur and other dissidents who were slated to testify about abuses.
China Orders Apple to Remove Popular Messaging Apps - WSJ - "Meta Platforms’ WhatsApp and Threads as well as messaging platforms Signal and Telegram were taken off the Chinese App Store Friday. Apple said it was told to remove certain apps because of national security concerns, without specifying which... The Cyberspace Administration of China asked Apple to remove WhatsApp and Threads from the App Store because both contain political content that includes problematic mentions of the Chinese president, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Apple spokesperson said that wasn’t part of the reasoning. The move shrinks the number of foreign chat apps Chinese internet users can use to communicate with those outside of the country, a further tightening of internet controls by Beijing, which is sensitive to uncensored information circulating... Apps such as X were key to disseminating information and videos of protests against Covid rules in China that erupted in late 2022... Beijing has intensified crackdowns on its internet space, cranking up censorship and data controls and requiring platform operators to manage online activities. In 2017, Apple came under fire for removing dozens of apps enabling Chinese internet users to circumvent the Great Firewall from the country’s app store. It also took down thousands of videogame apps in 2020 after Chinese officials cracked down on gaming software without a government license. Chat messaging platforms have been a thorn in the side for Chinese authorities because they provide a channel for users to organize social movements, said Eric Liu, an analyst with China Digital Times, a website tracking Chinese censorship. These apps have shared news about China the government doesn’t like, such as about a protester on a bridge in Beijing in 2022 who was demonstrating against the country’s anti-COVID lockdowns, which first appeared on Telegram. Apple’s takedowns further decouple the iPhone ecosystem there from the West. Global apps such as Reddit, Spotify and ChatGPT aren’t available on China’s app store, along with more than 14,000 apps that are blocked in China, according to AppleCensorship.com, a website run by anticensorship activist organization GreatFire, which has been monitoring such censorship for more than a decade. Some of these are internet circumvention tools, messaging apps or apps that are linked to the LGBT community, according to GreatFire. The demands of China’s censors illustrate the growing cost to Apple of access to one of the biggest consumer markets in the world. China is its most important international sales market and largest manufacturing base globally. Even so, the iPhone maker is already facing headwinds there. Weak consumption spending has weighed on sales, while competition with homegrown rivals has intensified. Beijing has also limited the use of iPhones by state employees."
>playing gta v
>some guy is hacking
>notice he's spamming non english characters
>idea
>type ”1989 tiananmen square massacre winnie the pooh"
>chinese hacker has disappeared
hows your day been anons?"
- Tesla open source its technology. Elon said he wants to promote green innovations. I was shocked when I heard this from him in that NYT conference last year. I can’t think of a single major tech company that open source its technology w its own shareholder capital
- Tesla groomed an EV supply chain in China. Almost entirely of Tesla components are sourced in China. https://gizchina.com/2022/02/25/tesla-cars-and-components-are-almost-entirely-made-in-china/ This supply chain also supplies its Chinese competitors. China EV took off from about 1.2 million in 2017, the year Tesla entered China, to about 9 million units last year.
Now with its own EV industry fully grown, China is done courting Tesla “Tesla Cars Are Banned in Certain Areas in China Amid Security Concerns” https://autoevolution.com/news/tesla-cars-are-banned-in-certain-areas-in-china-amid-security-concerns-228221.html So I say Tesla perfectly demonstrates the meaning of “you reap what you sow”."
Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 on X - "Yep. Tesla went to China for cheap production and for a dream of huge consumer markets, just like every other Western company. Then China took Tesla's tech, distributed it to various state-affiliated companies, and those companies started outcompeting Tesla. Old, old story."
I wanted to see how much of the repression of the minorities, and the economic segregation, I could capture. For example, the biggest industry in Xinjiang is hydro-carbons, like gas and construction. I didn’t see a single Uyghur person working there. It was all Han Chinese people. The only people you see working in the cotton fields were Uyghur. They are second-class citizens. And they are in a region that is generating so much wealth — but not for them... In 2016, it was a highly-surveilled region. By 2019, it had become an open air prison filled with police. The officers are all Uyghur people, and they are checking you all the time. You have to go through a body scan and security, just like when you go through an airport, but whenever you enter any public place at all, like a bazaar or a supermarket. There’s also the surveillance you can’t see. There are devices that check the content of phones and apps that record everything. And the cameras are absolutely everywhere. The second major change was in the landscape. The women were not wearing their veils anymore. Any symbol that was Middle Eastern or Muslim had been removed. The mosques were closed or destroyed. You couldn’t hear the call to prayer anymore in the streets. In 2016, the mosques were filled, especially in the towns in the south of the region, which is the cradle of the Uyghur people. In 2019, I didn’t see a single person going to the mosque to pray. Some mosques were open, but only as tourist sites. I also saw a gap in the demographics in the region. There were fewer men in their twenties, thirties and forties out in the streets. My impression was that they were in the camps, but it’s hard to know for sure. That’s what I felt. There was tension and weight all around. Something grim... The government says it’s to make the area safer and to secularize it. It’s true there were a lot of incidents in the past twenty years, and the area needs to be safer, but the whole point is to accelerate something that was already underway: to turn these religious minorities into Chinese people. That policy of forced assimilation is broadening beyond Muslims to Christians, too... The CCP can’t stand hearing the voice of dissonance. That’s why they’re tightening their grip on Hong Kong. They can’t bear the idea that Hong Kong has a successful democracy in a Chinese society. They can’t stand the idea that Taiwan is a successful country, or that it did a better job of fighting COVID while still remaining democratic. Xi Jinping can’t handle anything that casts a shadow on the only official religion, which is Communism, or on the reign of the CCP. The goal is to turn everyone into foot soldiers for the new China. To have them bow to the CCP and to Xi Jinping. They don’t want anything to stand in the way of the society they’re trying to create... I know Chinese officials are sent into peoples’ homes to spy on them and report anything that could show that they are leading a religious or traditional life. Whether they have a Quran or they’re fasting or they aren’t willing to drink alcohol. Any of these things can get you sent to a camp. Receiving a call from abroad or having WhatsApp on your phone can also get you sent to the camps. The only mosques that are open now are the ancient ones. The regular ones that people would actually use are closed, or they’re being destroyed and turned into parking lots. I saw burial grounds being destroyed to be turned into new residential developments. They’re trying to erase what it means to be Uyghur... One of the texts in my book, by Brice Pedroletti, says that people within the community use code language. They’ll say, “My uncle has been sent to school,” which means he is in a re-education camp. There’s a fear not only of putting yourself in danger, but anyone else, too. It’s a complete nightmare... There are busloads of Han Chinese tourists coming in to see this idyllic version of Xinjiang which is just about the folklore. They’re going to theme parks, or ethno-parks, and ten kilometers away you have camps where they are trying to brainwash and annihilate the culture of the Uyghurs. I found it perverse, the two realities of this Potemkin Village version of Xinjiang with what was really happening... To make a political book about this, you don’t need to be an activist. Explaining the facts is enough. Telling the truth is enough. It’s a political object because everything with China is political. For example, by saying that the CCP has to honor the One Country Two Systems policy in Hong Kong, you’re saying something political. But it’s just the truth... We all realize that European imperialism is horrible. The genocide of Native Americans or in Austrialia is horrible. But you can’t justify a current genocide by saying, ‘Those people have done it before us.’ That’s basically what’s being thrown at me in the comments on my Instagram: that I’m a white supremacist or a colonizer, or a CIA agent. They’re re-using those tropes, and holding up a mirror of past mistakes to say, ‘You should leave us alone.’ But what kind of logic is that?"
Weird. China shills keep telling us that if you just visit Xinjiang, you'll realise that talk of Muslim oppression is Western propaganda
Whistleblower Emma Reilly reveals: “Beijing paid bribes to two UNGA Presidents who had significant influence over the final texts” of Sustainable Development Goals. Beijing “imposes a secret conditionality across UN agencies” that their funding “may not be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan.”"
Why using Apple is a bad idea