Links - 7th February 2020 (2) (China's 'Peaceful' Rise)

How much has the US lost from China's intellectual property theft? - "The United States Trade Representative, which led the seven-month investigation into China's intellectual property theft and made recommendations to the Trump administration, found that "Chinese theft of American IP currently costs between $225 billion and $600 billion annually."...  "China has sought to acquire US technology by any means, licit or illicit," James Andrew Lewis, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote in a blog post Thursday."Espionage and theft were part of this, but so were forced technology transfers or mandatory joint ventures as a condition for doing business in China," he wrote"

Wikipedia blocked in China in all languages - "All language editions of Wikipedia have been blocked in mainland China since April... The country had previously banned the Chinese language version of the site, but the block has now been expanded."

New Horrors: China Harvesting Muslim Organs in Concentration Camps. - "As for claims, China is removing live organs from executed Uyghur Muslims and marketing them as “halal” and then distributing via a network to wealthy Saudi clients, we know that China has taken the biometric data of the upwards of 2 million Uyghur it holds in its concentration camps, along with those of millions of others in Xinjiang, and we also know that as many as 100,000 organ transplants are carried out each year in China, according to the authors of Bloody Harvest/Slaughter."

China harvested organs from political prisoners on substantial scale, says tribunal - "Forced harvesting of organs from prisoners of conscience in China has been “substantial,” says an interim judgment of an independent “people’s tribunal” set up to determine whether the country’s transplantation practices breached international criminal law."

The long march from China to the Ivies - "It is one of China’s curious contradictions that, even as the government tries to eradicate foreign influences from the country’s universities, the flood of Chinese students leaving for the West continues to rise. Over the past decade, the number of mainland Chinese students enrolled in American colleges and universities has nearly quintupled, from 62,523 in 2005 to 304,040 last year... Even the daughter of Xi Jinping, China’s president and the man driving the campaign against foreign ideas, recently studied – under a pseudonym – at Harvard University. Among Western educators, the Chinese system is famous for producing an elite corps of high-school students who regularly finish at the top of global test rankings, far ahead of their American and British counterparts. Yet so many Chinese families are now opting out of this system that selling education to Chinese students has become a profitable business for the West... Even as Xi’s daughter took seminars at Harvard, his government cracked down on university faculty and curricula “corrupted” by foreign influences – with the exception of a thickly bearded German philosopher.As part of this campaign, Beijing decreed last year that international wings in public high schools should be shut down, or at least moved away from their host schools... American universities, too, have learned to mistrust applications coming from China. Their suspicions are often grounded in unpleasant experience, most commonly with Chinese students whose high TOEFL scores or eloquent personal essays are betrayed by an inability to form coherent sentences in English. Few universities have the resources to check up on each of their applicants’ claims – and indeed, with the amount of cash full-tuition-paying Chinese students are bringing in, some don’t have much incentive either... Chinese teachers as a rule don’t write recommendations, so students must conjure them up themselves, treating it, according to a consultant, “as a creative writing sample in which you have to write in another person’s voice”. Mistrust of Chinese applications has spawned a small “verification” industry in China... several firms, such as the Beijing-based Vericant, now conduct video-taped interviews with applicants, in English, and post them online so that colleges and universities can evaluate whether their ability matches their test scores... Most students have had little chance to develop outside interests, so are trying to create rounded personalities from a standing start... A Beijing school official told me about a boy from north-eastern China whose father flew him in a private plane to Tibet – for just a day – to make a video of him aiding poor minorities"

More Than 1,200 Buddhist Statues Removed - "The destruction of large Buddhist and Taoist statues has become an ideological matter for the Chinese authorities, an integral part of the unprecedented struggle to rid the country of anything religious that is not controlled by the CCP. In the past year, numerous Buddhist statues have been removed or demolished; temples shut down and destroyed"
Maybe according to China shills this is to stop terrorism

A Brief History of Vietnam: The 4 Periods of Chinese Domination - "For over thousands of years, China ruled over Vietnam from 111 B.C. — 980 A.D.... During the conquered period, Vietnam had to adopt the Chinese writing system, Confucianism, arts, and literature. A part of the conquered Vietnam lost their native language, culture, and national identity until the revolt of Trung Sister in 40 A.D... The Ming Dynasty took Vietnam and suppressed it even further by the emperor’s command:
兵入。除釋道經板經文不燬。外一切書板文字以至俚俗童蒙所習。如上大人丘乙已之類。片紙隻字悉皆燬之。其境內中國 所立碑刻則存之。但是安南所立者悉壞之。一字不存。
“Once our army enter Annam (Vietnam currenly), except Buddhist and Taoist text; all books and notes, including folklore and children book, should be burnt. The stelas erected by China should be protected carefully, while those erected by Annamese (Vietnamese currently), should be completely annihilated, do not spare even one character.” Vietnam’s economy suffered greatly. Valuables artifacts, gold, gems, jade, pieces of arts were transported to China"
So much for the myth of a peaceful China

In Hong Kong, battles grow over identity and future of special status within China - The Washington Post - "Sitting on a bus in Boston, thousands of miles from her home in Hong Kong, college student Frances Hui crossed paths with an inquisitive fellow passenger.Where are you from? the passenger pressed.When she eventually replied “Hong Kong,” the man started to get aggressive, Hui recounted. He insisted that she should define herself as “from China” — which was handed control of the former British colony in 1997... Hui penned a column at Emerson’s student paper, titled “I am from Hong Kong, not China.” She opened with the line: “I am from a city owned by a country I don’t belong to.”It was soon followed by an intense and, at times, threatening backlash from mainland Chinese students at her college... The terms of Britain’s handover were meant to guarantee Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy, allowing the territory to keep its own political, judicial and economic systems until 2047.But Beijing’s controls stepped up after the 2014 street protests... Hong Kong courts have charged and imprisoned the pro-democracy movement’s leaders for up to 16 months despite the protests being overwhelmingly peaceful... a party that advocates for Hong Kong’s independence was banned, and a senior Financial Times editor was expelled. No official explanation was given for the editor’s expulsion, but he had hosted a talk with the founder of that independence party just weeks before at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club.The Hong Kong government also is pushing through a bill that would make insulting the Chinese national anthem a criminal offense... The most jarring comment came from a Chinese student at Emerson, who made Hui’s personal Facebook posts public. In one post, he wrote a comment that translates to: “Whomever opposes my greatest China, no matter how far they are, must be executed.”... Her experience... mirrors that of other Hong Kongers at overseas universities."
Some people claim that while the government is brutal, Chinese people are reasonable. Yet, it doesn't take many nasty people to ruin your day

Hong Kong: Leaked police manuals show officers often ignored guidelines in protest crackdown - Washington Post - "As violence escalated in Hong Kong over recent months, senior officials repeatedly ruled out a full inquiry into increasingly aggressive police tactics toward pro-democracy demonstrators.Independent scrutiny would be an “injustice” and a “tool for inciting hatred” against the force, commissioner Chris Tang said recently, echoing the refusal of Carrie Lam, the city’s Beijing-appointed leader, to meet one of protesters’ key demands. A police spokesman emphasized that the force is adhering to “strict” guidelines in policing the protests, “benchmarked against international standards.”A review of more than 100 pages of police guidelines and training manuals obtained by The Washington Post details these protocols surrounding use of force. The guidelines, however, were often ignored by police, who have misused chemical agents and used excessive force against protesters not resisting, according to experts in policing who examined dozens of incidents in consultation with Post journalists and in comparison with the police protocols...  Concerns over a lack of police accountability underpin the sentiments fueling the unrest — growing fears that Hong Kong’s rule of law is being eroded as Beijing tightens its grip over the territory. Many in the city’s pro-democracy camp view the Hong Kong police as a means for China’s Communist Party to suppress unrest without resorting to direct intervention that could provoke an international response.A police spokesman said no officer has been suspended from duty in connection with “any incident relating to the protests,” a step taken when an officer is being investigated for serious wrongdoing. No officer has been charged or prosecuted over protest-related actions... A culture of impunity now pervades the force, according to a current and a former officer, emboldening riot police to disregard their training or lie when asked in official reports to justify excessive force... An officer who left the force recently, dissatisfied with police conduct, added: “All those disciplinary rules are just being ignored now. The higher-ups are afraid to use them.”... The indiscriminate use of force has led Hong Kongers to tolerate protesters’ increasingly violent reprisals against police. As demonstrators resorted to gasoline bombs and bricks, polls showed that far more people blamed the government and police for the worsening situation... The experts, who each reviewed a different set of videos, said they thought that Hong Kong police went against their rules in about 70 percent of the incidents reviewed. In 8 percent of incidents, the experts said the use of force could be justified under police guidelines... Lam, Hong Kong’s leader, has urged the public to trust the Independent Police Complaints Council to address police behavior. Yet the council — whose chairman Lam appointed in 2018 — has no power to call witnesses. Between 2010 and 2018, the council recommended criminal proceedings against only one police officer.  In September, Lam said she had formed a five-member international expert panel to provide advice on the council’s findings, which are due in the coming weeks.  In a November progress report, those international experts warned of limitations in the scope and powers of the council inquiry. They said on Dec. 11 that they were standing aside, citing disagreements with the council over the scope of the exercise. "
Maybe the China shill excuse is that the HK police guidelines are outdated colonial rubbish, and the police needed to adapt to the realities on the ground. And that Hong Kong people have all been brainwashed by the foreign media and foreign agents since they don't blame the protesters for the situation

Muhammed on Twitter - "So #Beijing has been aggressively pumping out staged propaganda videos like the one below, hoping the world will start buying into its unjustifiable claims of counter-terrorism. Unfortunately, with all the arguments so perfectly contradict with existing findings, there is little chance that the world will start looking at the #Xinjiang crisis differently.
@WangGuanCGTN, I wonder how much you believe in the words you said in when all evidence show that the re-education program is essentially a religious and cultural cleansing operation."
"What lies! I hate how propagandists repeatedly use numbers game. I know first hand that Xinjiang has the mosques closed, just the Id Kah mosque is open now -- tourists pay a fee and locals show ID. Tourists cannot pray and if locals pray they will be profiled and sent to camps."
"Did you go there? China shills like to tell me to go to xinjiang and look for myself. When I ask them if they've done that they keep quiet"
"Yes"
"I guess the China shills will just have to fall back on claiming you've been deceived by Western propaganda, or that you're a paid agent"

Bob Malak on Twitter - "Scientists discover China has been secretly emitting banned ozone-depleting gas"
"At least they didnt back out of the Paris Accord"

Chinese MMA Fighter Xu Xiaodong has social credit score lowered to “D”, is barred from buying plane tickets and real estate - "Chinese Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Xu Xiaodong’s social credit score has been lowered to “D” following a court order.Xu became an internet celebrity in 2017 when a video of him defeating a tai chi grandmaster in just 20 seconds went viral.Xu is a fierce critic of what he calls “fake kung fu.” He claims that Western-style MMA is superior to traditional Chinese martial arts, a point of view that in the increasingly nationalistic environment in China is often unwelcome. To prove his point, Xu challenged tai chi grandmaster Wei Lei to a fight. The bout, which took place in a basement in the city of Chengdu, lasted only 20 seconds. Wei’s defeat shocked China and drew the ire of many Chinese, who viewed the fight as a battle between East and West. “Chinese traditional wushu like tai chi is a philosophy and social medium. It’s not martial arts”... A credit score “D” means that Xu will no longer be allowed to buy plane tickets or train tickets, purchase real estate. He also will be banned from star-rated hotels, restaurants and nightclubs, and his children will not be able to study in private schools. In 2014 China announced the launch of a pilot scheme to create a nationwide social credit score system, which will be fully implemented by 2020. The system aims to evaluate the behaviour of citizens and punish those who have a low score."
China lovers will just say that he deserves it and this is totally not an abuse of the social credit system but justification for it since he made China look bad

China Bans The Intercept and Other News Sites in “Censorship Black Friday” - "people in China began reporting that they could not access the websites of The Intercept, The Guardian, the Washington Post, HuffPost, NBC News, the Christian Science Monitor, the Toronto Star, and Breitbart News... Charlie Smith, co-founder of GreatFire.org, an organization that monitors Chinese government internet censorship, said that the apparent crackdown on Western news sites represented a significant new development and described it as a “censorship Black Friday.”“This frenzied activity could indicate that the authorities are accelerating their push to sever the link between Chinese citizens and any news source that falls outside of the influence of The Party”"