Hong Kong Free Press HKFP - Posts | Facebook - "Episode 12 of Season 16 of The Simpsons is missing from the newly-launched Disney+ streaming platform in Hong Kong. The episode references Chairman Mao and the Tiananmen Massacre. HKFP has reached out to Disney for comment."
China's debt-trap diplomacy - "A new international study has shed light on China’s muscular and exploitative lending practices by examining 100 of its loan contracts with 24 countries, many of which participate in its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an imperial project that seeks to make real the mythical Middle Kingdom. The study found that these agreements arm China with considerable leverage by incorporating provisions that go beyond standard international lending contracts. In fact, such is the lopsided nature of the Chinese-dictated contracts that, while curtailing the options of the borrowing nations, they give China’s state-owned banks untrammeled discretion over any borrower, including the power to scrap loans or even demand full repayment ahead of schedule... Many Chinese loans, in fact, have not been publicly disclosed, thus spawning a “hidden debt” problem. Every contract since 2014 has incorporated a sweeping confidentiality clause that compels the borrowing country to keep confidential its terms or even the loan’s existence. Such China-enforced opacity, as the study points out, breaches the principle that public debt should be public and not hidden from taxpayers so that governments can be held accountable. Forcing the other side to keep contractual provisions under wraps is also necessitated by the fact that China’s loan accords equip it with “broad latitude to cancel loans or accelerate repayment if it disagrees with a borrower’s policies,” whether domestic or foreign policy, according to the study. No less significant is another unique clause: The contracts, the study found, obligate the borrower to exclude the Chinese debt from any multilateral restructuring process, such as the Paris Club of official bilateral creditors, and from any “comparable debt treatment.” This is aimed at ensuring that the borrowing country remains dependent on Beijing, including for any debt relief in the event of financial distress, like in the current pandemic. The study confirms that little of what China provides is aid or low-interest lending. Rather, its infrastructure financing comes mainly in the form of market-rate loans like those from private capital markets. The more dire the borrower’s financial situation, the higher the interest rate China is likely to charge for lending money. In stark contrast, interest rates for Japan’s infrastructure loans to developing countries, for example, mostly run below half a percent. Worse still, many of China’s loan agreements incorporate collateral arrangements, such as lender-controlled revenue accounts. Its collateralization practices seek to secure debt repayments by revenues flowing from, for example, commodity exports. Through various contract clauses, a commercially aggressive China, according to the study, limits the borrowing state’s crisis management options while leveraging its own role. The study did not examine how borrowing states, when unable to repay Chinese loans, are compelled, including by contract provisions allowing debt-for-equity swaps, to cede strategic assets to China... BRI, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature initiative, has been plagued by allegations of corruption and malpractice, and many of its completed projects have proved not to be financially viable... After all, BRI is central to its debt-trap diplomacy. China often begins as an economic partner of a small, financial weak country and then gradually enlarges its footprint in that state to become its economic master. "
Chinese loans in Africa: will risky business pay off or buyer’s remorse beat soft power? | South China Morning Post - ""China has rapidly scaled up the provision of foreign currency-denominated loans to resource-rich countries that suffer from high levels of corruption"... “The pursuit of profit is a key difference between Chinese state-owned lenders and other bilateral and multilateral lenders, which explains why a typical overseas loan from China has a 4 per cent interest rate and a typical loan from Germany or France or Japan has a 1 per cent interest rate,” Parks said... Beijing had a “buyer’s remorse” problem on its hands, where many foreign leaders initially eager to jump on the belt and road bandwagon were now suspending or cancelling Chinese infrastructure projects, because of concerns about artificially inflated project costs and debt sustainability, he said."
Beijing finds itself cornered by Africa as they cancel China-led projects - "China is increasingly finding itself being cornered by African countries on investment-related matters with several of them cancelling their contracts with Chinese companies... some of the countries had cancelled contracts as the "shoddy" work of the Chinese companies had become a source of tension for the ruling dispensations in several nations across the African continent... The DRC President said he wants to get fairer deals for his country. Unhappy with China's exploitative tendency, he said, "Those with whom his country signed contracts are getting richer while DRC people remain poor.""
Areas in Africa with more Chinese-backed projects were more likely to experience protests - "There are a couple of potential explanations for this link between projects and protests. First, we know from previous research that, compared with World Bank aid, Chinese finance is prone to being used by local elites to pursue their own interests and obtain many of the benefits, perhaps because of a lack of transparency in loan conditions, or because of China’s principle of not interfering in domestic affairs when granting loans, which gives local political leaders more power to allocate resources to projects. All this can lower citizens’ trust in their government institutions. When people lose trust in institutions, they may prefer protesting to voting. Our analysis confirms that areas with a larger number of Chinese projects do see lowered trust in local government. Second, using data from the Afrobarometer, which surveys Africans on their view on democracy, governance and other issues, we observe a growing sense of China’s rising domestic economic influence among citizens who are more strongly exposed to Chinese projects. This perception can stir protests when citizens feel that the economic changes are serving Chinese rather than domestic interests."
Damn CIA!
Too bad the Africans are too ignorant to realise the great benefits that Chinese-aided development brings
Free Hong Kong Road: Budapest renames streets to frustrate Chinese campus plan - "Budapest has renamed streets around the planned site of a leading Chinese university campus to protest an “unwanted” project forced on it by the government of the prime minister, Viktor Orbán. Four street signs at the site now bear the names Free Hong Kong Road, Uyghur Martyrs’ Road, Dalai Lama Road, and Bishop Xie Shiguang Road, the last referring to a persecuted Chinese Catholic priest."
Westminster School pulls out of China after Communist Party insists lessons are approved by Beijing - "Westminster School is to pull the plug on its China operation after a new Communist Party ruling stipulated that all lesson plans must be approved by Beijing... British-branded private schools in China will be forced to abandon their curricula and teach only lessons approved by Beijing as part of a broader push led by president Xi Jinping to ensure the “right” thinking. The new regulations mean that international schools must now teach the same lessons as China’s state-run public schools from kindergarten to grade nine. All private schools must now “uphold the leadership of the Communist Party of China”, a move aimed at giving Beijing greater oversight on what children learn... Stephen Spriggs, the managing director at the consultancy firm William Clarence Education, said: “There was always a risk with schools viewing China as the land paved with gold. You are liable to a change in their government’s policy.” He said he suspects more British schools will pull out of China and instead target more “politically stable” countries."
Beijing Wants More Citizen Vigilante Groups Across the Capital - "The Chaoyang Masses are a collective of eagle-eyed residents from Beijing’s Chaoyang District known for keeping tabs on petty crimes and also reporting the alleged misconduct of some of the country’s top celebrities. Now, city officials say they want more such citizen vigilante groups... The Chaoyang Masses most recently made national headlines in October after members anonymously reported prominent Chinese pianist Li Yundi for allegedly soliciting prostitution. Li was later detained by Chaoyang police. The Chaoyang Masses have also been referred to as the “world’s fifth-largest intelligence agency” on social media for their detective work. There are currently over 230,000 volunteers with daily obligations varying from picking litter to tipping off police to potential crimes."
Beijing Keeps Trying to Rewrite History - "Under the relentless crush of Beijing, the courtrooms of Hong Kong have become some of the few venues safe for protest in the city. Defendants accused or convicted of political crimes have turned otherwise banal hearings and bail applications into opportunities to voice dissent and challenge the arduous legal process... Weaponizing pandemic protocols and vague threats of possible national-security violations, authorities have canceled the once-annual vigil for the past two years. Prominent activists, Lee included, who took part in prior gatherings have been arrested. A museum dedicated to Tiananmen was abruptly closed. Its contents were hauled away by police as evidence against members of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which organized the vigil and ran the museum. The group disbanded as a result. Unsatisfied with residents being only physically barred from viewing its displays, Hong Kong officials blocked access to the museum’s website as well. An investigation by Hong Kong Free Press found that dozens of books on the topic of Tiananmen have disappeared from the city’s libraries... The attempts at removing the horrors of Tiananmen from the popular consciousness follow a full-scale effort to rewrite more recent history in Hong Kong. Officials have consistently attempted to twist the narrative of the city’s protest movement, portraying the demonstrations as organized by a small, violent group, conspicuously omitting the occasions when more than 1 million people marched peacefully. The reasons behind the protests have been obfuscated as well. Blame, officials now say, lies with the United States and astronomical housing prices, not the continued erosion of freedoms and broken promises from Beijing. The police have taken part in some of the most blatant acts of historical revisionism, hoping that residents will forget violent actions they witnessed with their own eyes. “The authorities … are working overtime to teach us what is the official position,” John P. Burns, an emeritus professor at HKU and the former dean of its faculty of social sciences, who has written in support of keeping the statue, told me. “Making Hong Kong more like the rest of China, that is the name of the game.”... In 1989, residents of Hong Kong were horrified by Beijing crushing the protests at Tiananmen Square... Authorities in Beijing believed then that the city’s protests would be a one-off event, according to a former Hong Kong government official who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, and that the territory would revert to being a purely “economic city,” whose inhabitants were uninterested in politics. This hypothesis—like many made by Beijing about Hong Kong—was totally incorrect. Instead, Hong Kong fostered a lively tradition of protests and demonstrations... HKU and other universities in the territory have quickly moved to submit to Hong Kong’s new, more authoritarian political order. Maintenance workers at the university removed colorful walls of protest art, and the administration cut ties with the students’ union and barred some of its members from campus because of a union motion expressing sympathy for the “sacrifice” of a man who had killed himself after stabbing a police officer in July. The students later apologized and retracted the statement, but four were arrested under the national-security law and charged with advocating terrorism. Burns told me that by moving to remove the sculpture, the university is “acknowledging its dependence on the mainland and on authorities in the mainland for the things the university wants.” One professor, who asked not to be named for fear of repercussions, told me that the threat of removal was part of “a wholesale embrace of the wider crackdown that we have seen in the media, civil society, and the general public,” and that the university was in “free fall into a totalitarian-friendly tertiary institution.” Another professor, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, told me about recently going out of their way to walk by the statue with colleagues to confirm that it was still standing. “I find campus very depressing,” the academic said, “because of everything that is no longer there.”"
Beijing’s plan to punish skeptics of traditional Chinese medicine - "Article 54 stipulates that those who “defame and slander” TCM are subject to punishment by public security departments or even face criminal responsibility for “picking quarrels, causing trouble, and disrupting public order,” a vaguely defined crime often used by Chinese law enforcers to police online speech."
Why Is China So … Uncool? – Foreign Policy - " The quest for cool is key to a country’s so-called soft power. Unlike hard power, which is the ability to get what one wants through coercion or payment, soft power usually comes in the form of seduction — via culture, political values, or foreign policies that have moral authority. It’s this power that China, unlike the United States, lacks... pop culture contributed to America’s victory during the Cold War. According to Joseph Nye, a Harvard scholar and father of the “soft power” term, “Soviet state-run propaganda and culture programs could not keep pace with the influence of America’s commercial popular culture in flexibility or attraction. Long before the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, it had been pierced by television and movies.” Today, if people in Eurasia were all fans of Chinese pop music or television dramas, or had a more positive image of China, it might be easier for their governments to partner with Beijing on “win-win” initiatives like One Belt One Road... China’s pop culture lacks emotional, artistic, or sex appeal. A 2013 Pew survey found that just 25 percent of Latin Americans and 34 percent of Africans have favorable opinions of Chinese music, movies, or television, while more than half view U.S. cultural products favorably... I’m usually not cool in China, where I live now — at least not until people find out that I grew up Stateside. Then people here look at me with new eyes. They start to admire the clothes I wear, the music I listen to, and the books I read. This fawning is doubled for my white American friends. In much of China today, telling people that you’re from the United States can transform you into a minor celebrity. Despite high levels of nationalism and rising income in China, people there still turn to the United States, Europe, South Korea, and even erstwhile wartime enemy Japan for entertainment. (Pop culture from Taiwan and Hong Kong, with relatively tiny populations, is also considered much cooler than that from the mainland.) When my Chinese friends share WeChat posts, they like to show that they traveled to non-Chinese locations, and they like to write their status updates in non-Chinese languages. For as long as I can remember, the more a Chinese person travels abroad, the more socially attractive he or she becomes. This wasn’t always the case. For millennia, Chinese culture was a thing of envy and imitation... China’s golden age was so admirable that, even today, China’s propaganda department peddles its ancient cultural products abroad — in part because it has nothing else, really, to offer. The fact that a country invented gunpowder brings it only so much social capital. “That’s like if your girlfriend’s family asks if you are wealthy, and you tell them that your ancestors are wealthy,” noted popular Chinese blogger Han Han. “It is useless.”... It’s an old maxim that trying too hard to be cool backfires. Just look at the Chinese Communist Party, which has been flummoxed by the question of how to improve its cultural image... The Party’s soft power failures are especially visible in the music industry. One of China’s most cringe-worthy efforts is a hip hop music video aimed at millennials abroad entitled “This is China,” produced by China’s Communist Youth League and the rap group Chengdu Revolution. The video promotes China with rambling lyrics like, “First things first, we all know that China is a developing country. It has large population and it is really hard to manage,” and the gem, “As for scientific achievement, we have [Nobel prize winner] Tu Youyou, who discovered Astemisinin.” The only way Chinese state media could out-do itself on this one is if it were to, say, promote a rap song praising Karl Marx... It’s not that Chinese artists lack creativity, style, or taste; they also have to overcome both an overweening state and the expectations and stereotypes of older Chinese, and of Western audiences... The clashing expectations of older Chinese, younger Chinese, Beijing censors, and the West can make it hard to create widely resonant works. Hollywood and state-backed Chinese studios recently coproduced a $150 million movie, “The Great Wall.” The ambitious film somehow managed to receive criticism for both whitewashing (it starred Matt Damon) and pandering to China (Matt Damon becomes humbled by Chinese virtues). It flopped in its opening weekend in the United States. In another instance, director Lu Chuan (known for “City of Life and Death”) agreed to produce an animated film in 2006 for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. But he quickly found that the government had inflexible demands on how the film should promote Chinese culture. “Under such pressure, my co-workers and I really felt stifled,” Lu wrote in China Daily. “The fun and joy from doing something interesting left us, together with our imagination and creativity.” And when the China Film Directors Guild awarded the 2013 director of the year award to Feng Xiaogang, often called the Spielberg of China, Feng gave an acceptance speech lamenting the censorship that Chinese directors must overcome. “Are Hollywood directors tormented the same way?” Feng asked. “To get approval, I have to cut my films in a way that makes them bad.” His speech went viral on Chinese social media... William C. Kirby, a professor of China Studies at Harvard who has also taught in China, cautions against assuming “that because of their educational experience the Americans are problem-solving innovators as a birth right and the Chinese are rote memorizers with no independence of thought.” Kirby told FP he is more worried about the government’s ideological purity campaign, which has recently made its way onto college campuses. Xi, for example, has tightened the Party’s grip over lesson plans, with visions to turn colleges into strongholds that obey Party leadership. “Great universities in China, one could fear, would end up with two types of graduates,” Kirby said. “The large majority being cynical of what they are being taught, which is never a good thing; and a small minority being opportunists, who say whatever they need to say to get ahead.”... Beijing still fails to grasp that soft power arises when individuals have room to create and grow — without fear of censorship or the need to conform to a government agenda. Popular culture becomes popular because, somewhere along the way, it pushes the boundaries of what is socially acceptable or recognized."
China state media promote rap song praising Karl Marx - "Entitled “Marx is a post-90” — China’s version of a millennial — the song extols the communist godfather’s supposed coolness with lyrics such as, “Life is full of little accidents, then one day I discovered how awesome he was.” “I saw my faith, don’t even ask why,” it continues. “You are my Venus, my dear Marx.” The website of the party newspaper People’s Daily said the song proves how Marx continues to appeal to young people and will “never completely go out of style.”"
Xi Jinping's crackdown on everything is remaking Chinese society - The Washington Post - "The orders have been sudden, dramatic and often baffling. In early September, “American Idol”-style competitions and shows featuring men deemed too effeminate were banned by Chinese authorities. Days earlier, one of China’s wealthiest actresses, Zhao Wei, had her movies, television series and news mentions scrubbed from the Internet as if she had never existed. Over the summer, China’s multibillion-dollar private education industry was decimated overnight by a ban on for-profit tutoring, while new regulations wiped more than $1 trillion from Chinese tech stocks since a peak in February. As China’s tech moguls compete to donate more to President Xi Jinping’s campaign against inequality, “Xi Jinping Thought” is taught in elementary schools, and foreign games and apps like Animal Crossing and Duolingo have been pulled from stores. A dizzying regulatory crackdown unleashed by China’s government has spared almost no sector. This sprawling “rectification” campaign — with such disparate targets as ride-hailing services, insurance, education and even the amount of time children can spend playing video games — is redrawing the boundaries of business and society in China as Xi prepares to take on a controversial third term in 2022. “It’s striking and significant. This is clearly not a sector-by-sector rectification; this is an entire economic, industry and structural rectification,” said Jude Blanchette, who holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies... Yet other recent regulations targeting the country’s youth appear aimed at asserting control over popular culture, measures that critics say limit the public’s few outlets for debate and expression. Officials are cracking down on China’s fervent fan clubs whose members discuss and rank celebrities, going to extreme lengths to support their favored stars. (When Chinese Canadian pop star Kris Wu was detained on allegations of rape in August, his fans flooded social media in his defense and called for breaking him out of prison.) Male Chinese celebrities known for their androgynous style have also become a threat in Beijing’s eyes. Regulators have ordered broadcasters to encourage “masculinity” and put a stop to “abnormal beauty standards” such as “niangpao,” a slur that translates to “sissy men.” “The party does not feel comfortable with expressions of individualism that are in some ways transgressive to norms that it puts forward,” said Rana Mitter, a professor of modern Chinese history and politics at the University of Oxford. “The party-state makes it clear that it has the first and last word on what is permitted in mass culture.” Within China, the campaign has been met with a mix of approval and skepticism... Xi’s crusade has left the country’s previously all-powerful tech titans, such as Alibaba’s Jack Ma and Tencent’s Pony Ma, in no doubt about who controls China’s future. But it has also alarmed investors. Regulators in September summoned Tencent and Netease over their online gaming platforms, ordering the companies to eliminate content promoting “incorrect values” such as “money worship” and “sissy” culture. Both firms promised to “carefully study” and implement the orders. Officials have been working to restore investor confidence, with Vice Premier Liu He promising during a forum on Monday in Hebei province that China’s support for the private economy “has not changed and will not change in the future.” In early September, the People’s Daily ran a front-page article pledging the government’s “unswerving commitment” to the private sector and protecting foreign capital and competition. The scope and velocity of the society-wide rectification has some worried China may be at the beginning of the kind of cultural and ideological upheaval that has brought the country to a standstill before... The essay, picked up by China’s state media outlets, prompted comparisons with a 1965 article that launched China’s chaotic decade-long Cultural Revolution, and left even some in the party establishment worried... Differences over the article may be a sign of deeper dispute within the party, according to Yawei Liu, a senior adviser focusing on China at the Carter Center in Atlanta, who wrote that such disagreement indicates “raging debate inside the CCP on the merits of reform and opening up, on where China is today . . . and about what kind of nation China wants to become.” Residents expect more measures to come, targeting regular life as well as other sectors. While the Ministry of Culture and Tourism is preparing a ban on karaoke songs deemed out of line with “the core values of socialism,” city officials are regulating dancing in China’s parks, a popular pastime for retirees. In an editorial in the People’s Daily in early September, the vice chairman of the Chinese Film Association called on filmmakers to make more patriotic films and “further promote” Xi Jinping Thought."
Shang-Chi Sparks Outrage in China Over 'Hidden' Tiananmen Square Reference - "On Chinese social media app Weibo, a screenshot taken from the bus fight sequence was shared, showcasing the bus driver's tag, reading "8964," which some have perceived to be a reference to the infamous and nationally suppressed Tiananmen Square Massacre, which took place on June 4, 1989. The image has been posted elsewhere on other social media sites and forums, sparking discussion about whether or not the reference was intentional."
Imagine being so fragile and reaching so hard
Canadian rights activist says he received death threat for support of Hong Kongers - The Globe and Mail - " Paul Cheng, who is in his 60s, is a retired computer programmer in Calgary and one of the founders of the New Hong Kong Cultural Club, a Canadian group dedicated to supporting pro-democracy efforts in the Asian territory. In late June the group received three messages via Telegram, a software application for smartphones that enables encrypted communication. The first message was a recent photo of Mr. Cheng from a Calgary protest against the Chinese government. The second message addressed him directly: “Having lots of fun, eh, Paul? Don’t blame me for reminding you that if you keep stirring up so much stuff, no one will be able to protect you.” The third message was an extremely graphic video of a beheading... Mr. Cheng said he believes the threat is an effort to dissuade people from helping activists flee. The New Hong Kong Cultural Club has been identified in Chinese media as a supporter of asylum seekers, or what pro-Beijing journalists have derisively referred to as “asylum gangsters.” “They want to show the world that it doesn’t matter where you are, if you are helping Hong Kong you will be in danger”... the Canadian Security Intelligence Service told The Globe and Mail Beijing routinely uses undercover state security officials and “trusted agents,” or proxies, to target members of Canada’s Chinese community in an effort to silence critics of President Xi Jinping, including threats of retribution against their families back in China."
Facebook - "CHINA'S SIX 'INEVITABLE WARS' ARTICLE RESURFACED. THE ARTICLE TITLED 'China Is Not Afraid — New Threats to National Security and Our Strategic Responses’, (中国不怕——国防安全新威胁与我们的战略应对) republished
The book stated the following war timeline:
▪︎2020–2025: The war to retake Taiwan
▪︎2025–2030: The war to recover the various islands of the South China Sea (Recently Chinese media mouthpiece claimed Palawan and Benham Rise as part of Chinese territory)
▪︎2035–2040: The war to recover southern Tibet (referring to India's Arunachal Pradesh)
▪︎2040–2045: The war to recover Diaoyutai and the Ryukyus of Japan
▪︎2045–2050: The war to unify Outer Mongolia (Half of Mongolia that China was unable to annex yet)
▪︎2055–2060: The war to recover the territory seized by Russia (Vladivostok region)
Republic of China's founding year is 1912 and in 1938 they published the below 'map of shame' aka the ‘lost’ Chinese territories. In this map include not only the Russian Far East, the Japanese Ryukyus, Taiwan and the South China Sea (PH Spratly islands included but notice that Scarborough is not inside this drawn line as well as Palawan and Benham Rise), but they also included Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, the Malay Peninsula and Singapore, Myanmar, Nepal, parts of Pakistan and most of Central Asia. The reappearance of this controversial article is to stoke their citizen's nationalism. Chinese people have been suffering from lack of electricity, job losses, economic crisis due to energy crisis, housing bubble and Evergrande's debt crisis which causes anger and instability to their people. Chinese' lives have been disrupted. They've been living in the dark unable to leave their high rise residences to buy their necessities. They barely have water & food supplies, no street lights, no elevators to go down or up to their homes. They lost their hard earned monies in property bubbles that are popping and their work at factories and offices have been halted for days to weeks now. Winter is on the horizon and the cold months could threaten their lives. Will Chinese' anger spill in the streets or they will leave their country and cause chinese mass exodus to escape the chaos or they will bow down to Xi Jinping's reintroduction of Purist Socialism? #ResistChina #FreeTibet #FreeHongKong #ProtectTaiwan #ProtectPH"
From Singapore to Sweden, China’s overbearing campaign for influence is forcing countries to resist and recalibrate relations with Beijing | South China Morning Post - " The elevation and rejuvenation of the United Front, and the formation of a Leading Small Group chaired by President Xi Jinping to oversee its work, has increased its bureaucratic capacity to extend China’s influence over ethnic and overseas Chinese populations. The United Front’s efforts are clearly being felt in countries with large Chinese diaspora populations, such as Australia and Canada . Pro-China “patriotic ” demonstrations and the destruction of Lennon Walls in Canada are worrying Canadians that a globally assertive and nationalistic China is impinging on Canadians’ rights. A recent poll found that less than a third of Canadians have a favourable view of China. Similar scuffles between pro-Hong Kong and pro-Beijing protesters in Australia have punctuated inappropriate displays of Chinese nationalism on foreign soil, including the raising of a Chinese flag over an Australian police station while the Chinese national anthem was sung. Public servants paying allegiance to a foreign country is not the manifestation of a healthy bilateral relationship but, literally, a red flag that China’s influence campaign has overreached and is damaging. In Sweden, the Chinese embassy’s sustained, antagonistic public messaging campaign has turned public opinion firmly against China, and prompted the government to re-evaluate the relationship... three Chinese tourists claimed they were abused by Swedish police following a dispute over their hostel reservation. Soon after arriving in Stockholm, Chinese ambassador Gui Congyou embarked on an extensive campaign , accusing Swedish police of brutality even when a video of the incident showed police standing to one side while the tourists prostrated themselves on the pavement. Gui conducted media interviews and released almost 60 statements criticising Sweden’s commitment to human rights and accusing it of tyranny, arrogance, racism and xenophobia. Faced with this barrage of government-sanctioned accusations, and with public opinion polls showing 70 per cent of Swedes viewing China unfavourably, Sweden announced in February that it was updating its China strategy... Singapore is particularly attuned to foreign-influence campaigns, ejecting a US embassy official in the 1980s and an academic presumed to be working for China in 2017, for interfering in domestic politics and policymaking. With ethnic Chinese making up two-thirds of Singapore’s population, it is acutely aware of its vulnerabilities to United Front tactics and influence campaigns, as well as the potential of Malaysia and India to influence Singapore’s other sizeable ethnic groups. It has therefore invested heavily in mechanisms and means to prevent any foreign country from influencing its population and destabilising Singapore’s polity... China’s influence campaigns are doing more harm than good . China’s pressure on global businesses, including airlines , hotels, consumer goods companies and the American National Basketball Association may succeed in getting companies to revise websites and censor employees’ personal opinions, but it is not improving the way governments and societies view China."
Clearly, it's racist to question the loyalty of someone who raises a Chinese flag and sings the Chinese national anthem
Jennifer Zeng 曾錚 on Twitter - "If you meet some Wumao (50 cent army) or Bamao (80 cent army, as they just got a pay rise), they may post from a prison in China. The #CCP recruits prisoners to participate in their info war, as prisoners are much cheaper. A reduction of jail time can make them work for free."
China’s internet police losing man-versus-machine duel on social media | South China Morning Post - " Automated social media accounts engaging in political discussions are stretching China’s internet police to the limit, a new study has found. These social media bots are difficult to identify because they use artificial intelligence technology to mimic human language and online behaviour. Often working in groups, they are able to generate and spread a huge amount of information within a short time. And these accounts are overpowering state censors, because “humans get tired easily, [and] cannot endure a sustained fight,” according to Shao Lei, associate professor of digital investigation with the Sichuan Police College... Their suggested solutions? Raising a counter-army of bot accounts, or even AI-driven public opinion leaders. This comes as, starting early last year, China’s internet police began to detect an unusual increase in posts with negative views on the government on the country’s largest social media platforms, WeChat and Weibo... Interpreting the content of the rogue accounts has also became more challenging in recent months, according to the study. Some texts are written by humans, and some by robots using natural language algorithms. On the surface, there may seem to be nothing illegal. And many of these accounts are active in subcultural interest groups such as animation, games, online songs and radio. They target young Chinese users, and deploy symbols or jargon that only insiders can understand. The internet police force is therefore not only having to battle the generational divide but also culture gaps... But the bot-vs-bot proposal could further suppress human voices on social media platforms, a researcher studying artificial intelligence with the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing warned. “This is a nuclear option,” said the researcher who requested not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue. “Many people in the computer science community opposed the idea.”"
China clamps down on vasectomies in bid to boost birth rate - The Washington Post - "they were turned down by two hospitals. One doctor told Zhao’s husband that the surgery was no longer allowed under the country’s new family planning rules... “It’s a rather simple surgery in theory, but public hospitals will almost always turn patients away because we are aware of the risks involved in doing something that’s not explicitly okayed by the government,” said Yang, the director of a hospital in Jingzhou city, Hubei province, who gave only part of his name for fear of punishment for speaking to foreign media. “The fundamental policy is that China needs more childbirths.”... Chinese family planning law says citizens’ reproductive rights, including choosing birth control, are protected. There is no official ban or specific restriction on the surgery, though hospitals and doctors conducting vasectomies, along with tubal ligations and abortions for women, must be approved by county-level health departments. The National Health Commission did not respond to faxed questions. The worry for some couples is that authorities could turn to more forceful or restrictive measures akin to those used to enforce the one-child policy. Guidelines released by the State Council in September said local governments should try to reduce the number of abortions for “nonmedical reasons.” Twelve public hospitals contacted by The Washington Post, including facilities in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, said they no longer offered the procedure. Six hospitals said they still perform the surgery, but one said it was no longer available to unmarried men. Couples and single men who sought the procedure said doctors and hospital staff refused, telling them they would regret the decision later. Some asked for documentary proof of marriage and evidence that couples had already had children before going ahead with the surgery... Jiang, 30, who works in customer service at an Internet company, visited six hospitals in his home province of Fujian before finding one over 1,200 miles away in Chengdu in Sichuan province that would perform a vasectomy. After his surgery in March, he posted the clinic’s details on an online forum — but heard from another user that the hospital had since stopped offering the surgery. “I felt like I had finally gotten rid of this huge burden,” said Jiang, who did not disclose his full name out of security concerns for criticizing government policy"
Damn CIA, propagating a culture of fear in China!
