China

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On Wednesday last week, one of China’s largest tea chains found itself at the center of an online storm after a video emerged of employees for the company apparently wearing cardboard signs and makeshift cardboard handcuffs to enforce workplace discipline — public displays of shame that had disturbing echoes of the country’s political past.

The offending post, made on September 17 to the official Douyin and Xiaohongshu accounts of the Guangdong operations of Good Me (古茗茶饮) — a tea chain with more than 5,000 locations across the country — showed several employees on site at a Good Me shop standing with their heads cast down, their hands bound in front with what appeared to be cardboard cup holders. Handwritten signs around their necks read: “The crime of forgetting to include a straw”; and “The crime of knocking over the teapot.”

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For China’s media and internet authorities, the Cultural Revolution is generally not a subject to be talked about at all. And for many Chinese who remember the period, which was ended by the ouster and arrest in October 1976 of the so-called Gang of Four, it remains a silent source of pain and fear.

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Most comments on the video on both platforms expressed shock and ridicule at what seemed to be extremely unfair and inhumane treatment of employees on the one hand, and an acute lack of good taste on the other. By Wednesday the video had been removed and Good Me was scrambling to contain the damage.

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The brutal killing of a Japanese schoolboy in the Chinese city of Shenzhen last week has made headlines across the world. The wider context of the tragedy — that it happened on the anniversary of the “Mukden Incident” that began Japan’s invasion of China nearly a century ago, and just months after another nearly deadly attack on a Japanese mother and her child in another city — raises serious questions about how it might be linked to decades of anti-Japanese education, entertainment and cultural conditioning in China.

But these are serious questions China’s media are not asking, or cannot ask.

How the media in China have reported the incident domestically (or not) is an unfortunate reminder not just of how stringent controls have become, but also how detrimental this atmosphere has been to discussion of the darker undercurrents of contemporary Chinese society.

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From the early stages of the incident, key details were missing. The police report from Shenzhen did not mention the boy’s nationality, age, or where the attack took place.

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In all likelihood, reports [...] were removed by the authorities because they jumped the gun, not waiting for an official news release (通稿) from Xinhua News Agency. Generally, for such sensitive stories, more compliant media know that protocol demands that they wait for official word. State media, therefore, kept silent on the issue until after Lin Jian (林剑), a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), held a press conference late on September 18, and again on September 19.

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Hunan Daily, for example, the official mouthpiece of the provincial CCP leadership in the province, quoted Lin Jian verbatim, offering no additional details or context. The same was true of Shanghai’s The Paper, published by the state-owned Shanghai United Media Group, and other provincial-level dailies such as Guizhou Daily.

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The Shenzhen attack is a sensitive story on a number of fronts for China. For starters, the government — which has touted increasing foreign visits as a mark of economic turnaround — is wary of frightening away foreign tourists, businesspeople, and investors. The attack, the third high-profile assault on foreigners in China in recent months, risks undermining the leadership’s message that China is open and ready to engage again with the world following the pandemic downturn.

The attack also risks undermining the simplistic narrative, advanced by state media, that China is fundamentally a society encouraging tolerance among civilizations — which has lately been a key pillar of what the leadership calls “Xi Jinping Thought on Culture.” The case tells us that despite China’s rhetoric of civilizational tolerance, the country has its own share, like perhaps any country, of individuals capable of violent xenophobia.

But the most sensitive aspect of this story, the most dangerous question that can be asked, is why. Why is China experiencing such violent attacks, and against the Japanese in particular? The answer to that question is no doubt complex. And yet, as netizens made clear in their early, stillborn conversations on the Shenzhen attack, the role of China’s officially-encouraged culture of xenophobic ire — a culture of “toxic nationalism” — is a serious issue that needs to be addressed.

The brutal truth behind this savage attack is that this problem will not go away until the antipathy at its root, present in the media discourse of the state as much as in the heart of the attacker, can be faced head on.

The Chinese government should quash the conviction and release Ilham Tohti, the prominent Uyghur economist and government critic, on the 10th anniversary of his sentencing, Human Rights Watch said today.

In 2014, the Xinjiang People’s High Court convicted Professor Tohti on politically motivated charges of “separatism” and sentenced him to life in prison. His family has not been allowed to visit him since early 2017 and he is believed to have been in solitary confinement since his arrest.

“The life sentence for Ilham Tohti marked the beginning of the Chinese government’s severe crackdown on the Uyghur region in 2014,” said Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch. “Tohti’s life imprisonment for his peaceful criticism and torturous solitary confinement reflects the Chinese government’s heightened repression and relentless abuses against Uyghurs.”

Tohti, 54, was teaching at Central University of Nationalities of China when he established “Uighurs Online,” a website aimed “to provide Uyghurs and Hans with a platform for discussion and exchange” in late 2005. The Chinese government shut down the website in 2008 and sentenced the manager, Gheyret Niyaz, now 65, to 15 years in prison in 2010 for “endangering state security.”

At least six of Tohti’s students, Abduqeyum Ablimit, Perhat Halmurat, Akbar Imin, Mutellip Imin, Shohret Nijat, and Atikem Rozi, are believed to have been sentenced to between three-and-a-half and eight years in prison in 2014, based on a document leaked to Xinjiang Victims Database. It is unclear whether they were released when their sentences ended.

[Edit typo.]

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/3139706

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Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat who was held in China for nearly three years [told] about the interrogation he endured during his six months in solitary confinement.

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"They are trying to bully and torment and terrorize and coerce you … into accepting their false version of reality, in which you're guilty.

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On December 14 [2018], four days after he was taken into custody [in China], Kovrig got his first consular visit with Canada's then-ambassador John McCallum and another official from the embassy an an offsite location.

Kovrig said he remembers trying, in that meeting and others, to communicate that China was violating international law by interrogating him the way they were.

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He said his food rations were cut for being uncooperative. He said that during interrogations he was put in a high-backed wooden chair and restrained, forbidden from crossing his legs or changing his position.

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[Kovrig and Michael Spavor, another Canadian who had also been detained but was being held separately] had been illegally detained by China in apparent retaliation for the Vancouver arrest of Huawei's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, who was detained at the behest of the U.S. to face fraud charges related to American sanctions against Iran.

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Kovrig's partner [who was pregnant at the time when he was detained] had played their daughter recordings of his voice and showed pictures of her father while he was locked up on the other side of the world. Their daughter was two-and-a-half years old when he finally arrived back in Canada.

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The killing of a Japanese schoolboy in the Chinese city of Shenzhen has sparked worry among Japanese expats living in China, with top firms warning their workers to be vigilant.

Toshiba and Toyota have told their staff to take precautions against any possible violence, while Panasonic is offering its employees free flights home.

Japanese authorities have repeated their condemnation of the killing while urging the Chinese government to ensure the safety of their citizens.

The stabbing of the 10-year-old boy on Wednesday was the third high-profile attack on foreigners in China in recent months.

In a statement issued to the BBC, electronics giant Panasonic said it would "prioritise the safety and health of employees" in mainland China in the wake of the latest attack.

Panasonic is allowing employees and their families to temporarily return to Japan at company expense, and is offering a counselling service as well.

Toshiba, which has around 100 employees in China, has urged its workers "to be cautious of their safety".

The world's biggest car manufacturer Toyota, meanwhile, told the BBC it was "supporting Japanese expatriates" by providing them with any information they might need on the situation.

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Chen Wenqing, head of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, recently visited Lhasa, Kardze, and Chamdo, meeting with local officials to emphasize the need for heightened surveillance and control. His tour, which took place from September 10th to 13th, focused on maintaining stability and combating what the Chinese government terms “separatists”.

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The official emphasized the need for legal suppression against those deemed threats to China’s stability and called for stricter management of religious activities stating, “We must resolutely crack down on separatist and sabotage activities in accordance with the law, resolutely manage religious affairs in accordance with the law, resolutely protect normal religious activities in accordance with the law.”

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Concurrent with Chen’s visit, other high-ranking officials have made similar trips to the region. Zhang Jun, president of the Supreme People’s Court, advocated for “tough punishments to maintain pressure on violent terrorism, ethnic separatism and other serious criminal crimes” during his visit to courts in Tibet.

These heightened security measures have raised concerns among human rights advocates, who note that China’s broad definition of separatism often includes individuals merely critical of its policies toward Tibetans.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2963866

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• Research from Infyos has identified that companies accounting for 75 per cent of the global battery market have connections to one or more companies in the supply chain facing allegations of severe human rights abuses.

• Most of the allegations of severe human rights abuses involve companies mining and refining raw materials in China that end up in batteries globally, particularly in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwest China.

• “The relative opaqueness of battery supply chains and the complexity of supply chain legal requirements means current approaches like ESG audits are out of date and don’t comply with new regulations. Most battery manufacturers and their customers, including automotive companies and grid-scale battery energy storage developers, still don’t have complete supply chain oversight," says Sarah Montgomery, CEO & co-founder, Infyos.

• Supply chain changes are needed to eliminate widespread forced labour and child labour abuses occurring in the lithium-ion battery market, Infyos added.

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At a less well-reported meeting in Beijing late last year, organised by the China-Africa Business Council, officials pushed for the rapid expansion of Chinese private security firms [in countries of the Global South]. ‘Outbound Chinese investors face security challenges and a complex environment,’ said an official statement.

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Officials are concerned about the fate of programmes under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which started as a global infrastructure programme, but has evolved into an umbrella for just about everything China does overseas to further its influence. Projects have stalled or collapsed under a mountain of unsustainable debt and growing resentment at the outsize role of Chinese firms and labour. In Pakistan, for instance, Gwadar Port, built by China as key part of a $62 billion (£47 billion) China-Pakistan economic corridor has been under virtual siege by Baloch separatists, who have targeted Chinese engineers. Chinese-owned mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo have also been targeted.

A BRI working group recently highlighted the need to ‘hammer out the safety protection in a detailed way,’ according to the state-owned Xinhua news agency.

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China now has overseas economic investments and assets worth well over a trillion dollars by most estimates. It has set up around 47,000 overseas firms across 190 countries or regions, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

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Beijing now seems to have concluded that they are dangerously exposed, particularly at a time of growing economic stress and geopolitical tensions and require a local security apparatus to match.

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The Solomon Islands provide a template for China. Last year, they signed a deal on police cooperation with Beijing as part of an upgrade of their relations to a ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’. The Chinese telecoms company Huawei is building a cellular network on the Islands, and a Chinese state company plans to redevelop the port in the capital, Honiara.

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China had less success with Thailand, where the government scrapped plans for joint patrols with Chinese police in popular tourist spots following criticism that it compromised Thai national sovereignty, and a rebuke from the country’s police chief. There was also anger on social media. ‘Thailand will become a complete surveillance state’, was one typical response, though among other autocrats more welcoming of Chinese, that seems to be precisely the point.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2929490

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Since August 28, disinformation has been circulating on social media platforms, Chinese content farms, and Taiwanese news media, claiming that Lai was stranded for one day (some disinformation said two days) in Kinmen because of the People's Liberation Army's exercise encircling Kinmen. Many of the disinformation posts identically referred to Lai as "rampant and arrogant [囂張]" and used the Chinese idiom "catching a turtle in a jar [甕中捉鱉]" to describe how the Liberation Army successfully confined Lai in Kinmen. The pieces further asserted that if the Liberation Army continued the exercise, Lai would only be imprisoned in Kinmen.

These claims were apparently untrue. According to the Taiwan President's office and the Kinmen County government, Lai was back in Taipei around 12:30 pm on the same day and later on met with athletes who were going to compete in the Paris Paralympics. Lai's meeting with the athletes was also broadcast by several news media.

What makes this disinformation particularly intriguing is how Taiwanese political commentators propagated this disinformation claim. These Taiwanese political commentators, who often appear on pro-China TV talk shows or make comments on cross-strait politics on their own online platform channels, were among the first to spread the false claim around the same time in late August.

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**The [...] disinformation claims resonated with the main theme of Chinese propaganda: on the one hand, it denounced the idea of Taiwan's independence and demonized those who defied China; on the other hand, the propaganda was eager to show China's generosity and its congenial relationship with those who are willing to "return to the Motherland." **

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2927437

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High-tech CCTV, super-accurate DNA-testing technology and facial tracking software: China is pushing its state-of-the-art surveillance and policing tactics abroad.

Delegates from law enforcement across the world descended this week on a port city in eastern China showcasing the work of dozens of local firms, several linked to repression in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.

China is one of the most surveilled societies on Earth, with millions of CCTV cameras scattered across cities and facial recognition technology widely used in everything from day-to-day law enforcement to political repression.

Its police serve a dual purpose: keeping the peace and cracking down on petty crime while also ensuring challenges to the ruling Communist Party are swiftly stamped out.

During the opening ceremony in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, China's police minister lauded Beijing's training of thousands of police from abroad over the last 12 months -- and promised to help thousands more over the next year.

An analyst said this was "absolutely a sign that China aims to export" its policing.

"Beijing is hoping to normalise and legitimise its policing style and... the authoritarian political system in which it operates," Bethany Allen at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said.

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"The more countries that learn from the Chinese model, the fewer countries willing to criticise such a state-first, repressive approach."

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Tech giant Huawei said its "Public Safety Solution" was now in use in over 100 countries and regions, from Kenya to Saudi Arabia.

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The United States sanctioned SDIC Intelligence Xiamen Information, formerly Meiya Pico, for developing an app "designed to track image and audio files, location data, and messages on... cellphones".

In 2018, the US Treasury said residents of Xinjiang "were required to download a desktop version of" that app "so authorities could monitor for illicit activity".

China has been accused of incarcerating more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang -- charges Beijing vehemently rejects.

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Several delegations expressed interest in learning from the Chinese police.

"We have come to establish links and begin training," Colonel Galo Erazo from the National Police of Ecuador told AFP.

"Either Chinese police will go to Ecuador, or Ecuadorian police will come to China," he added.

One expert said that this outsourcing of security is becoming a key tool in China's efforts to promote its goals overseas.

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"China's offers of police cooperation and training give them channels through which to learn how local security forces -- many either on China's periphery or in areas that Beijing considers strategically important -- view the security environment," [Sheena Greitens at the University of Texas in the U.S.] said.

"These initiatives can give China influence within the security apparatus if a threat to Chinese interests arises."

[Corrected broken link.]

A Hong Kong man is facing as long as 10 years in jail after he pleaded guilty to sedition for wearing a T-shirt featuring a protest slogan.

In court on Monday, Chu Kai-pong, 27, was the first person to be convicted under Hong Kong’s tough homegrown national security law enacted in March.

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He was arrested on June 12 at a train station wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times”, and a yellow mask printed with “FDNOL” – the shorthand for another pro-democracy slogan, “five demands, not one less”. June 12 is a date associated with protests in the city in 2019.

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Chu’s lawyer argued that the maximum he could be given would be two years.

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A Christian pastor from California has been freed from China after nearly 20 years behind bars and is back home in the U.S., the State Department said Monday.

David Lin, 68, was detained after he entered China in 2006, later convicted of contract fraud and sentenced to life in prison, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and advocacy groups.

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The Biden administration has been working on David Lin’s case and those of other wrongly detained Americans in China for years and have raised them at every meeting with senior Chinese officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s meeting this summer with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Laos.

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Lin was formally arrested in 2009 on suspicion of contract fraud and, after a court review, was sentenced to life in prison, China Aid said.

The charge is frequently used against leaders of churches that operate outside state-sponsored faith groups, and it is a crime that Lin denied, according to the Dui Hua Foundation, a humanitarian group that advocates for prisoners in China. The commission on religious freedom says those leading and taking part in churches not sanctioned by the Chinese government “often face intimidation, harassment, arrest and harsh sentences.”

In China, all Christian churches must pledge loyalty to the ruling Communist Party and register with the government. Any unregistered congregation is considered an underground church whose activities are illegal in China. Beijing has always cracked down on “unlawful preaching,” and efforts have only intensified in the past decade.

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Other Americans known to remain detained in China include Kai Li, a businessman who is being held on espionage-related charges that his family says are bogus, and Mark Swidan, who was sentenced on drug charges. The State Department’s office of the special presidential envoy on hostage affairs has designated the two as “wrongful detainees,” a label given to Americans jailed in foreign countries for what the U.S. government considers legally specious allegations or for improper motivations.

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Over the past decade and a half, the Chinese techno-authoritarian state has deeply entrenched itself in the day-to-day lives of citizens through the use of highly sophisticated surveillance technology. Two of the world’s largest manufacturers of video surveillance equipment, Hikvision and Dahua, have revolutionized the industry and exported their products to hundreds of countries worldwide.

Chinese citizens are required to use their ID when engaging in various activities, from signing up for WeChat, the ubiquitous messaging app, to using super-apps like Alipay or WeChat Pay for tasks such as public transport, online shopping, and booking movie tickets.

This extensive network allows the government to track citizens’ everyday activities and create detailed profiles, effectively establishing a Panopticon state of censorship and repression.

The most prominent feature of China’s surveillance state is its extensive network of facial recognition cameras, which are nearly ubiquitous. The Chinese government launched a programme known as Skynet in 2005, which mandated the installation of millions of cameras throughout the nation.

This initiative was further expanded in 2015 with the introduction of SharpEyes, aiming for complete video coverage of ‘key public areas’ by 2020.

The government, in collaboration with camera manufacturers such as Hikvision and Dahua, framed this as a progressive step towards developing ‘smart cities’ that would enhance disaster response, traffic management, and crime detection.

However, the technology has been predominantly employed for repressive purposes, reinforcing compliance with the Communist Party of China.

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Although many of the ‘threats’ identified by this system may turn out to be false alarms, the omnipresent vigilance of the state ensures that even the slightest dissent from citizens is swiftly suppressed.

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China has become the first known instance of a government employing artificial intelligence for racial profiling, a practice referred to as ‘automated racism’, with its extensive facial recognition technologies specifically identifying and monitoring minority groups, particularly Uyghur Muslims, who have been subjected to numerous human rights violations by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

[This inlcudes] mass detentions, forced labour, religious oppression, political indoctrination, forced sterilisation and abortion, as well as sexual assault.

In Xinjiang, an extreme form of mass surveillance has transformed the province into a battleground, with military-grade cyber systems imposed on the civilian population, while the significant investment in policing and suppressing Uyghur Muslims has established Xinjiang as a testing ground for highly intrusive surveillance technologies that may be adopted by other authoritarian regimes, and the Chinese government has been known to collect DNA samples from Uyghur Muslims residing in Xinjiang, a move that has drawn widespread international condemnation for its unethical application of science and technology.

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The Chinese government has adeptly formulated legislation that unites citizens and the state against private enterprises. Laws such as the Personal Information Protection Law and the Data Security Law, both enacted in 2021, impose stringent penalties on companies that fail to secure user consent for data collection, effectively diverting scrutiny away from the state’s own transgressions.

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cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2894418

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Apparently, AMD has placed a long black sticker on the lower left corner, seemingly to remove mentions of Taiwan. That appears to be convenient timing as the new 7600X3D chips are slated for release in China on September 20, and the country has a history of forbidding mentions of Taiwan on product packaging.

The hidden text shows the origin of the Ryzen processor: “AMD processors are diffused and/or made in one or more of the following countries and/or regions: USA, Germany, Singapore, China, Malaysia, or Taiwan.”

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We can surmise that the company is doing this to soothe Beijing’s ruffled feathers, which claims Taiwan is part of China and has previously slapped import restrictions on products mentioning Taiwan as the place of manufacture.

It isn’t the first time that AMD has seemingly acquiesced to the demands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In January, it removed the ‘Diffused in Taiwan’ silkscreen from the Ryzen 7000 chips. Although the company says it did this to standardize production with the products from its Xilinx acquisition, it does have the convenient side effect of keeping Beijing happy.

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This recent change — adding a sticker that covers ‘Taiwan’ on the box — doesn’t seem to have any other reason except to address the CCP’s likely complaints.

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In a strategic move to bolster its international propaganda on Tibet, the Chinese government has launched the ‘Tibet International Communication Center’ on September 2, coinciding with Tibetan Democracy Day. This initiative is part of China’s broader strategy to control and shape the global narrative on Tibet, presenting it from a perspective aligned with its political agenda.

The establishment of the latest propaganda center was made during a group study session of the Political Bureau of the CCP Central Committee in May 2021. On September 2nd, a meeting was held in Lhasa, attended by representatives from the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region’s Propaganda Department and China Foreign Language Bureau related to Tibet. During this round-table conference, which focused on how to build effective international communication for Tibet, the “Tibet International Communication Center” was officially established.

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According to Chinese state media, Wang Junzheng, Communist Party Secretary of the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region, highlighted at the meeting the critical importance of external propaganda as a key directive of the Communist Party and the state. He reiterated the need to uphold and implement President Xi Jinping’s ideology on Tibet.

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The International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), a U.S.-based advocacy group, reported on this development, expressing concern over China’s expanding efforts to dominate the global narrative on Tibet.

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The ICT warned that China’s propaganda efforts concerning Tibet are likely to intensify, potentially through increased collaboration with state-controlled media and the China Tibetology Research Center, expanded use of social media platforms to promote pro-China propaganda, and pressure on international organisations to adopt China’s stance on Tibet. The group expressed concern that, as China’s propaganda machine strengthens, the voices of Tibetans will be further marginalised on the global stage, and reports of repression within Tibet may increasingly go unheard.

Archived version

'Large-scale harassment:' Dozens of Hong Kong journalists and their family members and associates have been harassed in recent months, a leading media professional group says

Drastic political changes have created an increasingly restricted environment for journalists in the semi-autonomous Chinese city once regarded as a bastion of press freedom in Asia.

Selina Cheng, chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, said in a news conference that this was the largest-scale harassment of reporters in the city that they are aware of.

Cheng said her group found that people describing themselves as patriots have sent anonymous complaints to at least 15 journalists’ family members, the employers of their family members, their landlords and other related organizations since June. She said the attacks appeared to be “systematic and organized” and that she was among those targeted.

Many of the letters and emails threatened the recipients that if they continued to associate with the reporters in question or their family members, they could be endangering national security, the association said.

In addition, posts on Facebook targeting at least 36 journalists called their articles inflammatory and described legitimate reporting as problematic or illegal, the group said. Violent online threats were also made against some journalists and members of the association’s executive committee, it said.

"This type of intimidation and harassment, which includes sharing false and defamatory content, and death threats, damages press freedom in Hong Kong and we should not tolerate it,” Cheng said.

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Since the introduction of a Beijing-imposed national security law in 2020, two news outlets known for critical coverage of the government, Apple Daily and Stand News, were forced to shut down after the arrest of their senior management, including Apple Daily publisher Jimmy Lai.

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In March, Hong Kong enacted another security law that deepened fears over civil liberties and press freedom. In August, two former editors of Stand News were convicted in a sedition case widely seen as a barometer for the future of the city’s media freedoms. The ruling drew criticism from foreign governments.

Hong Kong was ranked 135 out of 180 territories in Reporters Without Borders’ latest World Press Freedom Index, down from 80 in 2021.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2813353

South Korea’s military recently removed about 1,300 Chinese-made surveillance cameras installed at bases, concerned about potential security risks, Yonhap news agency reported on Friday, September 13, citing an unnamed military official.

The cameras were designed to be connected to a specific server in China, but no actual data was leaked, Yonhap said.

They had been supplied by a South Korean company, with their Chinese origin determined during equipment inspections earlier this year, the report cited the official as saying.

The cameras were not used for guard operations such as along the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas, but for monitoring training groups and perimeter fences at bases, the report said.

South Korea’s defense ministry said on Friday it is in the process of collecting the foreign-made cameras and replacing them with others. The ministry declined to confirm where the cameras were made.

Last year, Australia’s foreign minister said its defense and foreign ministries were removing surveillance cameras made by Chinese-run firms from their facilities after reports that the technology posed a security risk.

Uyghur human rights group calls out UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for his weak response to China’s genocidal policies

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In a pointed response to the statement delivered by Volker Türk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, at the 57th session of the Human Rights Council, Justice For All‘s Save Uyghur Campaign strongly criticizes his failure to address the egregious human rights abuses committed against the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Chinese-occupied East Turkistan.

On August 31, 2022, after a multi-year assessment, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) concluded that “serious human rights violations have been committed” in East Turkistan. Justice For All is outraged that, after two years, the Chinese government not only defies the OHCHR assessment’s findings but also steadfastly refuses to implement the High Commissioner’s urgent recommendations.

These include the immediate release of all individuals arbitrarily detained, an end to all forms of intimidation and reprisals against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in East Turkistan and abroad, and a thorough investigation into allegations of horrific human rights abuses, including torture, sexual violence, forced labor, and forced medical treatment. This blatant disregard for human dignity and international norms is absolutely unacceptable.

Mr. Türk’s remarks included only two fleeting references to China’s oppressive policies, failing to capture the systemic and targeted atrocities that the Uyghur community has faced. Türk stated, “Despite some important advancements, 30 years after the universal commitments on women’s rights in Beijing, the shadow of patriarchy still looms large,” and “In China, undue restrictions on civic space continue to be imposed in the name of national security and social stability.” These statements are grossly inadequate when addressing the severity of the situation, which includes gender-based violence against Uyghur women such as forced sterilizations, abortions, sexual abuse, and forced marriages to Han-Chinese individuals, as well as the mass arbitrary detention of Uyghurs in concentration camps, prisons, and forced labor camps across East Turkistan.

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In its early stages in 2009, [Chinese social media platform] Sina Weibo built its success on larger-than-life personalities known as the “Big Vs” (大V), who were meant to be magnets attracting conversation — and much-desired traffic — to the platform. The strategy worked, and by 2010 media would proclaim that China had entered the “Weibo Era” (微博时代). But within several years, the idea of a privately-owned tech platform building mass audiences outside of CCP control would become untenable for the leadership. A 2014 crackdown on “Big Vs” was the beginning, some might say, of the inexorable unraveling.

Now, 15 years on from the “beta” launch of Weibo, it may be time to ask: has life gone out of the platform?

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China’s leaders, who today still make it their business to “guide public opinion” through the control of media and communication, had long bristled at the notion of “public intellectuals” outside the official system. The emergence of op-ed pages in commercial metro newspapers (都市类报纸) in the early 2000s had given rise to broader range of voices. In December 2004, the Central Propaganda Department-run Guangming Daily (光明日报) ran a series of scathing attacks on the notion of “public intellectuals,” which it dismissed as a dangerous product of Western social thought.

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A decade on from Xi Jinping’s concerted push to rein in the “Big Vs” created by Weibo’s original celebrity push, the platform seems a shadow of itself. Competition from more personalized apps like Douyin and Xiaohongshu, and unrelenting pressure facing more controversial accounts, have driven a mass migration of Weibo users. Today, writes 36Kr, Weibo’s special community feel has vanished. The open discussions that once buzzed around public intellectuals are gone.

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Politics has of course made its own contributions to the disappearance of public intellectuals from the platform. Former Global Times editor-in-chief and “Big V” Hu Xijin (胡锡进) has not posted anything on Weibo since late July, when his influential account was suspended for an unauthorized interpretation of the Third Plenum decision. On August 7, the account of Lao Dongyan (劳东燕), a criminal law professor at Tsinghua University with a respectable following of her own, was also banned for defending her criticisms of upcoming internet IDs for Chinese netizens.

Forums like Zhihu (知乎) or WeChat Moments still provide a town square of sorts for groups to form, but these are smaller, devoid of the larger-than-life “public intellectuals” of Weibo that once served as known voices for netizens to rally round [...] Many [public intellectuals] are laying low, which makes China’s internet a far quieter place.

• Zhongzhi units engaged in potentially illegal practices before Chinese shadow bank's collapse, records show
• Practices involved guaranteeing returns; using new investor funds to pay returns on existing wealth management products
• Chinese regulators had prohibited capital pool business and guaranteeing of returns to prevent financial instability
• Zhongzhi and relevant units did not respond to Reuters queries about such practices

Zhongzhi Enterprise Group, a former leader of China's shadow banking sector that declared insolvency last year, used aggressive and potentially illegal sales practices to sustain its operations as it lurched toward collapse, according to new records.

China's years-long property boom had propelled Beijing-headquartered Zhongzhi to the top of the country's $18 trillion asset-management industry and made it a key player in a shadow banking sector the size of the French economy. Asset managers such as Zhongzhi sell wealth-management products to investors. The proceeds are then channeled by licensed trust firms like its Zhongrong unit to developers and other companies that cannot tap bank funding directly because of poor creditworthiness or other reasons.

Previously unreported details show that about a year before its financial troubles burst into the open, Zhongzhi units were paying returns to existing investors in wealth-management products by using funds from new investors, and promising individual investors lucrative returns that belied the group's exposure to a deepening property crisis.

China's trust firms are known as shadow banks because they operate outside many of the rules that govern commercial lenders. But China's top banking regulator in 2018 specified that financial institutions including shadow banks and asset managers should not set up capital pools, to prevent them from using money from new sales to cover returns on existing wealth-management products, nor should they guarantee returns on wealth-management products.

The Chinese government should immediately quash the conviction of and release a Taiwanese political activist who was sentenced to nine years in prison for “separatism,” Human Rights Watch said today. On August 26, 2024, a court in China’s Zhejiang province convicted Yang Chih-yuan (楊智淵), 34, for political activities carried out in Taiwan, a neighboring democracy over which the People’s Republic of China claims sovereignty.

The case is the first known in which the Chinese authorities have charged a Taiwanese national with “separatism” for allegedly seeking to split the country in violation of article 103 of China’s Criminal Law. The law is typically used in politically motivated prosecutions of Uyghurs, Tibetans, and other ethnic groups who are Chinese nationals.

“The Chinese government’s prosecution of Yang Chih-yuan for exercising his basic rights in Taiwan has effectively criminalized being Taiwanese,” said Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch. “The use of a national security law coupled with an outrageous prison sentence appears to be Beijing’s latest attempt to intimidate the Taiwanese people and reinforce its claims of sovereignty over Taiwan.”

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China's government has been systematically uprooting hundreds of Tibetan villages and nomads from their ancestral lands. It has been forcibly relocating them to centralized settlements under the guise of "poverty alleviation" and environmental protection.

This mass relocation campaign has accelerated dramatically since 2016. It is eroding Tibetan culture, disrupting traditional livelihoods, and leaving many relocated families impoverished and dependent on government subsidies.

• Over 930,000 rural Tibetans have been relocated since 2000. A staggering 76% of these relocations occurred just since 2016.

• The Chinese government frames these relocations as voluntary poverty reduction efforts. However, evidence suggests they are often coercive and driven by Beijing's political agenda to assimilate Tibetans and tighten control over the region.

• Many of these relocations involve moving entire villages hundreds of kilometers from their original homes. Authorities refer to the relocated Tibetans as "border guardians," essentially turning them into civilian sentries along China's contested frontiers with India, Nepal, and Bhutan. More insidiously, they serve as a form of "demographic engineering," permanently altering the population of contested areas to strengthen China's territorial claims.

• A local government document indicated some villagers may receive around 20,000 yuan (less than $3,000 USD) per year for relocation. A few earn extra income from border patrol work. But for many, the relocations mean a complete loss of economic self-sufficiency.

• The mass relocations are just one component of China's broader efforts to reshape Tibet. Increased surveillance, restrictions on religious practices, and Mandarin-language education policies all serve to undermine Tibetan identity and autonomy.

• The government's heavy-handed approach demonstrates a fundamental disregard for the value of cultural diversity. It undermines the rights of minority populations to maintain distinct ways of life. This cultural erasure, masked as progress, is a form of soft ethnic cleansing that threatens to permanently alter the rich tapestry of ethnicities within China's borders.

• International law prohibits forced evictions, making China's coercive relocation program a clear violation of human rights. The mass displacement of Tibetan communities threatens to irreparably damage Tibetan culture and identity. That way, Tibetan identity is in the hands of the Chinese party-state and is eradicated under different policy directives.

Far from alleviating poverty, these forced relocations are creating a class of displaced impoverished Tibetans. They have been made dependent on state subsidies and cut off from their traditional livelihoods and cultural roots.

"The unique Chinese style of imperialism and colonialism" as Beijing might like to call it if it succeeds, sees Tibet as its first prey and victim. However, the big, ambitious Chinese dream of expansion doesn't stop there. You can see what is happening in Southern Mongolia and Eastern Turkistan (aka the Uyghur Autonomous Region). Every neighboring people and nation of Communist China could face the same destiny unless the world is consciously watchful.

Instead, state media and officials highlight Xinjiang’s economic development as evidence of the success of past policies, promoting a Chinese concept of human rights that prioritizes the right to development and survival as fundamental. The [Chinese Communist Party] CCP views development as a pre-condition for the realization of human rights [...]

The economic development in Xinjiang is undeniable [yet] it remains questionable how much Uyghurs and other minorities genuinely benefit from these projects and what the true cost of this development is.

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The CCP’s focus is on showcasing the achievements of China’s approach to human rights through the promotion of development, with Uyghurs increasingly highlighted not only in the context of poverty alleviation, but also as representatives of a minority group benefiting from Chinese development policies and as symbols of a unified Chinese identity.

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In recent years, the Chinese government has sought to paint a positive image of Xinjiang by showcasing Uyghur heritage and culture as a major attraction for tourists. Uyghurs are often depicted dancing, celebrating Muslim festivals, and wearing their traditional clothes.

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While the display of cultural heritage is prominently featured in the portrayal of Xinjiang’s development, Uyghur culture is clearly subordinate to Chinese culture. As Pan Yue, director of the National Ethnic Affairs Commission, states, Chinese culture serves as the binding element to create a unified Chinese identity, with ethnic minorities seen as “contributors to Chinese culture.” When officials describe Chinese identity as an inclusive umbrella term, it actually refers to a tightly controlled portrayal of ethnic minority cultures, limited to showcasing the success of a unified Chinese nation. This is not only achieved through external propaganda but (unsurprisingly) also through repressive policies aimed at assimilating and Sinicizing ethnic minorities.

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While Chinese state media showed images of Uyghurs celebrating Eid al-Fitr (the end of Ramadan), the reality has been that Muslims could not freely practice their religion.

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Schools and training institutions were prohibited from offering religious services to students. They were also required to distribute surveys asking students about their family’s habits, including whether they fast. Lectures on maintaining social order and stability, as well as health-related topics emphasizing regular meals, were scheduled during the hours of breaking the fast. These measures and restrictions were not only directed at Uyghurs, but also targeted Muslims in other provinces, such as Gansu.

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Beijing invites journalists, politicians and researchers from various countries to “see Xinjiang with their own eyes” on carefully orchestrated tours designed to internalize and spread images and stories of improved living conditions and the preservation of Uyghur heritage to an international audience. As the Chinese government faces reputation damage from allegations of human rights violations in Xinjiang, the portrayal of a flourishing economy alongside a pro-active construction of a unified Chinese identity acts as a strategy to win the “hearts and minds,” particularly in Arab countries and the Global South. This narrative aims to project a message of a rapidly developing, diverse yet united Xinjiang under CCP leadership, contradicting Western accusations and presenting an alternative model to Western concepts of human rights and development.

Political decision-makers in Europe and beyond should be mindful of the intertwined reality of economic development and forced assimilation when addressing the situation in Xinjiang. What the Chinese state media share in hundreds of articles as a success story of human rights in Xinjiang is, in fact, a CCP-approved narrative. This narrative selectively preserves certain cultural aspects to showcase the success of China’s concepts and values, particularly emphasizing the prioritized role of the right to survival and development as central to human rights. Recipients of this narrative should recognize that the concepts of “normalization” and “maintaining social stability” for development primarily serve the interests of the CCP, not those of the Uyghurs and other minorities. Ultimately, they [Uyghurs] only benefit from Xinjiang’s development as long as they conform to the image that the CCP crafted for them.

China’s influence increasingly threatens the academic world in Brazil. In recent years, the country’s main higher education institutions, such as the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), have established partnerships with Chinese institutions at an ever-increasing rate. Experts warn of the risks of this growing soft power that Beijing uses to promote the Chinese model.

“China’s influence on Brazilian universities has never been greater,” journalist Gabriel de Arruda Castro, editor of Brazilian daily Gazeta do Povo, told Diálogo. “Obviously, this opens the door to the presence of representatives of an authoritarian regime, which is not the case when Brazil establishes academic partnerships with countries like Germany or France.”

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Although agreements between Brazilian and foreign universities are common, Castro points out that these countries respect the independence and academic autonomy of their teaching centers. Chinese universities, on the other hand, are subject to the strict control of the Beijing government. “From the point of view of the Chinese regime, it doesn’t make any sense to fund any project that might be critical of the Chinese model,” says Castro.

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Part of the Chinese influence in Brazilian universities is exerted through partnerships with the Confucius Institute, an entity linked to the Chinese Ministry of Education, whose official mission is to spread Chinese culture and language.

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On August 13, 2020, the U.S. State Department designated the Confucius Institute as a “foreign mission” of China, noting that it promotes “Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence campaign” in classrooms.

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In 2023, Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) called the Confucius Institute a tool of political influence. “China’s activities and forms of cooperation threaten to undermine academic freedom in the field of education and research,” the BfV said in its annual report, German news agency Deutsche Welle reported.

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“Obviously, the official view of the regime is not challenged in these cases. The promotion of Chinese culture is therefore mixed with the promotion of the Chinese regime,” says Castro. “In my research, I didn’t find any perspective critical of China.”

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He believes there may be a risk of espionage by China in these initiatives. “Perhaps because it is not perceived as a direct adversary of China, Brazil has a little less of this aspect [of espionage]. But perhaps there is ‘soft espionage’ here: knowing where Brazil stands in certain areas of knowledge, in order to later use this as a strategic advantage in a possible competition in some area or to offer solutions,” he says.

“This is more or less what it [China] does in Africa by other means. In other words: meeting local demand pragmatically at first, but making these countries increasingly dependent on China,” Castro added.

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China's Defense Ministry said that naval and air forces will participate in the "North-Joint 2024" exercises in the skies and around the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk.

"This exercise aims to deepen the strategic cooperation level between the Chinese and Russian militaries and enhance their ability to jointly deal with security threats," the ministry said.

The two sides will send naval fleets to "relevant sea areas of the Pacific Ocean" for a joint maritime patrol, and China will also participate in Russia's "Ocean-2024" strategic exercise. China's Defense Ministry did not specify when the drills will take place.