Category: Older News Comments

Remember Hong Kong

I’ve written quite a bit about the Hong Kong protests – here, on learning from Hong Kongers and here, on the end of soft power and here, with some sympathy for the Hong Kong police. 

 It feels like we are approaching the end.

At this point, all I can muster is a feeling of sadness and apprehension.  The continued protests and violence will only hasten the end of human and civil rights in Hong Kong, when the mainland government feels a mandate to restore order by force, and maintain it.  Agreements of 1985 will be of little consequence when public order is truly at stake, as it now seems to be. 

Whether the elections are held this weekend or not, they will be a source of further conflict. As you know, CCP still selects or controls most of the candidates and the legislators, even though it is not officially a local political party.  Pro-democracy candidates, like Joshua Wong, have been banned from running in elections. The pro democracy candidates usually get about 55-60% of the total votes, but get fewer than half of the legislative seats, due to the indirectly elected share of the total seats.

The violence will spur businesses leaving for Singapore or other places in Asia, and foreign investment will slow.  The role of Hong Kong as financial hub for China, a role it has performed admirably since the 1970s, will be diminished. Lenovo, for example, could only get its start in China because it registered as a Hong Kong company – at the time, a foreign company. My friends in Hangzhou and Zhoushan talk about building the “back office” real estate for the new world financial hub in Shanghai.  Some of this talk might be boosterism, but I  think not all of it. At some point, China will not need Hong Kong and its freedoms as it has in the past.  Hong Kong can be absorbed into the new supercity planned to include Shenzhen and Guangzhou. 

Scenes from Hong Kong

Source: fox news 

Source: RTHK, Asia Times

Hong Kong will remain as a more or less occupied territory, with occasional uprisings.  Neither the students nor any future government will be able to bring peace to Hong Kong.

There is no path to success for the protesters, whatever that might be other than physical survival.  Many will be arrested and jailed.  A few might be killed, either on the street or in custody. It would be ironic if some of those arrested were sent to the mainland for incarceration, since that was the flash point for the original protests this year.  But China cannot afford to let Hong Kong become a new world symbol of oppression.

But that is what will happen.  In 1836, a group of Texians fighting the Mexican government planned a delaying action at an old mission in San Antonio.  The 186 or so Texians at the Alamo facing about 3,000 Mexican troops held out for 13 days, but eventually all were killed.  Their sacrifice was soon remembered across Texas – Remember the Alamo! – and it became a rallying cry for Texas independence and American lore across the centuries.  Outnumbered, outgunned, surrounded, no hope of victory, they became a symbol of resistance to tyranny. 

Remind you of Hong Kong?

That seems about all that can be expected from the Hong Kong fiasco.  Remember Hong Kong! as a symbol for those living under somewhat autocratic governments now so enamored of Chinese technology and Chinese products.  With the economic benefits will eventually come the loss of moral freedom – to speak and write as you wish, to get news free of censorship, to assemble in protest of government action, to vote for representatives. 

The US is not exactly a model of governance, peace, or economic hope right now. But Voice of America does still broadcast around the world, in Africa, in South America, in the middle east, in southeast Asia.  Someday perhaps VOA can be prouder of its US government sponsorship and can remind the world to Remember Hong Kong!  It was in many ways the shining city on a hill.  Brigadoon, perhaps, or even Camelot.  Watch the final scene – never let it be forgot … that once there was a spot ….

And watch the Hong Kong anthem, written by Hong Kongers

Crash out (2)

update at November 13, 2019 to Crash out –

Crash out may not happen.  We will find out in January.  But the wounding of the British economy is happening as we type, and this piece in Foreign Policy – Chinese Firms Can’t Avoid Being Party Tools – is a good example of how and why Brexit is great for business … in China.

If you can’t get Foreign Policy, let me summarize.  British Steel, an old-line British manufacturer, is being sold to Jingye Group, ostensibly a private steel-maker in China.  This should save thousands of jobs in Britain and help towns in northern England devastated by privatization (!) and changes in the market for British Steel.

This deal is promoted as a private transaction, since Jingye is not owned directly by the government.  But no matter.

As we have discussed many times, there is no such thing as a private company in China, particularly now that CCP has decided that all companies must have a CCP cell within top management and all – all – internal information, patents, contracts, revenues, orders, suppliers, employee information – must be available to the government upon request. See IP Theft in China – No More Worries.   Once a business is beyond the mom-and-pop stage, there is no such thing as a private business as we understand the term.

From the article –

In China, the power of the CCP is an underlying reality in every sector—not a goal for the party so much as an assumption about the state of the world. The CCP simply must lead and thus, all measures that defend and further entrench the position of the party are permissible.

That has produced a state of affairs where no organization is beyond the orbit of the CCP.

The author reminds us of two illustrative events – the first hypothetical – thre absurdity, if it had occurred in China, of Apple defying the FBI in 2015 over encryption of an iPhone; the second, all too real – the Sanlu milk formula scandal in 2008, right before the Olympics in Beijing –

Take the Sanlu milk scandal, in which at least half a dozen babies died as a result of tainted formula, and tens of thousands became sick. The company’s board belatedly decided to issue a full product recall in the face of overwhelming evidence that its product was damaging infants. The board was supposedly legally autonomous, but its decision was overruled by the Shijiazhuang city government as political considerations took precedence over public health. Baidu, China’s internet giant, was reportedly part of the cover-up that followed, all while catastrophic damage to Chinese infants occurred. The scandal only came to light because of actors entirely outside China. Sanlu’s New Zealander partners at the dairy multinational Fonterra, after extensive deliberation, eventually reported concerns themselves to the central government via their country’s ambassador in Beijing.

What marks out the British Steel acquisition is not the pyrotechnics but the mundanity of the deal. Each time a CCP entity acquires a company in this way, the U.K. becomes slightly more entangled in the party-state’s networks. Such entrenchment makes pushback harder should a reckoning ever come. Other countries, such as Australia, are holding a national conversation about their involvement with the Chinese party-state. The U.K., distracted and divided by Brexit, is in no position to do so.

 

All you need is the background music to the movie Jaws.

original and prior update here.

Crash-out

Or D-Day – Disaster Day – minus 7

The original D-Day was salvation for Britain and Europe – even, in its way, for Germany.  This one seems less promising.

Not much to say anymore.   Cue the violins and watch the China moves.

Update at April 28 – Aside from the current delay in the crash-out – From Brexit to Belt and Road by Keith Johnson in FP – Britain’s turn to China for salvation

Read Ives Smith at Naked Capitalism – https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/03/brexit-opening-the-seals.html

She opens with

And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals.

And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof?

– Revelations 5:1-2

I didn’t know, but this is where the Four Horsemen come from.  And it is the apocalypse.

Right following the Brexit vote in 2016, I thought Britain had voted itself out of being a major world economy.  Now it appears we will see if that was right.  China, of course, will be sympathetic to a now developing country that needs assistance. 

This can only be shuang yin – win-win for China.  Or maybe win-win-win.   Help the Chinese economy, better entre to the EU, more confounding of US policy. 

Shuang Yin Win-Win

 

Macroaggressions

From America Online – Several billionaires have recently criticized the wealth tax proposal of presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). And fellow lawmaker Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has come to her aid.   AOC: ‘Y’all, the billionaires are asking for a safe space’

But perhaps the billionaires threatened with having to pay taxes almost like the rest of us have learned how to do political threats from their experience with China. 

China can threaten the NBA based on a single vague tweet from an otherwise obscure NBA general manager.  A China so afraid of a tweet is a China willing to transform a nonaggression into a macroaggression, and needs special care and handling from the world.  Perhaps CCP doesn’t get sufficient love from its family at home. 

China is clearly looking for a safe space in the world.  The Chinese mentality is that China is constantly under attack from the barbarians, whether it is xiongnu in the north two thousand years ago or the western barbarians whose sinister plans to destroy CCP and China were exposed in 2013 by Mr. Xi in Document No. 9. 

And maybe China has learned from the NBA – the best defense is a good offense. 

So China has created a safe space for itself by threatening multinational corporations everywhere, and by caving to the tantrum the multinationals have temporarily created a safe space in which to do business until the next unfortunate lower level employee tweet, or some corporate employee’s kid in Kansas draws a map in school showing Taiwan as an independent country. 

Now the companies and their owners are seeking a safe space from the horror of paying more in taxes in the US. 

CCP has a safe space.  The billionaires have a temporary safe space in China, and now seek a safe space from AOC in the US.  The US Congress – at least the Senate – has a safe space behind the orange haired baboon.

What would be a safe space for the rest of us, concerned not only about taxes but free expression?

Attached, a list – soon to be outdated – of multinationals which don’t remember first they came for the socialists.  From Lucas Niewenhuis at Supchina, All the International brands that have apologized to China.

The definitive list of international companies that have issued apologies to maintain their market access in China in recent years. Plus, a record of the even more widespread phenomenon of self-censorship for the Chinese market.

Read the whole list.  Fun and shame, at the same time.

PS – Remember that China creates a safe space for multinationals only temporarily.  Foreigners can be had in more sophisticated ways than blocking markets.  I wrote about this in IP Theft – No More Worries and Steve Dickinson at ChinaLawBlog follows up his prior posts with this below.  Anything encoded by a foreign company – patent information, employee information, market information, customers, clients, revenues – will be available – without asking – to CCP.  

China’s New Cryptography Law: Still No Place to Hide

….

So in the end, inviting foreign providers and users of cryptography is just a trap for the unwary. Once data crosses the Chinese border on a network, 100% of that data will be 100% available to the Chinese government and the CCP. Cryptography may work well to prevent access by the public, but all this data will be an open book to the PRC government.

This then raises major issues for U.S. and other country entities that are relying on end to end encryption in China as an exception to U.S. export control rules. Under China’s new system, end to end encryption will no longer exist in China and for this reason this exemption from U.S. export controls will no longer be effective. As the U.S. expands the scope of technology subject to export controls, the risks for foreign companies will become progressively more significant.

No place for a multinational to hide – at least in China. Safe space is always in the eyes of the aggrieved. 

News: IP theft – no more worries

Just a brief note –  the FBI has more than 1,100 China IP theft  cases pending against Chinese entities or individuals.  Not a typo – 1,100.

 For American companies not doing business in China – we should not say, no exposure to China – the FBI investigations may still be something of a bulwark against theft.  Although, one notes, most of the investigations and arrests are in arrears of the crime.

And back nearly a year ago, Mr. Xi promulgated a new IP theft policy which threatened Chinese businesses that steal.  The policy was announced within hours of a Xi-Trump meeting last December, and comprised a coordinated efforts across 38 Chinese government agencies with 38 different punishments.  The insincerity of this announcement, coming immediately upon the leaders’ meeting, was palpable.  If you want to believe, you may.  I wrote about this at the time in Everything new is old again. 

But with a new Chinese government policy, IP theft in China is no more.

Now comes the latest entry in China’s bid to become the first panopticon state – the cybersecurity law that permits government access to all information, IP or otherwise, stored on any server available to any foreign business operating in China.  China Law Blog has details – China’s New Cybersecurity System – There is NO Place to Hide.  From the blog post –

This result then leads to the key issue. Confidential information housed on any server located in China is subject to being viewed and copied by China’s Ministry of Public Security and that information then becomes open to access by the entire PRC government system. But the PRC government is the shareholder of the State Owned Entities (SOEs) which are the key industries in China. The PRC government also essentially controls the key private companies in China such as Huawei and ZTE and more recently Alibaba and Tencent and many others. See China is sending government officials into companies like Alibaba and Geely and China to place government officials inside 100 private companies, including Alibaba. The PRC government also either owns or controls China’s entire arms industry.

Simply put, the data the Ministry of Public Security obtains from foreign companies will be available to the key competitors of foreign businesses, to the Chinese government controlled and private R&D system, and to the Chinese arms industry and military.

The takeaway on this is that the fear of IP theft in China is no more.  What used to be considered theft, done by stealth, is now a legal process.  As Steve Dickinson from China Law Blog says, welcome to the new normal.   And anyway, remember – information wants to be free.

Deer in the headlights

Aggressive moves by the government have sensitized the world to Chinese export of skullduggery, lying, theft, and threats to foreigners in their own country by Chinese organizations in business and government. Infiltration of politics and government in Australia and New Zealand has become a recurring story. 

Unfortunately, such actions can bias some people against Chinese everywhere.  So – what to make of Gladys Liu?

Gladys Liu was elected to the Australian Parliament this year from Chisholm, a district in which 70% of the voting population was born in China.

It has been discovered that she was listed as a council member of two chapters of the Chinese Overseas Exchange Association, a CCP United Front organization, from 2003 to 2015.  She is also listed as an officer in a business organization which is also said to have United Front ties.

Ms. Liu cannot recall being a member of the organizations – in which she had membership for twelve years.  The purpose of United Front is to influence overseas Chinese and foreign political and business organizations.

It is possible that mainland organizations could use her name without her knowledge.  We have an incident earlier this year in which the former Prime Minister of New Zealand was quoted in China Daily without her knowledge – the interview was simply made up by the newspaper in China. 

The Liu case follows that of Pierre Yang, another Australian MP forced to resign in late 2018 when it was discovered he was a member of two United Front organizations – the Northeast China Federation and Association of Greater China.  And the case of Sam Dastyari, another MP forced to resign from a government position after disclosure of his possible collusion in stopping an Australian intelligence investigation of a Chinese businessman in Australia – a CCP member who had, incidentally, paid debts owed by Dastyari and made illegal campaign donations – $100,000 cash, in a plastic bag – to Dastyari’s political party.

For Ms. Liu, when questioned in a tv interview about her views on the South China Sea and on the character of Xi Jinping, her answers were less than forthcoming.  The interview is remarkable for its length – over 17 minutes – and for the evasiveness and failures of memory in Ms. Liu’s answers. 

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has expressed his support for Liu, who is a member of his party, and called criticism of Liu racially motivated. 

More detail on the story is at the Conversation, Why Gladys Liu must answer to parliament about alleged links to the Chinese government.

What is one to make of all this?  I certainly don’t know. That is the problem with being a bit paranoid – you don’t know if they are really after you or not.  No doubt more will come out on this story. 

Watch the interview.  For a politician, even one from a place that is a bit of a backwater, she sounds remarkably inept, seeming to choose words quite carefully.  It seems that people are watching her, and it is not just voters in Australia. 

Gladys Liu Interview

China censorship by extortion in London

Update at October 7, 2019 – The NBA self-censors for China

The NBA is a business – we know that.  But the NBA has been the professional league in which players and coaches have had the most freedom to speak their minds about issues of rights and morality.  Now, apparently, that freedom of speech stops at the Chinese border.  The New York Times has the story – NBA executive’s Hong Kong tweet starts firestorm in China.

Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted an expression of support for protesters in Hong Kong.  This upset the Chinese Basketball Association, and some Chinese fans, who see Hong Kongers as only hooligans and destroyers of Chinese harmony.  Morey’s tweet suggested that he “stands with Hong Kong.”  He has now apologized to the NBA’s largest international market.  The NBA has disavowed his comment, although it did suggest weakly that he had a right to say what he said.  Of course, the Chinese league commented with the old trope, that Morey had hurt the feelings of all Chinese people (who are basketball fans). 

The story is less that the NBA wilts in the face of Chinese outrage, but that the outrage is so unified, potentially deadly, and in accord with CCP desires. Plenty of other western businesses have set the pattern, whether on Hong Kong, Xinjiang, or Taiwan. The takeaway is that FBI director Christopher Wray is correct in his assessment of China as a “whole of society” threat. The ease with which we self-censor in the face of Chinese assessment that we have offended the whole of the Chinese people (how DO they make that determination?) is a threat to our own values in more than just business. In 2002, eminent China scholar Perry Link wrote of Chinese censorship as the “The Anaconda in the Chandelier” – everyone knows it is there, we can’t see it, and don’t know when it will strike. It is powerful, and causes us to behave differently. We fear all the more what we don’t know and can’t see. National inability to tolerate a single tweet by a relatively minor official of the NBA is itself a bargaining tactic to worry about. Who knows where it will strike next?

The original London theater story below.

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China censorship by extortion in London

There cannot be anyone who still thinks “peaceful rise” is a metaphor for China’s relations with the world. But the real fear is not what we see in the papers. The real fear is not China’s military, or trade power, or isolating Taiwan, or OBOR, or votes and influence at the UN and in other international bodies.  In a sense, not even IP theft, although that is the only current trade concern of real import. 

What the world should fear over the next ten or twenty years is export of business and government practices conducted via cheating, extortion, threats to innocent parties, arrests under false pretenses, no rule of law, no free press, prison torture, and police and government action with impunity. 

The latest example is threats to a theater performance in London.

The Guardian has the story –

From Beijing to Hampstead: how tale of HIV whistleblower rattled Chinese state

Now we have threats to the performing arts – a theater, in London. Via threats to the family and friends and daughter of the woman who is the subject of the play.  Chinese security officials are threatening the family in China of a former health bureau official who exposed coverup of an HIV and hepatitis scandal in China in 1992 and 1995. Apparently the loss of face for CCP over events of 27 years ago is still salient. 

Dr. Wang Shuping is not the author of the play, the director, an actor, and probably not an investor or audience member.  The play is about her story to expose the coverup of “epic proportions” – demands to falsify medical data and then physical destruction of her lab and samples of blood tainted with hepatitis and HIV from donors.  Wang is now an American citizen, a practicing nephrologist in Williamsburg, VA.

From Wang’s statement to the media –

On 22 August 2019, I received a phone call from a relative in America who told me that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Ministry of State Security have sent officers from Beijing to Zhoukou, my hometown, to investigate my colleagues and relatives … During the past ten years, officers from the PRC Ministry of Health, Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of State Security have been to my hometown to interrogate my relatives and colleagues several times, trying to silence me.

 From the Guardian story –

The plot closely follows the battle Wang and her colleagues waged to uncover the truth. “I first reported the HCV [hepatitis] epidemic among blood donors to the Ministry of Health of PRC [People’s Republic of China] in 1992,” said Wang. “Three years later, I discovered and reported a serious HIV epidemic among the plasma donors to the Health Bureau of Zhoukou Region and the ministry of health of the PRC … Only after I reported my results to the central government in Beijing was any action taken. They requested that I falsify my information about the HIV epidemic situation among the plasma donors but I refused. To cover up the HIV epidemic situation, they broke up our clinical testing centre, hit me with a heavy stick and insulted me.”  Wang resisted pressure to close her laboratory, but the health bureau cut off the electricity and water supplies, forcing it to discard thousands of blood samples.

Officials have threatened the livelihoods of Wang’s friends and family in Beijing, and attempted to contact her daughter, to threaten her also.  The director of the play says they will do what Dr. Wang wishes – presumably, cancel the play if she feels the threats are extreme.  She wishes the play to go on, even with the threats to family and friends. 

Wang’s closing statement –

The only thing harder than standing up to the Communists and their security police is not giving in to pressure from friends and relatives who are threatened with their livelihoods all because you are speaking out. But even after all this time, I will still not be silenced, even though I am deeply sad that this intimidation is happening yet again. The King of Hell’s Palace will go ahead and I am really looking forward to seeing the production.

You know about kidnapping of foreign business people in China over business disputes.

You know about the hostage taking of three Canadians as political retaliation over the Huawei business. 

You know about threats at academic conferences and threats to individual foreign teachers, in their own country, of whom Beijing disapproves. 

You know about threats to Chinese students studying abroad, and their families in China.

You know about threats to the families of Chinese students studying in Hong Kong.

You know about threats to foreign businesses, such as Marriott and United and American and Delta airlines if they don’t cease calling the Republic of Taiwan the Republic of Taiwan.  

You know about the threat to put Cathay Pacific Airlines out of business unless they policed the activities of their own employees in not supporting the Hong Kong protests.

Business is not safe from threat.  Academics are not safe from threat in their home country.  Students are not safe from threat.  Now, theater is not safe from threat.  One is reminded of the Niemoeller quote –  “First came for the socialists, and I did nothing….”   Or Edmund Burke – “All that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

 Dr. Wang’s personal story is available at ChinaChange here.  It is perhaps more detail than you want, but is a good example of how some Chinese exports will be expected to work if good people remain silent and do nothing.

Police extremism in the Hong Kong subway

Videos of police extremism in the Hong Kong subway

update at October 5 –  after months of protest and escalation, and some excessive violence by police and thugs against protesters, I am starting to admire the Hong Kong police a bit for their restraint.

That is certainly not the popular attitude among protesters and supporters in Hong Kong.  But the police are caught in situations more war-like than preserving-the-peace like. 

Video of destruction at subway stations  – there are many such videos from the last few months, but the extent of the damage is causing Hong Kong to shut down – more here and here. No one knows where this goes or at this point what the intent can be.  At some point, shutting down Hong Kong only plays into the hands of the government.  The mainland needs Hong Kong, that is true; but Hong Kongers need Hong Kong as well. 

 
In case you’ve not been watching.  No need for further comment on this. 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yycXGXzqB6A
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4QL2rvmd3s
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emT93ipaHHc
 
 If you can get this from the New York Times, it is a chilling video of a student
protester talking about his actions.  He seems to treat the protests as an
extracurricular activity.  Not to doubt his sincerity, but he really could be killed
in this confrontation, and I doubt that has sunk in.  A bit like Tian’anmen or
Kent State.
 
we may die, we may be jailed
 
Update:  The anthem, written hastily but embraced by those in the streets, in Cantonese, pointedly not in Mandarin –
 

Glory to Hong Kong

 

Soft power? We don’t need no stinking soft power.

Update at August 28 – the affronts to human dignity, scholarship, free speech, trade fairness and personal expression now seem to come on a daily basis.  China under Mr. Xi is really carving a new international image, and it is neither “peaceful rise” nor “responsible stakeholder in the community of nations.” 

You’ve read some of the Hong Kong stories, in the media and below, and the disruptions and violence and threats coming from Chinese students in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US  when confronted with others speaking their minds.  You’ve read about the billionaires, activists, lawyers and missionaries who have been disappeared in the mainland.  As described in the Guardian, “China feels emboldened to place literally anyone under arbitrary and secret detention, regardless of citizenship. It is now long overdue for the world to stand up.”  Family members of those the CCP wants, for whatever purposes, are at significant risk, both inside China and outside. I had some fears for my wife and son when they were in China a few weeks ago.  I am unsure of my own potential for detention when I return to China.  In July, the Swedish Supreme Court ruled against extradition to China of a sought-after former official, based on threat of human rights violations if he were to be returned.

These are all on top of the old stories, from the last ten years or more, of American businessmen being kidnapped in China over real or imagined disputes with Chinese businesses.

The government has long pressured western businesses to conform to CCP political thought, at the risk of losing access to the Chinese market.  You remember the demands that hotels and airlines stop referring to Taiwan as a country. Then luxury brands like Versace and Coach faced the same demands, and folded immediately.  Now, we have the government demanding resignation of a Hong Kong airline CEO  – and getting it – over participation by Cathay Pacific employees in the Hong Kong protests.  Cathay Pacific is Hong Kong’s best known local business in international markets.  You can expect more pressure from the government over actions of foreign businesses, and you can expect more compliance. The government has said it will enforce a “social credit score” on foreign companies in China.  Expect the blacklisting to be used when a companies employees or related entities fail to conform – not to government, but to CCP – requirements.  This is despicable behavior by the government, and potentially dangerous to companies and their employees.

About a week ago, in Shenzhen, the government seized a Hong Konger who works for the British consulate in Hong Kong, thus confirming the worst fears of Hong Kongers about the extradition treaty that was the original proximate cause for the protests.  Simon Cheng was returning to Hong Kong when he apparently was seized on the train late at night. 

In the last couple of months, a Hong Kong 2014 umbrella protest leader, Nathan Law, has been singled out by Chinese student groups at Yale, and targeted with death threats. From ChinaFile on the messages sent to Nathan Law –  “I will wait for you at school and you have no escape. Gun shooting will start—American style.”

Let there be no mistake – there is no peaceful rise, CCP expects to dominate international relations as well as business and markets, free speech and rights of assembly are under attack throughout the world, and capitalism is no friend to democracy when profits are at stake.  We tend to ignore the Americans, Canadians, Australians being held in China under any form of false charges, to be used as warnings or bargaining chips. More stories are here and warnings to Americans from the US State Department are here.  The 2017 book The Peoples Republic of the Disappeared documents some of the stories of Chinese and foreigners held for no good reason. 

There seems no good outcome in the current Hong Kong protests.  About the best the world can expect is an updated version of the rallying cry from the War of Texas Independence – Remember Hong Kong.   May it be remembered as a rallying cry for free speech and a free press and free assembly and rule of law in Australia, and New Zealand, and Greece, and all of Africa, and South America, and southeast Asia. 

The old post from August 1 –

 You remember the bandits in Treasure of the Sierra Madre – the bandit horde, pretending to be Federales, descending on Humphrey Bogart and fellow prospectors.  “Badges?  We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges.  I don’t have to show you no stinking badges.” The famous lines were uttered by Gold Hat, head of the bandits, when Fred C. Dobbs (Bogart) asked for their badges.   Hong Kong was the soft power model, the badge of Chinese “peaceful rise.”  Mainland students and Confucius Institutes were supposed to be the badge of Chinese soft power in the world.  But no more, as we see in Hong Kong, in Australian and New Zealand universities, and indeed, universities throughout the world.

I kept thinking of that scene as I watched Hong Kongers resist the violence of the banditos, this time in the form of white-shirted thugs from Triad gangs, and the local police.   And then, watching mainland Chinese students attack Hong Kong sympathizers at Queenland University in Australia and Auckland University in New Zealand.

Watch the videos from Hong Kong –

Please stop beating us!

Hong Kong police use violence on protesters, not on thugs

In Australia and New Zealand …

In Australia, a Chinese diplomat applauded patriotic behavior from mainland students in disrupting a peaceful protest at University of Queensland.  As reported, the attack was coordinated, quite possibly by the local CSSA (Chinese Students and Scholars Association).  You can hear the beginning of the Chinese national anthem playing in the background of the Queensland attack.  Watch the video at twitter.

The New York Times reports– The Chinese nationalists disrupting pro-Hong Kong democracy rallies at the University of Queensland arrived 300 strong, with a speaker to blast China’s national anthem. They deferred to a leader in a pink shirt. And their tactics included violence.

Threats to Australian students via social media have continued, including death threats.  Similar violence took place last week at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

Bill Bishop at Sinocism suggests that expulsion might be beneficial to PRC students who can’t abide exercise of free speech – In the case of PRC students (expulsion) could be quite beneficial, as there are pressures from within the PRC student community, and its CCP minders, to be aggressive in the face of any perceived slights, and if you are not then you run the risk of being seen as insufficiently loyal and patriotic.  

Western universities have though that mainland Chinese students will see freedom at work, and have their lives transformed.  For some that is true.  But now, some mainland Chinese are out to transform their hosts.  The Confucius Institutes were supposed to be the vanguard of Chinese soft power in the world.  Now, they are suspected – in at least some cases, legitimately – of being a conduit for United Front activities.

In 2016, Xi Jinping issued what now seem to be orders to Chinese students abroad to serve their country, and the Chinese Ministry of Education issued a directive calling for a “contact network” connecting “the motherland, embassies and consulates, overseas student groups, and the broad number of students abroad” and ensuring that they will “always follow the Party.”

In Canada and the US …

You remember the death threats earlier this year to the Tibetan-Canadian student elected as student union president at the University of Toronto University of Toronto.   She now has a safety plan with the university police, letting them know where she is, hour by hour.  You remember the uproar  at McMaster University in Canada when a Uighur activist was scheduled to speak.  Mainland Chinese students sought advice from the Chinese consulate about how to proceed in their protests.  You remember the large protests in 2017 at the University of California at San Diego. Mainland students reportedly sought advice from the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles before condemning the university for naming as commencement speaker the Dalai Lama.  There are many such stories, including demands from the Chinese government that Uighur students return to China immediately, using their parents as potential hostages.

Hong Kong as the new model of Chinese power …

The “peaceful rise” touted by Deng Xiaoping, and the soft power projection from the Confucius Institutes worldwide is no more.  In Tibet, in Xinjiang, on the mainland in prisons where human rights lawyers and activists rot, in Canada, now in Hong Kong, and Australia, and New Zealand, the gloves have come off on soft power.  In Hong Kong, the protests have not yet turned deadly.  But Christy Leung, Hong Kong student at Queensland, made the point –

“People in Hong Kong are risking their lives. The threats we faced last week are nothing compared to them. We have to stand up. With them.”  

For Hong Kongers, it is more than a movie.  They are risking their lives.  They all know about June 4, even if mainland students do not.  

For western students, and teachers, and universities generally, lives are not likely at risk.  But the very concept of the university – let us say, seeking truth from facts, and speaking truth to power- is at risk.  The soft power glove is revealing the clenched fist beneath.

What Chinese are Talking About (3) – Love Mr. Xi, Love Mr. Trump

Update at August 13 – 

I wrote a bit about Epoch Times in the post below, mostly about Chinese getting their news from China news sources like public wechat.  Epoch Times is most decidedly anti-CCP, and published by organizations related to Falun Gong, the same people who bring you Shen Yun, the extraordinary dance and performance troup that has been wow-ing Americans for a decade.

In the last two weeks, Epoch Times has been bombarding YouTube with two minute (two minute!) video advertising in advance of a video one is watching.  The ads offer subscriptions to the newspaper, promising to expose the lies of the mainstream media in vilifying Donald Trump.  Here is a screen shot from one subscription ad.  “Honest news” is what they tout.

Donald Trump reads it every day.  ‘Nuff said.  Chinese can get their “honest news” from Beijing or Falun Gong.  Truly, only no news here is good news.

What Chinese are Talking About (3) – Love Mr. Xi, Love Mr. Trump

We know that mainlanders, particularly those in CCP, have a fondness for Mr. Trump.  There are several reasons – Chinese historically have been willing to defer to strong leaders, and Trump projects arrogance, if not wisdom.  It was clear before the 2016 election that if Trump won, Mr. Putin would win and Mr. Xi would also win.  Events bear this out.  There is no adversary so easy to fool as one convinced of his own superiority, particularly one with such poor justification.  Flattery and artifice will get you … everywhere.  For Chinese interested in foreign policy, all they need do is sit back and wait.  Trump’s unforced errors – TPP, belittling allies, cozying up to dictators, removing US from environmental treaties, threatening friends and foes alike – make Chinese arrogance and Mr. Xi’s own unforced errors look positively innocuous.  What’s not to love about someone willing to play the fool for you?

There is reason to think that Chinese in the US, whether citizens, long-time residents or new green card recipients, might hold more nuanced views about Mr. Trump.  And, in fact, they do.

But often not in the direction you might think.  Case in point – the Chinese American news, sent around the US on wechat.

You know wechat is the ubiquitous and multifaceted phone app from Tencent that has become indispensable to Chinese lives.  For communication purposes, there are two broad categories – private wechat, which functions like a group email, and public wechat, in which wechat operates as a news disseminator.

The news disseminator is well established in the US.  There is Chicago American Chinese news, New York American Chinese news, and probably a dozen or twenty more channels.  The channels have some local news, and share word for word some national stories.

All the channels function only in Chinese.  Anyone can read the news, if they can read Chinese.  For many Chinese in America, these channels function as a principal news source.  Every Chinese student who is harmed in America gets featured, along with positive stories about inventions and developments in China. The wechat channels function as modern versions of the Polish or German language newspapers our parents or grandparents read. 

But in our new era, the politics are different.  Rather than a pro-worker or socialist bent, the wechat channels exhibit a distinct pro-Trump, pro-Republican bias. 

Some bias among Chinese is understandable – they tend to be opposed to attempts to change university admissions standards, which tends to undercut hard-working and high-achieving Asians.  And they tend to be suspicious of Democratic relaxation of immigrant controls, when so many Chinese sacrificed so much to get here themselves.

One should remember that the wechat stories for consumption in America are mostly unsourced, identical across wechat platforms nationally in the US, and written in China or by Chinese working directly for wechat. Five or six national stories are reported each day, in addition to local news.

The wechat groups can be a useful and positive organizing technique.  Last year, a Chinese immigrant used WeChat to win a seat in the Maryland House of Delegates.  Lily Qi raised nearly $150,000 for her candidacy, and did so by contacting non-registered voters directly, with an appeal to change their non-voting behavior.

On the other hand, Australians are worried about fake news stories planted in the wechat groups to steer political views.  The Sydney Morning Herald documents fake news and doctored stories on local wechat groups, and comments  – With less than two weeks until the May 18 election, Chinese social media has become an increasingly powerful tool for all political parties, especially in seats with large numbers of Chinese-Australian voters…

Given its dependence on Chinese trade, and its traditional alliance with the other “five eyes” nations (US, Canada, Britain, New Zealand) Australia has become a prime target for Propaganda Ministry or United Front organizations to influence public opinion. 

Bill Bishop comments at Sinocism – any government should be very concerned over the growing role of Wechat as the primary communications and media consumption tool of the Diaspora. It is after all still controllable and censorable from Beijing.

Wechat is not the only social media platform operating in Chinese, of course.  The political newsletter Popular Information reports on wildly pro-Trump stories in Epoch Times, a media conglomerate with strong ties to Falun Gong, the secretive organization banned in China. A publication with Falun Gong ties is going to be virulently anti-CCP, but they do love Trump.

Epoch Times publishes in Chinese and in English, as well as in other languages. Popular Information reports that Epoch Times “was one of the top three political spenders on Facebook in the last week in April,” outspending every political candidate in the country except Biden and Trump, according to third party research. The money was spent “to promote stories that Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, has championed.”  Epoch Times spent almost as much on Facebook ads ($148,937) as did the Trump campaign ($149,610) in early May.  Epoch Times is now featuring hysterical Youtube advertising, debunking the Mueller investigation and directly promoting Trump. 

From the Popular Information story.  Epoch Times is number 4 –

 Also from the Popular Information story, about Epoch Times reporting on the FBI spying on Trump –

if you could read English only moderately well, wouldn’t you migrate to the news in your own native language?  Makes sense to me.  And makes sense to the wechat writers in Beijing, and to the Chinese and English language writers at Epoch Times.  Truly, for Chinese readers in America, no news is good news.