Category: Older News Comments

Chinese Officials Threaten Mainland Parents of Student Attending Australian Protest

It is important to remember what we are dealing with.  Let’s review –

From the Sydney Morning Herald, August 7 – Chinese authorities approached the family of an international student who participated in high-profile protests at an Australian university and warned his parents of the potential consequences of political dissent.

It has been clear for years that the Chinese government monitors words and actions of mainland students overseas.  There are various means.  Most prominent is the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) which operates as a student-run organization on most university campuses throughout the world.  It is now common for students to record other Chinese students expressing negative feelings toward the mainland government or CCP.  Chinese government officials in the foreign country support such efforts.

A mainland student who attended one of the pro-Hong Kong protest rallies at the University of Queensland in Australia later received a call from his mother.  From the Herald –

But within days of the rally the student received a call from his mother in China to say the family had been approached by “a guest”.  His mother told him the authorities had issued a warning about engaging in “anti-China rhetoric” in Brisbane and warned him not to “join any events where people are gathered together”.  “As long as you do that, we can make sure you’re safe and we’re safe,” his mother told him.  

Chinese officials in Australia praised actions by mainland students to disrupt the protests –

China’s consul-general in Brisbane, Xu Jie, subsequently issued a statement praising “the spontaneous patriotic behaviour of Chinese students” at the university in response to “people with ulterior motives [who] conducted anti-Chinese separatist activities”.

Government threats to families in China, or threats to Chinese abroad, are a despicable practice.  But it has become standard operating practice in the last decade. 

Put this down alongside threats to Yang Shuping the 2017 University of Maryland valedictorian, who praised fresh air and freedom in the US compared with her experiences in Yunnan.  The  former president of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) at the University of Maryland, told the CCP sponsored Global Times  – “Insulting the motherland to grab attention is intolerable. The university’s support to such critical speech is not only ill-considered, but also raises suspicion about other motives.”  The CSSA called on students from China to make videos promoting their hometowns with the scripted words “I have different views from Shuping Yang. I am proud of China.”  Yang received hundreds of negative or threatening social media posts. 

Or the action by the Chinese Education Ministry in 2010 to remove the University of Calgary from its list of approved universities, after Calgary awarded an honorary degree to the Dalai Lama.  That action threatened the ability of Chinese students at Calgary to have recognition of their degree in China.

And the experience of Chemi Lhamo, who by the nature of being Tibetan, and then earlier this year elected as student president at the University of Toronto Scarborough campus, was so threatened by Chinese vitriol, including death threats, that she needed university support;

And threats to Rukiye Turdush, Uighur activist, whose speech earlier this year at McMaster University in Ontario was disrupted in what some claim was activity promoted by the Chinese government.  University students clearly sought Chinese consulate advice on how to proceed with disruption.  Chinese officials in Canada applauded the threats from mainland Chinese students against Turdush;  

And Uighur university students throughout the world asked by the Chinese government to return home immediately, under hostage and harm threats to their parents and relatives in Xinjiang;

And physical destruction of the Lennon Wall at the University of Queensland on August 6.  From the Guardian – The University of Queensland has promised to take action after a pro-Hong Kong Lennon wall on its campus was torn down on Monday night by four masked men. The colourful protest wall – similar to those around Hong Kong and the rest of the world – had attracted hundreds of notes calling for democracy and solidarity with Hong Kong, and opposing the totalitarianism of the Chinese government. Two weeks ago pro-Beijing government protesters clashed violently with Hong Kong international students on the university’s Brisbane campus, punching and shoving.

Four masked men were seen destroying the wall.  Students have since put it up again. 

And, of course, the old standby –

Chinese rights lawyer Chen Jiangang-flees to US to escape persecution

In terms of (legal) human traffic, China still exports far more to the US than we export to China.  No sign of that changing anytime soon.  I reported on that at Let’s remember what we are dealing with.  

Let’s remember what we are dealing with …

News reporting is so uneven.  No mass shooting in the US is censored information in China – in fact, the news is prominently featured.   From China Xinhua News on Twitter –

China Xinhua News

@XHNews

 Shootings this weekend at a Texas Walmart and a bar in Ohio have left 30 people dead. Retail employees are taking to social media to say they’re terrified to go to work. Workers fear getting shot at their workplace

The Chinese government twitter account has several posts on the shootings, with video. 

At the same time, Xinhua completely missed this story – 

Chinese rights lawyer Chen Jiangang flees to US to escape “persecution” in China  

The South China Morning Post did report the story. 

Chen is a human rights lawyer who has been threatened and harassment before. He was representing Huang Yang, daughter in law of disgraced leader Zhou Yongkang.  Huang is an American citizen.  She has not been allowed to leave China over what is termed a rental disagreement, but it is not uncommon to punish relatives of disgraced CCP leaders without evidence of any wrongdoing. 

Huang explained that Wang Cun, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice, threatened Chen if he continued to represent her.  Chen was told that he would disappear if he continued to represent his client. 

Chen had been threatened before.  In April of this year, he was not allowed to leave China for a fellowship funded by the US government, citing national security concerns. 

In 2017, Chen’s entire family was put on an exit ban list, which has become a common means of targeting Chinese and foreigners who displease the government.

It is not clear how Chen and his family were able to get out.  News reports say that they traveled through several countries before finally arriving in the US.  China Aid, a non-profit reporting on human rights abuses in China, seems to have helped Chen and his family get out. 

Lawyer Chen Jiangang (second from left) and his family have fled China for the United States  Source: ChinaAid

China Aid, by the way, is a remarkable organization.  It seeks to expose persecution, torture, and imprisonment of Christians and human rights lawyers in China. 

Xinhua seems to have missed this story.   Perhaps international news is more compelling in this case.  

Shuang Yin Win-Win

Another update at July 24, 2019 – Boris Johnson became Prime Minister today.  From the South China Morning Post –


Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister-designate, said his government would be very “pro-China”, in an interview with a Hong Kong-based Chinese-language broadcaster shortly before he was chosen to succeed Theresa May on Tuesday…

Speaking to Phoenix TV, Johnson backed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s infrastructure-based Belt and Road Initiative and said his government would maintain an open market for Chinese investors in Britain.

Crash out is now scheduled for October 31 – Halloween in the US, when goblins arrive. 

Update at June, 2019 – the March, 2019 crash-out has been delayed, but that does not apply to earnest Britain-China cooperation – Sino-UK dialogue yields dozens of outcomes.

The 10th China-UK Economic and Financial Dialogue has just concluded in London.  China will help Britain in its soon-to-be developing country status by offering openings in financial and banking services, among many other programs to help British companies.  From the short article –

Christopher Bovis, a professor of international business law at the University of Hull, said this round of dialogue signified the importance of the future of Sino-UK trade relations, with an emphasis on large infrastructure projects and financial services.

“Both economic sectors will benefit enormously from Chinese investment in the UK, and China is expected to reciprocate with more market access to its evolving economy,” he said.

Funny, I didn’t hear much support from Britain for Hong Kong protesters in the recent extradition law conflict.

 ——–

______

Shuang Yin  Win-Win    February, 2019

Now that a crash-out Brexit seems all but assured, where will Britain turn for trade deals?  The kind of relationship that the British government wanted – like that of Canada or Norway with the EU – takes years to negotiate, under favorable circumstances.  There has been discussion for more than ten years that the special relationship between the US and Britain – forged from the mid-19th century and cemented between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill in World War II – is no longer so compelling.  The EU without Britain is still a huge and attractive market for US trade in both directions.

As of March 29, 2019 – in a bit more than a month – there will be hundreds of treaties and agreements to negotiate, suddenly, quickly, and in great detail.  Some agreements will probably get done – ability of British truck drivers to deliver goods through the Chunnel into EU turf, and ability of airplanes to take off from Heathrow bound for destinations in Europe using parts and crew that, without certification by the EU, would be not allowed.

But where can Britain turn for trade deals, quickly, without years of complicated negotiations?  What large trading partner is willing to set aside the details of complex agreements when mercantile interests, not to mention future geopolitical support, are at stake?  What large trading partner can act quickly, based on personal leadership from a president or prime minister or general secretary?

In October, 2015, a few months before the Brexit vote, Xi Jinping visited the UK, and  demonstrated his prescience –

“The UK has stated that it will be the Western country that is most open to China,” Xi told Reuters ahead of his first visit to the country as president.

“This is a visionary and strategic choice that fully meets Britain’s own long-term interest.”

UK Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking on CCTV, China’s state broadcaster, said the visit would mark a “golden era” in the two countries’ relationship.


Among items looted from the Summer Palace in 1860 – a blue and gold cloisonné “chimera”—a mythic animal with a lion’s body and dragon’s head.  The Garden of Perfect Brightness – Visualizing Cultures, MIT    Could the chimera’s lion’s head be compatible with the British Lion?  


Source: Tracy Ducasse, creative commons license

Politically, China has always been willing to play a long game for economic access, political favor, and “special relationships.”   But in 2015, I don’t think Mr. Xi was expecting such a quick return on the investment in his state visit.

Even in 2015, Britain said little about China’s incursions into the South China Sea.  A bit unusual for the country that used to rule the waves, and administered Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, and many more.  Britain has said little or nothing about Chinese cyberthreats or IP theft.  Britain was one of the first countries to join the Chinese counterpart to the IMF, the Asian Infastructure Investment Bank. 

In tourism, entertainment, and education, England has become a premier destination for Chinese. A 2015 story from CNN – London has become a favorite destination for young couples to take wedding photos and Chinese viewers are captivated in the millions by shows like “Sherlock Holmes” and “Downton Abbey” … Affluent Chinese parents are sending their children to British schools after some of the most notable names in British education have established campuses in China.

Since 2012, I have written quite a few recommendations for Chinese students to study for a master’s degree in England, at Nottingham, Sheffield, Birmingham, and Manchester.  Only one for a student wishing to study in the US.

China in England to date

China has a one-third interest in England’s first nuclear power plant in three decades, has substantial investments in the Heathrow and Manchester airports, two premier league soccer clubs, and in London’s tallest building.   The UK has been the top EU destination for foreign investment, and is China’s second largest trade partner in Europe.  Huawei is a top supplier to British Telecom, with apparently few qualms on the British side.  Huawei has told British lawmakers that it wants five years to correct identified problems that it denies having in any case.  Ok.   In May, 2016,  London was granted the right to do RMB trade closings  and Chinese government bonds can now be issued in London.   The RMB is now included in the IMF basket of currencies used for calculation of special drawing rights, which can be freely traded for currencies of member countries.  Some big Chinese banks, like China Construction Bank and the Bank of China, have adopted London as their European financial center, although that could easily change.  The nuclear plant deal at Hinkley Point will give two state owned Chinese companies a one-third stake in ownership, with Chinese involvement expected in two future nuclear plants, including a Chinese-designed reactor. 

China in England going forward

Better for China, and worse for negotiators in Britain, is that China will still want strong relations with the EU and will no longer see England as the easy backdoor to the rest of Europe.  In particular, British based banks and investment firms will be representing only Britain, not the rest of Europe.  With regard to the RMB clearinghouse function, Britain will provide access to a market of 65 million people rather than the EU 500 million people.

As the UK economy deteriorates, so will the value of Chinese investments in England, but so will the ability of Britain to strike hard bargains anywhere.  British companies in China have been optimistic about the fallout from Brexit.  But to the extent their concerns are with IP theft or cyberthreats, internet access, or unequal trade practices, they should not expect much support coming from London.  Britain will become a less expensive country in which to invest, British goods will become cheaper in China, but British companies selling in China will find a tougher road.  The British companies are not known for doing well in heavily competitive markets like China.  Supporters of democracy and free speech in Hong Kong should not expect any more moral support from Britain.

Britain will need trade deals quickly, China will not, and in such a balance England should expect to give a little more on political support for Chinese foreign policies and trade policies, despite the early reticence of Mrs. May to Chinese deals.  China will see a weak Britain, the former colonialist, opium supplier and burner of the Summer Palace (yuanmingyuan, Garden of Perfect Brightness) in 1860.  There will be artifacts from the looting of the Summer Palace that China will want returned, but there will be more important concessions demanded.  China will want Britain as a partner in establishing China as the global standard-setter in media relations, internet availability, business practices, finance, and foreign trade.  China might be able to get a good part of that agenda.

win-win

For China, the timing is perfect.  The US will need to consider carefully its special relationship with a Britain that has Huawei internet tools and supports Chinese trade and financial practices.  With Europe worried about the nearer threat from the east, in Russia, China may be able to strike better deals in the remaining EU as well. 

Even without a firm trade deal, China will be ready to help Britain as much as it is to China’s benefit.  Britain, after all, will be another developing economy in need of assistance, and win-win is always the Chinese mantra in such deals.  A win for China in England, perhaps a win for China in the EU, perhaps a win for China in the UN and other international forums.  In 2019 – 70 years after the creation of “new China” – we may see a new Britain as well. 

No Wechat conversation is safe. Anytime. Anywhere. What Chinese are (not) talking about (4)

Wechat is almost universal.  It is ubiquitous in China, and among the Chinese diaspora and their foreign friends and families.  Its functionality for social media, news, and buying things makes it a better choice than any combination of applications available in the west.  It is Twitter, Facebook, Googlemaps, Tinder and Apple Pay all rolled into one. And it is free.

Free does not mean without cost, of course, and in this case, the cost is the Chinese government being ready, willing, and able to monitor what you say, what you text, what you watch, what videos you post.  In China and outside.  If you think the long arm of Chinese government censorship doesn’t reach into the US – well, you would be wrong. 

SupChina cites a new report from Citizen Lab on WeChat censorship, surveillance, and filtering.  Citizen Lab is based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of  Toronto.  The lab studies government information controls, such as censorship surveillance and filtering, that affect the openness and security of the internet that pose threats to human rights.  Citizen Lab seems to be an extraordinarily sophisticated (to me, anyway) information provider for anyone interested in international government monitoring of individual communications.  Highly recommended.  Read the wiki.

The Citizen Lab report is (Can’t) Picture This2: An Analysis of Wechat’s Realtime Image Filtering in Chats. 

Two key findings on international scrutiny of chat images and texts –

WeChat implements realtime, automatic censorship of chat images based on text contained in images and on an image’s visual similarity to those on a blacklist

WeChat facilitates realtime filtering by maintaining a hash index populated by MD5 hashes of images sent by users of the chat platform

As the predominant form of personal communication in China, Wechat receives directives directly from the government as to what should be filtered.

Wechat Moments, Group Chat, and one-to-one communications are filtered differently.  Not surprisingly, filtering is heaviest for political, government, and social resistance topics.

Sometimes, the filtering does seem a bit much. A pdf of a student resume, sent to me in May of this year from China, was received in early July.  Three short videos of my son at swimming lessons, sent from China to Chicago, were blocked on July 19.  One doubts that the swimming pool could be understood as a state secret, but you never know. For the government, better safe than sorry in censorship.  Last year, I was talking about events in Xinjiang with government friends of mine.  They had fairly high-ranking jobs in a city police department, and I know they had access to information before it was disseminated to the public.  They knew nothing of events in Xinjiang.  That could have been feigned ignorance; but other Chinese colleagues suggested that no, my friends really did not know anything.  “Everything is fine in Xinjiang,” they told me.

An example from the Citizen Lab report –

 Figure 1: Top, a Canadian account sending an image memorializing Liu Xiaobo over 1-to-1 chat; bottom, the Chinese account does not receive it.

Stephen McDonnell, a BBC reporter in Beijing, describes being locked out of Wechat in China Social Media: WeChat and the Surveillance State.  As he describes it, life becomes almost unbearable without access.  He could not get a taxi, call friends or colleagues, contact sources for news stories, get airplane or train or movie tickets, make children’s school arrangements, or pay for almost anything.  He was locked out while in Hong Kong covering the recent protests.  He was allowed back in only when he provided his voice print and face print for WeChat.  Now, as he says, no doubt he has joined some list of suspicious individuals in the hands of goodness knows which Chinese government agencies.

For anyone with morbid curiosity, here is a friendly guide in English on installing and using WeChat.  Enjoy!

Money Talks in the Clash of Civilizations

What else would you expect?

You remember Samuel Huntington’s article in Foreign Affairs in 1993 –

The central axis of world politics in the future is likely to be, in Kishore Mahbubani’s phrase, the conflict between “the West and the Rest” and the responses of non-Western civilizations to Western power and values…. The third alternative is to attempt to “balance” the West by developing economic and military power and cooperating with other non-Western societies against the West, while preserving indigenous values and institutions; in short, to modernize but not to Westernize.

Take a look at the three maps below. 

The first is Huntington’s civilization categories.

The second maps countries that signed letters to the United Nations Human Rights Council in opposition to and in support of China’s ethnic cleansing policies in Xinjiang.

The third maps countries with substantial debt to China, as a per cent of national GDP.

The First Map – Huntington’s Civilizations

The Clash of Civilizations according to Huntington (1996), as presented in his book.  Formerly-archived Geography of War, course at Middlebury College. 

The Second Map – Uighurs – Which Side are you on?

Many sources confirm that up to 1.5 million Uighurs in Xinjiang are in concentration camps, with the goal of erasing their native Muslim culture and transforming them into good Chinese citizens.

From SupChina – An extraordinary event in human rights diplomacy happened in the last week: Two unprecedented letters to the president of the UN Human Rights Council were signed by dozens of countries expressing either support for or condemnation of China’s treatment of Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang region.

 Photo credit: A visual representation of countries that signed letters to the UN Human Rights Council against and in defense of China’s ethnic policies in the Xinjiang region. Map made by Reddit user Hamena95

 

Twenty-two countries signed the letter of condemnation.  They are in blue in the map above.

The Chinese government responded with a letter of its own. Reuters reports that 37 countries joined the Chinese response, commending China’s remarkable achievements in human rights.  Such counter-terrorism and deradicalization measures as have been undertaken in Xinjiang are to be applauded.  Those nations are in red in the map above.

What stands out is the US failure to condemn Chinese actions, although we understand that to be attributable to the views of our current dear leader.  The US dropped out of the Human Rights council in 2018.

What also stands out is the failure of any of the Islamic world to condemn Chinese actions against Muslims in Xinjiang.  A number of countries, notably Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Algeria signed on to the Chinese response to the original condemnation.  And notice the support for China in Africa where China is doing infrastructure and resource deals, and Russia.

It is easy to see Huntington’s cultural clash in the current US-China conflict. Individualism v collectivism. World hegemon v rising competitor. Modernity and traditionalism. Its surprising how quickly the world alliances have formed.  In the third map, we begin to see why.

The Third Map – Debt and Loyalty

The third map is from a new working paper on Chinese foreign lending by Sebastian Horn, Carmen Reinhart and Christoph Trebesch.  They identified nearly 2000 foreign loans and 3000 grants to more than 150 countries totaling about $530 billion from 1949 to 2017.  This is apart from purchases of foreign bonds.

As of 2018, the Chinese government holds more than five trillion dollars of debt of the rest of the world, equal to about six per cent of world GDP.   As I have noted elsewhere, this lending is mostly to low-income developing countries (LIDC), oil exporters, and countries in the path of the OBOR projects. 

From Ives Smith at Naked Capitalism – China: The Covert Credit Superpower –

The regions most indebted to China are Far East Asia and Central Asia, including highly exposed, small economies that are in geographic proximity to China such as Laos, Cambodia and the Kyrgyz Republic …. Next come Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, as well as some parts of the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. The debt flows to Eastern Europe are smaller, when measured as a share of debtor country GDP, but the amounts of credit to Europe have been growing substantially over the past five years.

Note the similarities in maps two and three. 

Notably, no Islamic nation condemned China for its treatment of Muslims.  Islamic northern Africa and much of the middle east and the –stans are recipients of substantial Chinese lending.  Even India has failed to condemn China.

No middle eastern or southern Africa country joined in the condemnation. Several southern African countries have more than 25% of their GDP in debt owed to China. 

Nearly all South American countries have more than 5% of GDP owed to China.  None joined in signing of the letter. 

Notably absent from the original UN letter were Italy, Greece, Turkey and all of eastern Europe, all recipients of large amounts of Chinese loans or expected beneficiaries of the OBOR. 

Signatories to the UN condemnation letter were the “west” including Scandinavia and Japan and all the English speaking nations except the US. 

Civilizations, repression, and debt

Samuel Huntington described about ten cultures in his 1994 book.  The big three civilizations he described were the west, the Islamic world, and Sinic, mainly China.  He described potential alliances of these with other civilizations – Russia with China, the Islamic world with China, based on similar thinking about the importance of history and desire to maintain distinction from the west.  Huntington’s categories are broad, and not without critics. 

Critics of the clash theory have pointed out that significant parts of the Islamic or Sinic world have modernized, particularly leadership and business interests. And any one nation, any one civilization, is far too complex to be accounted for in Huntington’s model. The populist uprisings in the US and Britain and Europe certainly point away from modernism. 

Well, ok.  The world is big and complicated.  Capitalism is no friend to democracy.  Huntington did not see a “winner” in the world civilizational struggle in his 1993 Foreign Affairs article.  

But it sure looks as if money speaks much louder than human rights talk, and Huntington was clearly onto something, way back in 1993.

For those of you want a bit more data, below is a listing of countries in Africa that have –

  • Signed on to the BRI (Belt and Road Initiative)
  • Supported China on Xinjiang
  • Supported China in the 2016 South China Sea arbitration
  • Received more than $500 million in loans from China in the period 2000-2017

This is from Sinocism –

The clash is looking less like a clash than a fait accompli.  And money is the root of … something. 

Learning from China … and Hong Kongers

“Don’t trust China” is what the recent Hong Kong protesters told the G20 representatives in Osaka.

 I think that is right. It has been a sea change for me.  Fool me once.  Maybe even a few times. Still, over the last 15 years, I have come to realize that we should listen to the Hong Kongers (who don’t wish to be called Chinese).

Why believe twenty-somethings marching in the streets? Let’s remind ourselves that lying and no respect for human dignity are part and parcel of the government face to the world.  FBI director Christopher Wray’s declaration of China as a “whole of state” threat should be taken at face value.  There is no company or researcher or even student studying abroad who cannot be tapped to assist CCP.  (This of course casts false suspicion on honest Chinese everywhere.  Resistance is of course possible, and the norm, but it can be dangerous).

We have preponderance of the evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt.  On our most public piece of recent evidence – Huawei cannot be an innocent bystander, regardless of its own wishes.  It has been implicated or charged in theft and cyberspying for years China hacked Norway’s Visma to steal client secrets: investigators | Reuters:; Huawei Sting Offers Rare Glimpse of U.S. Targeting Chinese Giant – Bloomberg:; Cisco, T-Mobile, Motorola, Nortel, et.al.  The rap sheet over a decade or two is pretty impressive.

Don Clarke, cited at Huawei – taking a fall, hoping for a call– There’s a whole variety of pressures that the government can bring to bear on a company or individual, and they are not at all limited to criminal prosecution …. China is a Leninist state that does not recognize any limits to government power.

Mark Rosenblatt  in Real Clear Policy  citing two recent Chinese laws, the National Intelligence Law and the Anti-Spyware Law –  Specifically, “any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the law, and keep the secrets of the national intelligence work known to the public. The State protects individuals and organizations that support, assist and cooperate with national intelligence work.”

Other evidence – politics in Australia and New Zealand are under direct attack, as are American tech companies; also, here – china cyber-cloudhopper.  A mayoral election in Taiwan appears to have been determined by fake news on social media coming from inside the mainland. Academic researcher Anne Marie Brady is under personal attack in New Zealand, presumably for research not to Mr. Xi’s liking. See Intimidation knows no boundaries and the update.  Wechat news for Chinese in the US is unabashedly Republican oriented, not only because of Democratic support for immigration and Chinese fears of university quotas.  The news stories, coming from Wechat in China, support the buffoon who is easy to exploit.

 Chinese espionage even rates its own wiki site now.

 My own path from trust to mis- began in 2004.  I taught CCP members going to school in Chicago for a year. They were sent by the government to learn about markets and government management. The students were midlevel bureaucrats, in about every discipline from police and propaganda bureau officials to stock market administrators. Over the years, many became my friends and colleagues.  I stayed in their homes, they in mine, we vacationed and worked together.

In 2009, I went to China to teach.  The world was still enamored of China, the shiny once-in-world-history transform learning to be a responsible leader in the community of nations. 

Living closely in China, one sees more sides of the world-facing sculpture constructed to be the New China –  like seeing the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.  What’s behind the curtain is not so shiny and imposing.  Nowadays, it can still be threatening.

The 2008 riots in Tibet and the 2009 unrest in Xinjiang were part of my seeing more clearly.  Suppression of the Sanlu milk scandal in 2008, for fear of soiling the glory of the Olympic Games, was another eye-opener.  Years later, my wife, who is Chinese, would never buy Chinese milk for our son.

There are, of course, innumerable other incidents of moral decay and lying, some reported in the Chinese media. For comparison, the US has no shortage of corruption, murder, mayhem, and cheating in business and government.  But more of that malfeasance is available in the news, and sometimes lawsuits and media and whistleblowers can help restore human dignity.  But see this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and – well, you get the idea.

By 2012, my view had changed. I had first hand exposure to police and hospitals and doctors and universities and media, urban and rural, wealthy and poor, citizen and peasant – and a lot of guanxi exercised on my behalf. I saw a university dean jailed not for a crime but for political retribution. I see now a university party leader heavily suspected of corruption, cheating faculty and no one will dare to complain. I see how judges and police and teachers deal with the moral quandaries.  I learned a great deal about Chinese as moral individuals in an immoral system.  I developed an idea – honor and respect individual Chinese; mistrust Chinese people; fear the Chinese government.  That still seems right to me.

None of this is new; China Law Blog, now-retired China Accounting Blog, and major media have been documenting for years how malfeasance – basically, all forms of lying – has cost American business and threatens models of business and law in which good will and good faith are basic to ideas of civility, fair dealing, and due process. 

The world is no longer so naïve about Chinese government intentions.  In 2009 American intellectuals thought a modern Chinese economy would bring democratic change.  Mr. Xi has disabused them of that notion.   Don Clarke has written about the Uyghur concentration camps, entirely outside the purview of the Chinese legal system.  This is what Hong Kongers see. 

The notion of Chimerica, the international economic partnership, is clearly no more.  Now, how does one deal with an ex when the breakup is a matter of lying?  Trust is off the table – even Reagan told us that, in the 1987 SALT treaty – “trust but verify.”  Now, the US negotiators want to insert such provisions into any trade agreement about IP theft.  While an admirable goal, Chinese will never agree to such a limitation, could not enforce it, and in any case, sanctions are after the fact. 

Now comes an open letter in the Washington Post to Trump from more than a hundred “scholarly, foreign policy, military and business” individuals advising return to the days of wishin’ an’ a hopin’ on China policy.  Bill Bishop’s sound reply at Sinocism is here, at item number three.  “Can’t we all just get along?” is so twentieth century. 

Turn the other cheek in international economic and political matters is no prescription for achieving a final reward.  The partnership breakup is a done deal. The only way forward for America is some limited decoupling, along with doubling down on the ideals of honesty and fairness and respect for human dignity that made Hong Kongers appeal to Americans at the G20.  Going forward, we should all learn from Hong Kongers.  We can’t go back to those innocent days of a decade ago.  You also remember – denial is not just a river in Egypt. 

When Internet Blocking Fails

An internet not coming to a computer near you …

CCP gets more paranoid than usual around June 4 of every year, particularly those years a multiple of five from 1989.   This year is 30 years since the Tian’anmen massacre.

I was in Chicago around June 4 of 2009, but I made the 2014 anniversary.  Internet blocking began early in May.  Every foreigner in China gets accustomed to internet and social media blocking, but in 2014 the online ban was nearly total.  It was a lesson in how particular the censorship could be.   You know, it’s China – it’s complicated.

At my school in Hangzhou, there were two internet services for students – one for Chinese, one for foreigners.  I got the foreign service, since I was living in the foreign faculty housing.  This was post-google ban in China, so it was expected that gmail would not go through.  Surprisingly, I could receive gmail, but could not respond to a gmail address, whether I used my own gmail or another server.  My principal means of communicating with students outside the classroom – for homework, paper information, changes in class scheduling – was via email.  My Chinese students could receive my emails from my aol account.  Some of my foreign students who lived off-campus, outside of the school server, could not.  When students told me they had not received my emails, at first I put that down to normal attempts to get around responsibility.  I was wrong.  My students could not receive my emails, and I could not receive theirs.

Herein lies the lesson about blocking particularity.  Blocking could be done, is done, at any of several different levels – national, provincial, city, district or individual school. The flow of information could be turned on or off like a hose, and could be titrated to whatever level was desired.  In 2014, I could send some emails – but one email might take four or six hours to send.

In 2015, one of my computers was blocked completely in Hangzhou – no internet access whatsoever, for a period of about six months. The same computer, taken to Wuhan, still had no access; but another computer of mine did work in Wuhan.  The blocking was targeted at me – or at least, at the computer I always used.

I was more than a little incensed about the blocking at my school.  Student contacts were completely disrupted, even more than usual.  In class, I began telling students when I had sent an email, and asked the foreign students to tell each other about my emails, so that they might be able to send to each other. Sometimes, that worked.

Communication with students outside of the classroom was nearly impossible.  This was made more ridiculous by the selectivity of the blocking – students living on campus had worse internet service than those living off campus. Sometimes. And vice versa.

The 2014 internet massacre was actually the second major interruption since 2009.  In late 2012, there were similar problems – emails that never got through – without any notice, emails that took many hours to send.  That was the time of the Bloomberg and the New York Times exposing the billions of dollars in family wealth accumulated by sons and family of Xi Jinping and Wen Jiabao, and CCP thought those exposès a bit … unseemly.   It was at this time that google was completely blocked from China – search, email to and from.

In my case, it was not only being unable to communicate with students.  I had business to conduct in Chicago, which was made impossible.  Checks could not get written.  Blocking was not just google, but any search, any email.

Not to sugarcoat it, but I voiced my discontent.  I complained.  Like voting – early and often.

The international office of our university was the natural place to go.  One of my Chinese government students from Chicago was the deputy leader (second only to the party leader) and she was generally sympathetic to my occasional foreign demands.  After a couple of weeks of no service, I went to her office on a Tuesday morning. The excuses were pathetic – there were problems with the whole school internet server (the Chinese students had no problem).  Ok.  Then, just a problem for foreign internet servers in China.  So why was this not a problem all over China?  Then, the apologies – “I have been told it will be fixed by next Monday.”  This, of course, on a Tuesday.  There were five or six successive Tuesdays with this promise.

Since this was clearly a problem only at our university, I suggested some remedies.  My favorite was a big, gross remedy that indicated how stupid the whole business was. The Chinese students had no problems.  The school administration people had no problems.  Apparently, the rest of China had no problems.  A residential development about 500 meters away on the other side of some small hills had no internet access problems.

I volunteered.  Ok, if this is so difficult for you to solve internally, give me 500 meters of category 5 cable, and we can string a wire from the adjacent residential development with service to the foreign faculty building. Right over the hills, bushes and all. Lay cable on the ground.  Would take two guys a few hours.  Inelegant, but solved.

The blocking was a problem for all the foreign faculty and the foreign students.  But I was teaching major courses, not language courses, so I was more or less a leader of the foreign faculty.  Sometimes leadership demands bold action.

I demanded a meeting with the university president.  I pointed out that the school was really banking on a large increase in the foreign student population.  I was more or less the face of the foreign presence at the school, and if I could not get internet access, all those foreign students in Germany, Indonesia, the –stans, and Africa would hear about the problems someway when I finally could get access.  In any case, the blocking was a violation of my contract with the school, that internet access would be available.

After six weeks of promises about next Monday, mirabile dictu, after my meeting with the university president on a Friday, access was restored by next Monday morning.

Worked pretty well, too.  Guanxi and a credible threat works wonders. 

How to End June 4, et al.

A Country That Controls the Internet Should be Able to Control the Calendar

A few years ago, it was reported in the Australian Financial Review that senior party members in the Chinese Communist Party were reading deTocqueville’s The Old Regime and the Revolution.  This was at the suggestion of Xi Jinping, who apparently wanted to call attention to the fate of leaders who ignore the people in favor of corruption and the easy life.  The end times of the French monarchy is a good model for what rulers should not do.

We now have the anti-corruption campaign and the tigers and flies and the framing of enemies by other Party members.   And we have the mandate to remove evil western influence from China (free speech, free press, democracy, and the western books and teachers who are unfortunately a product of those ideas).  This was the pronouncement from Yuan Guiren, the Chinese Education Minister.

An aside – Communism, you know, is a German import.  What CCP should do about that is overlooked.  No doubt this will be the subject of investigation.   Someone, somewhere, within the CCP, at a very senior level, is protecting Communism, this western import,  from being attacked.   Is this more corruption?

Anyway, the French Revolution has spawned lots of interesting ideas, in addition to “liberty, equality, fraternity.”    One of the more interesting was the French Revolutionary calendar.   Those of you who can get access to the internet outside China can look at French Republican Calendar.

The rationale for the calendar was to sweep away the ideas, the habits, the customs of the old system – the ancien régime, as it is called.   The concept was to erase the memories, the Four Olds of France as it were, and pave the way for a new France.

Sort of like a New China.  

On October 23, 1793, the Revolutionary Calendar was adopted by the National Convention, acting as the government in France.  The idea was to make the calendar rational, and modern.

In the spirit of the times the calendar was designed to do away with the old names of months, irrational numbers of days in the month and the week and hours in the day, and replace them with systematic, metric, and base-10 representations.    Very modern.  

The wiki article describes the months, days, and hours –

There were twelve months, each divided into three ten-day weeks called décades. The tenth day, décadi, replaced Sunday as the day of rest and festivity….

Names of the days, names of the months, and number of days in the month and hours in the day were all changed.  Controlling the calendar was rational, and modern.

How the old New France can help the New China

There has been a lot of anxiety within China about the date of June 4.    Many people think that June 4 is part of the modern calendar, and should come after June 3 and before June 5.    But in New China, old ideas should be eliminated.

Others in China seem to fear the date of June 4, and would like to see it banned.   Certainly, the Chinese Communist Party has taken that position, in action if not in policy statement.   References to June 4, particularly if they include a year, such as 1989, are blocked by the Chinese government.   References to related terms, such as May 35, or characters or words that could be generally understood as meaning “June 4” are also blocked by the Chinese government.  Attempts to talk about June 4 can land people in jail. 

Now we know that the Chinese government supports modernization of everything in China.   Getting rid of the Four Olds is itself an old term, but still a useful idea.

In the spirit of modernization, and using modernist ideas from the French enlightenment to support the CCP, we recommend that June 4 just be eliminated from the calendar.  This should eliminate the anxiety felt within the government about June 4, and make it possible for millions of Chinese to get back to the business of making money, which, after all, is what a society is for.

How to do it

There are many ways to eliminate June 4.   Perhaps the easiest would be to simply print calendars that go directly from June 3 to June 5.   The extra day can be added somewhere else, like February, which really could use another day in any case.

If this program were implemented immediately, then the calendar revision could be accomplished in conjunction with the map revisions that show dotted lines in the South China Sea and Taiwan as part of traditional China.  Maybe include some proposed acquisitions, as well.   Arunachal Pradesh, Aksai Chin, and diaoyudao in the East China Sea.  Mongolia?  Surely some argument can be made for ports in Sri Lanka, or along the coast of Africa.   With all those dotted lines, it would be easy to draw a dotted line between June 3 and June 5 to February 29.

Another idea – print calendars that call the day between June 3 and June 5, June X.   There will be confusion with people thinking we are using Roman numerals, like the French Republican calendar.   But we already have a June 10, so the confusion should be small, even if unavoidable for some people.   We all have to pay a price for progress.

There are other ideas.   June 3.99 has a nice look to it. Chinese citizens can come up with variations.

And the beauty of that sort of choice is that there are an infinite number of variations.  If some people don’t like June 3.99, then they can try June 3.999.   Or June 3.1.   Lots of choices.

Some people – looking at you, CCP –  get so anxious about June 4 that they try to eliminate June entirely from the calendar, or at least eliminate internet use during June.   We can fix that, too, by eliminating the word “June” from the calendar.

Early June in the French Revolutionary calendar would be Prairial, from the French word for prairie, or pasture.

And senior Communist Party officials who are reading deTocqueville should really have no objection to naming a month after a French prairie.   So Prairial 3.99 could be just what is desired, for all Chinese people.    So the sequence could be, Prairial 3, Prairial 3.99, Prairial 5.   So much more modern feeling.  And the internet doesn’t  have to go down, again, for maintenance, every year during May and  June.  There is no June.

As a final solution, we could just replace June 4 with nothing.   We would write June   , 2019, or 2019 – Prairial –    .     That way, the people who want to eliminate June 4 will have done so.   Everyone else can just remember what goes in front of the comma or behind the dash.

And then, on Prairial    , Chinese web-users should show their solidarity, and go silent.   Post nothing on Prairial    , and show your support for June 3.99.   This might be the most effective way to deal with the June 4 problem.  Post nothing on that date.  

If enough people comply, government will be flustered.  What does it mean to protest when no one shows up?  What if they blocked the internet and no one complied by being blocked?  And how about all those millions of Chinese who failed to post anything on June 4?  Which side are they on?

Think of  Tenzin Gyatso. the Dalai Lama, suggesting that if CCP demands that there be a new Dalai Lama to succeed him at death, then perhaps there should not be a new Dalai Lama.  Atheistic CCP is insistent that there be a new leader, so CCP can control; the religious faithful are not so sure.   What is the sound of one internet not buzzing?

Now I know it will be difficult to get hundreds of millions of people to adopt a system like this.   Sometimes when something is very difficult to do, we say it would be like murder to accomplish.   But that is what we suggest.   Not posting would to be thinking of murder.

Even if it is like murder to not think about June 4, take up the banner for June X or, if you wish, for June    , or Prairial 3.99.   Your choice.  Then we can completely forget June 4, and maybe that day, the internet can go silent, while millions remember. 

What Chinese cannot not talk about …

In a previous post, I mentioned the heavy hand of CCP coming down on internet access each year in the weeks leading up to date of the Tian’anmen Massacre in 1989.

What CCP sincerely wants is for Chinese netizens to model the three monkeys – see, hear, speak no evil – evil, of course, being in the eye of the CCP beholder and specifically any sight, sound, voice or thought related to the events leading up to and during June 4, 1989. 


But netizens are tenacious.  They are inventive in devising terms to get around blocking of all sorts, but particularly the blocking of 6-4 remembrance.

China Digital Times maintains a list of terms, indicating the extraordinary lengths to which Chinese netizens go to communicate about 6-4, or May 35, or any of dozens of other made up ways to refer to the date.  My current favorite is 82 = 64.

In spite of netizen tenacity, the government crackdown on public knowledge about Tian’anmen has worked very well.  While the “tank man” photo is recognized worldwide, it is nearly unknown in China.  My undergraduate students did not know what it was – or would not admit to knowing.  In 2014, the Onion had a headline – Chinese Citizens Observe 25-year Moment of Silence for Tian’anmen Square Massacre.  In 2013, Louisa Lim, author of Republic of Amnesia, found that 85% of Beijing  college students could not identify the picture.

And in truth, 1989 was a long time ago for young Chinese.  That was then, this is now.  In June, 2014 Robert Hariman noted how complete the erasure of history has been for most Chinese – a public act of protest against the authoritarian state has been replaced with political quiescence on behalf of commercial consumption. 


Michela Buttignol/New York Times

Also in 2014, China Law & Policy published a moving short biography of Wang Nan, originally published in People’s Republic of Amnesia.  (Video at Louisa Lim at Google).  In 2014, Wang Nan was a 45 year old photojournalist with a wife and family – except that he never made it to 45.  He was killed at Tian’anmen as a 19 year old student. 

China Law and Policy

His mother remembers her son.  Along with others, she is monitored heavily around this time each year.  She is one of the Tian’anmen mothers.

http://api.pictures.reuters.com/archive/CHINA-TIANANMEN-MOTHER-GM1EA640E8X01

Helen Gao, writing Tian’anmen, Forgotten in the New York Times in 2014 –

I do remember the first time the topic came up in conversation with my Chinese peers. On June 4, 2009, the 20th anniversary of the crackdown, I was shopping with a friend at a convenience store near Tsinghua University, when she, a junior at the university, turned to me, next to a shelf of colorful shampoos and conditioners. “Some people have been talking about this incident, liu si,” she said. “What was it all about?”

One of my minor subversive acts teaching in China was to accommodate Chinese undergrads who talked with me after class – “We want to know what happened.”   I gave them a three hour video documentary in Chinese about the events of the days.  The Gate of Heavenly Peace – part 1 and Part 2 was produced in 1995 with compiled videos and interviews with students, teachers, and observers of the events.  This is an extraordinary documentary.  There are some English subtitles.

No doubt that video has been shared.  I felt a bit like Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, retrieving truth from the west.

Outside the mainland, remembrance persists – in Hong Kong, in Taiwan, in the Chinese diaspora. The date is remembered each year in Hong Kong, to the worry and dismay of mainland officials.  The commemoration is one way that young people in Hong Kong express themselves as HongKongers, not Chinese. Typical of the response in Hong Kong is this from China Digital Times – Hong Kong Marks June 4 Anniversary.  Some of my mainland Chinese undergraduates expressed some anger at students in Hong Kong, deriding them as bad Chinese – disloyal and “stirring up trouble” – a common arrest charge on the mainland.

CCP likes to use Confucian chapter and verse to support its policies.  There is a paragraph in the Analects that would seem to recommend the stance of the three monkeys to all Chinese –  “Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety” (Analects Book 12 (Yan Yuan) para 1)

But this is not a recommendation to self censorship. Confucius is speaking of a man in control of his emotions, assured of his correctness, the Junzi– without anxiety or fear, as is pointed out in the same book, paragraph 4.  Censorship is the action of a man anxious or afraid, suppressing citizens’ lack of confidence in rule. In paragraph 7, the Master said that military equipment and even food sufficiency may be given up in extremis, if the people have confidence in their rulers.  Otherwise, the Master said, there is no standing for the state.

Censorship betrays the anxiety and fear in CCP.  In a far different context, Bill Clinton reminded us that a strong grip is the sign of a weak hand.  Netizens constantly remind CCP that the Chinese people are as Sun Yat-sen said in 1924 – a handful of sand, without a strong commitment to the CCP variety of nationalism and unmoldable to the model of a good communist soldier – willing to sacrifice all, even memory and moral freedom, for the benefit of the state.

CCP must walk a fine line – Xi Jinping just got through extolling the actions of student protesters of the May Fourth Movement in 1919, a foundational time for CCP. For CCP, also, that was then, this is now.  Student protesters in 1989, and since, are subject to arrest, jail, or murder.  See The Ideology of Occupation on arrest and disappearance of Peking U students trying to be good Marxists. 

This year, 30 years later, the heavier than usual blocking should be starting about now.  CCP must be always on guard against thinking that will pollute minds of Chinese.  Otherwise, as the Master said, there may be no standing for the state.

Huawei – Taking a Fall, Hoping for a Call

Pardon the soccer reference.  But to my mind, that is the Huawei move.  But Huawei has the support of the fans, at least in China, and they are vocal.

Don Clarke, professor of law at George Washington University, has penned this response to the declaration of the Zhong Lun law firm in Beijing, in support of Huawei as an innocent private company caught in a nasty trade spat.  According to the declaration, no company in China is ever required to comply with demands from the central government to install spyware or backdoors in any communication equipment.   Clarke points out that this is misleading and inaccurate.  Chinese law says nothing about what provincial and local governments might demand from a company, and in any case, law is not a constraint. 

“There’s a whole variety of pressures that the government can bring to bear on a company or individual, and they are not at all limited to criminal prosecution Clarke says.  “China is a Leninist state that does not recognize any limits to government power.”

From Clarke’s China Collection  blog –

Last May, two attorneys from the Zhong Lun law firm submitted a declaration to the FCC in support of Huawei’s position that it could not be compelled by the Chinese authorities to install backdoors, eavesdropping facilities, or other spyware in telecommunications equipment it manufactured or sold. I finally had the time to look at the declaration in detail. I don’t find it convincing. I have written up a pretty full analysis (over 10 single-spaced pages) and posted it here on SSRN. Enjoy.

Incidentally, my colleague Jacques deLisle of the University of Pennsylvania Law School also submitted a statement of his views, which largely support Huawei’s position. (I hope I have not characterized his statement unfairly.) Needless to say, I don’t agree, but the paper here is an analysis of the arguments of the Zhong Lun submission, not Jacques’. Those who are interested can read Jacques’ statement for themselves.

 Even we non-lawyers can read.  I wrote about this previously in Lie Down with Dogs, Get Up with Fleas

 Don Clarke’s analysis –

The Zhong Lun Declaration on the Obligations of Huawei and Other Chinese Companies Under Chinese Law (March 17, 2019)

Added March 22:  Steve Dickinson at China Law Blog on the new foreign investment law, which has been touted as an improvement in business conditions and a response to forced technology transfer – https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/03/chinas-new-foreign-investment-law-and-forced-technology-transfer-same-as-it-ever-was.html      Steve’s conclusion – 

Article 22 of China’s new Foreign Investment Law is not relevant to the issue of forced technology transfer. On that front absolutely nothing has changed and nobody should expect it to either.

Added May 25: Christopher Balding and Donald Clarke on Who Owns Huawei?  Huawei claims to be employee-owned.  But their shares are not ownership, but contract rights in a profit-sharing plan.  To the extent ownership is vested in a trade union, Chinese law does not grant ownership rights to employees if the company or trade union go bust.  It appears that ultimately Huawei could be state-owned, since all trade unions are part of the state.

Huawei responds

Don Clarke’s rebuttal.  Huawei makes no case for employee-ownership and does not refute any facts in the Balding-Clarke paper.