Tag: Censorship house-arrest brutality extortion

More on Monkey See, Monkey Do

Two years ago I wrote a bit about the governor of Florida enlisting students to record and spy on college teachers to ascertain whether instructors were deviating from the permitted DeSantis script on American history and morals. DeSantis (and his GOP ilk) were clearly borrowing policy from CCP, which encourages students to report teachers to CCP discipline inspection organizations for punishment if they mentioned support for … well, anything of which CCP does not approve. Of course the boundaries of such limits are left vague, in accord with CCP practice – no way to tell when a red line is crossed, so self-censorship becomes the norm. See Monkey See, Monkey Do. I warned DeSantis against his choice of Chinese imports, but apparently my entreaty fell on deaf ears.

Now from William Spivey at The Polis comes news of the free expression crisis at East Florida State College – Eastern Florida State College Shuts Down Class Over Civil Rights Discussion. From the Spivey post –

It should come as no surprise that a US government class was canceled on March 9th before it started in Ron DeSantis’s Florida because a single student filled out a complaint form saying they were “uncomfortable with the subject.” Josh Humphries, a political science instructor, sent home the class of twenty students to “avoid a disruptive situation,” according to an EFSC spokesman.

“There’s a climate of fear, an atmosphere created by Gov. Ron DeSantis, that has blurred the lines between scared and opportunistic. The victims of this censorship are history and the truth.”

In DeSantis’s Florida, teachers don’t know what to teach, and administrators don’t know what is allowed. The penalty is severe; they could either lose their jobs, be charged with a third-degree felony, or both. Welcome to Florida! Should this man become President, people will look back fondly on Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education, until she resigned after he tried to overturn an election. We won’t learn from our history because people will be afraid to teach it.

Not only welcome to Florida. Welcome to education under the Xi Jinping Communist Party. Who would have guessed that GOP and CCP would have so much in common?

(Actually, I did. See my series Xi, CCP, DJT, GOP from almost five years ago)

Could CCP Ban Hank Williams?

There is no civil society in mainland China, only the elite between the current emperor and the people. Now civil society – not to mention playful music – is quickly being banished from Hong Kong.

But first – the Hong Kong government has issued a “welcome back to Hong Kong” video aimed at foreigner tourists and business people. A Bloomberg story is here.

The launch video is a bit bizarre – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYIS9DQkAkE.

The welcome back has a sour undertone. CCP is still unhappy. CCP always claims to speak for all 1.4 billion Chinese when their feelings are hurt. And since Hong Kong has been aggressively taken, CCP deigns to speak for those Chinese who don’t see themselves as Hong Kongers and whose feelings are hurt by insensitive foreigners.

A good example of the fragility of the feelings of the Chinese people is in the 2023 CCP banishment of the song It Might Break Your Pinky Heart by Namewee and Kimberley Chen. From the Radio Free Asia article – They sing repeated apologies to a dancing panda, who lives in a hobbit-style house and waves a flag bearing the online insult “NMSL,” frequently used by Little Pinks to wish death on the mothers of those they believe have insulted China or hurt the feelings of its people.  “Sorry that I hurt your feelings,” Namewee and Chen sing, amid the sound of breaking glass. “I hear the sound of fragile self-esteem breaking into 1,000 pieces.”

Watch It Might Break Your Pinky Heart. You might get the allusions to Xi as the dancing panda and the baskets of cotton in reference to the forced labor in Xinjiang.

So … what CCP has done is banish artists and a song that apologizes (albeit a bit over the top) to those people in Hong Kong who want to kill others for disrespecting CCP. 

All while trying to woo foreigners back – “those last four years? That’s gone. Never mind. Don’t worry. Be happy.”

Someone reading this who has more lyrical skill than I should be able to pen a followup song to be banned – a rendition of Hank Williams’ Cold, Cold Heart  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQmzp-NA5PM   with Xi Jinping singing to Hong Kongers –

 
I tried so hard my dear to show that you’re my every dream.
Yet you’re afraid each thing I do is just some evil scheme
A memory from your lonesome past keeps us so far apart
Why can’t I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold cold heart
 
Another love before my time made your heart sad and blue
And so my heart is paying now for things I didn’t do
In anger unkind words are said that make the teardrops start
Why can’t I free your doubtful mind, and melt your cold cold heart
 
You’ll never know how much it hurts to see you sit and cry
You know you need and want my love yet you’re afraid to try
Why do you run and hide from life, to try it just ain’t smart
Why can’t I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold cold heart
 
There was a time when I believed that you belonged to me
But now I know your heart is shackled to a memory
The more I learn to care for you, the more we drift apart
Why can’t I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold cold heart
 
 
 
All rights reserved on the new version  😉
 

The Great American Cultural Revolution

Further to  Xi, DJT, GOP, CCP

About two years ago, I wrote a series of posts pointing out similarities between Mr. Xi and Donald Trump and their respective political parties.  Now comes the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution – with American characteristics. 

We have a leader who promotes violence but keep his hands sufficiently clean by not leading, like Mao. We have a political party with fortunes tied to the words of this mercurial leader.  Dissension has risen within GOP, as it did in CCP, but the political leaders who are rebels will be slapped down. The entire party is in thrall to a crazed minority, who determine policy for years.  From a trumpian perspective, Mao’s famous quote is right on target – “there is great disorder under the Heavens and the situation is excellent.”

It would be too delicious if it weren’t so scary. I can’t help but paraphrase the wiki entry on the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Go ahead and read that first. Won’t take but a minute. The parallels are eerie.  Below, I changed a few words from the wiki.

The Cultural Revolution, formally the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopathic movement in the US from 2016. Launched by Donald Trump, leader of the Republican Party of the United States (GOP), its stated goal was to preserve racism and evangelical Christianity by purging remnants of truth-seeking and progressive traditional elements from American society, and to re-impose Donald Trump Thought (known outside China as moronism) as the dominant ideology in the GOP.

Beginning in 2016, Trump called on young people to bombard the headquarters and proclaimed that to rebel is justified. He insisted that GOP revisionists be removed through violent class struggle, to which America’s  youth, as well as some urban workers, responded by forming boogaloo and “Proud Bois” groups around the country.  In late 2020, Trump inserted political loyalists in the Defense Department, possibly as a prelude to use of the military in quelling or fomenting civilian unrest. He indicated his readiness for battle by clearing peaceful protests from Lafayette Park and posing for an iconic picture, not swimming in the Yangtze but in front of a church, holding a bible upside down.  Rebels were told to not be afraid and take charge of the movement themselves, independent of GOP loyalists.   On January 6, Trump wrote his own ‘big character poster’ – a series of tweets and a speech –‘ rallying people to target the “command center (i.e., Congress) of counterrevolution. From Trump’s speech – And I would love to have if those tens of thousands of people would be allowed the military, the Secret Service and we want to thank you and the police and law enforcement great you’re doing a great job, but I would love it if they could be allowed to come up with us. Is that possible? 

We see that now the rebel groups, as in China, are splitting into factions –  Feeling Betrayed, Far-Right Extremists Have a New Message for Trump: ‘Get Out of Our Way’

We await the American version of the Little Red Book.  Maybe it will come in the form of hundreds of twitter posts, and mass rallies at state capitols in support of Trumpism and its offshoot moronism.  Intellectuals, teachers, dissident party members and rightists (know in America as Democrats) will be targeted, just like in the old days.

The American version of the Cultural Revolution – as in China – severely damaged the economy, cost hundreds of thousands of lives in the virus pandemic.  Rebels damaged cultural sites (more damage expected this coming week). 

We await an announcement by the GOP, coming in about a decade, echoing the CCP – the Cultural Revolution was “responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the Party, the country, and the people since the founding of the Republic.”

In the meantime, we should expect the 2021 version of big character posters like this –

https://chineseposters.net/themes/criticize-lin-biao-confucius

Down with Michael Pence! Down with Lindsey Graham! Hold high the great red banner of Donald Trump Thought – Great Meeting to thoroughly criticize the reactionary capitalist line of Pence and Graham!

Rebels – the proles – have nothing to lose but their chains … and in the American case, their democracy.  If only Mao had lost that 1968 election, we wouldn’t have such a useful model for trumpians and their ilk ….

Lest We Forget June 4

In the social, economic, and cultural miasma that is the state of the world, we might let tomorrow slip by without notice.

A couple of old comments –

What Chinese cannot not talk about …

How to End June 4, et al.

 

Moral Freedom

In Moral China in the Age of Reform, Ci Jiwei, Professor of Philosophy at Chinese University of Hong Kong, explains that Chinese do not have moral freedom.  His detailed explanation should be required reading for all China observers.

 What does it mean that Chinese don’t have moral freedom?

 Ai Fen is a doctor in the emergency department of Wuhan Central Hospital.  She was the first medical person to tell the world about the virus.  She got the nickname whistle blower for being the first to tell other hospital doctors – including Li Wenliang, one of the first doctors to die.  Her story is in some detail here.

In interviews, she talked about being threatened by the hospital party leader and head of the jian cha ke, the hospital version of the jiwei, the feared CCP Discipline Inspection department.  The leader said that she lost face in Wuhan city government meetings, because of what Ai Fen had said publicly.  The party leader accused Ai Fen of hurting the overall development of Wuhan City, and destroying all the improvements the hospital Party leader had made over the prior years.  According to Ai –

After the interview, I suffered an unprecedented and very severe rebuke.

At that time, the leader of the conversation said, “We can’t afford to raise our heads when we go out for a meeting. The director of XX criticizes our hospital.

Ai was threatened with spreading rumors, for which she could go to jail.  The party leader, incidentally, refused to let doctors and nurses wear masks early in the epidemic – she would lose face and she said, masks would scare patients.  She did not appear in the hospital emergency department until mid-March, when there was a big showy meeting with leaders.  She wore full protective equipment then.  More than 200 – some say, 300 – of the hospital staff are still in treatment for the virus. 

Ai Fen’s story in her own words is at Science Integrity Digest.

Ai Fen walked out dazed and shaken from this criticism meeting with her leaders.  She had never been threatened before.  She is a medical doctor, with many years of schooling and she is, as they say in China, a really excellent person.  But after this warning, this threat, she remained quiet – until her later public interviews.

Two questions – why did Ai Fen – clearly a smart, well educated, thoughtful person – think that these wild accusations about harming the GDP of Wuhan were any of her affair, or even remotely her doing?   Why could she not respond to the Party leader – figuratively, of course – with a personally directed expletive?

A couple of ideas – Ai Fen is an excellent person.  All her life, she was told how to be a good daughter, a good student – primary school, high school, university, medical school – the emphasis was always on being the best.  On the one hand, nothing wrong with incentive and initiative.  But “being the best” also meant being a good soldier, a good Party member, do what you are told and – in one of my most hated phrases in Chinese – meiyou wenti – no questions.  One could not advance in school without learning to mouth the right answer.  Her salary, advancement, stature would depend not only on her excellence, but on her relationship with leaders.  Obey authority is the idea.

What meiyou wenti means is that Ai Fen could not develop the courage to make choices for herself about moral questions – what is right, what is wrong, truth, falsity.  She was always told the correct answer, and there was no room for debate.  Wo bi xu zuo –  I must do it.  Making these judgments requires experience, and she did not have it.  Her reaction, though troubling to her, was to obey.

When presented with the virus diagnosis in December, she did the professional thing – circulate information to her colleagues.  This is science at its best – share information, seek the truth. This, however, was a political error – in CCP terms, an error in moral judgment.  When confronted by the leaders, she then chose to remain silent.

When confronted with power, she could only be in fear of what could happen to her personally from her inexperienced action. As a doctor, she always concentrated on her studies and her work. She was always shielded from the world of real power.  She is young, with two small kids, one a year old.  Jail?  Simply disappear?  She warned her husband after the severe reprimand –

I went home that night, I remember quite clearly, and told my husband after entering the door, if something went wrong, you can raise the child. Because my second treasure is still very young, only over 1 year old.

Most Chinese never have to deal with issues of moral freedom.  They have the luxury of living life, going to work, going to school, going shopping without having to confront issues of right or wrong, truth or falsity and making considered moral judgments – even voting or choosing what can be said or printed. That is what CCP wants.  Others – journalists, writers, artists, social scientists, intellectuals of all stripes – confront lack of moral freedom in some way every day.  In Wuhan, moral freedom came for Ai Fen.  With the interviews, Ai Fen found courage. She rose above CCP, and gained moral stature- not in CCP, but in eyes of the world.

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.

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.

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.