Mo Yan against the martyrs

Source: China Media Project (3/11/24)
Mo Yan Against the Martyrs
A spat about the red credentials of one of China’s most celebrated writers has been blown out of proportion on the Chinese internet, thanks to harsher nationalist laws and an increasingly rabid cancel culture.
By Alex Colville

Mo Yan.

One of China’s most celebrated modern authors is in the firing line, and the ammunition is a hardline 2018 law on the protection of heroes and martyrs. The Nobel Prize-winning writer Mo Yan (莫言) has irked extreme nationalist bloggers on the internet, one of whom, writing under the account name “Mao Xinghuo Who Speaks the Truth” (说真话的毛星火), filed a court order late last month to remove Mo Yan’s books from circulation and force him to pay 1.5 billion RMB in damages to the Chinese people and “stop infringing on heroes and martyrs” in his fiction.

The blogger’s four-page indictment, submitted to the Beijing Procuratorate, meticulously lists Mo Yan’s supposed offenses, including portraying members of the Eighth Route Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War as sexually abusive, “beautifying” Japanese soldiers, insulting Mao Zedong, and saying that the Chinese people have “no truth and no common sense.”

A Weibo post from “Mao Xinghuo Who Speaks the Truth” details the bloggers accusations against writer Mo Yan.

“Such words and deeds have greatly hurt the feelings of the Chinese people,” Mao Xinghuo solemnly claims. “As an upright and patriotic young man, I feel very angry. How does the country allow such behavior to exist?” The blogger has been trying to bring a case against Mo Yan for months, and has asked publishers not to work with him. Fellow nationalist bloggers rallied to the cause, pointing to the more sexually explicit parts of his oeuvre as pornographic.

The incident shows how the active efforts of China’s leadership in recent years to enforce nationalist sentiment around the sanitized history of the Party can backfire and turn on cultural figures who are seen as a source of national pride. Continue reading

Premier’s news conference

Source: NYT (3/6/24)
A Window Into Chinese Government Has Now Slammed Shut
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Once a year, the premier held a news conference, explaining the economy and giving Chinese a taste of political participation. That has come to an end.
By Li Yuan

Rows of government officials sit on a wide stage decorated in red and gold with an audience that includes media, standing with cameras recording the event.

Premier Li Qiang spoke from a dais during the opening session of the National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Tuesday. The annual news conference used to close the congress. Credit…Andy Wong/Associated Press

For more than 30 years, the Chinese premier’s annual news conference was the only time that a top leader took questions from journalists about the state of the country. It was the only occasion for members of the public to size up for themselves China’s No. 2 official. It was the only moment when some Chinese might feel a faint sense of political participation in a country without elections.

On Monday, China announced that the premier’s news conference, marking the end of the country’s annual rubber-stamp legislature, will no longer be held. With that move, an important institution of China’s reform era was no more.

“Welcome to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” a commenter wrote on the social media platform Weibo, reflecting the sentiment that China increasingly resembles its dictatorial, hermitic neighbor. The search term “news conference” was censored on Weibo, and very few comments remained by Monday evening Beijing time.

Although increasingly scripted, the premier’s news conference at the National People’s Congress was watched by the Chinese public and the world’s political and business elite for signs of economic policy shifts and, occasionally, high-level power plays taking place beneath the surface.

“As stage-managed as it was, it was a window to see how official China works and how official China explains itself to the Chinese people and to the wider world,” said Charles Hutzler, a former colleague of mine who attended 24 premier pressers since 1988 as a journalist for the Voice of America, The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal. Continue reading

China has thousands of Navalnys hidden from the public

Source: NYT (2/29/24)
China Has Thousands of Navalnys, Hidden From the Public
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China has no dissident with the kind of public profile that Aleksei A. Navalny had. The government has many critics, but they all disappear from view.
By Li Yuan

People at night standing along a tall iron fence outside a building with barred windows. Some are holding a large photo of Aleksei A. Navalny.

Outside the Russian Embassy in Warsaw on Feb. 16, the day Aleksei Navalny died in prison. Credit…Sergei Gapon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

After watching “Navalny,” the documentary about the Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, a Chinese businesswoman messaged me, “Ren Zhiqiang is China’s Navalny.” She was talking about the retired real estate tycoon who was sentenced to 18 years in prison for criticizing China’s leader, Xi Jinping.

After Mr. Navalny’s tragic death this month, a young dissident living in Berlin posted on X, “Teacher Li is closest to the Chinese version of Navalny.” He was referring to the rebel influencer known as Teacher Li, who used social media to share information about protests in China and who now fears for his life.

There are others: Liu Xiaobo, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who died in government custody in 2017, and Xu Zhiyong, the legal scholar who is serving 14 years in prison on charges of subversion.

The sad fact is that there’s no Chinese equivalent of Mr. Navalny because there’s no opposition party in China, and therefore no opposition leader.

It’s not for lack of trying. Many courageous Chinese stood up to the most powerful authoritarian government in the world. Since 2000, the nonprofit humanitarian organization Duihua has recorded the cases of 48,699 political prisoners in China, with 7,371 now in custody. None of them has the type of name recognition among the Chinese public that Mr. Navalny did in Russia. Continue reading

When SF Meets Political Fact

Source: China Media Project (2/22/24)
When Science Fiction Meets Political Fact
A win for China in the Best Novella category at the 2023 Hugo Awards for science fiction has been lauded by state media amid global controversy over authors being shut out of the Chengdu-hosted event. But many Chinese readers have panned the winning work — and some suspect that its victory is politically too convenient.
By Alex Colville

Hugo Awards celebration.

To the surprise of no one who understands the Chinese leadership’s obsessive control of ideas, news broke last week that a prestigious international book award was subject to censorship when held in China last October. File 770, a science fiction blog, revealed in a special report how the selection panel of the Hugo Awards in Chengdu had obeyed local laws and regulations, vetting the eligibility of finalists based on their stance on sensitive political issues. The blog also found evidence that Sichuan’s propaganda bureau had conducted “strict checks” on works at the convention.

For those paying closer attention, the red flags had flown at least six months before the awards were held, as rules published by Chengdu WorldCon said content considered for awards would only include works and individuals “that comply with local laws and regulations.” In China, local laws and regulations always abide by the political discipline of the Chinese Communist Party. Foreseeing trouble did not require a vivid imagination.

In media coverage outside China, the most obvious focus has been those writers excluded by Chengdu’s skewed process — including the likes of R.F. Kuang, Neil Gaiman, and Paul Weimer. But what about those writers who were boosted? Continue reading

Emigres are creating an alternative China

Source: NYT (2/23/24)
Émigrés Are Creating an Alternative China, One Bookstore at a Time
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From Thailand to America, Chinese denied a safe public space for discussion in their home country have found hope in diaspora communities.
By Li Yuan (Reporting from Tokyo; Taipei, Taiwan; and Chiang Mai, Thailand)

“What matters is not what you oppose but what kind of life you desire,” said Anne Jieping Zhang, the owner of bookstores in Taipei and Chiang Mai, Thailand. Credit…Simon Simard for The New York Times

On a rainy Saturday afternoon in central Tokyo, 50 or so Chinese people packed into a gray, nondescript office that doubles as a bookstore. They came for a seminar about Qiu Jin, a Chinese feminist poet and revolutionary who was beheaded more than a century ago for conspiring to overthrow the Qing dynasty.

Like them, Ms. Qiu had lived as an immigrant in Japan. The lecture’s title, “Rebuilding China in Tokyo,” said as much about the aspirations of the people in the room as it did about Ms. Qiu’s life.

Public discussions like this one used to be common in big cities in China but have increasingly been stifled over the past decade. The Chinese public is discouraged from organizing and participating in civic activities.

In the past year, a new type of Chinese public life has emerged — outside China’s borders in places like Japan.

“With so many Chinese relocating to Japan,” said Li Jinxing, a human rights lawyer who organized the event in January, “there’s a need for a place where people can vent, share their grievances, then think about what to do next.” Mr. Li himself moved to Tokyo from Beijing last September over concerns for his safety. “People like us have a mission to drive the transformation of China,” he said. Continue reading

Leaked files

Source: NYT (2/22/24)
Leaked Files Show the Secret World of China’s Hackers for Hire
China has increasingly turned to private companies in campaigns to hack foreign governments and control its domestic population.
Paul MozurKeith BradsherJohn Liu and Paul Mozur reported from Taipei, Keith Bradsher from Beijing, John Liu from Seoul and Aaron Krolik from New York.)

The exterior of the I-Soon office in Chengdu, China.

The I-Soon office building in Chengdu, China, on Tuesday. Credit…Dake Kang/Associated Press

The hackers offered a menu of services, at a variety of prices.

A local government in southwest China paid less than $15,000 for access to the private website of traffic police in Vietnam. Software that helped run disinformation campaigns and hack accounts on X cost $100,000. For $278,000 Chinese customers could get a trove of personal information behind social media accounts on platforms like Telegram and Facebook.

The offerings, detailed in leaked documents, were a portion of the hacking tools and data caches sold by a Chinese security firm called I-Soon, one of the hundreds of enterprising companies that support China’s aggressive state-sponsored hacking efforts. The work is part of a campaign to break into the websites of foreign governments and telecommunications firms.

The materials, which were posted to a public website last week, revealed an eight-year effort to target databases and tap communications in South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, India and elsewhere in Asia. The files also showed a campaign to closely monitor the activities of ethnic minorities in China and online gambling companies.

The data included records of apparent correspondence between employees, lists of targets and material showing off cyberattack tools. Three cybersecurity experts interviewed by The New York Times said the documents appeared to be authentic.

Taken together, the files offered a rare look inside the secretive world of China’s state-backed hackers for hire. They illustrated how Chinese law enforcement and its premier spy agency, the Ministry of State Security, have reached beyond their own ranks to tap private-sector talent in a hacking campaign that United States officials say has targeted American companies and government agencies. Continue reading

Genetics journal retracts 19 papers from China

The new announcement described below, of the retraction of multiple articles involving scientist’s abuse of ethnic minority people in China, comes right after Nature published a damning review of how slow the retraction process has often been, despite some scientists’ and editors’ recent awakening to the abuse:

“Unethical studies on Chinese minority groups are being retracted — but not fast enough, critics say. Campaigners who want scrutiny of biometrics research on Uyghurs, Tibetans and other groups are frustrated by slow progress.” By Dyani Lewis. Nature 625, 650-654 (2024). [24 January 2024 ]. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00170-0

See below for the latest batch of retractments of such abusive studies, mostly by scientists targeting Tibetans and Uyghurs; the scientists themselves being mostly Chinese and sometimes joined by Western collaborators, all of whom are now waking up to the absence of ethics in Chinese science in the era of China’s genocidal policies against Tibetans and Uyghurs.

Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Source: The Guardian (2/14/24)
Genetics journal retracts 18 papers from China due to human rights concerns
Researchers used samples from populations deemed by experts and campaigners to be vulnerable to exploitation, including Uyghurs and Tibetans
By Amy Hawkins, Senior China correspondent

A genetics journal from a leading scientific publisher has retracted 18 papers from China, in what is thought to be the biggest mass retraction of academic research due to concerns about human rights.

The articles were published in Molecular Genetics & Genomic Medicine (MGGM), a genetics journal published by the US academic publishing company Wiley. The papers were retracted this week after an agreement between the journal’s editor in chief, Suzanne Hart, and the publishing company. In a review process that took over two years, investigators found “inconsistencies” between the research and the consent documentation provided by researchers. Continue reading

China tries a friendlier image

Source: NYT (2/14/24)
As China Tries to Present a Friendlier Image, a New Face Emerges
Liu Jianchao is a Communist Party diplomat skilled at defending tough positions without being pugnacious. He also once hunted fugitive officials abroad.
By David Pierson, Reporting from Hong Kong

A man in a suit stands behind a lectern and in front of a screen with logos that say “World Peace Forum.”

Liu Jianchao heads the diplomatic arm of the Communist Party in China. Many describe him as more informal and engaging than other Chinese officials. Credit…Andy Wong/Associated Press

Faced with declining foreign investment at home, China has sought to soften its image in the United States and Europe and make nice with some of its neighbors. One Communist Party official has played an unusually prominent role in the shift in tone.

In New York, he told an audience of scholars and businesspeople that China did not seek to rewrite the United States-led global order. In Paris, he said that China’s modernization would benefit Europe and the world. In Beijing, he told the ambassador of India, a regional rival, that China hoped relations would “return to a healthy and stable” track.

The official, Liu Jianchao, heads the Communist Party’s diplomatic arm, a body that promotes the party’s ideology and influence abroad. His recent engagements suggest to analysts, however, that he has been auditioning for the role of China’s next foreign minister.

For Beijing, appointing a new foreign minister, potentially as soon as in March during a legislative meeting, would help steady the country’s diplomatic apparatus after a dramatic shake-up last year. Continue reading

Censorship targets critics of the economy

Source: NYT (1/31/24)
China’s Censorship Dragnet Targets Critics of the Economy
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As Beijing struggles with a slumping stock market and a collapsing real estate sector, commentary and even financial analysis it deems negative are blocked.
By Daisuke Wakabayashi and Reporting from Seoul

A 2012 interview with the economist Wu Jinglian seen as criticizing current China policy was taken down from WeChat after it recirculated last year. Credit…Vivek Thakker

China’s top intelligence agency issued an ominous warning last month about an emerging threat to the country’s national security: Chinese people who criticize the economy.

In a series of posts on its official WeChat account, the Ministry of State Security implored citizens to grasp President Xi Jinping’s economic vision and not be swayed by those who sought to “denigrate China’s economy” through “false narratives.” To combat this risk, the ministry said, security agencies will focus on “strengthening economic propaganda and public opinion guidance.”

China is intensifying its crackdown while struggling to reclaim the dynamism and rapid economic growth of the past. Beijing has censored and tried to intimidate renowned economists, financial analysts, investment banks and social media influencers for bearish assessments of the economy and the government’s policies. In addition, news articles about people experiencing financial struggles or the poor living standards for migrant workers are being removed.

China has continued to offer a rosy outlook for the economy, noting that it beat its forecast for economic growth of 5 percent last year without resorting to risky, expensive stimulus measures. Beyond the numbers, however, its financial industry is struggling to contain enormous amounts of local government debt, its stock market is reeling and its property sector is in crisis. China Evergrande, the high-flying developer felled by over $300 billion in debt, was ordered into liquidation on Monday. Continue reading

What does the Party stand to gain from AI

Source: China Media Project (1/30/24)
What Does the Party Stand to Gain from AI?
With the help of AI, CCP propaganda is becoming more targeted, accessible, and quickly made than ever before. We found one state-backed AI website and took it for a test drive.
By Alex Colville

Since ChatGPT was unveiled to the world just over two years ago, prompting what some have called an “artificial intelligence revolution,” China has been playing catch-up. But when it comes to applying AI to super-fuel the media control and propaganda objectives of the government, both at home and overseas, China may be ahead of the game — even if the results so far are mixed.

For a closer look at China’s plans for AI-driven propaganda and messaging, we spent a bit of time with Zhongke Wenge (中科闻歌), a company touted in China Daily as having “established a panoramic international communication” system, integrating AI-based news gathering, content production, editing, and impact analysis. Zhongke Wenge is one of a growing number of companies in China offering AI-based communication services to answer the call of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Back in 2018, President Xi Jinping identified it as a “necessary” mission for the CCP “to develop artificial intelligence systems suitable for government services.” Two years later, a set of opinions from the Party’s Central Committee urged media specifically to use AI to improve the quality of their content, innovate new ways to tell the news, and integrate the Party’s messaging into both domestic and international outlets. Last year, CCP mouthpiece People’s Daily  highlighted how AI can use big data to generate images, text, and in-depth analysis “in seconds,” and this month urged the development of “AI-aided translation software” to assist with outreach overseas. Continue reading

Shih Ming-teh dies at 83

Source: NYT (1/23/24)
Shih Ming-teh, Defiant Activist for a Democratic Taiwan, Dies at 83
He spent 25 years in prison for campaigning for Taiwan’s independence and democratization. After his release, he led protests to oust one its presidents.
By Chris Buckley and 

A black and white photo of Shih Ming-teh in a suit jacket over an open-collared shirt as helmeted police officers escort him toward a courtroom. He is smiling, and his hands are in his pockets.

Shih Ming-teh being taken into court in 1980 to face trial after he helped lead a pro-democracy protest in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, that was brutally broken up by the police. Credit…CNA

Shih Ming-teh, a lifelong campaigner for democracy in Taiwan who spent over two decades in prison for his cause and later started a protest movement against a president from his former party, died on Jan. 15, his 83rd birthday, in Taipei, the island’s capital.

The cause was complications of an operation to remove a liver tumor, said his wife, Chia-chiun Chen Shih.

Mr. Shih helped lead a pro-democracy protest in 1979 that was brutally broken up by the police and that is now viewed as a turning point in Taiwan’s journey from authoritarianism to democracy. When he stood trial over the confrontation, he smiled defiantly to the cameras, although his original teeth had been shattered years before under police torture, and delivered a groundbreaking argument for Taiwan’s independence from China, an idea banned under the rule of Chiang Kai-shek and then his son, Chiang Ching-kuo.

“I was imprisoned for 25 years, and I faced the possibility of the death penalty twice, but each time I came out, I instantly plunged back into the whole effort to overthrow the Chiang family dictatorship,” Mr. Shih said in an interview with The New York Times in 2022. “I’m someone who never had a youth.” Continue reading

U-lock

Source: China Digital Times (1/18/24)
Word of the Week: “U-LOCK” (U型锁, U-XÍNGSUǑ)
Posted by 

This month, there have been a number of incidents—some major and some minor—that illustrate the “U-lock” mentality, a phrase that is sometimes used as shorthand to describe vitriolic xenophobic (particularly anti-Japanese) sentiment. “U-lock” refers to a U-shaped metal bicycle lock used to attack the Chinese owner of a Japanese-made car during the 2012 anti-Japanese protests in Xi’an. Ever since, Chinese internet users have used the term “U-lock” to refer to knee-jerk, xenophobic sentiment with the potential to incite real-world violence.

The “U-lock” mentality was on display in some of the rejoicing and Schadenfreude on Chinese social media after a destructive magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck western Japan on New Year’s Day of this year. Some nationalist commenters even claimed that the earthquake was “retribution” for past Japanese transgressions, from the conquest of Asia during WWII, up to and including last September’s initial release of treated nuclear wastewater from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Just a week after the earthquake came the Nanning Metro “rising sun/folding fan” flap, set in motion by a nationalistic Douyin vlogger who complained that a colorful new advertisement on the Nanning metro system resembled the controversial former “rising sun” flag of the Imperial Japanese Army. Nanning Metro quickly backed down, deleting the offending imagery and promising to improve its oversight of future advertising, but a look at the entirety of the advertisement revealed that the image was not a Japanese rising sun at all, but a traditional Chinese folding fan. Some online observers chalked the incident up to nationalist trolls attempting to whip up anti-Japanese sentiment through deliberate misrepresentation or intentional misdirection (指鹿为马, zhǐlùwéimǎ, literally “pointing at a deer and calling it a horse.”) Others characterized it as an example of “porcelain bumping” (碰瓷, pèngcí)—in other words, creating a sham scenario to fool the unwary and advance one’s own agenda. (The term was coined, noted David Bandurski, “to describe a technique used by fraudsters who would wait with delicate porcelain vessels outside busy markets and demand payment when these shattered, ostensibly due to the carelessness of others.”) Continue reading

Rocky road for HK academics

Source: Hong Kong Free Press (1/20/24)
Opinion: Rocky road for those Hong Kong academics who are out of tune with the times
“It is difficult to feel optimistic about the future of Hong Kong universities generally if they are to be the playthings of political appointees who are unwilling or unable to respect the limits of their powers and rights,” writes Tim Hamlett.
By TIM HAMLETT

An amusing coincidence last week. A kind friend sent me an interesting op ed piece from the China Daily about recent events at Harvard University, where the president recently resigned under pressure from major donors.

Students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. File photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

Students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. File photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

The writer of this piece mentioned, in passing, how lucky we were that such a thing could not happen in Hong Kong, because our universities enjoyed autonomy and were immune to interference from the government.

I proceeded to breakfast and the morning paper, which announced that the Vice Chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong had resigned a few days into what was supposed to be a three-year contract.

The resigning V.C., Rocky Tuan, made all the usual polite noises: honour to serve… time is ripe… grateful to all concerned for their support. The chairman of the university council also made the usual polite noises: university is grateful … outstanding leadership, etc, etc, etc.

And behind all this, as the local media reported with varying degrees of candour, was a four-year campaign by the pro-government camp to get rid of Prof Tuan, who had, in 2019, not found the safe course for university leaders in a time of crisis, which was to hide in the office and say nothing. Continue reading

KMT fights to survive

Source: Wall Street Journal (1/19/24)
Party Backing China in Taiwan Fights to Survive
By Chun Han Wong

Kuomintang candidate Hou Yu-ih speaks at a campaign rally. I- HWA CHENG/ AGENCE FRANCE- PRESSE/ GETTY IMAGES

TAIPEI—Beijing’s closest political partner in Taiwan is fighting to remain relevant in an island democracy where voters increasingly see a future that is detached from an authoritarian China.

The Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, once governed China and had dominated Taiwanese politics for decades. It is now on its longest losing streak in presidential elections since this self-ruled island started choosing its leader by popular vote, consigned to a third straight term in opposition.

Whether the century-old party can get back on its feet has ramifications for Taipei’s rocky relationship with Beijing, which claims Taiwan as its territory and considers the KMT a useful partner in efforts to assimilate the island. The prospect that Taiwanese voters might never elect a Beijingfriendly government again could tilt China toward harsher methods to seek unification, including military force.

KMT leaders have put on a brave face, saying they still have the clout to keep Taiwan’s ruling party in check during the next four years. But many members worry that, without decisive overhauls, one of Asia’s oldest political parties could fade into irrelevance, as more Taiwanese embrace a local identity separate from China and reject the KMT’s perceived coziness with Beijing. Continue reading

Taiwan’s democracy draws envy and tears for visiting Chinese

Source: NYT (1/19/24)
Taiwan’s Democracy Draws Envy and Tears for Visiting Chinese
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People with personal ties to China, on a tour to see Taiwan’s election up close, learned of the island’s path to democracy — messy, violent and, ultimately, inspiring.
By Li Yuan, Reporting from Taipei and Tainan, Taiwan

In an illustration, three faces peer skyward as campaign balloons float and streamers fly in front of a rally.

Credit…Xinmei Liu

At the Taipei train station, a Chinese human rights activist named Cuicui watched with envy as six young Taiwanese politicians campaigned for the city’s legislative seats. A decade ago, they had been involved in parallel democratic protest movements — she in China, and the politicians on the opposite side of the Taiwan Strait.

“We came of age as activists around the same time. Now they’re running as legislators while my peers and I are in exile,” said Cuicui, who fled China for Southeast Asia last year over security concerns.

Cuicui was one in a group of eight women I followed last week in Taiwan before the Jan. 13 election. Their tour was called “Details of a Democracy” and was put together by Annie Jieping Zhang, a mainland-born journalist who worked in Hong Kong for two decades before moving to Taiwan during the pandemic. Her goal is to help mainland Chinese see Taiwan’s election firsthand.

The women went to election rallies and talked to politicians and voters, as well as homeless people and other disadvantaged groups. They attended a stand-up comedy show by a man from China, now living in Taiwan, whose humor addressed topics that are taboo in his home country.

It was an emotional trip filled with envy, admiration, tears and revelations. Continue reading