Politics

posts on political issues relevant to Greater China

Chengdu overpass protest

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Source: China Digital Times (5/1/25)
The Chengdu Overpass Protest and Its Antecedents: “The People Do Not Want a Political Party With Unchecked Power”
By Cindy Carter

Three long white banners hang from an overpass, twisting in the wind. The sky is still dark, the streetlights are on, and the taillights of two vehicles—a car and a truck—glow red as they pass by on the left. Also at left, several illuminated traffic signs (in blue and green, respectively) are visible in the distance.

The three banners hanging from a pedestrian overpass near Chengdu’s Chadianzi Bus Station. Local netizens confirmed the location of the photo, which is close to Chengdu’s Third Ring Road, based on the street layout and the illuminated signs visible in the background.

In the early hours of the morning of April 15, 2025, a lone protester lashed three long white banners with red, hand-painted political slogans to the railings of a pedestrian overpass near a bus station in Chengdu, and unfurled them to the street below. As he would later confide to the owners of several whistle-blowing social media accounts to whom he turned for help in amplifying his message, it was a protest he had been planning for over a year. The three slogans opposing autocracy and demanding democracy read as follows:

  1. There can be no “national rejuvenation” without systemic political reform
  2. The People do not want a political party with unchecked power.
  3. China does not need someone to “point the way forward.” Democracy is the way forward. [Chinese]

The date of the protest is significant because it was the anniversary of the April 15, 1989 death of former General Secretary Hu Yaobang—who for many symbolizes a more progressive, possibly even more democratic “path not taken.” (In the spring of 1989, mourning for Hu’s death coalesced into the massive protests that would later be crushed in the June 4 Tiananmen crackdown.) The language used in the slogans is quite measured, and references the CCP’s oft-lauded goal of “national rejuvenation.” Although Xi Jinping is not mentioned by name, the third slogan is a clear reference to the standard Party formulation of Xi Jinping “pointing the way forward” on various policy issues (at least 240, by one recent count). Continue reading Chengdu overpass protest →

China wants to silence RFA

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Source: NYT (5/2/25)
China Wants to Silence My Organization. Why Is Trump Doing It?
By Bay Fang (Ms. Fang is the president and chief executive of Radio Free Asia.)

An illustration of a journalist in a green suit with a microphone and a camera climbing up a ladder to mount a red wall. On the other side of the wall is a red flag. A man below in a suit is trying to cut the ladder with a chain saw.

Credit…Elaine L

In February 2020, weeks before Covid-19 paralyzed the world, the Radio Free Asia reporter Jane Tang received a panicked text from a source in Wuhan, China: “They are following me,” the message read. “I’m too scared to move.” Ms. Tang had been investigating China’s cover-up of a new disease that had spread through Wuhan when she learned that Li Zehua, a journalist who had quit his state media job to chase the story, was being trailed by the police. Shortly after Ms. Tang received the message, Mr. Li was arrested.

In contacting RFA, Mr. Li turned to one of the last reliable channels for on-the-ground, uncensored news in China. Since it was established in 1996 by the U.S. government in response to China’s massacre of pro-democracy student protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, RFA has reported from regions in Asia hostile to independent journalism: China, North Korea and Myanmar, among others, filling an important gap where free press outlets cannot exist.

RFA’s impact has been crucial in China, where the Chinese Communist Party maintains a stranglehold on all media. The party, which leads the world in imprisoning journalists, relentlessly monitors and surveils social media and punishes people for online comments that run afoul of Beijing’s official narrative. Its advanced censorship and surveillance technologies are constantly upgraded to block unsanctioned news from reaching ordinary Chinese people. Continue reading China wants to silence RFA →

What does China really think about Trump

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Source: The Guardian (4/13/25)
What does China really think about Trump? They know about humiliation and won’t take it from him
Economically, the trade war may be bad news for Xi Jinping, but ideologically and politically it is a gift
By

President Trump speaks about his tariffs at the White House on 2 April. Photograph: Carlos Barría/Reuters

Last week, Mao Ning, head of China’s foreign ministry information department, posted a blurry black -and -white clip of a moment in history. In 1953, the late Chairman Mao, in his heavily accented, high-pitched voice, made a defiant speech of resistance to what he called US aggression in Korea.

Kim Il-sung, the North Korean leader and founder of the Kim dynasty, now in its third generation, had invaded US-backed South Korea. When Kim’s attempt to unite Korea by force appeared to be failing, China threw nearly 3 million “volunteers” into the war and succeeded in fighting to the stalemate that has prevailed ever since.

There was no mistaking the symbolism of the image. As Donald Trump bragged to his acolytes in Washington that foreign leaders were queueing up and “kissing my ass”, Beijing was announcing a “fight to the end”.

Trump may be about to discover that it is unwise to insult Beijing. The harder he plays it, the harder Beijing will play it back. Continue reading What does China really think about Trump →

HK Democratic Party to disband

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Source: NYT (4/13/25)
A Chapter Closes: Hong Kong’s Democratic Party to Disband
The party, once the city’s largest opposition force, long championed a moderate approach. It ended up squeezed between a discontented populace and a repressive Beijing.
By Tiffany May, Reporting from Hong Kong

A man in a hoodie stands near a table covered with microphones as journalists shoot pictures of him.

Lo Kin-hei, the chairman of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party, at a news conference on Sunday. Credit…Tyrone Siu/Reuters

The Democratic Party in Hong Kong was for decades the city’s largest opposition party. It led protests demanding universal suffrage. Its lawmakers sparred with officials in the legislature about China’s encroachment on the region.

It was born in the 1990s of an audacious hope: that opposition politicians and activists could pressure Hong Kong’s iron-fisted rulers in Beijing to fulfill their promise of expanding democratic freedoms for the city of several million people.

On a rising wave of demands for democracy, the party grew to more than 1,000 members at its height in 2008. Its effort to maintain a moderate stance drew criticism, including from within its own ranks, from those seeking to push harder against Beijing. Yet moderation could not save the party’s leaders from being caught in the dragnet as China tightened its control over Hong Kong.

Now it is disbanding, one more casualty in Beijing’s suppression of Hong Kong’s once-vibrant political opposition.

Its leaders have been arrested and imprisoned on national security charges. Its members are effectively barred from running for local office, and routinely face harassment and threats. Raising money is hard. Continue reading HK Democratic Party to disband →

Lung’s call for reconciliation draws fierce backlash

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Source: Taipei Times (4/4/25)
Lung Ying-tai’s call for reconciliation with China draws fierce backlash
By Kuo Yen-hui, Huang Chi-hao, Tsai Pai-ling and Sam Garcia / Staff writers

Former minister of culture Lung Ying-tai is pictured in an undated photograph. Photo: Taipei Times

It is time for Taiwan to “reconcile with China,” former minister of culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) said in a New York Times op-ed this week, criticizing the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and President William Lai (賴清德) for antagonizing China and stirring fear among Taiwan’s public.

Titled “The Clock is Ticking for Taiwan” and published on Tuesday, Lung said in her article that with US President Donald Trump “casting aside democratic values and America’s friends, Taiwan must begin an immediate, serious national conversation about how to secure peace with China.”

Lai’s “provocative labeling of China as an enemy … [is] threatening peace and the progress Taiwan has made in building an open, democratic society,” she said.

Lung said that relations with China were the best under former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), when “reconciliation seemed possible.”

Lung served as Taiwan’s first minister of culture from 2012-2014 under the KMT and is a prominent writer and cultural critic. Continue reading Lung’s call for reconciliation draws fierce backlash →

The Clock Is Ticking for Taiwan

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Source: NYT (4/1/25)
The Clock Is Ticking for Taiwan
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By Yingtai Lung (Ms. Lung, a former culture minister of Taiwan, wrote from Taitung, Taiwan).

President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan and a group of soldiers holding up clenched fists and shouting in unison.

Credit…Ann Wang/Reuters

Taiwan’s cabdrivers are famously chatty, and after I settled into the back seat of a taxi in the island’s south recently, my cabby turned to me and cheerfully asked how my day was going, before abruptly declaring, “Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow.”

He was voicing a concern shared across Taiwan since President Trump pulled back on America’s strong support for Ukraine and added insult to injury by humiliating its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, at the White House in late February. Now people in Taiwan are wondering: If the United States could do that to Ukraine to cozy up to Russia, will it do the same to us to cozy up to China?

For decades, Taiwan’s leaders have framed our standoff with China — which claims Taiwan as its own territory and vows to take it, by force if necessary — as a defense of freedom and democracy, underpinned by the expectation that the United States would back us up if China were to invade. This created a false sense of security, allowing Taiwan’s politicians and people to delay a national reckoning over the best way for us to deal with China in order to ensure the long-term survival of our democracy. Continue reading The Clock Is Ticking for Taiwan →

Lai Ching-te’s security guards sentenced as Chinese spies

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Source: The Telegraph (3/27/25)
Taiwanese president’s security guards discovered to be Chinese spies
Our Foreign Staff

Lai Ching-te inspects the troops taking part in the Rapid Response Exercise

Three of the soldiers convicted worked as part of Lai Ching-te’s security detail – I-Hwa Cheng/Getty Images

Four Taiwanese soldiers have been sentenced to prison for leaking confidential information to China.

Three soldiers in charge of security for the presidential office and another in the defence ministry’s information and telecommunications command were convicted for violating national security law, the Taipei district court said on Wednesday.

The number of people prosecuted for spying for Beijing has risen sharply in recent years, with retired and serving members of the military targeted by Chinese infiltration efforts, official figures show.

“Their acts betrayed the country and endangered national security,” the court said in a statement.

It comes after Lai Ching-te, Taiwan’s president, announced in March his plans to reinstate military judges to hear Chinese espionage cases and other offences involving Taiwanese service members.

The soldiers received sentences ranging from five years and 10 months to seven years. Continue reading Lai Ching-te’s security guards sentenced as Chinese spies →

Filmmaker hit with harsh punishments

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Source: China Digital Times (3/28/25)
Chinese Indie Filmmaker Hit With Harsh “Cross-Provincial” Fine and Equipment Confiscation
By Cindy Carter

Despite troubling jurisdictional issues, the Urumqi Municipal Culture and Tourism Bureau in Xinjiang has imposed a fine of 75,000 yuan (US$10,300) on Yunnan-based artist and independent filmmaker Guo Zhenming (郭珍明) for “illegal filmmaking” activities. The administrative punishment also included the confiscation of Guo’s hard drive, two cameras, and some sound and lighting equipment. The penalties are being criticized by some Chinese netizens and supporters as blatant examples of administrative overreach, “high-seas fishing,” and suppression of artistic freedom. The unusually harsh punishment was based on some footage Guo shot in Xinjiang, and his 2023 documentary “Tedious Days and Nights” (Chinese title: 混乱与细雨, Hùnluàn yǔ xìyǔ), which was shot in Hunan province and screened at last year’s Berlin Film Festival (without official permission from China’s film censors).

This is not the first time Guo has been targeted by Chinese authorities: in 2023, as reported by VOA Chinese and Variety, he was prevented from renewing his passport and was subject to a travel ban, likely in retaliation for his support of the White Paper Movement and attention to the plight of Xiaohuamei (a woman who was trafficked, abused, and kept chained in a shed). What distinguishes this latest episode of law-enforcement harassment is the sheer distance at which it occurred: the authorities who levied the fine are located 2,000 miles from Hunan province, where Guo once filmed; and 2,500 miles from Dali, Yunnan province, where Guo currently lives.

CDT Chinese editors have archived a March 27 essay by WeChat blogger Li Yuchen, titled “The Film Was Shot in Hunan, but Xinjiang Confiscated Cameras and Imposed a 75,000 Yuan Fine.” In it, the author discusses the harsh penalties imposed by Xinjiang authorities on Guo Zhenming, and argues that this will have a chilling effect not only on filmmakers and other creative artists, but on China’s entire creative ecosystem, and on anyone who has ever picked up a camera: Continue reading Filmmaker hit with harsh punishments →

Ne Zha 2 and the Evolution of CGI Blockbusters (2)

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Yes, Magnus. People are talking a good deal about all of what you query, and more. Whether they are writing and in which fora is unclear. Writing is not available in digital forms, in large part because of the scrubbing the China Digital Times notes. I’ve seen both films — Ne Zha 1 & 2, as well as the 1979 version — and have had a large number of conversations about them. You might recognize the limits of what can be said/written/ done in public at this point, in China or Hong Kong. Given the tech-heavy tech-concentrated sets of concerns in China/HK today — China’s desire for superiority in tech-related matters, HK universities’ huge investments in AI and technology, coupled with the gutting of US institutions and funding for everything under the sun — the technological achievements are receiving a lot of attention. Obviously, this and nationalist pride are modes of avoiding discussion of content. But NO ONE I’ve spoken to is unaware of the radically transformed family relations of the movie from the original story. And nor is anyone in doubt about how the mother is sacrificed to secure the patriarchy towards the end of Ne Zha 2. So, yes, you are not the only person to have noticed these issues. They are widely discussed and topics of huge numbers of conversations.

Rebecca Karl <rek2@nyu.edu>

The secret campaign to save a chained woman

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Source: NYT (3/25)
The Secret Campaign in China to Save a Woman Chained by the Neck
By Vivian WangGraphics and illustration by Pablo Robles

Screenshot from a video showing a woman chained by the neck.

The video blogger had visited Dongji Village, in eastern China, to find a man known for raising eight children despite deep poverty. The man had become a favorite interview subject for influencers looking to attract donations and clicks.

But that day, one of the children led the blogger to someone not featured in many other videos: the child’s mother.

She stood in a doorless shack in the family’s courtyard, on a strip of dirt floor between a bed and a brick wall. She wore a thin sweater despite the January cold. When the blogger asked if she could understand him, she shook her head. A chain around her neck shackled her to the wall.

The video quickly spread online, and immediately, Chinese commenters wondered whether the woman had been sold to the man in Dongji and forced to have his children — a kind of trafficking that is a longstanding problem in China’s countryside. They demanded the government intervene.

Instead, local officials issued a short statement brushing off the concerns: The woman was legally married to the man and had not been trafficked. She was chained up because she was mentally ill and sometimes hit people.

Public outrage only grew. People wrote blog posts demanding to know why women could be treated like animals. Others printed fliers or visited the village to investigate for themselves. This was about more than trafficking, people said. It was another reason many young women were reluctant to get married or have children, because the government treated marriage as a license to abuse.

The outcry rippled nationwide for weeks. Many observers called it the biggest moment for women’s rights in recent Chinese history. The Chinese Communist Party sees popular discontent as a challenge to its authority, but this was so intense that it seemed even the party would struggle to quash it.

And yet, it did. Continue reading The secret campaign to save a chained woman →

Aftermath of Thai handing Uyghur refugees to China

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If you read just one article about Thailand handing Uyghur refugees to China, this may be the one — it situates this stunning debacle in the context of the global US withdrawal from commitments, promises, and values:

“US Ally Kowtows to China as Old Order Crumbles Under Trump,” by Matthew Tostevin. Newsweek (Feb. 28, 2025). 

The Newsweek piece was published the day after the forced deportation, so it could not yet note the absolutely stunning admission from the Thai government, on March 6, that they knowingly lied about there being no other governments (or the UNHCR) ready to take the refugees — as top officials all the way to the PM had been insisting, until that day, as one justification for setting aside the Torture Convention.

Links on this and on the Thai government’s shocking parroting of various other Chinese talking points (the refugees are “safe”, because there is pictufre proof from Chinese-arrangeded photo ops, etc.):

“In reversal, Thai official acknowledges other countries offered Uyghurs resettlement“… (Radio Free Asia)

“Thailand had offers to take Uyghurs but deported them to China anyway: MP.” (Radio Free Asia)

“US offered to resettle Uyghurs that Thailand deported to China, sources say.” (The Guardian)

For more, including some of the Chinese propaganda around this whole incident, see my online bibliography (periodically updated) on the genocide in the Uyghur region (East Turkestan): https://uhrp.org/bibliography/

Sincerely,
Magnus Fiskesjö

Many Chinese see a Cultural Revolution in America

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Source: NYT (3/6/25)
Many Chinese See a Cultural Revolution in America
阅读简体中文版 | 閱讀繁體中文版 | Leer en español
People in China are expressing alarm at what seems to be an authoritarian turn in the United States, long their role model of democracy, that feels familiar.
By Li Yuan

An illustration shows a mural of Mao Zedong on a brick wall that is crumbling, exposing the rear of a giant head wearing a red baseball cap labeled “Trump.”

Credit…Dongyan Xu

As the United States grapples with the upheaval unleashed by the Trump administration, many Chinese people are finding they can relate to what many Americans are going through.

They are saying it feels something like the Cultural Revolution, the period known as “the decade of turmoil.” The young aides Elon Musk has sent to dismantle the U.S. government reminded some Chinese of the Red Guards whom Mao Zedong enlisted to destroy the bureaucracy at the peak of the Cultural Revolution. Upon hearing President Trump’s musing about serving a third term, they joked that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, must be saying, “I know how to do it” — he secured one in 2022 by engineering a constitutional change.

The United States helped China modernize and expand its economy in the hope that China would become more like America — more democratic and more open. Now for some Chinese, the United States is looking more and more like China.

“Coming from an authoritarian state, we know that dictatorship is not just a system — it is, at its core, the pursuit of power,” Wang Jian, a journalist, wrote in an X post criticizing Mr. Trump. “We also know that the Cultural Revolution was about dismantling institutions to expand control.” Continue reading Many Chinese see a Cultural Revolution in America →

Thailand deports Uyghur refugees

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This morning, on Feb. 27, 2025, Thailand deported over forty Uyghur refugees to China, despite a pending court hearing set for next month. This was simply set aside — and was perhaps a lie to begin with. The shameful deportation was done under the cover of night, in buses with black-out windows, to prevent the press from seeing the prisoners [https://prachataienglish.com/node/11322]. A Chinese plane flew them direct from Bangkok to Kashgar in the Uyghur region, where China’s concentration camps now await them.

Thailand has now violated both the UN convention on torture, which it signed, and the principle of non-refoulement, against sending refugees in harm’s way. Thailand’s betrayal of human rights also overrides the Thai politicians and lawyers and others who tried to protest, arguing that refugees had suffered enough, languishing in Thai jails for over ten years, with five dying, including two children.

It is obvious this was done only to obey China — where state media celebrated getting their hands on the refugees.

For more see: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c14jjxz8re6o

A week ago, I explained the global stakes of Thailand’s Uyghur refugee drama, that has now ended in such a gruesome way. Listen on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/wrfihumanrightsshow/magnus-fiskesjo-feb-21_4upload
(first aired Friday, Feb. 21 on the “Human Rights and Social Justice” local FM radio show hosted by Ute Ritz-Deutch, on WRFI.org, at FM 88.1 in Ithaca)

Sincerely, with great sadness, and frankly disgust at the Thai authorities’ betrayal,

Magnus Fiskesjö

Taiwan Democracy and the Chinese Humanistic Tradition

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“Taiwan Democracy and the Chinese Humanistic Tradition”
Capstone lecture by Professor Josephine Chiu-Duke 丘慧芬, on the occasion of her retirement

Details and registration: https://asia.ubc.ca/events/event/taiwan-democracy-and-the-chinese-humanistic-tradition/

Thursday, March 6, 2025
3:00-5:00pm reception and lecture
Asian Centre Auditorium
The University of British Columbia
UBC Asian Centre, 1871 West Mall, Vancouver, BC

2025 Capstone Lecture by Dr. Josephine Chiu-Duke

Taiwan’s peaceful transformation from authoritarian rule to a liberal democracy in the early 1990s has been praised as a remarkable political achievement. This achievement, despite the many challenges it has faced and still confronts, has been thriving in the face of China’s claim of sovereignty over the island and its constant threats of serious coercion. To be sure, Taiwan’s production of the world’s most sought for semiconductor chips has already made Taiwan a pivotal link in the world supply chain.

What should be noted is that Taiwan today is also the only place where Chinese culture, especially with regard to the values embedded in the Confucian humanistic tradition, has been best preserved since 1949 without being deliberately destroyed as it was during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

In her talk, Dr. Chiu-Duke will discuss why Taiwan’s successful search for liberty and democracy has yet to bring about a consensus on Taiwan’s dealing with China. She will also discuss how Confucius’ innovative re-interpretation of the doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven laid the foundation for the Chinese humanistic tradition. This tradition was the key reason for China being identified as one of the “Axial civilizations.” However, it has never being able to make an institutional breakthrough in its pursuit of the Confucian ideal of a humane government, not even during the 1915 May Fourth New Culture movement when liberal democracy and science were advocated as the necessary goals for China’s path to modernity. Continue reading Taiwan Democracy and the Chinese Humanistic Tradition →

DeepSeeking Truth

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Source: China Media Project (2/10/25)
DeepSeeking Truth
When it comes to assessing the risks of DeepSeek, are we asking the wrong questions? Governments, journalists, and coders need to know that it’s a much more sophisticated propaganda tool than we all thought.
By Alex Colville

Can you tell me about the Tiananmen Massacre? When did China invade Tibet? Is Taiwan an independent country? When pointing out DeepSeek’s propaganda problems, journalists and China watchers have tended to prompt the LLM with questions like these about the “Three T’s” (Tiananmen, Taiwan, and Tibet) — obvious political red lines that are bound to meet a stony wall of hedging and silence. “Let’s talk about something else,” DeepSeek tends to respond. Alternatively, questions of safety regarding DeepSeek tend to focus on whether data will be sent to China.

Experts say this is all easily fixable. Kevin Xu has pointed out that the earlier V3 version, released in December, will discuss topics such as Tiananmen and Xi Jinping when it is hosted on local computers — beyond the grasp of DeepSeek’s cloud software and servers. The Indian government has announced it will import DeepSeek’s model into India, running it locally on national cloud servers while ensuring it complies with local laws and regulations. Coders on Hugging Face, an open-source collaboration platform for AI, have released modified versions of DeepSeek’s products that claim to have “uncensored” the software. In short, the consensus, as one Silicon Valley CEO told the Wall Street Journal, is that DeepSeek is harmless beyond some “half-baked PRC censorship.” 

But do coders and Silicon Valley denizens know what they should be looking for? As we have written at CMP, Chinese state propaganda is not about censorship per se, but about what the Party terms “guiding public opinion” (舆论导向). “Guidance,” which emerged in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, is a more comprehensive approach to narrative control that goes beyond simple censorship. While outright removal of unwanted information is one tactic, “guidance” involves a wide spectrum of methods to shape public discourse in the Party’s favor. These can include restricting journalists’ access to events, ordering media to emphasize certain facts and interpretations, deploying directed narrative campaigns, and drowning out unfavorable information with preferred content.

Those testing DeepSeek for propaganda shouldn’t simply be prompting the LLM to cross simple red lines or say things regarded as “sensitive.” They should be mindful of the full range of possible tactics to achieve “guidance.” Continue reading DeepSeeking Truth →