Linked In Spying for China

China is using LinkedIn to recruit Americans

By Warren Strobel, Jonathan Landay

Chinese spy nest

WASHINGTON -- The United States’ top spy catcher said Chinese espionage agencies are using fake LinkedIn accounts to try to recruit Americans with access to government and commercial secrets, and the company should shut them down.
William Evanina, the U.S. counter-intelligence chief, told Reuters in an interview that intelligence and law enforcement officials have told LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft Corp., about China’s “super aggressive” efforts on the site.
He said the Chinese campaign includes contacting thousands of LinkedIn members at a time, but he declined to say how many fake accounts U.S. intelligence had discovered, how many Americans may have been contacted and how much success China has had in the recruitment drive.
German and British authorities have previously warned their citizens that Beijing is using LinkedIn to try to recruit them as spies. 

But this is the first time a U.S. official has publicly discussed the challenge in the United States and indicated it is a bigger problem than previously known.
Evanina said LinkedIn should look at copying the response of Twitter, Google and Facebook, which have all purged fake accounts allegedly linked to Iranian and Russian intelligence agencies.
“I recently saw that Twitter is cancelling, I don’t know, millions of fake accounts, and our request would be maybe LinkedIn could go ahead and be part of that,” said Evanina, who heads the U.S. National Counter-Intelligence and Security Center.
It is highly unusual for a senior U.S. intelligence official to single out an American-owned company by name and publicly recommend it take action. 

LinkedIn boasts 562 million users in more than 200 counties and territories, including 149 million U.S. members.
Evanina did not, however, say whether he was frustrated by LinkedIn’s response or whether he believes it has done enough.
LinkedIn’s head of trust and safety, Paul Rockwell, confirmed the company had been talking to U.S. law enforcement agencies about Chinese espionage efforts. 

Earlier this month, LinkedIn said it had taken down “less than 40” fake accounts whose users were attempting to contact LinkedIn members associated with unidentified political organizations. Rockwell did not say whether those were Chinese accounts.
“We are doing everything we can to identify and stop this activity,” Rockwell told Reuters. 

“We’ve never waited for requests to act and actively identify bad actors and remove bad accounts using information we uncover and intelligence from a variety of sources including government agencies.”
Rockwell declined to provide numbers of fake accounts associated with Chinese intelligence agencies. 

He said the company takes “very prompt action to restrict accounts and mitigate and stop any essential damage that can happen” but gave no details.
LinkedIn “is a victim here,” Evanina said. 

“I think the cautionary tale ... is, ‘You are going to be like Facebook. Do you want to be where Facebook was this past spring with congressional testimony, right?’” he said, referring to lawmakers’ questioning of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Russia’s use of Facebook to meddle in the 2016 U.S. elections.

EX-CIA OFFICER ENSNARED
Evanina said he was speaking out in part because of the case of Kevin Mallory, a retired CIA officer convicted in June of conspiring to commit espionage for China.
A fluent Mandarin speaker, Mallory was struggling financially when he was contacted via a LinkedIn message in February 2017 by a Chinese posing as a headhunter, according to court records and trial evidence.
The individual, using the name Richard Yang, arranged a telephone call between Mallory and a man claiming to work at a Shanghai think tank.
During two subsequent trips to Shanghai, Mallory agreed to sell U.S. defence secrets -- sent over a special cellular device he was given -- even though he assessed his Chinese contacts to be intelligence officers, according to the U.S. government’s case against him. 

He is due to be sentenced in September and could face life in prison.
While Russia, Iran, North Korea and other nations also use LinkedIn and other platforms to identify recruitment targets, the U.S. intelligence officials said China is the most prolific and poses the biggest threat.
U.S. officials said China’s Ministry of State Security has “co-optees” -- individuals who are not employed by intelligence agencies but work with them -- set up fake accounts to approach potential recruits.
The targets include experts in fields such as supercomputing, nuclear energy, nanotechnology, semi-conductors, stealth technology, health care, hybrid grains, seeds and green energy.
Chinese intelligence uses bribery or phony business propositions in its recruitment efforts. 

Academics and scientists, for example, are offered payment for scholarly or professional papers and, in some cases, are later asked or pressured to pass on U.S. government or commercial secrets.
Some of those who set up fake accounts have been linked to IP addresses associated with Chinese intelligence agencies, while others have been set up by bogus companies, including some that purport to be in the executive recruiting business, said a senior U.S. intelligence official, who requested anonymity in order to discuss the matter.
The official said “some correlation” has been found between Americans targeted through LinkedIn and data hacked from the Office of Personnel Management, a U.S. government agency, in attacks in 2014 and 2015.
The hackers stole sensitive private information, such as addresses, financial and medical records, employment history and fingerprints, of more than 22 million Americans who had undergone background checks for security clearances.
The United States identified China as the leading suspect in the massive hacking.

UNPARALLELED SPYING EFFORT
About 70 percent of China’s overall espionage is aimed at the U.S. private sector, rather than the government, said Joshua Skule, the head of the FBI’s intelligence division, which is charged with countering foreign espionage in the United States.
“They are conducting economic espionage at a rate that is unparalleled in our history,” he said.
Five current and former U.S. officials -- including Mallory -- have been charged with or convicted of spying for China in the past two and a half years.
He indicated that additional cases of suspected espionage for China by U.S. citizens are being investigated, but declined to provide details.
U.S. intelligence services are alerting current and former officials to the threat and telling them what security measures they can take to protect themselves.
Some current and former officials post significant details about their government work history online -- even sometimes naming classified intelligence units that the government does not publicly acknowledge.
LinkedIn “is a very good site,” Evanina said. 

“But it makes for a great venue for China to target not only individuals in the government, formers, former CIA folks, but academics, scientists, engineers, anything they want. It’s the ultimate playground for collection.”

Chinese Anthropology

Predicting Trump: Chinese turn to fortune tellers to divine trade war

Reuters

SHANGHAI -- As analysts crunch trade data and political commentators dissect official statements for signs of how the Sino-American trade war will develop, ordinary Chinese are using different sources to predict U.S. President Donald Trump’s next moves: fortune tellers.
Armed with photos of Trump and his date of birth, the superstitious Chinese are turning to the divine -- from masters on cosmic energy to experts on ancient spirits -- for tips on what the president has got up his sleeve in the escalating trade spat between the world’s two largest economies.
The trade dispute has not only raised uncertainty over China’s economic growth, it has also unsettled the lives of some ordinary Chinese people, who are seeking advice on things like where to invest, how to run their business and even whether or not they should pursue plans to emigrate to the United States.
Victor Ng, a Feng Shui master from a line of famous practitioners in Hong Kong, says he usually analyses the birth date and time of birth of his clients for insights. 

With the trade row dominating headlines and increasing uncertainty about the future, he has been adding some ingredients to the mix.
“Because this time the U.S.-China trade war is ongoing, I will also look at the fate of the leaders of the U.S. and China -- for instance, Xi Jinping’s birth date and the birth date of Donald Trump. This is how we analyze the situation,” he said.
In the western city of Xi’an, fortune teller Xie Xianglin says he has seen “many, many more” people approaching him for readings on the future of the trade war. 

Most are entrepreneurs and investors, said Xie, who charges 500 yuan ($73) to analyze the relevant spirits.
“Seven people have asked about investment and also about emigration trends,” he said of recent visitors.
In Shanghai’s leafy Fuxing Park, for at least three weekends in a row in July, heated debate broke out intermittently between retirees discussing the victims and villains of the trade war.
The park is an unofficial meeting ground for retirees at the weekend -- and more recently, some have appeared there brandishing photos of Trump and his birth date looking for tips on his next step, said three people who had seen it happen.
Chinese, including the country’s leaders, have a long tradition of putting their faith in soothsaying and geomancy, looking for answers in times of doubt, need and chaos.
Members of the ruling Communist Party, however, are officially banned from participating in what the government dubs superstitious practices, including visiting soothsayers.
For investment broker Ricky Fong, readings by Ng, a master of the ancient Chinese belief in a system of laws that governs energy, or Feng Shui, have helped him navigate the impact of the trade war on his business.
“When it comes to the U.S.-China trade war, in my view the importance is huge, with regards to investment -- really big,” said Fong, in Hong Kong.
“Master Ng gives me a lot of very detailed data to work with. When it comes to the traditional financial tools they also provide data, but the Feng Shui master gives me another kind. He can use traditional methods to read my fate, and tell me how to better handle the situation,” Fong added.

Recently, amid the trade war, Ng advised Fong to invest in Kuangchi Science Ltd after a reading of the company stock number and Fong’s birth date, which Ng believes gives an indication of a person’s fortune with a particular firm. 

Fong says he bought at 0.375 per share and sold at 0.77 per share.
For now, at least some readings on the fate of Trump and the trade war are pointing in the right direction.
“The trade war will end up with a reconciliation in the near future,” said fortune teller Xie, who offered a free reading to Reuters.

Die Endlösung der Uigurischfrage

UN alarmed by reports of China's mass detention of Uighurs

BBC News
The UN commission says China discriminates against its Uighur population.

The UN says it is alarmed by reports of the mass detention of Uighurs in China and called for the release of those held on a counter terrorism "pretext".
It comes after a UN committee heard reports that up to one million Muslim Uighurs in China's East Turkestan colony, were held in re-education camps.
Beijing has denied the allegations but admitted that "some" religious "extremists" were being held for re-education.
China blames Islamist militants and separatists for unrest in the region.
During a review earlier this month, members of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said credible reports suggested Beijing had "turned the Uighur autonomous region into something that resembles a massive internment camp".
China responded that Uighurs enjoyed full rights but Beijing made a rare admission that "those deceived by religious extremism... shall be assisted by resettlement and re-education".
East Turkestan has seen intermittent violence - followed by crackdowns - for years.

What does the UN say?
The UN body on Thursday released its concluding observation, criticising the "broad definition of terrorism and vague references to extremism and unclear definition of separatism in Chinese legislation".
The committee called on Beijing to:

• End the practice of detention without lawful charge, trial and conviction;
• Immediately release individuals currently detained under these circumstances;
• Provide the number of people held as well as the grounds for their detention;
• Conduct "impartial investigations into all allegations of racial, ethnic and ethno-religious profiling".

What is China accused of?
Human rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have submitted reports to the UN committee documenting claims of mass imprisonment, in camps where inmates are forced to swear loyalty to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.
The World Uyghur Congress said in its report that detainees are held indefinitely without charge, and forced to shout Communist Party slogans.
It said they are poorly fed, and reports of torture are widespread.
Most inmates have never been charged with a crime and do not receive legal representation.
The latest UN statement comes amid worsening religious tensions elsewhere in China.
In the north-western Ningxia region, hundreds of Muslims have been engaged in a standoff with authorities to prevent their mosque from being demolished.

Who are the Uighurs?
The Uighurs are a Muslim ethnic minority mostly based in China's colony of East Turkestan. 

They make up around 45% of the population there.

Chinese occupation forces in East Turkestan, where all filming and reporting by foreign media is tightly controlled.

East Turkestan is a Chinese colony, like Tibet to its south.
Reports that more and more Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are being detained in East Turkestan have been circulating for some months.

Forced labor: the dirty secret of China’s prisons

The export of products made inside jails is illegal, yet they are still turning up in goods sold overseas 
By Yuan Yang in Jinxiang

At dawn the gates to the detention centre open.
A truck laden with several tonnes of freshly dug garlic bulbs enters, and disappears into the vast complex, which houses both prisoners and people awaiting trial.
For three hours, there is no movement apart from the Chinese police practising their morning drills. Then the same truck emerges from the complex, its load replaced with cloves of peeled garlic.
It drives for two hours to a depot in the central-eastern town of Jinxiang — the world’s garlic capital— which packages peeled garlic for export to India, according to a worker inside the facility.
 Prison labour is common in China, where the law states that prisoners able to work must do so — a system known as “reform through labour”.
China is home to around 2.3m prisoners and pre-trial detainees, according to the Institute for Criminal Policy Research, giving it the world’s second-largest prison population after the US. Exporting prison-produced goods is illegal under domestic and international trade laws.
Yet evidence of prison labour is present in many of China’s supply chains, from handbags to washing machines.
 “Most of the companies set up under prison provincial administration bureaus in China look, from the outside, like ordinary companies,” says Joshua Rosenzweig of Amnesty International in Hong Kong.
“Foreign corporations are in a pretty tough position to do the kind of due diligence that would be needed to identify whether their supply chains are connected to prison labour.” 

A garlic field in Jinxiang, the world's garlic capital 

Forced labour is not a new phenomenon in the country, but it is becoming more prevalent as a result of higher wages in China and the decline in the working-age population.
Manufacturers are under increasing pressure to stay competitive with Bangladesh and Vietnam.
Li Qiang head of the activist organisation China Labor Watch, says that suppliers to US retailers have told him about redirecting some of their orders to prisons in a bid to cut costs after renewed pressure on prices.
 “We have seen companies exploiting prison labour as a way of keeping costs low,” says Kenneth Kennedy, senior policy adviser on forced labour at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
 A spokesperson for Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer, which uses Chinese suppliers says: “We regularly assess factories and have systems in place to investigate complaints.”
Some manufacturers are also under pressure because local governments have started to enforce labour laws that restrict flexible hiring.
This has led some subcontractors to cut corners for foreign clients, who do not always have the ability to scrutinise supply chains.
 “Illegal subcontracting appears to have increased as a result of the government cracking down on the use of contract workers from 2012,” says Lesli Ligorner, partner at legal firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in Shanghai.
“When companies had rush orders or a lack of labour, they appear to have decided they would rather violate their supplier contract, and farm out the work to another company, than risk breaking the labour laws and be caught out by local government.”
 Companies who use forced labour reduce their wage costs to the level of paying off the prison or detention centre which keeps most, if not all, of the payment for the work, leaving workers very little, according to labour rights advocates and ex-convicts. 
In the words of the owner of a small garlic company in Jinxiang: “It means working for nothing.”

Inside a detention centre in Peixian town, 90km south of Jinxiang, detainees work on a fresh shipment of garlic bulbs, according to surveillance footage acquired by a local garlic businessman, Xu Mingju, and seen by the Financial Times. 
Some of the prisoners are awaiting trial.
Others have been convicted and will be transferred to prisons where ex-convicts say labour conditions are better, as they are more closely regulated than detention centres.
 Former prisoners say the pungent acids in the garlic can melt detainees’ fingernails, exposing stinging flesh.
Those who can no longer use their hands bite off the garlic skins with their teeth.
 Peixian’s detainees are only a fraction of those forced to work in China’s export supply chains.
Thousands of kilometres from Jinxiang, prisoners in the south-western city of Guilin made handbags once sold in Arizona, while those in the north-eastern city of Tonghua made wreaths to be exported to South Korea, say ex-prisoners interviewed by the FT.
Prisoners from Yantai, near Jinxiang in Shandong province, assemble the wiring that goes into household appliances sold worldwide.
 In Jinxiang, prison labour is an open secret.
The owners of two different shops near the Peixian Detention Centre say that at least one or two garlic trucks enter the centre every day.
A detention centre guard confirmed that the garlic truck arrived via the main gate.
In the afternoon, a rubbish cart leaves the centre filled with garlic skins, dripping grey water along the pavement.
 Good relationships with the police are essential to getting access to prison labour.
“This is the kind of thing you need to sort out with the officials,” says the owner of the small garlic company.
“It’s not the kind of service [that just] anyone can have access to.”
 Mr Xu’s photos of workers inside the detention centre show them unloading garlic bulbs and loading peeled garlic.
They also show footage from a surveillance monitor, which shows detainees sitting together in cells peeling garlic.
They wear blue bibs with numbers on the back.
On the top of the screen, red letters show crimes against the numbers of the rooms.
Cell 202: robbery, intentional bodily harm.
Cell 203: kidnapping. 205: theft.

A wholesale market in Jinxiang where garlic is packaged for export to India 

The truck that the Financial Times followed 90km back to Jinxiang carried an estimated two tonnes of peeled garlic, wrapped in mesh sacks.
It pulled into the entrance of a depot emblazoned with the characters Jinxiang Shuanglong or Jinxiang Double Dragon.
 Inside, workers using forklift trucks moved sacks of garlic around the warehouse, with no obvious separation of garlic from the various sources.
 “Our area exports peeled garlic to many countries,” the boss of Double Dragon later told the FT, posing as a garlic importer.
“Foreign demand from developed countries for peeled garlic is growing bigger and bigger, because clients want to save time.” 
He added that the company exported peeled garlic.
 But when contacted later by the FT for an official comment, Double Dragon said it did not export peeled garlic and sold only to the domestic market.
 A separate Jinxiang garlic company representative said that his company used to rely on labour from the local prison and detention centre to peel garlic for export to Japan, but that it lacked the necessary police connections to continue.
As a result, the price he charged for peeled garlic went up 50 per cent over the two years up to the end of 2017.

Jinxiang produces 80 per cent of the world’s garlic exports. 
The US, sources 80 per cent of all its fresh garlic imports from China, according to ASKCI Consulting, a trade data consultancy.
Chinese imports make up roughly 20 to 30 per cent of all garlic consumed in the US, according to US and Chinese figures.
 But it is illegal to import goods produced in part or whole by forced labour into the US.
If a complaint is raised against a foreign production site, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will issue a “withhold release order” — meaning that shipments from that source must be held at the border — and may also launch a criminal investigation into the importer.
Anti-dumping measures imposed after calls from the American fresh garlic-growers’ association, and in place since 2008, mean that all Chinese garlic importers face a 376 per cent duty, apart from Zhengzhou Harmoni and its US affiliate Harmoni International Spice.
US anti-dumping cases can only be initiated by domestic companies that have suffered as a result of the dumping.
The garlic association has not nominated Harmoni in its annual submission of complaints against Chinese companies.
As a result, Harmoni has never faced an anti-dumping investigation by the Department of Commerce. But after receiving allegations that Harmoni was using prison labour, the customs department detained shipments of garlic from the company in December 2016 and January 2017.
It later reversed that decision after Harmoni supplied CBP with documentation about its supply chain, according to the company.
CBP declined to comment on the case.
The use of forced labour is not, however, restricted just to the garlic industry.
It also occurs in other Chinese supply chains.
Of the 29 active withhold release orders that have been issued by the US, 23 are against Chinese sites.

A detention centre in Peixian where inmates peel garlic. Former inmates say the pungent acids in the garlic can melt detainees’ fingernails, exposing stinging flesh 

Customers have found notes, hidden by prisoners, in goods sold in the UK and US — from Christmas ornaments to socks.
One note was found by an Arizonan woman after buying a Walmart own-brand handbag last year. “Prisoners in the Yingshan Prison in Guangxi, China are working 14 hours every day,” the handwritten note read in Chinese.
“Whoever doesn’t finish his work will be beaten... Being a prisoner in China is worse than being . . . a dog in the US.”
 The letter was signed with the name of a man who was sentenced to serve 15 years in Yingshan Prison in 2012, according to local court records.
Calls to Yingshan Prison confirmed that it has a department in charge of production and sales. Walmart confirmed to the FT that it has dropped a supplier who had been sub-contracting from Yingshan Prison after investigating the issue.
But there are at least 55 prison companies whose registrations detailed all kinds of manufacturing and even construction work. 
Some explicitly had “prison” in the name, such as Jiangxi Province Prison Group.
 Others were owned by provincial prison bureaus, or were owned by the officials in charge of prison bureaus.
Many describe themselves as being in the export industry — particularly those companies in the coastal export zones of Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Shandong.
 Neither the Peixian detention centre nor the commerce ministry responded to requests for comment on this story.
The ministry of foreign affairs declined to comment.
“Prisons are run like companies, with their own sales teams,” says Mr Li of China Labour Watch. Unlike companies, prisons do not enforce labour law.
 “We often needed to work from 5 in the morning to 9 at night so the prison is able to make more money,” says one ex-convict who served five years in jail in Tonghua, Jilin province, where he made wreaths for export to South Korea.
Another inmate, released from Yantai Prison in Shandong province last year after serving four-years, also described a 5am-8pm working day with at most one rest day each month.
 “We did nothing but work,” says the Yantai ex-prisoner, “there were no traces of life”.
The prison holds 3,000 people but, he says, he was part of a smaller team of 130 doing unskilled electronics work, bundling wires together for electronics company Weihai Ruicao, which supplies the South Korean multinational LG.
LG confirmed that Weihai Ruicao was a supplier to another LG supplier, SL Electronics.
LG has since told the FT in a statement that: “SL Electronics severed its business relationship with Weihao Ruicao when SL was unable to obtain clear proof that they were in compliance with our code of conduct.”
Multinationals often rely on a series of local intermediaries and suppliers, who have an incentive to keep their use of prison labour secret. 
Detecting its use can be extremely difficult.
Prisons do not print receipts or sign formal contracts, according to ex-prisoners, although some have sales departments that responded to telephone inquiries from the FT posing as a buyer.
 But for prisoners there is no choice.
“The incentive for the prisoner is not monetary,” says one rights advocate who asked to remain anonymous.
“Engaging in labour is a prerequisite for clemency in terms of sentence reduction or parole. Prisoners earn points for performing labour.”

Chinazism

Under Xi Jinping, China is seeking to control not just the bodies, but also the minds of its inhabitants.

By Michael Clarke

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping has proclaimed that his signature “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) that seeks to link the Chinese economy with the major continental and maritime zones of the Eurasian continent will “benefit people across the whole world,” as it will be based on the “Silk Road spirit” of “peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness.”

The lived reality of the people of China's vast East Turkestan colony—the hub of three of the six “economic corridors” at the heart of BRI—could not be further from this idyll.
Rather, China has constructed a dystopic vision of governance in East Turkestan to rival that of any science-fiction blockbuster.
East Turkestan’s geopolitical position at the eastern edge of the Islamic and Turkic-speaking world and the ethno-cultural distinctiveness of its largely Turkic-Muslim ethnic groups such as the Uyghur have long constituted a challenge to Chinese authorities.
The Chinese Communist Party has since 1949 pursued a strategy of tight political, social and cultural control to integrate East Turkestan and its people into the People’s Republic of China (PRC). 

This has periodically stimulated violent opposition from the Uyghur population who chafe against demographic dilution, political marginalization and continued state interference in the practice of religion.
“Stability” in East Turkestan is however now a major strategic imperative for the Party, driven by periodic violent attacks in, or connected to, East Turkestan by Uyghurs that Beijing blames on an externally-based organization, the “Turkestan Islamic Party” (TIP) and the region’s role as hub of key elements of the BRI.
This obsession with “stability” in East Turkestan has seen the regional government’s expenditure on public security balloon, with provincial spending on public security in 2017 amounting to approximately $9.1 billion —a 92 percent increase on such spending in 2016.
Much of this expenditure has been absorbed by the development of a pervasive, hi-tech “security state” in the region, including: use of facial recognition and iris scanners at checkpoints, train stations and gas stations; collection of biometric data for passports; and mandatory apps to cleanse smartphones of potentially subversive material.
This system is not only reliant on technology but also significant manpower to monitor, analyse and respond to the data it collects. 

Its rollout has thus coincided with the recruitment of an estimated 90,000 new public security personnel in the region.
This is consistent with the Party’s move toward tech-driven ‘social management’ throughout the rest of China. 

However, in East Turkestan it has become defined by a racialized conception of “threat” in which the Uyghur population is conceived of as a “virtual biological threat to the body of society.”
From government officials describing Uyghur “extremism” as a “tumour” to equating religious observance with a virus , the Party’s discourse frames key elements of Uyghur identity as pathologies to be “cured.”
The Party’s “cure” for such pathologies is a programme of mass internment of Uyghurs — up to one million people according to some estimates — in prison-like “re-education” centres based on analysis of the data harvested through its system of “predictive policing.”
Here, receiving a phone call from a relative studying or travelling overseas or attendance at a mosque result in an almost immediate visit from local police and indefinite detention in a “re-education” centre.

The totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century—Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Fascist Italy—while divergent ideologically were united by their drive to make a “total claim” on the individual. 

“They were not content,” as historian Ian Kershaw reminds us , “simply to use repression as means of control, but sought to mobilize behind an exclusive ideology to ‘educate’ people into becoming committed believers, to claim them soul as well as body.”
The goal of China’s “re-education” of Uyghurs, according to a East Turkestan CCP Youth League official, is to “treat and cleanse the virus [of “extremism”] from their brain” and “restore their normal mind” so that they may “return to a healthy ideological state of mind.”
Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, China is thus arguably pursuing a “total claim” on the bodies and minds of the Uyghur people via a twenty-first century, technologically-enabled version of this—a “totalitarianism 2.0.”

China's crimes against humanity

American Lawmakers Push to Sanction Chinese Officials Over East Turkestan Camps
“No Chinese official or business complicit in what is happening in East Turkestan should profit from access to the United States or the U.S. financial system.”

Josh Chin and Eva Dou

A screen showed Chinese dictator Xi Jinping in China's East Turkestan colony last year. 

BEIJING—Members of Congress are pressuring the Trump administration to confront Beijing over the mass roundup of Muslims in internment camps, urging travel and financial sanctions be clamped on senior Chinese officials involved in the detentions.
In a letter sent Wednesday to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and 16 other members of Congress from both parties called for the sanctions on seven Chinese officials and two businesses that make surveillance equipment.
An official at the Treasury Department, which is largely responsible for executing the administration’s sanctions policies, said the office “responds as appropriate to Congressional correspondence” and doesn’t “telegraph sanctions or comment on prospective actions.” 

A State Department spokeswoman said she hadn’t seen the letter.
The letter, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, cites the Communist Party boss of East Turkestan, the western colony where Chinese authorities have over the past year vastly expanded an internment program that initially targeted religious extremists but now includes broad numbers of Uighurs, a largely Muslim ethnic group.
The build-out of detention centers to neutralize Uighur opposition to Communist Party rule has been under way for two years in East Turkestan. 

Only in recent months, as the build-out has gathered momentum, has the program begun to attract concerted criticism from Western governments.

A Chinese Auschwitz–Birkenau in East Turkestan

China’s detention of as many as a million Uighurs and other Muslims in the camps “requires a tough, targeted and global response,” the letter from the Congress members said. 

“No Chinese official or business complicit in what is happening in East Turkestan should profit from access to the United States or the U.S. financial system.”
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

Senior Chinese officials have denied the mass incarcerations and said the centers are for "vocational" training.
In calling for sanctions, the letter urges the Trump administration to apply the Global Magnitsky Act. 

The act, named after a Russian lawyer and whistleblower who died in prison in 2009, allows the U.S. to freeze the assets and ban the entry of foreign individuals involved in gross violations of human rights or sizable acts of corruption.
While Congressional letters are sometimes dismissed by the State Department with a form response, this letter lands as officials inside the department are pushing for action on East Turkestan, said Todd Stein, a former State Department staffer who worked on human rights issues in China.
“It would not be surprising to see Magnitsky sanctions come out on East Turkestan,” said Mr. Stein.
The State Department last month said it was “deeply concerned” about the camps and the campaign against Chinese Muslims.
East Turkestan has come to resemble an armed encampment in recent years as the Chinese battle what they see as violent separatism fueled by "terrorists". 

A high-tech surveillance network enables police to track and collect evidence on people seen as potentially threatening.
The detention centers, many of them equipped with watchtowers and surrounded by high walls topped with razor wire, have expanded in recent months, according to satellite imagery and interviews with former inmates and relatives of those detained.
Much of the spread of this security network has taken place under East Turkestan’s party chief, Chen Quanguo. 

He arrived in the region in 2016 after a stint in Tibet, where he is credited by security experts with stifling dissent and ending a series of self-immolations by Buddhist monks protesting government controls.
The letter sent by the Congress members names Chen. 

An attachment to the letter also cites Hu Lianhe, a senior official with the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, who defended the program before a U.N. panel last month. 

He denied arbitrary detentions were taking place and said the centers are being used as "vocational" training centers for petty criminal offenders.
Neither Chen nor Hu could be reached for comment late Wednesday in China. 

They haven’t responded to previous attempts to reach them to discuss the situation.
The two companies the Congress members want targeted are Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co. and Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co. Ltd., two of the world’s largest manufacturers of video surveillance equipment. 

Both have significant business in East Turkestan and in the U.S. 

Both were also banned from supplying equipment to the U.S. military in the recently approved John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act. 

The companies couldn’t be reached for comment.
Experts on East Turkestan disagree about how effective Magnitsky sanctions would be. 

David Brophy, a historian at the University of Sydney, said it isn’t clear if East Turkestan officials have large overseas bank accounts that would make them vulnerable to such sanctions. 

The Magnitsky sanctions were originally designed to target Russian officials with significant overseas wealth, he said.
He also said that Beijing could use the continuing U.S.-China trade war as a way to brush off any unilateral U.S. pressure over East Turkestan.
“It makes it very easy for China to characterize opposition to its policies in East Turkestan as simply part and parcel of efforts to constrain China’s economic development and its political rise,” he said.
China has rebuffed requests by Western governments in recent months for access to the detention centers in East Turkestan. 

In July, a senior European Union foreign affairs official, Paola Pampaloni, raised the request during an annual EU-China human rights dialogue and was promptly turned down, according to two people familiar with the talks.
Germany’s Interior Ministry last week told lawmakers it is halting deportations of Uighurs and members of other Muslim minorities to China for now. 

In April, a Uighur man was mistakenly deported from Germany to China due to what officials called an administrative error, according to German media reports.

Google Does Evil

WORLD’S HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS TELL GOOGLE TO CANCEL ITS CHINA CENSORSHIP PLAN
By Ryan Gallagher

LEADING HUMAN RIGHTS groups are calling on Google to cancel its plan to launch a censored version of its search engine in China, which they said would violate the freedom of expression and privacy rights of millions of internet users in the country.
A coalition of 14 organizations — including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, Access Now, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, PEN International, and Human Rights in China — issued the demand Tuesday in an open letter addressed to the internet giant’s CEO, Sundar Pichai. 

The groups said the censored search engine represents “an alarming capitulation by Google on human rights” and could result in the company “directly contributing to, or [becoming] complicit in, human rights violations.”
The letter is the latest major development in an ongoing backlash over the censored search platform, code-named Dragonfly, which was first revealed by The Intercept earlier this month. 

The censored search engine would remove content that China’s ruling Communist Party regime views as sensitive, such as information about political dissidents, free speech, democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest. 

It would “blacklist sensitive queries” so that “no results will be shown” at all when people enter certain words or phrases, according to confidential Google documents.
Google launched a censored search engine in China in 2006, but ceased operating the service in the country in 2010, citing Chinese government efforts to limit free speech, block websites, and hack Google’s computer systems. 

The open letter released Tuesday asks Google to reaffirm the commitment it made in 2010 to no longer provide censored search in China.
“It is difficult not to conclude that Google is now willing to compromise its principles.”
The letter states: “If Google’s position has indeed changed, then this must be stated publicly, together with a clear explanation of how Google considers it can square such a decision with its responsibilities under international human rights standards and its own corporate values. Without these clarifications, it is difficult not to conclude that Google is now willing to compromise its principles to gain access to the Chinese market.”
The letter calls on Google to explain the steps it has taken to safeguard against human rights violations that could occur as a result of Dragonfly and raises concerns that the company will be “enlisted in surveillance abuses” because “users’ data would be much more vulnerable to [Chinese] government access.” 

Moreover, the letter said Google should guarantee protections for whistleblowers who speak out when they believe the company is not living up to its commitments on human rights. 

The whistleblowers “have been crucial in bringing ethical concerns over Google’s operations to public attention,” the letter states. 

“The protection of whistleblowers who disclose information that is clearly in the public interest is grounded in the rights to freedom of expression and access to information.”
GOOGLE HAS NOT yet issued any public statement about the China censorship, saying only that it will not address “speculation about future plans.” 

After four weeks of sustained reporting on Dragonfly, Google has not issued a single response to The Intercept and it has refused to answer dozens of questions from reporters on the issue. 

The company’s press office did not reply to a request for comment on this story.
It is not only journalists, however, who Google has ignored in the wake of the revelations. 

Amnesty International researchers told The Intercept they set up a phone call with the company to discuss concerns about Dragonfly, but they were stonewalled by members of Google’s human rights policy team, who said they would not talk about “leaks” of information related to the Chinese censorship. 

The open letter slams Google’s lack of public engagement on the matter, stating that the company’s “refusal to respond substantively to concerns over its reported plans for a Chinese search service falls short of the company’s purported commitment to accountability and transparency.”
Google is a member of the Global Network Initiative, or GNI, a digital rights organization that works with a coalition of companies, human rights groups, and academics. 

All members of the GNI agree to implement a set of principles on freedom of expression and privacy, which appear to prohibit complicity in the sort of broad censorship that is widespread in China. 

The principles state that member companies must “respect and work to protect the freedom of expression rights of users” when they are confronted with government demands to “remove content or otherwise limit access to communications, ideas and information in a manner inconsistent with internationally recognized laws and standards.”
Following the revelations about Dragonfly, sources said, members of the GNI’s board of directors – which includes representatives from Human Rights Watch, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the Committee to Protect Journalists – confronted Google representatives in a conference call about its censorship plans. 

But the Google officials were not responsive to the board’s concerns or forthcoming with information about Dragonfly, which caused frustration and anger within the GNI.
Every two years, members of the GNI are assessed for compliance with the group’s principles. 

One source said that Google’s conduct is due to be reviewed this year, and it is likely that its Chinese censorship plans will be closely scrutinized through that process. 

If the company is found to have violated the GNI’s principles its status as a member of the organization could potentially be revoked.
Inside Google, the company’s intense secrecy on Dragonfly has exacerbated tensions between employees and managers. 

Rank-and-file staff have circulated a letter saying that the project represents a moral and ethical crisis, and they have told bosses that they “urgently need more transparency, a seat at the table, and a commitment to clear and open processes.”
Pichai, Google’s CEO, told employees during a meeting on August 16 that he would “be transparent as we get closer to actually having a plan of record” and portrayed Dragonfly as an “exploratory” project. 

However, documents seen by The Intercept show that the project has been in development since early 2017, and the infrastructure to launch it has already been built. 

Last month, Google’s search engine chief Ben Gomes told employees working on Dragonfly that they should have the censored search engine ready to be “brought off the shelf and quickly deployed.”
Gomes informed the employees working on Dragonfly that the company was aiming to release the censored search platform within six to nine months, but that the schedule could change suddenly due to an ongoing U.S. trade war with China, which had slowed down Google’s negotiations with officials in Beijing, whose approval Google needs to launch the search engine. 

Sources said Gomes joked about the unpredictability of President Donald Trump while discussing the potential date the company would be able to roll out the censored search.
“This is a world none of us have ever lived in before,” Gomes said, according to the sources. 

“We need to be focused on what we want to enable, and then when the opening happens, we are ready for it.”

Axis of Islamophobia

Call for Rohingya Genocide Prosecution to Deepen China’s Support of Myanmar Massacres
By Josh Chin

Axis of islamophobia: Aung San Suu Kyi meeting with Xi Jinping in 2017.

BEIJING—A recommendation by investigators that Myanmar’s military leaders be prosecuted for genocide over their campaign against Rohingya Muslims is dragging China into another fight at the United Nations.

For Beijing, that could be a good thing.
The investigators’ report, released this week by the U.N.’s human-rights agency, gives China a fresh chance to shelter Myanmar’s military and political leaders from international pressure, drawing them further into Beijing’s orbit as the U.S. retreats from the region, analysts say.
“The Rohingya crisis really creates an opportunity” for China with Myanmar, said Yun Sun, an expert on Myanmar-China relations at the Washington-based Stimson Center. 

“Now’s the time to show them who their real friends are.”
For the friendship, Beijing expects to secure access for its companies to a resource-rich neighbor on the Indian Ocean and a strategic partner in efforts to tamp down criticism of China’s more muscular exercise of power in the region.
The U.S. and other Western nations accuse China and Russia of using their veto power in the U.N. Security Council to scuttle punitive action against Myanmar for a campaign of violence that since last year drove Rohingya to flee en mass. 

When Sweden and the Netherlands called on Tuesday for the Security Council to refer Myanmar’s military commanders to the International Criminal Court, China and Russia urged patient diplomacy.
“Unilateral accusation or pressure will not help to solve the problem,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular news briefing on Tuesday. 

The potential payoff for China’s leaders is worth the risk of being accused of shielding war criminals, according to analysts. 

An immediate positive is keeping the U.N. from interfering in problems along China’s border and thereby making Beijing a peacemaker.
Rebel groups with ethnic and commercial ties to China have been battling the Myanmar military for decades, and Beijing would like to see the conflicts resolved on its terms. 

“The entry point is that there shouldn’t be any international interference in ethnic conflicts in Myanmar, because that might affect what’s happening at the border,” said Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International’s East Asia director.
Myanmar also occupies an important role in Chinese dictator Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road plan to build infrastructure and deepen trade ties throughout Eurasia. 

A critical piece of Xi’s plan is a multibillion-dollar China-Myanmar Economic Corridor anchored by an Indian Ocean port at Kyaukpyu, in the Rohingyas’ home state of Rakhine.
Authorities in Myanmar are pressing to scale back the port project, worried it could leave the country too heavily indebted to China, and no agreement has been reached about the rest of the corridor, expected to consist of new roads, high-speed rail lines and industrial zones.
“Beijing has a long wish list in Myanmar,” said Elliot Brennan, a nonresident research fellow at the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm. 

While Myanmar’s leaders are wary of China and may resist concessions on the biggest projects, “an acceptable, if unpalatable, quid pro quo for its support will certainly be found,” he said.

More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, including to this refugee camp in Cox's Bazar. 

Beijing played diplomatic protector for Myanmar in the previous decade when the country was isolated and its military leadership was shunned by the West for resisting democracy and confining Aung San Suu Kyi, then an opposition leader who had won a Nobel Peace Prize.
The Myanmar junta eventually became leery of China’s sway. 

With political reforms and Suu Kyi’s release, Myanmar began to court Western nations and multinationals, eclipsing Beijing.
Still, China remains Myanmar’s largest trading partner, and, according to Myanmar government statistics, Chinese companies are responsible for roughly a quarter of Myanmar’s foreign direct investment.
China’s government has worked to rekindle the political relationship, including hosting a visit last year by Suu Kyi, now Myanmar’s de facto leader who came in for blame in the U.N. report for failing to use her position and moral authority to stop the violence.
More than anything, according to Ms. Sun of the Stimson Center, patching up ties with Myanmar’s military and civilian leaders allows China to regain regional prestige befitting an emerging superpower.
“There’s almost a psychology of revenge,” after Myanmar was coaxed away by the West, Ms. Sun said. 

“The mentality in China is, ‘Myanmar is right on our border. If we can’t take care of them, then who are we?’”

China Is Treating Islam Like a Mental Illness

The country is putting Muslims in internment camps—and causing real psychological damage in the process.

By SIGAL SAMUEL

A woman stands behind a pillar during the Eid al-Adha festival at a Chinese mosque.

One million Muslims are being held right now in Chinese internment camps, according to estimates cited by the UN and U.S. officials. 

Former inmates—most of whom are Uighurs, a largely Muslim ethnic minority—have told reporters that over the course of an indoctrination process lasting several months, they were forced to renounce Islam, criticize their own Islamic beliefs and those of fellow inmates, and recite Communist Party propaganda songs for hours each day. 

There are media reports of inmates being forced to eat pork and drink alcohol, which are forbidden to Muslims, as well as reports of torture and death.
The sheer scale of the internment camp system, which according to The Wall Street Journal has doubled in China’s East Turkestan colony just within the last year, is mindboggling. 

The U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China describes it as “the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today.” 

Beijing began by targeting Uighur extremists, but now even benign manifestations of Muslim identity—like growing a long beard—can get a Uighur sent to a camp, the Journal noted. 

Earlier this month, when a UN panel confronted a senior Chinese official about the camps, he said there are “no such things as reeducation centers,” even though government documents refer to the facilities that way. 

Instead, he claimed they’re just vocational schools for criminals.
China has been selling a very different narrative to its own population. 

Although the authorities frequently describe the internment camps as schools, they also liken them to another type of institution: hospitals. 

Here’s an excerpt from an official Communist Party audio recording, which was transmitted last year to Uighurs via WeChat, a social-media platform, and which was transcribed and translated by Radio Free Asia:
Members of the public who have been chosen for reeducation have been infected by an ideological illness. 

They have been infected with religious extremism and violent terrorist ideology, and therefore they must seek treatment from a hospital as an inpatient. … 

The religious extremist ideology is a type of poisonous medicine, which confuses the mind of the people. … 

If we do not eradicate religious extremism at its roots, the violent terrorist incidents will grow and spread all over like an incurable malignant tumor.
Religious belief is seen as a pathology in China, explained James Millward, a professor of Chinese history at Georgetown University, adding that Beijing often claims religion fuels extremism and separatism. 

“So now they’re calling reeducation camps ‘hospitals’ meant to cure thinking. It’s like an inoculation, a search-and-destroy medical procedure that they want to apply to the whole Uighur population, to kill the germs of extremism. But it’s not just giving someone a shot—it’s locking them up for months in bad conditions.”
China has long feared that Uighurs will attempt to reestablish their own national homeland in East Turkestan. 

In 2009, ethnic riots there resulted in hundreds of deaths, and some radical Uighurs have carried out violent attacks in recent years. 

Chinese officials have claimed that in order to suppress the threat of Uighur separatism and extremism, the government needs to crack down not only on those Uighurs who show signs of having been radicalized, but on a significant swath of the population.
The medical analogy is one way the government tries to justify its policy of large-scale internment: After all, attempting to inoculate a whole population against, say, the flu, requires giving flu shots not just to the already-afflicted few, but to a critical mass of people. 

In fact, using this rhetoric, China has tried to defend a system of arrest quotas for Uighurs. 

Police officers confirmed to Radio Free Asia that they are under orders to meet specific population targets when rounding up people for internment. 

In one township, police officials said they were being ordered to send 40 percent of the local population to the camps.
The government also uses this pathologizing language in an attempt to justify lengthy internments and future interventions any time officials deem Islam a threat. 

“It’s being treated as a mental illness that’s never guaranteed to be completely cured, like addiction or depression,” said Timothy Grose, a China expert at the Rose Hulman Institute of Technology. 

“There’s something mentally wrong that needs to be diagnosed, treated—and followed up with.” Here’s how the Communist Party recording cited above explains this, while alluding to the threat of contagion:
There is always a risk that the illness will manifest itself at any moment, which would cause serious harm to the public. 

That is why they must be admitted to a reeducation hospital in time to treat and cleanse the virus from their brain and restore their normal mind. … 

Being infected by religious extremism and violent terrorist ideology and not seeking treatment is like being infected by a disease that has not been treated in time, or like taking toxic drugs. … 

There is no guarantee that it will not trigger and affect you in the future.
Having gone through reeducation and recovered from the ideological disease doesn’t mean that one is permanently cured. … 

So, after completing the reeducation process in the hospital and returning home … they must remain vigilant, empower themselves with the correct knowledge, strengthen their ideological studies, and actively attend various public activities to bolster their immune system.
Several other government-issued documents use this type of medical language. 

“This stuff about the poison in the brain—it’s definitely out there,” said Rian Thum, noting that even civilians tasked with carrying out the crackdown in East Turkestan speak of “eradicating its tumors.” Recruitment advertisements for staff in the internment camps state that experience in psychological training is a plus, Thum and other experts said. 

Chinese websites describe reeducation sessions where psychologists perform consultations with Uighurs and treat what they call extremism as a mental illness. 

A government document published last year in Khotan Prefecture described forced indoctrination as “a free hospital treatment for the masses with sick thinking.”
This is not the first time China has used medical analogies to suppress a religious minority. “Historically, it’s comparable to the strategy toward Falun Gong,” said Adrian Zenz, a researcher at the European School of Culture and Theology in Berlin. 

He was referring to a spiritual practice whose followers were suppressed in the early 2000s through reeducation in forced labor camps. 

“Falun Gong was also treated like a dangerous addiction. … But in East Turkestan this [rhetoric] is certainly being pushed to the next level. The explicit link with the addictive effect of religion is being emphasized possibly in an unprecedented way.”
Tahir Imin, a U.S.-based Uighur academic from East Turkestan who said he has several family members in internment camps, was not surprised to hear his religion being characterized as if it’s a disease. 

It’s part of China’s attempt to eradicate Muslim ethnic minorities and forcefully assimilate them into the Han Chinese majority. 

“If they have any ‘illness,’ it is being Uighur,” he said. 

In addition to Uighurs, The Washington Post has reported that Muslim members of other ethnic groups, like the Kazakhs and the Kyrgyz, have been sent to the camps. 

“I think the Chinese government is saying: ‘This ideological hospital—in there, send every person who is not [ethnically] Chinese. They are sick, they are not safe [to be around], they are not reliable, they are not healthy people.’”

The doors of mosques closed by authorities in East Turkestan.

The terrible irony is that in “treating” Uighurs for supposed psychological problems, China is causing very real psychological damage, both at home and abroad. 

One former inmate told The Independent he suffered thoughts of suicide inside the camps. 

And as Uighurs in exile around the world learn what is happening to their relatives back home, some have told reporters they suffer from insomnia, depression, anxiety, and paranoia.
Murat Harri Uyghur, a 33-year-old doctor who moved to Finland in 2010, said he has received word from relatives that both his parents are in the camps. 

He has launched an online campaign, “Free My Parents,” he said will raise money to start an advocacy organization to help them, but he told me he suffers from recurrent panic attacks. 

He also described finding himself prone to feelings of anger, powerlessness, and exhaustion. 

“I try to be normal,” he said, “but I have a psychological problem now.”
In an interview with The Globe and Mail, a Uighur woman in Canada who said she had a sister in the camps said, “I cannot concentrate on anything. My mind is off. I cannot sleep.” 

She added, “I lost a lot of weight because I don’t want to eat anymore.”
Some Uighurs I spoke to who are living abroad also have to cope with a pervasive sense of guilt. They know that Beijing treats any Uighur who’s traveled internationally as suspicious, and that their family members are treated as suspicious by association. 

For example, a 24-year-old Uighur attending graduate school in Kentucky, who requested anonymity for fear that China would further punish his relatives, said it’s been 197 days since he’s been able to contact his father in East Turkestan. 

He tracks the days on a board tacked to his bedroom wall. 

“I’m afraid for my dad’s life,” he said. 

Asked why he believes his father was sent to an internment camp, he replied without a trace of doubt: “Because I go to school here in a foreign country.”
“Now I know that if I ever go home,” he added, “I will be imprisoned just like my dad.”

Chinese Islamophobia

China Declared Islam a Contagious Disease – and Quarantined One Million Muslims
By Eric Levitz

Chinese occupation forces patrol as Muslims leave the Id Kah Mosque after the morning prayer in China’s East Turkestan colony. 

China is among the most ethnically homogeneous large countries in the world, with Han Chinese accounting for 91 percent of its population. 

The ruling Communist Party considers China’s homogeneity and social cohesion to be pillars of its strength (and, also, potent rationalizations for discrimination against ethnic minorities and authoritarian rule).
But the colony of East Turkestan, in northwest China, is home to a large population of Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim, Turkic ethnic group. 

The Chinese government has long worried that the Uighurs will attempt to establish an independent homeland in the region. 

In 2009, ethnic riots in East Turkestan claimed hundreds of lives; since then, individual Uighur nationalists have carried out multiple violent attacks.
So, to combat the impression that Uighurs have any cause for wanting their own separate state — let alone for deploying violence to achieve it — Xi Jinping’s government has decided to declare Islam a contagious “ideological illness,” and quarantine 1 million Uighurs in reeducation camps, according to an estimate from the United Nations. 

In interviews, former inmates from these camps say that they were made to renounce their faith, sing Communist Party songs, consume pork, and drink alcohol; and the truly “ideologically sick” have been tortured and killed.
At first, Beijing was content to reserve its concentration camps for suspected radicals. 

But, as the Atlantic’s Sigal Samuel explains, they eventually decided that the Uighurs’ ideological malady was so destructive and contagious, it was best to quarantine them prophylactically, upon the slightest apparent symptom (like, say, the appearance of a long beard on an Uighur male’s face).
To the West, China insists that its reeducation camps are mere vocational schools. 

But, as Samuel notes, Beijing offers a more forthright account of its intentions to its Chinese constituents. 

Here’s how the Communist Party explained its policy in an official recording:
Members of the public who have been chosen for reeducation have been infected by an ideological illness. 

They have been infected with religious extremism and violent terrorist ideology, and therefore they must seek treatment from a hospital as an inpatient.
… There is always a risk that the illness will manifest itself at any moment, which would cause serious harm to the public. 

That is why they must be admitted to a reeducation hospital in time to treat and cleanse the virus from their brain and restore their normal mind … 

Being infected by religious extremism and violent terrorist ideology and not seeking treatment is like being infected by a disease that has not been treated in time, or like taking toxic drugs … 

There is no guarantee that it will not trigger and affect you in the future.
Having gone through reeducation and recovered from the ideological disease doesn’t mean that one is permanently cured … 

So, after completing the reeducation process in the hospital and returning home … they must remain vigilant, empower themselves with the correct knowledge, strengthen their ideological studies, and actively attend various public activities to bolster their immune system.
Clearly, this is the missive a political party with a supremely healthy ideology.
To this point, international outcry over China’s mass repression of its Muslim population has been relatively tame. 

As Business Insider notes, the governments of many Muslim-majority countries have declined to express public opposition, for fear of jeopardizing their access to Chinese capital — especially the infrastructure loans that Beijing has provided as part of its “One Belt, One Road” initiative.
Fortunately, the United States remains, for now, the world’s preeminent military and economic power. And as president Trump made clear in his speech withdrawing the U.S. from the Iran nuclear agreement, our country is deeply committed to spreading religious freedom, individual liberty, and other human rights throughout the globe. 

So, is there any reason to doubt that Trump will make the liberation of the Uighurs America’s top priority in its next round of negotiations with China over trade policy?

Sina Delenda Est

With Ships and Missiles, China Is Ready to Challenge U.S. Navy in Pacific
By Steven Lee Myers

China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, at sea in April. First launched by the Soviet Union in 1988, it was sold for $20 million to a Chinese investor who said it would become a floating casino, though he was in reality acting on behalf of the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

DALIAN, China — In April, on the 69th anniversary of the founding of China’s Navy, the country’s first domestically built aircraft carrier stirred from its berth in the port city of Dalian on the Bohai Sea, tethered to tugboats for a test of its seaworthiness.
“China’s first homegrown aircraft carrier just moved a bit, and the United States, Japan and India squirmed,” a military news website crowed, referring to the three nations China views as its main rivals.
Not long ago, such boasts would have been dismissed as the bravado of a second-string military. 

No longer.
A modernization program focused on naval and missile forces has shifted the balance of power in the Pacific in ways the United States and its allies are only beginning to digest.
While China lags in projecting firepower on a global scale, it can now challenge American military supremacy in the places that matter most to it: the waters around Taiwan and in the disputed South China Sea.
That means a growing section of the Pacific Ocean — where the United States has operated unchallenged since the naval battles of World War II — is once again contested territory, with Chinese warships and aircraft regularly bumping up against those of the United States and its allies.
To prevail in these waters, according to officials and analysts who scrutinize Chinese military developments, China does not need a military that can defeat the United States outright but merely one that can make intervention in the region too costly for Washington to contemplate. 

Many analysts say Beijing has already achieved that goal.
To do so, it has developed “anti-access” capabilities that use radar, satellites and missiles to neutralize the decisive edge that America’s powerful aircraft carrier strike groups have enjoyed. 

It is also rapidly expanding its naval forces with the goal of deploying a “blue water” navy that would allow it to defend its growing interests beyond its coastal waters.
“China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States,” the new commander of the United States Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Philip S. Davidson, acknowledged in written remarks submitted during his Senate confirmation process in March.
He described China as a “peer competitor” gaining on the United States not by matching its forces weapon by weapon but by building critical “asymmetrical capabilities,” including with anti-ship missiles and in submarine warfare. 

“There is no guarantee that the United States would win a future conflict with China,” he concluded.
Last year, the Chinese Navy became the world’s largest, with more warships and submarines than the United States, and it continues to build new ships at a stunning rate. 

Though the American fleet remains superior qualitatively, it is spread much thinner.
“The task of building a powerful navy has never been as urgent as it is today,” Xi Jinping declared in April as he presided over a naval procession off the southern Chinese island of Hainan that opened exercises involving 48 ships and submarines. 

The Ministry of National Defense said they were the largest since the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949.
Even as the United States wages a trade war against China, Chinese warships and aircraft have picked up the pace of operations in the waters off Japan, Taiwan, and the islands, shoals and reefs it has claimed in the South China Sea over the objections of Vietnam and the Philippines.
When two American warships — the Higgins, a destroyer, and the Antietam, a cruiser — sailed within a few miles of disputed islands in the Paracels in May, Chinese vessels rushed to challenge what Beijing later denounced as “a provocative act.” 

China did the same to three Australian ships passing through the South China Sea in April.
Only three years ago, Xi stood beside President Barack Obama in the Rose Garden and promised not to militarize artificial islands it has built farther south in the Spratlys archipelago. 

Chinese officials have since acknowledged deploying missiles there, but argue that they are necessary because of American “incursions” in Chinese waters.
When Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited Beijing in June, Xi bluntly warned him that China would not yield “even one inch” of territory it claims as its own.
Ballistic missiles designed to strike ships on display at a military parade in Beijing in 2015.

‘Anti-Access/Area Denial’
China’s naval expansion began in 2000 but accelerated sharply after Xi took command in 2013. 

He has drastically shifted the military’s focus to naval as well as air and strategic rocket forces, while purging commanders accused of corruption and cutting the traditional land forces.
The People’s Liberation Army — the bedrock of Communist power since the revolution — has actually shrunk in order to free up resources for a more modern fighting force. 

Since 2015, the army has cut 300,000 enlisted soldiers and officers, paring the military to two million personnel over all, compared with 1.4 million in the United States.
While every branch of China’s armed forces lags behind the United States’ in firepower and experience, China has made significant gains in asymmetrical weaponry to blunt America’s advantages. 

One focus has been in what American military planners call A2/AD, for “anti-access/area denial,” or what the Chinese call “counter-intervention.”
A centerpiece of this strategy is an arsenal of high-speed ballistic missiles designed to strike moving ships. 

The latest versions, the DF-21D and, since 2016, the DF-26, are popularly known as “carrier killers,” since they can threaten the most powerful vessels in the American fleet long before they get close to China.
The DF-26, which made its debut in a military parade in Beijing in 2015 and was tested in the Bohai Sea last year, has a range that would allow it to menace ships and bases as far away as Guam, according to the latest Pentagon report on the Chinese military, released this month. 

These missiles are almost impossible to detect and intercept, and are directed at moving targets by an increasingly sophisticated Chinese network of radar and satellites.
China announced in April that the DF-26 had entered service. 

State television showed rocket launchers carrying 22 of them, though the number deployed now is unknown. 

A brigade equipped with them is reported to be based in Henan Province, in central China.
Such missiles pose a particular challenge to American commanders because neutralizing them might require an attack deep inside Chinese territory, which would be a major escalation.
The American Navy has never faced such a threat before, the Congressional Research Office warned in a report in May, adding that some analysts consider the missiles “game changing.”
The “carrier killers” have been supplemented by the deployment this year of missiles in the South China Sea. 

The weaponry includes the new YJ-12B anti-ship cruise missile, which puts most of the waters between the Philippines and Vietnam in range.
The Chinese military is preparing for a limited military conflict from the sea, according to a 2013 paper in a journal called The Science of Military Strategy.
Lyle Morris, an analyst with the RAND Corporation, said that China’s deployment of missiles in the disputed Paracel and Spratly Islands “will dramatically change how the U.S. military operates” across Asia and the Pacific.
The best American response, he added, would be “to find new and innovative methods” of deploying ships outside their range. 

Given the longer range of the ballistic missiles, however, that is not possible “in most contingencies” the American Navy would be likely to face in Asia.

Soldiers with the People’s Liberation Army Navy patrolling Woody Island in the disputed Paracel archipelago in 2016.

Blue-Water Ambitions
The aircraft carrier that put to sea in April for its first trials is China’s second, but the first built domestically. 

It is the most prominent manifestation of a modernization project meant to propel the country into the upper tier of military powers. 

Only the United States, with 11 nuclear-powered carriers, operates more than one.
A third Chinese carrier is under construction in a port near Shanghai. 

Analysts believe China will eventually build five or six.
The Chinese military, traditionally focused on repelling a land invasion, increasingly aims to project power into the “blue waters” of the world to protect China’s expanding economic and diplomatic interests, from the Pacific to the Atlantic.
The carriers attract the most attention but China’s naval expansion has been far broader. 

The Chinese Navy — officially the People’s Liberation Army Navy — has built more than 100 warships and submarines in the last decade alone, more than the entire naval fleets of all but a handful of nations.
Last year, China also introduced the first of a new class of a heavy cruisers — or “super destroyers” — that, according to the American Office of Naval Intelligence, “are comparable in many respects to most modern Western warships.” 

Two more were launched from dry dock in Dalian in July, the state media reported.
Last year, China counted 317 warships and submarines in active service, compared with 283 in the United States Navy, which has been essentially unrivaled in the open seas since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Unlike the Soviet Union, which drained its coffers during the Cold War arms race, military spending in China is a manageable percentage of a growing economy. 

Beijing’s defense budget now ranks second only to the United States: $228 billion to $610 billion, according to estimates by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
The roots of China’s focus on sea power and “area denial” can be traced to what many Chinese viewed as humiliation in 1995 and 1996. 

When Taiwan moved to hold its first democratic elections, China fired missiles near the island, prompting President Bill Clinton to dispatch two aircraft carriers to the region.
“We avoided the sea, took it as a moat and a joyful little pond to the Middle Kingdom,” a naval analyst, Chen Guoqiang, wrote recently in the official Navy newspaper. 

“So not only did we lose all the advantages of the sea but also our territories became the prey of the imperialist powers.”
China’s naval buildup since then has been remarkable. 

In 1995, China had only three submarines. 

It now has nearly 60 and plans to expand to nearly 80, according to a report last month by the United States Congressional Research Service.
As it has in its civilian economy, China has bought or absorbed technologies from the rest of the world, in some cases illicitly. 

Much of its military hardware is of Soviet origin or modeled on antiquated Soviet designs, but with each new wave of production, analysts say, China is deploying more advanced capabilities.
China’s first aircraft carrier was originally launched by the Soviet Union in 1988 and left to rust when the nation collapsed three years later. 

Newly independent Ukraine sold it for $20 million to a Chinese investor who claimed it would become a floating casino, though he was really acting on behalf of Beijing, which refurbished the vessel and named it the Liaoning.
The second aircraft carrier — as yet unnamed — is largely based on the Liaoning’s designs, but is reported to have enhanced technology. 

In February, the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation disclosed that it has plans to build nuclear-powered carriers, which have far greater endurance than ones that require refueling stops.
China’s military has encountered some growing pains. 

It is hampered by corruption, which Xi has vowed to wipe out, and a lack of combat experience. 

As a fighting force, it remains untested by combat.
In January, it was embarrassed when one of its most advanced submarines was detected as it neared Japanese islands known as the Senkaku. 

The attack submarine should never have been spotted.
The second aircraft carrier also appears to have experienced hiccups. 

Its first sea trials were announced in April and then inexplicably delayed. 

Not long after the trials went ahead in May, the general manager of China Shipbuilding was placed under investigation for “serious violation of laws and discipline,” the official Xinhua news agency reported, without elaborating.

Fiery Cross Reef in the South China Sea. The deployment of missiles on three man-made reefs in the disputed Spratly Islands — Subi, Mischief and Fiery Cross — has prompted protests from the White House.

Defending Its Claims
China’s military advances have nonetheless emboldened the country’s leadership.
The state media declared the carrier Liaoning “combat ready” in the summer after it moved with six other warships through the Miyako Strait that splits Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and conducted its first flight operations in the Pacific.
The Liaoning’s battle group now routinely circles Taiwan. 

So do Chinese fighter jets and bombers.
China’s new J-20 stealth fighter conducted its first training mission at sea in May, while its strategic bomber, the H-6, landed for the first time on Woody Island in the Paracels. 

From the airfield there or from those in the Spratly Islands, the bombers could strike all of Southeast Asia.
The recent Pentagon report noted that H-6 flights in the Pacific were intended to demonstrate the ability to strike American bases in Japan and South Korea, and as far away as Guam.
“Competition is the American way of seeing it,” said Li Jie, an analyst with the Chinese Naval Research Institute in Beijing. 

“China is simply protecting its rights and its interests in the Pacific.”
And China’s interests are expanding.
In 2017, it opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, saying that it will be used to support its participation in multinational antipiracy patrols off Somalia.
It now appears to be planning to acquire access to a network of ports and bases throughout the Indian Ocean. 

Though ostensibly commercial, these projects have laid the groundwork for a necklace of refueling and resupply arrangements that will “facilitate Beijing’s long-range naval operations,” according to a new report by C4ADS, a research organization in Washington.
“They soon will be able, for example, to send a squadron of ships to somewhere, say in Africa, and have all the capabilities to make a landing in force to protect Chinese assets,” said Vassily Kashin, an expert with the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
The need was driven home in 2015 when Chinese warships evacuated 629 Chinese and 279 foreigners from Yemen when the country’s civil war raged in Aden, a southern port city.
One of the frigates involved in the rescue, the Linyi, was featured in a patriotic blockbuster film, “Operation Red Sea.”
“The Chinese are going to be more present,” Mr. Kashin added, “and everyone has to get used to it.”

Fighter jets on the Liaoning in the East China Sea in April.