China's Final Solution: TikTok parent company ByteDance is working with China's Communist Party to spread propaganda on East Turkestan

• ByteDance, the company that owns the viral video app TikTok, is working closely with China's government to facilitate human-rights abuses against Uighur Muslims in China's western colony of East Turkestan.
• The report, titled "Mapping more of China's tech giants: AI and surveillance," looked at the way major Chinese tech companies were involved in state-sanctioned surveillance and censorship using artificial intelligence packaged as popular apps and websites.
• ByteDance is collaborating with public security bureaus across China, including in East Turkestan where it plays an active role in disseminating the party-state's propaganda on East Turkestan.
• TikTok has been in the spotlight after it suspended the account of a US teenager Feroza Aziz after she posted a viral video on the app that was disguised as a makeup tutorial but criticized the Chinese government's treatment of Uighurs in East Turkestan.

By Rosie Perper

The Chinese company that owns the viral video app TikTok is working closely with China's government to facilitate human-rights abuses against Uighur Muslims in the western colony of East Turkestan, according to a new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
The report, titled "Mapping more of China's tech giants: AI and surveillance," looked at the way major Chinese tech companies were involved in state-sanctioned surveillance and censorship using artificial intelligence packaged as popular apps and websites.
ByteDance, the parent company of the viral-video sensation TikTok, was mentioned in the report alongside other major Chinese tech companies including Huawei, Tencent, and Alibaba, all of which -- ASPI wrote -- "are engaged in deeply unethical behavior in East Turkestan, where their work directly supports and enables mass human rights abuses."
China is running thousands detention centers and forced labor camps in East Turkestan. 

Interviews with people who were held in the facilities reveal beatings and food deprivation, as well as medical experimentation on prisoners.
In its research, ASPI singled out ByteDance and accused it of acting alongside the Communist Party to enforce the country's strict censorship laws.
"ByteDance collaborates with public security bureaus across China, including in East Turkestan where it plays an active role in disseminating the party-state's propaganda on East Turkestan," the report said.
ByteDance operates two versions of its viral video app — a China-based app called Douyin and the global app TikTok.
TikTok is one of the most downloaded phone apps in the world and has already entered more than 150 global markets.
Previous reports cited by ASPI indicated that "East Turkestan Internet Police" had a presence on Douyin in 2018 and created a "new public security and internet social governance model."
ASPI also cited recent reporting that said China's Ministry of Public Security's Press and Publicity Bureau signed an agreement with ByteDance that allowed ministry and police officials to have their own Douyin accounts to push ministry propaganda. 

The report also said ByteDance would "increase its offline cooperation with the police department," though it was unclear what that partnership would entail.

ASPI added that other tech giants, including Alibaba and Huawei, contributed cloud computing and surveillance technologies in East Turkestan.
In October, the US blacklisted 28 Chinese organizations and companies accused of facilitating human-rights abuses in East Turkestan.

And earlier this month, sources told Reuters that the US opened a national security investigation into ByteDance after its $1 billion acquisition of the US social-media app Musical.ly in 2017.
TikTok has been in the spotlight after suspending the account of a US teenager named Feroza Aziz who posted a viral video on the app that was disguised as a makeup tutorial but criticized the Chinese government's treatment of Uighurs in East Turkestan.
The company apologized in a statement published to its website on Wednesday, saying that it stood behind its initial decision to suspend Aziz's account but that its moderation process "will not be perfect."
East Turkestan has a population of about 10 million, many of whom are Uighur or other ethnic minorities. 

In May, US Assistant Secretary of Defense Randall Schriver said "at least a million but likely closer to 3 million citizens" were detained detention camps.
Satellite images reviewed by the Washington-based East Turkistan National Awakening Movement earlier this month identified at least 465 detention centers, labor camps, and suspected prisons in East Turkestan.
And a recent leak of classified Chinese government documents known as the "China Cables" laid out a manual for exactly how the detention centers were to operate, preventing escape by double locking all the doors and using a "points system" based on behavior that is linked "directly to rewards, punishments, and family visits".

English Quislings: UK academia's links to Chinese defence firms harmful for national security

Report singles out Britain for unprecedented levels of collaboration with China’s military

By Hannah Devlin and Ian Sample

Imperial College London is among the UK universities hosting labs jointly run by Chinese defence companies. 

Extensive links between British universities and Chinese defence companies, including missile manufacturers, could threaten UK national security interests, the author of a report on China’s research activity overseas has said.
The UK has been singled out as having unprecedented levels of collaboration with Chinese military companies in the analysis by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) which identifies collaborations with scientists from China’s hypersonic missile programme and on research topics ranging from smart materials to robotics.
Sixteen university labs around the world are identified as being run jointly by Chinese defence companies, or have major investments from them. 

Ten are based in the UK, with the University of Manchester and Imperial College London hosting six between them. 

The others are in Australia, Germany, Switzerland and Austria.“[Something] that really alarmed me was the level of collaboration with Chinese missile scientists,” said Alex Joske, the report’s author and an analyst at ASPI, referring to the UK collaborations. 

“I haven’t seen anything like Chinese missile manufacturers setting up these joint labs in other countries,” he added.
Earlier this month, a report by the foreign affairs select committee revealed “alarming evidence” of Chinese interference on UK campuses, adding that universities are not adequately responding to the growing risk of China and other “autocracies” influencing academic freedom in the UK.
The UK labs mentioned in the report include the Sino-British Joint Advanced Laboratory on Control System Technology at the University of Manchester and Imperial College London’s Advanced Structure Manufacturing Technology Laboratory. 

Both are partnerships with the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, which develops space launch vehicles and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Other labs highlighted in the report are based at the University of Strathclyde and the University of Nottingham. 
Research at the Strathclyde lab includes autonomous rendezvous systems for satellites, which could be used for docking, but also for anti-satellite missions.
Beyond their industrial collaborations with Chinese defence firms, dozens of British universities also work with Chinese military institutes, such as the PLA’s Army Engineering University and the National University of Defence Technology. 

The work ranges from hi-tech materials and design optimisation strategies to 5G networks and artificial intelligence programmes that can identify people in low-resolution surveillance footage, and control swarms of robotic vehicles on military patrols.
Bob Seely, a former Conservative MP and co-author of a critical report on Huawei for the Henry Jackson Society, said some universities appeared to have a “laissez-faire” attitude to the potential risks. 

“We are in danger of being extremely naive about this,” he said.
“We have to draw a line between what is beneficial for us and China and what is not so beneficial for us. I’m incredibly wary considering the amount of IP theft, espionage and cyberattacks that have come out of China. At the moment we haven’t got the balance right at all.”
Joske said that such research was often framed as “dual-use”, but that this concept was questionable when applied to collaborations with defence companies. 

“If you’re dealing with a company like a Chinese missile manufacturer you don’t really need to speculate about the use,” he said.
The analysis revealed what Joske described as a fundamental misalignment between the way universities approach research collaborations and how countries, including the UK, approach security interests. 

“Some of the collaborations that universities are engaged in with China are almost certainly harmful for national security and contributing to things that I don’t think the taxpayer would approve of,” he said.
He added that some laboratories ran risks of inadvertently violating export controls or laws around weapons of mass destruction.
Charles Parton, a China expert at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), said Britain had not done sufficient work to understand the issue. 

“People need to wake up. The world has changed and I don’t think academia has kept up with that change or understands the challenge that China represents here. We are just sleepwalking into this.”
“We don’t want a cold war with China, we want to cooperate, but we should cooperate in those areas which are not a threat to our national interests, our national security and our values. You don’t help your potential enemies to produce weapons or techniques which could be used against you,” he added.

Parton said the government should work with UK academics to create a reference list of technologies that are permissible for them to work on with the Chinese military and defence industry. 

He said an equivalent system to List X contractors, who are permitted to do secret work for the government, was needed for UK-based academics “because a lot of this work is very grey”.

Chinese military researchers exploit western universities

Study shows US and UK scientists aiding high-tech progress for People’s Liberation Army 
By Kathrin Hille in Taipei

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping inspecting forces of the People's Liberation Army. A study shows the PLA's scientists have contributed to the development of Beijing's military technology by collaborating with researchers at western universities 

China has sent thousands of scientists affiliated with its armed forces to western universities — especially in countries that share intelligence with the US — and is building a web of research collaboration that could boost Beijing’s military technology development.
 About 2,500 researchers from Chinese military universities spent time at foreign universities — led by the US and UK — over the past decade, and they hid their military affiliations, according to a new report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a think-tank partly funded by Australia’s department of defence.
 The research effort focused on members of the so-called “Five Eyes” group of countries with which the US shares an intelligence relationship: the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Over the past five years, researchers affiliated to the People’s Liberation Army published more joint papers with scientists from the UK and the US than with those of any other country. 
 The findings will fuel the debate raging in some western capitals over how to control the flow of cutting-edge and especially dual-use technology to Beijing — one of the main fronts in their struggle to adapt to a rapidly rising China.
 The PLA’s international research collaboration “focuses on hard sciences, especially emerging and dual-use technologies”, said Alex Joske, author of the report that is being published by ASPI today.
Dual-use technology has civilian and military applications.
 While the US and other western militaries have expanded exchanges with China’s armed forces, the scientists the PLA sends abroad usually have no contact with military officers in their host countries. Instead, the focus is on collecting knowledge to power China’s military technological progress. 
 In 2015, the science publication Shenzhou Xueren wrote about an interdisciplinary project between the PLA’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) and the University of Cambridge.
The article said the collaboration would produce the next generation of supercomputer experts for China and eventually “greatly enhance our nation’s power in the areas of defence, communications, anti-jamming for imaging and high-precision navigation”.
 Mr Joske found that navigation technology, computer science and artificial intelligence (AI) were the dominant areas of exchanges after reviewing collaborations between Chinese and foreign scientists since 2006 and statistics on Chinese researchers who were sent abroad.
 In one example, several researchers visited UK universities and are continuing joint research on topics such as combustion in scramjet engines, which could power hypersonic aircraft capable of flying at six times the speed of sound.
Wang Zhenguo, deputy chief of the PLA’s scramjet programme and head of the department of postgraduate studies at the NUDT, has co-authored 18 papers with foreign scientists.
 Huang Wei, an NUDT scramjet researcher and aircraft design expert for the PLA’s General Armaments Department, worked on his PhD while visiting the University of Leeds between 2008 and 2010, a researcher at the UK university told the FT.
Luo Wenlei, another NUDT scramjet researcher, wrote his PhD thesis on scramjet engines at Leeds in 2014.
 Both Huang and Luo, as well as Luo’s doctoral thesis supervisors, have published together with  Wang on scramjets.
Derek Ingham, a professor at Leeds and one of Luo’s thesis supervisors, did not respond to a request for comment.
 Qin Ning, a professor at the University of Sheffield involved in some of the exchanges with Chinese scramjet experts, said their joint research was "academic" in nature.
 He added that a number of EU-China collaborative projects strongly encouraged by the university — with the participation of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, which is administered by the State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence, China’s weapons industry regulator — had produced “fruitful collaboration”.
Scientists working in PLA universities do not mention this affiliation when applying to western universities or publishing in English, but present themselves as members of civilian-sounding academic institutions instead. 
 One of the persistent pushes for international technology collaboration has come from the PLA’s Rocket Force, which includes China’s missile and nuclear weapons programmes. 
Major General Hu Changhua, one of the leading missile experts at Rocket Force Engineering University, spent three months at Germany’s University of Duisburg-Essen in 2008, while Zhou Zhijie, another lecturer at RFEU, was a visiting scholar at the University of Manchester in 2009. Both concealed their affiliation with RFEU and named the Xi’an Research Institute of High Technology, a non-existent institution, instead, the ASPI report said.
They continue to publish in English under this fake affiliation, entries in digital science publication databases show. 
 Yang Jianbo and Xu Dongling, two professors at Manchester, published a book with Maj-Gen Hu and Zhou in 2011, and have continued to collaborate with RFEU researchers, according to entries on ResearchGate, the online database of scientific papers. 
Yang and Xu did not respond to requests for comment.
Zhou did not respond to a request for comment.
Maj-Gen Hu could not be reached for comment.
 Among universities in the US, which hosted about 500 visiting scholars from PLA-affiliated schools over the past decade, Georgia Tech scientists published the highest number of joint papers with PLA researchers, according to Mr Joske.
 Liu Ling, a professor at Georgia Tech’s College of Computing who works on big data and cloud computing, has co-published papers with scientists from the NUDT according to the digital library of IEEE, a scientists’ association.
 She told the FT that her work with NUDT visiting scholars “has been on pure (fundamental) research” and unrelated to military applications, adding: “While I am not familiar with all of Georgia Tech collaborations, I know for sure that I have never worked with PLA directly”.
 However, defence experts cast doubt on such a distinction. 
While many staff of PLA-affiliated universities are so-called civilian cadres who focus on scientific work and are not supposed to be used in combat, they are still members of the PLA.
NUDT is supervised by the Central Military Commission, China’s top military body.
 In 2015, the US government added NUDT to its list of organisations that require case-by-case licensing for the transfer of any item to them, including technology, under the Export Administration Regulations.

Chinese Peril

China’s secret threat to Australia’s Antarctic claim
AAP

An aerial view of Antarctica, as seen from a Qantas Jumbo sightseeing flight.
AUSTRALIA must wise up to secret Chinese military activities and the threat of a land grab for resources in Antarctica, a report warns.
Research from defence think tank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute says Australia’s leadership role is being eroded because of long-term under-investment at a time when other countries are expanding their presence and influence in the region.
“China has conducted undeclared military activities in Antarctica, is building up a case for a territorial claim, and is engaging in minerals exploration there,” the report says.
“The calculation that the Australian government has long made in short-changing Antarctic affairs in order to boost activities up north is looking increasingly risky.” 

China has ceased being a minor player in the polar regions and is becoming a major actor as a result of a huge budget increase in the past decade. 

Beijing is operating two icebreakers down south and has a third under construction. 

The report, by Anne-Marie Brady, noted three out of four of China’s Antarctic bases and two of its field camps are in the Australian Antarctic Territory. 

Australia’s territorial claim in Antarctica spans 42 per cent of the continent. 

The report warns China’s expanding presence in Antarctica is aimed at angling for resources including minerals, hydrocarbons, fishing, tourism, transport routes, water and bioprospecting.

The Antarctic plateau behind Australia’s Mawson base.

“China has never stopped exploring Antarctic mineral resources, despite the requirements of the Madrid Protocol,” the report said.
Exploration activities have stepped up since 2012 including preliminary surveys of coal reserves and investigations of undersea metal deposits. 

It’s in Australia’s national interest that Antarctica remains free from military competition, the report argues.
But in recent years China has frequently failed to accurately report the extent of its military’s activities in Antarctica as well as defence use of some of its scientific projects there, which is a breach of the Antarctic Treaty. 

“China regards Antarctica as a useful laboratory for preparing for an advanced space program,” the report says.
“The engineering needed to build a modern research station in Antarctica can be applied in many other extreme environments, including space.” 

Australia needed to urgently look at its funding priorities in Antarctica to protect its interests and encourage the Chinese to be more transparent about their polar policies.
“With careful diplomacy, a clear-headed strategy and leadership, and strategic investments in capacity, Australia can better manage its economic and political relationship with China while protecting its own national interests in Antarctica,” the report said.