Rogue Nation: Beijing Hinders Free Speech Abroad

Through a campaign of fear and intimidation, Beijing is hindering free speech in the United States and in other Western countries.
China Digital Times

At The New York Times, Wang Dan, a former leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, looks at the growing reach of Chinese censors on American college campuses as Beijing attempts to export its political control beyond its borders. 

Chinese international students studying in the U.S. were discouraged from attending Wang’s forums on Chinese politics due to fear of reprisal.
[…O]ver the past three months, my efforts on American campuses have been stymied. 

The Chinese Communist Party is extending its surveillance of critics abroad, reaching into Western academic communities and silencing visiting Chinese students. 

Through a campaign of fear and intimidation, Beijing is hindering free speech in the United States and in other Western countries.
The Chinese government, and people sympathetic to it, encourage like-minded Chinese students and scholars in the West to report on Chinese students who participate in politically sensitive activities — like my salons, but also other public forums and protests against Beijing. 

Members of the China Students and Scholars Association, which has chapters at many American universities, maintain ties with the Chinese consulates and keep tabs on “unpatriotic” people and activities on campuses. 

Agents or sympathizers of the Chinese government show up at public events videotaping and snapping pictures of speakers, participants and organizers.
Chinese students who are seen with political dissidents like me or dare to publicly challenge Chinese government policies can be put on a blacklist. 

Their families in China can be threatened or punished.
When these students return to China, members of the public security bureau may “invite” them to “tea,” where they are interrogated and sometimes threatened. 

Their passport may not be renewed. 

One student told me that during one of his home visits to China he was pressured to spy on others in the United States. [Source]
Australia has also recently been confronted with Chinese government influence on its academic and publishing sectors. 

Publisher Allen & Unwin announced plans to postpone the release of Clive Hamilton’s book on Chinese influence in Australia for fear of possible legal action from Beijing. 

The book’s delay has sparked widespread criticism as the country grapples with its economic dependence on China and the consequent growth of Beijing’s interference in its domestic affairs. From Jacqueline Williams at The New York Times:
The decision this month to delay the book, “Silent Invasion: How China Is Turning Australia into a Puppet State,” has set off a national uproar, highlighting the tensions between Australia’s growing economic dependence on China and its fears of falling under the political control of the rising Asian superpower.
Critics have drawn parallels to decisions this year by high-profile academic publishers in Europe to withhold articles from readers in China that might anger the Communist Party.
But the case has struck a particularly sensitive nerve in Australia, where the book’s delay is the latest in a series of incidents that have raised concerns about what many here see as the threat from China to freedom of expression. [Source]
Allen & Unwin is not the only major Western publisher that has succumbed to pressure from Beijing to censor material critical of China. 

The book’s delay is the latest in a series of incidents that have raised concerns about Chinese attack on freedom of expression. 

Last month, scientific publishing company Springer Nature caved in to Chinese government request and blocked hundreds of articles on its Chinese website that touched on sensitive political topics. 

In August, Cambridge University Press withheld more than 300 articles from the Chinese website of China Quarterly, before reversing the decision in response to widespread criticism.
In Ghana, artist Bright Tetteh Ackwerh has published a series of cartoons criticizing Chinese influence in the country. 

He has continued to use art to speak out against controversial Chinese government activities in the country despite protests from Beijing. 

Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu at Quartz reports:
In the image, Xi Jinping is pouring a sludge of brown water from a Ming dynasty vase into bowls held by Ghana’s president and the minister of natural resource. 

Next to Xi, China’s ambassador to Ghana happily clutches a gold bar.
The Chinese embassy was reportedly infuriated by the cartoon and issued a complaint to the Ghanaian government on media coverage of the arrests of several Chinese miners involved in illegal mining, which is known locally as “galamsey”. 

While Ghanaian miners were also arrested, much of the public’s focus has been on the Chinese. Ghana is the second largest gold producer in Africa after South Africa.
[…A]ckwerh, who cites Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei as one of his inspirations, wasn’t done. 

In August, he published another cartoon titled “Occupation,” where the presidents of Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal are arguing over a plate of jollof rice. 

It’s reference to the so-called jollof wars, a mostly fun debate between West African countries over who makes the best version of the dish.
[…] “I hope my example has given other artists the courage to also contribute to this and things like this. 

There are things we have the power to do that even governments can’t,” he said. [Source]
Meanwhile, more direct efforts to gain support for the Communist Party abroad have been stymied. 

A group of visiting Chinese scholars at the University of California, Davis disbanded a Chinese Communist Party branch that they set up at the university after realizing they may have violated U.S. laws. 

Nectar Gan and Zhuang Pinghui at South China Morning Post report:
Mu Xingsen, secretary of the party branch, confirmed its establishment when contacted by the South China Morning Post on Sunday but said it had already been dissolved.
“It is because we have later learned that this [establishing a party branch] does not comply with the local laws,” Mu said. 

“Of course we should respect the local laws when we’re here.”
The US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) requires all individuals and groups acting under the direction or control of a foreign government or political party to register with the Department of Justice in advance and regularly report their activities.
[…] The branch, which planned to meet every two weeks, had tasked its members with promoting the organisation to their colleagues or neighbours who were coming to the US, it said, and to absorb party members into the organisation. [Source]

Rogue Nation

Blunt instrument? What a list of banned articles says about Chinese censors
By John Ruwitch

People walk past the Cambridge University Press (CUP) stall at the Beijing International Book Fair in Beijing, China, August 23, 2017. 

SHANGHAI -- An old review of an academic monograph on agrarian revolutionaries in 1930s China is hardly a political third rail in Beijing today, even by the increasingly sensitive standards of the ruling Communist Party.
That such a piece appeared on a list of some 300 scholarly works that Cambridge University Press (CUP) said last week the Chinese government had asked it to block from its website offers clues about the inner workings of China's vast and secretive censorship apparatus, say experts.
Xi Jinping has stepped up censorship and tightened controls on the internet and various aspects of civil society, as well as reasserting Communist Party authority over academia and other institutions, since coming to power in 2012.
Far from being a well-oiled machine, though, China's censorship regime is fragmented and often undermined by gaps, workarounds, and perhaps even hasty officials, say academics specializing in Chinese politics.
"Crude is the word," said Jonathan Sullivan, an associate professor at the University of Nottingham in Britain. 

"The blunt way in which articles were chosen for censoring ... suggest to me that there was not a lot of thought put into it."
CUP, the publishing arm of Britain's elite Cambridge University, on Monday reversed its decision to comply with the request to censor the articles published in the journal China Quarterly following an outcry over academic freedom.
China's response remains to be seen. 

The education ministry, foreign ministry, cyberspace administration and state publishing authority all declined to comment.
The list of articles the authorities wanted blocked covered topics that are considered sensitive by the government, including the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy protests, the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, Tibet, Taiwan and the violence-prone far-western region of Xinjiang.
But it was far from thorough or comprehensive.
The article on 1930s agrarian revolutionaries may have got there by mistake, say experts.
What appears to have condemned the scathing but otherwise innocuous 1991 review of Kamal Sheel's book about a Communist base area in China's southern heartland was the fact the place was named Xinjiang, and the word appeared in the book title.
The Chinese characters are different for Xinjiang, the village, and Xinjiang, the mostly-Muslim region more than 2,500 km (1,550 miles) to the northwest that is beset by ethnic tensions and occasional unrest. 

But in English they are indistinguishable.

KEYWORD SEARCHES
Xu Xibai, a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford, tweeted a brief analysis of the list that noted that its creators appear to have hastily searched the China Quarterly database for taboo words in titles and abstracts.
"The censors probably used a few keyword searches to locate just enough articles to make a nice, long list to impress their superiors," Xu's post said. 

"They did not bother to read the articles or go through the content list manually."
An article defending Mao Zedong was on the censored list, for instance, while others more critical of the former paramount leader were not.

People talk at the Cambridge University Press (CUP) stall at the Beijing International Book Fair in Beijing, China, August 23, 2017. 

Some sensitive subjects seem to have eluded the officials' net.
The Communist Party tightly controls discourse on the 1958-61 Great Leap Forward, in which millions starved to death due to ill-conceived economic policies. 

Censors have banned books on the topic but it was apparently not on this list.
Nor were the brutal, Communist-led land reforms of the 1950s, or the Hundred Flowers Movement, an effort by Mao to lure critics out of the woodwork by feigning openness, only to punish them.
The party's efforts to censor news and information have sometimes backfired or left outsiders perplexed.
In 2009, software designed to check pornographic and violent images on PCs blocked images of a movie poster for cartoon cat Garfield, dishes of flesh-color cooked pork and on one search engine a close-up of film star Johnny Depp's face.
Citizen Lab, a group of researchers based at the University of Toronto, compiled a list of words banned as of last year on popular live streaming sites in China. 

Among them: "Moulin Rouge", "braised rabbit", "helicopter" and "zen".
The request to block the articles was passed to Cambridge University Press by its import agent, but without knowing where it originated it is hard to draw firm conclusions, said Sebastian Veg, a China scholar at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences in Paris.
"The censorship system is of course centrally directed, but not uniform," Veg said.
Lee Siu-yau, assistant professor of Greater China studies at the Education University of Hong Kong, suspects the request was a trial balloon.
"They usually start with something small-scale and gradually expand and make their requirements more difficult," he said.
"This might be one of the first steps that the Chinese government would take to see if it could actually influence international academic publishers."

Hollywood’s dangerous obsession with China

American filmmakers have made common cause with Chinese censors in pursuit of profit. 

By Robert Daly

People walk past a poster for Disney’s “Star Wars” film at a movie theater in Beijing on Jan. 9. 
American film studios are playing a leading role in the growing strategic and ideological competition between China and the U.S., and Washington is taking note. 

Sixteen members of Congress wrote a letter calling for scrutiny of Chinese investments in the U.S. film industry, and former Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) wants a review of Hollywood’s pursuit of Chinese box office. 

“By controlling the financing and distribution of American movies [in China],” Wolf wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed, “and [by] subjecting them to censorship..., Beijing could effectively dictate what is and isn’t made.”
Government attention to these issues raises the specter of federal regulation of culture — a brand of McCarthyism that would be worse than the problem it seeks to solve — but the lawmakers’ warnings are on target. 

American filmmakers have already made common cause with Chinese censors in pursuit of profit. 

Writing scripts to satisfy the rulers of the People’s Republic doesn’t simply weaken the films the U.S. exports to China, it limits what plays at the multiplex on American soil, and it diminishes our understanding of the greatest geostrategic challenge America will face over the coming decades: the rise of China.
There are upsides to Hollywood’s courtship of China. 

Fine Chinese actors are now regularly cast in American movies — Jiang Wen and Donnie Yen will be featured in “Star Wars: Rogue One,” for example, and a treasure trove of Chinese stories, locations and aesthetics is gradually being introduced to American audiences. 

If Hollywood’s China partnerships help erode the cultural myopia of American film, good.
But China’s film industry isn’t run by the talent; it’s run by the Chinese Communist Party, which has grown increasingly assertive and paranoid since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012. 

Xi is waging a soft-power campaign that requires artists, filmmakers, writers, academics and the media to “serve socialism” and show “positive energy” by offering uplifting messages about the party.
Despite this oppressive cultural atmosphere, China’s economy continues to grow. 

China now has a larger middle class (consumers with annual incomes of between $50,000 and $500,000) than the United States. 

It is this combination of massive purchasing power, combined with aggressive authoritarian governance, that makes China a dangerous obsession for Hollywood.
In 2017, China’s box office receipts are expected to surpass America’s. 

Already, a movie cannot break box office records unless it plays in China, and it cannot play in China unless it is approved by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. American studios that want films distributed in China either submit to Beijing’s censors or become adept at self-censorship. 

The problem is compounded because China might object to anything — its censors don’t explain their decisions.
The result is that Hollywood is allowing China to determine which movies get made. 

As U.S. studios gain expertise in winning approval from the censors, they’ve stopped greenlighting projects to which Beijing might object. 

The proof? 

There have been no films in recent years that depict the Chinese Communist Party or mainland Chinese characters in a critical light. 

Instead, China saved the world in “2012” and “The Martian” and provided a stunning backdrop in “Skyfall.” 

We no longer see movies like “Red Corner,” “Seven Years in Tibet” and “Kundun,” all of which were released in 1997, before China’s box office became the force it is today.
It’s not that we need anti-Chinese or Yellow Peril fare. 

But Americans have always used movies to help them make sense of major challenges. 

“The Great Dictator” and “Casablanca” were among hundreds of World War II movies that provided important perspectives on their times. 

The Cold War gave us “Dr. Strangelove,” “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,” “The Manchurian Candidate” and “War Games,” to name a few. 

Vietnam inspired some of the best cinematic art ever. 

War in the Middle East has yielded “Three Kings,” “The Hurt Locker” and “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,” as well as landmark television programs such as “24” and “Homeland.” 

Of course, the Axis powers, the Soviet Union, Vietnam and Saddam’s Iraq didn’t offer much potential box office.
Now China is the United States’ most formidable strategic, economic and ideological competitor. 

It is a one-party state with a dramatically poor human rights record. 

There is little doubt about what Hollywood’s go-to source of international conflict would be if the industry weren’t placating Beijing.
American struggles with racism, sexism, and technology have spawned countless good, bad and indifferent dramas, comedies, romances and suspense films. 

China’s social fissures and moral failings would receive similar treatment if Hollywood were functioning in a healthy way — to the benefit of the U.S. and, in the long run, of the People’s Republic. 

Meanwhile, China sees a stream of American movies about U.S. injustice, crime and corruption. Oliver Stone’s “Snowden” will be seen by Chinese audiences; neither they nor Americans will see Stone’s Mao Tse-tung epic because China has refused to allow him to film it for decades.
China is something new for filmmakers and the U.S. government — a nation of grave concern to us that we also want to sell to and cooperate with. 

If a free culture is essential to our national well-being, it matters that the U.S. is surrendering its ability to respond to this historic challenge through film. 

Congress is right to worry that Hollywood’s global business model has implications for national security. 

The film industry needs to prove it is protecting creative freedom in the face of Chinese pressures and temptations, before the invitations arrive from Capitol Hill.