China's Crimes Against Humanity

Biotech Giant Thermo Fisher Stops Selling DNA Sequencers in Repressive Chinese Colony

By DAVID MEYER

The Massachusetts biotechnology giant Thermo Fisher Scientific has decided to stop selling genetic sequencing equipment in the Chinese colony of East Turkestan, where the authorities have for years been persecuting the local Muslim population.
East Turkestan is the main home of China’s Uighur minority—a Turkic group that is primarily Muslim. 

As many as a million Uighurs have been interned in “re-education” camps.

Heavy surveillance is commonplace in the oil-rich region, with cameras everywhere and people forced to install spyware on their smartphones.
Part of the surveillance effort is the collection not only of biometric data such as iris scans and fingerprints, but also DNA, as part of a "health" program. 

A database is being compiled of every person’s genetic information, not just that of criminal suspects.
Human Rights Watch said in late 2017 that Thermo Fisher was supplying some of the DNA sequencers for this project. 

The NGO confronted the company, only to be told that “it is not possible for us to monitor the use or application of all products we manufactured.”
Since then, however, U.S. politicians got involved, in particular Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who pushed for a crackdown on the use of American technology in human rights violations by the Chinese.
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported Thermo Fisher as saying it had taken account of “fact-specific assessments,” and that it recognizes “the importance of considering how our products and services are used—or may be used—by our customers.”
The manufacturers of DNA sequencers are mostly based in the U.S., with a couple coming from Europe and one notable new entrant to the market—BGI—being Chinese. 

BGI was reportedly set up with state support.
On a related note, the World Health Organization last week announced a new committee that will write guidelines for human genome editing. 

The decision comes after Chinese scientist He Jiankui last year claimed to have used DNA editing to produce HIV-resistant twins—the first babies in the world to have edited genes.

U.S. Tech Executioners

How U.S. tech powers China's surveillance state

By Erica Pandey

American companies eager to enter China’s massive market brace themselves for potential intellectual property theft or forced technology transfers. 

But there’s another threat at play: their technology is being used for surveillance.
The big picture: China has sophisticated systems of state surveillance, and these systems have long been powered by technologies developed by American companies. 

Beijing has used U.S. tech to surveil its citizens, violate human rights and modernize its military.

The entanglement
Companies doing business in China often get caught in a web: Beijing uses its economic leverage to draw them in and then uses their technology for police-state tactics. 

As a result, "American companies are enabling and complicit in major human rights abuses," says Elsa Kania, a technology and national security expert at the Center for a New American Security.
Another concern is American universities and research institutions partnering with Chinese companies that work with state security, she says.
Thermo Fisher Scientific, a Massachusetts company, has supplied the Chinese government with DNA sequencers that it is now using to collect the DNA of ethnic minorities in East Turkestan, Human Rights Watch reports. 

At a Thursday hearing, Sen. Marco Rubio called Thermo Fisher's operations in East Turkestan "sick."
iFlyTek is a Chinese company that recently launched a 5-year partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Beijing has used iFlytek’s voice recognition technology "to develop a pilot surveillance system that can automatically identify targeted voices in phone conversations," according to Human Rights Watch.
Cisco, in 2011, participated in a Chinese public safety project that set up 500,000 cameras in Chongqing, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Yahoo, in 2005, gave the personal information of a Chinese journalist to China's government. 

That information was used to put the man in jail.
Tech giants, like Facebook, Apple and LinkedIn, have faced scrutiny in the past for censoring or offering to censor content in China.
"Not all of these companies realize the extent to which their activities could be exploited," Kania says.
Companies often take on projects for the Chinese government in the name of curbing "crime", according to Scott Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, but "the boundary between promoting public safety and protecting the state is increasingly blurred with these types of technologies."

The other side: Axios reached out to all of the companies listed above. 

The responses we received by deadline:
Thermo Fisher Scientific: "We work with governments to contribute to good global policy."
Cisco said it "has never custom-tailored our products for any market, and the products that we sell in China are the same products we sell everywhere else."
Oath, which now owns Yahoo: “We’re deeply committed to protecting and advocating for the rights to free expression and privacy of our users around the world."
LinkedIn: "In order to create value for our members in China and around the world, we need to implement the Chinese government’s restrictions on content, when and to the extent required."

The stakes
"A lot of people wanted very much to believe that once China had exposure to the outside world, political liberalization would come with economic liberalization," Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, tells Axios. 

"They're getting a lot richer and a lot more powerful and no more politically liberal."

What's next:
Some companies have pulled out of China of their own accord in the past. 

Google refused to censor its search engine in China in 2010, leading to its ouster from the country. Other companies may follow suit if they realize their technology is being misused, says Kania.
If companies cannot be held accountable by internal ethics guidelines, shareholders or users, the government may need to step in through export controls or limits on funding to researchers that collaborate with China, she says.
Worth noting: There's already a U.S. law that prohibits the export of crime-control products to China, but the sale of cameras and other dual use technologies that could be used for surveillance are not banned, reports the Wall Street Journal.