China’s Media Forecast is Bleak and Stormy

Spring Festival is coming, but the country's politics remain frozen.
BY SARAH COOK
The Year of the Dog saw Chinese journalists and bloggers kept on a tighter leash than ever. 

Xi Jinping and the ruling Communist Party moved aggressively to control reporting on threats to the economy, block or shut down popular social media applications, and reduce avenues for jumping the so-called Great Firewall’s censorship. 

The Year of the Pig, which starts on Feb. 5, doesn’t look much better—but could also see the start of some serious pushback globally, as the world becomes more aware of Beijing’s propaganda-fueled efforts to influence foreign audiences. 

Here are five takeaways for China’s information control strategies in the new lunar year.

1. Big dates, new crackdowns. 

The Year of the Pig is replete with politically sensitive anniversaries: 60 years since the Dalai Lama’s flight from Tibet in March, a century since the launch of the influential May 4 student movement, 30 years since the June 4 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, a decade since a major bout of unrest and intensified restrictions in East Turkestan in early July, 20 years since the party launched its campaign against the Falun Gong spiritual movement later that month, and the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic in October.
Those dates often bring extra censorship even on less significant anniversaries, and regulators seem especially keen to preempt any potential expressions of dissent in 2019. 

On Jan. 3, the Cyberspace Administration of China announced the launch of a new campaign against vaguely defined “negative and harmful information” online. 

It is set to last six months and has already included instructions to the web portals Baidu and Sohu to suspend their news services for one week this month in order to “root out undesirable content.”
As the various anniversaries pass, spikes in censorship will be tracked by monitors such as Weiboscope; localized internet shutdowns and travel restrictions will affect regions such as Tibet and East Turkestan; and arrests or involuntary “vacations” will be imposed on prominent democracy advocates, grassroots activists, and ordinary Falun Gong, Tibetan Buddhist, and Uighur Muslim believers. 

If the past is any indication, at least some of the repressive measures deployed and the jail sentences imposed will last far beyond the anniversary year itself.

2. First iCloud arrest. 

The 2017 Cybersecurity Law stipulates that foreign companies must store Chinese users’ cloud data on servers located in China. 

To meet this requirement, Apple announced last January that iCloud data would be transferred to servers run by a company called Guizhou on the Cloud Big Data (GCBD), which is owned by the Guizhou provincial government. 

Apple and GCBD now both have access to iCloud data, including photos and other content.
Personal communications and information from platforms such as WeChat, QQ, Twitter, and Skype have increasingly been used by Chinese authorities to detain or convict people for their peaceful political or religious speech. 

This makes it only a matter of time before American companies with localized data centers become complicit in a politicized arrest. 

Apple has already proved its willingness to comply with Chinese government demands that violate basic freedoms by removing hundreds of apps used to circumvent censorship or access foreign news services from its mobile store in China.
Other companies to watch include the U.S.-based note-taking app Evernote, which transferred user data to Tencent Cloud last year, and various blockchain platforms, which as of next month will be required to implement real-name registration, monitor content, and store user data.

3. Financial news frozen. 

Last year, Chinese censors intensified their focus on controlling business and economic news—usually relatively openly reported topics compared with political or cultural issues—amid a trade war with the United States and slowing growth at home. 

Propaganda and censorship authorities actively intervened to suppress negative reporting on a staggering economy by suspending online portals’ financial news channels, issuing regular directives to editors to carefully manage their coverage, and providing monthly ideological trainings to journalists at financial news outlets.
This year, censors have already told the media not to report information on layoffs in the tech sector and restricted the circulation of a speech by a prominent economist, who said the government had made serious economic miscalculations in 2018. 

As the slowdown intensifies and its impact is felt across a wider range of sectors, the authorities are expected to tighten their control over the news and work to prevent—and prosecute—leaks of negative financial data and analysis.

4. Big data efforts. 

Reports emerge weekly of pilot initiatives in which Chinese authorities attempt to incorporate artificial intelligence and other technological aids into existing control mechanisms. 

The more benign examples include efforts to identify and fine jaywalkers, limit illegal subletting in public housing, encourage good manners on public transportation, and improve student attendance at school. 

Yet even these cases involve considerable restrictions on privacy, possible false positives, and enormous potential for abuse. 

And in other instances, similar technologies are being deployed for more obviously repressive purposes, such as censoring politically sensitive images on WeChat or identifying potential targets for forced re-education in East Turkestan.
Previous cases have been experimental or limited to certain geographical locations. 

But as these advanced systems for social and political control are refined, and as the government proceeds with its plans for a national social credit system, centralized surveillance is becoming the new norm.

5. Stronger pushback against influence abroad. 

The past two years have seen international society become far more sharply aware of the threat posed by the Chinese government’s foreign influence operations. 

Policymakers and civil society actors in democratic countries have mobilized to more critically examine Beijing’s media engagement and investment practices.
In the United States, the Justice Department has urged the Xinhua news agency and China Central Television (CCTV) to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, closing an important gap in the law’s enforcement. 

In Ghana, the local independent broadcasters’ association raised concerns about a potential contract with a Chinese firm to build the country’s digital television infrastructure. 

Britain’s media regulator is reviewing CCTV’s license following complaints that it had participated in the filming and airing of forced confessions by detainees, including activists and journalists. 

And a host of countries, such as Australia, Japan, and Norway, have restricted or are reconsidering the Chinese firm Huawei’s involvement in current or future telecommunications infrastructure projects.
China’s leaders will continue their ambitious, and at times covert or coercive, drive to influence foreign media and information environments, but Chinese state-run outlets, telecom firms, and even diplomats are now far more likely to encounter legal and other obstacles in democratic settings.
The Chinese Communist Party’s apparatus for information control will be more technologically sophisticated than ever this year, and the leadership under Xi will press it to the limits of its capacity. That the regime believes this is necessary suggests a deep insecurity—about its own historical legacies, about the crisis of legitimacy that a slowing economy creates for an unelected government, and about the ways even the smallest expressions of public anger can snowball online and offline. Censorship, propaganda, and surveillance may seem necessary to the regime, but they are hardly sufficient. 

The authorities’ efforts continue to intensify because they are never entirely successful. 

While the government’s information controls will likely bulk up during the Year of the Pig, they will come no closer to flying.

Apple is the world leader in globalizing Chinese and Foxconn censorship

Apple blocks New York Times in China after paper probes Chinese subsidies given to iPhone maker’s partner Foxconn
By MATTHEW SHEFFIELD

Apple has officially blocked the New York Times from the Chinese edition of its mobile application market.

This move followed a Chinese government ruling that appears to have been sparked by the newspaper’s reporting on massive subsidies provided to Apple’s top manufacturing partner by the People’s Republic.
The ban went into effect on Dec. 23, when Apple formally removed the Times’ English- and Chinese-language programs from its app store for users in mainland China. 

It was not announced by the newspaper until this week, presumably because the Times sought to reverse the decision.
In a statement released to the Times, Apple spokesman Fred Sainz said that the paper had been banned from the app store because it had somehow run afoul of unspecified Chinese laws.
“For some time now the New York Times app has not been permitted to display content to most users in China and we have been informed that the app is in violation of local regulations,” Sainz said in the statement.
“As a result, the app must be taken down off the China App Store. When this situation changes, the App Store will once again offer the New York Times app for download in China.”
The newspaper’s website has been blocked by China’s infamous “Great Firewall” censorship regime since 2012, when it published several reports about the vast wealth of the family of Wen Jiabao, who was at the time the ostensibly Communist nation’s country’s prime minister.
Tom Grundy, editor-in-chief of the Hong Kong Free Press, condemned the move on Twitter, describing it as “Apple eagerly assisting Beijing’s blatant censorship.”
But Apple, the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization, is far from the only major technology firm willing to comply with Beijing’s demands in order to do business in China.
According to former Al Jazeera journalist Melissa Chan, “every single US tech company in China makes compromises in order to enter the market.”
She gave several examples in an essay for the Guardian, including social network LinkedIn, note-taking service Evernote and Microsoft. 
Google is one of the few American tech firms unwilling to comply, opting instead not to do business in China. 
It completely exited the country in 2010.
“But if anybody had hoped Google’s defection would launch an exodus, it never happened,” Chan wrote.
“Since then, Chinese censorship and attempts to control foreign companies have only become more odious, with no indication it will let up.”
According to Wikipedia, about 3,000 major websites are currently banned within China.
The Times apps were blocked by Beijing due to a story that reporter David Barboza was working on about the massive subsidies and other inducements that the Chinese government provides to Foxconn, a Taiwanese firm which is Apple’s manufacturing partner and the largest private employer in China.
According to the Times, Barboza contacted Apple on Dec. 23 for comment about his report. 
Within hours, the newspaper’s management was informed by the iPhone maker that its apps had been blocked for users with billing addresses within mainland China.

The Dirty Four

Apple is not the only tech company kowtowing to China’s despots.
There is rightly outrage at Apple removing the New York Times app from its Chinese store. 
Now let’s take a look at LinkedIn, Evernote and Microsoft.

By Melissa Chan

‘One online advocacy organization labelled Apple the “world leader in globalizing Chinese censorship”.’

News of Apple pulling the New York Times app from its store in China has been met with the expected outrage on social media.
One online advocacy organisation labelled Apple the “world leader in globalising Chinese censorship”. 
Tom Grundy of Hong Kong Free Press, an independent online news outlet, tweeted that Apple was now “eagerly assisting” in censorship. 
And the New York Times’s own correspondent, Chris Buckley, asked on Twitter whether Apple owed an explanation to the paper’s Chinese readers.
I have experience with Chinese censorship, as both target and witness of it.
As a reporter there for five years, I – along with the rest of the foreign press corps – often faced attempts at both the local and national level to interfere with and stop our coverage.
And as someone who happened to be in China when social media and cloud-based technology started taking off, I also wrote many stories on China’s moves to block Facebook, Twitter and Google. Here’s a list of major websites blocked in the country.
As much as I have spoken up against Chinese censorship, and as often as I berate Mark Zuckerberg’s blatant kowtowing in order to get Facebook back into China, I actually think we should hold some of our fire, or at least stop short of singling Apple out as the worst offender.
I say this as someone who has also covered Silicon Valley as a Bay Area-based correspondent.
In the United States, Apple has a strong track record as an industry leader against government attempts to access users’ data.
It has butted heads directly with the Obama administration over issues of privacy and security, calling it a fight for civil liberties.
It has taken unpopular positions, including refusing to cooperate with the FBI to help agents read the encrypted data from domestic terrorist Syed Farook’s iPhone.
This is a technology company that has appeared to have at least tried, at times, to do the right thing.
Of course, Apple has not manufactured iPhones in China without scandal.
From stories of factory workers being made ill by the chemicals used to make iPhone touch screens, to a spate of suicides at a manufacturer’s campuses, Apple’s record is checkered.
Apple only shoulders responsibility when it also happens to improve the company’s bottom line, or when it’s easy. 
In the United States, Apple has recourse to a functioning legal system to launch its battles.
In China, where the rule of law is weak, it means a much tougher environment and far fewer options when the company disagrees with government decisions.
The situation is complicated by the tremendous leverage the Chinese government has over Apple. 
Not only is the iPhone manufactured there, but sales of Apple products in China account for a quarter of its global revenue.
Apple has not explained its latest decision and which law the New York Times fallen foul to.
The newspaper has a Chinese-language edition of its paper.
In 2012, Beijing blocked both the Chinese and English-language websites, but readers could continue reading articles if they downloaded the apps to their iPhones.
Now, Apple has removed both English and Chinese-language apps from its store, making it impossible to read the New York Times unless users know how to employ circumvention tools.
Maybe the larger the company, the more scrutiny it should receive.
In that spirit, Apple’s decision to pull the apps deserves full moral fury.
But keep in mind that every single US tech company in China makes compromises in order to enter the market.
LinkedIn restricts its content. 
Evernote, like Apple, stores Chinese account holders’ data on Chinese servers so that authorities may access the information. 
Microsoft censors. 
None of this is right.

Tom Grundy of Hong Kong Free Press, an independent online news outlet, tweeted that Apple was now “eagerly assisting” in censorship.
Few foreign companies have taken the moral stand that Google did by exiting China. 
I remember when the company made that decision.
Supporters of a more open China dropped off flowers outside its Beijing offices, excited that it had made such a bold move.
But if anybody had hoped Google’s defection would launch an exodus, it never happened.
Since then, Chinese censorship and attempts to control foreign companies have only become more odious, with no indication it will let up. 
Apple’s problem today, is another foreign company’s conundrum tomorrow.
Its dependance on China serves as a case study for how the story will repeatedly, dismally play out. All this stops only when the financial incentives to do business in China, and with China, disappear.