Hong Kong Takes Symbolic Stand Against China’s High-Tech Controls

The first major place in China to rebel against Beijing’s technologies of control is one of the last not yet fully under their thrall.
By Paul Mozur and Lin Qiqing

In Hong Kong, umbrellas are commonly deployed to shield protester activities from digital eyes.

HONG KONG — There’s no sign to mark it. 

But when travelers from Hong Kong cross into Shenzhen in mainland China, they reach a digital cut-off point.
On the Hong Kong side, the internet is open and unfettered. 

On the China side, connections wither behind filters and censors that block foreign websites and scrub social media posts. 

The walk is short, but the virtual divide is huge.
This invisible but stark technological wall has loomed as Hong Kong’s protests smolder into their fourth month. 

The semiautonomous city’s proximity to a society that is increasingly closed off and controlled by technology has informed protesters’ concerns about Hong Kong’s future. 

For many, one fear is the city will fall into a shadow world of surveillance, censorship and digital controls that many have had firsthand experience with during regular travels to China.
The protests are a rare rebellion against Beijing’s vision of tech-backed authoritarianism. 

Unsurprisingly, they come from the only major place in China that sits outside its censorship and surveillance.
The symbols of revolt are rife. 

Umbrellas, which became an emblem of protests in Hong Kong five years ago when they were used to deflect pepper spray, are now commonly deployed to shield protester activities from the digital eyes of cameras and smartphones. 

In late July, protesters painted black the lenses of cameras in front of Beijing’s liaison office in the city.
Since then, Hong Kong protesters have smashed cameras to bits. 

In the subway, cameras are frequently covered in clear plastic wrapping, an attempt to protect a hardware now hunted. 

In August, protesters pulled down a smart lamppost out of fear it was equipped with artificial-intelligence-powered surveillance software.

The moment showed how at times the protests in Hong Kong are responding not to the realities on the ground, but fears of what could happen under stronger controls by Beijing.
This week, as protesters confronted the police in some of the most intense clashes since the unrest began in June, umbrellas were opened to block the view of police helicopters flying overhead. 

Some people got creative, handing out reflective mylar to stick on goggles to make them harder to film.
“Before, Hong Kong wouldn’t be using cameras to surveil citizens. To destroy the cameras and the lampposts is a symbolic way to protest,” said Stephanie Cheung, a 20-year-old university student and protester who stood nearby as others bashed the lens out of a dome camera at a subway stop last month. 

“We are saying we don’t need this surveillance.”
“Hong Kong, step by step, is walking the road to becoming China,” she said.
Hong Kong’s situation shows how China’s approach to technology has created new barriers to its goals, even as it has helped ensure the Communist Party’s grip on power.
In building a sprawling censorship and surveillance apparatus, China has separated itself from broader global norms. 

Most people — including in Hong Kong — still live in a world that looks technologically more like the United States than China, where services like Facebook, Google and Twitter are blocked. 

With much of culture and entertainment happening on smartphones, China faces the challenge of asking Hong Kong citizens to give up their main way of digital life.

Protesters pulling down a smart lamppost during an anti-government rally in August.

In the mainland, Xi Jinping has strengthened an already muscular tech-powered censorship and surveillance system.
The government has spent billions to knit together sprawling networks that pull from facial-recognition and phone-tracking systems. 

Government apps are used to check phones, register people and enforce discipline within the Chinese Communist Party. 

The internet police have been empowered to question the outspoken and the small, but significant, numbers of people who use software to circumvent the internet filters and get on sites like Twitter.
“One country, two systems” — the shorthand to describe China’s and Hong Kong’s separate governance structures — has brought with it one country, two internets.
Undoing that is an ask that is too large for many. 

Apps like the Chinese messaging service WeChat, which some in Hong Kong use, in part to connect to people across the border, have garnered suspicion. 

Gum Cheung, 43, an artist and curator who travels to China for work, said he abandoned WeChat last year after he noticed some messages he sent to friends were not getting through.
“We have to take the initiative to hold the line. The whole internet of mainland China is under government surveillance,” he said.
The Cyberspace Administration of China did not respond to a faxed request for comment about the impact of internet censorship. 

The Hong Kong police did not respond to questions about their use of surveillance during the protests.
Beijing’s approach has sometimes encouraged the fears. 

In recent months, playing to a push from China’s government, Hong Kong’s airline carrier Cathay Pacific scrutinized the communications of its employees to ensure they do not participate in the protests. 

Twitter and Facebook took down accounts in what they said was an information campaign out of China to change political opinions in Hong Kong.
The debate over why, how, and who watches who has at times descended into a self-serving back-and-forth between the police and protesters.
The Hong Kong police have arrested people based on their digital communications and ripped phones out of the hands of unwitting targets to gain access to their electronics. 

Sites have also been set up to try to identify protesters based on their social media accounts. 

More recently, the police have requested data on bus passengers to pinpoint escaping protesters.
Protesters have called for the police to release footage showing abuses at Hong Kong’s Prince Edward subway station in Kowloon in August. 

Hong Kong’s subway operator fired back, pointing out that cameras that might have gotten the footage were destroyed by protesters. 

Other than a few screenshots, they have not released footage.
“Trust in institutions is what separates Hong Kong from China,” said Lokman Tsui, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 

Privacy concerns on both sides have driven efforts to maintain real-life anonymity. 

Police officers have stopped wearing badges with names or numbers. 

Protesters have covered their faces with masks. 

Both sides are carrying out increasingly sophisticated attempts to identify the other online.
Each even has a matching, if often ineffective, countermeasure to video surveillance. 

Protesters shine laser pointers at lenses of police cameras to help hide themselves. 

Police officers have strobing lights attached to their uniforms that can make it hard to capture their images.
“Of course we’re worried about the cameras,” said Tom Lau, 21, a college student. 

“If we lose, the cameras recorded what we’ve done, and they can bide their time and settle the score whenever they want.”
“We still have decades in front of us,” he said. 

“There will be a record. Even if we don’t want to work for the government, what if big companies won’t hire us?”

Paranoid Chinese Government Erases All Evidence Of Country’s Existence From Internet

The Onion

BEIJING—In an effort to completely stamp out any possibility of political unrest, officials within the Chinese government have scrubbed from the internet all evidence that might suggest their nation exists, according to a highly classified internal report obtained by reporters Wednesday. 

“To ensure the safety of our citizens, we have removed all written and visual representations of China, its history, and its people from the web forever,” the report read in part, suggesting the government would look “terrible” if any information about the country were to reach the Chinese public, and thus the best course of action would be to permanently delete all mentions of the 4,000-year-old civilization. 

“Going forward, all internet searches for China will simply redirect to Korea, and our online encyclopedia articles will be revised to indicate that when Marco Polo reached the eastern edge of Central Asia, there was nothing else to see so he turned around and went home. In addition, Google Maps has agreed to replace our territory with a 9.6-square-kilometer bay that extends westward from the Pacific Ocean to the coast of Tajikistan.” 

Asked for comment during a White House press briefing, President Trump praised China’s Xi Jinping as a strong leader and suggested American news outlets could learn a lot from the Asian nation’s state-run media.

30th Anniversary

The Tiananmen Massacre Is One of China's Most Censored Topics. Here's a Look at What Gets Banned

BY AMY GUNIA / HONG KONG

More than 1,000 posts related to the Tiananmen Square Massacre that were removed from the Internet by Chinese censors were made public on Monday.
The database contains images of 1,056 posts that were deleted from Sina Weibo, a popular micro-blogging site with more than 400 million users, between 2012 and 2018. 

Researchers at the University of Hong Kong collected the posts as part of a project called Weiboscope, which tracks censorship on several Chinese social media networks.
“Over the years we found Chinese netizens consistently continued to post about the Tiananmen Square crackdown in early June,” Dr. King-wa Fu, an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong, who leads the project, told TIME.
Nearly thirty years after the crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, it remains one of the most censored topics on the Chinese Internet. 

China’s censorship apparatus, dubbed the Great Firewall, and a army of censors thought to be in the millions, block all mentions of the event. 

Related words and topics are also banned, and authorities have even blocked references to the date — June 4, 1989 — that Chinese tanks rolled into Beijing’s Tiananmen Squares and left what is believed to be thousands of protesters dead.
But Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous Chinese enclave, lies outside the Firewall, and researchers here were able to archive many posts before they were deleted.
Here’s a look at the photos the Chinese government does not want its people to see or share.

Re-enactments of the iconic ‘tank man’ photo
A photo of an anonymous man facing off to a row of tanks entering Tiananmen Square is one of the most well-known photos of event. 

Authorities block any posts that look similar to that photo — even of a swan facing a semi-truck.

Hu Yaobang tributes
Protests in Tiananmen Square started in April 1989 when students gathered to mourn the death of Hu Yaobang — a former Communist Party General Secretary, who was popular with students for his ideas about political and economic reform but was forced to resign by the government. 

Tributes to Hu, who protesters called “The Soul of China” have been widely censored.

Mentions of commemoration ceremonies
Each year in Hong Kong, tens of thousands of people gather to hold a candlelight vigil in remembrance of the event. 

Photos of the ceremony have been widely censored, and even simple photos of candles posted around the date of the event are removed.


Any references to the date on which the massacre occurred
An image of a set of playing cards displaying what could be seen as the year, month and date of the event, and a screenshot of a calendar, attracted the attention of censors.

Other images can be seen on the project’s Instagram account, Pinterest and website. 

“I want the public to understand the extent [to which] people are trying to post, about what kind of message they want to send out,” said Fu.

Rogue Nation

We must stop China from gaining control of the Internet
By Newt Gingrich

What will it be like if the Internet that America invented and designed is replaced in the next technological cycle by one that is controlled, developed, implemented, and managed by the Chinese?
This is a real possibility we must confront right now.
The danger of America giving up and allowing the Chinese to win was driven home by a senior United States government official this week. 

The Washington Post published a story headlined: “U.S. officials planning for a future in which Huawei has a major share of 5G global networks.”
The newspaper quoted Sue Gordon, the principal deputy director of national intelligence saying: “We are going to have to figure out a way in a 5G world that we’re able to manage the risks in a diverse network that includes technology that we can’t trust.” 

She added, “We’re just going to have to figure that out.”
I read this while I was having highly productive talks about China, 5G, and Huawei in the Netherlands in a series of conversations arranged by U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
In six meetings, I communicated what I have been told is the absolute position of the president, the vice president, the national security adviser and the secretary of defense. 

Furthermore, I have been told that the head of the National Security Agency and the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency have both been very clear that Huawei is an enormous national security threat.

A Chinese Internet should be totally unacceptable to everyone who believes in freedom.

I have been focusing on this growing challenge for months, and I devoted two episodes of my “Newt’s World” podcast to 5G, referring to it as the 4th Industrial Revolution.
The Trump administration position has been that 5G is extraordinarily important and so powerful that Huawei and China cannot be trusted to run it. 

Administration officials have gone all over the planet urging countries to block Huawei technology in their networks because it poses a national security risk.
I was in the Netherlands urging the Dutch to block Huawei and develop a European alternative with Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and advanced secure 5G technology from the United States.
So while I was advocating the rejection of Huawei, The Washington Post reported an administration official suggesting that we have to learn to live with it.
In all fairness, the story was simply reporting the confusion, incompetence and hostility that has characterized the Defense Department bureaucracy’s inability to act effectively against the Chinese threat.
For months, President Trump and his senior national security team have been clear that America must be proactive and aggressive in meeting and quickly overmatching the Chinese challenge.
Meanwhile, for months, senior bureaucrats at the Defense Department have been blocking any effective response.
The large, older telecommunications companies have been encouraging the bureaucrats to take a slow-motion, risk-averse, “don’t worry about Huawei” approach. 

They have also been deliberately distorting the ideas of reformers and misrepresenting a proposal for a wholesale network as a plan for government-run nationalization of the American 5G network.
However, the reformers – the people who are most committed to defeating Huawei – are totally committed to a free market system funded by private capital and implemented by private companies.
Those seriously analyzing the Huawei threat believe that only a wholesale approach – allowing every company to share spectrum in a competitive environment – is capable of dropping prices enough to undercut the Huawei strategy of buying business through Chinese government-subsidized special deals.
I want to be crystal clear: The stakes are enormous. 

It represents the greatest American technological failure since the Soviets launched Sputnik.
I know a great many people are thinking, “What’s the big deal? Who cares if China builds out the global Internet through Huawei’s 5G network?”
The answer is: A Chinese Internet should be totally unacceptable to everyone who believes in freedom.
As I said in the Netherlands: China is a Leninist totalitarian state. 

The Chinese government has put at least 1 million Muslim Uighurs in concentration camps. 

It regularly locks up Catholic priests and bishops. 

It has outlawed the Falun Gong and persecutes them.
China recently put the most popular movie star in the nation (and therefore the world) under “residential surveillance,” or house arrest, for months without trial. 

It is developing and implementing a “social credit” system which will track the private behavior of 1.4 billion people and judge them without trial.
Xi Jinping is chairman of the Central Military Commission, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, and president of the People’s Republic of China, in that order.
His military commission post is most important because the People’s Liberation Army is first and foremost an extension of the Communist Party – not the government.
Xi’s No. 1 duty is to the nearly 90 million members of the Chinese Communist Party (by contrast, Donald Trump received 63 million votes to become president).
In excerpts from a 2013 speech that were just released this week, Xi made the case for the life and death struggle between Chinese Communism and the West.
“Our party has always adhered to the lofty ideals of communism,” Xi said. 

“Communists, especially leading cadres, should be staunch believers and faithful practitioners of the lofty ideals of communism and the common ideals of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The belief in Marxism, socialism, and communism is the political soul of the communists and the spiritual prop of the communists to withstand any test. The party constitution clearly stipulates that the highest ideal and ultimate goal of the party is to realize communism.”
In a nod toward Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Xi told the Communist Party Central Committee: “Facts have repeatedly told us that Marx and Engels' analysis of the basic contradictions in capitalist society is not out of date, nor is their historical materialism view that capitalism must die out and socialism must win. This is an irreversible general trend in social and historical development, but the road is tortuous.”
“The final demise of capitalism and the final victory of socialism must be a long historical process,” Xi added. 

“We should have a deep understanding of the self-regulation ability of capitalist society, fully estimate the objective reality of the long-term dominance of Western developed countries in economic, scientific, technological and military aspects, and earnestly prepare for the long-term cooperation and struggle between the two social systems.”
Xi concluded the Chinese people and the Chinese Communist Party must “continuously build socialism with superiority over capitalism, and continuously lay a more solid foundation for us to win initiative, advantage and future.”
Huawei is a brilliant example of long-term planning and a decisive effort to “win initiative, advantage and future.”
If the United States does not get its act together, we should expect to suffer a strategic defeat in the emergence of a Chinese-controlled Internet that may define the next half century.
Vice President Mike Pence’s speech to the National Space Council last week captured the right sense of urgency and willingness to change organizations and innovate despite the bureaucracy.
The 5G challenge is an even more immediate crisis than securing our leadership in space – and American leadership in space is critical to our ultimate survival as a nation.
We need the Trump-Pence team to drive into the bureaucracy the Churchillian motto of “action this day.”
Bureaucrats who don’t take beating Huawei seriously should be replaced until we find a team capable of winning for America and for freedom.

Google Makes Wall Great Again

Google blocks China adverts for sites that help bypass censorship 
Visitors and locals rely on virtual private networks to access global internet 
By Yuan Yang in Hong Kong

Google has stopped distributing advertisements in China for two websites that review anti-censorship software, in a move that signals the US tech giant’s efforts to curry favour with Beijing.
Last week, VPNMentor, a company that reviews virtual private network services that allow users to bypass China’s internet controls and avoid surveillance, said that Google had refused to sell its adverts to Chinese users, after doing so for more than two years. 
 On Wednesday, Top10VPN, another review site, said it had received the same notice after advertising with Google for several months.
 VPNMentor posted a screenshot of an email to Twitter, appearing to be from Google, saying “it is currently Google policy to disallowed [sic] promoting VPN services in China, due to the local legal restrictions”.
 Foreign businesses and visitors to China, as well as local citizens, rely on VPNs to access the global internet, including platforms such as Google and Facebook, which are blocked by China’s “Great Firewall” of internet controls.
Google runs adverts on third-party websites in China.
 Google said it had “longstanding policies prohibiting ads in our network for private servers, in countries where such servers are illegal”, adding that bans on VPN adverts in China had been in place for several years.
 On Friday, China’s market regulator demanded that internet platforms step up their censorship of adverts.
 However, there is no blanket ban on selling VPNs in China.
Chinese regulators issued a notice in 2017 stating that VPN providers would need to be licensed in order to operate in China.
Regulators told the Financial Times last year that the situation was “complex” and that they were still “researching” how to apply the measures.
 Charlie Smith of GreatFire, a censorship monitoring organisation, criticised Google’s blunt action in relation to VPNMentor and Top10VPN as being too broad.
He said: “There are legally registered VPNs operating in China, so either Google has not kept up to date with local regulations or they are overstepping their boundaries.” 
 David Kaye, the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, said that Google’s move “deprived [Chinese users] of the choice to find uncensored material”. 
 “If Google is in the business of expanding access to information, why do they not conceive of their business in those terms in China?” he asked.
 Mr Kaye also questioned whether Google had researched the legal status of the review sites, or “sought ways to ameliorate the impact on expression” before deciding to enforce a ban against them as regards all VPN-related adverts.
 Mark Natkin of Marbridge Consulting, a tech research group in Beijing, said that Google “may be trying to comply with the spirit of the regulation”.
 “Google’s situation is that, based on their past decisions in China, they have a more delicate relationship with the Chinese authorities and feel compelled to make additional efforts to curry favour and get back in the good graces to get approval to re-enter the market,” he added.
Lee Jyh-An, associate professor of law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, agreed, saying the move was a “signal to show kindness towards the Chinese government”. 
 “Google have withdrawn from China before and that scene wasn’t pleasant, so if they want to come back again, they have to show a stronger ‘kindness’ signal.”
 Google closed its China search engine in 2010 after suffering cyber attacks and periodic blocks from the government.
The company announced that it was no longer willing to censor search results, devastating its relationship with Beijing at the time.
 Google said its decision to block VPNMentor’s adverts was “completely unrelated” to trying to re-enter China.
 “As we’ve said for many months, we have no plans to launch Search in China and there is no work being undertaken on such a project,” the company added, referring to its previously leaked “Dragonfly” plan to bring a censored Google Search back to China.

How an Australian spy stopped China from growing internet influence South Pacific

As China's plan to spread itself across the South Pacific grew, one Australian spy took matters into his own hands.
By Matt Young

Australia to build comms cable for Solomons and PNG: Bishop

AN AUSTRALIAN spy is being hailed after intervening in a major deal that would have seen a surge in China’s influence in the South Pacific.

Today Australia and its neighbour, the Solomon Islands, will sign off on the first stage of a 4000km high-speed undersea internet cable in a deal that has swiped China off the map.
The multimillion-dollar deal will provide a high speed internet link between Australia and the fifth-largest Oceanian country by population which struggles with unreliable and ineffective internet services. 

It will also connect Papua New Guinea to Australia.
SBS described it as a “significant leap forward for communications” for the impoverished country, which currently relies on satellite networks.
The Solomon Islands had originally awarded the contract to Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei in 2016 but it was “diplomatic pressure and rare intervention” from a top Australian spy that saw the deal take a change of course, according to the ABC.
“Australian intelligence agencies never wanted the Solomon Islands to allow Chinese company Huawei to build the link, and were keen to prevent it happening,” journalist Matthew Doran reported.
Huawei has become the world’s third largest smartphone maker in recent years but the company faces headwinds in its expansion plans due to its close links with the Chinese communist party.
Australia halved the cost of the project for the island nation and refused to allow a “landing point” for the cable on Australian territory if China took control.

Nick Warner, director-general of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service at the launch of the Foreign Policy White paper at DFAT in Canberra. 

A map of submarine cable systems and their landing stations around Australia. 

Julie Bishop this morning defended the decision, saying Australia’s neighbours needed other options than simply China.
“What we have offered the Solomon Islands, and they have accepted, is an alternative to the offer, and ours is cheaper. It’s likely to be faster results for them, and technically superior. And also more resilient,” she said.
“We put up an alternative, and that’s what I believe Australia should continue to do. We are the largest aid donor in the Pacific.
“We are a longstanding partner of Solomon Islands, and I want to ensure that countries in the Pacific have alternatives, that they don’t only have one option and no others, and so in this case we are in a position to be able to offer a more attractive deal for Solomon Islands and PNG, and they accepted it.”

Prime Minister @TurnbullMalcolm welcomes the Prime Minister of #SolomonIslands Rick Houenipwela and Madam Rachel Houenipwela to @Aust_Parliament with a Ceremonial Welcome today, including a 19 gun salute and an inspection of Australia's Federation Guard. pic.twitter.com/HJh9mM5n80— PM&C (@pmc_gov_au) June 13, 2018

Jonathan Pryke, director of the Pacific Islands Program at the Lowy Institute, warned in November last year that if Beijing had its way, it would result in some “really significant national security issues for Australia.
“Having a Chinese state-owned enterprise connecting up to a piece of critical domestic infrastructure is pretty unpalatable for the Australian Government.”
The contract change was only after Nick Warner, the head of Australia’s foreign spy agency, ASIS, intervened in July 2017. 

He warned the Solomon Island’s former Prime Minister that allowing the Chinese such measures would create a cybersecurity risk for Australia and its allies by giving the Chinese access to the “back end” of the Australian network.

President Rodrigo Roa Duterte discusses matters with Australian Secret Intelligence Service Director General Nicolas Peter 'Nick' Warner who paid a courtesy call on the President at the Malaca — an Palace on August 22, 2017.

Today Solomon Islands’ current Prime Minister, Rick Houenipwela, and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will cement the deal in Canberra.
“We have had some concerns raised with us by Australia, and I guess that was the trigger for us to change from Huawei to now the arrangements we are now working with Australia on,” Mr Houenipwela told Sky News in New Zealand last week.
Taxpayers will be slugged for about two-thirds of the price, the government revealed in the 2018 Budget. 

The exact price of the deal, though, is unknown, despite reports it could cost more than $100 million from the aid budget.
Last month, the Pentagon ordered U.S. military bases worldwide to ban mobile phones and other telecommunications equipment made by the Chinese company Huawei after senior U.S. intelligence officials warned the phones could be used to spy on Americans and U.S. service members.
Although there has been steadfast denials from Huawei, that the Chinese tech company eavesdrops on behalf of Beijing, for a number of years the US has prohibited Huawei from bidding for government contracts out of fears for national security
Both Labor and Liberal government blocked Huawei from tendering for the National Broadband Network in 2012 and 2013.

Alex Beech

✔@AlexHBeech

Australia's signing a deal with the Solomon Islands re a high-speed internet cable. But it was originally set to be built by Huawei, so will this upset #China?-- "It's a competitive world. We put forward an alternative. The Solomon Islands are accepting it" -Julie Bishop #auspol

12:28 AM - Jun 13, 2018

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A Reporter Rolled Her Eyes, and China’s Internet Broke

By PAUL MOZUR

Liang Xiangyi’s scorn for a fellow reporter’s question was captured on Chinese state television.

SHANGHAI — It was the eye roll seen across China.
As the annual meeting of the country’s legislature stretched into its second week, the event’s canned political pageantry and obsequious (and often scripted) media questions seemingly proved too much for one journalist on Tuesday.
With a fellow reporter’s fawning question to a Chinese official pushing past the 30-second mark, Liang Xiangyi, of the financial news site Yicai, began scoffing to herself. 

Then she turned to scrutinize the questioner in disbelief.
As Ms. Liang rolled her eyes with a look of such concentrated disgust, it seemed only natural that her entire head should follow her eyes backward as she looked away in revulsion.
Captured by China’s national news broadcaster, CCTV, the moment spread quickly across Chinese social media.
It was a rare puncturing of the artifice surrounding the widely watched, intentionally dull National People’s Congress. 

The carefully choreographed event, at which top leaders make speeches and delegates rubber-stamp new policy, lends a veneer of democracy to China’s autocratic system of governance. 

This year, it has drawn heightened attention for a constitutional amendment that abolished term limits for Xi Jinping.
On Chinese social media, GIFs and other online riffs inspired by Ms. Liang’s epic eye roll quickly proliferated, and by evening they were being deleted by government censors. 

Ms. Liang’s name became the most-censored term on Weibo, the microblogging platform. 

On Taobao, the freewheeling online marketplace, vendors began selling T-shirts and cellphone cases bearing her image.
In one video, three men did a deadpan recreation of the incident. 

On Ms. Liang’s Weibo account — which quickly soared to 100,000 followers and kept climbing — supporters flooded her with jokes and comments of support.
“You are the only thing I remember since the beginning of the National People’s Congress,” one commenter wrote. 

Another saluted “an eye-rolling representing all people who don’t dare to do so.”
On the messaging app WeChat, people jokingly separated Ms. Liang and the questioner into two parties based on the color of their clothing. 

Many said they supported the blue party, in reference to Ms. Liang. 

The questioner, Zhang Huijun, wore red — the color of China and the Chinese Communist Party.
Before posing her question to the government official, Xiao Yaqing, Ms. Zhang had introduced herself as the operating director of American Multimedia Television U.S.A., a Los Angeles-based broadcaster that has had partnerships with Chinese state-run television in the past, according to its website. 

Its president, Jason Quin, also lists himself on LinkedIn as the president of a Los Angeles Confucius Institute, organizations supported by Beijing that promote Chinese culture and propaganda overseas.
News outlets with such ties to the Chinese government are often chosen to ask questions of China’s rarely available political leaders at the National People’s Congress, while more mainstream local and foreign outlets are seldom called on. 

Neither Ms. Zhang’s employer nor Ms. Liang’s responded to a request for comment on the incident Tuesday.
For the record, Ms. Zhang’s question was as follows:
“The transformation of the responsibility of supervision for state assets is a topic of universal concern. Therefore, as the director of the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, what new moves will you make in 2018? This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Reform and Opening-up Policy, and our country is going to further extend its openness to foreign countries. With General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi proposing the One Belt One Road Initiative, state-owned enterprises have increased investment to countries along the route of One Belt One Road, so how can the overseas assets of state-owned enterprises be effectively supervised to prevent loss of assets? What mechanisms have we introduced so far, and what’s the result of our supervision? Please summarize for us, thank you.”

Chinese Paranoia

Command and control: China’s Communist Party extends reach into foreign companies
By Simon Denyer

Chinese dictator attends the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in October. Xi’s vision of complete control over Chinese life is intruding into the boardrooms of foreign companies.

BEIJING  — American and European companies involved in joint ventures with state-owned Chinese firms have been asked in recent months to give internal Communist Party cells an explicit role in decision-making, executives and business groups say.
It is, they say, a worrying demand that threatens to put politics before profits, and the interests of the party above all other considerations. 

It suggests that foreign companies are no longer exempt from Xi Jinping’s overarching vision of complete control.
“The creeping intrusion by the party apparatus into the boardrooms of foreign-invested enterprises has not yet manifested itself on a large scale, but things are certainly going down that path,” said James Zimmerman, a managing partner of the law firm Sheppard, Mullin, Richter and Hampton and former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, who is instructing clients to “push back.”
The party’s demand would give its cells a formal role in approving management decisions, such as investment plans or personnel changes. 

And that is ringing alarm bells.
At the same time, a campaign to reinforce China’s draconian censorship of the Internet is beginning to affect foreign companies.
The twin efforts to keep tabs on foreign companies are an expression of the Communist Party’s constant paranoia about internal stability. 

But they also represent a shift in the balance of power here, as China feels itself to be stronger economically and Western businesses more dispensable.
Not every company is affected by the changes. 

Larger enterprises have dedicated lines and special technology ensuring unfettered Internet access. But the smaller ones do not have that latitude.
By the same token, wholly owned foreign ventures have not faced the same pressure from internal party cells, while even companies involved in joint ventures are pushing back against the new demands.
But everyone is aware which way the wind is blowing.
For decades, China was something of an El Dorado for foreign companies, its low wages luring manufacturers and its vast consumer market and rapidly expanding middle class presenting an unrivaled opportunity for growth — even if it was always a challenging place to operate. 

These days, the mood has perceptibly changed: China is no longer so keen to put out the welcome mat, and foreign companies are increasingly prone to complain of unfair treatment.
Even after the wholesale transformation of the Chinese economy, the Communist Party has remained ever present in business. 

Executives of state-owned firms are party members, while under Chinese law, any organization that has three or more party members has to provide the “necessary conditions” for cadres to establish a party cell.
In practice, that rule has not, up to now, been intrusive.
Party members might use company premises to meet, but they would tend to do so after office hours and might help organize social events for employees. 

Executives described relations as friendly and cooperative, with the cells acting at times as if they were adjuncts to existing human resources departments.
In the past year, that has begun to change. 

Party members are expected to spend more time studying Xi Jinping Thought, the president’s political theory, in office hours or in time-consuming off-site retreats. 

Although a formal role for party cells in management decisions is not required under Chinese law, business executives are worried about a trend toward growing party interference.
“The long-term negative cost, in my view, is the inefficiencies and wastefulness that are likely to result from political influence that has no other purpose than to drive the political machine,” Zimmerman said.
The European Chamber of Commerce in China said in a statement that introducing an “additional layer of governance” would have serious consequences for the independent decision-making ability of joint-venture companies and deter investment from the continent.
China’s investment law stipulates that foreign companies must enter into joint ventures in many sectors of the economy. 

Already, many companies are being used simply to mine their intellectual property, before they are one day pushed aside by their erstwhile partners.
For now, minority joint ventures are feeling the most heat from party cells, but even 50-50 joint ventures have reported a growing assertiveness, executives and business groups say.
“That’s the danger European investors see, a kind of salami-slicing tactics, that starts with the minority joint ventures, then heads for the 50-50 joint ventures, and eventually heading for the 100 percent foreign-owned companies,” said Joerg Wuttke, former president of the European Chamber of Commerce.
“We really want people here to understand: We don’t object to party activities or people, but we do want them to stay away from operational questions,” Wuttke said.
The controls on the Internet could follow a similar salami-slicing tactic, whereby controls are extended across smaller companies first.
China has embarked on a major crackdown on VPNs, or virtual private networks, technology that is widely used to jump over the country’s Great Firewall to gain access to banned websites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and many foreign news sites.
Although large companies use dedicated lines and technology known as MultiProtocol Label Switching, which allows them to bypass the firewall and encrypt messages, that’s often too expensive for small and medium-size enterprises that rely on commercial VPN and encryption software.
Some companies have had ports closed down until they register with local telecommunications operators and report who is accessing the Internet and why.
To regain full access to the Internet, one American company was asked to sign a “solemn commitment” — that it would obey the Chinese Communist Party’s “seven bottom lines,” do nothing to undermine the socialist system, public order or social morality, and wouldn’t use the Internet to violate the interests of the state.

Chinese dictator shown on a screen in front of logos of China’s leading Internet companies, Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba Group, during the fourth World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China, in December. 
The agreement, made in Shanghai last November, is typical of the hoops some foreign companies are having to jump through to maintain access to the Web, and to continue doing business in a country where politics is back on top of the agenda.
That has led many American companies to take a “much more cautious approach” to regulating who within their organization uses VPN software, said Jake Parker, vice president of China operations at the U.S.-China Business Council in Beijing.
A mergers and acquisitions team might, for example, be cleared to access websites such as Reuters and the Financial Times to make better business decisions, but other staffers would be more restricted, Parker said.
“That’s because there is an emerging consensus among our legal counsels that using VPNs for noncommercial functions could be construed as potentially violating China’s rules and regulations,” he said. 

“There is a ‘more safe than sorry’ approach.”
Parker said not everyone was taking this approach, but there has been a shift in that direction, with “10, 15 or 20” companies saying they had adopted similar procedures.
An ongoing clampdown on VPN use by private individuals could also have a negative effect on recruitment, executives say: Parents will be reluctant to relocate to China if their children can’t access their preferred social media sites, many of which are banned here.
A more fundamental anxiety is that the Communist Party will ultimately demand to see everything that flows in and out of the country over the Internet, under China’s new Cybersecurity Law, which went into effect in June.
“How safe will intellectual property and trade secrets be? Will servers have to be stored here? Will companies have to hand over encryption codes to Chinese authorities?” asked a ­Beijing-based diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
“Could perhaps entire industry sectors become off limits for foreigners for security reasons? It’s not clear whether Chinese authorities are aware of possible collateral damage to businesses.”
To an extent, Beijing does not care as much about foreign firms as it used to, with a definite hubris setting in after the Western financial crisis, experts say.
“Foreign companies used to be seen as special here, as friends of China,” said James McGregor, a China-based author and businessman. 

“But that kind of flipped during the Western financial crisis.”
Attitudes changed, he said. 

China began to believe its system of state-directed capitalism was superior to the West’s, and that foreign companies are simply “here to serve us.”
One consequence: As President Trump starts to take retaliatory action against China over its trade and business practices, Beijing is putting off some of its most valuable lobbying partners.
“In the past, foreign business has been an important ally for China, but the country now appears to be alienating it at a time when it most needs friends abroad,” said Wuttke, the former president of the European Chamber of Commerce.

Rogue Nation

68 Things You Cannot Say on China’s Internet
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and AMY CHENG

Song Jie, a writer of online romance novels who has to work around China’s censors, at her home in Wuhan.

BEIJING — Song Jie, a writer in central China, knows what she can and cannot write in the romance novels she publishes online. 

Words that describe explicit sexual acts are out, of course. 

So are those for sexual organs. 

Even euphemisms like “behind” or “bottom” can trigger censorship by automatic software filters or a website’s employees.
“Basically,” she said, “the sex scenes cannot be too detailed.”
Other prohibitions inside China’s Great Firewall, the country’s system of internet filters and controls, are trickier to navigate, in part because they are subjective and even contradictory. 

And there are more and more of them.
While China has long sought to block access to political material online, a flurry of new regulatory actions aims to establish a more expansive blockade, recalling an earlier era of public morality enforced by the ruling Communist Party.
In a directive circulated this summer, the state-controlled association that polices China’s fast-growing digital media sector set out 68 categories of material that should be censored, covering a broad swath of what the world’s largest online audience might find interesting to read or watch.
The guidelines ban material that depicts excessive drinking or gambling; that sensationalizes “bizarre or grotesque” criminal cases; that ridicules China’s historical revolutionary leaders, or current members of the army, police or judiciary; or that “publicizes the luxury life.”
“Detailed” plots involving prostitution, rape and masturbation are also forbidden. 

So are displays of “unhealthy marital values,” which the guidelines catalog as affairs, one-night stands, partner swapping and, simply but vaguely, “sexual liberation.”
Despite the efforts of censors, the internet has long been the most freewheeling of China’s mass media, a platform where authors and artists — as well as entertainment studios — could reach audiences largely free of the Propaganda Department’s traditional controls on broadcasting, publishing, cinema and stage.
But the new restrictions — which expanded and updated a set of prohibitions issued five years ago — reflect an ambitious effort by Xi Jinping’s government to impose discipline and rein in the web.
They were issued by the China Netcasting Services Association, which includes as members more than 600 companies, including the official Xinhua News Agency, the social media giants Sina and Tencent, the dominant search engine Baidu and the news aggregator Jinri Toutiao.
David Bandurski, an analyst and editor for the University of Hong Kong’s China Media Project, said the association’s rules created the illusion of industry consensus as the company’s acquiesced to what party officials call “self-discipline.”
“Many of these companies are private, so it’s important for the leadership to have a means of bringing them together and creating a means of applying pressure on the collective,” he wrote in an email. 

“It is a tactic of co-option.”
Writers, filmmakers, podcasters and others attributed the guidelines and other measures to a new prim and paternalistic ideology taking shape under Xi, who has called on party members to be “paragons of morality” in pursuit of what he calls the “China Dream.”
Many also attributed the tightening of controls to official nervousness ahead of a major Communist Party congress scheduled for October. 

The congress is expected to reshuffle the country’s leadership and consolidate Xi’s already formidable power.
“I feel like people say all the time that after the big congress, things will be O.K.,” said Fan Popo, a documentary filmmaker whose work has run afoul of online censorship because it explores the country’s conflicted views about homosexuality. 

But then he noted how online censorship has also spiked ahead of important state holidays and following unexpected events like the death of the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.
“It’s still going on,” he said, “and it’s getting worse.”
In June, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television announced a new rating system for online bookstores and publishers based on criteria that included upholding moral values.
The powerful Cyberspace Administration — the ultimate authority over what is online in China — also shut down dozens of blogs and social media accounts for covering celebrity news and gossip that month.
Regulators also ordered two popular video streaming sites, AcFun and Bilibili, to stop showing hundreds of foreign television programs, while other state agencies issued a new rule this month prohibiting video sites from streaming even domestically produced shows without a license.
That essentially subjects online programs — often considered edgier — to the same restrictions governing what is broadcast on television, which critics say is dominated by trifles and propaganda.
The directive also ordered online producers to submit plans for creating new dramas between now and 2021 that “praise the party, the nation and heroes so as to set a good example.”

Fan Popo, a young Chinese filmmaker who is leaving China for Germany because of China’s growing censorship, at his apartment as he was packing for a flight to Berlin. 

The new industry regulations provoked outrage — online, of course.
The country’s leading scholar of sexuality, Li Yinhe, wrote in a scathing commentary on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, that the new regulations violated two basic freedoms. 

“The first is a citizen’s constitutionally protected right to freedom of creativity; the second is the constitutionally protected right to sexual freedom of sexual minorities.”
When Ms. Li called on people to “work toward abolishing screening and censorship rules,” her posts were deleted, too.
Much of the online discussion has focused on the new prohibitions of sexual content and the inclusion of homosexuality among a list of “abnormal sexual relations” that also included incest and sexual assault. 

Critics said the regulation appeared to contradict the government’s own position on homosexuality, which it decriminalized in 1997 and removed from an official list of mental disorders in 2001.
China’s censorship agencies exercise overlapping jurisdiction over the internet and often employ policies that create confusion. 

The result has been a layered system of control that begins with self-censorship by those who create online content, followed by policing by web platforms, which are often private enterprises, and finally, when necessary, intervention by government regulators or the police.
Some regulations are explicit — no depiction of killing endangered species or underage drinking, for example. 

Others are imprecise. 

One, for example, prohibits blurring the lines between “truth and falsity, good and evil, beauty and ugliness.”
The rules are meant to be so vague that the authorities can justify blocking anything, as circumstances dictate.
“The tightening of content censorship is the general trend, but for content creators, they never know where exactly the lines lie,” said Gao Ming, who until recently produced a satirical podcast on current affairs called Radio HiLight.
Like others, Mr. Gao acknowledged softening his commentaries to avoid trouble, trying to work around, or one step ahead of, the censors. 

For profit or in pursuit of art, many performers and producers have learn to live with the party’s limitations.
Ms. Song, the writer, works mostly in a literary genre known as danmei that has become hugely popular among young women. 

Taking its inspiration from Japanese stories and manga, it typically involves homoerotic romances. Ms. Song’s work is often serialized, with readers paying for new chapters as they are posted on one of the biggest publishing sites, Jinjiang Literature City.
“If I want to publish it,” she said of her work, “then I need to follow the rules.”
Ms. Song, who lives in Wuhan, an enormous city in central China, said some of her chapters have been blocked because “sensitive keywords appeared in high frequency.” 

Usually, she then edits enough of those words out to get her writing past the censors and to her readers.

China’s Crackdown on “Abnormal Sexual Behaviors”

Chinese Regulator Calls Homosexuality ‘Abnormal’ and Bans Gay Content From the Internet
By Yifan Wang

China released a new regulation Friday banning any display of “abnormal sexual behaviors” — including homosexuality — in online video and audio content.
The regulation, published by the China Netcasting Services Association (CNSA), lays out strict censorship rules for online content ranging from movies and documentaries to cartoons and educational videos, according to Reuters.
Under the new rules, content will be edited or even banned if it promotes “luxurious lifestyles,” shows “violent and criminal processes in detail,” demonstrates “obscenity” including masturbation or displays “abnormal sexual behaviors" such as homosexuality.
The regulation is seen as another step of Chinese authorities’ efforts to tighten its control over online media.
Just last week, Weibo, China’s top micro-blogging site, vowed to block unlicensed videos after warnings from the government, causing its stock to plunge.
The new rules quickly sparked heated debates and oppositions on Chinese social media.
Li Yinhe, China’s leading scholar and advocate of free sexuality, said in a Weibo post that under these regulations, “all audio-visual art will be revoked.”
“Trying to regulate and censor people’s desires is as absurd as trying to regulate and censor people’s appetites.”
Geng Le, the creator of Blued, one of China’s most popular gay dating apps, and a grand marshal at this year’s NYC Pride Parade, also disagreed with the rules.
He pointed to the fact that China has removed homosexuality as a mental illnesses in 2001, and that the World Health Organization had done so in as early as 1990.
“Gay Voice,” a Chinese-language LGBT non-profit magazine, said on social media that homosexuality is just as normal and should not be treated differently.
“The false information in these regulations has already caused harm to the Chinese LGBT community — who are already subjected to prejudice and discrimination.”

China adopts cybersecurity law in face of overseas opposition

By Michael Martina, Sue-lin Wong

BEIJING -- China adopted a controversial cybersecurity law on Monday to counter what Beijing says are growing threats such as hacking and terrorism, although the law has triggered concern from foreign business and rights groups.
The legislation, passed by China's largely rubber-stamp parliament and set to come into effect in June 2017, is an "objective need" of China as a major internet power, a parliament official said.
Overseas critics of the law argue it threatens to shut foreign technology companies out of various sectors deemed "critical", and includes contentious requirements for security reviews and for data to be stored on servers located in China.
Rights advocates also say the law will enhance restrictions on China's internet, already subject to the world's most sophisticated online censorship mechanism, known outside the country as the Great Firewall.
Yang Heqing, an official on the National People's Congress standing committee, said the internet was already deeply linked to China's national security and development.
"China is an internet power, and as one of the countries that faces the greatest internet security risks, urgently needs to establish and perfect network security legal systems," Yang told reporters at the close of a bimonthly legislative meeting.
More than 40 global business groups petitioned Li Keqiang in August, urging Beijing to amend controversial sections of the law. 

Chinese officials have said it would not interfere with foreign business interests.
Contentious provisions remained in the final draft of the law issued by the parliament, including requirements for "critical information infrastructure operators" to store personal information and important business data in China, provide unspecified "technical support" to security agencies, and pass national security reviews.
Those demands have raised concern within companies that fear they would have to hand over intellectual property or open back doors within products in order to operate in China's market.
James Zimmerman, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, called the provisions "vague, ambiguous, and subject to broad interpretation by regulatory authorities".
Human Rights Watch said elements of the law, such as criminalizing the use of the internet to "damage national unity", would further restrict online freedom.
"Despite widespread international concern from corporations and rights advocates for more than a year, Chinese authorities pressed ahead with this restrictive law without making meaningful changes," Sophie Richardson, China Director at Human Rights Watch, said in an emailed statement.
Zhao Zeliang, director of the Cyberspace Administration of China's cybersecurity coordination bureau, told reporters that every article in the law accorded with rules of international trade and that China would not close the door on foreign companies.
"They believe that [phrases such as] secure and independent control, secure and reliable, that these are signs of trade protectionism. That they are synonymous. This is a kind of misunderstanding, a kind of prejudice," Zhao said.
Many of the provisions had been previously applied in practice, but their formal codification coincides with China's adoption of a series of other regulations on national security and foreign civil society groups.
The law's adoption comes amid a broad crackdown by Xi Jinping on civil society, including rights lawyers and the media, which critics say is meant to quash dissent.
Last year, Beijing adopted a sweeping national security law that aimed to make all key network infrastructure and information systems "secure and controllable".