China’s social credit system interferes in other nations’ sovereignty

System, criticised as an Orwellian tool of mass surveillance, is shaping behaviour of foreign businesses, report says
By Kelsey Munro

China’s social credit system, a big-data system for monitoring and shaping business and citizens’ behaviour, is reaching beyond China’s borders to impact foreign companies, according to new research.
The system, which has been compared to an Orwellian tool of mass surveillance, is an ambitious work in progress: a series of big data and AI-enabled processes that effectively grant subjects a social credit score based on their social, political and economic behaviour.
People with low scores can be banned or blacklisted from accessing services including flights and train travel; while those with high scores can access privileges. 

The Chinese government aims to have all 1.35 billion of its citizens subject to the system by 2020.
But a new report by US China scholar Samantha Hoffman for the ASPI International Cyber Policy Institute in Canberra claims the system’s impact beyond China’s borders has not been well understood, and is in fact already shaping the behaviour of foreign businesses in line with Chinese Communist party preferences. 

It has the “potential to interfere directly in the sovereignty of other nations”, she said.
She said recent incidents where Chinese authorities pressured international airlines in the US and Australia to use Beijing’s preferred terminology to refer to Taiwan and Hong Kong were high-profile examples of this new extension of the social credit system rules to foreign companies.
“The civil aviation industry credit management measures that the airlines are accused of violating were written to implement two key policy guidelines on establishing China’s social credit system,” she explains. 

“Social credit was used specifically in these cases to compel international airlines to acknowledge and adopt the CCP’s version of the truth, and so repress alternative perspectives on Taiwan.”
As of 1 January 2018, all companies with a Chinese business licence – a necessity for operating in the country – were brought into the social credit system through the new licence requirement to have an 18-digit “unified social credit code”. 

Through this business ID number, the Chinese government keeps track of all businesses, reporting transgressions on its National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System, Hoffman said. 

The system extends to non-profits, NGOs, trade unions and social organisations after 30 June.
“Companies don’t have a choice but to comply if they want to continue doing business in China,” Hoffman told the Guardian Australia.
Sanctions for companies so far have come in the form of fines, she said, citing the example of the Japanese retailer Muji, which was fined 200,000 yuan in May for labelling on products sold in China that listed Taiwan as a country. 

The fine cited a violation of PRC advertising law banning activity which damages “the dignity or interests of the state”, but the violation was also recorded on the social credit system’s National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System. 

This listing can trigger further fines from other state agencies, Hoffman said.
It is not clear whether foreign companies have access to the information kept on their social credit record, nor if foreign citizens could find out if their nation’s companies have made concessions or changed their behavior as a result.
Guardian Australia unsuccessfully sought comment from Qantas, which announced earlier this month it would change the language used on its global websites in accordance with the Chinese government’s preferred terminology for Taiwan.
Hoffman is a visiting academic fellow at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin. 

Her report, Social Credit: Technology-enhanced Authoritarian Control with Global Consequences, was published on Thursday by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a security-focused thinktank which has urged the Australian government take a harder line on Chinese government interference in its democracy.
The report comes amid a difficult period in Australia-China relations; in the same week Australia’s parliamentary committee released a bipartisan report paving the way for the passage of new draft laws against covert, coercive or corrupt foreign interference.

What is the social credit system?
China’s social credit system is an Orwellian tool of social monitoring and political repression.
People can be blacklisted for transgressions such as smoking on trains, using expired tickets or failing to pay fines, as well as spreading false information or causing trouble on flights, according to statements released by China’s National Development and Reform Commission in March.
Citizens with high credit scores can access better hotels, rental homes and even schools; while those with low credit scores can be temporarily or permanently banned from taking planes or trains, as happened to 6.15 million people in 2017, on the government’s own figures. 

A pilot version of the scheme run this year in Hangzhou City reportedly saw citizens with high social credit ratings get free access to gym facilities and shorter public hospital waiting times.
On the business side, the Brookings Institute has reported that businesses that pay tax on time and “abide by government demands” will get better loan conditions and easier access to public tenders; noncompliant businesses will face more difficult business conditions.
But researchers believe its power and reach may be overstated.
Queensland University of Technology researcher Meg Jing Zeng has said that while the social credit system can be used to punish political dissenters such as journalist Liu Hu, it may have positive benefits because government officials can be blacklisted for corrupt behaviour. 

Over 1,100 officials were on restricted lists at December 2017, according to the state media organisation People’s Daily.
An academic study of the social credit system released last month by Belgian researcher Rogier Creemers said that while the Chinese government had high ambitions for the system, at present it remained a relatively crude tool.

Rogue Nation

Hong Kong’s rapid descent into repression


Pro-democracy activists Joshua Wong, right, and Nathan Law, left, speak outside the high court in Hong Kong on Thursday. They were sentenced to six to eight months in prison. 

IN 2014, as Hong Kong erupted into protests calling for free elections, Joshua Wong emerged as the face of the city’s pro-democracy Umbrella Movement. 

Just 17 years old at the time, he led demonstrators as they marched on a fenced government square and organized weeks of sit-ins thereafter. 

In the years since, he has continued to champion democratic reform, establishing a student-led political party that won a seat on the legislative council. 

Apparently, this was more than Beijing and the pro-China local government could bear: On Thursday, Mr. Wong and two other activists, Alex Chow and Nathan Law, were sentenced to six to eight months in prison for their role in the peaceful protests.
Thursday’s ruling overturns lighter penalties handed down last year. 

Mr. Wong and Mr. Law were initially sentenced to community service, and Mr. Chow was given a suspended sentence. 

That the Hong Kong government pressed forward with prosecution was troubling enough, but its decision to appeal the original penalties and push for jail time is particularly vindictive. 

It is also politically self-serving: Hong Kong law prohibits people sentenced to more than three months in prison from running for office for five years. 

By cracking down on three rising political stars, the pro-Beijing establishment has managed to cripple its opposition and discourage further criticism.
The sentences send a chilling message that speech and assembly are only permitted in the city if they support the status quo. 

This strikes at many Hong Kong residents’ deepest fear: that the local government has become an extension of Beijing. 

When Hong Kong was officially transferred from British to Chinese rule in 1997, it was on the condition that China would allow the city a measure of autonomy and democracy. 

Hong Kong has long prided itself on its independent judiciary and system of self-rule. 

It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that the local leadership is willing to jettison these principles.
Over the past three years, Beijing and its loyalists in Hong Kong have restricted the field of candidates allowed to run for chief executive; reached across borders to detain five Hong Kong booksellers who stocked politically sensitive books; cracked down on street protesters calling for democracy; and stacked the deck to elect a pro-China leader, Carrie Lam, who trailed in public opinion polls. 

Most recently, Chinese lawmakers reinterpreted Hong Kong’s charter to disqualify four pro-democracy legislators for peacefully protestingduring their swearing-in ceremony. 

Thursday’s decision should not be seen in isolation but as part of Hong Kong’s rapid descent into political repression.
What is especially sad about this crackdown is that it is so self-defeating: Both China and Hong Kong would benefit from a city that upholds the rule of law and promises a stable environment for investment. 

The more Hong Kong embraces authoritarianism, the less vibrant and prosperous it will be.

Rule by Fear and Torture: China's War on Law

Chinese lawyer wore torture device for a month
By John Sudworth

A picture of Mr Li from 2012 and one taken after his release

It's a form of restraint that would be more in keeping with the practices of a medieval dungeon than a modern, civilised state.
But the device -- leg and hand shackles linked by a short chain -- is a well-documented part of the toolkit that the Chinese police use to break the will of their detainees.
And it is one that they forced one of this country's most prominent human rights lawyers to wear, for a full month.
Li Heping was finally released from detention on Tuesday and his wife Wang Qiaoling has now had time to learn about the treatment he endured over his almost two-year-long incarceration.
"In May 2016 in the Tianjin Number One Detention Centre, he was put in handcuffs and shackles with an iron chain linking the two together," she tells me.
"It meant that he could not stand up straight, he could only stoop, even during sleeping. He wore that instrument of torture 24/7 for one month."
She adds: "They wanted him to confess."

China's war on law
In one sense, Mr Li was lucky.
A 2015 investigation by Human Rights Watch into the use of torture by the Chinese police revealed the case of a man who was forced to wear this type of device for eight years.
In 2014 an Amnesty International report documented the supply and manufacture of torture equipment by Chinese companies, including the combined hand and leg cuffs.

Torture devices like the one used on Li Heping are readily available online

"The use of these devices causes unnecessary discomfort and can easily result in injuries," William Nee, China Researcher at Amnesty International, tells me.
"Such devices place unwarranted restrictions on the movement of detainees and serve no legitimate law enforcement purpose that cannot be achieved by the use of handcuffs alone."
Li Heping is one of a group of human rights lawyers who were detained in July 2015, in a crackdown since referred to as China's war on law.
Of course, threats, intimidation and violence have always been part of the risks for any lawyer daring to take on the might of the Communist Party in its own courts.
But Xi Jinping has made it clear that he sees the ideal of constitutional rights, guaranteed by independent courts, as a threat to national security.
So his war on law sends a clear message.

For those like Mr Li, representing the victims of China's illegal land grabs, religious persecution or political repression, the threat is not just from corrupt local officials or powerful businessmen, but from the state itself.

The before and after photos offer a visual clue to his time in detention.
One taken in 2012 shows an assured, cheery lawyer.
The one taken on his release shows him noticeably thinner and looking older than his years.
Wang Qiaoling tells me she barely recognised him.
And she tells me about the other forms of ill-treatment that her husband has described to her since his release.
"He was forced to take medicine. They stuffed the pills into his mouth as he refused to take them voluntarily," she says.
"The police told him that they were for high blood pressure, but my husband doesn't suffer from that.
"After taking the pills he felt pain in his muscles and his vision was blurred."

Gruelling questioning
"He was beaten. He endured gruelling questioning while being denied sleep for days on end," she goes on.
"And he was forced to stand to attention for 15 hours a day, without moving."

Amnesty International's William Nee tells me that each of these methods of ill-treatment could be considered torture by themselves.
"Cumulatively, they would demonstrate a clear intent by the authorities to inflict physical and mental torture with the goal of getting Li Heping to confess," he says.
"Since China is a party to the Convention against Torture, these serious allegations should prompt the Chinese authorities to immediately launch a prompt, effective and impartial investigation to assess whether this torture took place."
Despite the prolonged and extreme nature of the torture, Ms Wang tells me her husband never did confess.
"He was worried that he might be tortured to death in the detention centre and he wouldn't make it to meet his family again, so he reached an agreement with the authorities that the trial would be held in secret.
"He would be given a suspended sentence but he never admitted guilt or confessed that he had subverted state power."

Barred from the media
At that secret trial, the details of which were released by China's state-controlled media afterwards, the court ruled that Mr Li had "repeatedly used the internet and foreign media interviews to discredit and attack state power and the legal system".
As a result of his conviction, he is now unable to practise law and has also signed an agreement that he will not carry out any further media interviews.
But his wife, despite constant intimidation, refuses to be similarly constrained.
Plain-clothes policemen still surround the family home and she was followed to our agreed interview location.
Wang Qiaoling's account tallies with that of other lawyers caught up in the crackdown, including Xie Yang, whose court case was heard this week.
He had alleged similar abuses during his interrogations -- including shackling, beatings and being made to remain in the same position for hours on end.
We called the Tianjin Number One detention centre to ask about the allegations that Li Heping was tortured there.
"We don't do any interviews," came the reply. 

"If you want to do an interview, please go through the legal and proper channels."