Chinazism

Prague security services say China poses major threat as Czech billionaire's loan firm launches propaganda campaign to burnish Beijing’s image
By Robert Tait

  Liberal Prague mayor Zdeněk Hřib, who refused to abide by Beijing’s One China policy, which recognises China’s claim to Taiwan. 

The Czech Republic’s richest man is at the centre of a foreign influence campaign by the Chinese government after one of his businesses financed an attempt to boost China’s image in the central European country.
In a development that has taken even seasoned sinologists aback, Home Credit – a domestic loans company owned by Petr Kellner that has lent an estimated £10bn to Chinese consumers – paid a PR firm to place articles in the local media giving a more positive picture of a country widely associated with political repression and human rights abuses.
Home Credit also funded a newly formed thinktank – headed by a translator for the Czech Republic’s pro-Chinese president, Miloš Zeman – to counteract the more sceptical line taken by a longer-established China-watching body, Sinopsis, linked with Prague’s Charles University, one of Europe’s oldest seats of learning.
Experts say the moves, revealed in an investigation by the Czech news site Aktualne, bear the hallmarks of a foreign influence campaign by China that highlights its aggressive attempts to gain access to former communist central and eastern European countries through its ambitious “belt and road” initiative, under which it offers to fund infrastructure projects in those states.
According to analysts, the Czech Republic has been more open to Chinese influence than most other European countries, a situation that has coincided with the burgeoning commercial relationship between China and Kellner’s sprawling PPF group, which boasts an estimated £40bn in assets, including Home Credit.
PPF began accumulating its vast wealth in the mass privatisation of state assets that followed the fall of communism in the former Czechoslovakia in 1989.
Home Credit is currying favour with the Chinese regime in an effort to protect its interests after a series of political disputes between China and the Czechs that cooled previously warm bilateral relations.
Home Credit has acknowledged paying the PR firm, C&B Reputation Management, and backing Sinoskop, the thinktank, to try to bring “greater balance” to debate about China.
“Discussion of China in the Czech Republic had become one-sided, relentlessly negative and poorly informed,” Home Credit’s spokesman, Milan Tomanek, told the Observer.
Martin Hala, a lecturer at Charles University’s Sinology department and director of Sinopsis, said: “The bottom line is that Home Credit hired this company not to defend their own corporate interests per se, but rather to promote the narrative coming from the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese communist party.
“The first goal is to normalise China, presenting it not as a dictatorship but as a country, like any other, that is opening up to reforms. I don’t think that’s an accurate picture.” 
The revelations coincide with a recent warning by the Czech intelligence service, BIS, that Chinese influence campaigns pose a greater threat to national security than meddling by the Russian government of Vladimir Putin.
“The BIS considers primarily the increase in the activities of Chinese intelligence officers as the fundamental security problem,” the report says.
“These activities can be clearly assessed as searching for and contacting potential cooperators and agents among Czech citizens.”
Czech ties with Beijing grew closer after 2014 when the regime granted Home Credit a nationwide licence to offer domestic loans, the first foreign company to be given the right.
This would only have happened on the understanding that Home Credit would work to ensure favourable coverage of China in the Czech media and political discourse. 
It heralded several trips to China by Zeman, who is close to Kellner, and culminated in a state visit in 2016 by the Chinese dictator Xi Jinping to Prague.
The rapprochement – which also saw the purchase of a Czech brewery, television station and Slavia Prague football club by a Chinese energy company, CEFC – reversed the policy adopted by the late Václav Havel, the Czech Republic’s first post-communist president who had championed human rights, and the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet.
But relations began to sour last year when the Czech government of prime minister Andrej Babiš, acting on advice from the country’s cybersecurity agency, banned Huawei phones from ministerial buildings, prompting Chinese protests and a rebuke from Zeman, who accused the security services of “dirty tricks”.
They took a further turn for the worse when Prague’s liberal mayor, Zdeněk Hřib, refused to abide by the One China policy – recognising China’s territorial claim to Taiwan – accepted by his predecessor as part of a twinning arrangement between the Czech capital and Beijing.
In retaliation, China scrapped the agreement and cancelled a planned tour of the country by the Prague Philharmonia.
Amid the rows, criticism began to appear in Chinese state media of Home Credit’s lending practices, accompanied by several failures in court to fully recover unpaid debts.
That has fuelled speculation that the company began to fear for the future of its interests in China.
When Sinopsis reported the Chinese media criticism on its website, it received a “cease and desist” legal warning from Home Credit which threatened to sue unless in the absence of an apology.
The company accuses Sinopsis of failing to correct “misleading or incorrect statements”.
Home Credit had earlier abandoned a £50,000 sponsorship deal with Charles University – which foreswore each institution from damaging the other’s good name – after a backlash from academics, who feared it would muzzle any criticism of China.
Now critics see a new threat, from PPF’s recent £1.62bn purchase from AT&T of Central European Media Enterprises (CME), a company which includes the Czech Republic’s most-watched commercial TV station, Nova, as well as channels in neighbouring countries.
PPF has dismissed warnings about potential political interference in the station’s output but some are sceptical.
“PPF negotiated this deal saying that they would never meddle in politics,” said Petr Kutilek, a Czech political analyst and human rights activist.
“But from the Home Credit affair, you actually see them meddling in politics.”

Colleges Should All Stand Up to China

American universities need to show Beijing—again and again—that they reserve the right to unfettered debate.
By Rory Truex
About five times a year, the U.S. military conducts freedom-of-navigation operations, or FONOPs, in the South China Sea to challenge China’s territorial claims in the area.
American Navy vessels traverse through waters claimed by the Chinese government.
This is how the U.S. government registers its view that those waters are international territory, and that China’s assertion of sovereignty over them is inconsistent with international law.
Americans are witnessing a similar encroachment on territory equally central to our national interest: our own social and political discourse. 
Through a combination of market coercion and intimidation, the Chinese Communist Party is trying to constrain how people in the United States and other Western democracies talk about China.

Freedom-of-speech operations (FOSOPs) 
This encroachment needs a measured response—what we might call freedom-of-speech operations, or FOSOPs for short. 
American universities can take the lead.
They should routinely hold events on the fate of Taiwan, the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, the repression of Uighur Muslims in East Turkestan, and other topics known to be sensitive to the Chinese government.
These events can be organized by students, faculty, or research centers.
They need not originate from a university’s administration.
If anything, the message that FOSOPs send—everything in the United States is subject to open debate, especially on college campuses—is even stronger if the pressure comes from the grass roots.
Last month’s NBA-China spat crystallized the basic problem.
After the Houston Rockets executive Daryl Morey tweeted in support of the Hong Kong protesters, Rockets games and gear were effectively banned in China, costing the team an estimated $10 million to $25 million.
It has become common for the Chinese government to force Western firms and institutions to toe the party line.
Gap, Cambridge University Press, the three largest U.S. airlines, Marriott, and Mercedes-Benz have all had China access threatened over freedom-of-speech issues. 
This list will continue to grow.
Recently, the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV canceled the showing of an Arsenal soccer game because the club’s star, Mesut Özil, had criticized the ongoing crackdown in East Turkestan.
The Chinese government regularly uses coercive tactics to affect discourse on American campuses, including putting pressure on universities that invite politically sensitive speakers.
This is precisely what happened at the University of California at San Diego, which hosted the Dalai Lama as a commencement speaker in 2017.
The Chinese government, which considers the Tibetan religious leader a threat, responded by barring Chinese scholars from visiting UCSD using government funding.
There is also disturbing evidence that the Chinese government is mobilizing overseas Chinese students to protest or disrupt events, primarily through campus chapters of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association. 
These groups exist at more than 150 universities and receive financial support from the Chinese embassy in the United States. 
As Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian reported last year in Foreign Policy, the embassy can exert influence over the chapters’ leadership and activities.
The goal of freedom-of-speech operations is safety in numbers.
Other universities remained largely mum after the Chinese government moved to punish UCSD, effectively inviting Beijing to deploy similar tactics against other schools in the future. 
But imagine if instead there had been an outpouring of events on Tibet or invitations for the Dalai Lama. 
Coordination is key.
An affront to one American university should be taken as an affront to all.
At Princeton, where I teach, we held three FOSOPs in recent weeks: the first on East Turkestan, sponsored by the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions; the second on Hong Kong, sponsored by a student group that promotes U.S.-China relations; and a third on East Turkestan, also sponsored by students. 
These events were not labeled as FOSOPs, of course; I, not the organizers, am applying the term.
The panels occurred independently, organically, and with no real interference or involvement from university administration, other than to ensure the safety and security of our students.
I played a small role in the Hong Kong event, at which I moderated a panel that featured three Hong Kong citizens discussing the ongoing protest movement.
Our China talks usually get about 30 attendees, most of whom are retirees who live nearby.
The Hong Kong panel last month was the biggest China-related event I have attended on our campus.
Our room was at maximum capacity, as was the overflow room we created for the simulcast.
It was clear that mainland-Chinese students and Hong Kong students—two groups whose views on the protests generally diverge—had both mobilized in some way or another.
The event was emotionally charged at the outset.
One Chinese student, apparently sympathetic to the Chinese government’s position, flipped the panel the middle finger after a panelist made a comment about police brutality against Hong Kong protesters.
Several of the audience members from mainland China pressed the panelists on some of the basic realities of the events on the ground.
One student asked if there was actually any evidence of police brutality.
It felt like Chinese students had come to the event just to push the Communist Party line. 
But it was healthy and helpful to have pro-Beijing views expressed and debated publicly, and juxtaposed with the lived experiences of the Hong Kong protesters.
As the panelist Wilfred Chan noted, it is especially important right now to have dialogue between the Hong Kongers and mainland-Chinese communists.
Western university campuses are among the only spaces where this can occur.
Firms, local governments, civic associations, and individuals can create their own freedom-of-speech operations.
Imagine if every NBA player signed a pledge to mention China’s mass detention of Muslims in East Turkestan at press conferences, just for one day. 
Or if American churches reached out to Chinese pastors to give sermons about the repression of China’s Christian community.
There will be pushback from the Chinese government, and some events might be labeled as an affront to “Chinese sovereignty” or “the feelings of the Chinese people”—standard rhetorical devices of the Chinese Communist Party.
University administrators may receive warnings or veiled threats in the short term.
But if this sort of interference is met with more campus events, at more universities and institutions, China’s coercion will be rendered ineffective, and its government would have no choice but to back down.
It is important that while we push to preserve freedom of speech on China at Western institutions, we also push to preserve the rights and freedoms of our students from mainland China.
Anti-China sentiment in the U.S. is at historic highs.
Freedom-of-speech operations should be constructed to encourage dialogue and foster norms of critical citizenship.
Done right, these events can protect Americans’ intellectual territory, and demonstrate the value of our open society. 

Denise Ho, the Hong Kong singer who chose politics over career

AFP

Ho's activism has won new fans in Hong Kong. 

HONG KONG -- Denise Ho has been pulled from concerts, her records are banned in China and she has been smeared as "poison", but the Cantopop star says standing with the Hong Kong protest movement outshines all the damage to her career.
The short-haired 42-year-old is a rare and instantly recognisable face among the masked crowds at this summer's huge rallies.
She marches with the masses, gives outspoken television interviews calling for democracy and condemning police brutality, drawing attention to the crisis in her city on a Twitter feed with nearly 250,000 followers.
It is a bold stance.
From actor Jackie Chan to billionaire magnate Li Ka-shing, most famous Hong Kongers have chosen silence or made cryptic middle-ground calls for "peace", as Beijing scours the landscape for critics.

Ho is no stranger to activism -- she made the leap from pop to politics five years ago. 

But Ho, who is now in Australia to spread the word about the protests before travelling to the United States, said she had "no regret" over her critiques of the mainland.
She believes artists who stay quiet have made bigger sacrifices.
"They have lost total freedom of speech. As a Hong Konger, it's my responsibility to stand up and stand with (the protesters).
"This is really not the time to think about your own career and personal benefits," she added.
The movement, which is avowedly leaderless, has few figureheads -- diluting the risk of infighting or the impact of arrests and harassment.
"Of course, because I am a public figure or celebrity, people recognise me," said Ho at a recent event.

Ho is a rare and instantly recognisable face among the masked crowds at this summer's huge rallies. 

But she explained, "there is really no leader, no particular organisation leading the movement.
"And that's the beauty of it, and that's why this movement has been able to go on for such a long time."

"THEY ARE NOT ALONE"
Initially sparked by opposition to a proposed law that would have allowed extradition to mainland China, the protests soon spilled out into a broader anti-government movement calling for democratic reforms.
The protests have become increasingly violent and the weekend saw fires, tear gas and police beatings as hardcore protesters clashed with riot police in the city centre.
Yet hundreds of thousands of people have also taken part in peaceful demonstrations across the city -- including last Wednesday (Aug 28), when Ho addressed a rally in central Hong Kong against sexual violence by police.
"I see myself as one of the participants of this movement. Hopefully I can give some moral support to these young people, to let them know that they are not alone in this fight," she told AFP.

POP TO PROTEST
Ho is no stranger to activism -- she made the leap from pop to politics five years ago during Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement, calling on Beijing to allow fully free elections.
That won her instant opprobrium in China -- and her music a blanket ban.
She had been an international Cantopop star, her ballads released under a stagename HOCC, who enjoyed success on the Chinese mainland.
In addition to her music career she was a strident advocate for LGBT rights, having come out as gay in 2012, and also turned her hand to acting, appearing in a film by Hong Kong director Johnnie To.
She joined the Umbrella Movement when it erupted in September 2014, just one month after her last visit to mainland China.
Soon she joined protesters who occupied a central business district and was arrested when the site was dismantled more than two months later.
As her reputation for outspoken campaigning grew, in June 2016 French cosmetics giant Lancome cancelled a promotional concert at which Ho was due to perform.
The move sparked an outcry among Hong Kongers who said the decision was due to criticism from China's state-run media, after the Global Times accused Lancome of cooperating with "Hong Kong poison" and "Tibet poison" -- a reference to Ho's praise for the Dalai Lama.
In July, Ho again infuriated Beijing by urging the UN rights council to put pressure on China over its tightening grip on semi-autonomous Hong Kong.
Her activism has won new fans in Hong Kong.
Ho is "so cool", a protester at a recent anti-sexual violence rally said, adding "she sacrificed everything" for her beliefs.

China Snares Tourists’ Phones in Surveillance Dragnet by Adding Secret App

Border authorities install the app on the phones of people entering the East Turkestan colony by land from Central Asia, gathering personal data and scanning for material considered objectionable.
By Raymond Zhong

Surveillance cameras are ubiquitous in China’s East Turkestan colony.

BEIJING — China has turned its western colony of East Turkestan into a police state with few modern parallels, employing a combination of high-tech surveillance and enormous manpower to monitor and subdue the area’s predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities.
Now, the digital dragnet is expanding beyond East Turkestan’s residents, ensnaring tourists, traders and other visitors — and digging deep into their smartphones.
A team of journalists from The New York Times and other publications examined a policing app used in the colony, getting a rare look inside the intrusive technologies that China is deploying in the name of quelling Islamic radicalism and strengthening Communist Party rule in its Far West. 

The use of the app has not been previously reported.
China’s border authorities routinely install the app on smartphones belonging to travelers who enter East Turkestan by land from Central Asia, according to several people interviewed by the journalists who crossed the border recently and requested anonymity to avoid government retaliation. 

Chinese officials also installed the app on the phone of one of the journalists during a recent border crossing. 

Visitors were required to turn over their devices to be allowed into East Turkestan.
The app gathers personal data from phones, including text messages and contacts. 

It also checks whether devices are carrying pictures, videos, documents and audio files that match any of more than 73,000 items included on a list stored within the app’s code.
Those items include Islamic State publications, recordings of jihadi anthems and images of executions. 

But they also include material without any connection to Islam, an indication of China’s heavy-handed approach to stopping extremist violence.

There are scanned pages from an Arabic dictionary, recorded recitations of Quran verses, a photo of the Dalai Lama and even a song by a Japanese band of the earsplitting heavy-metal style known as grindcore.
“The Chinese government, both in law and practice, often conflates peaceful religious activities with terrorism,” Maya Wang, a China researcher for Human Rights Watch, said. 

“You can see in East Turkestan, privacy is a gateway right: Once you lose your right to privacy, you’re going to be afraid of practicing your religion, speaking what’s on your mind or even thinking your thoughts.”
The United States has condemned Beijing for the crackdown in East Turkestan.

The colony is home to many of the country’s Uighurs, a Turkic ethnic group, and the Chinese government has blamed Islamic extremism and Uighur separatism for deadly attacks on Chinese targets.
In the past few years, China has placed hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other Muslims in re-education camps in East Turkestan. 

For the region’s residents, police checkpoints and surveillance cameras equipped with facial recognition technology have imbued life with a corrosive fear of acting out of turn.

A book about Syria’s civil war is one of the files that the Fengcai app checks a phone’s contest against.

The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, whom China considers a dangerous "separatist".

With the scanning of phones at the border, the Chinese government is applying similarly invasive monitoring techniques to people who do not even live in East Turkestan or China. 

Beijing has said that terrorist groups use Central Asian countries as staging grounds for attacks in China.
Three people who crossed the East Turkestan land border from Kyrgyzstan in the past year said that as part of a lengthy inspection, Chinese border officials had demanded that visitors unlock and hand over their handsets and computers. 

On Android devices, officers installed an app called Fengcai (pronounced “FUNG-tsai”), a name that evokes bees collecting pollen.
A copy of Fengcai was examined by journalists from The New York Times; the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung; the German broadcaster NDR; The Guardian; and Motherboard, the Vice Media technology site.
One of the journalists undertook the border crossing in recent months. 

Holders of Chinese passports, including members of the majority Han ethnic group, had their phones checked as well, the journalist said.
Apple devices were not spared scrutiny. 

Visitors’ iPhones were unlocked and connected via a USB cable to a hand-held device, the journalist said. 

What the device did could not be determined.
The journalists also asked researchers at the Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany and the Open Technology Fund, an initiative funded by the United States government under Radio Free Asia, to analyze the code of the Android app, Fengcai. 

The Open Technology Fund then requested and funded an assessment of the app by Cure53, a cybersecurity company in Berlin.
The app’s simple design makes the inspection process easy for border officers to carry out. 

After Fengcai is installed on a phone, the researchers found, it gathers all stored text messages, call records, contacts and calendar entries, as well as information about the device itself. 

The app also checks the files on the phone against the list of more than 73,000 items.
This list contains only the size of each file and a code that serves as a unique signature. 

It does not include the files’ names or other information that would indicate what they are.
But at the journalists’ request, researchers at the Citizen Lab, an internet watchdog group based at the University of Toronto, obtained information about roughly 1,400 of the files by comparing their signatures with ones stored by VirusTotal, a malware-scanning service owned by the Google sibling company Chronicle. 

Additional files were identified by Vinny Troia, the founder of the cybersecurity firm NightLion Security, and York Yannikos of the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology in Darmstadt, Germany.
Most of the files that the journalists could identify were related to Islamic terrorism: Islamic State recruitment materials in several languages, books written by jihadi figures, information about how to derail trains and build homemade weapons.

Vehicles belonging to Uighur drivers being inspected at a police checkpoint in the East Turkestan colony.

Many of the files were more benign. 

There were audio recordings of Quran verses recited by well-known clerics, the sort of material that many practicing Muslims might have on their phones. 

There were books about Arabic language and grammar, and a copy of “The Syrian Jihad,” a book about the country’s civil war by the researcher Charles R. Lister.
Mr. Lister said he did not know why the Chinese authorities might consider him or his book suspicious. 

He speculated that it might only be because the word “jihad” was in the title.
Other files the app scans for have no link to Islam or Islamic extremism. 

There are writings by the Dalai Lama, whom China considers a dangerous separatist, and a photograph of him.

There is a summary of “The 33 Strategies of War,” a book by the author Robert Greene on applying strategic thinking to everyday life.
“It’s a bit of a mystery to me,” Mr. Greene said, when told that his book had been flagged.
There is also, puzzlingly, an audio file of a metal song: “Cause and Effect,” by the Japanese band Unholy Grave. 

The reason for the song’s inclusion was not clear, and an email sent to an address on Unholy Grave’s website was not answered.
After Fengcai scans a phone, the app generates a report containing all contacts, text messages and call records, as well as lists of calendar entries and of other apps installed on the device. 

It sends this information to a server.
Two of the people who recently crossed the East Turkestan border said that before officials returned phones to their owners, they took photos of each owner’s passport next to his or her device, making sure that the app was visible on the screen.
This suggests that the authorities have been told to be thorough in scanning visitors’ phones, although it was not clear how they were using the information they acquired as a result. 

It also could not be determined whether anyone had been detained or monitored because of information generated by the app. 

If Fengcai remains on a person’s phone after it is installed, it does not continue scanning the device in the background, the app’s code indicates.
Officials in East Turkestan are now gathering oceans of personal information, including DNA and data about people’s movements. 

It would not be surprising for the Chinese authorities to want this harvesting of data to begin at the region’s borders.
China’s Ministry of Public Security and the East Turkestan colonial government did not respond to faxed requests for comment.
Names that appear in Fengcai’s source code suggest that the app was made by a unit of FiberHome, a producer of optical cable and telecom equipment that is partly owned by the Chinese state. 

The unit, Nanjing FiberHome StarrySky Communication Development Company, says on its website that it offers products to help the police collect and analyze data, and that it has signed agreements with security authorities across China.
FiberHome and StarrySky did not respond to requests for comment.
According to StarrySky’s website, the company offers “cellphone forensic equipment,” which it says can extract, analyze and recover data from mobile phones.
On another page, StarrySky says the purpose of its “smart policing” products is “to let there be not a bad guy in the world who is hard to catch.”

What the Hong Kong Protests Are Really About

By Jimmy Lai

Riot police firing tear gas during clashes with protestors outside the Legislature in Hong Kong, on Monday.

When hundreds of thousands of my fellow Hong Kongers took to the streets to demonstrate last month, most of the world saw people protesting provocative legislation that would allow extraditions to mainland China.
But the Chinese government, which supported the extradition measure, had a much broader view of the protests. 

It recognized them as the first salvo in a new cold war, one in which the otherwise unarmed Hong Kong people wield the most powerful weapon in the fight against the Chinese Communist Party: moral force.
In much of the West, moral force is underestimated. 

Communists never make that mistake. 

There is a reason Beijing will never invite the pope or the Dalai Lama for a visit to China. 

The government knows that whenever its leaders must stand beside anyone with even the slightest moral legitimacy, they suffer by the comparison. 

Moral force makes Communists insecure.
And for good reason. 

As China was reminded this week, as riot police officers used pepper spray and batons on demonstrators in Hong Kong, the protests have been holding a mirror up to China. 

What rattles Beijing is that it sees in that mirror what the rest of the world sees: a monster.
Since his ascendancy to power in 2012, Xi Jinping has made no secret of his goal to purge the Western influences that he believes are contaminating China. 

In Hong Kong, he has been working to erode the limited political freedoms and rule of law that make Hong Kong the special region of China that it is — and that have long made Hong Kong economically valuable to China, ironically enough.
Nearly all us in Hong Kong are refugees or the descendants of refugees from China. 

We have no illusions about what happens to people when they come up short in the eyes of the Communist Party. 

Everyone in Hong Kong knows that introducing the possibility of imprisoning us in China, as the extradition treaty does, would signal the end of life in Hong Kong as we know it.
In Beijing’s view, of course, Hong Kong’s colonial past undermines its legitimacy as a Chinese society. 

Never mind that the system of limited freedoms that the British introduced to Hong Kong existed long before Communism was established on the mainland. (Communism is itself a Western import to China, by the way.)
The inconvenient truth is that people in Hong Kong (and in Taiwan) live better than any Chinese in Chinese history. 

This gives moral force to our way of life. 

It also shows the extraordinary things people can accomplish when given the freedom to do so.
Hong Kong’s moral force has also been economically good for China, since the moral force of our free society cannot be separated from its prosperity. 

It is not likely that Beijing agreed to have the government of Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, suspend consideration of the extradition bill just because a lot of people marched against it. 

No doubt Xi Jinping learned much about capital flight and jittery investors during those protests and saw how badly China still needs a prosperous and functioning Hong Kong.
This is Xi’s great weakness: If he crushes the soul of Hong Kong, he will lose the Hong Kong he needs to make China the global power he envisions.

It should be possible for the West and China to trade freely, while at the same time competing as opposing value systems.

People at protests against changing Hong Kong’s extradition law sat outside the Legislative Council building in Hong Kong, on June 21.

The values war is the real war. 

For the West to prevail, it must support the tiny little corner of China where its virtues now operate: Hong Kong. 

These values may be a legacy of Western rule, but for Hong Kongers who have grown up with them, they feel as natural as any part of our Chinese heritage.
Our struggle with Beijing, if successful, can help China’s leaders begin to accept the need for authority earned through the moral admiration of the world, not through the barrel of a gun. 

But if Beijing’s approach prevails, when China becomes the world’s biggest economy; the West will face a far greater monster.
The West’s moral authority is its most powerful weapon. 

Moral authority is where China is most vulnerable to humiliation, at home and abroad. 

Beijing has no weapons save for force, which gets harder to rely on, the more the world can see that for itself.

China’s Orwellian War on Religion

Concentration camps, electronic surveillance and persecution are used to repress millions of people of faith.
By Nicholas Kristof

Police patrolling near the Id Kah Mosque in the old town of Kashgar in China’s East Turkestan colony.

Let’s be blunt: China is accumulating a record of Orwellian savagery toward religious people.
At times under Communist Party rule, repression of faith has eased, but now it is unmistakably worsening. 

China is engaging in internment, monitoring or persecution of Muslims, Christians and Buddhists on a scale almost unparalleled by a major nation in three-quarters of a century.
Maya Wang of Human Rights Watch argues that China under Xi Jinping “poses a threat to global freedoms unseen since the end of World War II.”
China’s roundup of Muslims in concentration camps appears to be the largest such internment of people on the basis of religion since the collection of Jews for the Holocaust. 

Most estimates are that about one million Muslims have been detained in China’s East Turkestan region, although the actual number may be closer to three million.
Muslims are being ordered to eat pork or drink alcohol, against their religious principles.

China has also offered “free health checks” that are used to get fingerprints, photos and DNA samples from Muslims for a surveillance database.
While China hasn’t established concentration camps for Christians, it has harassed congregations, closed or destroyed churches, in some areas barred children from attending services and last year detained Christians about 100,000 times, according to China Aid, a religious watchdog group (if one person was detained five times over the year, that would count as five detentions).
China installed monitoring cameras in churches, including on the pulpit aimed at the congregation. 

With China’s facial recognition software, that would enable security authorities to identify who shows up at services.
The country is also experimenting with even more Orwellian technology, including the Ministry of Public Security’s mass surveillance system and a “Social Credit System” that can create a blacklist for those who don’t pay debts or who cheat on taxes, break traffic rules or attend an unofficial church.
Blacklisted individuals can be barred from buying plane or train tickets: Although the system is still being tested in different ways at the local level, last year it barred people 17.5 million times from purchasing air tickets, the government reported. 

It could also be used to deny people promotions or assign a ring tone to their phone warning callers that they are untrustworthy.
The system isn’t focused on religious people, and some argue that it isn’t as menacing as it is sometimes portrayed, but it’s easy to see how the Social Credit System could punish faith communities — especially if it is integrated with a mass surveillance network. 

The East Turkestan mass surveillance system explicitly targets people who collect money for a mosque “with enthusiasm.”
Through it all, Chinese people of faith have shown enormous courage. 

One Catholic bishop, James Su Zhimin, 87, has been detained by China since he led a religious procession in 1996. 

Counting previous detentions, he has spent a total of four decades in prisons and labor camps.
The paradox is that for half a century before the Communist revolution in 1949, Western missionaries traveled around China, operated schools and orphanages and had negligible impact on the country — yet these days missionaries are banned, ministers are persecuted and Christianity has grown prodigiously. 

There are many tens of millions of Christians, mostly Protestants, with some estimates as high as 100 million.
Some are part of officially recognized churches that pledge loyalty to the government, but most are part of the underground church that has been the main target of the crackdown.
Tibetan Buddhists have likewise suffered brutally. 

Most extraordinary is the fate of the Panchen Lama, the No. 2 figure in Tibetan Buddhism, after the Dalai Lama.
The previous Panchen Lama died in early 1989. 

Following tradition, Tibetans in 1995 chose a 6-year-old boy as the next incarnation of the Panchen Lama. 

Shortly afterward, the Chinese authorities kidnapped the boy and his family, and they haven’t been seen since. 

In his place, the Chinese helped pick a different person as a rival Panchen Lama. (When the Dalai Lama dies, something similar may happen, so at that point there would be two Dalai Lamas and two Panchen Lamas.)
The true Panchen Lama, once the world’s youngest political prisoner, has now apparently been detained for 24 years, along with his entire family, through reformist Chinese leaders and repressive ones.
We can’t transform China, but we can apply levers like targeted sanctions on individuals and companies participating in abuses of freedom — plus we can certainly do more to speak up for prisoners of conscience of all faiths. 

It’s as important to push for their freedom as to seek more soybean exports.

Wikipedia Is Now Banned in China in All Languages

BY HILLARY LEUNG

An error message for the blocked Wikipedia website page is seen on a computer screen on March 23, 2018.

China has expanded its ban on Wikipedia to block the community-edited online encyclopedia in all available languages, the BBC reports.
An earlier enforced ban barred Internet users from viewing the Chinese version, as well as the pages for sensitive search terms such as Dalai Lama and the Tiananmen massacre.
According to Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), an internet censorship research group, the block has been in place since late April.
The Wikimedia foundation said in a statement that it did not receive any notice of the censorship.
Wikipedia joins a growing list of websites that cannot be accessed in China, which in recent years has tightened its grip on access to information online. 

Google, Facebook and YouTube are among the sites already banned, forcing Internet users to use virtual private networks, or VPN, to bypass what has become known as the “Great Firewall” of China.
Reporters Without Border’s 2019 World Press Freedom index ranks China at 177 on a list of 180 countries analyzed. 

China is not just issuing censorships locally, but is also attempting to infiltrate foreign media in an attempt to deter criticism and spread propaganda.
Wikipedia is also blocked in Turkey.

China's crimes against humanity

China’s Worsening Human Rights Abuses Evoke Memories of Mao
By Shane McCrum and Olivia Enos

A Uighur woman passes the Communist Party of China flag on a wall in Urumqi, East Turkestan.
When the State Department recently released its “2018 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,” China figured prominently in its findings—but not in a good way.
The annual report, issued March 13, shines a harsh spotlight on China and its various human rights abuses, including religious persecution, internment of Uighurs in concentration camps, and increased surveillance of its citizens.
Many assumed that China’s rapid economic transformation would have led automatically to improvements in civil liberties and human rights. 

Instead, China has become more oppressive.
What is taking place today in East Turkestan looks a lot like Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. 

And in modern China, the state is equipped with far more advanced and invasive technology to achieve its totalitarian aims.
The State Department report highlighted a number of China’s draconian practices. 

The report describes China’s crackdown on “extremism,” which resulted in the “detention since 2017 of 800,000 to possibly more than [2 million] Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and other Muslims in ‘transformation through education’ centers.”
These “re-education centers” are designed to instill patriotism and fidelity to the state above ethnic and religious loyalty. 

These practices were labeled among the worst abuses “since the 1930s.”
In its 2018 regulations on religious affairs, China conflates all religion with extremism and sees religious fasting, praying, and abstaining from alcohol in the same light.
To monitor for those behaviors, China uses various forms of surveillance, including internet monitoring, video surveillance, and a “double-linked” household system, in which citizens are encouraged to spy on one another.
Beyond the repression of minority and religious groups, draconian surveillance efforts affect all Chinese citizens.
The State Department report notes the continued application and development of a “social credit system,” which monitors “academic records, traffic violations, social media presence, quality of friendships, adherence to birth-control regulations, employment performance, consumption habits, and other topics.”
As the system becomes more advanced, the government has become more aggressive in implementing repercussions. 

Chinese state media claims that 11 million air-travel trips have now been “blocked” due to citizens’ low “social credit” scores.
The report also examines China’s newest efforts at internet suppression, including the creation of the Cyberspace Administration of China, which shut down an estimated 128,000 websites in 2017. Additionally, platforms such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as any information on topics on Taiwan, the Dalai Lama, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre are all banned from the internet.
It’s now estimated the government employs tens of thousands of individuals to restrict and monitor internet content, as well as to promote state propaganda.
China’s internet influence extends beyond its borders and has far-reaching ramifications for its relations with other nations.
Recently, Mercedes-Benz was forced to apologize to Chinese consumers after quoting the Dalai Lama in an Instagram post. 

Instead of Western companies exerting influence over China to liberalize its totalitarian system, we see the very opposite occurring as Delta Air Lines and Spanish fashion retailer Zara were compelled to apologize to China after listing Tibet, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan as countries independent from China.
This influence likewise extends to Hollywood, where the influence of Chinese censors has led to script changes in multiple blockbuster movies, so as to steer clear of topics politically sensitive in China.
Conversely, China has no problem producing movies that seek to promote Chinese foreign policy and anti-American sentiment. 

An example of this is the Chinese box office record-breaker “Wolf Warrior II,” which contains highly anti-American content and is essentially China’s version of Sylvester Stallone’s anti-Soviet Russia “Rambo” series in the 1980s.
Due to China’s large and dynamic global economy, technological advances, and influence over foreign investors, Beijing has been able to take its level of state control of citizens to the next level.
Additionally, because of the success of its pseudo-communist economy on the world stage, other nations have been forced to submit to its strict censorship laws.
The U.S. should consider carefully steps it can take to hold China accountable for the severe human rights violations taking place—not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because if left unchecked, Beijing’s draconian policies will continue to impede freedom far beyond its borders.

60 years after exile, Tibetans face a fight for survival in a post-Dalai Lama world

By Sugam Pokharel

New Delhi -- The Dalai Lama describes it as "freedom in exile," but it's a freedom which has lasted longer than he likely ever dreamed about.
Sixty years ago today, the Tibetan Buddhist leader set foot on Indian soil to begin his life as a refugee.
After an unsuccessful revolt following the arrival of Chinese troops in Tibet, the Dalai fled Lhasa in fear for his life. 

Only 23 years old, he and his followers crossed a treacherous Himalayan pass into India on horseback, arriving on March 31, 1959.
Then-Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru offered the religious leader asylum along with tens of thousands of other Tibetans who had followed him into exile.
Ever since, the Dalai Lama -- who is revered as a living god by millions of Tibetan Buddhists -- has made India his home. 

India officially calls him "(our) most esteemed and honored guest."
"I'm the longest guest of the Indian government," the Dalai Lama, the 14th holder of the title, jokingly told CNN in an interview in 2009.

Tibetans gather during the armed uprising against Chinese rule on March 10, 1959, in front of the Potala Palace, the former home of the Dalai Lama, in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.

But as Tibetans mark 60 years of exile for their cultural icon, there is growing uncertainty about what the future holds. 

The globe-trotting monk, now 83, decided last year to cut down on his travels, citing age and exhaustion.
It is unclear who will succeed him when he dies, how that person will be picked or whether there will even be another Dalai Lama.
Traditionally, the title is bestowed on the highest-ranking leader in Tibetan Buddhism. 

It is given to those deemed to be the reincarnation of a line of revered religious teachers.
Asked in a recent interview with Reuters what might happen after his death, the Dalai Lama anticipated a possible attempt by Beijing to foist a successor on Tibetan Buddhists.
In the interview, the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize laureate said: "In future, in case you see two Dalai Lamas come, one from here, in a free country, one is chosen by Chinese, and then nobody will trust, nobody will respect (the one chosen by China). So that's an additional problem for the Chinese. It's possible, it can happen."

Tibetan flags are displayed as people protest in front of the Chinese Consulate General in Los Angeles on March 10.

End of the line
Such speculation is not new. 

The Dalai Lama once told the BBC that he might be the last person to hold the title, or that the next leader could be elected and not reincarnated.
But his comments highlighted the dilemma facing the future of Tibetan Buddhism as its current leader heads into his mid-80s.

China's foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said in March the "reincarnation of living Buddhas including the Dalai Lama must comply with Chinese laws and regulations and follow religious rituals and historical conventions."
Beijing must have full control over the appointment of the next Dalai Lama to help strengthen its overall grip on the Tibetan community, which is deeply faithful to its spiritual leader.
The Dalai Lama says he no longer seeks an independent Tibet, only its cultural autonomy, but China is not convinced. 

It reviles him as a traitor, "a wolf in monk's robes" engaged in "anti-China separatist activities under the cloak of religion with the aim of breaking Tibet away from China."
In 2011, in a move to democratize the Tibetan government-in-exile, the Dalai Lama gave up his political and administrative powers to become just a spiritual leader, but he is still by far the community's most influential figure.
Even though he has set up a democratic structure for Tibetans in India, many are concerned their future may look bleak without the Dalai Lama to speak on their behalf.

The Dalai Lama celebrates the birthday of the Lord Buddha for the first time since his arrival in India in exile in May 1959.

India-Tibet divide?
India is home to nearly 100,000 Tibetan refugees, some 73% of all Tibetans in exile.
But many in recent years have questioned whether the host nation is distancing itself from the community and whether the Dalai Lama and his followers would get the same welcome today as they did in 1959.
"India is sensing Tibet's appeal in the West is declining," said Tsering Shakya, a Tibet scholar and research chair at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
Ultimately, current geopolitics are what matters most for India. 

China is vastly more powerful than it was 60 years ago, and India takes a pragmatic view of the relationship -- an approach that could have a cost for the interests of exiled Tibetans.

A Tibetan exile activist is detained by Indian police during a protest near the Chinese embassy in New Delhi on March 12.

Celebrations last year to mark the start of the 60th anniversary were moved or canceled when asking senior leaders and government officials not to attend them.
The note reportedly said that the events, in March and April, came at a "very sensitive time in the context of India's relations with China." 

A week later, the Tibetan Central Administration -- the government in exile -- decided to move a major cultural event from New Delhi to Dharamsala, where the exiled community is based.
These are worrying developments for the community.
"The current Indian stand towards the Tibetans is based on its relationship with the Dalai Lama," Shakya said. 

"All the privileges afforded to the Tibetans on the ground, they are honoring an important and internationally recognized religious figure. This claim provides a moral legitimacy for the Indian government.
"In the absence of the Dalai Lama, India cannot make a similar claim."
As China's influence in South Asia rapidly increases and the Dalai Lama grows old and frail, the exiles in India can only worry and wait.

American Colleges Hosted an Important Part of China’s Propaganda Set-Up. Now They’re Bailing Out.

Congress has demanded more scrutiny of Confucius Institutes.
By DAN SPINELLI

The patron saint of China's propaganda machine

When the University of Minnesota established a Confucius Institute, or center for Chinese language learning, in September 2008, it quickly turned into one of China’s overseas success stories. 

With its efforts to promote the study of Chinese among students “from preschool to 12th grade,” the Minnesota center won plaudits from Hanban, a Chinese government organization that oversees the institutes and China’s other international language partnerships. 

Three years after its opening, the Minnesota outpost was named a Confucius Institute of the Year and between 2014 and 2018, China contributed more than $1.2 million toward the Minnesota center’s operation, according to a report in the Minnesota Daily student newspaper.
In June, the university will cut ties with Hanban, and Minnesota’s Confucius Institute will close. University officials cited a desire to refocus “our China-related activities through a strengthened and enhanced China Center,” spokesperson Katrinna Dodge said in an email to Mother Jones. 

In doing this, Minnesota joins the ranks of roughly a dozen other American colleges that have abandoned their partnerships with Hanban amid increasing criticism of Beijing’s growing authoritarianism and hostility to free speech. 

“Most agreements establishing Confucius Institutes feature nondisclosure clauses and unacceptable concessions to the political aims and practices of the government of China,” the American Association of University Professors concluded in a 2014 report, which said the centers “function as an arm of the Chinese state and are allowed to ignore academic freedom.”
Beijing first imported Confucius Institutes to American universities in 2004, offering generous subsidies and even staff, but the centers have attracted controversy from the start. 

As retired Communist Party bigwig Li Changchun once said, these institutes are “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up.” 

Marshall Sahlins, a University of Chicago anthropologist, called them “academic malware” with propaganda objectives “as old as the imperial era.” 

Many scholars and lawmakers wanted nothing to do with the institutes, which use an authoritarian government’s money to bankroll hundreds of classes and programs at colleges, high schools, and elementary schools. 

Now, as tensions between the US and China have increased, the White House, lawmakers from both parties, and the intelligence community have singled out Confucius Institutes as a nefarious symbol of China’s creeping influence.
In a January Senate hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray said China posed a threat “more deep, more diverse, more vexing, more challenging, more comprehensive, and more concerning than any counterintelligence threat I can think of.” 

He acknowledged last year that federal agents had targeted some Confucius Institutes with “appropriate investigative steps” over concerns of improper Chinese influence. 

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) introduced a bill last month that would require Confucius Institutes to register with the Justice Department as foreign agents, which quickly gained bipartisan support, and the most recent defense appropriations bill restricts schools with Confucius Institutes from receiving Pentagon language grants. “
“Foreign governments should not be funding student organizations on the campuses of democratic societies,” says Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, who examined Chinese influence in American higher education for a November report. 

“And certainly not the foreign government of authoritarian countries.”
In addition to citing concerns about transparency and censorship, lawmakers have also identified a glaring discrepancy between the freedoms afforded to Confucius Institutes in the United States and China’s crackdown on a similar slate of American-run centers abroad. 

In February, a bipartisan report from the Senate Homeland Security subcommittee on investigations identified “over 80 instances in the past four years” in which China interfered with State Department efforts to set up and access “American Cultural Centers” at Chinese universities. 

The US chose to stop funding the program last year amid continuing obstacles put in place by China. 

The report also noted that “nearly 70 percent” of US schools neglected to report Hanban contributions to the Department of Education, despite a requirement that postsecondary institutions report foreign gifts above a certain threshold.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), the subcommittee’s top Democrat, released a statement with the report that compared China’s influence activities with Russia’s efforts to intervene in the 2016 presidential election. 

“Given what our country experienced during the 2016 election and what we’re preparing to grapple with in 2020,” he said, “it is critical that we be vigilant in combatting foreign efforts to influence American public opinion.”
Diamond does not consider Confucius Institutes a security issue on par with China’s increasing surveillance of its own citizens or its widespread theft of intellectual property, but he argues that unless contracts with Hanban are made public, and assurances put in place to ensure American law governs the centers, the agreements “should be terminated.” 

Gao Qing, a Chinese agent who directed George Mason University’s Confucius Institute and now runs a nonprofit in Washington, DC, that advocates for these centers nationwide, wrote in an email to Mother Jones that Confucius Institutes are meant to offer “apolitical educational programs” and not “engage with any political activity and do not teach politics and policies.”
Confucius, the ancient philosopher whose teachings fell out of favor after the Communist Revolution, became the perfect symbol for China’s renaissance when fifteen years ago, government officials formed a Chinese language-learning center in Seoul. 

More than a century after China ceded control of the Korean peninsula to Japan—and with it, wider influence over the Asia-Pacific region—Beijing was mounting a comeback in its own backyard. 

Who better to adorn the name of its signature foreign influence project than Confucius, a philosopher with a name much easier to market overseas than Marx or Mao.
In the United States, interest in learning Chinese had been rising, but a shortage of qualified instructors left school administrators searching for help. 

By 2008, only 3 percent of elementary schools with language programs taught Chinese. 

After planting roots in South Korea, in 2004, Chinese officials unveiled their first US outpost at the University of Maryland. 

Between 1991 and 1994, Annapolis had slashed funding for state universities by nearly 20 percent, resulting in dramatic cuts at College Park, the University of Maryland’s flagship site. 

Administrators eliminated eight departments and 23 degree programs, according to the Hechinger Report, a nonprofit education news site, so an infusion of Chinese funding looked even more appealing. 

But some faculty members became uncomfortable with the arrangement. 

David Prager Branner, then an associate professor of Chinese, told Mother Jones the agreement to accept funding from the Chinese government constituted a “betrayal of the University’s primary obligation: cultivating young minds and teaching them to cultivate themselves.”
“I imagine the prestige of having the first such Institute in the United States, plus generous (as we were told) funding, more than made up in their minds for the failure to apply normal academic standards,” he wrote in an email. 

He noted that the influx of new instructors with their Hanban-approved textbook “were not even vetted by the University’s own Chinese language faculty.” 

In an email to Mother Jones, a Maryland spokeswoman sent a statement from Donna Wiseman, the university’s Confucius Institute director: “As part of our partnership with Hanban, we are responsible for making decisions about the programs we offer to the community and the extracurricular activities we coordinate on campus.”“
The partnership is a tricky one, as administrators at the College of William and Mary discovered when the Dalai Lama received an invitation to speak on campus seven years ago. 

As the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, whose land has been under China’s control for centuries, the Dalai Lama is considered a “wolf in monk’s robes” by the Chinese government. 

His appearance at any American university would upset Chinese officials, but especially so at William and Mary, which months earlier had established its own Confucius Institute. 

Ahead of the visit, a university administrator flew to Beijing and briefed Hanban leaders as part of what two knowledgeable sources described as a tense, difficult conversation that included pushback from Chinese officials. 

Nonetheless, the visit went on as planned and the university’s Confucius Institute remains in operation with continuing support from Hanban.
The dust-up was awkward, but ultimately inconsequential for the university. 

Occasional controversies over transparency and improper influence, experts say, largely depend on administrators’ care in reviewing contracts and removing any questionable language from their agreements. 

Qing says Confucius Institutes “affirm the primacy of US law,” but Hanban’s website includes a set of bylaws that several administrators around the country found concerning. 

One line implies that Chinese law, with its noticeably weaker free speech protections, would ultimately govern Confucius Institutes on US soil. 

A current Confucius Institute director at an American college, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about the partnership, said this part of the agreement had “to be watered down” for his school to participate. 

The Chinese officials did not object, he said, and seemed almost to expect the pushback. 

“Some of these nuances take time to learn,” he told Mother Jones. 

“Somebody may, without realizing it, sign the template thinking that’s the way to go forward.”

When George Washington University was first considering whether to form a Confucius Institute, faculty members were put off by a provision in Hanban’s generic agreement that its partners respect the “One China” principle which maintains that Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic of China. 

The US formally adopted this policy in 1979, but the provision still concerned administrators who interpreted it as a backdoor way to stifle academic discourse about Taiwan. 

The university ultimately agreed to a contract, years later, when the provision was no longer required.
A common criticism lodged against Hanban is the secrecy of its contracts. 

“At most Institutes, the terms of agreement are hidden,” a report from the conservative National Association of Scholars found in 2017. 

The key to keeping institutes free of undue influence, several administrators and experts reiterated, involves vetting the contracts more rigorously. 

No matter how innocuous a single institute may be, now that President Trump’s foreign policy has appeared to settle on an adversarial approach to Beijing, it is likely that they will become increasingly isolated. 

Sen. Marco Rubio, one of the most persistent critics of China in Congress, expressed a growing Washington consensus when he asked during a Senate hearing this year whether China had become “the most significant counterintelligence threat this nation has faced, perhaps in its history but certainly in the last quarter century.”

Dalai Lama contemplates Chinese gambit after his death

By Krishna N. Das, Sunil Kataria

DHARAMSHALA, India -- The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, said on Monday it was possible that once he dies his incarnation could be found in India, where he has lived in exile for 60 years, and warned that any other successor named by China would not be respected.
Sat in an office next to a temple ringed by green hills and snow-capped mountains, the 14th Dalai Lama spoke to Reuters a day after Tibetans in the northern Indian town of Dharamshala marked the anniversary of his escape from the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, disguised as a soldier.
He fled to India in early 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, and has since worked to draw global support for linguistic and cultural autonomy in his remote and mountainous homeland.
China, which took control of Tibet in 1950, brands the 83-year-old Nobel peace laureate a dangerous separatist.
Pondering what might happen after his death, the Dalai Lama anticipated some attempt by Beijing to foist a successor on Tibetan Buddhists.
“China considers Dalai Lama’s reincarnation as something very important. They have more concern about the next Dalai Lama than me,” said the Dalai Lama, swathed in his traditional red robes and yellow scarf.
“In future, in case you see two Dalai Lamas come, one from here, in free country, one chosen by Chinese, then nobody will trust, nobody will respect (the one chosen by China). So that’s an additional problem for the Chinese! It’s possible, it can happen,” he added, laughing.
China has said its leaders have the right to approve the Dalai Lama’s successor, as a legacy inherited from China’s emperors.
But many Tibetans -- whose tradition holds that the soul of a senior Buddhist monk is reincarnated in the body of a child on his death -- suspect any Chinese role as a ploy to exert influence on the community.
Born in 1935, the current Dalai Lama was identified as the reincarnation of his predecessor when he was two years old.
Many of China’s more than 6 million Tibetans still venerate the Dalai Lama despite government prohibitions on displays of his picture or any public display of devotion.
The Dalai Lama said contact between Tibetans living in their homeland and in exile was increasing, but that no formal meetings have happened between Chinese and his officials since 2010.
Informally, however, some retired Chinese officials and businessman with connections to Beijing do visit him from time to time, he added.
He said the role of the Dalai Lama after his death, including whether to keep it, could be discussed during a meeting of Tibetan Buddhists in India later this year.
He, however, added that though there was no reincarnation of Buddha, his teachings have remained.

“If the majority of (Tibetan people) really want to keep this institution, then this institution will remain,” he said. 

“Then comes the question of the reincarnation of the 15th Dalai Lama.”
If there is one, he would still have “ no political responsibility”, said the Dalai Lama, who gave up his political duties in 2001, developing a democratic system for the up to 100,000 Tibetans living in India.

SEMINAR IN CHINA?
During the interview, the Dalai Lama spoke passionately about his love for cosmology, neurobiology, quantum physics and psychology.
If he was ever allowed to visit his homeland, he said he’d like to speak about those subjects in a Chinese university.
But he wasn’t expecting to go while China remained under Communist rule.
“China - great nation, ancient nation - but its political system is totalitarian system, no freedom. So therefore I prefer to remain here, in this country.”
The Dalai Lama was born to a family of farmers in Taktser, a village on the northeastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, in China’s Qinghai province.
During a recent Reuters visit to Taktser, police armed with automatic weapons blocked the road. Police and more than a dozen plain-clothed officials said the village was not open to non-locals.
“Our strength, our power is based on truth. Chinese power based on gun,” the Dalai Lama said. 

“So for short term, gun is much more decisive, but long term truth is more powerful.”

‘The Chinese Government is at War With Faith.’

U.S. Official Denounces Religious Crackdown in China
BY AMY GUNIA

Former US Senator Samuel Dale Brownback (R-KS) testifies during his Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing to be ambassador at large for international religious freedom, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on Oct. 4, 2017.

U.S. diplomat Samuel Brownback denounced China’s treatment of the Uighur minority during a teleconference call Tuesday.

Uighurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic group, make up roughly 40% of the population of the northwestern colony of East Turkestan.

According to the U.N., an estimated 1 million Uighurs are being held in concentration camps in East Turkestan.
“We have been putting out very clearly that this is a horrific situation that’s taking place in East Turkestan,” said Brownback, the U.S. Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom.
Brownback was speaking Tuesday from Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, where he is leading a regional conference on religious freedom to raise awareness of the issue.
In response to a question submitted by TIME, Brownback said that international pressure on China over their treatment of Uighurs is causing Beijing to change their approach.
“Initially they didn’t respond. Then they denied that it was taking place and then finally more recently settled on this idea that this is "vocational training". They haven’t said that it’s involuntary vocational training,” he said. 

“All of these are completely unsatisfactory answers,” he added.
“It is past time in the year 2019 for the Chinese government to answer what it’s doing to its own people,” he continued. 

The ambassador said families of hundreds of people who have gone missing in the detainment camps have contacted him.
Brownback called for China to allow international observers to visit East Turkestan and for the release of individuals being held there. 

He mentioned that if China does not comply, the U.S. could invoke sanctions or enact the Global Magnitsky Act, legislation that allows the U.S. (as well as other countries, including Canada and E.U. member states) to put sanctions on individuals or organizations who are complicit in human rights abuses.
“The administration is serious about religious freedom matters and deeply concerned about what is taking place in China,” he said. 

U.S. lawmakers have repeatedly called for the Trump Administration to take firm action against China over its treatment of Muslims.
The conference in Taipei came after Brownback visited Hong Kong, where he gave a speech addressing wider religious repression by the Chinese government.
“Over the last few years, we have seen increasing Chinese government persecution of religious believers from many faiths and from all parts of the mainland,” he said at Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents Club on Friday, referring to growing religious repression against not just Muslims, but also Buddhists, Christians and the Falun Gong.
Referring to China’s claims that the East Turkestan camps help prevent terrorism, he said the “magnitude of these detentions is completely out of proportion to any real threat China faces from extremism.”
“Based on testimonies of survivors, it is clear that China’s misguided and cruel policies in East Turkestan are creating resentment, hatred, division, poverty and anger,” he added.
Concerning Buddhists in Tibet, Brownback said in the same speech that China is “likely to interfere with the selection of the next Dalai Lama” but that Tibetans “should be able to select, educate, and venerate their religious leaders without government interference”
He also addressed persecution of Christians in China, denouncing the government’s 2018 ban on online sales of the Bible. 

He also discussed the crackdown on underground churches and the detention of Christian religious leaders.
China is officially atheist but its constitution guarantees its citizens “freedom of religious belief” and protection or “normal religious activities.” 

The Chinese government officially recognizes five religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism.
Since 1999, the U.S. government has designated China a “Country of Particular Concern” under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.

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.