Oriental Despotism

China’s Communist Party is as shadowy and repressive as when it took power 70 years ago

By YAQIU WANG

On Sept. 23, the wife of 38-year-old Chinese activist Wang Meiyu learned that her husband had died in a detention center in Hunan province, less than three months after the police detained him there. Wang had staged lone protests calling for Xi Jinping to step down and allow democracy in China.
“He was a healthy, normal man when he went in there,” Wang’s widow told Radio Free Asia. 

“When I saw his [dead] body… he was totally unrecognizable.”
Those who rely on Chinese media for their news are unlikely ever to hear about Wang’s death — or about the hundreds of thousands of other Chinese citizens who have run afoul of the government. Controlling information has always been central to Chinese Communist Party rule, and as the 70th anniversary of that rule approaches on Oct. 1, the propaganda machine is in overdrive. 

What Chinese people hear are Xi’s speeches extolling the party’s achievements and interviews with people expressing their national pride. 

They see images of government-produced high-speed trains, state-of-the-art weaponry, and high-tech mega projects.
“There are actually two Chinas,” Chinese scholar Qian Liqun said in a speech. 

“One is the China amplified by the historical narrative and propaganda machinery, a China that strides triumphantly and is unstoppable. The other is the China ravaged and denied, perishing in the darkness.”
As a China researcher for Human Rights Watch, I know something about that other China. 

It’s one where people are routinely imprisoned for speaking out for a more just and free society, where a critical comment online about the president can get someone forcibly disappeared, and where a person can be declared mentally ill and sent to a psychiatric hospital for seeking compensation for expropriated land.
It is the China where a million Turkic Muslims in the East Turkestan colony are now being detained solely because of their ethnic identity, while many of their children are forcibly housed in state-run boarding schools. 

It is the China where millions of women have suffered the trauma of forced sterilizations and abortions, and where children cannot go to school because they were born outside of the One-Child or Two-Child policies.
“The other China” is the one whose existence the Communist Party denies and forbids anyone to speak about.
The other day I came across an anonymous posting by a woman based in Shanghai who had found her way to some Human Rights Watch’s research on East Turkestan — presumably using a virtual private network, or VPN, to circumvent the state censorship that prevents internet users in China from reading uncensored news of the region. 

She described how her “heart sank” and her “body trembled” as she learned of the government’s brutal repression. 

She wrote that her daily life in the first China was “good and vacuous,” but when reading censored news websites about “the other China” she feels “uncontrollably frightened” and “powerless.”
Most Chinese people, at least for now, can live their lives untroubled by “the other China.” 

But there are no guarantees of not being suddenly engulfed by it. 

The billionaire Xiao Jianhua and the former vice minister of public security and president of Interpol, Meng Hongwei, now live in “the other China,” incarcerated since 2017 and 2018, respectively. 

Once you are pulled into that shadowy world, it is difficult to get out. 

Actress Fan Bingbing only reemerged from months of house arrest after making a groveling public apology.
People understand the message of these cases, and do their utmost to protect themselves.
Last year, the writer Yangyang Cheng, tweeted about how, at the age of 8, she learned to be careful about expressing dissent. 

After a “lively dinner” at her grandmother’s, Cheng said in her tweet, she wrote in her diary about the night’s political discussion. 

“My mother blocked out the lines with the darkest of ink,” Cheng tweeted, “and told me to never write such things again.”
This is not just the impulse of intellectuals. 

Even at a time of strong nationalistic sentiment and high tension with the West, many hope to immigrate to Western countries. 

In 2017, nearly 90% of the applicants on the waiting list for America’s investment-based green cards were from China. 

Many Chinese have chosen to store their assets abroad—so much so that the massive wave of capital flight in recent years has prompted the party to resort to extreme measures to control it.
After all, no one would want to meet the same fate as Xiao Jianhua or Wang Meiyu.
Seventy years into the Chinese Communist Party’s rule, millions of people now live in the China that promises material comfort and convenience, and projects political unity. 

But they all live in fear of “the other China”— a reality the party’s top brass relies on to maintain control.

China's disappeared: Some of the people who vanished at the hands of the Chinese state in 2018

Canadian citizens, a famous actress, a security insider and a student Marxist disappeared in China this year
The Associated Press
Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig briefly disappeared this month before it was revealed they were taken into custody by Chinese officials. The two men's detention followed the arrest and detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou by Canadian authorities. 

It's not uncommon for individuals who speak out against the government to disappear in China, but the scope of the "disappeared" has expanded since Xi Jinping came to power in 2013.
Not only dissidents and activists, but also high-level officials, Marxists, foreigners and even a movie star — people who never publicly opposed the ruling Communist Party — have been whisked away by police to unknown destinations.
The widening dragnet throws into stark relief the lengths to which Xi's administration is willing to go to maintain its control and authority.
Here's a look at some of the people who went missing in 2018 at the hands of the Chinese state:

Canadian citizens
China threatened "grave consequences" if Canada did not release high-tech executive Meng Wanzhou, shortly after the Huawei chief financial officer was detained in Vancouver earlier this month for extradition to the U.S.
The apparent consequences materialized within days, when two Canadian men went missing in China. 

Both turned up in the hands of state security on suspicion of endangering "national security", a nebulous category of crimes that has been levied against foreigners in recent years.
Former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig was taken by authorities from a Beijing street late in the evening, a person familiar with his case said. 

He is allowed one consular visit a month and has not been granted access to a lawyer, as is standard for state security cases.

Kovrig, an adviser with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, remains in detention in China.

Also detained is Michael Spavor, who organizes tours to North Korea from the border city of Dandong. 

China has not said whether their detentions are related to Meng's, but a similar scenario unfolded in the past.
A Canadian couple was detained in 2014 on national security grounds shortly after Canada arrested Su Bin, a Chinese man wanted for industrial espionage in the U.S.
Like Spavor, Kevin and Julia Garratt lived in Dandong, where they ran a popular coffee shop for nearly a decade. 

They also worked with a Christian charity that provided food to North Korean refugees.
While Julia Garratt was released on bail, her husband was held for more than two years before he was deported in September 2016 — about two months after Su pleaded guilty in the U.S.

Tax-evading actress
Fan Bingbing was living the dream. 

Since a breakthrough role at the age of 17, Fan has headlined dozens of movies and TV series, and parlayed her success into modelling, fashion design and other ventures that have made her one of the highest-paid celebrities in the world.
All this made her a potent icon of China's economic success, until authorities reminded Fan — and her legion of admirers — that even she was not untouchable.
For about four months, Fan vanished from public view. 

Her Weibo social media account, which has more than 63 million followers, fell silent. 

Her management office in Beijing was vacated. 

Her birthday on Sept. 16 came and went with only a handful of greetings from entertainment notables.
When she finally resurfaced, it was to apologize.
"I sincerely apologize to society, to the friends who love and care for me, to the people, and to the country's tax bureau," Fan said in a letter posted on Weibo on Oct. 3.
Chinese actress Fan Bingbing poses for photographers upon arrival at the opening of the Cannes film festival in southern France in May. One of China's highest paid celebrities, Fan disappeared from public view for four months before apologizing for tax-evasion. 

Fan later admitted to tax evasion. 

State news agency Xinhua reported that she and the companies she represents had been ordered to pay taxes and penalties totaling 900 million yuan ($130 million US).
"Without the party and the country's great policies, without the people's loving care, there would be no Fan Bingbing," she wrote, a cautionary tale for other Chinese celebrities.
Xinhua concurred in a commentary on her case: "Everyone is equal before the law, there are no `superstars' or `big shots.' No one can despise the law and hope to be lucky."

Security insider
Unlike most swallowed up by China's opaque security apparatus, Meng Hongwei knew exactly what to expect.
Meng — no relation to the Huawei executive — is a vice minister of public security who was also head of Interpol, the France-based organization that facilitates police cooperation across borders.
When he was appointed to the top post, human rights groups expressed concern that China would use Interpol as a tool to rein in political enemies around the world.
Instead, he was captured by the same security forces he represented.
Former Interpol president Meng Hongwei delivers his opening address at the Interpol World congress in Singapore in July 2017. 

In September, Meng became the latest high-ranking official caught in Xi's banner anti-corruption campaign. 

The initiative is a major reason for the Chinese leader's broad popularity, but he has been accused of using it to eliminate political rivals.
Xi pledged to confront both high-level "tigers" and low-level "flies" in his crackdown on graft — a promise he has fulfilled by ensnaring prominent officials.
Meng was missing for weeks before Chinese authorities said he was being investigated for taking bribes and other crimes. 

A Chinese delegation later delivered a resignation letter from Meng to Interpol headquarters.
His wife Grace Meng told the AP that she does not believe the charges against her husband. 

The last message he sent her was an emoji of a knife.

Daring photographer
Lu Guang made his mark photographing the everyday lives of HIV patients in central China. 

They were poor villagers who had contracted the virus after selling their own blood to eke out a living — at a going rate of $7 a pint, they told Lu.
A former factory worker, Lu traversed China's vast reaches to capture reality at its margins. 

He explored environmental degradation, industrial pollution and other gritty topics generally avoided by Chinese journalists, who risk punishment if they pursue stories considered to be sensitive or overly critical.
His work won him major accolades such as the World Press Photo prize, but his prominence likely also put him on the government's radar.
This November, Lu was travelling through East Turkestan, the far west colony that has deployed a vast security network in the name of fighting terrorism. 

He was participating in an exchange with other photographers, after which he was to meet a friend in nearby Sichuan province. 

He never showed up.
More than a month after he disappeared, his family was notified that he had been arrested in East Turkestan, according to his wife Xu Xiaoli. 

She declined to elaborate on the nature of the charges.

Marxist student
In the past, the political activists jailed in China were primarily those who fought for democracy and an end to one-party rule. 

They posed a direct ideological threat to the Communist Party.
This year, the party locked in on a surprising new target: young Marxists.
About 50 students and recent graduates of the country's most prestigious universities convened in August in Shenzhen, an electronics manufacturing hub, to rally for factory workers attempting to form a union
Among them was Yue Xin, a 20-something fresh out of Peking University. 

Earlier this year, she made headlines by calling for the elite school to release the results of its investigation into a decades-old rape case.
This time, she was one of the most vocal leaders of the labour rights group, appearing in photographs with her fist up in a Marxist salute and wearing a T-shirt that said "Unity is strength" — the name of a patriotic Chinese communist song.
Yue, a passionate student of Marx and Mao Zedong, espoused the same values as the party. 

She wrote an open letter to Xi and the party's central leadership saying all the students wanted was justice for Jasic Technology labourers.
Her letter quoted Xi's own remarks: "We must adhere to the guiding position of Marxism." 

Yue called Marx "our mentor" and likened the ideas of him and Mao to spiritual sustenance.
Nonetheless, she ended up among those rounded up in a raid on the apartment the activists were staying at in Shenzhen. 

While most have been released, Yue remains unaccounted for.
She has been missing for four months.

How President Trump’s Trade War Is Driving China Nuts

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping reacted to American pressure with desperation

By WILLIAM PESEK

TOKYO—Five years ago, China’s Xi Jinping rocked the Communist Party establishment by pledging to let markets play a “decisive role” in decision making. 

Reformists rejoiced as Xi signaled a revival of Deng Xiaoping’s pro-capitalism revolution.
Things haven’t gone as planned. 

First, Xi slow-walked steps to reduce China’s reliance on runaway credit, debt and an antiquated state sector. 

He prioritized short-term growth over long-term upgrades. 

And then President Donald Trump came along to imperil both objectives.
Initially, Xi’s government figured the president was bluffing. 

Beijing’s calculation was that, sure, President Trump might slap some tariffs on Chinese goods, but it’s a mere negotiating tactic – his “Art of the Deal” writ large. 

After all, past American presidents had often attacked China on the campaign trail—only to make nice while in office. 

Xi’s men held it together as President Trump slapped taxes of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum. 

They figured President Trump’s initial attack on $50 billion of Chinese imports in June would satisfy Professor Peter Navarro and other anti-China voices in the White House.

Hardly, as Xi’s team is realizing. 

If the extra $200 billion of levies President Trump tossed Beijing’s way in September weren’t reality-check enough, Vice President Mike Pence’s Oct. 4 “we-will-not-stand-down” speech suggests 2019 could get even worse for Beijing.

Mr. Pence accused Beijing of trying to malign President Trump’s credibility, of reckless harassment and of working to engineer a different American president.

On both economic and military issues, Mr. Pence declared: “We will not be intimidated; we will not stand down.”
The vice president seemed to confirm that President Trump’s trade war is more about tackling China than creating U.S. jobs. 

Worse, perhaps, taxing Beijing is shaping up to be a 2020 re-election strategy. 

Forget Russia, Vice President Pence suggested: China is the real election meddler. 

It “clearly laid down an official marker for a much more competitive and contentious New Era of U.S.-China relations,” says China analyst Bill Bishop.

All this is throwing Xi’s domestic strategies into disarray – perhaps permanently.
Six months ago, Beijing was throttling ahead with “Made in China 2025,” a multi-trillion-dollar effort to dominate the future of self-driving vehicles, renewable energy, robots and artificial intelligence. 

Party bigwigs were also planning festivities to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Deng’s reforms -– and Xi’s steps to accelerate them.
Now, Xi’s undivided attention is on making this year’s growth numbers. 

President Trump’s trade-policy grenades are sending a few too many market forces Beijing’s way for comfort. 

China’s currency is down 6.4 percent this year. 

Shanghai stocks are down 22.3 percent this year as JPMorgan Chase and other investment banks turn cautious despite China’s 6.7 percent growth.
The headwinds heading China’s way are unmistakable, particularly with President Trump threatening to up the tariff ante to $505 billion. 

In August, export growth weakened to just under 10 percent from the previous month -- crisis levels for a trade-reliant developing nation. 

Fixed-asset investment has stalled, falling to a record low in August. 

And the latest purchasing managers’ data from the government and Caixin at right at the 50-point mark -- just a small step from contraction.
That’s unleashed a frantic push to keep China’s growth engine from crawling to a stop. 

Almost daily, Xi’s team rolls out new plans to cut taxes, boost business lending and ramp up infrastructure spending. 

Regulators are easing up on credit curbs and limits on property speculation. 

On Oct. 7, the central bank slashed the amount of cash lenders must set aside as reserves for the fourth time this year. 

It is as clear an admission as any that China’s 6.5 percent growth target is in trouble.
So are Xi’s designs of raising Deng’s upgrades to 11. 

In 1978, Deng set the most populous nation on a journey from impoverished backwater to surpassing Japan’s GDP on the way to America’s. 

Deng replaced Maoist egalitarianism with meritocratic forces. 

He loosened price controls, decollectivized agriculture, allowed entrepreneurs to start businesses, welcomed foreign investment and morphed China into a global manufacturing juggernaut.
Xi’s Made in China 2025 gambit aimed to push the economy upmarket – making it more about tech companies like Alibaba and Tencent than sweatshops. 

Yet now Xi is engaged in all-hands-on-deck battle against President Trump’s ploy to turn back the clock on China’s rising influence.
A key element of moving China beyond boom-and-bust cycles and making growth more productive is tackling dueling bubbles in credit, debt and property prices. 

That means increasing transparency, policing an out-of-control $20 trillion shadow-banking sector and dropping support for state-owned enterprises to create a vibrant private sector. 

Such upgrades will necessitate slower growth -- 5 percent or below.
Yet they are now largely on hold. 

Xi reverting to the stimulus-at-all-costs playbook that got China into financial hot water is a worrisome bookend for the Deng revolution. 

Xi is ensuring that when China’s debt-excess reckoning comes, what economists call a “Minsky moment,” it will be bigger, more spectacular and more globally impactful. 

If you thought the “Lehman shock” of 2008 was scary, wait until the No. 2 economy with $14 trillion of annual output goes off the rails.
Beijing is well aware of its plight – and the air of panic and paranoia is manifesting itself in bizarre ways.
The disappearance of a beloved actress, the detention of an Interpol bigwig and the visa troubles of a Western journalist wouldn’t normally be big concerns for economists. 

But there’s nothing typical about the lengths to which China is going to fend off President Trump’s escalating trade war.
The first narrative involves “X-Men” star Fan BingBing, who resurfaced last week after vanishing from public view. 

She was detained for alleged tax evasion and ordered to cough up $129 million. 

Yet her case was a stark reminder about something else: President Xi’s paranoia about capital outflows as wealthy mainlanders spirit their fortunes abroad.
The second concerns Meng Hongwei, the Chinese head of Interpol who went missing last month. Meng is being investigated for bribery. 

Yet Xi’s heavy-handed tactics highlight the lengths to which the Communist Party will go to maintain absolute control over its subjects, even those on the world stage. 

Couldn’t Interpol deal with any credible allegations in-house? 

It hardly helps that Xi’s anti-graft drive often seems more about sidelining rivals than cleansing the system.
The third narrative relates to Hong Kong-based Financial Times editor Victor Mallet, whose visa renewal was just rejected. 

Mallet is vice president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, which in August enraged Xi by hosting a pro-Hong Kong independence speaker. 

It may be the latest sign of Chinafication in a city that once stood as a financial green zone for investors tapping the mainland market.
Taken together, these plotlines make a mockery of Xi’s market-forces pledge. 

Rather than creating a predictable rule of law on which trusted economies thrive, Xi’s China is regressing in ways sure to chill foreign investment. 

This imperils his efforts in the President Trump era to portray China as a credible power ready to fill the global leadership void. 

Xi is engaged in his own Trumpian battle against the media –- even outside the mainland –- and going after high-profile rivals.
President Trump doesn’t get all the blame. 

If Xi had worked with Deng-like determination to recalibrate growth engines and wean China off exports, the economy would be less vulnerable to President Trump’s attacks. 

By certain metrics, meantime, Xi, is dragging China backward. 

Its press-freedom ranking from Reporters Without Borders worsened to 176th, three notches below 2013.
Irony abounds, of course. 

Earlier this year, Xi convinced the party to effectively make him president for life rather than the traditional 10 years. 

Past U.S. presidents would’ve condemned the power grab; Trump was all compliments. 

Yet the stronger Xi becomes, the more he clamps down on the media and dissenting voices needed to police the government and corporate titans.
Nor has Xi addressed a central paradox: how China increases innovation while walling off innovators from Google, Facebook and the big debates of the day. 

Those market forces Xi pledged to heed are coming from Silicon Valley, too. 

While Trump complains about fake news, Xi’s China has a “fake reform” problem, says Wang Yiming, deputy director of the State Council Development Research Center.
A propensity for own-goals, too. 

Case in point: China’s government inserted tiny spying chips into smartphones and other devices. 

Might that troll President Trump to retaliate further? 

“Conflict with China over trade, investment, technology and geopolitical dominance will only escalate,” says analyst Arthur Kroeber of Gavekal Research in Beijing.
That’s likely to further reduce China’s appetite for risk. 

Since Xi’s legitimacy is predicated on rapid growth, he’s likely to punt Deng 2.0 forward. 

It follows that the faster China grows over the next 12 months, the less reforming Xi’s men are doing behind the scenes.

China's Magic

China's Leading Actress Fan Bingbing Has Vanished. 

By ELI MEIXLER / HONG KONG

In past years, actress Fan Bingbing was a regular presence on film festival red carpets and fashion catwalks from Barcelona to Busan. 

And then, suddenly, she wasn’t.
Film fans are expressing alarm at Fan’s disquieting recent disappearance from public life: she was last seen on July 1, while visiting a children’s hospital. 

Her account on China’s popular Sina Weibo social media network, where she has 63 million followers, has been silent since July 23.
Speculation is linking the disappearance of Fan, one of cinema’s top-earners, to an alleged tax evasion scandal at a time when China’s state-controlled film industry is cutting back on bloated budgets and star-driven blockbusters.
If so, it would be a swift reversal for the celluloid superstar, whose rapid ascent as an actress and fashion icon seemed eclipsed only by her potential. 

A Chinese state news report assured readers last week that matters surrounding the actress—who featured in 2017’s TIME 100—were “under control.” 

But like its subject, the report quickly disappeared.
Here’s what we know:

A rising star
Not long ago, Fan, 36, seemed poised to become one of the biggest crossover stars in the world: a China-born, English-speaking workaholic armed with a formidable combination of acting, singing, and modeling skills.
Fan became a Chinese household name in 1999 with the TV series My Fair Princess, but broke into stardom in 2003’s Cell Phone, the year’s highest-grossing Chinese film, for which she won Best Actress honors at the Hundred Flowers Awards, China’s equivalent of the Golden Globes.
Fan won again in 2008, and began to pick up leading roles and international festival awards from Taiwan, Tokyo, and San Sebastián. 

In 2016, she earned $17 million, according to Forbes, making her the world’s fifth-highest paid actress. 

The following year, she sat on the Cannes Film Festival Official Competition Jury, where she promised to assess films “from an Asian perspective.”
She also logged side roles American films like X-Men: Days of Future Past and Ironman 3 after, as she told TIME last year, “[Hollywood] wanted to add Asian faces and found me.” 

It was effective: her brief role as “Blink” helped propel X-Men to a $39.35 million opening weekend in China.
Earlier this year, she was cast in 355, an espionage thriller, among a multinational ensemble that included Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Lupita Nyong’o, and Marion Cotillard. 

Her place in the pantheon of leading actors seemed secure. 

“In 10 years’ time…I’m sure I will be the heroine of X-Men,” she predicted to TIME last February.

A hint of scandal
But her once certain ascension was jeopardized in May, when CCTV presenter Cui Yongyuan leaked a pair of contracts that allegedly showed Fan double-billing an unidentified production, first for 10 million renminbi ($1.6 million), and then for 50 million renminbi ($7.8 million) for the same work.
The documents appeared to reveal an arrangement, known as “yin-yang” contracts, wherein one contract reflects an actor’s actual earnings while a second, lower figure is submitted to tax authorities, the BBC reported. 

According to the South China Morning Post, Cui then called for the Chinese authorities to “step up regulations on show business.”
In June, the Jiangsu Province State Administration of Taxation opened a tax evasion investigation focusing on the entertainment industry. 

Fan’s film studio, which denied the allegations, is based in Jiangsu, according to the Post.
The lack of an official statement on her whereabouts has spurred tabloid speculation that Fan was banned from acting or placed under house arrest. 

Last week, according to the Guardian, a report in China’s state-run Securities Journal claimed that Fan would “accept legal judgement,” though the article did not specify her offense, and was removed shortly after publication.
The whiff of impropriety has already impacted her cachet: Australian vitamin brand Swisse suspended use of Fan’s image in advertisements, while her name was removed from promotional materials for the upcoming Unbreakable Spirit, starring Bruce Willis.
Adding insult to financial and professional injury, the BBC reports that Fan has been rated last in a ranking of Chinese celebrities’ personal integrity and charitable work, scoring zero out of 100 in the 2017-2018 China Film and Television Star Social Responsibility Report published Tuesday by a Chinese university. 

That’s despite the fact that Fan co-founded a charity to provide surgery for children with congenital heart disease in rural Tibet, which she called her “greatest achievement” in a 2003 interview with the Financial Times. 

In 2015, she also donated a million renminbi ($146,000) to relatives of firemen killed in the Tianjin chemical warehouse disaster; the following year a different index listed Fan among the 10 most philanthropic Chinese celebrities.

A cautionary tale
Other, more salacious theories have claimed to account for Fan’s fall from grace.
Last year, she filed a defamation lawsuit against exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, who alleged sexual affairs between celebrities, including Fan, and top Chinese Communist Party officials. 

And when the yin-yang contracts came to light, Fan was shooting a sequel to Cell Phone that Cui, her CCTV accuser, complained bore an uncomfortable resemblance to his own life, the Post reports.
Actor Jackie Chan has meanwhile dispelled rumors that he recommended Fan seek asylum in the U.S.
She may also be the victim of industry belt-tightening, following a series of costly flops. 

Last year, the $150 million, Matt Damon-led The Great Wall, China’s most expensive film ever, recouped just $18.4 million in its North American opening. 

In July, the blockbuster Asura was promptly pulled from Chinese box offices after generating just $7.4 million. 

In June, the government instituted new salary ceilings on film and TV actors, blaming “sky-high” salaries and yin-yang contracts for creating a “distorted” culture of “money worship,” according to the BBC.
Fan’s plight also underscores fundamental divisions between Hollywood and the Chinese film industry, where state censors still exert considerable control over content and celebrate stars who advocate fealty to the Communist Party.
But Fan’s supporters have remain loyal, yearning for news or sight of the absent actress. 

“I have a hunch that you will be back, right?,” one posted on Weibo. 

“We’ll wait for you”

U.S. Tech Quisling

Facebook blocked dissident Guo Wengui after the Chinese government complained

By Heather Timmons

Facebook, Twitter, and Google were grilled this morning about their efforts to combat propaganda in the run up the 2016 US election by the Senate’s intelligence committee. 

Most of the questions focused, naturally, on Russia’s influence, because the Kremlin was specifically identified by US intelligence as trying to sway the vote.
Florida senator Marco Rubio, who takes a particular interest in Beijing’s attempts to curtail Chinese citizens’ free speech, focused for a moment on dissident Guo Wengui. 

Facebook said Oct. 1 it had taken down a page associated with Guo and stopped him from posting to his own account after he had posted someone else’s “personal identifier information.”
Did Facebook do so at the behest of Beijing, Rubio asked the company’s attorney Colin Stretch. Kind of, Stretch admitted.
“We did receive a report from a representative of the Chinese government about that account,” Stretch said. 

“We analyzed that report as we would any other, and took action based on our policies,” he said.

Guo Wengui

The Chinese government has been trying to silence Guo, and to bring him back from the US to China, because he has been using social media to disseminate claims that elite government officials are corrupt. 

The wealthy businessman lives in a Manhattan penthouse surround by bodyguards.
Guo’s account was blocked because he published information about Wang Qishan, a member of the elite Politburo in charge of Beijing’s anti-corruption push, and Fan Bingbing, a movie star on his Facebook page, people briefed on his case say. 

He has alleged that Wang’s family amassed a fortune from dealings with Chinese conglomerate HNA, and that Fan was his mistress.
The company’s Community Standards only specify it will take action for “credible threats to public figures and hate speech directed at them.” 

A Facebook spokesman said when his account was blocked that “we don’t allow people to publish the personal information of others without their consent” and the company had no update today after the hearing.
Although Facebook is officially blocked in China, the Chinese government has a robust presence on the platform, mostly through state-owned media accounts, which claim to have tens of millions of Facebook fans. 

The Chinese government employs a veritable army of paid social media users to spread its message on Chinese networks that are jokingly called the “50 Cent party”.
The 50 Cent party is also colonizing foreign social media. 

Searching for Guo’s name on Twitter turns up a string of poorly-worded tweets disparaging him.