The Virus That Saves Mankind From Communism

Bass says U.S. should let the Chinese virus rampage through the ranks of the Global Times and the rest of the communist party
By Hannah Levitt

Kyle Bass

Kyle Bass took his long-time battle with communist China up another notch by getting into a heated spat with the editor-in-chief of a Communist Party-backed newspaper.
The hedge fund manager suggested on Twitter that the U.S. abandon efforts to help contain the coronavirus and let it spread through China’s leadership.
“We should take our supplies and go back home. Let the chinese virus rampage through the ranks of the Global Times and the rest of the communist party,” the founder and chief investment officer of Dallas-based Hayman Capital Management wrote.
He was responding to a tweet from Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Global Times, a daily run by the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily, in which he complained about “belated” U.S. aid.


Hu Xijin 胡锡进
✔@HuXijin_GT
.@Jkylebass As an investor with 129K twitter followers, you uttered such a malicious curse. You should apologize.

566
1:47 PM - Feb 9, 2020

Bass later deleted the tweet but doubled down when Hu suggested he apologize.
“I will not,” Bass replied. 

“You arrested, censured, and ‘punished’ (only God knows what you did to Li Wenliang and the other 7 doctors) the heroes of Wuhan. You are disgrace to humanity.”
In an emailed statement to Bloomberg News addressing his spat with Hu, he said he deleted the tweet because he “felt that it was too harsh for the rank and file” of the Global Times, but that he will “never apologize to a self-righteous, attempted manipulator of public opinion,” referring to Hu.
Bass has long been a vocal critic of China’s predatory policies -- he forecast last month that Hong Kong will suffer a “full-fledged banking crisis” this year and said it’s unlikely that Beijing will adhere to a trade deal with the U.S.
The coronavirus disease surfaced in late December in Wuhan, China. 

The ensuing global outbreak has infected tens of thousands of people and killed more than 900.

Tech Quisling

TWITTER HELPED CHINESE PROMOTE DISINFORMATION ON REPRESSION OF UIGHURS
By Ryan Gallagher

TWITTER HELPED TO promote Chinese government propaganda and disinformation about the country’s concentration camps in the East Turkestan colony, a review of the company’s advertising records reveals.
The social media company today announced a policy change that would bar such promotion following an inquiry from The Intercept and an earlier controversy over similar propaganda related to demonstrations in Hong Kong.
In East Turkestan, a western colony of China, the United Nations has estimated that 1 million ethnic minority Muslim Uighurs — including children, pregnant women, elderly people, and people with disabilities — have been detained under the pretext of fighting extremism. 

According to Human Rights Watch, Chinese authorities are “committing human rights abuses in East Turkestan on a scale unseen in the country in decades.”

A review of Twitter advertisements from between June and August this year showed that the social media giant promoted more than 50 English-language tweets from the Global Times, a Chinese state media organization. 

The tweets deliberately obscure the truth about the situation in East Turkestan and attack critics of the country’s ruling Communist Party regime.
The Global Times paid Twitter to promote its tweets to a portion of the more than 300 million active users on the social media platform. 

The tweets appeared in users’ timelines, regardless of whether they followed the Global Times account. 

In July, amid global condemnation of the treatment of Uighurs in East Turkestan, Twitter began promoting several Global Times tweets about the region.
One of the promoted tweets, from July 11, included a embedded video in which the Global Times’ editor-in-chief claimed that people who refer to the facilities in East Turkestan as “mass detention camps” have “smeared the vocational education and training centers established to help people avoid extremism.” 

He went on to attack “European politicians and media workers,” who he claimed had “tried to defend terrorist activities in East Turkestan,” adding, “their hands are in a way soiled with the blood of the Chinese people who died in violent attacks.”
Another promoted tweet, from July 4, included a video purportedly taken in East Turkestan, in which people are seen shopping in the street and eating in restaurants to a soundtrack of piano music. 

The video describes riots in 2009 that occurred in Urumqi, the capital of East Turkestan, and states that residents there “now live a happy and peaceful life” because they work together to fight terrorism and extremism. 

There is no mention in the video of the mass detention camps.
Other Global Times ads promoted by Twitter follow a similar theme, presenting the region as a happy and peaceful place where no human rights abuses have occurred. 

One promoted tweet includes video of an elderly woman receiving a package of medical supplies from government officials before breaking down in tears of joy. 

The tweet claims that poverty has been alleviated in the area because local residents have “access to high-quality medical care and affordable medicines.”
Patrick Poon, China researcher for Amnesty International, said he found Twitter’s promotion of the advertisements to be “appalling.”
“This is a very important, serious issue that Twitter needs to address,” said Poon. 

“Twitter is helping to promote false allegations and government propaganda. Allowing such advertising sets an alarming precedent.”
On Monday, Twitter said that it would no longer accept advertising from state-controlled media, in order to “protect healthy discourse and open conversation.”
The announcement was published three hours after The Intercept had contacted the company for comment on its promotion of the Global Times’ East Turkestan tweets. 

Earlier on Monday, TechCrunch highlighted Twitter’s promotion of tweets from a different state news entity, China Xinhua News, which portrayed largely peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong as violent.
Twitter’s promotion of Chinese government propaganda had appeared to contradict its own policies, which state that advertising on the platform must be “honest.” 

The advertisements also undermined statements from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who told the Senate Intelligence Committee last year that the company was working to combat “propaganda through bots and human coordination [and] misinformation campaigns.”
Like many Western technology companies, Twitter has a complex relationship with China. 

The social media platform is blocked in the country and cannot be accessed there without the use of censorship circumvention technologies, such as a virtual private network or proxy service. 

At the same time, however, Twitter generates a lot of advertising revenue in China and has a growing presence in the country.
In July, Twitter’s director in China reportedly stated that the company’s team there had tripled in the last year and was the company’s fastest growing division. 

In May, the social media giant held a “Twitter for Marketers” conference in Beijing. 

Meanwhile, Twitter was criticized for purging Chinese dissidents’ accounts on the platform – which it claimed was a mistake – and has also been the subject of a protest campaign, launched by the Chinese artist Badiucao, after it refused to publish a “hashflag” symbol to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Poon, the Amnesty researcher, said police in China have in recent months increasingly targeted human rights advocates in the country who are active on Twitter, forcing them to delete their accounts or remove specific posts that are critical of the government. 

These cases have been reported to Twitter, according to Poon, but the company has not taken any action.
“Twitter has allowed the Chinese government to advertise its propaganda while turning a deaf ear on those who have been persecuted by the Chinese regime,” Poon said. 

“We need to hear how Twitter can justify that.”

Global Times: The annihilation of American spy ring was a victory for China

Chinese newspaper applauds reported anti-espionage killing of CIA sources
Reuters

The story has attracted thousands of comments on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, with many people expressing glee that the spy ring was broken.

An influential state-run newspaper has applauded China’s anti-espionage efforts after the New York Times said China had killed or imprisoned up to 20 CIA sources, hobbling US spying operations in a massive intelligence breach.
The Chinese killed at least a dozen people providing information to the US Central Intelligence Agency between 2010 and 2012, dismantling a network that was years in the making, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

China dismantled CIA spying operations and killed 12 sources.

China’s Global Times, published by the official People’s Daily, said in an editorial in its Chinese and English-language editions that it was a victory for China.
“We would like to applaud China’s anti-espionage activities. Not only was the CIA’s spy network dismantled, but Washington had no idea what happened and which part of the spy network had gone wrong,” the paper said.
“It can be taken as a sweeping victory. Perhaps it means even if the CIA makes efforts to rebuild its spy network in China, it could face the same result,” it said.
The Chinese government has yet to respond to the report.
The ministry of state security, which oversees anti-spying operations, has no publicly available telephone number and no website, unlike other Chinese ministries.
While the New York Times’ website is blocked in China, like those of many mainstream Western news organisations, the story has been widely discussed and its contents picked up in other Chinese media, especially by online news portals.
The story has attracted thousands of comments on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, with many people expressing glee that the spy ring was broken.
“Strike hard against spy traitors, protect the country’s security!” wrote one Weibo user.
“Well done! Good on you China,” wrote another.