Hong Kong Uprising Poses a Threat to China’s Legitimacy

An unintended consequence of the current unrest in Hong Kong has been to derail Xi Jinping’s proposal to use the “one country, two systems” formula to settle the Taiwan issue.

by Dennis P. Halpin


In December 2004, the Heritage Foundation’s Hong Kong office hosted a speech by Henry Hyde, Chairman of the then-named House International Relations Committee (now the Foreign Affairs Committee.) 

 Hyde, a veteran of World War II who fought in the battle for the Philippines, had an abiding personal interest in post-war political developments in Asia, including the challenges posed by a rising China. In his remarks, he saw political developments in Hong Kong as a key test as to whether Beijing would emerge as a responsible stakeholder or, alternatively, an authoritarian threat in the 21st Century.
Speaking of Hong Kong, he said: “Many years ago, those laboring in mines deep underground, faced the deadly problem of the buildup of fatal but undetectable gases. To warn them of approaching danger, they would bring with them a small and fragile bird, imprisoned in a cage, which became known as the miners’ canary… Hong Kong is the miners’ canary. Its vulnerability makes it an unmistakable indicator of the course of China’s historic transition and the impact it will soon have on us all. We must watch carefully.”
Hyde died in 2007. 

 Yet his words of caution remain relevant for Americans today. 

These include Donald Trump who, according to a CNN report on October 4th, made another questionable promise on Hong Kong in one of his now-famous phone calls to global leaders: “During a private phone call in June, Trump promised Chinese dictator Xi Jinping that the US would remain quiet on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong while trade talks continued.” 

 CNN further reported that the State Department told then-U.S. Consul General in Hong Kong, Kurt Tong, “to cancel a planned speech on the protests in Washington because the President had promised Xi no one from the administration would talk about the issue.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and NBA star LeBron James should also take heed. 

Their concerns for human rights and the rule of law are blinded by what Chairman Hyde called in his 2004 speech “the fool’s gold of pure selfishness” – in this case, the glitter of Chinese gold.

Zuckerberg, seeking a breakthrough for Facebook in China after it was blocked in 2009, bought several copies of China strongman Xi Jinping’s book on governance in 2014, so that “he and (his) colleagues could learn about socialism with Chinese characteristics,” according to a December 9, 2014 article in the South China Morning Post. 

And LeBron James more recently got caught in the awkward position of appearing to excuse Beijing’s current crackdown in Hong Kong in some ill-advised online comments. 

This happened soon after a high school student protester was shot in the chest by police on China’s National Day, October 1st, in an eerie echo of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and prior to a leader of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement being hospitalized after an assault on the street by thugs with hammers. 

Commenting on LeBron James’s remarks, one disappointed Hong Kong protester told the Associated Press on October 15th: “Please remember, all NBA players, what you said before: ‘Black lives matter.’ Hong Kong lives also matter.” 

Perhaps all three -- Trump, Zuckerberg, and James -- need to take their quotes more from Chairman Hyde and a little less from Chairman Mao.
The spin doctors in Beijing did not care very much for what Hyde had to say in his speech. 

UPI reported on December 6, 2004 that a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that Hyde had “viciously attacked China’s development and progress, and insulted China’s foreign policy from his own Cold World view.”
So, what exactly did Hyde say about Hong Kong back in 2004 that drew such ire from Beijing? 

 Hyde noted that “in sharp contrast with Taiwan, where political reform and liberalization enjoyed sustained government sponsorship, in Hong Kong the push has had to come from the people themselves, with the government actively attempting to slow or stop altogether any further advance. I am certain that the standoff that has arisen is dispiriting to many here, especially as the prospects for further progress remain uncertain… Clearly, the commitment to democracy has already sunk deep roots.”
If the situation looked uncertain back in 2004, it looks downright gloomy in 2019. 

Reuters reported on September 30th that “last month, Beijing moved thousands of troops across the border into this restive city. 

They came in on trucks, and armored cars, by bus and by ship. 

“ Three diplomatic envoys told Reuters that “the contingent of Chinese military personnel in Hong Kong had more than doubled in size since the protests began. They estimate the number of military personnel is now between 10,000 and 12,000, up from 3,000 to 5,000 in the months before the reinforcement. As a result, the envoys believe, China has now assembled its largest-ever active force of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops and other anti-riot personnel and equipment in Hong Kong.”
Chairman Hyde foresaw this coming, as he remarked that “Hong Kong has become an arena for an unavoidable struggle, one with global implications, where rival forces are locked in a battle to determine which of their visions for China’s political evolution will prevail... If we assume that chaos or repression are unacceptable outcomes to both sides, the question becomes: Is there a route by which Hong Kong can become increasingly free and democratic without challenging the regime’s ultimate authority and thereby provoking a forcible response?” 

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping seemed to answer Hyde’s question in the negative during a recent trip to Nepal. 

In the face of the ongoing unrest in Hong Kong, Xi warned that any effort to split China will result in “bodies smashed and bones ground into powder,” according to Hong Kong Free Press. 

 Hyde concluded at the end of his speech, if the repression of civil liberties in Hong Kong was China’s response, that “enamored of an aggressive and intoxicating nationalism, it would soon wreak havoc on the world.”
One result of the current political crisis in Hong Kong has been the exposure of Beijing’s formula of “one country, two systems” as a fraud. 

Beijing has been steadily seeking to undermine this pledge made at the time of the 1997 reversion of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule.Under the Basic Law, based upon the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, Hong Kong was to be a special administrative region (SAR) with its own capitalist economic system, its own currency, its own legal and legislative system, and a guarantee of the people of Hong Kong’s rights for fifty years. Yet Beijing and its surrogates in Hong Kong have sought to erode these guarantees by such means as the 2003 controversy over the since withdrawn national security measures contained in Article 23 of the Basic Law, the use of Hong Kong immigration to restrict entry of human rights critics of the Beijing regime, and the kidnapping of Hong Kong sellers of books banned in mainland China.
According to a New York Times article of April 3, 2018, “At a national Communist Party congress in October 2017, Xi Jinping made clear the party’s expansive vision of control. ‘The party exercises overall leadership over all areas of endeavor in every part of the country,’ he told delegates. No corner of society was out of reach. Even books — ‘socialist literature,’ in Xi’s words — must extol ‘our party, our country, our people and our heroes.’”
Then there was the attempt by Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, which triggered the current unrest, to ram through the Legislative Council a new extradition bill earlier this year (since withdrawn) which would make both the citizens of Hong Kong and visitors subject to the long reach of Chinese security forces. 

 The people of Hong Kong decided it was time to either stand up or fatalistically submit to creeping authoritarianism.
Another unintended consequence of the current unrest in Hong Kong has been to completely derail Xi Jinping’s proposal to use the “one country, two systems” formula to settle the Taiwan issue. 

 In remarks made at the beginning of 2019, Xi said that unification was the key to “national rejuvenation,” according to the South China Morning Post. 

“The political division across the strait cannot be passed from generation to generation,” he added. 

 Xi proposed the “one country, two systems” formula for Taiwan. 

However, the people in Taiwan have been watching very closely the current political struggles of their Hong Kong cousins and, as a result, see “one country, two systems” as the equivalent of the spider inviting the fly into its web.
A further unintended consequence has been placing Hong Kong’s special status in U.S. legislation as a separate customs area with special trading status distinct from China at risk. 

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, in a report to Congress last year, noted that Beijing’s “encroachment” on the city’s political system could diminish its standing as a global business hub and affect the export of American technology to the city. 

The report recommended an assessment of the export control policy on technology “as it relates to U.S. treatment of Hong Kong and China as separate customs areas.”
The recent passage of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act by the U.S. House of Representatives drew threats of unspecified “strong countermeasures” from Beijing if enacted by the entire Congress, according to an October 16th Bloomberg report. 

The Act subjects Hong Kong’s “special U.S. trading status to annual review and provides sanctions against officials deemed responsible for undermining its ‘fundamental freedoms and autonomy.’”

Xi Jinping’s “broken bones” remark seems to answer Chairman Hyde’s question on the future for both Hong Kong and China -- the specter of authoritarianism and repression is in the air. 

 Hyde said back in 2004 to his Hong Kong audience that “I can assure you that the U.S. Congress will never abandon its commitment to the freedom and prosperity of Hong Kong nor fail to ensure that this remains a prism through which our relations with China as a whole are viewed.” 

 Hyde’s old colleagues in the House seem to be heeding his admonition of fifteen years ago to “watch carefully” the events unfolding in Hong Kong both for their human rights implications and for their indication of the aspirations of a rising China.

Chinese Peril

US Opens National Security Investigation Into TikTok

BY BOWEN XIAO

The logo of TikTok application is seen on a mobile phone screen in this picture illustration taken Feb. 21, 2019. 

A national security review of Chinese-owned TikTok’s $1 billion acquisition of U.S. social media app Musical.ly has been opened by the U.S. government, three unidentified sources told Reuters.
U.S. lawmakers have only recently called for a national security probe into the popular Chinese video-sharing app, though the acquisition by TikTok—which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Technology Co.—was completed in 2017. 

Concerns include the company censoring politically sensitive content, and how it stores users’ personal data.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews deals by foreign acquirers for potential national security risks, has started its review of the Musical.ly deal, the sources told Reuters. 

TikTok didn’t seek clearance from CFIUS when it acquired Musical.ly, the committee said, which gives the U.S. security panel scope to investigate it now.
CFIUS, which is chaired by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, didn’t respond to an Epoch Times request through the Treasury Department to confirm if such a review had been initiated.
In an Oct. 9 letter to Mnuchin, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) urged a national security panel to review the acquisition over concerns that Chinese-owned apps such as TikTok “are increasingly being used to censor content and silence open discussion on topics deemed sensitive by the Chinese Government and Communist Party.”
Under the Trump administration, there has also been increasing concern about technology transfers between Washington and Beijing. 

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, recently called for the U.S. government to accelerate plans to establish rules on exports of critical technologies to China while expressing a “deep concern” at the current rate of the regulatory rollout.
Michael Brown, the director of the Defense Innovation Unit at the Department of Defense, said at a recent panel event that Beijing is now leading in a number of emerging revolutionary technology industries such as hypersonics and artificial intelligence and said the United States’ relationship with the Chinese Communist Party must change when it comes to technology transfers, The Epoch Times previously reported.
TikTok allows users to create and share short videos, and the app is growing in popularity among U.S. teenagers. 

About 60 percent of TikTok’s 26.5 million monthly active users in the United States are between the ages of 16 and 24, the company said this year.
The sources told Reuters that CFIUS is in talks with TikTok about measures it could take to avoid divesting the Musical.ly assets it acquired. 

The sources requested anonymity because CFIUS reviews are confidential.
A TikTok spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment, but a spokesperson told Reuters the company “has made clear that we have no higher priority than earning the trust of users and regulators in the U.S. Part of that effort includes working with Congress, and we are committed to doing so.” 

The spokesperson said he or she can’t comment on ongoing regulatory processes.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) sent a letter last week to acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire asking for a national security probe, saying they were concerned about the app’s collection of user data, and whether China censors the content U.S. users can see. 

They also suggested TikTok could be targeted by foreign influence campaigns.
The company has said U.S. users’ data is stored in the United States, but the senators noted that ByteDance is governed by Chinese laws. 

TikTok claims China doesn’t have jurisdiction over the content of the app.
In October, the Trump administration placed 28 Chinese public security bureaus and companies—including video surveillance company Hikvision and seven other companies—on a blacklist due to concerns of human rights abuses.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has in the past gone to great lengths to please Chinese officials, recently made a speech at Georgetown University in which he criticized the Chinese regime for its internet censorship.
“China is building its own internet focused on very different values,” Zuckerberg said, noting that the Chinese regime “is now exporting their vision of the internet to other countries” through popular China-developed internet platforms.

Tech Quisling

Mark Zuckerberg, give up on China before you embarrass yourself even more

By Isaac Stone FishJuly 31 at 2:31 PM

In a box in my parents’ basement sits a videotape featuring perhaps the most embarrassing thing Mark Zuckerberg has ever done: dance to the Backstreet Boys’ “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” at our summer camp talent show. 

The second most embarrassing thing Zuckerberg has ever done? 

Prostrate himself to Beijing. 

And as the years go by and Facebook grows more mature, it’s becoming more painful to watch.
Zuckerberg blurbed Chinese Communist Party Secretary Xi Jinping’s book “The Governance of China” — which one reviewer called “a mix of stilted Communist Party argot, pleasant-sounding generalizations, and ‘Father Knows Best’ style advice” — and displayed it on his desk when China’s then-Internet czar Lu Wei visited him in December 2014. 

In March 2016, he posted a picture of himself cheerfully running through Tiananmen Square, the site of the infamous June 1989 massacre. 

In November 2016, The New York Times revealed that Zuckerberg facilitated the development of a tool that would help Beijing censor Facebook. 

Zuckerberg even asked Xi Jinping to give a Chinese name to his unborn daughter.
In response, Chinese officials toy with him. 

“I didn’t say Facebook could not enter China,” Lu said in October 2014, “but nor did I say that it could.” (Zuckerberg wasted his time courting Lu: Beijing just accused the now-disgraced official of taking a “huge amount” of bribes.) 

And on July 25, the New York Times reported that the government had revoked Facebook’s permission to set up an innovation hub in China — just hours after notice of approval appeared in a government database. (In what was almost certainly just an unfortunate coincidence, the report of Beijing yanking its approval came on the day that Facebook announced lackluster earnings, sending its stock down by roughly 20 percent.)
In another article published that day, the Global Times, China’s top Internet troll masquerading as a newspaper, quoted a Chinese analyst making the absurd claim that “China is more open in the high-tech sector compared with the U.S.” 

Facebook could succeed in China, the analyst said, but first it has to “understand and obey Chinese laws and regulations.”
To avoid further embarrassment, Zuckerberg should give up on entering China. 

Yes, China has more than twice the number of Internet users as the United States, and Facebook believes it cannot be a truly global company without China. 

And yes, even though Facebook is blocked in China, it is the company’s largest ad market in Asia, because Chinese companies use Facebook to sell to consumers globally.
But the costs of Facebook (as well as Instagram and WhatsApp, both also blocked on the mainland) entering China clearly outweigh the benefits — a calculus that has changed little since Beijing blocked the company in 2009.
As Chinese Internet regulators, government officials, academics and even Xi himself have slyly reminded Facebook for years, the company won’t succeed in China unless it plays by Chinese rules. That almost certainly means censoring content, storing servers in China and giving Beijing access to all Facebook accounts anywhere.
This has been a terrible year for Facebook’s reputation as a moral steward of America’s data. 

But if Facebook yields to Beijing, things could get far worse.
Consider what happened to Yahoo. 

In 2004, Yahoo gave Beijing information about the online activities of Chinese dissident journalist Shi Tao, who was later sentenced to 10 years in prison. 

Hauled in front of Congress, the company’s co-founder, Jerry Yang, found himself excoriated. “While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies,” the late Rep. Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, told him. 

How unkindly would Congress and Americans see Zuckerberg if he facilitated the arrest of a Chinese dissident, or if he helped Beijing more effectively arrest Muslims in East Turkestan and send them to concentration camps? (Yes. That is a thing that is happening.)
Let’s say Beijing allowed Facebook to operate in China. 

It would face one of the world’s toughest Internet markets, with several battle-ready competitors — companies like Tencent, which owns China’s most popular social networking app, WeChat; and Alibaba, which seems to own everything else. 

Beijing far prefers WeChat because it has access to every message sent on the platform, because Tencent’s founder, Pony Ma, needs the approval of the party to stay out of prison, and because it wants Chinese companies to succeed. 

Internet regulators and local government officials would stymie and extort Facebook every chance they could.
To imagine an even unlikelier hypothetical, let’s take Beijing at its word and imagine it would allow Facebook a fair playing field. 

Two well-funded Facebook clones — RenRen and Kaixin001 — lost the social media battle to WeChat years ago. 

“Facebook launching in China,” the writer Charlie Custer wrote in the blog Tech in Asia, “would be like MySpace relaunching in the U.S.”
Facebook does have one real chance of succeeding in China: Localize. Become a Chinese company. 

Follow the guidelines Xi set out in a major April 2018 speech and “strengthen online positive propaganda, and unequivocally adhere to the correct political direction and the guidance of public opinion.”
The world now has two dominant Internet models. 

There is the American model, which although it sometimes facilitates hate speech, monopolies and anarchy, prioritizes the free exchange of ideas. 

And there is Beijing’s model, which prioritizes national sovereignty, order and blandness. 

Facebook can stay an American company, or become a Chinese one. 

For Facebook, there is no middle ground.

The spurned sycophant

After a single day, Facebook is kicked out of China again

By Shannon Liao

Just one day after Facebook gained permission to open a subsidiary in China, the government pulled the business filing and began to censor mentions of the news. 

An anonymous source tells The New York Times that Facebook no longer has permission to launch the startup incubator it had planned.
Facebook planned to open up a $30 million subsidiary called Facebook Technology (Hangzhou) and run a startup incubator that would have made small investments and gave advice to local businesses.
The sudden rejection stems from a disagreement between Chinese authorities, the source told the Times. 

Local officials in Zhejiang, an eastern province that houses Alibaba’s headquarters, gave Facebook the initial permission, but the Cyberspace Administration of China, Beijing’s internet regulator, had not.
According to screenshots of the business filing on the remaining social media posts that haven’t been censored, the subsidiary had been listed as wholly owned by Facebook Hong Kong Limited. Facebook does have a sales office in Hong Kong, which isn’t subject to the rules and censorship of the mainland. 

In a statement yesterday, the company told The Verge, “We are interested in setting up an innovation hub in Zhejiang to support Chinese developers, innovators and start-ups.”
This would have been the first time that Facebook successfully expanded into China after Beijing blocked the platform in 2009 following its use by East Turkestan independence activists in the Ürümqi riots. 

Facebook previously tried to open an office in Beijing in 2015 and got as far as obtaining a permit, but ultimately, it was unsuccessful, a pattern that seems to be echoed here. 

Last year, Facebook quietly launched an app in China called Colorful Balloons that let users share photos with friends. 

Oculus, Facebook’s VR company, also has an office in Shanghai.
Last week in an interview with Recode, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg expressed significant doubt that his company could successfully reach China. 

When asked where Facebook was on China, he responded, “I mean, we’re blocked.” 

He then elaborated on the grim situation: “I mean, we’re a long time away from doing anything. At some point, I think that we need to figure it out, but we need to figure out a solution that is in line with our principles and what we wanna do, and in line with the laws there, or else it’s not gonna happen. Right now, there isn’t an intersection.”

Tech Quisling

Mark Zuckerberg’s Long March to Serve China

Rogue Chinese company Huawei is among Facebook’s partners in a data-sharing program.
By ALEXIS C. MADRIGAL

Another shoe dropped in the New York Times investigation of Facebook’s deals with phone makers across the world: A Chinese connection emerged, touching the data scandal to the politically electric topic of the United States’ biggest economic rival.
Beginning in 2007, Facebook cut deals with 60 phone manufacturers to put versions of the service onto their devices, and among those companies were four Chinese manufacturers, including Huawei, which U.S. intelligence services have repeatedly linked to the Chinese government. 

Earlier this year, the heads of the NSA, FBI, and CIA warned against using Huawei phones.
Also in 2007, Bain Capital, the U.S. networking company 3com, and Huawei proposed a multibillion-dollar deal, only to be scuppered by U.S. officials over security concerns. 

That is to say, this was a concern Facebook knew or should have known even back in the era when these deals were negotiated.
Facebook maintains that Huawei stored Facebook data locally on devices, and did not send it to the company’s own servers, where presumably it would have been more open to collection by Chinese authorities.
Senators Marco Rubio and Mark Warner both voiced their displeasure over the revelation. 

Even before the new Times story came out, Warner, who has been tussling with Facebook for the past year, had already pointed out that Chinese companies were probably among the 60 device manufacturers that Facebook cut deals with to develop versions of their service for those phones. 

“It’s a serious danger,” he said. 

“I’ve been disappointed we’ve not gotten a straight answer.” 

Warner tweeted that he wanted “the whole story, now, not six months from now.”
At the same time, the Trump administration is close to cutting a deal with another Chinese phone maker, ZTE, to return to the U.S. market, after the United States says it violated trade embargoes with North Korea and Iran.
Given the tensions between the United States and China, the dominance of the two countries’ technology firms, and the size of their markets, it’s no surprise that their governments are fighting for power in this realm.
While some American technology companies have taken more or less principled stands on the Chinese market because of the ethical dilemmas the government poses, American technology companies still made more than $100 billion there last year. 

Chinese factories assemble the most valuable American companies’ products, with Apple the most notable among them.
Certainly, it looks bad for Facebook to have made and kept these agreements with Huawei. 

It calls to mind the memo that the senior executive Andrew Bosworth wrote (and later disavowed) about the company’s growth, in which he pondered what the company might have to do to break into the Chinese market.
“We connect people. Period. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact-importing practices,” he wrote. 

“All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it.”
At the same time, it’s worth thinking through who would likely have been affected by any data flow that resulted from the deal that Facebook cut. 

“This could be a very big problem,” tweeted Marco Rubio, for example. 

“If @Facebook granted Huawei special access to social data of Americans this might as well have given it directly to the government of #China.”
But how many Americans might we be talking about?
Huawei is roughly tied with Apple as the second-largest smartphone maker in the world with around 10 percent of global market share. 

Its largest business remains selling networking equipment, which positions the company slightly differently from any U.S. company. 

Huawei is built like a combination of Qualcomm (wireless networking equipment), Cisco (networking infrastructure), and Apple (consumer devices).
Most of the company’s sales come from China. 

The company has basically no market share in the United States, but as a 2017 Forbes article noted, the company’s phones are now popular in many European countries including Finland, Italy, Poland, Spain, Germany, and France. 

Right now, it’s unclear if the company’s new smartphones operate with the technical tools and under the agreements referenced in the Times reporting. 

Given the heat that Facebook has faced in Europe, the latest revelations probably won’t make things any easier for the company in Brussels.
From the Times reporting, we know that the devices were able to pull Facebook data on friends and friends of friends, which could lead one device to capturing data on hundreds of thousands of people. 

Huawei’s market share was much, much lower in the days when these agreements were cut, so we don’t know how many phones currently in use would be affected by any possible data flow. 

But given that there are Americans who have long been connected to people in China and Europe and other markets with Huawei phones, it’s probable that the Huawei devices could have accessed American data at some point. 

No one can yet say how many Americans could even hypothetically be in the widest possible ring of affected people.
It’s worth asking how significant that data might be, too. 

At the friends level, devices could work through a Facebook account to pull a lot of information about someone’s connections. 

At the friends of friends level, the devices were pulling only the existence of the friends and those users’ Facebook IDs.
Given all this, and given that it almost certainly was going to come out after Sunday’s Times report, it’s surprising to me that Facebook did not just admit that the Chinese companies, particularly Huawei, were among the manufacturers that it had cut deals with. 

If nothing else, their reticence adds to the sense expressed by Congressional leaders (and just about everyone else) that Facebook is not always completely forthcoming about its problems.

Tech Quisling: The Prime Minister Wants Mark Zuckerberg In Australia To Answer Questions About Facebook Privacy

The company's reported data sharing arrangement with rogue Chinese company Huawei has got local politicians angry.
By Josh Taylor

Zuckerberg is  "like a Red Guard waving the White Book," says Hu Jia

Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has thrown his support behind a push to have Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg appear before Australia's parliamentary committee on national security over news the company shared user data with Chinese telecommunications manufacturer Huawei.

It was reported yesterday that Facebook had entered into a data sharing arrangement with several Chinese manufacturers including Huawei, Lenovo, OPPO, and TCL, and allowed these companies to collect user data including address books, likes, and friendships.
Facebook has these types of relationships with many companies, including Apple and Google, but politicians in the US, the UK, and Australia have raised concerns about the sharing of the data with Chinese companies, given the relationships between some Chinese-owned companies and the Chinese government.
The deputy chair of the joint standing committee on intelligence and security, Labor MP Anthony Byrne, is so concerned over the data handed to Huawei that he has indicated that Zuckerberg would be invited to give evidence before the committee.

View image on Twitter

Anthony Byrne

✔@AnthonyByrne_MP

It is vital that Facebook explains its data sharing partnership with firms such as Huawei. We need to protect the data of over 15 million Facebook users in Australia. (1/2)

3:22 AM - Jun 7, 2018

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Anthony Byrne

✔@AnthonyByrne_MP

If need be Mr Zuckerberg will be invited to appear before the PJCIS in a public hearing to explain himself to our committee and the Australian people. (2/2).

3:22 AM - Jun 7, 2018

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This call was backed by PM Turnbull, who said he would welcome Zuckerberg giving evidence in Australia.
"Well, certainly there are a lot of concerns about Facebook, about privacy ... And I would welcome Facebook coming and testifying before our parliamentary committees, yes," he said.



"We'd love to see the boss. But, naturally, he is the founder, but the important thing everyone is paying a lot of attention to [is] the issue of privacy. And, of course, the question of whether people really know what is being done with their personal data."
Turnbull said Facebook had become dominant in people's lives, and it was important to keep a close eye on how data is being used, and ensure people consent to their data being used.
Facebook has not yet indicated whether Zuckerberg would appear, but the Facebook founder did not turn up to face UK lawmakers in April, despite repeated requests. 

He did, however, front the European Parliament in May.
The Australian parliamentary committee is due to hand down its report on Thursday on legislation aimed at cracking down on foreign interference in Australia from countries including China.
Huawei is also under closer scrutiny in Australia at the moment as the government is considering whether to use new powers to veto mobile telecommunications companies such as Telstra, Optus and Vodafone from using Huawei technology in the construction of their 5G mobile networks.
The company has already provided equipment for some of the nation's 4G mobile networks, but was banned from tendering for the National Broadband Network.

Tech Quisling

Senators Demand Answers from Mark Zuckerberg over Huawei Data Sharing Scandal
By Allum Bokhari 

Sens. John Thune (R-SD) and Bill Nelson (D-FL), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, have sent a letter to Mark Zuckerberg demanding answers on Facebook’s latest data scandal.
Earlier this week it was revealed that Facebook shared user data with “at least 60” phone manufacturers including Huawei, a company linked to the Chinese government and flagged as a national security threat by the CIA, FBI, and NSA.
A Democrat lawmaker has since accused Zuckerberg of lying to Congress when he told them that users had “complete control” over who sees their data on the platform.
Among the questions asked by Sens. Thune and Nelson, which can be read in full here, is whether Zuckerberg would like to amend his statement on this, given that the New York Times reported that phone manufacturers had access to data from Facebook users’ friends even when those friends denied them the permission to share their data with third parties.
The Senators also asked Zuckerberg if Facebook verified whether the phone companies complied with the social network’s rules on data-sharing, and if there was even any method to check.
The Senators also demanded transparency: a full list of the device manufacturers that Facebook granted data access to, including manufacturers with whom it has since ended partnerships with.
The letter requests a response from Zuckerberg by no later than 5:00 p.m. on June 18, 2018.

China Spreads Propaganda to U.S. on Facebook, a Platform it Bans at Home

By PAUL MOZUR

HONG KONG — China does not allow its people to gain access to Facebook, a powerful tool for disseminating information and influencing opinion.
As if to demonstrate the platform’s effectiveness, outside its borders China uses it to spread state-produced propaganda around the world, including the United States.
So much do China’s government and companies value Facebook that the country is Facebook’s biggest advertising market in Asia, even as it is the only major country in the region that blocks the social network.
A look at the Facebook pages of China Central Television, the leading state-owned broadcast network better known as CCTV, and Xinhua, China’s official news agency, reveals hundreds of English-language posts intended for an English-speaking audience.

Xinhua has more than 31 million followers on Facebook.

Each quarter China’s government, through its state media agencies, spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy Facebook ads, according to a person with knowledge of those deals, who was unauthorized to talk publicly about the company’s revenue streams.
China’s propaganda efforts are in the spotlight with President Trump visiting the country and American lawmakers investigating foreign powers’ use of technology to sway voters in the United States.
Last week, executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter were grilled in Washington about Russia’s use of American social media platforms to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Though banned, foreign social media companies are trying to promote themselves in China. Many Chinese businesses, and the government, use Facebook to reach an international audience.

During Facebook’s time in the congressional hot seat last week, Senator John Neely Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, asked whether China had also run ads to affect the United States election. 
Facebook’s general counsel replied that to his knowledge it had not.
There is no indication that China meddled in the American election, but the Communist government’s use of Facebook is ironic given its apparent fear of the platform.
It also hasn’t been reluctant to use it as a soapbox where China’s relationship with the United States is concerned.
China has been a major priority for Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s founder, has spent years courting it.
Facebook executives even set up a page to show CCTV, one of Beijing’s chief propaganda outlets, how to use the platform during Xi Jinping’s 2015 trip to the United States.
While China’s propaganda channels on Facebook are not nearly as subtle as Russian groups when it comes to influencing opinion, their techniques are nonetheless instructive.
Rather than divisive advertisements, many of the Chinese Facebook posts replicate the sort of news propaganda delivered at home: articles stressing China’s stability and prosperity mixed with posts highlighting chaos and violence in the rest of the world.
A similar blend of stories — pandas and idyllic Chinese landscapes next to heavy coverage of the mass shooting in Texas — has proliferated across China’s official Facebook channels in the lead-up to President Trump’s visit to Beijing, which began on Wednesday.
While much of it is unlikely to sway the average American’s mind, such posts reach people across the world, many of whom are newer to the internet and may have a less sophisticated understanding of media.
China’s state media has Facebook channels dedicated to Africa and other regions of the world, and it seems evident that it is offering itself as an alternative to the Western media for a more global audience.

CCTV, China’s leading television broadcaster, spreads propaganda overseas as well as at home.

Recently, for example, Xinhua posted an article entitled “China’s IP protection system works well, says U.S. professional” — a rebuke of a congressional investigation into Chinese trade policies that critics say encourage intellectual property theft.
A more anodyne post offered a ham-handed attempt to find common ground between China and the United States, pointing to the basketball player Yao Ming, pandas and American students making dumplings as examples of the countries’ close relationship.
A video posted by Xinhua, which already has about 100,000 views, presents a series of man-on-the-street interviews with Chinese people talking about the United States.
It begins on a positive note, with questions about President Trump and what they like about the United States.
About halfway through the video, however, the tone changes and people are asked to describe the problems they see with the United States.
At that point, the interviewees get critical.
“U.S.A. interferes with others’ lives arrogantly,” says one woman.
“Every person and nation has its own culture and customs, no need to interfere.”
Another woman addresses America directly: “Don’t be so self-important and arrogant.”
Even children are asked about the relationship between the United States and China.
“Sometimes they went too far in bullying others,” one says of the Americans.
“They don’t respect China and use South Korea to spy on China,” says another.
“They also sent weapons to South Korea.”
When asked what advice he would give Mr. Trump, one man says: “Let him learn from China.”

The Desperate Kowtowing

Facebook Is Trying Everything to Re-Enter China—and It’s Not Working

Since regulators blocked the service in 2009, Mark Zuckerberg has hired well-connected executives, developed censorship tools and taken a ‘smog jog’ in Beijing—but the company has made no headway.
By ALYSSA ABKOWITZ in Beijing, DEEPA SEETHARAMAN in San Francisco and EVA DOU in Wuzhen, China

Mark Zuckerberg’s 2016 ‘smog jog’ in Tiananmen Square. 

Facebook Inc.’s chances of getting back into China appeared to take a rare turn for the better when an employee noticed an official posting online: Beijing authorities had granted it a license to open a representative office in two office-tower suites in the capital.
Such permits typically give Western firms an initial China beachhead. 

This one, which Facebook won in late 2015, could have been a sign Beijing was ready to give the company another chance to connect with China’s roughly 700 million internet users, reopening the market as the social-media giant’s U.S.-growth prospects dimmed.
There was a catch. 

Facebook’s license was for three months, unusually short. 

Facebook executives found the limitation unexpected and frustrating, people familiar with the episode said.
Facebook never opened the office. 

The official posting disappeared and now exists as a ghost in cached versions of the government website. 

“We did, at one point in time, plan to have an office,” said Facebook spokeswoman Charlene Chian, “but we don’t today.”
The episode is part of Facebook’s running tale of woe in China, where it has been trying to set the stage for a return. 

Blocked on China’s internet since 2009, Facebook has courted Chinese officials, made Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg more visible in China, hired a well-connected China-policy chief and begun developing technology that could cull content the Communist Party deems unacceptable.

It has made no visible headway. 

And as time passes, Facebook is watching from the outside as Chinese social-media giants mop up the market that might have been its own. 

Weibo, along with Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat and QQ, are now dominant in China, and it may be too late for Facebook, said industry executives including Kai-Fu Lee, Google’s former China head and now CEO of Innovation Works, a Chinese incubator.
“At this stage and time with WeChat, Weibo and other products, it’s hopeless,” Mr. Lee said.
Facebook also faces a wary central government, which blamed social media for stirring ethnic unrest in 2009 and remains uneasy with Facebook’s ability to be a dissidents’ megaphone, said industry executives and others who deal with Beijing regulators. 

And government censorship would be a prerequisite, under Chinese law, for Facebook to re-enter China.
“It’s important for Facebook to respect the laws and regulations of China,” said Guo Weimin, vice minister of the State Council Information Office. 

Zuckerberg, who declined to be interviewed for this article, has said he considers China crucial to Facebook’s future. 

“Obviously you can’t have a mission of wanting to connect everyone in the world and leave out the biggest country,” he told analysts in 2015. 

“Over the long term, that is a situation we will need to figure out a way forward on.”
His drive has had fits and starts. 

He scored a high-profile board seat at one of China’s top universities to build inroads with Chinese officials but didn’t attend the body’s meeting last year.
“We have long said that we are interested in China, and are spending time understanding and learning more about the country,” Facebook spokeswoman Debbie Frost said. 

“However, we have not made any decision on our approach to China.”
Prospects were brighter in 2005, when Facebook registered “www.facebook.cn.” 

It launched a Chinese-language version of its website in 2008 and was a serious contender in China. A Facebook page purporting to be of then-premier Wen Jiabao had tens of thousands of “likes.”

Locked out
Things changed in 2009, when regulators blocked Facebook and Twitter in an information lockdown after riots in China ’s Muslim Xinjiang region. 

State media said riot leaders used social media to stir unrest.
China had previously blocked social-media sites temporarily during political unrest, and many assumed it would eventually back off this time. 

Instead, it continued blocking Facebook and Twitter. 

Some tech-savvy users found ways around the “Great Firewall,” but Facebook was effectively banned.
Zuckerberg maintained his intense interest in China, studying Mandarin and hosting Chinese officials at his Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters. 

He traveled to China to meet business leaders and government officials to maintain communication.
Facebook in a 2012 federal filing said it continued to “evaluate entering China” but faced “substantial legal and regulatory complexities.” 

It shifted focus to wooing Chinese advertisers, with teams in Hong Kong and Singapore pitching the network as a way for Chinese businesses to reach customers outside the mainland.

Facebook Vice President Vaughan Smith at a 2014 internet conference in China.

Over about the past two years, Facebook has stepped up its China groundwork, said current and former Facebook executives and employees. 

Since at least 2014, the task of coordinating the company’s China initiative has fallen to Vaughan Smith, vice president of mobile, corporate and business development, who helped negotiate dozens of Facebook’s earliest acquisitions, they said. 

In December, China’s elite Tsinghua University announced Smith would co-teach a class on innovation. 

He declined to be interviewed.
To deploy a Hong Kong-based field commander, Facebook in 2014 hired Wang-Li Moser, who spent more than a decade at Intel Corp. in China, where former colleagues said she made her name as a quiet fixer. 

She helped Intel navigate Chinese bureaucracy to build a $2.5 billion factory and strengthen government relations.
Born in 1954 in China’s Henan province and now a U.S. citizen, Moser was among the first wave of Chinese to go to college in China after the Cultural Revolution, according to her writings. 

She earned an M.B.A. from Rider University in New Jersey. 

She declined to be interviewed.
“Her role,” said Facebook’s Chian, “is to help us understand and learn more about China.”
That includes building more face-to-face relations with government officials. 

In a 2011 essay, she called arranging meetings with Chinese officials a “long, trivial and pressing” task.
“She makes a point to understand who she’s dealing with,” said Tan Wee Theng, former president of Intel China, who worked with her at Intel and now runs a business-advisory firm.
Her hiring appeared to bear fruit in December 2014, when she accompanied Zuckerberg in a meeting with Lu Wei, then China’s top internet regulator, at Facebook headquarters. 

She accompanied the CEO in March 2016 Beijing meetings with Lu and the Communist Party’s ideology chief Liu Yunshan.
Last fall, she was at China’s World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, an invitation-only event hosted by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the regulator that determines, among other things, which websites are blocked. 

She steered Smith by the arm, striking up conversations with well-placed Chinese friends and acquaintances.

Zuck’s ‘Smog jog’
Zuckerberg has made himself visible in China, joining the board of Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management in 2014, a high-profile group that includes Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook.
In 2015, he gave a 22-minute speech in Mandarin at the university. 

Last spring, he posted a photo of himself jogging through Tiananmen Square on a smoggy day without the pollution mask many wear around the city, causing a stir online.
During Xi Jinping’s 2015 Seattle trip, Zuckerberg was among American business leaders to meet the Chinese.

Zuckerberg met Xi Jinping in Washington state in 2015.

Facebook has rapidly expanded its sales teams in Singapore and Hong Kong in anticipation of more business in Asia, particularly in China, people familiar with the teams said.
Amin Zoufonoun, Facebook’s head of corporate development who has helped drive some of its largest acquisitions, is eyeing potential deals including joint ventures that could help jump-start Facebook’s China growth should it be allowed to return, said people familiar with Facebook. 

Zoufonoun, who declined to be interviewed, joined Zuckerberg on his "Love China, Love Tank" Tiananmen “smog jog.”
Over the past year, Zuckerberg has directed engineers at Facebook to start building and adapting products that can be used in China, according to people familiar with the effort. 

Facebook has been working on technology that could block content in China, said people briefed on the effort. 

The New York Times previously reported that Facebook is working on a tool to allow a third party to block content.
The circumstances Facebook faces are different from a decade ago when Moser made her reputation as an Intel fixer. 

Then, China’s tech sector was weak, and officials were eager for outsiders’ factories to employ thousands and advance China’s technology. 

Now China champions its own rising stars, and Facebook can’t promise the level of job creation offered by hardware makers such as Intel and Apple.
It was Moser’s name on Facebook’s application to open the Beijing office, filed with the Beijing Municipal Administration of Industry and Commerce. 

The agency didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Chinese law would demand more, and censorship is a price that has led Western internet companies such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google to abandon the market.

Facebook executives worry that agreeing to heavy censorship could create a backlash among the site’s 1.8 billion active users, said people familiar with the company.
Another obstacle for Facebook may be the aftermath of Google’s departure. 

In 2010, Google said it would stop censoring its search engine after concluding Chinese hackers were attacking human-rights activists’ Gmail accounts.

It pulled its engine from the mainland, redirecting users to its Hong Kong site. 

After Google’s departure and declarations about human rights, government officials publicly called Google “unfriendly” and “irresponsible.” 

Within Facebook, said people familiar with the company, the view is Chinese leaders remain wary that, were they to grant Facebook access, the company might leave after deciding it can’t tolerate censorship after all—that Facebook, said one, might “pull a Google.”
While Facebook can’t be a social network in China just now, its top executives continue to urge Chinese companies to use it as an advertising platform. 

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg met with a small group of advertising clients at a swanky Beijing hotel last summer. 

Turnout appeared light, said one attendee. 

A person familiar with Facebook said the event was intended it to be small. 

Sandberg declined to comment.

Amanda Chen, who oversees Facebook’s small-business advertising in China, at a 2016 e-commerce conference in Guangzhou.

A few months later, Facebook’s Amanda Chen appeared at a regional e-commerce convention in Guangzhou. 

Singapore-based Chen, who oversees small-business advertising in China, told attendees how Facebook could help Chinese businesses chu hai, or “go out to sea,” and increase international sales by buying ads on Facebook. 

She declined to be interviewed.
Participants swarmed Chen after her presentation. 

They asked her to connect with them on WeChat, China’s preferred networking method. 

They couldn’t ask to friend her on Facebook in China.