Freedom Fighter

Sweden honors detained political writer Gui Minhai

AFP-JIJI

Sweden's Culture Minister Amanda Lind awarded the prize. 

Sweden's culture minister Amanda Lind on Friday defied a Chinese threat of "counter-measures" by awarding a Swedish rights prize to detained Chinese-Swedish book publisher Gui Minhai.
Known for publishing titles about Chinese political leaders out of a Hong Kong book shop, Gui disappeared while on holiday in Thailand in 2015 before resurfacing in mainland China several months later.The Swedish section of free speech organisation PEN International gave its Tucholsky Prize to the 55-year-old Gui, a Chinese-born Swedish citizen currently in detention at an unknown location in China.

"China resolutely opposes Swedish PEN awarding a criminal and lie-fabricator," China's ambassador to Sweden said in remarks published in English on the embassy website.

Swedish PEN's Tucholsky Prize is for a writer or publisher being persecuted, threatened or in exile from his or her country.

In spite of China's threats, Swedish Culture and Democracy Minister Amanda Lind attended the ceremony.
"Those in power should never take the liberty to attack free artistic expression or free speech," Lind said while presenting the award in Stockholm. 

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven stressed earlier in the day that the Scandinavian country would not back down.
"We are not going to give in to this type of threat. Never. We have freedom of expression in Sweden and that's how it is, period," Lofven told Swedish Television.

Strained ties
Lind had earlier called Beijing's threat "serious".
"We have made it clear to China's representatives that we stand by our position that Gui Minhai must be released and that we have freedom of expression in Sweden," Lind told TT.
"This means that Swedish PEN must, of course, be allowed to award this prize to whoever they want, free of any influence. And as culture and democracy minister it is natural for me to attend the award ceremony," she said.
Relations between Sweden and China have been strained for several years over Gui Minhai's detention. 

He has appeared on Chinese state television confessing to a fatal drink-driving accident from more than a decade earlier.
He served two years in prison, but three months after his October 2017 release he was again arrested while on a train to Beijing, travelling with Swedish diplomats.
His supporters and family have claimed his detention is part of a political repression campaign orchestrated by Chinese authorities.

The Tucholsky Prize, named after German writer Kurt Tucholsky, who came to Sweden in the early 1930s as a refugee from Nazi Germany, is worth 150,000 kronor (14,000 euros, $15,500).
The prize, established in 1984, has been previously won by Adam Zagajevski, Nuruddin Farah, Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasrin and Svetlana Alexievich, among others.

Chinese Fifth Column

Zuckerberg’s Anti-Tyranny Rhetoric Roils Chinese Employees
Tensions between Facebook’s large community of Chinese employees and the company’s management have been on the rise since Zuckerberg became more critical of Beijing. 

By Wayne Ma

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Georgetown address about free speech last month drew hostility and skeptical commentary from his Chinese employees. 

Zuckerberg’s criticism of Chinese video app TikTok and China’s censorship of the internet renewed long-standing complaints that Facebook’s management is biased against communist China, according to one Chinese employee who saw messages in Facebook’s internal discussion groups.

Tensions between Facebook management and its large fifth column of Chinese employees have been on the upswing over the past year or so, since Zuckerberg abandoned efforts to get Facebook allowed back into China and instead became more critical of Beijing. 

Many of the company’s newer Chinese employees were hired from mainland China and are unapologetically supportive of the Chinese government.

Facebook is grappling with its large fifth column of Chinese employees, some of whom are becoming more vocal and critical in internal company forums over what they claim is a bias against communist China.

But in the past couple of months complaints of anti-China bias have overlapped with unhappiness about working conditions at Facebook, crystallized by the suicide of a Chinese employee at Facebook headquarters. 

Infiltration by Chinese Spies
The increasingly vocal criticism by Chinese employees is the latest example of how workers at big tech companies such as Google and Amazon have turned pro-China activists, protesting their employers’ business dealings with the U.S. government and complaining about other issues. 

But in this case, Zuckerberg has to walk a fine line, trying to keep an aggressive group of Chinese employees happy while not alienating Facebook’s many anti-China critics in Washington, D.C. 

If he goes too far to appease the Chinese employees, he could hand his critics in Washington more ammunition.

“We’re seeing Chinese employees emerge as a dangerous force from tech companies,” said Matt Sheehan, a fellow at the Paulson Institute whose research focuses on the relationship between Silicon Valley and China. 

Further complicating the challenges facing Zuckerberg are comments by longtime Facebook board member Peter Thiel, who accused Google of working with China’s military and that its leadership has been infiltrated by Chinese spies. 

Thiel said Google was behaving in a “seemingly treasonous” manner. 

A Large Chinese Fifth Column
The ranks of Chinese workers at Facebook—the vast majority of whom are software engineers and data and research scientists—have been increasing in recent years, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees.
The total number couldn’t be learned, although it likely numbers in the thousands (Facebook employed nearly 36,000 people as of Dec. 31). 

Facebook has more Chinese as a share of its U.S. workforce than Apple, Google or Microsoft, according to an analysis of federal filings. 

Some 42% of its U.S. employees were Chinese in 2018, up from about a third in 2014, the filings show. At Google, the percentage in 2018 was 37% and at Apple it was 23%. 

Facebook’s share of green card sponsorships for Chinese employees also has been growing annually since 2013, rising from 25% to 44% of sponsorships in the nine months ending in June.
The internal group Chinese@FB, which Facebook hosts for its Chinese employees, counts more than 6,000 members and is the largest of its kind at the company, current and former employees say.
One former Chinese employee, who worked at Facebook between 2015 and 2019, said there were so many Chinese employees that he sometimes could get away with speaking only Chinese at work. 

Other former Chinese employees recounted being asked by their managers to be mindful of non-Chinese speakers after holding work conversations in Chinese.Chinese workers said they were drawn to Facebook’s results-focused culture and by what they said was its willingness to quickly sponsor employees for permanent residency in the U.S. 

Many Chinese employees hired a decade or so ago rose through the ranks to become directors and vice presidents, which has led to even more hiring of Chinese workers, according to current and former employees. But as the number of Chinese hires has increased, Facebook has had to rely more on mainland China as a source of new talent. 

A decade ago, many of Facebook’s Chinese hires were employees with graduate degrees from American universities who had spent years getting used to the country’s culture.  

In contrast, many of these newer hires haven’t spent as much time in the U.S. and still get their news from China’s state-controlled media and use Chinese social media to keep in touch with friends and family back home, several current and former Chinese employees said. 

They don’t share the U.S. view of the internet as a haven for free speech and open debate.
These employees added that China’s rise as an economic, technological and political power in recent years has made Chinese nationals more assertive about their country’s place in the world.

National Security Risk

Facebook has taken a number of steps in the past year that have been interpreted by its Chinese employees as hostile to the Chinese government. 

Last year Facebook invited Taiwan’s president to a Facebook-sponsored event in Taipei promoting the territory’s economy and e-commerce industry. 

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen posed for photos with Facebook Vice President for Asia-Pacific Dan Neary and gave a speech highlighting Taiwan’s strong ties with Facebook. 

Chinese employees said in internal groups that the meeting legitimized Taiwan’s claim to self-rule and jeopardized Facebook’s chances of entering China. 

Simon Milner, Facebook vice president of public policy for Asia-Pacific, was forced to defend the event in the messaging groups, according to employees who saw the messages.
Zuckerberg’s public comments have also turned more critical of communist China. 

In March, for instance, Zuckerberg said Facebook would never host data in countries with a track record of violating human rights and last month he said it was never able to reach an agreement with Chinese authorities over how to operate its services free from censorship.
Also this year, Facebook’s Milner visited Hong Kong where he met with a number of local lawmakers and government officials, according to two people familiar with the meetings, which were announced in Facebook’s internal groups. 

The meeting sparked online complaints after Milner met with Alvin Yeung, a Hong Kong pro-democracy legislator, saying the meeting could be viewed as legitimizing pro-democracy demonstrators’ claims to self-autonomy, the people said.
The pro-China activism within the Chinese employee community, and the criticisms of the company they sometimes spark, has alarmed some senior Facebook executives, said a person who is familiar with management’s thinking. 

Some executives, including David Wei, a Facebook vice president of engineering many Chinese Facebook employees said acts as an informal liaison between senior management and Chinese employees, are closely monitoring the internal message groups and have moved to clamp down on discussions when they get heated, the person said. 

For instance, in September, Wei weighed in, urging calm.
“I would encourage everyone in the discussion to try your best to understand each other’s point of view,” he wrote in a post on Chinese@FB. 

“When a discussion gets heated, consider having a tea time in person. Our respectful communication policy ask is that we don’t attempt to convert people’s political views.”

Facebook didn’t respond to a request for comment about these specific incidents with Chinese employees. 

Greedy American Quislings

China's vise grip on corporate America

by Erica Pandey


The NBA’s swift apology to Chinese fans for a single tweet in support of Hong Kong protestors is part of a troubling trend: The Communist Party in Beijing is setting boundaries for what Americans more than 7,000 miles away are willing to say on sensitive issues.

Why it matters: This isn't a covert operation. 

It's China using its market power to bully American companies and organizations in broad daylight — and muzzle free speech.

The big picture: U.S. companies are increasingly weighing in on social and political issues at home. But when it comes to China — in particular to Hong Kong or to mass detentions of Muslims in East Turkestan — they’re silent.
"When it has to do with market access in China and profits ... they will bend over backwards to apologize," says Bonnie Glaser, an expert on China at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The latest: An image that Houston Rockets' general manager Daryl Morey tweeted — then quickly deleted — that backed Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests kicked off a firestorm in China.
Both Morey and the NBA backtracked after offending Chinese fans. 

But the Chinese government, the Chinese Basketball Association and multiple Chinese businesses have severed ties with the Rockets, reports Axios' Kendall Baker.
Hanging in the balance is an NBA-Tencent streaming deal worth billions, the support of millions of Chinese fans and Morey's job.
This isn't the first time Beijing has squeezed an apology out of — or even changed the behavior of — an American entity.
Marriott apologized to China after Beijing shut down the hotel chain's website because it listed Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet and Macau as separate countries. 

"We don’t support separatist groups that subvert the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China,” the company said in a statement.
All three big U.S. airlines — American, United and Delta — bent to China's will last summer and scrubbed references to Taiwan as its own country.
The Gap — under threat of getting cut out of China — apologized for selling T-shirts with a map of China that didn't include Tibet or Taiwan. 

The company said its map was "incorrect."
Beijing, which is Hollywood's biggest international market, has also pushed American studios to alter content in order to get into Chinese theaters.
What to watch: NBA commissioner Adam Silver released a statement on the situation this morning.
"It is inevitable that people around the world — including from America and China — will have different viewpoints over different issues. It is not the role of the NBA to adjudicate those differences."
"However, the NBA will not put itself in a position of regulating what players, employees and team owners say or will not say on these issues. We simply could not operate that way."

The bottom line: Leveraging foreign access to its 1.5 billion consumers is one of China’s most potent weapons against the U.S.
"It's an authoritarian government, and the Communist Party is in control," Glaser says. 

"They are able to have impact on what their citizens do, and they can mobilize their citizens to hold boycotts if they want do that."

Chinese Espionage

Chinese tech firms don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt

By Josh Rogin

A man walks past signage for Chinese company ByteDance's app TikTok, known locally as Douyin, at the International Artificial Products Expo in Hangzhou, China, Oct. 18. 

The U.S. government and Congress are grappling with a new and daunting challenge: Chinese are amassing personal data on Americans at an alarming rate. 

But while there’s no firm plan on what to do about it, there’s consensus on the one thing we can’t do: trust Chinese tech firms to protect our data from the Chinese government and preserve Americans’ free speech.
“Parents, if you don’t know what TikTok is, you should. It’s a Chinese-owned social media platform so popular among teens that Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly spooked,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said at a Tuesday hearing of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism. 

“For Facebook, the fear is lost social media market share. For the rest of us, the fear is somewhat different. A company compromised by the Chinese Communist Party knows where your children are, knows what they look like, what their voices sound like, what they’re watching and what they share with each other.”
If that sounds alarmist, it’s because the facts are alarming. 

Representatives from TikTok and pro-China Apple (which was also invited to Hawley’s hearing) declined to testify at Hawley’s hearing, but TikTok defended itself in a statement Hawley read at the hearing.
“No governments, foreign or domestic, direct how we moderate TikTok content. TikTok does not remove content based on sensitivities related to China or any countries. We have never been asked by the Chinese government to remove any content and we would not do so if asked,” their statement said.
TikTok’s claims are contradicted by claims of former employees, who have told The Post that content decisions were made by company moderators in China.
“The former employees said their attempts to persuade Chinese teams not to block or penalize certain videos were routinely ignored, out of caution about the Chinese government’s restrictions and previous penalties on other ByteDance apps,” The Post reported.
ByteDance is the Chinese tech giant that owns TikTok. 

In September, the Guardian reported on internal guidelines that revealed ByteDance had instructed the censorship of content related to Tibet, the Tiananmen Square massacre and the Falun Gong religious sect. 

Chinese tech firms know the punishment if they don’t implement the censorship on their own; the government doesn’t even have to ask.
And, as Hawley pointed out, no Chinese or American tech company can credibly claim it would refuse a request for data on its users if it got a “knock on the door” from Chinese authorities. 

That’s why the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) opened an investigation into ByteDance’s 2017 acquisition of Musical.ly, which it renamed TikTok.
Anyone who doesn’t understand that all Americans’ data held by a Chinese tech firm is susceptible to Chinese government exploitation has “a fundamental misunderstanding of how the government in Beijing works,” Klon Kitchen, tech policy lead at the Heritage Foundation, testified at Tuesday’s hearing.
TikTok is only the latest Chinese-owned tech firm operating in the United States to be caught taking direction from its superiors in Beijing after claiming it wouldn’t. 

When Chinese tech giant Kunlun took over the gay dating app Grindr, it gave access of its user database to engineers in Beijing for a period of several months, NBC later revealed.
CFIUS is compelling Kunlun to sell Grindr and ordering it to keep all U.S. user data in the United States. 

But it’s too late. 

Once the sexual identity, habits and health statuses of millions of Americans are in Chinese hands, they can never be taken back. 

There’s zero doubt that Beijing is feeding all that information into the database it’s building to advance its own interests at our expense.
The implications are chilling. 

Just think if Beijing cross-referenced Grindr user data with the 22 million secret files on Americans China stole from the Office of Personnel Management in a 2015 hack. 

The intelligence advantages are obvious and dangerous.
That naturally brings up the question of what can be done apart from banning Chinese tech firms from operating inside the United States.

William A. Carter, deputy director of the Technology Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, testified that the U.S. government must drastically increase its efforts to help companies protect Americans’ data, punish those who don’t, and work to establish and enforce international norms in this area.
But it’s not just about Americans’ past behavior and data; it’s also about the future information environment. 

In her company’s statement, TikTok’s U.S. general manager, Vanessa Pappas, identified a future risk in Chinese control over U.S. social media networks: the potential for covert election interference.
“TikTok team, senior staff and myself understand the importance of building a close and transparent working relationship with regulators and lawmakers,” she wrote. 

“This will be increasingly important during the upcoming U.S. election season.”
In other words, if Beijing can censor what Americans see in their social media streams on Tibet, they could censor what we see about President Trump, Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren just as easily. 

We would never know. 

The algorithms are secret. 

There is no transparency. 

And based on the record of the Chinese government and Chinese tech firms, we would be stupid to just take their word for it.

Chinese Peril

China Is an Underrated Threat to the World

By John Mauldin

Chinese occupying forces in Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, somewhere between 1–2 million people (out of a 7+ million population) have taken to the streets protesting an extradition bill proposed by Beijing.
These protests have been ongoing and persistent. 

That the extradition bill has now been withdrawn is seemingly not enough to satisfy Hongkongers.
And then came the furor over the NBA. 

The general manager of the Houston Rockets, Daryl Morey, tweeted out a small and rather innocuous message of support for the Hong Kong protesters.
(Note that Twitter is not allowed inside of China. This should have been a non-event. Almost any NBA referee would have overseen it as no harm, no foul.)
But it set off a furor within China. 

Contracts were cancelled, and the government demanded Morey be fired.

Think About That for a Second
Some low-level bureaucrat pressured businesses to cancel contracts and then demanded an American organization tell one of its members to fire one of its employees who had exercised what we think of as free speech over here.
Note that NBA basketball is one of China’s most popular sports. 

China is a growing market and moneymaker for the NBA. 

To his credit, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver defended the right of free speech and said there was “no chance” the league would discipline Morey over that tweet.
This was business as usual from the Chinese perspective. 

It is something every American company that does business in China has to deal with.
You don’t criticize the Chinese government. 

You block access to information the government wants hidden. 

You use maps that are Chinese-government approved. 

The list goes on and on.
The key “tell” is that the Chinese actually expected a reaction and felt they had the right to dictate to US companies and organizations, which because of prior acquiescence on the part of companies and organizations, led them to believe they would be successful.
Most of their “arm-twisting” is done behind closed doors and out of the view of the public. 

This was not…

This Is the Underlying Problem with China
The United States and the rest of the West are not dealing with 1.3 billion Chinese citizens and human beings. 

The country is run by the Chinese Communist Party, which controls almost every facet of life for everyone there.
Over the last three or four years, I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with China’s ambitions.
There has been a surge of research pointing to the fact that the Chinese military has openly planned to be the dominant world power by 2049. 

And while many of these documents have been withdrawn, there is no doubt that they were written.
I have talked to people who have been in the libraries and read them in China. 

This desire for dominance has always been a latent force but one that was convenient to ignore, except that now we can no longer ignore it.
There’s a growing consensus that behind the Chinese economic colossus is a threat to not just the United States and other Western democracies, but the very concepts of free speech and personal liberty, not to mention property rights and the rule of law that we consider the foundations of civilization.
If something so utterly meaningless as a tweet about Hong Kong rises to the level that it requires “thought control” then what is next?

American greed: Beijing's ass kissers

How the NBA censored me on American soil

The NBA’s courage to speak truth to power dissipates when faced with the power of China’s monstrous Communist regime

By Jon Schweppe


I’ve been an NBA fanatic as long as I can remember. 

Growing up, I rooted for the Minnesota Timberwolves. 

I was there for the ups — who can forget that almost magical 2004 season? — and all of the downs, of which there have been far too many. I still follow the team closely today.
So as a fan of the league, I was shocked when I found myself being censored at an NBA exhibition game Wednesday night in Washington between the Washington Wizards and the Guangzhou Loong Lions. 

Now, I’m rethinking my allegiance to the league and wondering whether I should stop attending or even watching games altogether.
I decided to attend last night’s game after reading about an incident that took place at a Philadelphia 76ers game this week. 

In Philly, security guards ejected two spectators for displaying small signs with messages of support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy dissidents.
It was an unsettling sight: One of America’s premier sports leagues, which constantly virtue-signals about its “values,” groveling to a totalitarian regime and censoring its own fans in the United States of America — in Philly, home of the Constitutional Convention and the Liberty Bell.
I knew I had to do something. 

I wanted to test for myself whether the NBA would be so brazen as to censor fans again — this time in our nation’s capital, no less.
My friends and I entered Capital One Arena donning “Free Hong Kong” T-shirts given to us by an activist outside the arena and with homemade signs concealed in our clothes. 

We took our seats shortly before the Chinese national anthem began to play.
At that point, we stood up and unfurled a long “Free Hong Kong” banner. 

That immediately attracted the attention of several security guards, who came over to confiscate our sign. 

We asked why we were having our sign taken away. 

We were told: “We respect your freedom of speech, but … we don’t have any stance on [Hong Kong]. So we’re just asking not to have any signage related to that in here tonight.”
Later, we unveiled a second message, a homemade sign that simply said “Google Uyghurs,” referring to China’s oppressed Muslims, more than a million of whom are detained in Chinese concentration camps.
This sign, too, was deemed to be a problem. 

Within minutes, we were approached by security supervisors, who told us that we were not allowed to make political statements about China at the game. 

My friend pleaded that we were simply seeking to educate some of the NBA officials, coaches and players, many of whom had expressed ignorance about the issue. 

It was in vain: The supervisor still confiscated the sign and told us that if we continued to disrupt the game, we would be ejected.
By then, we felt we had seen enough and left of our own accord.
At this point, it’s fair to wonder: 

What values does the NBA really stand for? 

In recent years, the league has taken pains to exhibit a concern for “social justice,” with prominent players speaking out in favor of almost exclusively progressive political causes and executives encouraging such activism.
Most notably, in 2016 the NBA used its influence to push a gender ideology and lobby against a “bathroom bill” law in North Carolina that would have protected women in private spaces — going so far as to move the NBA All-Star game out of Charlotte to New Orleans. 

Far from avoiding political controversy, the league seemed to embrace it when the targets were American conservatives.
But the NBA’s courage to speak truth to power dissipates when faced with the power of China’s monstrous Communist regime. 

When Xi Jinping yanks the NBA’s corporate chain, the league tells its fans: “Shut up and watch us dribble.”
This should be very worrying for all Americans, not just sports fans. 

If the price of US companies doing business in China involves self-censorship, there should be no sale. 

Free speech is a bedrock American principle, not some cheap slogan that can be auctioned off to the highest bidder. 

When Beijing can force the country’s wokest sports league to practice Chinese-style censorship and authoritarianism on American soil, free trade has gone too far.
Our country and the freedoms we enjoy are too important to ignore the league’s craven conduct. 

Until the NBA apologizes to fans for how it has handled this incident and unequivocally commits to bedrock American values, I will be forgoing my NBA viewership for a pastime which better upholds American values. 

I encourage my fellow fans to do the same.

Fight For Freedom, Stand With Hong Kong

The NBA has just thrown Hong Kong’s protesters a new lifeline
By Isabella Steger

The Hong Kong protests are benefiting from China’s latest effort to quash speech about them—which involved starting a full-blown spat with the NBA.
It’s unlikely many basketball fans in the US were paying close attention to the months-long protests in Hong Kong. 

But the deepening fallout between the league and Beijing, stemming from a now-deleted tweet by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey last week expressing support for Hong Kong’s protests, has put the issue front and center of American basketball, and even arguably America’s news cycle.
There’s a name for such unintended consequences: the “Streisand effect.”


Paul Mozur 孟建国
✔@paulmozur
It’s really amazing. The ferocity of the China response to the NBA has drawn the Hong Kong protests much more deeply into the American mainstream and linked it to issues of speech control in China. Hard to think of a bigger own goal for Beijing in all this. https://twitter.com/hashtaggriswold/status/1182063136523902976 …
Halloween Name Griswold
✔@HashtagGriswold
Protesters outside of the Washington Wizards preseason game against the Guangzhou Long-Lions. Passing out free shirts reading “Free Hong Kong.”


2,967
3:09 AM - Oct 10, 2019

Politicians from across the spectrum—from Ted Cruz to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—have warned the NBA not to compromise America’s respect for free speech and bend to China’s will. 

The Washington Post (paywall), the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal (paywall) have advised the league in strongly worded editorials not to be complicit in Chinese censorship. 

The Daily Show‘s Trevor Noah devoted a segment to the NBA firestorm, with a pretty comprehensive list of China’s offense-taking in the last two years.
And basketball fans have added oil to the issue, as Hong Kongers might say, by taking protest messages directly to NBA games. 

Fans attending pre-season NBA games in the US have worn t-shirts or held up placards bearing messages of solidarity with Hong Kong, including during an exhibition game between the Washington Wizards and the Guangzhou Loong Lions. 

One group also carried a message referring to China’s persecuted Uyghurs in East Turkestan. 

Some were booted from the games—in one case, while the US anthem was playing—or had their signs confiscated.


Jon Schweppe@JonSchweppe
Just had our “Free Hong Kong” sign confiscated at Capitol One Arena at the Wizards game against the Guangzhou Long Lions. #FreeHongKong #NBA #Censorship

24.7K
1:08 AM - Oct 10, 2019

China has been retaliating against the NBA after the league’s chairman Adam Silver failed to apologize for Morey’s actions or discipline the manager, which prompted a host of Chinese NBA partners and sponsors to sever ties with the league. 

While many expected Silver to capitulate in the face of Chinese pressure—as numerous other American and global corporations have done in the past—Silver on Tuesday (Oct. 8) said on a visit to Japan that he strongly supported the league’s values of “equality, respect and freedom of expression.” Since then, China’s punitive measures NBA have worsened, canceling a fan event scheduled for yesterday (Oct. 9) in Shanghai. 

An exhibition match between the Los Angeles Lakers and Brooklyn Nets this evening appears set to go ahead.


Lin Qiqing@lqq91926
Workers are ripping off a big NBA ad of tomorrow's Lakers VS Nets game in Shanghai. Still unclear if they can play. When asked why it's taken down, a worker said "no idea, orders from above."

115
9:55 AM - Oct 9, 2019

For many long-time observers of China, the NBA saga is a perfect storm that’s finally bringing to the forefront of American discourse the problem of China’s attempts to bully countries and companies that do not bend to its dictates. 

Prior to the NBA, US companies such as Coach and Nike have bowed down to China in various ways after they unwittingly “offended” Chinese sovereignty, but most of those incidents flew under the radar. 

The NBA, with its huge domestic following, is different—Nike removing an offending sneaker from China’s shelves does not touch the average US consumer, but the thought that China’s economic clout could force an NBA team to punish managers or players for their speech, or restrict the speech of audience members on US soil, is a different ball game.
Hong Kong’s protesters, who have long seen international support as key to their success—particularly from the US—have tried, with mixed results, to draw attention to the ways that Beijing’s authoritarian approach can have a reach far beyond China’s borders. 

But the NBA debacle has accomplished exactly that—granting protesters an extraordinary opportunity to galvanize support for their own cause.
And as if the perfect storm couldn’t get more perfect, a number of other US companies have also at the same time been drawn into the China-Hong Kong maelstrom. 

Apple today pulled an app showing real-time, crowdsourced maps of the city’s protest hotspots just a day after China’s biggest state-run paper warned that the tech giant would suffer consequences for its “unwise and reckless” decision of approving the “poisonous” app. 

US game maker Blizzard—partly owned by China’s Tencent—earlier this week suspended a Hong Kong Hearthstone player after he shouted a protest slogan during a post-game interview, prompting calls among players to boycott the company. 

ESPN reportedly sent out an internal memo barring mention of Chinese politics on its shows. 

And South Park drew attention to the topic of Chinese censorship of American companies in an episode last week, with the show now censored in China.


Josh Hawley
✔@HawleyMO
Chinese Communist Party has been trying to suppress the protestors in Hong Kong for months. Now they’re trying to censor Americans and stop us from speaking out. I will travel to Hong Kong myself to learn the latest on the ground and report the facts.
14.8K
2:20 AM - Oct 10, 2019

These rapidly mounting instances do seem to be succeeding in bolstering bipartisan opposition in the US toward China’s censorship attempts, with protesters looking forward to the passage of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which would freeze the assets of and bar entry to officials found to be complicit in suppressing freedoms in Hong Kong. 

But international support can be fickle and unpredictable, particularly with Donald Trump in the White House—NBA fanatics and gamers may well turn out to be more steadfast, and useful, allies.
Writing in a column (link in Chinese), Allan Au, a current affairs commentator who teaches at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said that it’s understandably “difficult” to get outsiders to care too much about the affairs of other countries, but now through the NBA incident Americans of all stripes see how “a simple tweet can draw the ire of China.” 

The development also gives Hong Kong’s protesters—stuck in a bottleneck of escalating violence—time for a breather while others wade into the fray on their behalf.
“Hong Kong’s fighters can take a rest, and let the bullets fly,” he wrote.

N.B.A. Commissioner Commits to Free Speech

China’s state-run television canceled broadcasts of two preseason games scheduled to be held in the country this week, and Adam Silver issued an emphatic defense of the right of league employees to speak out on political issues.

By Sopan Deb

Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.

The N.B.A.’s decades-long push to develop China into its biggest overseas market appeared in jeopardy on Tuesday as the league’s commissioner stood firm in the face of criticism from Beijing and the Chinese threatened financial repercussions.
The threats began when China’s state-run television announced it would not broadcast two N.B.A. preseason games this week in Shanghai and Shenzhen that would feature basketball’s biggest star, LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers. 

Hours later, the league’s commissioner, Adam Silver, issued an emphatic defense of its employees’ right to speak out on political issues.
That followed days of intense criticism accusing Silver of trying to appease one of the world’s most autocratic governments after a Houston Rockets executive tweeted support for pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. 

“We will protect our employees’ freedom of speech,” Silver said.
The N.B.A. has made global expansion — particularly into China — a core part of its mission. 

The preseason games are part of a set of events designed to promote the league in the country — including basketball clinics, fan gatherings and various public appearances by players.
But the league’s Chinese campaign has been overshadowed by the single pro-Hong Kong tweet on Friday night from Daryl Morey, the general manager of the Rockets, who shared an image that contained the words “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.” 

The phrase is a popular slogan at the protests in Hong Kong that have raged for months.

The tweet put the league in a situation familiar to many global companies seeking to do business in a Communist country with 1.4 billion people: Any misstep could mean swiftly losing access to a powerful economy.
China Central Television, the state broadcaster, made clear the risks of challenging Beijing, chiding the league for an earlier expression of support for Morey’s free speech rights.

At a news conference in Japan — where the Rockets played the Toronto Raptors on Tuesday — Silver said that the Chinese broadcast cancellation was unexpected and that a community outreach event scheduled to take place at a school in Shanghai had also been canceled.
“I think it’s unfortunate,” Silver said. 

“But if that’s the consequences of us adhering to our values, we still feel it’s critically important we adhere to those values.”

Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey, left, as the team announced the signing of the star guard Russell Westbrook in July.

Silver planned to travel to Shanghai on Wednesday and said he hoped to meet with Chinese government officials to try to defuse the conflict.

“But I’m a realist as well, and I recognize that this issue may not die down so quickly,” Silver said.

Both Democrats and Republicans have castigated the league for its initial reaction to the situation: a statement on Sunday that said it was “regrettable” that Morey’s tweet had offended people in China. The N.B.A. also said that “the values of the league support individuals’ educating themselves and sharing their views on matters important to them.”
Silver responded again on Tuesday morning with a statement that said: “It is inevitable that people around the world — including from America and China — will have different viewpoints over different issues. It is not the role of the N.B.A. to adjudicate those differences.”
The statement continued: “However, the N.B.A. will not put itself in a position of regulating what players, employees and team owners say or will not say on these issues. We simply could not operate that way.”
Chinese government and basketball officials, as well as Chinese companies, had pressured the N.B.A. to be more critical of Morey, and to go beyond a version of the league’s statement that appeared on Chinese social media platforms on Sunday. 

In that statement, the league appeared to call Morey’s tweet “inappropriate.” (The league denied that the difference in translation was intentional and said the English version should be considered its official response.)

An N.B.A. store in Beijing.

Despite the controversy, as of Tuesday, the preseason games had not been canceled, even though they would not be broadcast in China. 

The Lakers were scheduled to play the Brooklyn Nets, a team owned by Joe Tsai, the billionaire co-founder of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. 

In a lengthy Facebook post this week, Tsai criticized Morey’s tweet as damaging to the N.B.A. in China. 

Also, an editorial in the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba, carried the headline: “Sports loses out when politics enters play.”


Sopan Deb
✔@SopanDeb
UPDATE: Per NBA spokesman, Mike Bass: "There should be no discrepancy on the statement issued earlier today. We have seen various interpretations of the translation of the Mandarin version, but our statement in English is the league’s official statement.”
210
7:10 AM - Oct 7, 2019

Multiple Chinese companies, including Luckin Coffee and Anta, a sportswear brand that sponsors N.B.A. players, announced Tuesday that they were suspending partnerships with the league.

Criticism of the N.B.A. also has come from pro-Hong Kong activists and their supporters in the United States, who have accused Silver of capitulating to an authoritarian government.
Silver, in an interview with CNN after his news conference on Tuesday, hinted at frustration over the way the league’s actions have been received.
“I will say I’m a bit surprised that CCTV canceled the telecasting of preseason games, and specifically named me as the cause,” Silver said. 

“It’s interesting, while at the same time in the U.S. media, there is some suggesting I am not being protective enough of our employees. Clearly, they’re seeing it the other way in China, but I think, at the end of the day, we have been pretty consistent.”
The backlash hasn’t been limited to Silver and Morey. 

The Rockets superstar James Harden was criticized on social media for offering an apology to China while standing next to his teammate Russell Westbrook.
Other basketball figures have steered clear of the topic. 

Steve Kerr, the typically outspoken coach of the Golden State Warriors, declined to comment on Monday, telling reporters, “It’s a really bizarre international story, and a lot of us really don’t know what to make of it.”
One notable exception was another outspoken coach, Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs. 

He praised Silver’s remarks, saying: “He came out strongly for freedom of speech today. I felt great again. He’s been a heck of a leader in that respect and very courageous. Then you compare it to what we’ve had to live through the past three years, it’s a big difference. A big gap there, leadership-wise and courage-wise.”
DeAndre Jordan of the Nets told ESPN that it was unfortunate for events to be canceled, but that the players aren’t experts on Hong Kong.
“What we are experts in is basketball, and we wanted to come here to promote basketball and see all of our fans in China,” Jordan said.

Cheers in Beijing Can’t Drown Out the Protesters in Hong Kong

As Xi Jinping celebrates 70 years of Communist rule, a democratic enclave resists.
The New York Times

Images of Xi Jinping on Tuesday on a Hong Kong street following a day of protests.

It was hard to imagine a greater contrast. 

While China’s rulers were celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic with an enormous parade of missiles and technological achievements meant to intimidate and impress, Hong Kong witnessed some of the most violent protests in four months of demonstrations against Beijing’s encroachment on the enclave’s autonomy.
There was no subtlety in either Xi Jinping’s celebration of his country’s raw power, or Hong Kong’s rejection of the repressive rule behind that power. 

Something will have to give.
Xi was central to his show. 

Clad in a Mao suit, he made no mention of his immediate predecessors as he presided over an awesome display of what he calls the “Chinese dream,” a broad vision of China’s rise as an economic, military and police force to be reckoned with. 

“No force can shake the status of our great motherland, no force can obstruct the advance of the Chinese people and Chinese nation,” he declared.

These were not idle words. 

Xi has not hesitated to use force in bringing minorities like the Tibetans or the Uighurs to heel, and the showpiece of the parade was the giant DF-41, an intercontinental ballistic missile that can carry 10 nuclear warheads and strike anywhere in the United States.
Hong Kong protesters were manifestly not impressed. 

On the contrary, they welcomed the opportunity to demonstrate their opposition to Communist rule over their theoretically autonomous district by upstaging Beijing’s show. 

The day’s demonstrations began peacefully but turned violent in various outlying districts after nightfall as protesters, many dressed in black, set fires and clashed with the police. 

For the first time since the protests began in June, a demonstrator was wounded with a live bullet by a cornered officer.
There is nothing to suggest that Xi appreciates what is really taking place in Hong Kong. 

The system that the Chinese Communist Party has shaped over seven decades of repressive rule, like the 70 years in which Soviet Communists controlled their empire, brooks no diversity of thought or challenge to authority. 

Raised in the brutal paternalism of that system, Xi equates greatness with power and dissent with treachery; to him, the 50 years of relative autonomy granted Hong Kong, which ends in 2047, is time to wipe out whatever bad foreign habits its people picked up.

Police officers in riot gear clashed with protesters in Hong Kong on Tuesday.

Those habits, acquired under British colonial rule, include a Western political culture of democracy, human rights, free speech and independent thought. 

And what began in June as mass protests against legislation that would have made it possible to extradite Hong Kong people to mainland China has morphed over succeeding weeks into increasingly explicit protests against Chinese control, which is exercised in Hong Kong by an executive handpicked by Beijing and its local allies.

The message liberal democracies should send the people of Hong Kong should be that the free world stands with them in their rejection of what the Chinese Communist Party stands for. 

And the urgent message to Beijing, as tensions rise to the breaking point, must be that any attempt to crush the protests by forces from the mainland will meet with a strong response.
Unfortunately, Trump saw fit to send Beijing congratulations on the 70th anniversary, without any mention of Hong Kong. 

Trump is locked into his own strange love-hate relationship with Xi, which includes personal praise and escalating tariffs, and he probably regards Hong Kong and its aspirations as a regrettable diversion. 

But that should not preclude Congress, or America’s allies, from speaking out.

Chinese Peril

China’s influence on campus chills free speech in Australia, New Zealand
By A. Odysseus Patrick and Emanuel Stoakes

Students hold placards during a protest at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, on July 31. 

SYDNEY — Chinese students poured into Australia and New Zealand in their hundreds of thousands over the past 20 years, paying sticker prices for university degrees that made higher education among both countries’ top export earners.
Now, as a more-authoritarian China projects its influence deeper into the South Pacific, attempts by Chinese students and diplomats to interfere with anti-Beijing dissidents and stifle free speech on campus pose an uncomfortable challenge for both U.S. allies.
The immediate trigger for the flare-ups was mass protests in Hong Kong, which authorities in the semiautonomous Chinese territory are struggling to contain.
Protesters there have assailed what they say is the steady erosion in Hong Kong’s rule of law, aided and abetted by the city’s pro-Beijing leaders.
Students, academics and officials in Australia and New Zealand, two of the modern world’s older democracies, now find their natural sympathy for the Hong Kong protesters colliding with their nations’ economic dependency on Beijing — a weakness the Chinese Communist Party isn’t hesitating to exploit.
The most visible flash point is on campus.
Students who support and oppose the Chinese Community Party have spent recent days erecting, ripping down, and restoring walls covered with cards and Post-it notes calling for freedom in Hong Kong at universities in the Australian cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Hobart, and in New Zealand.
“Beijing’s influence on campuses is responsible for widespread self-censorship by universities and academics in Australia and New Zealand,” said Clive Hamilton, a professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra and author of “Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia.”
“The events of the last couple of weeks on Australian campuses have proved to be a serious escalation of Beijing’s interference,” he said.
Every pro-democracy protest is countered by Beijing’s well-drilled student supporters.
When some University of Sydney students proposed a protest on Friday, which did not proceed, opponents shared notes on the Chinese WeChat platform about how to respond.
“The pro-Hong Kong independence demonstration on August 9 is planned by some forces of Sydney University,” one person wrote, according to an image taken by a student.
“We will not use force, but will absolutely not sit idly by and do nothing. [We] will fight the separatist forces to the end using legal means. Never make a concession!!”
The person, who could not be reached for comment, added in the message that they had “reported this to the education section” of the Chinese Consulate.
After years of feeling fortunate about their economic relationship with China, Australians are starting to worry about the cost.
On Thursday, a ruling-party lawmaker, Andrew Hastie, compared China’s expansion to the rise of Hitler's Nazi Germany before World War II and suggested it posed a direct military threat.
“Like the French, Australia has failed to see how mobile our authoritarian neighbor has become,” Hastie wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Hastie’s comments ricocheted between Beijing and Canberra, where the Chinese Embassy condemned the former officer in Australia’s Special Air Service Regiment, an elite army special forces unit.
As the smallest members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance that includes the United States, Britain and Canada, Australia and New Zealand are attractive targets for Chinese influence and espionage operations, analysts say.
Paul Buchanan, a strategic analyst based in Auckland, said that New Zealand is an “ideal liberal democratic lab rat” for China to experiment with ways to use “the very freedoms and transparency of democratic systems against them.”
Chinese diplomats in both Australia and New Zealand appear to be encouraging confrontations by praising counterprotesters.
On July 29, a student at New Zealand’s Auckland University was confronted by a group of men who objected to her involvement in adorning a protest site, known as a “Lennon Wall,” with messages of support for Hong Kong demonstrators.
Cellphone footage uploaded to social media showed one of the men moving aggressively toward the student, who fell to the ground.
Three days later, the Chinese Consulate in Auckland published a statement that supported the actions of the assailant and his companions, conveying its “appreciation to the students for their spontaneous patriotism,” while condemning unnamed individuals for “inciting anti-China sentiment.”
Protests and counterprotests have taken place since; participants say they have received threatening messages from unknown senders.
Defenders of free speech say the episodes are a wake-up call.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said this week that officials have reminded their Chinese counterparts that New Zealand “will uphold and maintain our freedom of expression.”
Standing up for such values comes at the cost of worsening relations with Beijing, the top trade partner of both countries and a lucrative source of funds for universities, which lack the big endowments of American colleges.
China’s purchases of iron ore, coal and dairy products have helped power Australia and New Zealand’s prosperity.
The University of Queensland, where punches were thrown at a Hong Kong sympathy protest two weeks ago, is so close to Chinese authorities that it appointed the Chinese consul general in Brisbane a visiting professor of language and culture last month.
The consulate then praised the “patriotic behavior” of 300 pro-Beijing students after the violent incident, prompting Australia’s defense minister to warn foreign diplomats against interfering in free speech.


Nilsson Jones@nilssonjones_

Chinese students clash with pro-Hong Kong protesters at UQ after peaceful sit in #uq #hongkong #china

1,632
5:27 AM - Jul 24, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
1,462 people are talking about this

Among themselves, mainland Chinese students share advice on how attract sympathetic coverage in confrontations with the left-wing activists they call the “baizuo,” a pejorative term for Western liberals that translates as “white left.”
“UQ students please be calm, don’t resort to violence,” said a recent post on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service.
“Try to learn from the tricks of those pro-Hong Kong independence activists. If you push me I will fall over. Fake tumble, cry and wail, call campus police. We are too strong, which won’t work in the world of baizuo.”
“It’s very tense,” said Drew Pavlou, one of the student organizers of the University of Queensland protest, in an interview.
“It doesn’t feel safe. I have had to have security walk me to some classes.”
In New Zealand, an event commemorating China’s 1989 suppression of pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen Square scheduled for June 3 was moved away from Auckland University of Technology following pressure from Chinese officials.
Emails obtained through freedom-of-information requests by online outlet Newsroom revealed that China’s vice consul met with the university’s president on May 31 to request that the event be scuttled. 
The university received emails from the consulate on the matter, too.
In Australia, officials are so concerned about Chinese influence that the attorney general has asked his department to examine why 14 Confucius Institutes — Chinese-funded education units within Australian universities — have not been registered as agents of foreign influence under a new law directed at Chinese espionage, influence and propaganda.
At the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, a Confucius Institute shares a building with the office of Anne-Marie Brady, a professor who has researched Chinese government influence.
Brady has complained of threats, break-ins at her home and attempted sabotage of her car. 
Police investigated but were unable to identify a culprit.
Reflecting a growing unease that Australia’s economic future depends on an unpredictable adversary, former prime minister John Howard said this week that unrest in Hong Kong “perhaps represents a glimpse of the future for Chinese society.”
“If you’ve been born into relative affluence and comfort you take that for granted and you resent being told how to run your life,” he said.
“Perhaps over the next 50 years we’re going to see just how all of that works out.”

Oriental Despotism

China's terrifying moves on Hong Kong

By Michael Bociurkiw

When the last British governor of Hong Kong sailed out of Victoria Harbor on July 1,1997, many expected the Chinese government to honor pledges to maintain the colony's basic freedoms, enshrined in the so-called Basic Law -- in effect, the territory's mini-Constitution.
After all, the thinking went, Beijing would have nothing to gain by tinkering with the rule of law in one of the world's premier trade and business hubs. 

It wouldn't dare pluck the feathers of what had traditionally been known as the goose that lays China's golden eggs -- a freewheeling, capitalist enclave that served as China's gateway to the world for trade and investment. 

And freedom of the press would be tolerated on the assumption that the Chinese understood the need for business to have unfettered access to information.
Moreover, the British had installed a world class legal and physical infrastructure that was expected to endure far into the future. 

That included such institutional safeguards as the powerful and feared Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), designed to keep the noses of the civil service squeaky clean.
But almost half way into the mandate of the "one country, two systems" experiment, Beijing appears to be accelerating Hong Kong's absorption into China at a pace no British foreign office official might have expected in the heady run-up to the handover.
That includes a hard crackdown on dissent, especially on anyone who advocates independence of Hong Kong from the mainland. 

The situation was brought into focus Monday when three of the territory's most high-profile pro-democracy protesters appeared in court on charges of fomenting unrest during 2014 street protests that brought the central business district to a standstill for almost three months. (They have pleaded not guilty but face up to seven years in prison if convicted.)
Local pro-democracy protesters are not the only ones to feel the clampdown on freedom of expression. 

Last month, the Asia editor of the Financial Times, Victor Mallet, was declared persona non grata in Hong Kong after chairing a talk at the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) with Hong Kong independence advocate Andy Chan. 

A few weeks ago, Mallet, who was also the correspondents club's vice president, was denied entry into Hong Kong as a tourist -- a move of such severity it would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
While Hong Kong's Beijing-appointed chief executive, Carrie Lam, has refused to comment on the reasoning behind the expulsion, it is widely seen to be a signal to others of a red line that should not be crossed. 

It may also foreshadow more troubles ahead for the FCC: in 2023, its lease comes up for renewal by the Hong Kong government. 

And, with a three-month cancellation clause, which allows the government to terminate the lease even sooner, more missteps could shutter an institution that has traditionally served as not only a venue for free speech, but as a haven, exhibit space and workplace for foreign journalists and diplomats.
Even before the exclusion of Mallet, there has been creeping self-censorship in Hong Kong. 

The territory's major English language newspaper, the South China Morning Post, owned since 2015 by Alibaba's Jack Ma, tends to give Chinese authorities velvet glove treatment. 

The Chinese-language media in the territory has long-since fallen into line and stays clear of criticism of Beijing.
Some, such as the FT's Hong Kong correspondent, Ben Bland, say that those who speak out face a hard knock because Lam and her administration have to be seen delivering on the hardline policies of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping. 

Xi warned during a visit to Hong Kong last year that any challenge to the regime is "absolutely impermissible" and not to cross the "red line" of undermining Chinese sovereignty. 

As China aggressively widens its military and economic footprint in the region, Hong Kong officials find themselves under even more pressure to be delivering positive returns for Xi.
Francis Moriarty, a former senior political correspondent for Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), tells me that the harsh actions against Mallet, pro-democracy leaders and others indicate that "the legal protection of free press and free speech, guaranteed under the Basic Law, are being steadily eroded by pressures from Beijing and its Hong Kong acolytes, who are becoming emboldened."
While local business tycoons are not kicking up a public fuss on the erosion of freedoms in Hong Kong, representatives of foreign businesses, many with regional bases in the territory, are. 

In a stunning blow to Hong Kong, the US-China Economic and Security Review Committee, which advises the US Congress, said this month that Beijing's "encroachment" on the territory's freedoms could tarnish its status as a global business hub. 

"The ongoing decline in rule of law and freedom of expression is a troubling trend," the report said.
The American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong said reining in press freedom could damage the territory's competitiveness as a leading financial and trading center and termed Mallet's visa denial "a worrying signal." 

After initially playing down Mallet's visa woes, AmCham President Tara Joseph, a former Reuters journalist and FCC president, said: "Without a free press, capital markets cannot properly function, and business and trade cannot be reliably conducted."
Whether pro-democracy advocates like it or not, China's embrace of Hong Kong is proceeding apace, and in more ways than one. 

In recent months, the territory has become much more physically integrated, with multi-billion-dollar bridge and high-speed rail links.
When people say there really is no place like Hong Kong, they aren't exaggerating. 

With a world-class infrastructure, enviable geographic location and an educated and entrepreneurial population, British officials might now be expressing regret at handing it back to China on such liberal terms. 

It's just too bad they didn't do more to shield this golden goose from China's poison arrows.

Rogue Nation

How The Chinese Government Works To Censor Debate In Western Democracies
By FRANK LANGFITT

Tibetans cheer on a Tibetan team at a soccer tournament in London. Fans say they were pleased and surprised that the tournament organizers didn't succumb to pressure from potential sponsors and dump the Tibetan team to avoid angering the Chinese government.

It used to be that the Communist Party focused on censoring free speech primarily inside of China. 

In recent years, though, China's authoritarian government has tried to censor speech beyond its borders, inside liberal democracies, when speech contradicts the party's line on highly sensitive political issues, such as the status of Tibet and Taiwan. 

It's part of the party's grand strategy to change the way the world talks about China.
The Chinese government has been so effective at intimidating Western businesses on this front that companies do the party's work for it. 

That's what happened in London this summer at an obscure soccer tournament modeled on the World Cup. 

The teams were drawn from a hodgepodge of minority peoples, isolated territories and would-be nations, including Tibet.
Some potential corporate sponsors were queasy.
"There were inquiries made as to whether we would consider removing Tibet from the competition," said Paul Watson, commercial director for the Confederation of Independent Football Associations, or CONIFA, which ran the tournament. 

Watson spoke with one potential sponsor who was apologetic but direct.
"Look, I took this to my boss," Watson recalled the sponsor telling him. 

"It's Tibet. Can you get them out of there? I'm really sorry. It's a terrible thing to ask. We love what you do, but would you remove Tibet?"
Watson refused to dump the Tibetans, which he said cost CONIFA more than $100,000 in sponsorship money. 

Watson said no one from the Chinese government ever approached him, but they didn't have to, because the sponsors already knew the risks.
Tibet is a colony of China, but Tibetans hate Chinese rule because the Chinese are trying to destroy Tibetan spiritual and cultural identity, not only at home, but also abroad. 

Potential sponsors were worried about offending Beijing because they'd already seen how other companies were punished when they didn't follow China's official line. 

In January, authorities suspended Marriott's Chinese website after the hotel group mistakenly referred to Tibet, Hong Kong and Macau as countries. 

The next month, Mercedes-Benz was forced to apologize for quoting the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, on Instagram.
"Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open," the quote read.
Watson said potential sponsors were terrified that if they backed the tournament, they'd be in a business meeting in China a few months later, staring at a photo of their company's logo next to Tibetan soccer players and the Tibetan flag.
"It could be a deal-breaker," Watson said.

Potential sponsors urged the Confederation of Independent Football Associations, CONIFA, to drop a Tibetan team from a soccer tournament in London for fear of offending the Chinese government.

Tibetans in London who turned out to root for their team were grateful and surprised that CONIFA stood up for them.
"It's very rare these days that you see people sticking to such principles," said Pema Yoko, a former official with Students for a Free Tibet, "but the more you allow yourself to bend down to China, the more China is going to bully."
The Communist Party has spent years trying to control the country's narrative and influence how the world talks about China. 

Between the Opium War in 1840 and the Communist victory in 1949, foreign powers including Japan and the United Kingdom controlled pieces of Chinese territory during a period the party refers to as the "Century of Humiliation."
"One of the contexts for the obsessive way in which Chinese officials can sometimes think about the way that China is portrayed overseas is the fact that, from the mid-19th century to well into the 20th century, China was not in control of its own destiny," said Rana Mitter, a China scholar at Oxford University.
The recent economic boom, which vaulted China from a backward, agrarian society to an industrial powerhouse and the world's second-largest economy, changed all that.
"These days China is in a much better position to actually spread [its] narrative," said Mitter, "with, we might say, a much louder megaphone."
When groups or institutions in the West don't toe Beijing's line, the Chinese government is now more willing to use its muscle to enforce its views.
Last year, the Durham University students' union organized a debate on whether China was a threat to the West. 

Tom Harwood, then president of the union, said the school's Chinese Students and Scholars Association complained about the topic and pressed him to drop one of the speakers, Anastasia Lin, a former Miss World Canada. 

Lin is also a human rights activist and a practitioner of Falun Gong, a spiritual meditation group banned by the Chinese government.

A Chinese Embassy official in London urged the Durham University students' union to drop Anastasia Lin, a former Miss World Canada and a human rights activist, from a debate on whether China is a threat to the West.

"Actually, it got to the point where the Chinese embassy phoned up our office and started questioning us a lot about the debate, asking if we could not invite Anastasia Lin," Harwood recalled. 

"It even got to the point where one of the officials at the embassy suggested that if this debate went ahead, the U.K. might get less favorable trade terms after Brexit."
In March, the United Kingdom is scheduled to leave the European Union, a giant market of more than 500 million consumers. 

British officials are desperate to ink new free trade deals with major economies, including China. Harwood was stunned that a Chinese diplomat would suggest that the United Kingdom might pay a financial price for something as small as a college debate.
"It's just quite shocking that within an institution that was 175 years old, that's prided itself on hosting free speech, free exchange, free debate, that an outside influence was trying to change that or try and stop us hosting a speaker," said Harwood.
Malcolm Rifkind, a former British foreign secretary, participated in the Durham debate. 

He didn't think much of China's tactics.
"I thought it was pathetic," Rifkind said. 

"It's something that the Chinese very foolishly do again and again."

Malcolm Rifkind, a former British foreign secretary, participated in the Durham debate. Rifkind served as foreign secretary in the lead-up to the return of the then-British colony of Hong Kong to China in 1997.

Rifkind said that a couple of decades earlier, when China was much weaker and its economy much smaller, it was easy to ignore such complaints. 

Rifkind served as Britain's foreign secretary as the country prepared to return the then-British colony of Hong Kong to China in 1997. 

At the time, the United Kingdom's economy was bigger than China's. 

When the Dalai Lama asked to meet Rifkind, about a year before the handover, he didn't hesitate.
"They spluttered," Rifkind recalled. 

"They complained. They said it was inappropriate, but nothing more than that happened because, at that time, they didn't have the diplomatic weight they have today."
Flash-forward to 2012 when then-British Prime Minister David Cameron met with the Dalai Lama in public in London. 

China's economy was now more than three times the size of the United Kingdom's. 

Beijing responded by canceling meetings and freezing out British officials. 

In 2015, Cameron refused to meet the Dalai Lama, who told The Spectator, a conservative political magazine, "Money, money, money. That's what this is about. Where is morality?"

The Chinese government no longer just tries to punish the West for straying from the Communist Party line. 

In the past year, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping has gone further, arguing that China's authoritarian system can serve as a model for others, an alternative to liberal democracy.
Jan Weidenfeld, who runs the European China Policy unit at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, a Berlin-based think tank, says the party's argument runs like this: "Look at where democracy has gotten you? Lots of irrational decisions. You got Donald Trump in the White House. You've got Brexit and we've just got the better model here."
Weidenfeld says Beijing's goal is to undermine support for the Western system and wage a broader battle of systemic competition — something that would've been unthinkable just a few years ago.
Clumsy attempts to censor people — as in the case of the Durham University debate — have backfired, but China has had success pressuring businesses, as the apologies by Marriott and Mercedes-Benz show.
Benedict Rogers, deputy chair of the Conservative Party's Human Rights Commission, said the willingness of some in the West to knuckle under to the Communist Party is part of the problem. 

Rogers said that a Chinese Embassy official called a member of Parliament last year to try to prevent a conservative website from publishing an article Rogers was writing about China's repressive policies in Hong Kong on the 20th anniversary of the handover. 

Rogers said that five or 10 years ago, the embassy would've never had the guts to try that.
"China has been emboldened by our weakness over recent years," Rogers said. 

"Actually, if we'd taken a stronger stand a few years ago, they perhaps wouldn't have been doing this kind of thing now."