China’s Media Forecast is Bleak and Stormy

Spring Festival is coming, but the country's politics remain frozen.
BY SARAH COOK
The Year of the Dog saw Chinese journalists and bloggers kept on a tighter leash than ever. 

Xi Jinping and the ruling Communist Party moved aggressively to control reporting on threats to the economy, block or shut down popular social media applications, and reduce avenues for jumping the so-called Great Firewall’s censorship. 

The Year of the Pig, which starts on Feb. 5, doesn’t look much better—but could also see the start of some serious pushback globally, as the world becomes more aware of Beijing’s propaganda-fueled efforts to influence foreign audiences. 

Here are five takeaways for China’s information control strategies in the new lunar year.

1. Big dates, new crackdowns. 

The Year of the Pig is replete with politically sensitive anniversaries: 60 years since the Dalai Lama’s flight from Tibet in March, a century since the launch of the influential May 4 student movement, 30 years since the June 4 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, a decade since a major bout of unrest and intensified restrictions in East Turkestan in early July, 20 years since the party launched its campaign against the Falun Gong spiritual movement later that month, and the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic in October.
Those dates often bring extra censorship even on less significant anniversaries, and regulators seem especially keen to preempt any potential expressions of dissent in 2019. 

On Jan. 3, the Cyberspace Administration of China announced the launch of a new campaign against vaguely defined “negative and harmful information” online. 

It is set to last six months and has already included instructions to the web portals Baidu and Sohu to suspend their news services for one week this month in order to “root out undesirable content.”
As the various anniversaries pass, spikes in censorship will be tracked by monitors such as Weiboscope; localized internet shutdowns and travel restrictions will affect regions such as Tibet and East Turkestan; and arrests or involuntary “vacations” will be imposed on prominent democracy advocates, grassroots activists, and ordinary Falun Gong, Tibetan Buddhist, and Uighur Muslim believers. 

If the past is any indication, at least some of the repressive measures deployed and the jail sentences imposed will last far beyond the anniversary year itself.

2. First iCloud arrest. 

The 2017 Cybersecurity Law stipulates that foreign companies must store Chinese users’ cloud data on servers located in China. 

To meet this requirement, Apple announced last January that iCloud data would be transferred to servers run by a company called Guizhou on the Cloud Big Data (GCBD), which is owned by the Guizhou provincial government. 

Apple and GCBD now both have access to iCloud data, including photos and other content.
Personal communications and information from platforms such as WeChat, QQ, Twitter, and Skype have increasingly been used by Chinese authorities to detain or convict people for their peaceful political or religious speech. 

This makes it only a matter of time before American companies with localized data centers become complicit in a politicized arrest. 

Apple has already proved its willingness to comply with Chinese government demands that violate basic freedoms by removing hundreds of apps used to circumvent censorship or access foreign news services from its mobile store in China.
Other companies to watch include the U.S.-based note-taking app Evernote, which transferred user data to Tencent Cloud last year, and various blockchain platforms, which as of next month will be required to implement real-name registration, monitor content, and store user data.

3. Financial news frozen. 

Last year, Chinese censors intensified their focus on controlling business and economic news—usually relatively openly reported topics compared with political or cultural issues—amid a trade war with the United States and slowing growth at home. 

Propaganda and censorship authorities actively intervened to suppress negative reporting on a staggering economy by suspending online portals’ financial news channels, issuing regular directives to editors to carefully manage their coverage, and providing monthly ideological trainings to journalists at financial news outlets.
This year, censors have already told the media not to report information on layoffs in the tech sector and restricted the circulation of a speech by a prominent economist, who said the government had made serious economic miscalculations in 2018. 

As the slowdown intensifies and its impact is felt across a wider range of sectors, the authorities are expected to tighten their control over the news and work to prevent—and prosecute—leaks of negative financial data and analysis.

4. Big data efforts. 

Reports emerge weekly of pilot initiatives in which Chinese authorities attempt to incorporate artificial intelligence and other technological aids into existing control mechanisms. 

The more benign examples include efforts to identify and fine jaywalkers, limit illegal subletting in public housing, encourage good manners on public transportation, and improve student attendance at school. 

Yet even these cases involve considerable restrictions on privacy, possible false positives, and enormous potential for abuse. 

And in other instances, similar technologies are being deployed for more obviously repressive purposes, such as censoring politically sensitive images on WeChat or identifying potential targets for forced re-education in East Turkestan.
Previous cases have been experimental or limited to certain geographical locations. 

But as these advanced systems for social and political control are refined, and as the government proceeds with its plans for a national social credit system, centralized surveillance is becoming the new norm.

5. Stronger pushback against influence abroad. 

The past two years have seen international society become far more sharply aware of the threat posed by the Chinese government’s foreign influence operations. 

Policymakers and civil society actors in democratic countries have mobilized to more critically examine Beijing’s media engagement and investment practices.
In the United States, the Justice Department has urged the Xinhua news agency and China Central Television (CCTV) to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, closing an important gap in the law’s enforcement. 

In Ghana, the local independent broadcasters’ association raised concerns about a potential contract with a Chinese firm to build the country’s digital television infrastructure. 

Britain’s media regulator is reviewing CCTV’s license following complaints that it had participated in the filming and airing of forced confessions by detainees, including activists and journalists. 

And a host of countries, such as Australia, Japan, and Norway, have restricted or are reconsidering the Chinese firm Huawei’s involvement in current or future telecommunications infrastructure projects.
China’s leaders will continue their ambitious, and at times covert or coercive, drive to influence foreign media and information environments, but Chinese state-run outlets, telecom firms, and even diplomats are now far more likely to encounter legal and other obstacles in democratic settings.
The Chinese Communist Party’s apparatus for information control will be more technologically sophisticated than ever this year, and the leadership under Xi will press it to the limits of its capacity. That the regime believes this is necessary suggests a deep insecurity—about its own historical legacies, about the crisis of legitimacy that a slowing economy creates for an unelected government, and about the ways even the smallest expressions of public anger can snowball online and offline. Censorship, propaganda, and surveillance may seem necessary to the regime, but they are hardly sufficient. 

The authorities’ efforts continue to intensify because they are never entirely successful. 

While the government’s information controls will likely bulk up during the Year of the Pig, they will come no closer to flying.

Tech Quisling

Amnesty International Is Accusing Apple of Betraying Chinese iCloud Users

By LAIGNEE BARRON

Amnesty International says Apple Inc is creating the Orwellian future it once envisioned by potentially opening up the data of Chinese iCloud users to Beijing’s scrutiny.
Texts, photos, emails, contacts and any other information stored on Apple’s cloud service in China could now be easily accessed by the government, Amnesty claims, warning of arrests or imprisonment as rights to privacy and free speech are infringed upon.
Apple famously positioned itself as a champion of free expression in its iconic “1984” advertisement.
According to an Amnesty blog post, to comply with new legislation in China, Apple, as of last month, began hosting Chinese users’ accounts on servers operated by a Chinese company, with the encryption keys managed by the local provider. 

The rights group says that previously, in order to view a Chinese account, Beijing would have had to go through the U.S. legal system. 

Now, communist officials will be able to go through China’s compliant courts.
“Apple’s pursuit of profits has left Chinese iCloud users facing huge new privacy risks,” Amnesty’s East Asia Director Nicholas Bequelin alleged in a statement. 

Apple reported record earnings of $17.9 billion in Greater China in the last quarter, up from US$16.2 billion in the same period a year ago.
According to some estimates, mainland China is the largest market of iPhone users.
“By handing over its China iCloud service to a local company without sufficient safeguards, the Chinese authorities now have unfettered access to all Apple’s Chinese customers’ iCloud data. Apple knows it, yet has not warned its customers in China of the risks,” Bequelin said.
The human rights group this week launched a social media campaign targeting Apple, just in time to coincide with Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook’s visit to Beijing.

Tech Quisling and Moral Pygmy

Apple is kowtowing to China’s police state
Washington Post

CHINA AND Russia, among other places ruled by strongmen and their political cronies, are demanding that technology companies locate all their data on national soil.  

The titans of American digital innovation — Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and others — face a difficult choice. 

They can risk moving the data of millions of customers to a police state, or they can refuse and risk losing millions of customers.
This week, Apple is choosing option A: police state. 

Starting Wednesday, the data of its iCloud customers in China will be transferred to China, as required by a new law, to be housed in a center operated by a Chinese company. 

Apple will control the encryption keys but says it will respond to “valid legal requests” from Chinese authorities for the data of individuals. 

This applies only to the popular iCloud and what Chinese users decide to store there; data on an iPhone itself is encrypted, and users are the only ones who can unlock it.
Previously, a request for the cloud data would have come to the United States and would have been subject to the rigors of U.S. law and due process. 

China, however, is ruled by the Communist Party, which remains above the law. 

A vivid glimpse of how the mechanism works is China’s recent campaign to silence and punish human rights lawyers, jailing them for defending people who dared speak their minds openly. 

China is also rolling out a nationwide system to monitor the behavior of individuals, including their financial transactions, shopping habits, social media, traffic tickets and unpaid bills, and combining it with ubiquitous surveillance. 

This is the legal environment that will oversee the iCloud data of Chinese users.

Amazon and Microsoft have also established data centers in China. (The chief executive and founder of Amazon, Jeffrey P. Bezos, owns The Post.)
Two years ago, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, refused to help the FBI crack open an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorists. 

Cook insisted that it was vital to protect data encryption for privacy, that to give in to the FBI would “make hundreds of millions of customers vulnerable around the world, including in the U.S.” 

We understand that Cook was talking about the iPhone then, and not the cloud, but he was very passionate about the principle of resisting government snooping. 

“We need to stand tall and stand tall on principle,” Cook bombastically declared.

When it comes to China, however, Apple says that it decided to “remain engaged.” 

This cannot have been an easy decision for Apple or Cook. 

Other companies will confront it, too. 

Of course it would have been painful to Apple’s customers, and to its bottom line, to pull out of China. 

But obeying “local laws” can mean honoring the whims of mega-snoops and dictators who do not share the values of democracy and free expression. 

Apple should find that painful, too.

Chinese surveillance is the dystopian future nobody wants

Monitoring tech pioneered in East Turkestan is spreading across China and the world.
By Nithin Coca

Security cameras are seen on a street in Urumqi, East Turkestan.

In July 2009, deadly riots broke out in Urumqi, the capital of East Turkestan. 

Nearly 200 people died, the majority ethnic Han Chinese, and thousands of Chinese troops were brought in to quell the riots. 

An information battle soon followed, as mobile phone and internet service was cut off in the entire province. 

For the next 10 months, web access would be almost nonexistent in East Turkestan, a vast region larger than Texas with a population of more than 20 million. 

It was one of the most widespread, longest internet shutdowns ever.
That event, which followed similar unrest in neighboring Chinese-ruled Tibet in 2008, was the sign of a new phase in the Chinese state's quest to control its restive outer regions. 

The 2009 shutdown was the first large-scale sign of a shift in tactics: the use of technology to control information.
"East Turkestan has gotten little attention, but this is where we're really seeing the coming together of multiple streams of technology [for surveillance] that just hasn't happened in other contexts before," said Steven Feldstein, fellow in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Nine years later, East Turkestan has seen the widespread implementation of sophisticated high-tech surveillance and monitoring technology, what BuzzFeed called "a 21st century police state." 

But what happens in East Turkestan does not stay in East Turkestan. 

The technologies piloted there are already spreading across all of China, and Chinese companies are beginning to sell some of this technology to other authoritarian-minded countries. 

If this trend continues, the future of technology, particularly for those in the Global South, could more resemble what's happening in East Turkestan than developments in Silicon Valley.
East Turkestan is the home to the Uyghurs, a Turkic people who mostly follow Islam and have a distinct culture and language. 

Not surprisingly, the region has a tenuous relationship with Beijing, which is more than 1,400 miles away. 

Protests, riots and even terrorist attacks have been connected to the Uyghur struggle, which gives cover to Chinese authorities to implement the harshest strategies there.
"Abuses are most apparent in East Turkestan because of the lack of privacy protections but also because the power imbalance between the people there and the police is the greatest in China," said Maya Wang, China researcher at Human Rights Watch.
That is why security investment in East Turkestan skyrocketed after the riots. 

According to Adrian Zenz, a lecturer at the European School of Culture and Theology who has written extensively about the police presence in East Turkestan and Tibet, the region's security forces doubled between 2009 and 2011 to more than 11,000 people. 

And it kept growing: In 2017, he documented more than 65,000 public job advertisements for security-related positions in East Turkestan, and last year Amnesty International estimated that there were 90,000 security staff in the region, the highest ratio of people to security in any province in China.
Several new tools and tactics accompanied this rise in security personnel, most notably the implementation of "convenience police stations," a dense network of street corner, village or neighborhood police stations designed to keep an eye out everywhere and rapidly respond to any threat, perceived or real. 

But there were also corresponding investments in security technology on a globally unprecedented scale. 

It started with a drive to put up security cameras in the aftermath of the 2009 riots before evolving into something far more sophisticated, as East Turkestan turned into a place for state-connected companies to test all of their surveillance innovations.
"The rule of law doesn't exist," said William Nee, China researcher at Amnesty International. "They are able to pioneer new methods of control that, if successful, they could use elsewhere in China."
Today, East Turkestan has both a massive security presence and ubiquitous surveillance technology: facial-recognition cameras; iris and body scanners at checkpoints, gas stations and government facilities; the collection of DNA samples for a massive database; mandatory apps that monitor messages and data flow on Uyghurs' smartphones; drones to monitor the borders. 

While there's some debate over how advanced the system tying these technologies together is, it's clear that China's plan is for a fully integrated system that uses artificial intelligence to rapidly process massive amounts of information for use by the similarly massive numbers of police in convenience stations.
For Uyghurs, it means that wherever they go, whomever they talk to and even whatever they read online are all being monitored by the Chinese government. 

According to The New York Times, "When Uighurs buy a kitchen knife, their ID data is etched on the blade as a QR code." 

BuzzFeed documented stories of family members too scared to speak openly to relatives abroad. 

And the combination of all of these tools through increasingly powerful AI and data processing means absolute control and little freedom.
"It's one thing to have GPS tracking. It's another thing to monitor social media usage of large populations," said Feldstein. 

"But to do that in combination with a large DNA database of up to 40 million people and to integrate those methods with other modes of surveillance and intrusion -- that represents a very new frontier and approach when it comes to online surveillance and oppression."
The result, at least for China, is a massive success. 

Violence in the region has fallen as riots, protests and attacks are now rare in East Turkestan. 

Part of that is due to the presence of the state, but it's also related to a rise in fear, as no one is sure how pervasive the Chinese surveillance apparatus is.
"People can never be sure if they are free from monitoring," said Nicole Morgret, project coordinator at the Uyghur Human Rights Project. 

"The fear is such that even if the surveillance is not complete, people behave as if it is. The technology is being rolled out so quickly."
That is because access to the actual platforms being used by the Chinese authorities is limited, and much of the knowledge about surveillance technology comes from observations by the few journalists who can report from East Turkestan or through looking at public tender and budget documents. 

Or, increasingly, the knowledge comes from observing how other regions in China are being monitored and how Chinese tech companies abroad are deploying or marketing similar tools.

While the East Turkestan model may be extreme even for China, it is starting to influence policing across the country. 

The advent of the surveillance state in East Turkestan has come alongside China's increasingly tightening control over national information flows, including the blocking or removal from app stores of many foreign apps, VPNs and platforms, most recently Skype.

"The question a lot of people have [is] ... to what extent is this going to be rolled [out] across the rest of China and packaged and sold to other repressive governments around the world?" said Morgret. "You can definitely see parts of it being implemented in China proper, such as the police database and collecting DNA samples from certain people. I certainly suspect the government has ambitions to create this type of total surveillance across the country."
The government has a powerful tool at its disposal, as last year, a new cybersecurity law went into effect that greatly broadens the power of the state to further control information. 

It requires foreign companies to maintain data centers in China, something Apple, for example, is complying with, leading the nonprofit watchdog group Reporters Without Borders to warn journalists working in China not to use iCloud anymore to store data. 

WeChat, China's do-everything app, is already sharing user data with the state.
There are other signs that East Turkestan's policing innovations are entering the rest of China. 

The country is planning to integrate footage from its estimated 176 million surveillance cameras into a "police cloud" system, linked to national identity cards, making it possible that in the near future, everyone in China could be tracked anywhere. 

A model of this was demonstrated earlier this month when news reports emerged that new facial-recognition glasses are being used by police in train stations and airports across the country, tracking travelers ahead of the Lunar New Year.
Considering all of this, it's no surprise that China is already the world's biggest market for surveillance software and hardware, estimated by industry researcher IHS Markit at $6.4 billion in 2016, a figure expected to triple by 2020. 

China's tech giants Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent are also jumping in, investing heavily in surveillance technology to take advantage of this boom.
These companies are starting to sell some of these tools abroad as well. 

In Ecuador, a Chinese ECU911 Integrated Security Service system, the development of which was connected to the state-owned China National Electronics Import and Export Corporation, was deployed in 2016 and credited with a 24 percent drop in crime. 

A more worrisome case was uncovered by Human Rights Watch, which found evidence that the Ethiopian government was using telecom-surveillance technology provided by the Chinese telecom giant ZTE to monitor the political opposition, activists and journalists.
Other companies are following ZTE's path. 

Yitu Technology, an AI facial-recognition company, has already set up offices in several African countries and is looking to expand to Europe, where it sees potential due to recent terrorist attacks -- the same rationale initially used to expand the surveillance state in East Turkestan. 

These examples are few and not yet a sign that the East Turkestan model is having a big global impact, but even if the overseas market for Chinese surveillance technology remains limited for now, many observers think that could quickly change.
"Now that China is delving into this new technology realm and is repressing very successfully and effectively, it is by nature that other dictatorial regimes would try to emulate this," said Feldstein.
"I think we're on the threshold of this exploding," said Zenz. 

"China wants to become a world leader in AI, and that includes a lot of these security applications that are already earmarked for exporting."
While the technology itself is not necessarily harmful, the concern is that in the wrong hands, it could empower repressive governments around the world to further abuse human rights. 

And the number of these regimes is growing, as recently released reports from the Economist Intelligence Unitand Freedom House show that around the world, free speech and democracy are falling and censorship, authoritarianism and autocracy are rising.
"The Chinese government is leading on thinking around mass surveillance, and it has the impact of influencing other countries to think, 'Well, we could have an authoritarian government but look outwardly stable by putting in these systems to make sure that even if people are discontented, we can still keep them down by ensuring that every move is monitored,'" said Wang. 

"As this technology becomes cheaper, that reality might become more possible even for countries without massive resources like the Chinese government."
Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, East Turkestan

In East Turkestan, there are no signs that the massive buildup in both police presence and surveillance technology will recede anytime soon, despite the perceived success in limiting violence and protests thus far. 

If anything, it looks like things will get a lot worse. 

More and more Uyghurs, perhaps as many as 120,000, are being rounded up and sent to reeducation camps for minor offenses. 

Increasingly, any outward expression of religion or cultural expression is being seen as subversive, with even elderly intellectuals facing arrests, like the 82-year-old Islamic scholar Muhammad Salih Hajim, who died earlier this year in a reeducation camp. 

Now Uyghurs are also being forced to hand over DNA samples and put spyware on their phones. 

Meanwhile, spending on both technology and human-security presence is expected to rise even further.
"It is going to crazy heights and there are no sign of it abating ... quite to the contrary, the state officials are really into intelligent, big data processing, networking of information, storing all the information and linking it up, applying AI and predictive policing for it," said Zenz.
At least one facet of the East Turkestan model has gone global. 

Internet shutdowns, like what happened in East Turkestan in 2009, are now common around the world. 

Just this past year, there were widespread internet shutdowns in Indian-controlled Kashmir, the English-speaking region of Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya and more than 30 other countries. 

Often the causes are similar to what took place in East Turkestan -- ethnic tensions, riots or political events such as elections.
"It's an increase around the world," said Melody Patry, a spokesperson with Access Now. "Moreover, the phenomenon of repeat offenders is on the rise. ... When a government issues a first internet shutdown, they are more likely to issue others."
But China has moved on, and internet shutdowns are now rare. 

According to Access Now, there was only one documented shutdown in China in all of 2016. 

While uninformed observers could see this as a sign of progress, in actuality it shows that the next frontier of digital surveillance and state control is not blocking information access but harvesting it with a purpose.
"You don't need these blackout shutdowns anymore when you have much more fine-grained mechanisms of control ... that can very early on detect potential issues and problems, and in turn promote self-policing, self-censorship," said Zenz. 

"Because people know what consequences there are."
The shift in China is that the internet, which was initially seen as a threat due to its ability to allow users to access information, is now being perceived differently. 

What was back in 2009 blamed for the riots is now the source of information empowering the Chinese government to preemptively arrest and detain not only Uyghurs but also, increasingly, Chinese human rights lawyers, feminist activists and journalists around the country before they can post something inflammatory on a website or share sensitive content on WeChat.
"The internet ... has become a great source of information that can be intelligently processed at capacity and speed that was not possible 10 years ago," said Zenz. 

"What we see is a moving from a mere firewall that just blocks or an instant response, like the deletion of messages, to proactive self-censorship."
The global rise in shutdowns, which Access Now notes are getting more sophisticated and fine-tuned, shows that East Turkestan model has a market in an increasingly technological, authoritarian world. How quickly other countries follow China's move toward more total, personalized and data-driven control depends on both the need and the availability of the tools pioneered in East Turkestan on the global marketplace.

Tech Quisling

Reporters in China should close iCloud accounts to avoid surveillance, says press watchdog
By Shannon Liao

In light of Apple’s intentions to outsource Chinese iCloud operations to a firm with ties to the local government at the end of the month, French nonprofit Reporters Without Borders — otherwise known as Reporters Sans Frontières or RSF — is telling journalists to take security precautions.
The nonprofit said in a post on Monday that members of the media who have Apple iCloud accounts in China should either move or close their accounts before the deadline, or face “control of their data [passing] to the Chinese state.” 

iCloud operations in China will be taken over by Guizhou-Cloud Big Data (GCBD), which is supervised by a board run by government-owned businesses.
However, this is the second time RSF has recently expressed concern over Apple’s compliance with the Chinese government. 

In August, the organization commented on news that VPNs would be withdrawn from Apple’s Chinese App Store since the government considers them illegal. 

RSF has expressed a dark outlook on Apple’s partnership with GCBD, noting how Apple’s lawyers have added a clause in the Chinese terms that both Apple and GCBD may access all user data.