China

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/33309810

Archived

[Analysis by Nomura, a financial services group.]

• Some USD560 bn of China’s annual exports may need to find new markets, which can be disruptive to economies
• 45 countries that experienced large increases in their shares of imports from China are generally the ones that experienced the sharpest slowdowns in manufacturing growth and where evidence of disinflation was strongest
• This year, with a US-China trade war raging, the results illuminate just how exposed economies are to the flood of China imports turning into a deluge

With the US-China trade war in full force, many emerging economies, particularly those in Asia, are exposed to the flood of inexpensive Chinese imports turning into a deluge.

[...]

Statistics suggest that China’s highly competitive manufacturers, far from retreating, have penetrated new markets around the globe to make up for lost orders in the US. Local manufacturers in countries outside the US – from EVs in Germany and steel in Brazil to toys in Vietnam and electronics in India – have been facing increasing competition from goods imported from China.

Over 2017-24, China’s exports to the US grew by a cumulative 21% to US$524 billion, whereas China’s exports to the rest of the world grew three times as fast, by 67% to US$1.2 trillion. We estimate some US$100 billion of this was then re-exported to the US via Mexico and ASEAN, as a way for companies in China to circumvent US tariffs.

Against this backdrop, and using 2024 data, if we assume that all of China’s indirect exports to the US via Mexico and ASEAN (US$100 billion), half of China’s direct exports to the US (US$262 billion) and a smaller, one-quarter of China’s total exports to the EU, UK, Canada and Japan (US$198 billion) are at risk, then in aggregate some US$560 billion of China’s annual exports would need to find new markets.

A sudden flood of Chinese imports into emerging market economies can be very disruptive. Faced with growing cut-throat import competition, the likely initial response by local firms would be to cut prices to maintain market share, but at the cost of reduced profits. This can be good news for consumers but over time, as local firms accumulate financial losses, they would need to downsize, cut back on jobs and capex, and ultimately many may need to close down.

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Going forward, these economies might become more vulnerable to cut-throat competition from China. The drum beat of anecdotes of this China shock is growing louder.

Archived

China Mobilizes Museums for Propaganda: Museum directors are told they should focus on documenting that “border regions” such as Tibet and Xinjiang were always Chinese

Now, museums are also mobilized for Chinese propaganda. The [Chinese Communist Party] CCP’s primary interest is telling what Xi Jinping calls the “China story” and emphasizing that “border regions” such as Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, or Tibet were “always part of China.”

Pan Yue, director of the National Ethnic Affairs Commission, presided in Beijing on April 16 at the First National Training Session for Museum Directors. Museums, he said, should counter “incorrect historical interpretations,” including those that “attempt to position the Central Plains against border regions, the Han against non-Han groups, and Han culture against those of ethnic minorities.”

Each cultural artifact and historical account should be framed within “the overall development of the Chinese nation,” according to Pan, who emphasized that the country’s representation should be “diverse yet unified.” Pan also mentioned Xi Jinping’s thought on archeology, highlighting the alleged ancestral unity of Chinese culture within the present borders of the People’s Republic. Xi also believes that the earliest Chinese populations practiced a form of communism.

The training session was especially focused on Tibet and Xinjiang, which museums should (falsely) present as part of China from ancient times.

Pan visited Xinjiang in 2024, lecturing on Western and Uyghur critics’ “ignorance of history” and insisting that “a large amount of archaeological evidence tells us that Xinjiang has been an important part of the Chinese cultural sphere since ancient times.”

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/33304290

• Three European funding groups say no new funding with Chinese agency since 2021
• Funders concerned about risks from China's Data Security Law
• U.S., Britain also concerned about way law could affect collaboration
• Funding suspension could hamper research into global health issues

Several of Europe’s biggest funders of scientific collaboration with China, in fields such as viruses and air quality, have put bilateral research programmes on hold due to concerns over Chinese data protection laws, funding agencies said.

The suspension, which Reuters is reporting for the first time following queries to the agencies on funding, highlights the widening impact of a Chinese data protection law that has already impeded some business projects, as international institutions and companies assess how to navigate the regulations.

[...]

While many countries require various protections and privacy safeguards for research involving their citizens, one of China’s most recent laws – known as the Data Security Law – makes it illegal to share any "important data" with overseas partners without approval.

Three European funding agencies - the German Research Foundation, Swedish Research Council and Swiss National Science Foundation - told Reuters that they had not offered new co-funding for projects with the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) since 2021, the year the law took effect.

They said they would not jointly fund new research projects with the NSFC due to concerns over access to data, potential conflict with local data law, or legal liabilities for themselves or research institutes for breaches of the law's vaguely-defined provisions.

[...]

"It is not clear what the definition of 'important data' is," the Swiss National Science Foundation told Reuters. "It is therefore difficult for the Swiss research community to assess when and under what circumstances a research collaboration could be subject to sanctions or even penalties."

China had defined "important data" as data that poses a threat to national and economic interests or affects the rights of individuals or organisations, and has not provided further details.

A dataset classified as "important data" means "it will be extremely difficult (if not virtually impossible) to export these data from China to another country," the German Research Foundation [said].

[...]

The suspension could potentially delay research in the health sector - one area of joint collaboration funders had previously supported - at the same time as the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump moves to freeze billions of dollars in U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, cut 1,200 of that agency's staff and withdraw from the World Health Organization.

[...]

"The concerns about how the data laws are being applied exist, and are very real," said Jan Palmowski, secretary-general of the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities.

"We saw that responding to the COVID pandemic effectively required global sharing of data on a massive scale; but we have also seen national sensitivities around data relating to the origin of COVID," Palmowski added. "If we want to be agile in responding to future pandemics and address other key health challenges, we need to find ways to share data responsibly, safely, and according to common ethical rules."

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/33294557

Archived

In February 2025, a London neighborhood council and the London Metropolitan Police withdrew their opposition to the Chinese government’s plans to construct a huge “super embassy” on the grounds of the old Royal Mint, only days after thousands of people had participated in a protest against the project. Embassies and consulates are meant to provide useful services to citizens from the home country and promote comity and understanding between nations. However, the London authorities’ about-face in favor of construction of the 5.5-acre Chinese facility has sparked fears among United Kingdom residents from China—some of whom are the targets of bounties imposed by Beijing—that it could be used to enable acts of transnational repression. Their worries are not unfounded, especially considering the involvement of Chinese consul-general Zheng Xiyuan in the beating of a protester at the Manchester consulate in 2022. [...]

The Chinese government is just one of many authoritarian regimes that have employed diplomatic staff at embassies and consulates to spy on diaspora communities, threaten and harm exiled dissidents, and selectively deny them access to crucial services.

Watchful eyes

It is unsurprising that governments known for repressing citizens at home would use their diplomatic outposts to engage in similar efforts to silence dissent abroad, in contravention of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. One common transnational repression tactic made possible by these missions is the close monitoring of opposition movements. Throughout 2011, for example, Syrian and Libyan embassy officials tracked the participation of Syrian and Libyan nationals at Arab Spring rallies in the United States and Britain. They later shared this intelligence with officials back home, who put pressure on family members of the diaspora residents to rein in their activism overseas.

[...]

Physical attacks and abductions

Diplomats and their associates may go beyond surveillance and interference, engaging in plots to physically harm or forcibly repatriate dissidents living abroad. The grisly murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018 is arguably the most infamous example of this practice.

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Access denied

In addition to carrying out espionage and physical intimidation, embassy and consulate staff representing authoritarian regimes often withhold access to key services and documents. As Freedom House has previously reported, the governments of at least 12 countries have denied consular services to their nationals abroad for political reasons. The diplomatic missions in question arbitrarily refuse to extend passports, certify birth or marriage certificates, or provide identity documents, leaving people trapped in limbo.

[...]

While acknowledging the legitimate role played by embassies and consulates in assisting their nationals and strengthening relationships between governments, the authorities in host countries must make it clear that transnational repression is not a diplomatic privilege.

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Canada and the Netherlands have expelled Eritrean diplomats for imposing the diaspora tax on local Eritreans. Similarly, in 2024, the Canadian government banished six Indian diplomats for collecting information on alleged Sikh separatists in Canada.

As the British government nears a decision on the Chinese “super embassy” this summer, it should uphold its obligation to prioritize the safety and human rights of diaspora members and send a clear signal that no embassy in the United Kingdom will be allowed to serve as a hub for transnational repression.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/33238850

BASF said in a statement it had completed the sale of its shares in Markor Chemical Manufacturing and Markor Meiou Chemical to the Singaporean group Verde Chemical.

The German group gave no financial details of the transaction, which was completed on Monday "following approval by the relevant authorities".

BASF had said in February 2024 it would accelerate its divestment from the joint ventures which manufacture the industrial chemical butanediol.

Plans to sell the shares had already been announced by BASF in 2023 in response to commercial and environmental concerns.

German public broadcaster ZDF and news magazine Der Spiegel had reported that staff of BASF's partner firm Markor were involved in rights abuses against members of the mostly Muslim Uyghur minority.

Employees were alleged to have spied on Uyghur families and filed reports with Chinese authorities.

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In a case that has drawn international attention, renowned Chinese human rights lawyer Lu Siwei was sentenced to 11 months in prison following a closed tribunal in Chengdu, Sichuan province. Lu, charged with 'illegally crossing the border,' was initially detained in Laos while attempting to join his family in the United States, despite having legal travel documents.

Lu, a prominent figure known for defending clients in politically sensitive cases, has faced relentless state scrutiny. Despite securing temporary release in 2023 after being extradited back to China, he was re-arrested in 2024 as authorities pursued border-crossing allegations. His ongoing legal battles have spotlighted Beijing's expanded reach in transnational repression, igniting calls for international human rights advocacy.

During his recent trial, which barred public access, Lu's defense argued for a reduced sentence based on time served, including his Lao detention. The appeal was dismissed, and he was fined 10,000 yuan. Lu's imprisonment, estimated to extend until mid-2024, signals increasing crackdowns on dissenters against the backdrop of closed legal proceedings and intimidation of supporters.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/33196889

Archived

Kyiv has presented Beijing with evidence that Chinese citizens and companies have participated in Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine, the Foreign Ministry reported on April 22.

The report comes less than a week after President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that China is supplying weapons to the Russian military.

"I think we will be able to say in detail next week that we believe that Chinese representatives are engaged in the production of some weapons on the territory of Russia," Zelensky said on April 17.

During a meeting with Chinese Ambassador to Ukraine Ma Shengkun, Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgen Perebyinis shared evidence that Chinese citizens and companies are involved in the war in Ukraine.

The ministry cited the participation of Chinese nationals in combat in Ukraine alongside Russian troops and Chinese businesses' role in producing military equipment for Russia.

These matters "are of serious concern and contradict the spirit of partnership between Ukraine and the People's Republic of China," the ministry said.

Ukrainian special services shared evidence of allegations with the Chinese, the Foreign Ministry reported.

Perebyinis also called for China to "take measures to stop supporting Russia" in its aggression against Ukraine, and assured that Ukraine "values ​​its strategic partnership with China and expects that China will refrain from taking steps that could hinder bilateral relations."

[...]

Although China has officially claimed neutrality with regard to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Beijing has deepened economic ties with Moscow, supported Russia against Western sanctions, and emerged as a top supplier of dual-use goods that feed the Russian defense sector.

Earlier this month, Ukraine captured two Chinese citizens fighting for Russia in Donetsk Oblast. President Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed that "several hundred" Chinese nationals are fighting on Russia's side in the war.

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Online dissent is a serious crime in China. So why did a Weibo censor help me publish posts critical of the Communist party?

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The Cyberspace Administration of China is the premier censorship agency in China. The newly appointed boss, Lu Wei, popularly known as the “internet tsar”, begins to implement a series of severe purges of online speech. Countless accounts are cancelled, and many people are thrown behind bars for what they wrote online. But that’s just guesswork. In China, there’s no need for a good reason to block someone’s account. A powerful government agency can simply issue an order to make a person disappear from public life.

[...]

After three years as a censor, Liu [Lipeng] detests his job. He detests the white office ceiling, the grey industrial carpet and the office that feels more like a factory. He also detests his 200-odd colleagues sitting in their cubicles, each concentrating on their mouse and keyboard as they delete or hide content.

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One day, Liu sends me a direct message on X. He is excessively polite. He writes: “Mr Murong, please forgive me for presumptuously disturbing you,” before asking whether I remember the email sent via Yu Dayou with the two screenshots. My heart is pounding. I say: “Yes, I remember that. I wondered who sent that email. I am most grateful.”

We have a long phone call like long-lost friends. We describe everything we have done since leaving China. He says: “I wish to testify that although I was a Weibo censor, I am not a bad person.”

[...]

Think you've found a great deal on TikTok to buy Lululemon or Louis Vuitton directly from the factory? Experts say you might want to think again about how real the claims in that video are.

In recent days, social media users claiming to have an inside scoop on how and where luxury brands are really made have begun popping up online, especially on TikTok.

In the videos, users claim to be Chinese manufacturers, or say they have friends in high positions at factories that make luxury goods. They go on to say that brands like Louis Vuitton, Lululemon, Hermes and more make their products in China, and claim the items are made for much less than they're sold for.

Some of the videos also offer links or website names that they say users can go to in order to purchase versions of their favourite products of the same quality but for a fraction of the price.

Other accounts, like @lunasourcingchina which shared a very popular video claiming that Lululemon products could be bought directly from Chinese factories for $5 or $6, have since disappeared from TikTok, though accounts with nearly identical usernames and content styles do remain up.

Inga Trauthig, a research professor studying cybersecurity at Florida State University, says many of the videos repeat specific messages — like the claim that China has the best supply chains —and this raises red flags.

[...]

It would be impossible to tell whether or not these videos are actually being made by real Chinese manufacturers or if they might be part of a Chinese state-run campaign without further research, Trauthig says — especially given the trade war would incentivize both the government and business owners to make videos like this that promote manufacturing within the country.

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Trauthig cautions against ordering from any of these sites, as consumers should be wary of the kind of personal data and credit card information they'd be passing over in doing so.

"One thing we also know from our research in the online space is the political and the economic often overlap," she said. "So there might be people piggybacking on [the trade war], knowing this is a political trending topic, but they actually are just there to defraud some American consumers."

[...]

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2527523

Archived version

China’s foothold in Europe’s energy sector is no longer viewed through a purely commercial lens. What once seemed like standard foreign investment has evolved into a strategic liability, one that touches the core of Europe’s security architecture. As policymakers take stock, a clearer pattern is emerging: control over the flow of electricity is not just about energy, but about leverage in moments of geopolitical strain [...]

Energy networks, like telecommunications, serve as critical infrastructure not because of what they produce, but because of what they enable. A blackout in the wrong place at the wrong time—whether accidental or engineered—could paralyze civil and military readiness alike. European leaders once worried about reliance on Russian gas; today, they face a parallel concern that power infrastructure could be shaped by actors with competing strategic objectives. The 21st-century battlefield includes cables, substations, and data streams, and in that arena, grid ownership is influence [...]

Europe’s energy sector is no longer an open playing field for Chinese investments. After years of welcoming Chinese capital with few questions asked, policymakers are increasingly treating ownership of critical infrastructure as a national security issue. What began as overdue scrutiny has evolved into a broader recalibration: strategic control is no longer seen as a neutral investment—it’s a risk vector. The shift hasn’t been loud, but it’s gaining traction, one policy tool at a time [...]

Europe’s Energy Awakening is Just the Beginning

The Chinese playbook in Europe’s energy sector mirrors its approach in telecommunications investments: acquire stakes, embed influence, and shape strategic terrain through economic means. These moves have not been purely extractive. At times, Chinese capital has kept utilities afloat and helped launch high-cost infrastructure. But the net effect is a deeper tension between economic interdependence and strategic autonomy.

European governments are now responding with greater caution. The open-door era has given way to a more selective posture, grounded in the recognition that control over energy infrastructure is about more than electrons, it’s about leverage. This evolution, though uneven across the continent, reflects growing convergence with U.S. concerns about China’s use of critical infrastructure as a foreign policy tool.

The European experience offers a warning and a blueprint: when strategic sectors are treated as market commodities, influence follows ownership. The case for screening foreign investments and asserting national control over core systems is no longer theoretical, it’s operational. And as NATO allies and EU members ramp up efforts to secure supply chains and guard against coercive dependencies, China’s tactics will remain a persistent variable.

Beijing, for its part, is unlikely to retreat. Chinese firms are likely to recalibrate, favoring joint ventures, minority stakes, or sectors less likely to trigger scrutiny, but the underlying objective remains unchanged: long-term access, embedded presence, and influence without confrontation.

This emerging pushback is not a blanket rejection of Chinese capital. But it is a statement of limits. Strategic assets are no longer up for silent auction, and Western nations are showing signs of protecting what matters most. Europe’s course correction in its energy sector may prove to be more than reactive; it may be the early test case for how the West manages the expanding Chinese investments across every domain where control and criticality intersect.

[Edit typo.]

A campaign started in 2018 by Safeguard Defenders, a human rights organization focused on China, revealed how the Chinese police use threats and fear to coerce scripted confessions for television. In 2021, it led to a ban on broadcasts of the international arms of China’s state TV (CGTN and CCTV-4) in several countries, including the UK, Australia and a number of European nations.

After 2020 China's forced televised confessions of foreigners ceased, except for those of Taiwanese citizens.

But now, it appears they’re back at it again.

[...]

On April 3, domestic channel CCTV-13 and the international Chinese-language channel CCTV-4 broadcast the forced confessions of three Filipino expats living in China.

The two young men and one young woman are accused of espionage, something which the Philippine government vehemently denies.

The CCTV-4 broadcast (which includes one of the confessions) was aired internationally, including in Canada, where our long-term regulatory complaint on the use of such forced televised confessions remains pending before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). The renewed airing of forced confessions, abusive and harmful content, is yet another clear violation of the terms and conditions of CCTV-4’s continued broadcasting license in Canada.

Now, Filipino authorities and TV providers face the same issue, as the illegal forced televised confessions of their compatriots were broadcast on their own soil.

[...]

CCTV-4 is broadcast in the Philippines through SKY Cable Corporation. In its public values statement, the pay television and broadband arm of ABS-CBN highlights its commitment to “serving the Filipino”. It claims to uphold a customer service that drives the company “to treat Filipinos as our Kapamilyas (e.g. ‘family’) whose interest is put above all”.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/33121732

Archived

Chinese nationals have been increasingly attempting to smuggle military equipment and dual-use goods out of Russia, often using international postal services, Russian state-controlled media Izvestia reported on April 21, citing undisclosed sources.

The incidents reportedly concern body armor, tactical gear, and other military apparel that are then studied and replicated using cheaper materials before being resold abroad.

The news comes as China becomes increasingly involved in the Russian war against Ukraine. While Beijing officially denies supplying arms to Moscow, it has become a major supplier of dual-use goods since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said on April 17 that Chinese exports to Russia also include weapons, making the accusation only days after saying that hundreds of Chinese nationals fight against Ukraine in the Russian military. China has denied any involvement in the war.

[...]

The Russian news outlet reported that incidents of Chinese citizens attempting to smuggle Russian military-related goods have increased since 2022. In one of the first known cases, a Chinese national was convicted in the fall of that year for attempting to export sensitive sensors and sentenced to three years in a penal colony.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/33125526

Archived

The key motions of the resolution are the following:

• Noting that China commits human rights violations on a frequent basis and in particular, religious and ethnic minorities (such as Uyghurs, Tibetans, Mongols and others), are subjected to discrimination, harassment, criminalisation, re-education and imprisonment.
• Calls on the Cabinet to push for an EU Special Representative for Tibet and a joint EU-Tibet strategy, along the lines of the US “Resolve Tibet Act” and to inform the Chamber about this prior to the planned EU-China Summit.
• Noting that the Dalai Lama will celebrate his 90th birthday this year which has sparked conversation about his successor as head of the Tibetan Buddhism; whereas there are concerns among Tibetans and the Tibetan government-in-exile about the interference by the Chinese Communist Party in the appointment of a successor; believing that interference in Tibetans’ customs regarding their spiritual leader is undesirable; Speaks out that the Chinese Communist Party should not have a voice in the Dalai Lama’s succession; Requests the cabinet to express this signal in bilateral and multilateral forums.

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Packed with stats, well-written, pretty convincing.

PS: at the very least it may redress (by about 1%) the relentless stream of negative downer news posted by a certain other member of this community.

Honest question to mindless downvoters: what do YOU think this community is for? Is it for "Genuine news and discussion about China" (as it claims to be)? Or is it just to provide a daily quota of stories (almost all posted by one person) about oppression, environmental destruction, repressed Uighurs, suffering Tibetans, dangerous AI, perfidious spying, more Uighurs, more Tibetans, more oppression, and so on and on? Do you really think that there is literally nothing positive (or even neutral) to say about this country of 1.4 billion people? Have you even been to China? Did you even READ this article? (silly question). And what is the point of a "discussion" community monopolized by a single member who seems to have the same understanding of "discussion" as the editor of the Global Times?

So many questions, but I remain genuinely mystified.

But it now occurs to me that almost nobody is even reading this. People are not even clicking on the post before downvoting, let alone the article. A sad reflection of the state of social media.

Archived

Here is the original report, It Does Matter Where You Stay: International Hotel Chains in East Turkistan.

Key takeaways:

• Five international hotel chains—Accor, Hilton, InterContinental (IHG), Marriott, and Wyndham—currently operate in the Uyghur Region amidst ongoing crimes against humanity and genocide.

• International hotel chains have significantly expanded their presence in the Uyghur Region, with at least 115 hotels operational as of April 2025. At least another 74 hotels are in various stages of planning or construction from Accor, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Marriott, Minor Hotels, and Wyndham. A total of 189 hotels from international chains are either open, or are planned to open, in the Uyghur Region.

• Three international hotel chains—Hilton, IHG, and Wyndham—are located in areas administered by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) (新疆生产建设兵团), an entity under targeted sanctions by the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, for its grave and systematic human rights violations.

• Hilton, through a franchisee, built a Hampton by Hilton hotel on the site of a demolished mosque in Khotan, following an extensive government campaign that left more than 10,000 mosques destroyed throughout the region. Despite international scrutiny, including an inquiry from the US Congress in 2021, the hotel opened for visitors in 2024.

• Accor has been exposed to Uyghur forced labor in two ways: (1) through a franchisee’s participation in a “labor transfer” program called the Hundred Project (百名工程); and (2) through its strategic partner in China, H World Group Limited (华住酒店集团), which has benefitted from “Xinjiang Aid” (对口援疆) programs, identified by experts as a high-risk indicator of Uyghur forced labor.

• Ownership structures and management partnerships between international hotel chains and Chinese companies link international chains to state-owned companies, creating ties that financially benefit and advance the interests of a government responsible for crimes against humanity.

• Hilton Hotels in the Uyghur Region host state propaganda events and promote tourism sites that erase a non-state version of Uyghur culture and history.

• International hotel chains’ operations in the Uyghur Region may be in violation international standards, including the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct, and the International Labour Organization’s Forced Labour Convention (C29) and Abolition of Forced Labour Convention (C105).

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/32890522

• Ukraine president says China providing artillery and gunpowder
• Zelenskiy also says Beijing helping make weapons in Russia
• Beijing accused of direct military aid for Russia for first time
• Russia waging a more than three-year-old invasion of Ukraine

Archived

“If [the] government goes to the bank with a list of 100 Uyghur names and says, you know, ‘give me the bank balance for these people [and] how much money they have.’ The bank will print it out and hand it over to the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]. Then, they shut down the bank accounts, freeze their assets, and they take their properties,” she said.

Archived

A Chinese state-owned company that was previously sanctioned by the U.S. for facilitating human rights abuses against Uyghurs is now training police officers in Tibet on hacking techniques and digital forensics, according to a watchdog organization.

SDIC Intelligence Xiamen Information Co Ltd, a digital forensics company better known as Meiya Pico, won a contract in mid-2023 to build two labs at the Tibet Police College: one on offensive and defensive cyber techniques and the other on electronic evidence collection and analysis. Details of the approximately $1.32 million contract were analyzed and released on Wednesday by Turquoise Roof, a research network focused on Tibet.

The contracts include “servers for the cyber range, network switches, intrusion simulation software, forensic workstations and] evidence storage systems,” the researchers said.

Founded in 1999 as an independent company, Meiya Pico is now state-owned, and as of 2019 it reportedly had a 45% market share of China’s digital forensics market. Its products have raised controversy globally for their invasiveness, including a spyware app called MFSocket that police have allegedly installed on phones throughout the country during inspections of smartphones.

[...]

According to the company, it has conducted training courses in 30 countries as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

[...]

Archived

[...]

In one [Tiktok] video that has nearly 10 million views, a creator claims to be able to sell yoga pants from the same manufacturer that supplies Lululemon for $5-$6, instead of the $100 they sell for in the United States.

“The material and the craftsmanship are basically the same because they come from the same production line,” she says, standing in front of what appears to be a factory.

In another, a man standing on a factory floor claims to have access to manufacturers that produce Louis Vuitton bags, which he says can be sold directly to customers for $50.

But both companies deny their products are finished in China, and experts told The Independent the videos are likely an effort by counterfeit or “dupe” manufacturers to take advantage of the chaos over the tariffs to boost their sales.

“They're trying to conflate the fake manufacturers in China with the real manufacturers,” said Conrad Quilty-Harper, author of Dark Luxury, a newsletter about the luxury goods industry.

“They're very clever with their social media, and they’re very effective at driving demand in the West,” he added.

[...]

Louis Vuitton has said repeatedly that it does not manufacture products in China.

[...]

TikTok users have reported seeing the videos appear in their feeds in recent days as the trade war between the U.S. and China continues to heat up.

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The counterfeit market in China is the largest in the world. U.S. Customs seized counterfeit items worth some $1.8 billion in recommended retail price in 2023.

Quilty-Harper said the counterfeit industry in China has been a concern for Western companies for years. And the enforcement of trademark and intellectual property rights internally has tended to depend on the geopolitical climate.

“In the past, the Chinese authorities have been stricter on it, and sometimes they've been looser on it, and often that's to do with the relationship with the US and previous presidents,” he said.

“This is part of a huge geopolitical battle between America and China over intellectual property. And it's just fascinating to see this sort of propaganda fight happening on these very high-traffic TikTok videos,” he added.

[This is an op-ed by Valentin Weber, senior research fellow with the German Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of the International Forum for Democratic Studies report “Data-Centric Authoritarianism: How China’s Development of Frontier Technologies Could Globalize Repression.” His research covers the intersection of cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and technological spheres of influence.]

[...]

While the financial, economic, technological, and national-security implications of DeepSeek’s achievement have been widely covered, there has been little discussion of its significance for authoritarian governance. DeepSeek has massive potential to enhance China’s already pervasive surveillance state, and it will bring the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) closer than ever to its goal of possessing an automated, autonomous, and scientific tool for repressing its people.

[...]

With the world’s largest public AI-surveillance networks — “smart cities” — Chinese police started to amass vast amounts of data. But some Chinese experts lamented that smart cities were not actually that smart: They could track and find pedestrians and vehicles but could not offer concrete guidance to authorities — such as providing police officers with different options for handling specific situations.

[...]

China’s surveillance-industrial complex took a big leap in the mid-2010s. Now, AI-powered surveillance networks could do more than help the CCP to track the whereabouts of citizens (the chess pawns). It could also suggest to the party which moves to make, which figures to use, and what strategies to take.

[...]

Inside China, such a network of large-scale AGI [Artificial General Intelligence] systems could autonomously improve repression in real time, rooting out the possibility of civic action in urban metropolises. Outside the country, if cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — where China first exported Alibaba’s City Brain system in 2018 — were either run by a Chinese-developed city brain that had reached AGI or plugged into a Chinese city-brain network, they would quietly lose their governance autonomy to these highly complex systems that were devised to achieve CCP urban-governance goals.

[...]

As China’s surveillance state begins its third evolution, the technology is beginning to shift from merely providing decision-making support to actually acting on the CCP’s behalf.

[...]

The next step in the evolution of China’s surveillance state will be to integrate generative-AI models like DeepSeek into urban surveillance infrastructures. Lenovo, a Hong Kong corporation with headquarters in Beijing, is already rolling out programs that fuse LLMs with public-surveillance systems. In [the Spanish city of] Barcelona, the company is administering its Visual Insights Network for AI (VINA), which allows law enforcement and city-management personnel to search and summarize large amounts of video footage instantaneously.

[...]

The CCP, with its vast access to the data of China-based companies, could use DeepSeek to enforce laws and intimidate adversaries in myriad ways — for example, deploying AI police agents to cancel a Lunar New Year holiday trip planned by someone required by the state to stay within a geofenced area; or telephoning activists after a protest to warn of the consequences of joining future demonstrations. It could also save police officers’ time. Rather than issuing “invitations to tea” (a euphemism for questioning), AI agents could conduct phone interviews and analyze suspects’ voices and emotional cues for signs of repentance. Police operators would, however, still need to confirm any action taken by AI agents.

[...]

DeepSeek and similar generative-AI tools make surveillance technology smarter and cheaper. This will likely allow the CCP to stay in power longer, and propel the export of Chinese AI surveillance systems across the world — to the detriment of global freedom.

[Edit typo.]

Archived

[...]

Factories across China at the low-end of manufacturing are facing the same dilemma — either they invest in automation that shrinks the number of jobs, or they slowly wither away.

The result, in the view of researchers and economists, is a painful shift away from low-cost, labour-intensive production that could leave millions of older, lower skilled workers in the lurch.

Analysis of 12 labour-intensive manufacturing industries between 2011 and 2019 by academics at Changzhou University, Yancheng Teachers University and Henan University found that average employment shrank by roughly 14 per cent, or nearly 4mn roles, between 2011 and 2019. Roles in the textile industry shrank 40 per cent over the period.

[...]

“China exploited its comparative advantage over recent decades in terms of having an abundant labour force . . . and it really became the dominant manufacturer globally of labour intensive goods,” says Frederic Neumann, chief Asia economist at HSBC. “That game is now up.”

In many ways, Beijing risks experiencing the same “China shock” that it imposed on advanced manufacturing nations after its entry to the World Trade Organization in the early 2000s, when orders migrated en masse from more expensive hubs to the cheap and efficient factories of Guangdong and other provinces. Now, the cheaper factories are in countries like Vietnam and Indonesia where exports have surged.

[...]

Analysts say production in high-tech export industries will be less labour-intensive, and will not provide enough new opportunities to soak up the excess labour on its own. “You’re not going to employ as many people by definition,” Neumann says.

They also doubt that manufacturing alone can deliver China’s growth targets, which political leaders set at “around 5 per cent” for the third year running in 2025.

A rise in localised unemployment risks further denting economic prospects and creating social strains that policymakers, used to decades of breakneck growth, are unfamiliar with.

[...]

China shares of the export of 10 labour-intensive products — including home fixtures, furniture, luggage, toys and others — peaked at nearly 40 per cent in 2013, according to figures compiled by Hanson at Harvard Kennedy School.

Hanson’s figures show that China’s share of the combined 10 goods had fallen to less than 32 per cent by 2018. Tariffs put in place by the US that year have since accelerated the process, he says.

Even items requiring more advanced processes are not immune. Amid tensions with the US, global and local companies have accelerated their efforts to “de-risk” their supply chains and decrease Chinese production of everything from iPhones to car parts in recent years.

[...]

“This eventually leads to serious social problems, such as higher rates of unemployment and increased crime and social unrest. Nations with socially polarised work forces also suffer from political instability," [Dorien Emmers and Scott Rozelle, academics at KU Leuven and Stanford wrote in a paper].

It is an open question how these trends apply to a one-party state like China.

Despite tight social controls, small-scale labour protests — generally confined to disputes and collective action between workers and their employers — are fairly regular across China.

And while the country’s tight control over information related to such events makes them hard to track, the China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based NGO, has noticed a marked increase in recent years.

The CLB recorded 452 protests in the manufacturing sector in last year, the highest in almost a decade, driven by factory closures, relocations and wage arrears. That followed a tenfold increase in manufacturing strikes and protest actions the year before.

[...]

During the journalist’s visit [of a Chinese factory], it was less than 20 per cent full, with small groups of workers idling in the nearby bleachers, or chatting among themselves by the entrance.

“It’s no good,” says one older prospective labourer, before being hastily spirited away from a foreign reporter by a wary security guard. “[Nowadays] you can’t even earn Rmb100 in a day.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/32794436

"José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, an old friend of the Chinese people, has played a prominent role in politics, both in Spain and internationally. During his administration, he actively promoted structural adjustment and internal reform, improving Spain's competitiveness in the global economic landscape." This was the introduction made by officials from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the city of Guiyang, in the south of the Asian giant, when the former Spanish president visited them at the end of last year to participate in a symposium. Zapatero praised the successful policies of the Chinese government to improve the lives of its people, such as those that had lifted half a million people out of poverty in record time in the region where he was.

[...]

"Without holding an official position or having a fixed headquarters in Beijing, he [Zapatero] is being the best ambassador Spain has ever had in this country, in terms of strengthening ties and successfully mediating for Spanish commercial interests," says a Spanish diplomatic source. A representative from the EU office in Beijing adds important nuances: "For almost all European countries, especially in these times of trade wars, it is essential to have China as a stable trading partner. But there are countries that are more aware than others of the risks of getting too close to Beijing. No matter how attractive its packaging may be, we must not forget that we are dealing with a dictatorship. And we cannot promote alliances with dictatorships. Therefore, it is unsettling that a figure like Zapatero, who is very influential in the Spanish government, is behaving like an activist on his many trips to China."

The consulted Spanish diplomatic sources are clear that Zapatero's frequent walks in the Asian superpower have been key for Pedro Sánchez to return to Beijing this Friday for the third time in two years. Since the pandemic, no EU leader has visited the Asian giant as many times.

[...]

The former Spanish leader held meetings with high-ranking CCP officials and acted as a liaison between Spanish companies and Chinese state-owned firms like China Energy, a conglomerate that has invested in several renewable energy projects in Spain.

It is no secret the lobbying that Zapatero does in China through the Gate Center think tank, where he serves as chairman of the advisory board, and the ONUART Foundation, based in Barcelona, where he acts as chairman of the advisory board. Both organizations, linked to Chinese entrepreneurs close to Beijing, promote Chinese projects under the umbrella of the new Silk Road, especially in Latin America.

Archived

In his speech, [Chinese leader Xi Jinping] highlighted the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) cooperation [with Asian countries], and touted ideas of building high-level connectivity networks, enhancing industrial cooperation, advancing security and law enforcement cooperation, and expanding people-to-people exchanges. China is likely to sign a number of agreements as it seeks to deepen ‘all-around cooperation’ with the three Southeast Asian nations. These are likely to include ongoing attention to digital infrastructure, technology, and governance norms-setting under digital cooperation – and risk further entrenching digital repression in the region.

[...]

Vietnam

Vietnam is emblematic of a digital authoritarian state learning from China’s digital governance norms.

[...]

there is a great degree of similarity between the two laws, pointing to China’s influence over the development of Vietnam’s digital governance. Both laws define cybersecurity in a manner that diverges from conventional, rights-based approach, conflating technical infrastructure security with information control — resulting in enhanced censorship. Both laws also take a centralised approach to critical information infrastructure and promote centralised censorship of information critical of the regime. They require data localisation, raising serious risks of surveillance, and include a number of concerning obligations on foreign tech companies. Both laws also promote real name registration, which further compromises right to privacy and anonymity protections, adversely impacting freedom of expression online. Finally, Vietnam’s approach to cybersecurity models China’s emphasis on individual and tech companies’ requirements to act as surveillance extensions of the Party-State apparatus. Subsequent decrees in Vietnam have positioned the law even closer to its Chinese predecessor.

[...]

Cambodia

In early 2022, Cambodia launched its Cambodian Digital Government Policy 2022– 2035, which referred to China as a positive case study in successful digital government, raising concerns about internet freedom in the country. We are likely to see further tightening of this relationship through additional cooperation agreements and memoranda of understanding.

The starkest example of China’s malicious influence over Cambodia’s digital infrastructure and governance space is in the National Internet Gateway (NIG). In February 2021 Cambodia enacted the NIG Sub-Decree, establishing the country’s version of the Great Firewall of China. Article 6 of the Sub-Decree requires telecommunications companies and service providers to route internet traffic through government-controlled and monitored servers ‘to prevent and disconnect all network connections that affect national income, security, social order, morality, culture, traditions, and customs’. Articles 14 and 16 allow government officials to retain traffic data for a year and issue overbroad penalties for non-compliance. Sopheap Chak, former executive director of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, has observed that ‘the proposed NIG mirrors that of the Chinese internet gateway’.

[...]

Malaysia

Malaysia is home to the second-largest Chinese overseas community in the world, after Thailand. It is also among the top 10 global recipients of BRI support; relations with China and digital cooperation are common elements of Malaysian politics. [...]

One area where cooperation between China and Malaysia has raised human rights concerns is around partnerships on high-risk Chinese surveillance and artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, last year ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, promised to invest some USD 2,13 billion to develop an AI hub in Malaysia.

[...]

One of the stated objectives outlined the recent Central Work Conference on Diplomacy with Neighbouring Countries has been to expand law enforcement cooperation. This is likely to be among the priorities of Xi Jinping’s trip, and we should expect further discussion on these points in Malaysia. Cooperation on expanding partnership in new and emerging technologies, especially around AI, are likely to also be a focus of the upcoming delegation, as China seeks to both elevate its global norms setting role and further dislodge the United States as a leader in AI technology.

Chinese president Xi Jinping has declared a monopoly on narratives not only about today's China but also about its ancient and more recent past. In that process, any diverging narrative or piece of historical testimony that could contradict the grand official narrative is erased and censored. Yet, historical memory has managed to survive in Chinese society to this day.

[...]

Born in Montréal, [China historian Ian] Johnson Johnson, as he explains, was exposed to the value of multilingualism and eventually moved to the US, where he got his first job in journalism. He has lived mostly in Taiwan, Germany, and China. He describes his role as “trying to describe people’s lives by observing them closely and letting them speak as much as possible.” He launched The China Unofficial Archives, in Chinese 中国民间档案馆, as a US-registered non-profit in late 2023.

Question: Chinese authorities, from ancient times to today’s market-economy Communism have always paid special attention to history to justify their legitimacy and power. As a result, alternative or dissenting voices and materials have been regularly eliminated from mainstream public space. Is this why you decided to highlight censored content in your online archive? What are you hoping to achieve?

Ian Johnson: We want to make available to the general public the amazing outpouring of independent work that Chinese people inside China had done about their country’s history over the 75-year history of the People’s Republic. This includes books, magazines, blog posts, and documentary films, almost all of them banned inside China. We also have what we believe is the most comprehensive online database of independent Chinese thinkers. Our goal is non-ideological — we don’t endorse any particular item or person but try to present them with a neutral description in Chinese and English [...] Our target audience is people living inside China, who don’t have access to these works, but also we want to give people who can’t understand Chinese a sense of the works and the people who are involved in this movement.

[...]

Our single most important criterion is that our staff believes that the works are important — not that we endorse they but that they have proven to be important to Chinese people trying to understand their history. So this includes classic samizdat-style publications from the 1950s or ’60s all the way up to censored blogposts from the White Paper protests of 2022.

[...]

We lack holdings on many things including China’s ethnic minorities, gender issues, and current events [meaning the collection is not complete ...]. We’re now filling in those holes, for example with material on the COVID-19 outbreak or feminism, but it’s a huge task and we rely on readers to point out important work to us, as well as our board of advisors.

[...]

One of the great myths about today’s China is that independent thought has been crushed. It definitely is less lively than in the 2000s, [...] and it is true that many platforms have been eliminated, for example with the closing of independent film festivals or the heavy censoring of Chinese social media. But it is not true that suddenly all these people disappeared from China or no longer work. They do, but they are less visible.

[...]

We’ve had strong positive feedback from overseas Chinese bookstores, podcasts, and publications, most of which are run by people recently from China or aimed at people going back and forth to the country. We think this reflects a new reality — that for the first time in roughly a century, there is a strong diasporic movement of Chinese who have the means (financial and social) to influence events back home. Our goal is to be a resource to this community of people inside and outside China, by providing the material they need to think about their country’s future.