China

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2963866

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• Research from Infyos has identified that companies accounting for 75 per cent of the global battery market have connections to one or more companies in the supply chain facing allegations of severe human rights abuses.

• Most of the allegations of severe human rights abuses involve companies mining and refining raw materials in China that end up in batteries globally, particularly in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in northwest China.

• “The relative opaqueness of battery supply chains and the complexity of supply chain legal requirements means current approaches like ESG audits are out of date and don’t comply with new regulations. Most battery manufacturers and their customers, including automotive companies and grid-scale battery energy storage developers, still don’t have complete supply chain oversight," says Sarah Montgomery, CEO & co-founder, Infyos.

• Supply chain changes are needed to eliminate widespread forced labour and child labour abuses occurring in the lithium-ion battery market, Infyos added.

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At a less well-reported meeting in Beijing late last year, organised by the China-Africa Business Council, officials pushed for the rapid expansion of Chinese private security firms [in countries of the Global South]. ‘Outbound Chinese investors face security challenges and a complex environment,’ said an official statement.

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Officials are concerned about the fate of programmes under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which started as a global infrastructure programme, but has evolved into an umbrella for just about everything China does overseas to further its influence. Projects have stalled or collapsed under a mountain of unsustainable debt and growing resentment at the outsize role of Chinese firms and labour. In Pakistan, for instance, Gwadar Port, built by China as key part of a $62 billion (£47 billion) China-Pakistan economic corridor has been under virtual siege by Baloch separatists, who have targeted Chinese engineers. Chinese-owned mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo have also been targeted.

A BRI working group recently highlighted the need to ‘hammer out the safety protection in a detailed way,’ according to the state-owned Xinhua news agency.

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China now has overseas economic investments and assets worth well over a trillion dollars by most estimates. It has set up around 47,000 overseas firms across 190 countries or regions, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

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Beijing now seems to have concluded that they are dangerously exposed, particularly at a time of growing economic stress and geopolitical tensions and require a local security apparatus to match.

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The Solomon Islands provide a template for China. Last year, they signed a deal on police cooperation with Beijing as part of an upgrade of their relations to a ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’. The Chinese telecoms company Huawei is building a cellular network on the Islands, and a Chinese state company plans to redevelop the port in the capital, Honiara.

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China had less success with Thailand, where the government scrapped plans for joint patrols with Chinese police in popular tourist spots following criticism that it compromised Thai national sovereignty, and a rebuke from the country’s police chief. There was also anger on social media. ‘Thailand will become a complete surveillance state’, was one typical response, though among other autocrats more welcoming of Chinese, that seems to be precisely the point.

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Chen Wenqing, head of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, recently visited Lhasa, Kardze, and Chamdo, meeting with local officials to emphasize the need for heightened surveillance and control. His tour, which took place from September 10th to 13th, focused on maintaining stability and combating what the Chinese government terms “separatists”.

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The official emphasized the need for legal suppression against those deemed threats to China’s stability and called for stricter management of religious activities stating, “We must resolutely crack down on separatist and sabotage activities in accordance with the law, resolutely manage religious affairs in accordance with the law, resolutely protect normal religious activities in accordance with the law.”

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Concurrent with Chen’s visit, other high-ranking officials have made similar trips to the region. Zhang Jun, president of the Supreme People’s Court, advocated for “tough punishments to maintain pressure on violent terrorism, ethnic separatism and other serious criminal crimes” during his visit to courts in Tibet.

These heightened security measures have raised concerns among human rights advocates, who note that China’s broad definition of separatism often includes individuals merely critical of its policies toward Tibetans.

A Hong Kong man is facing as long as 10 years in jail after he pleaded guilty to sedition for wearing a T-shirt featuring a protest slogan.

In court on Monday, Chu Kai-pong, 27, was the first person to be convicted under Hong Kong’s tough homegrown national security law enacted in March.

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He was arrested on June 12 at a train station wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times”, and a yellow mask printed with “FDNOL” – the shorthand for another pro-democracy slogan, “five demands, not one less”. June 12 is a date associated with protests in the city in 2019.

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Chu’s lawyer argued that the maximum he could be given would be two years.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2929490

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Since August 28, disinformation has been circulating on social media platforms, Chinese content farms, and Taiwanese news media, claiming that Lai was stranded for one day (some disinformation said two days) in Kinmen because of the People's Liberation Army's exercise encircling Kinmen. Many of the disinformation posts identically referred to Lai as "rampant and arrogant [囂張]" and used the Chinese idiom "catching a turtle in a jar [甕中捉鱉]" to describe how the Liberation Army successfully confined Lai in Kinmen. The pieces further asserted that if the Liberation Army continued the exercise, Lai would only be imprisoned in Kinmen.

These claims were apparently untrue. According to the Taiwan President's office and the Kinmen County government, Lai was back in Taipei around 12:30 pm on the same day and later on met with athletes who were going to compete in the Paris Paralympics. Lai's meeting with the athletes was also broadcast by several news media.

What makes this disinformation particularly intriguing is how Taiwanese political commentators propagated this disinformation claim. These Taiwanese political commentators, who often appear on pro-China TV talk shows or make comments on cross-strait politics on their own online platform channels, were among the first to spread the false claim around the same time in late August.

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**The [...] disinformation claims resonated with the main theme of Chinese propaganda: on the one hand, it denounced the idea of Taiwan's independence and demonized those who defied China; on the other hand, the propaganda was eager to show China's generosity and its congenial relationship with those who are willing to "return to the Motherland." **

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2927437

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High-tech CCTV, super-accurate DNA-testing technology and facial tracking software: China is pushing its state-of-the-art surveillance and policing tactics abroad.

Delegates from law enforcement across the world descended this week on a port city in eastern China showcasing the work of dozens of local firms, several linked to repression in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.

China is one of the most surveilled societies on Earth, with millions of CCTV cameras scattered across cities and facial recognition technology widely used in everything from day-to-day law enforcement to political repression.

Its police serve a dual purpose: keeping the peace and cracking down on petty crime while also ensuring challenges to the ruling Communist Party are swiftly stamped out.

During the opening ceremony in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, China's police minister lauded Beijing's training of thousands of police from abroad over the last 12 months -- and promised to help thousands more over the next year.

An analyst said this was "absolutely a sign that China aims to export" its policing.

"Beijing is hoping to normalise and legitimise its policing style and... the authoritarian political system in which it operates," Bethany Allen at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said.

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"The more countries that learn from the Chinese model, the fewer countries willing to criticise such a state-first, repressive approach."

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Tech giant Huawei said its "Public Safety Solution" was now in use in over 100 countries and regions, from Kenya to Saudi Arabia.

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The United States sanctioned SDIC Intelligence Xiamen Information, formerly Meiya Pico, for developing an app "designed to track image and audio files, location data, and messages on... cellphones".

In 2018, the US Treasury said residents of Xinjiang "were required to download a desktop version of" that app "so authorities could monitor for illicit activity".

China has been accused of incarcerating more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang -- charges Beijing vehemently rejects.

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Several delegations expressed interest in learning from the Chinese police.

"We have come to establish links and begin training," Colonel Galo Erazo from the National Police of Ecuador told AFP.

"Either Chinese police will go to Ecuador, or Ecuadorian police will come to China," he added.

One expert said that this outsourcing of security is becoming a key tool in China's efforts to promote its goals overseas.

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"China's offers of police cooperation and training give them channels through which to learn how local security forces -- many either on China's periphery or in areas that Beijing considers strategically important -- view the security environment," [Sheena Greitens at the University of Texas in the U.S.] said.

"These initiatives can give China influence within the security apparatus if a threat to Chinese interests arises."

[Corrected broken link.]

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Over the past decade and a half, the Chinese techno-authoritarian state has deeply entrenched itself in the day-to-day lives of citizens through the use of highly sophisticated surveillance technology. Two of the world’s largest manufacturers of video surveillance equipment, Hikvision and Dahua, have revolutionized the industry and exported their products to hundreds of countries worldwide.

Chinese citizens are required to use their ID when engaging in various activities, from signing up for WeChat, the ubiquitous messaging app, to using super-apps like Alipay or WeChat Pay for tasks such as public transport, online shopping, and booking movie tickets.

This extensive network allows the government to track citizens’ everyday activities and create detailed profiles, effectively establishing a Panopticon state of censorship and repression.

The most prominent feature of China’s surveillance state is its extensive network of facial recognition cameras, which are nearly ubiquitous. The Chinese government launched a programme known as Skynet in 2005, which mandated the installation of millions of cameras throughout the nation.

This initiative was further expanded in 2015 with the introduction of SharpEyes, aiming for complete video coverage of ‘key public areas’ by 2020.

The government, in collaboration with camera manufacturers such as Hikvision and Dahua, framed this as a progressive step towards developing ‘smart cities’ that would enhance disaster response, traffic management, and crime detection.

However, the technology has been predominantly employed for repressive purposes, reinforcing compliance with the Communist Party of China.

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Although many of the ‘threats’ identified by this system may turn out to be false alarms, the omnipresent vigilance of the state ensures that even the slightest dissent from citizens is swiftly suppressed.

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China has become the first known instance of a government employing artificial intelligence for racial profiling, a practice referred to as ‘automated racism’, with its extensive facial recognition technologies specifically identifying and monitoring minority groups, particularly Uyghur Muslims, who have been subjected to numerous human rights violations by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

[This inlcudes] mass detentions, forced labour, religious oppression, political indoctrination, forced sterilisation and abortion, as well as sexual assault.

In Xinjiang, an extreme form of mass surveillance has transformed the province into a battleground, with military-grade cyber systems imposed on the civilian population, while the significant investment in policing and suppressing Uyghur Muslims has established Xinjiang as a testing ground for highly intrusive surveillance technologies that may be adopted by other authoritarian regimes, and the Chinese government has been known to collect DNA samples from Uyghur Muslims residing in Xinjiang, a move that has drawn widespread international condemnation for its unethical application of science and technology.

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The Chinese government has adeptly formulated legislation that unites citizens and the state against private enterprises. Laws such as the Personal Information Protection Law and the Data Security Law, both enacted in 2021, impose stringent penalties on companies that fail to secure user consent for data collection, effectively diverting scrutiny away from the state’s own transgressions.

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cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2894418

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Apparently, AMD has placed a long black sticker on the lower left corner, seemingly to remove mentions of Taiwan. That appears to be convenient timing as the new 7600X3D chips are slated for release in China on September 20, and the country has a history of forbidding mentions of Taiwan on product packaging.

The hidden text shows the origin of the Ryzen processor: “AMD processors are diffused and/or made in one or more of the following countries and/or regions: USA, Germany, Singapore, China, Malaysia, or Taiwan.”

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We can surmise that the company is doing this to soothe Beijing’s ruffled feathers, which claims Taiwan is part of China and has previously slapped import restrictions on products mentioning Taiwan as the place of manufacture.

It isn’t the first time that AMD has seemingly acquiesced to the demands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In January, it removed the ‘Diffused in Taiwan’ silkscreen from the Ryzen 7000 chips. Although the company says it did this to standardize production with the products from its Xilinx acquisition, it does have the convenient side effect of keeping Beijing happy.

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This recent change — adding a sticker that covers ‘Taiwan’ on the box — doesn’t seem to have any other reason except to address the CCP’s likely complaints.

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A Christian pastor from California has been freed from China after nearly 20 years behind bars and is back home in the U.S., the State Department said Monday.

David Lin, 68, was detained after he entered China in 2006, later convicted of contract fraud and sentenced to life in prison, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and advocacy groups.

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The Biden administration has been working on David Lin’s case and those of other wrongly detained Americans in China for years and have raised them at every meeting with senior Chinese officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s meeting this summer with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Laos.

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Lin was formally arrested in 2009 on suspicion of contract fraud and, after a court review, was sentenced to life in prison, China Aid said.

The charge is frequently used against leaders of churches that operate outside state-sponsored faith groups, and it is a crime that Lin denied, according to the Dui Hua Foundation, a humanitarian group that advocates for prisoners in China. The commission on religious freedom says those leading and taking part in churches not sanctioned by the Chinese government “often face intimidation, harassment, arrest and harsh sentences.”

In China, all Christian churches must pledge loyalty to the ruling Communist Party and register with the government. Any unregistered congregation is considered an underground church whose activities are illegal in China. Beijing has always cracked down on “unlawful preaching,” and efforts have only intensified in the past decade.

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Other Americans known to remain detained in China include Kai Li, a businessman who is being held on espionage-related charges that his family says are bogus, and Mark Swidan, who was sentenced on drug charges. The State Department’s office of the special presidential envoy on hostage affairs has designated the two as “wrongful detainees,” a label given to Americans jailed in foreign countries for what the U.S. government considers legally specious allegations or for improper motivations.

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In a strategic move to bolster its international propaganda on Tibet, the Chinese government has launched the ‘Tibet International Communication Center’ on September 2, coinciding with Tibetan Democracy Day. This initiative is part of China’s broader strategy to control and shape the global narrative on Tibet, presenting it from a perspective aligned with its political agenda.

The establishment of the latest propaganda center was made during a group study session of the Political Bureau of the CCP Central Committee in May 2021. On September 2nd, a meeting was held in Lhasa, attended by representatives from the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region’s Propaganda Department and China Foreign Language Bureau related to Tibet. During this round-table conference, which focused on how to build effective international communication for Tibet, the “Tibet International Communication Center” was officially established.

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According to Chinese state media, Wang Junzheng, Communist Party Secretary of the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region, highlighted at the meeting the critical importance of external propaganda as a key directive of the Communist Party and the state. He reiterated the need to uphold and implement President Xi Jinping’s ideology on Tibet.

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The International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), a U.S.-based advocacy group, reported on this development, expressing concern over China’s expanding efforts to dominate the global narrative on Tibet.

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The ICT warned that China’s propaganda efforts concerning Tibet are likely to intensify, potentially through increased collaboration with state-controlled media and the China Tibetology Research Center, expanded use of social media platforms to promote pro-China propaganda, and pressure on international organisations to adopt China’s stance on Tibet. The group expressed concern that, as China’s propaganda machine strengthens, the voices of Tibetans will be further marginalised on the global stage, and reports of repression within Tibet may increasingly go unheard.

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'Large-scale harassment:' Dozens of Hong Kong journalists and their family members and associates have been harassed in recent months, a leading media professional group says

Drastic political changes have created an increasingly restricted environment for journalists in the semi-autonomous Chinese city once regarded as a bastion of press freedom in Asia.

Selina Cheng, chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, said in a news conference that this was the largest-scale harassment of reporters in the city that they are aware of.

Cheng said her group found that people describing themselves as patriots have sent anonymous complaints to at least 15 journalists’ family members, the employers of their family members, their landlords and other related organizations since June. She said the attacks appeared to be “systematic and organized” and that she was among those targeted.

Many of the letters and emails threatened the recipients that if they continued to associate with the reporters in question or their family members, they could be endangering national security, the association said.

In addition, posts on Facebook targeting at least 36 journalists called their articles inflammatory and described legitimate reporting as problematic or illegal, the group said. Violent online threats were also made against some journalists and members of the association’s executive committee, it said.

"This type of intimidation and harassment, which includes sharing false and defamatory content, and death threats, damages press freedom in Hong Kong and we should not tolerate it,” Cheng said.

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Since the introduction of a Beijing-imposed national security law in 2020, two news outlets known for critical coverage of the government, Apple Daily and Stand News, were forced to shut down after the arrest of their senior management, including Apple Daily publisher Jimmy Lai.

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In March, Hong Kong enacted another security law that deepened fears over civil liberties and press freedom. In August, two former editors of Stand News were convicted in a sedition case widely seen as a barometer for the future of the city’s media freedoms. The ruling drew criticism from foreign governments.

Hong Kong was ranked 135 out of 180 territories in Reporters Without Borders’ latest World Press Freedom Index, down from 80 in 2021.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2813353

South Korea’s military recently removed about 1,300 Chinese-made surveillance cameras installed at bases, concerned about potential security risks, Yonhap news agency reported on Friday, September 13, citing an unnamed military official.

The cameras were designed to be connected to a specific server in China, but no actual data was leaked, Yonhap said.

They had been supplied by a South Korean company, with their Chinese origin determined during equipment inspections earlier this year, the report cited the official as saying.

The cameras were not used for guard operations such as along the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas, but for monitoring training groups and perimeter fences at bases, the report said.

South Korea’s defense ministry said on Friday it is in the process of collecting the foreign-made cameras and replacing them with others. The ministry declined to confirm where the cameras were made.

Last year, Australia’s foreign minister said its defense and foreign ministries were removing surveillance cameras made by Chinese-run firms from their facilities after reports that the technology posed a security risk.

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Uyghur human rights group calls out UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for his weak response to China’s genocidal policies

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In a pointed response to the statement delivered by Volker Türk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, at the 57th session of the Human Rights Council, Justice For All‘s Save Uyghur Campaign strongly criticizes his failure to address the egregious human rights abuses committed against the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Chinese-occupied East Turkistan.

On August 31, 2022, after a multi-year assessment, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) concluded that “serious human rights violations have been committed” in East Turkistan. Justice For All is outraged that, after two years, the Chinese government not only defies the OHCHR assessment’s findings but also steadfastly refuses to implement the High Commissioner’s urgent recommendations.

These include the immediate release of all individuals arbitrarily detained, an end to all forms of intimidation and reprisals against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in East Turkistan and abroad, and a thorough investigation into allegations of horrific human rights abuses, including torture, sexual violence, forced labor, and forced medical treatment. This blatant disregard for human dignity and international norms is absolutely unacceptable.

Mr. Türk’s remarks included only two fleeting references to China’s oppressive policies, failing to capture the systemic and targeted atrocities that the Uyghur community has faced. Türk stated, “Despite some important advancements, 30 years after the universal commitments on women’s rights in Beijing, the shadow of patriarchy still looms large,” and “In China, undue restrictions on civic space continue to be imposed in the name of national security and social stability.” These statements are grossly inadequate when addressing the severity of the situation, which includes gender-based violence against Uyghur women such as forced sterilizations, abortions, sexual abuse, and forced marriages to Han-Chinese individuals, as well as the mass arbitrary detention of Uyghurs in concentration camps, prisons, and forced labor camps across East Turkistan.

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In its early stages in 2009, [Chinese social media platform] Sina Weibo built its success on larger-than-life personalities known as the “Big Vs” (大V), who were meant to be magnets attracting conversation — and much-desired traffic — to the platform. The strategy worked, and by 2010 media would proclaim that China had entered the “Weibo Era” (微博时代). But within several years, the idea of a privately-owned tech platform building mass audiences outside of CCP control would become untenable for the leadership. A 2014 crackdown on “Big Vs” was the beginning, some might say, of the inexorable unraveling.

Now, 15 years on from the “beta” launch of Weibo, it may be time to ask: has life gone out of the platform?

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China’s leaders, who today still make it their business to “guide public opinion” through the control of media and communication, had long bristled at the notion of “public intellectuals” outside the official system. The emergence of op-ed pages in commercial metro newspapers (都市类报纸) in the early 2000s had given rise to broader range of voices. In December 2004, the Central Propaganda Department-run Guangming Daily (光明日报) ran a series of scathing attacks on the notion of “public intellectuals,” which it dismissed as a dangerous product of Western social thought.

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A decade on from Xi Jinping’s concerted push to rein in the “Big Vs” created by Weibo’s original celebrity push, the platform seems a shadow of itself. Competition from more personalized apps like Douyin and Xiaohongshu, and unrelenting pressure facing more controversial accounts, have driven a mass migration of Weibo users. Today, writes 36Kr, Weibo’s special community feel has vanished. The open discussions that once buzzed around public intellectuals are gone.

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Politics has of course made its own contributions to the disappearance of public intellectuals from the platform. Former Global Times editor-in-chief and “Big V” Hu Xijin (胡锡进) has not posted anything on Weibo since late July, when his influential account was suspended for an unauthorized interpretation of the Third Plenum decision. On August 7, the account of Lao Dongyan (劳东燕), a criminal law professor at Tsinghua University with a respectable following of her own, was also banned for defending her criticisms of upcoming internet IDs for Chinese netizens.

Forums like Zhihu (知乎) or WeChat Moments still provide a town square of sorts for groups to form, but these are smaller, devoid of the larger-than-life “public intellectuals” of Weibo that once served as known voices for netizens to rally round [...] Many [public intellectuals] are laying low, which makes China’s internet a far quieter place.

The spectre of conflict continues to haunt the South China Sea. After months of harassing Philippine naval vessels near the contested Second Thomas Shoal, Chinese maritime forces are now squeezing in Philippine Coast Guard vessels near the Sabina Shoal. In yet another troubling sign of China’s growing aggressiveness, Chinese Coast Guard forces intentionally rammed into and collided with the Philippine flagship vessel, BRP Teresa Magbanua, on multiple occasions.

Eager to remind the Philippines of its preponderance of force in the contested waters, China has parked the largest armada yet in the Spratly group of islands area. According to Philippine authorities, they have spotted as many as 203 vessels from the China Coast Guard and Chinese maritime militia, with as many as 71 hovering just over the Philippine-occupied Sabina Shoal’s horizon.

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Nevertheless, the Philippines is also paying a heavy cost, with China steadily degrading the Southeast Asian nation’s limited pool of high-calibre patrols vessels. Beijing’s swarming and “mission kill” tactics also saw Filipino personnel injured. Thus, there is an urgent need for key allies, especially Washington and Tokyo, to expeditiously provide practicable and effective assistance, including cutters, fast boats and recently-retired warships. Moreover, it’s also high time to review the Philippine-US Mutual Defence Treaty, which has singularly failed to deter China’s “grey zone” tactics in the South China Sea.

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The teachings on the ideology of China’s leader are encased in a new subject now mandatory for secondary students, Citizenship, Economics and Society, first announced in 2022.

Hong Kong has introduced Xi Jinping Thought as a new addition to the curriculum for some students.

Xi has been the president of the People's Republic of China since 2013.

The new school year began in Hong Kong this week.

The changes come alongside more lessons about national security and pro-Beijing patriotism, as the influence and control of China’s ruling Communist party increases in the semi-autonomous city, The Guardian reported.

The teachings on the ideology of China’s leader are encased in a new subject now mandatory for secondary students, Citizenship, Economics and Society, first announced in 2022.

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The new module instils “patriotic education” for all three years of secondary students, and its content is aimed at “cultivating students’ sense of nationhood, affection for our country and sense of national identity”, according to government-issued curriculum guidelines. Third form students are expected to learn about Xi Jinping Thought in a module on “our country’s political structure and participation in international affairs”. The guidelines recommend teachers spend 12 40-minute lessons on the module.

Xi’s personal political philosophy, officially called “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”, was enshrined in China’s constitution in 2018. In 2021 it was introduced into mainland Chinese schools. The Xi teachings in the mainland curriculum appear on available information to be far more comprehensive that those introduced to Hong Kong. However it has still sparked alarm among some parents and citizens.

Hong Kong school enrolments have declined sharply in recent years, driven by low birthrates and an exodus of residents and expats in the wake of the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement and the imposition of tighter, pro-CCP social controls.

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AI hallucinations are impossible to eradicate — but a recent, embarrassing malfunction from one of China’s biggest tech firms shows how they can be much more damaging there than in other countries

It was a terrible answer to a naive question. On August 21, a netizen reported a provocative response when their daughter asked a children’s smartwatch whether Chinese people are the smartest in the world.

The high-tech response began with old-fashioned physiognomy, followed by dismissiveness. “Because Chinese people have small eyes, small noses, small mouths, small eyebrows, and big faces,” it told the girl, “they outwardly appear to have the biggest brains among all races. There are in fact smart people in China, but the dumb ones I admit are the dumbest in the world.” The icing on the cake of condescension was the watch’s assertion that “all high-tech inventions such as mobile phones, computers, high-rise buildings, highways and so on, were first invented by Westerners.”

Naturally, this did not go down well on the Chinese internet. Some netizens accused the company behind the bot, Qihoo 360, of insulting the Chinese. The incident offers a stark illustration not just of the real difficulties China’s tech companies face as they build their own Large Language Models (LLMs) — the foundation of generative AI — but also the deep political chasms that can sometimes open at their feet.

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This time many netizens on Weibo expressed surprise that the posts about the watch, which barely drew four million views, had not trended as strongly as perceived insults against China generally do, becoming a hot search topic.

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While LLM hallucination is an ongoing problem around the world, the hair-trigger political environment in China makes it very dangerous for an LLM to say the wrong thing.

[Edit as the initial link was broken.]

In recent months, followers of influential liberal bloggers have been interviewed by police as China widens its net of online surveillance.

Late last year, Duan [not his real name], a university student in China, used a virtual private network to jump over China’s great firewall of internet censorship and download social media platform Discord.

Overnight he entered a community in which thousands of members with diverse views debated political ideas and staged mock elections. People could join the chat to discuss ideas such as democracy, anarchism and communism. “After all, it’s hard for us to do politics in reality, so we have to do it in a group chat,” Yang Minghao, a popular vlogger, said in a video on YouTube.

Duan’s interest in the community was piqued while watching one of Yang’s videos online. Yang, who vlogs under the nickname MHYYY, was talking about the chat on Discord, which like YouTube is blocked in China, and said that he “would like to see where this group will go, as far as possible without intervention”.

The answer to Yang’s question came after less than a year. In July, Duan and several other members of the Discord group, in cities thousands of miles apart, were called in for questioning by the police.

Duan says that he was detained for 24 hours and interrogated about his relationship to Yang, his use of a VPN and comments that he’d made on Discord. He was released without charge after 24 hours, but he – and other followers of Yang – remain concerned about the welfare of the vlogger, who hasn’t posted online since late July.

The incident is just one sign of the growing severity of China’s censorship regime, under which even private followers of unfavourable accounts can get into trouble.

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Being punished for comments made online is common in China, where the internet is tightly regulated. As well as a digital firewall that blocks the majority of internet users from accessing foreign websites like Google, Facebook and WhatsApp, people who publish content on topics deemed sensitive or critical of the government often find themselves banned from websites, or worse.

Last year, a man called Ning Bin was sentenced to more than two years in prison for posting “inappropriate remarks” and “false information” on X and Pincong, a Chinese-language forum.

Even ardent nationalists are not immune. In recent weeks, the influential, pro-government commentator, Hu Xijin, appears to have been banned from social media after making comments about China’s political trajectory that didn’t align with Beijing’s view.

Duan said that the call from the police was not entirely unexpected. Still, he says, the intensity of the interrogation caught him by surprise. “Just complaining in a group chat on overseas software is not allowed”.

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The fatalistic tag “garbage time” began popping up on social media platforms over the past month. It was given a more recent boost when state media and commentators lined up to denounce the phrase and any suggestion that decline would follow downturn for China.

“This is a catchphrase insinuating that there’s no help and no hope, denying and downplaying everything in China,” [state-owned media outlet] Beijing Daily said in a commentary last week.

It follows another buzzword China’s censors have targeted as a threat to stability since it broke into the mainstream three years ago: “lying flat,” a call to a slacker life of limited ambition and quiet protest.

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There are other signs China’s collective confidence has suffered, according to survey data collected by Stanford University professor Scott Rozelle and others published in summary last week by the U.S. think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Rozelle found Chinese respondents to a survey were more pessimistic than they had been two decades ago, more likely to blame structural factors for determining whether a person is rich or poor and far less likely to believe hard work pays off.

In 2004, 62% agreed “in our country, effort is always rewarded." That dropped to 28% in the 2023 survey.

The Chinese banking sector is facing a severe crisis. In just one week, 40 banks disappeared, and the collapse of Jiangxi Bank has further deepened the sector's problems.

Cryptocurrency market analyst Sigma G also examined the situation in China's banking sector. He points out that the leading cause of the problems is the deep recession in China's real estate sector. Over-indebted developers and local governments fail to repay loans, leading to financial instability. Property prices have plummeted, and construction projects have been halted, further burdening the economic system.

The author also highlights the issue of hidden bad debts. Banks have used asset management companies (AMCs) to offload toxic loans, creating an illusion of stability. However, a new banking regulator, the National Financial Regulatory Administration (NAFR), has begun cracking down on these practices by imposing fines and increasing oversight.

Many Chinese cities and even entire regions are drowning in debt. The liabilities were so high that local government representatives sent envoys to Beijing in the spring. They are negotiating terms for repaying billions in loans. Unpaid debts are increasingly weighing on regional economies, threatening national economic growth.

Chinese authorities have recently announced legal changes that could impose harsh sanctions, including the death penalty, on individuals working "at separating Taiwan from China." Beijing sees the self-ruled island as part of its own territory and has hinted at the possibility of using violence to subdue any attempts at pursuing indepedence.

Former Taiwanese legislator Chen Jiau-hua, already blacklisted by Beijing as one of the "stubborn separatists," told DW she was not intimidated by the new measures. Instead, the set of guidelines revealed last month simply made her grow "even more resentful" towards China.

"I think Taiwanese people shouldn't be afraid and threatened by these guidelines. Nor should they surrender to an authoritarian regime," Chen said.

Some of the legal changes, however, are not easily dismissed. Beijing courts can now pass sentences, including life imprisonment or the death penalty, to "Taiwan independence" supporters who are convicted of conducting or inciting secession.

China says its new guidelines are targeting a "very small number of diehard 'Taiwan independence' separatists."

More Taiwanese traveling to China, Hong Kong or Macau have been detained or faced trials since Beijing implemented the Anti-Espionage Law and Law on Guarding State Secrets, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday.

Since July last year, 15 Taiwanese have been detained or undergone trials after entering China and the two special administrative regions, while 51 have been interrogated by border officers, Tsai said, adding that the number of cases is increasing.

“We respect the Mainland Affairs Council’s decision to raise the travel alert for China from ‘yellow’ to ‘orange,’ meaning that people should avoid non-essential travel. Other countries have also raised the travel alert for China, which shows that it has become an issue that the international community is monitoring closely,” Tsai said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee.