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Hi there, reader,
I have been reading and thinking about this New York Times article by Chris Buckley all day: As China’s woes mount, Xi Jinping faces rare rebuke at home (porous paywall). I’ll have some thoughts on it tomorrow.
In the meantime, we have four things for you at the top, starting with some interesting news from Google, and the growing #MeToo scandal at a Buddhist monastery in Beijing. The usual load of links are below.
—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief
1. Google building censored search engine for China
Since last December, when Google CEO Sundar Pichai kissed the ring of Chinese leaders at China’s World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Google has rapidly expanded its presence in China. SupChina has reported on Google’s opening of an AI research center, multiple apps that the company has launched in China along with strategic investments, and a half-billion-dollar investment deal between Google and Chinese ecommerce giant JD.com.
Why have the past eight months seen so much activity? Now we may have an answer.
Documents leaked to the investigative website The Intercept reveal that Google plans to launch a censored version of its search engine in China in the form of an Android app. And Sundar Pichai’s China visit in December appears to have played a pivotal role in greenlighting development of the new app: The Intercept says that the documents show the project, code-named Dragonfly, “accelerated” since that time. Here are the details:
- “Google’s Chinese search app will automatically identify and filter websites blocked by the Great Firewall.”
- “The search app will also ‘blacklist sensitive queries’ so that ‘no results will be shown’ at all when people enter certain words or phrases.”
- “The app has already been demonstrated to the Chinese government.”
- “The finalized version could be launched in the next six to nine months, pending approval from Chinese officials.” Or, Google’s search engine chief Ben Gomes told staff last month, it could be earlier if “suddenly the world changes or [President Donald Trump] decides his new best friend is Xi Jinping.”
- Only a “few hundred” members of Google’s 88,000-plus workforce had access to the information. One of those people, because of “moral and ethical concerns about Google’s role in the censorship,” let the Intercept look at the documents.
- “I’m against large companies and governments collaborating in the oppression of their people, and feel like transparency around what’s being done is in the public interest,” said the Intercept’s source, adding that they feared “what is done in China will become a template for many other nations.”
Back in 2010, Google chose to abandon the censored version of its search engine that it had operated in China since 2006, becoming one of very few foreign companies — and by far the most prominent one — to back away from the Chinese market for ethical, rather than business-related, reasons. You can listen to the very first episode of the Sinica Podcast about Google’s 2010 pullout here.
Fast-forward to 2018: The Intercept says that two things are responsible for Google’s new interest in China — a growing Chinese market and a changing leadership structure at Google. The company’s co-founder, Sergey Brin, who grew up in the Soviet Union and was among the most sensitive to criticism of Google’s censorship pre-2010, is less hands-on now.
The focus is an Android app, with no word of an iOS app or web option for desktop. However, about 95 percent of China’s more than 750 million internet users have mobile devices, and 80 percent of those have Android installed. So an Android app would allow Google to reach most potential customers and users in China.
What’s the downside? Amnesty International researcher Patrick Poon told the Intercept: “The biggest search engine in the world obeying the censorship in China is a victory for the Chinese government — it sends a signal that nobody will bother to challenge the censorship anymore.”
—Lucas Niewenhuis
2. Abbot of Buddhist temple in Beijing denies sexual abuse allegations
The abbot of Longquan Temple in Beijing, Xuecheng 学诚, is the latest public figure to be accused of sexual misconduct in China. The “Venerable Master” of Longquan, one of the highest-profile monasteries in the country, has called the allegations “false” and “misleading.”
In a 95-page expose titled “Report on important matters,” which was shared on WeChat on July 31 and instantly went viral, two former masters at Longquan Temple, Xianjia 贤佳 and Xianqi 贤启, said Xuecheng has been preying on bhikkhunis (ordained nuns) for years. They specifically allege that he has had sex with multiple nuns by persuading them they could be “purified” through physical contact. (Celibacy is one of the tenets of Buddhist monasticism.)
Included in the document are extensive records of explicit text messages sent by Xuecheng, showing how he emotionally manipulated his victims by denying them communication with the outside world, and a personal essay written by the bhikkhuni Xianjia 贤甲, one of Xuecheng’s alleged victims, who says that during her two-month stay at Longquan in 2018, Xuecheng kept sending her messages containing vulgar language and making unwanted advances toward her. “My belief system almost collapsed,” Xianjia writes. “I even considered giving up Buddhism and returning to secular life.”
Click through to SupChina for details.
—Jiayun Feng
3. The Cop Killer of Harbin
Between 1987 and 1988, five policemen were murdered in northeast China, their cases unsolved to this day. The legend of the Cop Killer of Harbin — was he a populist “hero” or a demented serial killer? — is still told, with rumors bleeding into facts.
The above marks the final installment in our 10-part China Unsolved series of long-form stories, in which Robert Foyle Hunwick recounts some of China’s most notorious unsolved mysteries. The whole series is archived here.
—Jeremy Goldkorn
4. Trade war, day 27: Blackmail and 25 percent tariffs
The glimmer of hope didn’t last long. Yesterday — day 26 of the U.S. China trade war — Bloomberg reported that representatives of U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He were talking privately, in hopes of re-engaging in trade negotiations.
But “President Donald Trump’s officials are considering more than doubling planned tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports,” Bloomberg then reported (paywall) before day 26 was even over.
On day 5 of the trade war, the escalation to planned taxes on $200 billion in Chinese imports was announced to be at a 10 percent level. Now the tax level reportedly under consideration is 25 percent.
- Private talks continue, Bloomberg indicates, but the conciliatory tone of Mnuchin is clearly not shared by other top Trump officials. (This much we knew already when a shouting match between Mnuchin and Peter “Death by China” Navarro was reported back in May.)
- Mnuchin also may partially support the escalation, however, because he had told media in past weeks that he was personally watching the value of the Chinese yuan, which could be — but has not yet been — manipulated by Beijing to be artificially cheap to cushion the damage of tariffs to Chinese exports.
- The yuan has devalued on its own, but not because of manipulation to the extent of it being artificially cheap: “Prior to the imposition of tariffs, as the dollar was rising, China appeared to be keeping its currency above the level predicted by the [market]. But since the trade war started in earnest, it has let the yuan drop rapidly closer to the implied value,” Bloomberg writes (paywall).
- That change in currency value has nonetheless allowed China to maintain demand for its exports, Quartz writes, even though the PMI, an important measure of manufacturing activity, has fallen to a five-month low.
Mnuchin and other top Trump officials may well have concluded that 10 percent tariffs just weren’t enough of a threat to the Chinese economy.
China called the latest escalation “blackmail,” AFP reports, with Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang emphasizing, “If the U.S. takes measures to further escalate this situation, we will surely take counter-measures to firmly uphold our legitimate rights and interests.” Here’s what China is doing in the meantime:
- “China plans to make it easier for foreign buyers to take strategic stakes in companies listed on domestic exchanges, a step that stands to address some of the complaints levied by the U.S. and other trading partners that its markets are too closed,” according to Bloomberg (paywall).
- Wang Qishan, Xi Jinping’s right-hand man and a well-known Yankee-whisperer, was deployed in May to “rebuff U.S. criticism of Beijing’s industrial policies, expounding on what he called American ignorance of Chinese history” to a group of American businessmen, the Wall Street Journal reports (paywall). To the businessmen, “Wang said his job as vice president is to do whatever President Xi wants him to do,” so he could play a role in trade negotiations going forward.
- “China is consulting businesspeople and think tanks at home and abroad as it considers whether to adapt its strategy in the trade war,” the South China Morning Post reports. Chinese government advisers “said that Beijing was trying to assess the impact of the trade row and political sentiment in Washington, and that it was exploring the possibility of restarting talks — although the time was ‘not ripe right now.’”
- A coordinated propaganda push to communicate “that China isn't actually that innovative, that it does not pose a threat to the U.S., [and] that concerns of the U.S. and others are based on their own misunderstanding” is forming, according to Matt Schrader, editor of the China Brief at the Georgetown Foundation.
—Lucas Niewenhuis
