The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. The name of the issuing body has been omitted to protect the source.
Former Chinese men’s soccer player Hao Haidong made a subversive speech on overseas social media, which is a serious political event. All media platforms must delete the relevant information, make Hao’s name a first-level search engine sensitive word, close Hao Haidong’s account on all interactive platforms, and strictly clean up comments. (June 4, 2020) [Chinese]
“I think the Chinese people should not be trampled upon by the Chinese Communist Party any more. I think this Communist Party should be kicked out of humanity. This is the conclusion I reached after 50 years of living,” he says in the video.
[…] Hao, a prolific scorer who played for the Chinese national team more than 100 times, led China to its only World Cup finals appearance, in 2002.
He has been outspoken on social issues and has criticised the Chinese football establishment, earning him the nickname “Cannon Hao”, but had not previously spoken out against the Communist Party.
[…] In another video, Hao read from a “declaration” of the “New Federal State of China.”
Hao’s Weibo account, which had more than 7 million followers, appeared to have been removed on Thursday afternoon from the Twitter-like platform. All entries on him on Zhihu, a popular question-and-answer website, had also been removed. [Source]
“The Chinese Communist Party is a terrorist organisation funded by the Communist International, which has subverted the legitimate Chinese government in the past,” Hao declared in the video, released on the eve of the 31st anniversary of Beijing’s crackdown of the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square.
“Totalitarian rule in China has caused horrific atrocities against humanity, total disregard for human rights, the destruction of humanity, trampled all over democracy, violated the rule of law, dishonoured lawful agreements, caused great bloodshed in Hong Kong and exported corruption across the globe,” he said.
“The crimes it has committed are too heinous to be tolerated! The elimination of the Chinese Communist Party is essential in breaking the shackles of slavery imposed on the Chinese people, and also in bringing about peace to the world. The New Federal State of China, as a country without the Chinese Communist Party, will be able to fulfil the needs of all Chinese people as well as ensure the prosperity of the world.”
He touched on sensitive topics, urging genuine autonomy for Hong Kong, Tibet and Taiwan, and accused Beijing of waging biological warfare on the world with the coronavirus pandemic, without providing any evidence. [Source]
Titan, a leading state-run sports website, quickly issued a statement that said: “Hao Haidong has made a speech that subverts the government and harms national sovereignty and uses the coronavirus epidemic to smear the Chinese government and spread falsehoods about Hong Kong. . . . We strongly condemn this behavior.”
Shortly after, the statement was edited to replace Hao’s name, which had become sensitive, with the Roman letter “H.” Hours after that, the statement was removed outright as the government opted to erase all mention of the incident on the domestic Internet, as if it had never happened.
Within 24 hours, according to the Internet monitor freeweibo.com, Hao’s name had become the most heavily censored term on Weibo — topping even “6-4,” the perennially censored reference to the Tiananmen crackdown on June 4, 1989.
On Friday, the government addressed the videos for the first time, dismissing Hao’s statements as farce. “I don’t have any interest in commenting,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said. [Source]
Hao gained celebrity as a standout in China’s otherwise beleaguered soccer league. He led the team to their first, and last, World Cup appearance in 2002, where they failed to score a single goal. He is the record goal scorer for the Chinese National Team. He was known to be outspoken about the management of soccer and social issues in China. In recent months, he had publicly supported Fang Fang, whose journal of life in Wuhan under COVID quarantine became a lightning rod for nationalist internet users who felt she was depicting China in a negative light to the world.
Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. Some instructions are issued by local authorities or to specific sectors, and may not apply universally across China. The date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source. See CDT’s collection of Directives from the Ministry of Truth since 2011.
The coronavirus outbreak in China highlighted the nation’s huge “digital divide”—the uneven distribution of information technology’s accessibility, use, and impact between different socioeconomic and demographic groups. At the South China Morning Post, Elaine Yao reported that, as in previous crises, those living in remote areas with less reliable internet access were disproportionately negatively affected during the response to the outbreak. The New York Times’ Raymond Zhong similarly reported in March on how rural students, lacking the hardware and infrastructure necessary for remote learning, were far less able to continue their educations during school closures, a trend that has also affected other nations.
One afternoon after seeing the dentist I took the bus home.
The buses here have all already changed over to requiring digital payment. You just open up the Alipay app, click the “pocket” icon in the upper right-hand corner, and then display the QR code for the particular city bus. Early on people worried about what those left behind by technology would do. Perhaps we justified this to ourselves by reasoning: “In their free time they can just get a young person to figure it out for them!”; “If they really can’t figure it out, they can just carry cash.” These types of justifications, perhaps useful in the abstract, in reality have proved to just be excuses.
Halfway through my bus ride, a father and son (I think) got on. The boy was eleven- or twelve-years-old. The father looked to be in his forties, his back slightly hunched and his skin dark—probably caused by many years of working outside. The two had their hands full of large and small bags. After getting on, the child found a seat and sat down, and the father stood next to the driver and pulled out his phone.
“So do I just scan with WeChat?” From his accent, it was clear he’s not local.
“Is this your first time riding?” the driver asked irritably.
“I have WeChat, who says I don’t.” He had already been fumbling on his phone for a while at that point, the eyes of the people on the bus leaving him feeling a little awkward. The boy’s seat was in the row in front of me. He continually stood there, looking towards the front of the bus.
“It’s not going to work unless it’s linked to a bank card,” the driver peered over at his phone.
Another minute passed. The driver pulled the bus over to the side of the road. None of the QR codes the man presented worked. “Invalid code,” the payment machine chimed.
The driver took the man’s phone and, after tapping on it for a bit, said, “It’s not working. You should just get off the bus and ask some young person to help you get it sorted out.”
“Why should I get off the bus?” He became agitated. The boy heard the bus driver trying to kick them off and, without hesitation, picked up the bags and got ready to go. But he was still frozen there.
Most of the people on the bus were middle-aged and wearing face masks. “You have to download it!” “You need to link it to your bank card!” “That’s not the right way!” After the bus had been stopped for a while, everyone gradually became restless. “Download,” “link to bank card”—I felt that they also weren’t too clear about the whole process. Maybe it was their own children who helped them get set up. It must have been something like that.
“Why don’t you just get off the bus! Don’t make everyone late.” Finally, a middle-aged person couldn’t hold back any longer, and joined the remove-from-the-bus faction.
That’s when I went up and took the man’s phone to try to see what’s going on. At that point, I was still confident that I could help him get it figured out.
I opened Alipay, then selected city, bus, and link to bank card—it turned out they were all stuck.
It wasn’t that his Alipay couldn’t be linked to his bank card, rather it was that his Alipay is not a “secure account,” and so can’t be linked to his bus card. Alipay said something like “please dial 953XX (I can’t remember the rest of the number) to contact…” I was completely unable to help.
No one knows what transpires in an Alipay account. Maybe you just forgot to make an “Ant Credit Pay” payment. Maybe the system didn’t like that you made too many transactions, or maybe it knows you’ve been sick… In any event, it has decided that you are not a secure account, which means you’re unable to take the bus.
“I’ll scan my code for him,” I said to the driver.
“Most certainly not,” the driver replied emphatically. “I have to fulfill my legal responsibility. This is a time of pandemic, you must ride the bus using the ‘real-name registration system.’ If you scan for him and it turns out there is some type of problem, how am I going to find him?”
His seamless logic left me mute, unable to respond. How on earth could there be such an unassailable argument? Humans feel insignificant in the face of such an explanation.
“I have some money on me,” an elderly man behind me took out some paper bills. The sight of the bills felt a bit unfamiliar, like seeing an old friend. The boy and his father were still frozen to the same spot.
The elderly man gestured for me to put the bills in the slot. 8 RMB for two people. But when I turned my head I saw that the money slot had been filled with a pair of cotton gloves.
“You can’t use cash either,” the driver resumed speaking—this time less emphatically, because this time he doesn’t have an argument to rely upon. But in any event, cash can’t be used.
“Why can’t you use cash?” I was getting a bit indignant. No one answered me. There were just a few young people on the bus, all indifferently playing with their phones. The middle-aged people are all hoping the father and son would get off the bus soon. It was silent for a dozen or so seconds, the elderly man and myself were helpless.
“Why can’t you use cash?” This question appears foolish in the age of high technology. “Why would one want to use cash?” This is the retort of the good youth of our age.
“You better get off, you’re delaying everyone on the bus.” The driver used an imploring tone with the man. His son was continually expressionless as he grasped the bags tightly in his hands.
Carrying a great number of things, they got off the bus.
Dejected, I returned to my seat. I felt a sense of humiliation, like I’d been raped by technology. I don’t know if the father or the elderly man felt the same way, or if his son did.
I know that sentimentality is of little use in a place that values efficiency above all else. This self-knowledge allows me, for the most part, to suitably keep moving forward. Occasionally, when I lose this self-awareness, it hits me like a blow to the head and makes me realize the disparity of power—just like it did that time on the bus.
But I really don’t know what on earth buses were invented for. If the bus was like a Transformers character and had its own consciousness, then might it not have, at that time, spurred by anger, swept them up into its pocket? “I AM BUS—CARRYING PEOPLE IS MY MISSION” it would say. [Chinese]
Thousands flooded into Victoria Park, the usual venue for the annual vigil, which this year was forbidden for the first time by police, who cited public-health concerns because of the coronavirus. The crowd roared support as speakers on microphones criticized China’s recent decision to impose national-security laws on the city, while a minute of silence observed for the victims was broken with loud chants of “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time.”
[…] Around 9 p.m. local time, undercover police officers seized a bunch of protesters gathered on a road in the city’s Mong Kok district, beating back others with pepper spray and batons. One man was pinned to the ground in a stranglehold by a plain-clothed officer.
The swoop marked a sudden violent turn to a hitherto peaceful evening, with police in most areas allowing gatherings despite earlier warning that those who gathered would be arrested. The police force said in a tweet that if protestors hadn’t blocked roads, the police wouldn’t have intervened.
[…] Other activities took place across the city late Thursday in public spaces, churches and universities. [Source]
[One 22-year-old participant in Thursday’s vigil] said protesters across the political spectrum were putting aside their differences in the face of the new national security law.
“The freedom and democracy people fought for on June 4 [1989] is not so different from what we fight for now,” he said. “If we don’t commemorate June 4, maybe people will forget what my generation has done in a few decades’ time.”
Tobey Yau, 21, who works in social services, said she could sympathise with the alliance’s “end one-party rule” slogan after last year’s anti-government protests.
“What we’re facing now in Hong Kong is very similar to what the generation of 1989 was experiencing back then. The government won’t listen to your opinion and just does whatever it wants,” she said.
[…] “Looking back at history, I worry we will also face the same situation,” she said. “We are two generations walking the same path, but they failed. And now it seems like we will meet the same outcome.” [Source]
Last year’s crowd was especially large, as people both commemorated the 30th anniversary of the massacre and asserted their freedoms amid looming threats from China.
A few days later, hundreds of thousands gathered on Hong Kong’s streets to protest an extradition bill that would have allowed suspects to be sent to mainland China, launching eight months of massive demonstrations and sometimes violent unrest.
“Every time there’s a crisis in Hong Kong and more suppression, people will turn out,” said Lee, who also co-founded the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China.
This year, the gathering at Victoria Park was also marked by new slogans, notably: “Hong Kong independence, the only way out.” Independence before last year was a fringe idea; such slogans were heard on Hong Kong’s streets only after the announcement of the impending national security law. [Source]
The accusation of separatism has been central to official efforts to vilify Hong Kong protesters, particularly in the eyes of the mainland public. The New York Times’ Andrew Higgins wrote last year, in a profile of real independence advocate Edward Leung, that "support for declaring Hong Kong an independent country has remained a tiny, fringe cause. It exists largely as a trope in Communist propaganda, which has used it to tar protesters as traitors and curb any sympathies people in mainland China might have for the protests." Other prominent activists disavowed the cause: 2014 protest leader Nathan Law tweeted last year, for example, that "democracy and autonomy are what we are striving for. Stop labelling the protest as ‘independent movement.’" Independence was not among the "Five Demands" that emerged from last year’s movement, which focused instead on the extradition bill that sparked the protests—now revoked but likely superseded by the looming national security law—the authorities’ response to earlier protests, and universal suffrage. The reported spread of pro-independence sentiment now appears to be a response to a feeling of being "backed into a corner with no way out."
Hong Kong’s legislature has passed a bill making it a crime to poke fun at China’s national anthem — a move that puts new limits on anniversary events marking the Tiananmen Square massacre. Under the ban, it is illegal to alter the lyrics of the anthem, or to sing it "in a distorted or disrespectful way."
The Beijing-backed anthem bill was initially introduced in January 2019, but it wasn’t approved until Thursday — the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing. Making parodies of the Chinese national anthem has been a popular mode of protest; it’s now punishable by up to three years in prison and hefty fines.
[…] During debate over the national anthem bill in a legislative session last May, a council member expressed their view "that Hong Kong people should not be forced to respect the national anthem and the country through law and punishment," according to minutes summarizing the meeting.
But in Thursday’s vote, the council rejected more than 20 attempts to amend the bill and voted to adopt the ban, further reshaping Hong Kong’s relationship with mainland China. [Source]
Just listened to a good @EmilyZFeng report on June 4th & Hong Kong/refers to HKG as a vision of a "counter-factual," what PRC could've become if 1989 had turned out differently/for a deeper dive on this theme, see the "Best China" feature of @chinaheritagehttps://t.co/APD97o9iun
One of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) most persistent bugbears are separatist threats—real or imagined—on the fringes of its empire. The most recent manifestation of this concern has been the CCP’s response to the ongoing unrest in Hong Kong. On May 20, 2020, the National People’s Congress adopted a decision regarding “national security” in Hong Kong. According to the decision’s preamble, “illegal activities such as ‘Hong Kong independence,’ splitting the country, and violent terrorist activities have seriously endangered the sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity of the country.” Such is the extent of the CCP’s agitation that it must combat independence even on the linguistic front, putting the characters in quotes to stress the unthinkable nature of the concept.
Elsewhere, the CCP has justified its reeducation camps in Xinjiang by “claiming they are for ‘education transformation’ and ‘vocational training’ in the fight against the ‘three evils’ of ‘separatism, terrorism and extremism.’” There are also “separatist elements” at work in Tibet. Even the CCP’s militaristic designs on Taiwan are framed in delusional “anti-secession” terms.
The existence of secessionist movements within China is not in question. Xinjiang and Tibet have had independence movements for a long time. And though Hong Kong independence was until recently a fringe idea, by December 2019 it was supported by 19% of Hongkongers—and it is reasonable to assume that support has only grown in the following months. Critics of CCP policies in places like Hong Kong point out that they should be free to have this stance. This would be consistent with international law. Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, of which China is a signatory [but which it has not ratified], declares,
All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. [Source]
The Tiananmen Square Massacre is commemorated annually in Liberty Plaza in Taipei. Liberty Plaza is where the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial is located, but has also historically been a frequent site of protest for Taiwanese social movements. This includes the 1990 Wild Lily Movement, a weeklong student occupation that was a pivotal moment in Taiwan’s democratization, as well as other events, such as the 4-5-6 Movement (四五六運動), a weekly anti-nuclear demonstration that took place in the year before the outbreak of the 2014 Sunflower Movement.
Given the ongoing protests that have taken place in Hong Kong for the past year, which have begun to resume with the COVID-19 situation under control in Hong Kong, much of the commemorations this year were focused on Hong Kong. The Tiananmen Square vigil in Taipei this year takes place during the first year ever in Hong Kong in which the annual Tiananmen Square commemoration was banned by the government. […]
Many of the speakers at the event were Hongkongers residing in Taiwan, including Lam Wing-kee, the only one of the Causeway Bay booksellers to remain free, and who recently reopened Causeway Bay Books in Taipei. Likewise, half a dozen individuals wore gas masks, black clothing, and other hallmarks of Hong Kong demonstrators, and waved Hong Kong independence flags. Individuals wearing “full gear” are an increasingly common sight at protests in Taiwan.
A frequent chant from the crowd was “Restore Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times” (光復香港，時代革命). During the commemoration, Hong Kong protest songs such “Glory to Hong Kong” (願榮光歸香港), which became a “national anthem” for the Hong Kong protests in the past year, and “Flower of Freedom” (自由花), which is sung at the Victoria Park commemoration every year, were among those sung. […] [Source]
Around the world, there are 365 days in a year. Yet in China, one of those days is purposely forgotten each year. In Taiwan, there were once days missing from our calendar, but we’ve worked to bring them to light. I hope one day China can say the same.
[…] Immediately interpreted as an attempted clampdown on Hong Kong’s cherished freedoms of speech and assembly, the news [of the new national security law’s imposition] was met with immediate outcry by city residents that such an act would violate the principle of “one country, two systems,” developed in the 1980s to facilitate the “return” of Hong Kong and Macau to the PRC from the UK and Portugal, their respective colonial rulers. The cornerstone of “one country, two systems”, as the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 outlined, was a “high degree of autonomy” for Hong Kong for the first fifty years after the 1997 handover. Yet only 23 years later, Beijing is making clear with its “national security” law that it believes it can unilaterally interpret, warp, and circumscribe the nature of that autonomy. To Beijing it seems, “one country” will always supersede “two systems.”
[…] The purpose of “one country, two systems”, after all, is to promote a vision of China as a nation-state, a cultural concept, and a global force that contains Hong Kong and Taiwan firmly within its orbit at all times. Beijing has so successfully set the terms of the discussion about these two places that both their histories and futures are imagined as inextricably bound to China’s. Indeed, even anti-CCP activists in both spaces have often allowed Beijing to dominate the narrative. Protest slogans like “Today’s Hong Kong, Tomorrow’s Taiwan” presume that the fate of one might predict the other and that both are dependent upon the whims of Beijing.
What if we were to question this entire premise? Rather than streamlining Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the PRC into a “Greater China” with “one country, several systems” as its natural zenith, we argue that they are better understood as possessing divergent, independent histories that have only recently and unexpectedly been brought together by the force of Beijing’s ambitions. Indeed, the idea that Taiwan and Hong Kong were both “lost” to China and need to be recovered is rooted in an anachronistic reading of late imperial Chinese history that downplays the extent to which both territories have been subject to colonial violence. […] [Source]
(@lokmantsui)