On Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang took issue with critics’ assertions that any such legal requirement does exist, dismissing them as "wrong," "biased," "bullying," "hypocritical, immoral and unfair." The Star Vancouver’s Perrin Grauer reported on Monday that experts disagree with Geng’s claims, however:
“While these problems are not unique to Huawei or many other Chinese companies … there are ways in which they are expected to be — or have no option but to be — subject to party control and often mobilized to national priorities,” said Elsa B. Kania, adjunct senior fellow with the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.
“It is a Chinese tech company operating within a system (in) which Xi Jinping has declared the party leads everything. And like any other Chinese company, Huawei is expected to have a party secretary and party committee who exercise some rather ambiguous position in terms of its leadership and management.”
[… ] The Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s objection […] came in response to Saturday assertions from U.S. Vice President Mike Pence at the Munich Security Conference that “Chinese law requires (Chinese telecom companies such as Huawei) to provide Beijing’s vast security apparatus with access to any data that touches their network or equipment.”
[…] Geng said laws adjacent to the intelligence legislation oblige China’s national security service to “protect the legitimate rights and interests of organizations and citizens, including data security and right to privacy.” To suggest the intelligence law could supersede these obligations, he said, is a “one-sided” view of a complex legal landscape. [Source]
China does have increasingly robust consumer privacy protections, as Samm Sacks and Lorand Laskai recently described at Slate. But their analysis contradicts Geng’s argument, highlighting "an acute disjuncture between privacy from commercial surveillance and privacy from government surveillance. […] Even as the Chinese government grows increasingly willing to scold tech companies for overstepping the bounds of reasonable data collection, it has indicated no willingness to curb its own surveillance capabilities for the sake of individual privacy." This is in keeping with Chinese authorities’ broader ideal of law empowering rather than constraining central power. (It may also be in line with the public’s main privacy concerns.)
"Xuexi Qiangguo", which literally translates as ‘Study to make China strong’ and is a play on the government propaganda theme of applying President Xi Jinping’s thoughts, overtook Tik Tok’s Chinese version Douyin and WeChat to become the county’s most popular app on Apple’s China app store last week.
[…] The app, which includes short videos, government news stories and quizzes, was created by an Alibaba team. A user of Alibaba’s own messaging app DingTalk can use their login credentials to log into Xuexi Qiangguo. Alibaba said the app was built using DingTalk’s software.
[…] Last month, Alibaba executive vice-chairman Joe Tsai slammed U.S. treatment of fellow Chinese tech firm Huawei Technologies as "extremely unfair", and sharply criticized what he called an attempt by the U.S. government to curb China’s rise via the trade war.
[…] "The upside for these firms is that their track record of cooperation can put them in a better position to obtain key licenses or opportunities," said Mark Natkin, managing director at Beijing-based Marbridge Consulting, adding these collaborations were Beijing’s way of maintaining control over private firms.
"The downside is they may get tapped to participate in projects which, on economic or PR considerations alone they might normally eschew, but which may be uncomfortable or unwise to refuse." [Source]
What’s On Weibo’s Manya Koetse presented an in-depth look at the app, including its integrations with Alibaba products, its public reception, and its position among broader efforts to produce propaganda targeted at younger Chinese.
An important part of the app is its news feed: its home page features “recommended” reads that all focus on Xi Jinping and the Party. Another major feature is its ‘quiz’ page: every week, there are different quizzes that users can do, relating to all sorts of things, from Party ideology to famous Chinese poems.
[…] The app’s most noteworthy and perhaps also most appealing feature is its scoring system, since it turns studying Party ideology and Xi Jinping Thought into a game.
Those who accumulate enough points can get an item from the app’s ‘prize shop.’ There are also contests which users can join to compete over a Huawei tablet or other items.
[…] So how popular is the app, really? If the headlines in Chinese and non-Chinese media are to be believed, the majority of Chinese internet users are getting hooked on the app. That picture is perhaps the rose-colored one the Party would like to envision, but judging from social media comments and app ratings, reactions have been somewhat lukewarm. [Source]
[…] Many early users are Party members or work in China’s giant state apparatus, who were told to install the app. Several users TechCrunch spoke to, including a public school principal, a director of a district party committee and a municipal government official, confirmed that everyone in their organizations must download the app and every now and then, users may get quizzed on relevant content.
Newspapers and social media posts also suggest local governments have mandated downloads among Party members and encouraged the general public to give it a try. Some take a step further to organize offline study sessions for the app. For some context, China had nearly 90 million Communist Party members by the end of 2017.
“I believe that most of the downloads were incentivized, probably only a very small portion was initiated by a real interest,” says Kristin Shi-Kupfer, director of the research area on public policy and society at MERICS, a German think tank specializing in China. “This app will probably drop out of the rankings of any app store soon.”
[…] The app also has a gamified loyalty program, which rewards users virtual points when they complete a task, such as daily sign-in. Because registrations are on a real-name basis, supervisors can check who in their organizations haven’t installed the app, ushering in a new kind of digital monitoring. [Source]
Ratings and reviews for Study the Great Nation are currently disabled in Apple’s app store. But App Annie, an analytics firm, has preserved 497 reviews that had been submitted to Apple’s store as of Tuesday.
They are not kind, by and large. Many are laced with dry sarcasm. The average rating is 2.7 stars out of five.
“Everybody is installing this app voluntarily,” wrote one reviewer who gave the app one star. “Nobody is forcing us.”
“This software is great,” another one-star review said. “I downloaded it completely voluntarily. I like to study.” [Source]
The platform is interesting and significant not only for the nature of its content as reflective of a renewed push to enforce the dominance of the Party’s ideology and positions, and to consolidate the power of Xi Jinping around the developing notion of “Xi Jinping Thought,” but also for the way it reinvents the process of ideological dominance for the digital era.
This is most evident in the points system employed by the “Xi Study Strong Nation,” the way it is engineered to make demands, in actionable and measurable ways, on how Party members spend what might otherwise be considered their personal time.
[…] Consider how the “Xi Study Strong Nation” point system is engineered and you realise that the advancement of the platform is about the real and measurable engagement, and thereby domination, of the individual within the broader Party-led system.
[…] As with anything in China, there are possible workarounds, and these have already been the topic of some discussion on Chinese social media. In the Douban piece, the writer introduces a “plan” for their mother — potentially of utility to others — that includes a number of possible cheats by which the overtaxed users of the “Xi Study Strong Nation” app might earn points more efficiently. For example, by ensuring their mobile screens are timed to lock out only after at least 10 minutes of inactivity (meaning that it will not seem that they been inattentive while the app is open). But “Xi Study Strong Nation” illustrates and underscores, nevertheless — for even circumvention demands engagement — the potential of the smartphone as a tool through which authoritarian regimes can shape and reinforce dominance over the population. [Source]
Beginning on February 5, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL) began running reviews on its official WeChat account of how the League, nicknamed “Tuan Tuan” (团团), engaged with audiences over the past year through various social media channels. The point of the reviews is apparently to highlight the work the CCYL has done to modernise propaganda and reach younger audiences with the messages of the leadership.
One example on the CCYL’s review of what it characterised as its “top” posts on Zhihu (知乎), a Chinese question-and-answer website similar to Quora, was a discussion about the CCYL’s opening of accounts on two popular video streaming sites, Kuaishou (快手) and Tik Tok (抖音). The question was phrased: “How should we view the Chinese Communist Youth League’s announcement that it will join Kuaishou and Tik Tok?” The answer: “When the Chinese Communist Youth League officially joined Kuaishou and Tik Tok on October 1, 2018, this received both attention and ridicule from internet users. Facing this situation, this team responded on Zhihu: ‘General Secretary Xi Jinping has said before that wherever the youth are, the league’s organisation and work must extend there, and so Tuan Tuan is coming for the sake of the youth!’”
[…] Such public acts of taking stock of the implementation of Party policies are common in the Chinese political system, as various offices and institutions strive to signal to the leadership that they are proactive. [Source]
This lies at the heart of the party’s efforts to control the social media narrative and operated for three years under the nickname of Chang An Jian – or Sword of Long-lasting Security – complete with anime-style avatar, before disclosing its true identity in November.
The South China Morning Post understands that this new media operation is run by a small central team of fewer than 10 people, all of whom were born in the 1980s or 1990s.
[…] Unlike the traditional top-down structure of propaganda departments, the new media team had more editorial freedom “not necessarily following orders from the top”. When deciding what stories to promote, “the first consideration is can we reach people’s hearts?” the person said.
[…] The Post has seen an official document from the Political and Legal Affairs Commission in Siping, a city in Jilin province, in which Politburo member Guo Shengkun tells all Chinese police officers to subscribe to the new media accounts operated by the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, which he heads. [Source]
A military court has sentenced Fang Fenghui, former chief of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission–China’s central military command–to life in prison for corruption. Fan becomes one of the highest-ranking military officials to be felled by Xi Jinping’s signature anti-corruption campaign. The BBC reports on Fang’s fall:
Fang Fenghui, ex-chief of joint staff of the People’s Liberation Army, was found guilty of bribery and having huge wealth that he had been unable to account for, according to Xinhua.
[…] Fang Fenghui lost his post with no explanation in 2017 and disappeared from public view. The government later confirmed he was under investigation for alleged corruption.
He was also a member of the powerful Central Military Commission, China’s supreme military body, and was close to Zhang Yang, who also served on the commission and was found dead in 2017 while being investigated for corruption.
Fang was expelled from the Communist Party last year ahead of his trial at a military court. [Source]
Mr. Fang is among dozens of senior military officers purged over the past six years as Mr. Xi has sought to assert control over the politically influential PLA and impose a far-reaching modernization program that has also unsettled some career soldiers who fear losing influence and jobs. Many of their replacements are widely regarded by military-affairs specialists as more professional and loyal to Mr. Xi, who has fashioned himself as a resolute defender of China’s sovereignty.
State media first disclosed the case against Mr. Fang a year ago, months after he disappeared from public view in the fall of 2017. In addition to his command of the Joint Staff Department, Mr. Fang was also a member of the Communist Party commission that oversees the armed forces. He was later stripped of his rank, discharged from the military and expelled from the party.
While disclosing Mr. Fang’s expulsion in October, party authorities denounced him as a greedy “two-faced person” who was dishonest and disloyal to the party. At the time, the party said Mr. Fang’s wrongdoings were “extremely severe” and involved “especially huge” sums of money. [Source]
Xi has pledged to continue the anti-corruption crackdown, which since 2012 has brought down 1.5 million party officials, including top military leaders.
Corruption has long been an intractable problem for the country, but many experts argue that the campaign has the hallmarks of a political purge as the Chinese president consolidates his power.
Xi has sought to enhance his control over China’s 2 million-strong military, the world’s largest, reshuffling its leadership and vowing to make it “world-class” by 2050.
The military was ordered to pledge to be “absolutely loyal, honest and reliable to Xi” in new guidelines released by the Central Military Commission in 2017. The CMC is chaired by Xi. [Source]
But in the final version of the film, which was released in the United States this month, Mr. Ai’s contribution was nowhere to be found. Mr. Ai said the producers told him they had decided to cut his segment after investors, distributors and other partners raised concerns about the artist’s political sensitivity in China.
“When I found out, I was very angry,” Mr. Ai said. “It was frustrating to see Western creators and institutions collaborating with Chinese censorship in such an obvious way.”
Starring Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren and Luke Wilson, “Berlin, I Love You” is part of the Cities of Love franchise, in which international directors are invited to make short, intersecting vignettes that take place in a particular city.
Claus Clausen and Edda Reiser, two of the film’s producers, confirmed Mr. Ai’s account, adding that they had fought to keep his segment in the film but ultimately felt they had no choice but to remove it.
[…] Mr. Ai said producers had submitted “Berlin, I Love You” to the Berlin Film Festival but it had been rejected, and he speculated that it was because of his involvement. A statement from the festival said it could not discuss films that were not in the program, but that “the involvement of Ai Weiwei would never be a criteria for choosing or not choosing a film.” [Source]
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei told DW why his contribution to the feature film 'Berlin, I love you' was deliberately cut out. @aiwwpic.twitter.com/wlq8Gs1tNd
The romantic drama — featuring 10 short films from 10 different directors all set in the German capital and centered on the subject of love — was released Feb. 8 in the U.S. by Saban Films. Berlin, I Love You is the latest installment in the City of Love series created by Emmanuel Benbihy, which also features Paris, je t’aime; New York, I Love You; Rio, I Love You; and Tbilisi, I Love You.
Fernando Eimbcke, Dennis Gansel, Peter Chelsom and Massy Tadjedin are among the directors that shot segments for Berlin, I Love You, which features Helen Mirren, Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Diego Luna, Emily Beecham and Luke Wilson among its ensemble cast.
In 2015, Ai Weiwei directed a segment for Berlin, I Love You. As he was at the time still prevented from traveling outside of China because of his activism, the artist directed the movie by video link. The segment focused on the artist’s relationship with his son, Ai Lao, then 6 years old and living with his mother in Berlin. German star Til Schweiger (Inglourious Basterds) also had a small role in the film. Shortly after the film was shot, Ai Weiwei was allowed to leave China and moved to Berlin. [Source]
Melissa Chan first reported the editing on Deutsche Welle, where she interviewed Ai:
Ai’s and Zhang’s cases are just the latest troubling examples of China’s influence beyond its borders, showing how Beijing can flex its muscle over the arts, and on events and projects taking place thousands of miles away.
[…] The Los Angeles Times viewed an email that appeared to support Ai’s story that at least some involved in “Berlin, I Love You” believed the festival was avoiding projects associated with Ai.
“Chinese censorship has become institutionalized globally,” Ai said, “with Western partners increasingly willing to engage in this war against freedom of expression.”
Producers Clausen and Reiser described feeling embattled, with pressure from “many, many sides” to cut Ai’s portion or risk losing distributors and support, but they felt they had an obligation to the other directors and actors to move forward with a release.
“We underestimated the power of China,” Reiser said. “We were disappointed by the lack of support in the free world.” [Source]
Also @dwnews spoke to @cliffordcoonan, once The Hollywood Reporter's China correspondent:
"Censorship in China is a very inexact science. There are rules laid down but how the rules are applied are often very arbitrary. Directors and producers struggle with this."
