The group of about 80 protesters wore numbered lanyards around their necks and cordoned themselves off with tape as they marched, like a crime scene in motion.
This odd spectacle last month was Hong Kong’s first authorized protest in three years — highly choreographed, surveilled and regulated, even though it was not an explicitly antigovernment demonstration, and a world away from the crowds that thronged streets in 2019 to protest China’s tightening grip on the city. One participant said the protesters, who were opposed to a land reclamation project, were “herded like sheep”.
It was just one example of how Hong Kong, a global, tech-savvy city whose protests were once livestreamed around the world, is being transformed.… Seguir leyendo »
One morning last November, I woke up to a stirring sight: video clips of young protesters in several Chinese cities singing, shouting and chanting for an end to the oppressive “zero Covid” policy that China had adhered to during the pandemic. I’m 31. Never in my life had I seen my fellow Chinese citizens stand up to the government on such a scale and with such determination.
I marveled at their courage, but a sense of disquiet crept in: The protests made clear just how thoroughly censorship, propaganda and the government’s iron grip on all discourse had stunted a generation’s ability to express itself.… Seguir leyendo »
When the internet proliferated in the early 2000s, Chinese millennials saw it as a window to a bigger, wider world—one in which China was becoming more integrated. Back then, many Chinese still saw the West as a model to learn from. In my high school, right as the internet was becoming commonplace, I was taught how to browse news on Yahoo, search information on Google, and find videos on YouTube. Discussions on nascent online forums were somewhat similar to those in many Western democracies: open, free, and unfiltered. Netizens would organically criticize government policies. Public intellectuals who drew attention to societal problems were applauded.… Seguir leyendo »
In the post-communist afterword of Roadside Picnic, the famous 1972 Soviet-era science fiction novel by brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Boris goes to great lengths to detail the absurd limits imposed on the siblings’ work by their country’s obsessive censors.
The co-author insisted that the classic story they produced “contained nothing criminal; it was quite ideologically appropriate and certainly not dangerous” in any intentional or even readily discernible sense. But this did little to mollify the authorities who had firm and final say on what could and could not be published in the country and who insisted on repeated rounds of deletions, often aimed at what appeared to the authors to be mundane descriptive details.… Seguir leyendo »
El periódico hongkonés Apple Daily ha sido obligado a cerrar. El día del cierre, la gente hizo fila para comprar un último ejemplar; se imprimió un millón. El destino de la publicación estaba sellado desde el año pasado, cuando el gobierno comunista de China impuso a Hong Kong una dura Ley de Seguridad Nacional. La policía allanó sus oficinas; amenazaron con violencia a sus periodistas; inmovilizaron sus activos, de modo que ya no pudo pagar salarios. Arrestaron a varios directivos y al editorialista.
Al periódico se lo acusó del delito de «confabulación con potencias extranjeras», o como expresó rudamente el ex jefe del ejecutivo hongkonés, C. … Seguir leyendo »
My business -- documenting attacks on journalists in Asia and advocating on their behalf -- requires a thick skin. I can't let every case get to me, or I couldn't function. But sometimes a case pierces through the armor. That happened Monday morning when I awoke to the news that a Chinese court had sentenced journalist Zhang Zhan, 37, to four years in jail for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble". This follows the government indictment, which accused her of "publishing large amounts of fake information".
Zhang's real crime: to report factually on the ground at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, at its then epicenter, Wuhan, in video dispatches that challenged the government's official narrative.… Seguir leyendo »
Since my column last week revealing safety concerns regarding the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), some Western scientists have come to the defense of the lab and its scientists. Their perspectives are important, but many of them seem to overlook a crucial point: that all scientific research in China must ultimately subordinate itself to the dictates of the Chinese Communist Party.
This shouldn’t be a controversial assertion. This has been the case for decades, and the message has been amply reinforced by the party’s efforts to cover up the covid-19 outbreak. The Chinese government has systematically thwarted scientific investigation that would either implicate or exonerate the lab — or shed light on alternative theories.… Seguir leyendo »
While the world is busy trying to contain the spread of the deadly coronavirus, Chinese authorities last week pulled credentials from journalists at three major media outlets: the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and The Post. What is particularly shocking about this retaliatory move, after the Trump administration took action against several Chinese Communist Party-controlled outlets, is that for the first time, those foreign correspondents are also barred from reporting from Hong Kong and Macau.
This is an unprecedented decision. For decades, Hong Kong has long been known as a bastion of press freedom in the region. With protections by independent courts and civil liberties enshrined in Hong Kong’s Basic Law (equivalent to its Constitution), foreign media have been able to operate free from intervention from autocratic China.… Seguir leyendo »
As the coronavirus spreads around the world, the Chinese government is fighting a war on two fronts: one against the virus itself and one against the truth. Beijing is desperate to protect its own image by shaping the narrative around the virus and its origins. But the time has come for the international community to demand Beijing end its war on the truth so we can work together to contain the epidemic.
Since the beginning of the outbreak, China’s strategy has been to silence critics and minimize reporting about the scale of the threat. In late January, the Chinese government brought massive resources to bear to try to contain the virus’s spread internally, using draconian measures against its own people that it won’t acknowledge.… Seguir leyendo »
Antes de que el mundo tome conocimiento del surgimiento del nuevo coronavirus, que hoy en día provoca pánico mundial, Li Wenliang, un oftalmólogo con residencia en Wuhan, notó algo extraño en algunos pacientes, notó que aparentemente dichos pacientes habían contraído un virus desconocido, que se asemejaba al síndrome respiratorio agudo severo (SRAS), el cual coartó a China tiempo atrás, hace casi una generación. Unos días más tarde, después de que Li enviara un mensaje de advertencia a varios médicos en un chat grupal, este médico de 34 años fue convocado por la policía, institución que le obligó a firmar una carta confesando que “había realizado comentarios falsos” que habían “perturbado el orden social”.… Seguir leyendo »
As China and the United States engage in high-level negotiations over a possible trade deal, it’s puzzling to see what’s been left off the table: the Chinese internet market. China blocks or hinders nearly every important foreign competitor online, including Google, Facebook, Wikipedia in Chinese, Pinterest, Line (the major Japanese messaging company), Reddit and The New York Times. Even Peppa Pig, a British cartoon character and internet video sensation, has been censored on and off; an editorial in the Communist Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper once warned that she could “destroy children’s youth.”
China has long defended its censorship as a political matter, a legitimate attempt to protect citizens from what the government regards as “harmful information,” including material that “spreads unhealthy lifestyles and pop culture.”… Seguir leyendo »
Last month, I spent several days at the Forbidden City, the gargantuan palace in the middle of Beijing where China’s emperors ruled the land for nearly five hundred years. I was there to attend a conference on religion and power in imperial China, but my thoughts were drawn to more contemporary concerns: the plight of the Uighurs in China’s far western province of Xinjiang, including re-education camps aimed at breaking their faith in Islam.
I was struck by parallels between contemporary and imperial religious policy at the end of the conference, when our hosts took us to parts of the complex that are off-limits to tourists, such as the Hall of Imperial Peace.… Seguir leyendo »
This week on the right-wing site Breitbart News, a video surfaced of one of Google’s weekly “T.G.I.F.” meetings, where employees and the leadership engage in heated debates over everything from healthier snack stations to the election of Donald Trump.
Breitbart News described the 2016 video as a “smoking gun” because it showed Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder, telling everyone how he felt about the new leader of the free world.
Spoiler: Not good.
“Myself, as an immigrant, as a refugee, I certainly find this election deeply offensive, and I know many of you do, too,” he said in his flat, nasal voice.… Seguir leyendo »
The first threatening phone call that Zhuang Liehong got in New York was in the fall of 2016, on a gloriously warm September morning. The call came from a jail where his father was being held following a protest in Mr. Zhuang’s home village in Southern China. “Is this Zhuang Liehong?” asked an unfamiliar voice. When Mr. Zhuang said yes, there was a pause and his father’s voice came on the line. “Son”, he said, “stop doing what you’re doing. It will be bad for your family”.
What Mr. Zhuang had been doing, for the most part, was posting on Facebook.… Seguir leyendo »
During its recent Lunar New Year gala show, state-run Chinese Central Television spotlighted a 93-year-old engineer who participated in China’s first nuclear submarine program. The program, which broadcasts to an audience of over 1 billion national and overseas viewers, lauded this guest of honor for dedicating his life to top-secret government work and for making huge sacrifices for the Communist Party. “For 30 years, he made no contact with his family for fear of giving away his knowledge and only told his father what he did for a living when the older man was on his deathbed,” the state report declared.… Seguir leyendo »
Apple ha compartido algo muy valioso. No se trata del anuncio de la última versión del iPhone, sino de una enorme cantidad de datos personales que irán directamente al régimen autoritario más grande, y uno de los más severos, del mundo: el gobierno comunista de China.
Debido a la continua represión de los derechos humanos y de la libertad de expresión por parte del gobierno chino del presidente Xi Jinping, así como a su involucramiento cada vez más profundo en las democracias de Occidente, las políticas de Apple en China tienen implicaciones de mucho mayor alcance para todos nosotros.
El verano pasado, Apple anunció que se asociaría con Guizhou-Cloud Big Data (GCBD), una empresa propiedad del Estado relacionada con el Partido Comunista, para construir el primer centro de almacenamiento de datos de Apple en China.… Seguir leyendo »
Apple is selling out. It’s not about the latest version of the iPhone, but the huge cache of personal data that will be going directly to the largest, and one of the harshest, authoritarian regimes in the world: the Communist government of China.
Given the Chinese government’s continuing crackdown on human rights and freedom of speech under President Xi Jinping, as well as its deepening reach into Western democracies, Apple’s policies in China have far-reaching implications for us all.
Last summer, Apple announced that it would be partnering with Guizhou-Cloud Big Data, a state-owned company with Communist Party connections, to build Apple’s first data-storage center in China.… Seguir leyendo »
I spent nearly seven years in a Chinese prison for being a leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. I was freed in 1998, and the Chinese government let me leave the country. I chose to go to the United States, where I could freely speak my mind without fear of being thrown in prison.
I earned a doctorate in history in 2009 and took a teaching position in Taiwan. I taught contemporary Chinese history and led a weekly seminar — a “China salon” — of open discussions about Chinese society and politics. Many of the seminar topics, like the 1989 protest movement and political reform, were taboo in the mainland but safe for public discussion in Taiwan.… Seguir leyendo »
The censorship order handed down from the Chinese Communist Party earlier this year reads like a decree from a Puritan: depictions of underage drinking, gambling and extreme violence are not permitted online; images of scantily clad people and portrayals of homosexuality are off limits; spiritual figures and beliefs cannot be satirized.
The directive, aimed at China’s booming online entertainment industry, prompted uncommon outrage for the number of topics — 68 — it banned. The list includes not only the usual politically sensitive subjects but also subjects that have made the internet an exhilarating and liberating space for this country’s hundreds of millions of web users.… Seguir leyendo »
Authoritarians, in China and elsewhere, normally have preferred to dress their authoritarianism up in pretty clothes. Lenin called the version of dictatorship he invented in 1921 “democratic centralism,” but it became clear, especially after Stalin and Mao inherited the system, that centralism, not democracy, was the point. More recent examples of prettifying include “The Republic of Zimbabwe,” “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” and several others. What would be wrong with plainer labels? The Authoritarian State of Zimbabwe? The Shining Dictatorship of Korea? That dictators avoid candidly describing their regimes shows that, at least in their use of words, they acknowledge the superiority of freedom and democracy.… Seguir leyendo »
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