Monday 28 September 2020

Beijing Tightens Control Over Hong Kong Broadcast Media

Since the passing of the Hong Kong National Security Law in July, Beijing has steadily expanded its control over Hong Kong’s media outlets. In August, Next Digital publisher Jimmy Lai was dramatically arrested on national security charges during a raid of Apple Daily’s offices. Last week, Hong Kong police announced that they would begin to bar from restricted press areas journalists representing outlets not officially recognized by the government. Several other major Hong Kong media organizations have experienced significant changes over the last three months, including attempts to muzzle critical journalists and extend airtime for pro-Beijing politicians.

On Sunday, Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), Hong Kong’s public broadcasting service, reported on the re-opening of a concluded investigation into one of their reporters based on complaints made against her a year ago:

The reporter, Nabela Qoser, has also been informed that her three-year probation period as a civil servant will be extended by another 120 days, according to the RTHK Programme Staff Union.

Qoser’s confrontational approach towards Chief Executive Carrie Lam and other officials at press conferences during the months of anti-government protests was praised by many, but denounced as aggressive and biased by others.

“Where were you all last night?,” she had asked Lam, for example, the day after the Yuen Long gang attack on July 21 which put dozens of people in hospital.

[…] The [RTHK Programme Staff] union questioned why the investigation into Qoser is being reopened after it had been concluded and said it would be seeking information as to who made the decision. It described the move as “unreasonable suppression”.
[Source]

RTHK has drawn the ire of pro-Beijing supporters in Hong Kong for their coverage of the Hong Kong protests. They accuse the broadcaster of being sympathetic to protestors’ demands and unfairly critical of the government. In June, at the same time that the government appointed a team to scrutinize RTHK’s management, the broadcaster ended its popular long-running satirical program “Headliner,” analogized by some as Hong Kong’s “Saturday Night Live,” following complaints that it mocked and derided the Hong Kong Police Force.

On Monday, RTHK reported on senior government officials’ attempts to distance themselves from the decision to investigate Qoser:

The Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development, Edward Yau, whose bureau oversees RTHK, brushed aside suggestions that the government played a role in the controversy, saying it is a “staff matter” that’s completely left in the hands of RTHK.

“I think what you’re talking about is a staff matter within a government department, which under the existing arrangement is a matter for the department to handle because as all government departments, they have their own policies to establish performance, promotion and other staffing matters. This is entirely a matter for the department, so it is inappropriate for me to comment on this,” Yau said. [Source]

But a representative of the broadcaster’s staff union disputed those claims, saying the decision was made by the Civil Service Bureau:

 

Publicly funded news outlets are not the only media organizations facing heightened scrutiny. In August, local freelance reporter Rachel Cheung wrote a long thread on Twitter about significant shake-ups of top management at two of Hong Kong’s biggest cable news providers. From a collated version of the thread:

The police raid at @appledaily_hk, the only pro-democratic paper in #HongKong, on Monday was shocking. But across the town, a major shake-up occurred at the newsroom of broadcast station iCable, which is equally alarming.

There had been rumours that the former news director Fung Tak-hung would soon be let go. The surprise came at his replacement: not one, but three new appointed media executives, all of whom have far less experience in running a newsroom.

[…] The parachute appointments couldn’t have come at a more sensitive time. A similar move occurred at another pay-television network Now TV last month, where three senior staff from pro-establishment broadcast station TVB were appointed to lead the newsroom.

“The purpose is to control the highest authority in the newsroom and leverage that power to influence the direction and agenda of news coverage,” said Allan Au, a media and political commentator in Hong Kong.

[…] Another alarming phenomenon that happens across the industry is journalists leaving in droves because of the poor working environment and low pay. At iCable, average salary for new reporters is around HK$13,000 [$1700USD]. Salary increase each year is no more than several hundred.

At the iCable’s China reporting team, once known for its exclusive stories, eight of 12 members resigned in the last 3 years, many of which have many years of experience. All were replaced with fresh graduates. [Source]

On Saturday, news broke that broadcaster NowTV would no longer have a journalist host its weekly political news program. The host would instead be replaced by Starry Lee, the leader of Hong Kong’s largest pro-Beijing political party:

In some cases, top government officials have eschewed speaking to journalists altogether. Last week, an interview with Hong Kong police commissioner was conducted by pro-Beijing lawmaker Elizabeth Quat and published directly to her own YouTube channel:

Taken together, the changes at RTHK, iCable, and NowTV represent a significant strengthening of Beijing’s control over Hong Kong media, and particularly over broadcast news. Alongside Television Broadcasts (TVB)—Hong Kong’s most watched television broadcaster, widely considered to be biased in favor of Beijing—the networks essentially capture the regions entire TV news audience, presenting an ominous future for press freedom in the city.



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/09/beijing-tightens-control-over-hong-kong-broadcast-media/
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Wednesday 23 September 2020

Minitrue Diary, January 14, 2020: Higher Education, Dutch Chip-makers, WHO & Coronavirus

CDT has recently acquired and verified a collection of  directives issued by central Party authorities to  at the beginning of this year. These directives were issued on an almost daily basis in early 2020, and we will be posting them over the coming weeks. The following four directives were released on January 14, 2020.

In the next few days, the Ministry of Education will announce its Recommendation on Pilot Reform Program to Recruit Students in Basic Subjects to Select Institutes of Higher Education (the “Strong Base Plan”). If covering this, follow information released by authoritative offices as the standard; do not produce extensive reports, do not hype state-of-the-art chips and software, intelligent technology, new materials, cutting-edge manufacture and national security and other key fields related to recruiting students and training personnel; do not hype the scope of pilot schools; do not question the timing of the announcement or the provincial quotas for the program; do not bring up the schools’ previous [ability to] recruit students independently. Promptly clean up extreme and negative messages and harmful speech. (January 14, 2020) [Chinese]

On January 14, the Ministry of Education released the Recommendation on Pilot Reform Program to Recruit Students in Basic Subjects to Select Institutes of Higher Education.

gmh 33

1. Do not republish foreign media reports concerning China’s importation of Dutch photolithography machines.

2. Please safely handle news related to China informing the WHO about the Wuhan pneumonia epidemic, in accordance with the content and low-key tone of official information. (January 14, 2020) [Chinese]

In January, it was reported that the Trump administration tried to block the Netherlands from selling chip-making equipment to China. Alexandra Alper, Toby Sterling, and Stephen Nellis of Reuters reported:

The high-level push, which has not previously been reported, demonstrates the importance the White House places on preventing China from getting hold of a machine required to make the world’s fastest microprocessors. It also shows the challenges facing the U.S. government’s largely unilateral efforts to stem the flow of advanced technology to China.

The U.S. campaign began in 2018, after the Dutch government gave semiconductor equipment company ASML, the global leader in a critical chip-making process known as lithography, a license to sell its most advanced machine to a Chinese customer, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Over the following months, U.S officials examined whether they could block the sale outright and held at least four rounds of talks with Dutch officials, three sources told Reuters. [Source]

On January 14, the WHO publicly offered conflicting information about the newly emergent novel coronavirus, issuing a tweet citing a report provided by the Chinese government that there was no evidence that the virus was passed through human-to-human transmission. The same day, at a public briefing, a WHO official stated the opposite. The WHO later faced a barrage of criticism from many, notably Donald Trump, that they had acquiesced to the Chinese government in their initial reporting on the virus, leading to a delayed global response. From Julian Borger at The Guardian:

The WHO also provided ammunition to its detractors when, on 14 January, it put out a tweet citing preliminary Chinese studies finding “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission”.

It was issued on the same day the WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19, Maria Van Kerkhove (a US immunologist) gave a press briefing in Geneva warning of precisely the opposite – the potential for rapid spread. Concerned that her briefing conflicted with the initial Chinese findings, a middle-ranking official told the social media team to put out a tweet to balance the Van Kerkhove briefing. In so doing, the WHO exposed itself to the charge of contributing to an air of complacency. But the tweet was factually true and does not appear to have been part of a deliberate strategy.

Again and again, the events of January reflected the difficulties Tedros and his organisation faced in negotiating a path between two hostile superpowers, and the egos of their leaders, without any independent powers to enforce compliance and information sharing. [Source]

gmh 33

Disable posting, commenting, and all other interactive functions on all platforms (including third-party platform accounts) from January 15 at 12:00 p.m. until January 16 at 12:00 p.m. If you are unable to do so, you must file a report with the editor-in-chief stating the reasons why, and assign staff to monitor the platform during this period. (January 14, 2020) [Chinese]

真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.



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/09/minitrue-diary-january-20-2020-higher-education-dutch-chip-makers-who-coronavirus/
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Facebook Shuts Down Chinese Influence Operation Targeted At Philippines, U.S.

On Tuesday, September 22nd, Facebook announced the removal of 155 accounts, 11 Pages, nine Groups and six Instagram accounts which violated policies against coordinated inauthentic behaviour. The accounts were operated by individuals in China’s Fujian province. The fraudulent accounts were part of a concerted misinformation operation, nicknamed Operation Naval Gazing, primarily focused on influencing Southeast Asian publics’ perceptions of Chinese influence in the region. In a detailed report which accompanied the announcement, the disinformation analysis firm Graphika reported that the Facebook-based disinformation campaign targeted Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and, eventually, the United States: 

Operation Naval Gazing enlarges our understanding of information operations emanating from China. Some of its content reflected Chinese messaging, both overt and covert, on issues such as the Hong Kong protests, Taiwan’s independence, and COVID-19. Other content promoted China’s position in its geopolitical rivalry with the United States, especially in the South China Sea. The operation’s use of covert assets to promote favored politicians – notably members of the Duterte family in the Philippines, and President Joko Widodo (“Jokowi”) in Indonesia – appears more novel. Its use of fake American accounts was also novel, but these assets were generally too rudimentary to establish a persona.

The operation began in late 2016 by posting about Taiwan; some of its posts attacked President Tsai Ing-Wen. In early 2018, it started posting about the Philippines with content that supported President Rodrigo Duterte and argued in favor of Chinese regional influence. Around the same time, it also created a collection of pages that focused more broadly on the South China Sea and defended China’s policies there. For a few months in late 2018, one page began posting in support of President Joko Widodo in Indonesia, shortly before Indonesia’s presidential election.

In 2019-2020, the operation began running accounts that posed as Americans and posted a small amount of content about the U.S. presidential election. Different assets supported President Donald Trump and his rival Joe Biden; one short-lived group supported former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. The operation did not single out either candidate for preferential treatment. Many of the accounts in this phase of the operation were barely active.

Throughout all of these phases, the operation kept returning to the theme of maritime security, especially the achievements of the Chinese Navy. [Source]

Graphika’s report also noted that many of the accounts used General Adversarial Networks (GAN), a form of artificial intelligence, to generate new profile pictures and “[sidestep] the need to clothe a fake account in a stolen profile picture; as such, [GANs] defeat the traditional investigative technique of reverse- searching the image.”

Groups and accounts targeted at Filipino Facebook users spread messages that praised President Duterte and encouraged increased cooperation between the Philippines and China. Conseulo Marquez of the Philippine Daily Inquirer reports that the accounts shared information regarding Chinese investments in the Philippines and Duterte’s use of emergency powers: 

One of the pages taken down was “South China Sea Outpost” which shared the news report about President Rodrigo Duterte’s remark that government will push through with projects under Chinese companies even those blacklisted by the United States.

Specifically, the Sangley Point International Airport, a joint project of blacklisted China company Communications Construction Co. Ltd. (CCCC) and Lucio Tan’s MacroAsia Corp.
Another post by a Facebook page “Solid Sarah Z Duterte 2022,” which backs Duterte-Carpio’s presidential bid in 2022, criticized Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon for opposing the proposal to give Duterte emergency powers to fix the problems hounding Philippine Health Insurance Corp. [Source]

As reported by Rappler itself, the Chinese operation’s targets in the Philippines “included opposition senators, Rappler, ABS-CBN news outlets, and Rappler founder and chief executive Maria Ressa.” In June of this year, Maria Ressa was found guilty of cyberlibel, with rights lawyer Amal Clooney describing Ressa’s arrest as “a sinister action to silence a journalist for exposing corruption and abuse.”

Notably, Operation Naval Gazing used little cross-platform coordination. The operation was connected with only one Twitter account. In March, ProPublica reported on the PRC’s extensive use of fake Twitter accounts to spread disinformation about the Hong Kong protests and China’s COVID-19 response. On Facebook, as of June this year, Chinese authorities had appeared to favor a more direct approach by posting overtly from state media accounts (“white propaganda”) rather than through networks of fake accounts.

However the Graphika report indicates that by 2019, fake Chinese-run accounts had already begun preliminary attempts to impersonate American Facebook users. Yet in an interview with Craig Timber of The Washington Post, Ben Nimmo of Graphika suggested that the influence operations had achieved very little influence on the American public: 

For U.S. politics, there were Facebook groups supporting Trump, Biden and former Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. Together the groups had fewer than 2,000 members, Graphika found. One group supporting Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), had about 1,400 members. A group supporting Trump had three members.

“The U.S.-focused content was the least and last part of the operation,” said Ben Nimmo, head of investigations for Graphika. “Some of their fake accounts did not engage with political content at all and liked content from the U.S. military instead. Most of the U.S.-focused assets were taken down when they were a few months old, so they didn’t have time to build a substantial audience. [Source]

The New York Times reports that American officials concurred with Graphika’s assessment on the limit of Chinese interference. Adam Goldman, Sheera Frenkel, and Julian E. Barnes relayed anonymous official assertions that, “China […] has not yet decided whether to try to influence the election in November in any substantial way.”

Facebook’s public announcement comes eight days after Buzzfeed News reported the contents of a lengthy memo by a now-fired Facebook insider detailing Facebook’s inability or unwillingness to counter state-directed election influence campaigns in Azerbaijan, Honduras, India, Ukraine, Spain, Brazil, Bolivia, and Ecuador, among others.

This was Facebook’s first takedown of Chinese accounts targeting the United States. In late July 2020, the United States warned China not to interfere in the electoral process. The United States and Australia have launched a joint initiative to combat Chinese social media misinformation efforts.



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/09/facebook-shuts-down-chinese-influence-operation-targeted-at-philippines-u-s/
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U.S. Takes Further Action to Restrict Xinjiang Imports

The House of Representatives passed legislation on Tuesday that would effectively ban all imports from Xinjiang. While existing US laws already ban the import of goods if there is evidence of forced labor during their production, as the South China Morning Post’s Owen Churchill reports, the new legislation would presume that forced labor was involved by default:

But the new legislation approved Tuesday would reverse that calculus for Xinjiang, meaning that importers could not source goods produced either wholly or in part in the region unless the US government could certify with “clear and convincing” evidence that they were not produced using forced labour. [Source]

The bipartisan legislation passed by the House comes shortly after Customs and Border Protection last week blocked some shipments of cotton, clothing, and computer parts imported from Xinjiang. As AP’s Ben Fox reports, the Trump administration is already considering expanding measures to restrict goods from the region:

The Trump administration has over the past year issued eight of what are known as “withhold release orders,” on goods from China to block goods tainted by forced labor and is considering further steps amid ongoing disputes over trade and other issues between the two countries.

Among the measures under consideration is an order banning cotton and tomatoes from the entire Xinjiang region, a move that could have significant economic effects. Cuccinelli said the administration was still studying the proposal.

“We are gathering more evidence there but also just doing a more thorough legal analysis to make sure we can withstand any legal assault once we proceed with it,” he said in a conference call with reporters. [Source]

The US government also imposed sanctions in July on 11 companies alleged to use the forced labor of Uyghurs.

It has become harder for independent observers to audit supply chains in Xinjiang. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal’s Eva Xiao reported that at least five organizations have announced they would stop inspecting factories, making it harder for companies to certify their products to be free of forced labor:

At least five organizations say they won’t help companies audit their supply chains in China’s Xinjiang region, where human-rights activists say a police-state atmosphere and government controls make it too difficult to determine whether factories and farms are relying on forced labor.

[…] In recent years, concerns have grown that in addition to the camps, which Beijing says are for vocational education, Uighurs are forcibly sent to work in factories in the region or elsewhere in China.

To respond to the concerns, some Western brands have turned to outside companies or nonprofits to vet their suppliers. Human-rights and labor activists, however, argue that auditors risk becoming enablers that help brands justify sourcing in Xinjiang, and that, given the lack of access and heavy policing in the region, they can’t realistically carry out proper examinations of factories. Beijing has denied the existence of forced Uighur labor. [Source]

This week, Reuters’ Cate Cadell published an exclusive showing that China may be expanding its forced labor programs beyond Xinjiang into neighboring Tibet. The report shows a systematic initiative to transfer rural laborers into “military-style training centers” where they are turned into coerced factory workers:

Beijing has set quotas for the mass transfer of rural laborers within Tibet and to other parts of China, according to over a hundred state media reports, policy documents from government bureaus in Tibet and procurement requests released between 2016-2020 and reviewed by Reuters. The quota effort marks a rapid expansion of an initiative designed to provide loyal workers for Chinese industry.

A notice posted to the website of Tibet’s regional government website last month said over half a million people were trained as part of the project in the first seven months of 2020 – around 15% of the region’s population. Of this total, almost 50,000 have been transferred into jobs within Tibet, and several thousand have been sent to other parts of China. Many end up in low paid work, including textile manufacturing, construction and agriculture. [Source]

Read more about the exchange of authoritarian policies between China’s peripheral regions via CDT.

Facing growing Western backlash against rights abuses in Xinjiang, a recently published Chinese white paper suggests there may be growing unease in Beijing about its forced labor programs. The Guardian’s Emma Graham-Harrison reports that the issuing of the white paper might indicate anxieties within the CCP about the economic consequences of its forced labor initiative:

“My hunch is that the CCP issued the white paper because it fears economic consequences,” said Timothy Grose, a professor of China studies with expertise in ethnic policy at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana.

“Reports of forced labor have circulated for over a year, so the timing of this white paper is interesting … Quite possibly, the CCP fears other countries will impose similar [import bans].” [Source]



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/09/u-s-takes-further-action-to-restrict-xinjiang-imports/
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Hong Kong Police to Stop Recognizing Some Journalists’ Credentials

The Hong Kong Police Force announced amendments to its guidelines on Tuesday to restrict access to press briefings and restricted areas for journalists from news outlets not officially recognized by the government. Only government-registered and “internationally known” foreign media would be permitted, while outlets accredited by local press associations such as the Hong Kong Journalists Association would no longer be recognized.

Hong Kong Free Press’ Kelly Ho reported on the justification for revising media access rules: 

[Chief Superintendent Kenneth] Kwok said that although officers wanted to assist with “normal coverage” of large-scale public processions, they had faced increased challenges in enforcing the law. He said police had spotted some people claiming to be journalists mixed in with crowds at protests: “[They] allegedly obstructed police work, and even assaulted police officers.” [Source]

The move comes after months of pressure on the government to set up a press licensing system, which various journalists’ associations decry as a move to constrict press freedoms. Back in May, Phila Siu at the South China Morning Post reported on local pro-Beijing political parties’ calls to set up an official accreditation system:

Pro-Beijing lawmaker Priscilla Leung Mei-fun, a former journalist, urged the government to establish an official press accreditation system, saying children were putting their safety at risk in its absence by reporting from protest venues.

Leung, from the Business and Professionals Alliance, said on Monday such a system could also prevent people from disguising themselves as reporters. [Source]

The South China Morning Post’s Christy Leung and Tony Cheung reported on how the rule change effectively bans “unaccredited” media from reporting in certain areas, and the legal implications for journalists on the ground:

That means a substantial, although not officially quantified, number can be banned from covering police-controlled events and outdoor activities that are cordoned off, but access to incidents and protests in public areas will not be blocked.

[…] While those no longer officially recognised by police can still cover news events and protests in public areas, officers are not obliged to help them, and they can be subject to criminal offences including attending an illegal assembly or violating social-distancing rules. [Source]

One of the groups most affected by the rule change is student journalists. Also for the South China Morning Post, Lilian Cheng reported that seven local journalism schools issued a joint statement condemning the police actions, and suggested that they could take legal action to oppose the move:

“We are concerned that the new policy would amount to giving clear instructions to officers to disperse non-mainstream journalists who have done no wrong and only exercising their right to gather information,” said the statement, which was drafted by the journalism department of Baptist University.

The Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) said it was taking legal advice and might consider applying for a judicial review to see if the amended guidelines infringed Basic Law guarantees of press freedom. [Source]

Another concern about the rule change is that because many web-based news outlets are not recognized by the government, they face being excluded from police-controlled events in the future. Citizen News’s Alvin Lum wrote on Twitter that many well known foreign media outlets may be affected by this move:

The rule change has significant implications for the coverage of public demonstrations. AFP’s Xinqi Su wrote on Twitter about how many of the pivotal moments during the 2019 Hong Kong protests were captured by news outlets that are now unrecognized by the police:

In addition to journalism schools, local press groups and the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents’ Club have denounced the rule change. The Guardian’s Helen Davidson covered the Hong Kong Journalist Association’s reaction to the new rules:

Mak Yin Ting, a veteran journalist and a former chair of the HKJA, told the Guardian the new rules were a further step in tightening control on media. “It is absurd because by doing so the government, who should be monitored, is taking the power to decide who can be the monitor over them.”

Mak suggested there were two main aims: “One, to take the control of defining who is media from professional groups to a government department … The second purpose is to stop the numerous online media and journalists from university and journalism schools from publishing articles.” [Source]

Facing stiff backlash on Wednesday, the Hong Kong government offered no comment. But Beijing’s Foreign Ministry Office in Hong Kong issued a statement accusing the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of “meddling with Hong Kong affairs on the pretext of press freedom”:

The spokesperson of the Commissioner’s Office expressed strong disapproval of and firm opposition against the unwarranted remarks FCC Hong Kong made about the Hong Kong police force’s amendment of the definition of “media representatives” under the Police General Orders, and urged the organization to immediately stop meddling with Hong Kong affairs on the pretext of press freedom.

[…] The spokesperson emphasized that there is no such thing as absolute press freedom above the law. Hong Kong is part of China, and any media practitioner in the HKSAR shall strictly and voluntarily abide by national laws applied to Hong Kong and local laws. No organization or individual shall seek privileges above the law, impede the HKSAR Government’s law-based governance, or endanger China’s national security and Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability on the pretext of press freedom. [Source]



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/09/hong-kong-police-to-stop-recognizing-some-journalists-credentials/
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Tuesday 22 September 2020

Photo: Fengxian Temple, by nicolas_oddo

Fengxian Temple, by nicolas_oddo (CC BY-ND 2.0)



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/09/photo-fengxian-temple-by-nicolas_oddo/
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Nothing of Interest in a Small Country? Czech-Chinese Academic Exchange in the Age of Military-Civil Fusion

The following article by Filip Jirouš was originally published by Project Sinopsis.

The first systematic survey of Czech academic ties with PRC defense-linked universities, by Sinopsis and Czech Radio, has identified dozens of partnerships between Czech universities and institutions assigned to the top risk categories on a database of Chinese defense universities maintained by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) deepens its strategy of military-civil fusion (军民融合), which aims to further integrate civilian innovation and research with military development, cooperation between Czech academia and multiple PRC defense-linked universities highlights the risk of knowledge and technology transfer to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).1

Denials that a small European country could have anything of interest to the CCP’s military are signs of a lack of awareness of the scale of the Chinese state’s efforts to obtain dual-use technology, as well as of previous attempts targeting the Czech Republic. As Czech intelligence revealed during this investigation, the institute that makes China’s nuclear warheads once tried to obtain Czech technology by exploiting ordinary academic exchanges with a local university.

The PRC’s use of academic cooperation with foreign academia for military research began to attract international attention with a series of publications by Alex Joske, a researcher currently affiliated with ASPI, and his collaborators. Their work has been followed by reports and news stories detailing instances of such cooperation in Sweden, Belgium, the UK, New Zealand and the US.2 Two ASPI reports discussed the role of cooperation with foreign universities in defense research using military and civilian universities. ASPI’s China Defence University Tracker, released in 2019, provides a database of Chinese universities with ties to national defense, classified by the assessed level of risk that exchanges with them will help advance the CCP’s defense and security goals.3

Defense universities are not only those directly subordinated to the PLA. The strong international links enjoyed by civilian universities can allow the PLA to gain access to foreign research and technology more easily, thanks to the CCP’s control of Chinese academic institutions and the Xi-era focus on military-civil fusion (军民融合).4 Among the civilian universities most involved in national defense research, the so-called “Seven Sons of National Defense” stand out. These include Beihang University (北京航空航天大学), the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT, 北京理工大学), and Northwestern Polytechnical University (NWPU, 西北工业大学). The Seven Sons rank among the best funded universities in the PRC, with a large portion of their funding spent on defense research and development.5 Available data shows that in recent years around 30 percent of their students were employed in the national defense system. All Seven Son universities participate in weapons research such as missiles, aircraft carriers and fighter jets.6

Research discussed in this post used the ASPI Tracker to identify potential sources of risk in Czech-Chinese academic cooperation agreements. In a project started in November 2019, the author compared the Czech Ministry of Education’s list of Chinese partners of public universities for 2018 with the ASPI database.7 The data was then used by Markéta Chaloupská and Jana Magdoňová, two journalists with Czech Radio, a public broadcaster, to conduct their own investigation, assessing the possible risks stemming from these ties. Some of the findings appeared in two Czech Radio reports in July 2020.8 Here, we provide further detail on selected cases of Czech-Chinese academic cooperation with links to PRC defense universities, as part of the first study of risks in Czech-Chinese technological research collaboration.

Czech academia and its Chinese defense-linked partners

While no PRC universities subordinate to the military or security agencies are known to have partnered with Czech counterparts, 14 out of 26 Czech public universities have established collaboration with civilian universities the ASPI database assigns medium to very high risk.9 Seven Czech universities have high or very high risk partners, including NWPU, Beihang University, and BIT.10 The highest number of such ties are found among technical schools, but one stands out among general universities, highlighting the link between collaboration with CCP propaganda and defense-related risks. Palacký University in Olomouc, the first university with a Confucius Institute in the country and the one that published a translation of a book by Xi Jinping, has cooperation agreements with, e.g., BIT and Wuhan University (武汉大学), designated as very high risk by the ASPI Tracker.11

Before the research by Czech Radio and Sinopsis became public, Czech universities showed low awareness of this issue, with some signing partnerships without adequate knowledge of their counterparts’ background. PRC institutions appeared to be treated as standard scientific bodies, as if they enjoyed the independence and academic freedoms taken for granted in democratic countries.12

Brno University of Technology’s (Vysoké učení technické v Brně) Sustainable Process Integration Laboratory (SPIL), led by Jiří Klemeš, boasts several PRC partners the ASPI database labels as medium to very high risk, including the high-risk Xi’an Jiaotong University (XJTU, 西安交通大学) that hosts a number of defense laboratories.13 The SPIL has several Chinese employees and focuses on research in energy industry, trying to reduce its environmental costs.14 In 2019, the SPIL’s annual conference was visited by Klemeš’s long-time XJTU collaborator Qu Zhiguo 屈治国, whose areas of expertise include heat protection in aeronautics and astronautics.15 According to Qu’s XJTU bio, he has led projects under national-level programs, including the the Central Organization Department’s Top Youth Talents Support Plan (青年拔尖人才支持计划) under the so-called “Ten Thousand Talents Plan” (万人计划). His bio also mentions he has participated in national defense research projects.16 Qu has done projects for the China General Nuclear Power Group (中国广核集团) and the tech company ZTE. As of September 2019, Qu was affiliated with XJTU’s State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering (动力工程多相流国家重点实验室), linked to national defense research.17 Additionally, one of Qu’s postdoc students worked at the PLA logistics research unit 62026 between 2013 and 2017.18 Confronted with this evidence by Czech Radio, Klemeš claimed he knew nothing about it and “d[id] not see any problem” with Qu or XJTU’s defense ties.19 In Klemeš’s view, “the Czech Republic is so tiny” that he does not know “how it could contribute to China’s defense industry.”20 Klemeš’s interview with the Czech Radio ended abruptly with his claim that the journalist worked for Czech intelligence.21

The Czech Technical University (České vysoké učení technické, ČVUT) has worked with the China Aviation Tianye Education Investment Co., Ltd. (CATEI, 中航天业教育投资有限公司) and Czech aviation company F AIR based in Karlovy Vary on a training project for Chinese pilots. CATEI is a part of a private conglomerate that provides pilot training in cooperation with domestic and foreign educational institutions. Its partners include top Chinese academic bodies such as the Sichuan Institute of Industrial Technology, which specializes in “national defense education” and “strives hard to create a national defense education brand.”22 While at least some of the pilot-training projects envisaged under the cooperation have fallen through, the partnership was used to promote links to other universities tied to PRC national defense.23 In 2017, CATEI invited a Czech delegation that included former minister of foreign affairs and then-adviser to the Czech PM Jan Kohout to visit BIT, one of the Seven Sons of National Defense focusing on military research in aeronautics and armaments, where they urged Chinese aviation students to study at ČVUT.24 CATEI also mediated other aviation exchange programs, such as Nanhang University (南京航空航天大学) sending students to the Czech University of Life Sciences.25 CATEI has similar international cooperation with schools and universities in Australia, the U.S., and Canada.26

ČVUT engages with another PRC aviation-focused body — the Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics (CSAA, 中国航空学会). In 2018, the organization hosted Peter Vittek from the Czech Aerospace Society (Odborná společnost letecká ČR) and Andrej Lalis from the ČVUT’s Aviation Security Lab.27 CSAA regularly holds recruitment and educational events with the PLAAF.28 A 2019 defense-themed educational event that involved the CSAA and a PLAAF research unit had a ČVUT link. The Shandong province middle school where the training was held specializes in aviation and sends students to study abroad, and in particular to ČVUT itself. The event, during which national-level experts (including an NWPU professor) talked about aeronautics, astronautics, naval and nuclear research, also stressed military-civil fusion.29 This illustrates how the military-civil fusion strategy is communicated to students, including prospective participants in these international cooperation agreements, from early on.

Czech universities’ reactions

The Technical University of Ostrava (Vysoká škola báňská – Technická univerzita Ostrava, VŠB-TUO) has partnered with, e.g., BIT and Shenyang Aerospace University (沈阳航空航天大学) (high risk). VŠB-TUO declined to discuss these ties with Czech Radio.30 This stance is consistent with those it assumed during previous rounds of debate on cooperation with the PRC. In 2019, while institutions such as ČVUT reviewed their cooperation with Huawei, VŠB-TUO stated that it intended to continue to work with the company as before, including on EU-funded projects.31 If anything, the university is seeking to deepen its cooperation with controversial PRC organs, e.g., upgrading its Confucius Class to a full Confucius Institute, against a global trend of disengagement from that Party-led propaganda and influence operation.32 The university’s Center for Advanced Innovation Technologies runs a Czech-China Center that participates in Hubei Province’s 100 Talents Plan, cooperating mainly in metallurgy and material science.33 Talent plans are government-run programs to obtain foreign technology and know-how that combine legal and illegal methods and are facing increasing global scrutiny. Most notably through the plans’ structure and mechanisms have been described in a recent report by Joske.34

In contrast, the universities in Pardubice and Hradec Králové responded to the Czech survey by stating that they would use the Tracker to vet their Chinese partners.35 The vice president of ČVUT told the radio that “every technology can be abused” and that they “take the problem seriously.”36 Despite this stated awareness, ČVUT collaborates with Beihang University, which spends close to 60 percent of its research budget on defense research, ČVUT has also had high-level contacts with NWPU, a university with several national defense laboratories: among them, only the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) laboratory received over 61 million USD in research funding between 2001 and 2019.37 In 2018, it hosted a delegation from the Ningbo Enterprise Successors Union (宁波市“创二代”联谊会), an association of young entrepreneurs under the supervision of the Ningbo United Front Work Department.38 The delegation listened to an exclusive Industry 4.0 presentation by then university president Petr Konvalinka,39 and visited the robotics department, reportedly ignoring a request not to take photographs.40

PRC interest in Czech defense technology

The fact that the PRC is interested in Czech research is underscored by Chinese cyber-attacks against local academic institutions that have been on the rise, attempting to acquire data and know-how in fields such as biotechnology, drones, or agriculture. According to one cyber-security expert, the attacks have been precisely targeted, indicating a good understanding of the Czech academic world.41

The country’s counter-intelligence agency BIS has disclosed a 2004 attempt to recruit a Czech scientist by the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics (中国工程物理研究院), responsible for designing and building the PRC’s nuclear warheads.42 The operation allegedly sought to obtain advanced nanotechnology through a Chinese student on a scholarship program at an unidentified Czech university.43 While this scheme was thwarted, other evidence points to long-term PRC interest in Czech defense technology. The CETC YLC-20 emitter locating system is based on the Czech Věra system, a planned sale of which to China was canceled in 2004 after US pressure.44

These examples show that the PRC seeks to obtain Czech technologies and know-how in niche fields such as drones and nanotechnology. Under the military-civil fusion strategy, technologies obtained through legal, officially civilian academic cooperation could be used for military purposes.45

Conclusion

While cooperation between Czech and Chinese research institutions remains limited, the publicly known cases showing the PRC’s interest in Czech military or dual-use technology should alert the country’s universities to the inherent risks of cooperation with defense-linked institutions in China. These include technology transfer through talent recruitment programs, military use of know-how obtained through civilian collaboration, and exploitation of research for human rights abuses. Responses from the Czech universities confronted with these facts largely point to a lack of awareness of the issue and of tools for vetting risky partnerships with the PRC universities. Czech academic institutions appear to treat their Chinese counterparts as regular scholarly establishments, when in reality they are ultimately controlled by a political party, lack academic freedoms, and often keep much closer relations with the military and security apparatuses than is disclosed in their external messaging.

This underlines the need to conduct background checks using Chinese sources, where information about these ties is often more readily available, as well as the emerging body of research on the topic. Rather than simply rely on counter-intelligence agencies, research institutions should proactively work to prevent technology theft and problematic knowledge transfer.

As the Czech case shows, smaller countries are not exempt from becoming targets of the PRC defense system’s technology acquisition efforts. These states often develop comparative advantages in specific — if niche — fields, where they focus expertise and funding. In the Czech Republic, those include, e.g., nanotechnologies and UAVs, which the PRC has already shown interest in. Taking this issue seriously is essential in order to protect both property and personnel. Positive responses to the findings from Czech universities, stating they would conduct background checks on Chinese partners using such materials as the ASPI database, show the potential for good practice and the possibility of changing a rather passive attitude toward due diligence.

For full footnotes, please visit the original text on Project Sinopsis’ website.



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/09/nothing-of-interest-in-a-small-country-czech-chinese-academic-exchange-in-the-age-of-military-civil-fusion/
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New United Front Directive Asserts Party Control Over Private Sector

Earlier this month, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party released new guidelines on the relationship between the Party and private businesses. The guidelines called for increased Party control over entrepreneurs and private enterprise and directed businesses to utilize Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as a compass. Titled “Opinion on Strengthening the United Front Work of the Private Economy in the New Era,” the report indicates the revanchist attitude of the Party under Xi towards the private sector. At the New York Times, Chris Buckley and Keith Bradsher write that the directive is oriented towards increasing economic growth and Party control over private enterprise: 

More broadly, the instructions reflect a long-running debate within China about the role of private business in a country where the government still controls crucial levers of industry. China emerged as a global economic power in large part by freeing entrepreneurs to open factories and find markets around the world.

That freewheeling approach has long unnerved some Chinese leaders who want businesses to hew more closely to the party’s strategic goals, which can range from strengthening sway abroad to lifting people out of poverty in underdeveloped parts of the country.

“It has been an ongoing dilemma about co-optation and ensuring loyalty, while allowing sufficient autonomy to develop a competitive economy,” said Kellee Tsai, a political scientist at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology who studies China’s private entrepreneurs, in a telephone interview. “I think it really reasserts the party’s leadership and authority. I think that’s really the primary message.” [Source]

Quartz’s Jane Li writes that the directive on United Front work might be guided by fears that China’s new global cohort of tech founders is insufficiently loyal to the Party:

There are clues in the guidelines that the Party is also concerned about shaping a younger generation of tech founders, such as Zhang Yiming, the 37-year-old founder of ByteDance. Compared with someone like Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who has long been seen as an informal ambassador for China, Zhang has always emphasized the global reach rather than the Chinese roots of his tech empire. He drew flack at home last month for a statement that appeared resigned to a forced sale of TikTok to a US firm in order to continue its global success—and that failed to thank China.

China must “strengthen the cultivation of young entrepreneurs…guiding them to inherit and continue the great tradition of listening to and following the Party” the decree said. [Source]

Chinese entrepreneurs with global aspirations may be dismayed at the government’s public assertion of control over their businesses. Tiktok, a subsidiary of Zhang Yiming’s ByteDance, has already faced intense scrutiny over its relationship with the Chinese state and the Party.

(CDT has previously tracked ByteDance’s evolution from a company on the receiving end of regulator’s ire to one promoting campaigns to “Pass Down Red Genes, Use Tech to Boost Patriotic Spirit.”)

Nonetheless, the Party intends for increased United Front work to be mutually beneficial for both the Party and business. Bloomberg reports that companies with stronger ideological adherence will receive greater state backing, citing the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Yue Su’s explanation that “the document shows China is trying to mobilize more resources around the national strategy amid the economic slowdown caused by the pandemic and the deterioration of diplomatic and trade relations with the US [….] The authorities will give priority to companies that assist in realizing policy goals when allocating financial and policy resources.”

Although the Opinion clearly defines the Party’s ambitions, it is light on details of possible future policy actions. In an effort to clarify which mechanisms the Party may use to exercise control, the blogger Youshu analyzed and shared a full machine-translation of a speech by Ye Qing, Vice Chairman of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce. Ye’s speech distilled the future direction of United Front efforts to three fields: human resources, monitoring of behavior, and improving the Party-led union. You Shu comments that Ye “calls for ‘a working mechanism for the Party to lead the human resources department and giving full play to the leading role of Party organizations in selecting and employing personnel.’ So, Party people will end up controlling hiring and firing? Sounds like that’s where we’re going”

Long before the September release of this opinion on United Front work, Xi Jinping had been angling to reinsert the Party into all aspects of Chinese society. A Made in China Journal essay by Jude Blanchette of the Center for Strategic and International Studies explained in April last year that the Party’s drive to insert itself into everything is part of a drive to stave off atrophy:

I argue that the campaign to enlarge the reach of the CCP into private companies cannot be separated from its much wider campaign to increase the Party’s governance over all institutions under its purview, be they state-owned enterprises, law firms, educational institutions, non-governmental organisations, and even within government bureaucracies. This development, in turn, is closely related to the Party’s decades-long campaign to arrest the organisational atrophy that accompanied the post-Mao economic reforms initiated in the late 1970s. Seen in this light, the expansion of Party organisations within private firms is not a discrete effort to infiltrate the private sector per se, but rather is a manifestation of the CCP’s desire to have insight and input into all economic, civil, and political activity within the country. [Source]

Xi summarized his own ambitions when he revived the use of the phrase, “Party, government, military, society, education, east, west, south, north, centre, the Party leads all.” In their China Neican newsletter, Adam Ni and Yun Jiang give the historical background of the phrase:

The formulation of “The Party leads all” was actually first used by Mao during the 1962 Enlarged Central Work Conference (aka the “Seven Thousand Cadres Conference”). This is the famous conference that saw a broad pushback against Mao and his radical leftist policies that left tens of million dead during the Great Famine (1959-1961).

In early 2016, Xi revived this formulation as one of the Party’s political principles. This was cemented at the 19th Party Congress in October 2017, when it was written into the Party Constitution (Chinese/English) [….] [Source]

An August report by the Economist analyzing China’s robust version of state capitalism captured the spirit of the era of “Red” entrepreneurs and patriotic tech:

Last year Zotye, a carmaker, used it to tackle weak sales, and Wuliangye, a distiller, to improve the quality of its baijiu; it helped Zheshang Bank to digitise its operations and catalysed the development of energy-saving technologies at China National Nuclear Power. “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” is, on the basis of these companies’ annual reports, quite the business-practice panacea. [Source]



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/09/new-united-front-directive-asserts-party-control-over-private-sector/
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