Friday 31 December 2021

Stand News’ Headquarters Raided, Executives Arrested, Computers Seized

Hong Kong’s Stand News is no more. The pro-democracy media outlet announced its dissolution on Wednesday after National Security Police arrested seven current and former employees, raided its headquarters, seized its computers, and froze its assets. The assault closely mirrored the tactics employed against Apple Daily in June. Those arrested were charged with conspiring to publish seditious materials, a violation of the colonial-era Crimes Ordinance. Five of those arrested were released on bail but two, chief editor Chung Pui-kuen and acting chief editor Patrick Lam, remain in custody. An eighth person, former Stand News director Joseph Lian Yi-zheng, is reportedly wanted for arrest. At The New York Times, Vivian Wang covered the sweeping attack on Stand News and what it means for Hong Kong’s press freedoms:

The seven were arrested on suspicion of conspiring to publish seditious material, according to the police. A senior official, Steve Li, accused the publication at a news conference of publishing “inflammatory” content intended to incite hatred toward the government and the judiciary, especially through its coverage of the city’s fierce pro-democracy protests in 2019.

[…] Around the same time, more than 200 officers entered the publication’s headquarters in Hong Kong and conducted a search, the police said. Footage and photos reviewed by The New York Times showed officers stringing orange tape across a hallway inside the office building, and wheeling suitcases and boxes containing computers and other materials out of the newsroom. A photo showed at least two dozen large blue plastic boxes stacked in the building’s lobby.

[…] But the arrests were carried out by the national security police, and the warrant for the newsroom raid was issued under the security law, the police said. And Mr. Li, the police official, said that Stand News’s articles had aimed to incite secession, subvert state power or call on foreign governments to impose sanctions on Hong Kong — all offenses under the security law. [Source]

Stand News editor Ronson Chan broke the news of the arrests by livestreaming a police raid on his own apartment:

In September, pro-Beijing lawmaker Regina Ip posited that the continued existence of Stand News, a canary in the coal mine of sorts, was proof “freedom of expression [was] still alive and well” in the city. Yet by that time the paper had already prepared for its demise: it pulled commentaries, asked its directors to resign, suspended donations, and began paying employees at the beginning of the month. Mere hours after the raids, Hong Kong Free Press reported that Stand News deleted its entire internet presence:

The non-profit media outlet’s website went dark at 11 p.m. on Thursday and was replaced with a message about its closure. “Given the circumstances, Stand News is immediately halting its operations,” the message read, adding that the outlet thanks readers for their support.

Stand News’ Facebook and Twitter pages were also removed. Its YouTube account remains, but all content has been taken down.

[…] The Stand News UK office also shut down on Wednesday. [Source]

Hong Kong authorities vociferously defended the arrests without offering a clear rationale for them. Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam said the arrests have “nothing to do with journalistic or media work.” At The Wall Street Journal, Natasha Khan reported on the National Security Department’s issues with the website:

Senior Superintendent of the National Security Department Li Kwai-wah told reporters after the Stand News arrests that the news site continued to publish seditious content from July 2020 to November 2021, after the national security law came into effect. Mr. Li raised a few examples, including that the news site described Hong Kong protesters as having disappeared and reported that police were pointing guns at the yellow helmets protesters were wearing during clashes and saying “burn them all.” Mr. Li said such articles were published with the intent to provoke hatred against the government and dissatisfaction among the community. [Source]

At the South China Morning Post, Chris Lau, Natalie Wong, and Brian Wong, reported on Hong Kong officials’ throaty defense of the arrests:

[Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said,] “People from the executive and legislative branches are also subject to the law with no exceptions. Why can people from the so-called fourth estate be above the law?”

Lam was repeatedly asked what constituted seditious content but refused to specify and insisted journalists should themselves know what amounted to an offence.

Beijing’s local representatives also went on the offensive, with a spokesman for the Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs defending the arrests as “actions of justice to safeguard national security, the rule of law and public order”, while the central government’s liaison office accused the West of interfering in the city’s affairs. [Source]

It was not immediately clear why the police have so far elected to use the Crimes Ordinance, rather than the National Security Law, against Stand News and its affiliates, but Tom Kellog, the Executive Director of the Georgetown Center for Asian Law, provided a compelling rationale on Twitter:

Cantopop star Denise Ho was among the seven people arrested. Ho’s assistant told CNN that police spent over two hours in the singer’s home, and seized her identification card, passport, phones and computers. Ho and others stepped down from Stand News earlier this year in a futile attempt to protect Stand News from National Security Law charges. At The Guardian, Rhoda Kwan wrote further on Ho’s arrest and the slow response from authorities in Canada, where Ho has citizenship:

Ho’s arrest marks the first time a pop star of global renown has been detained in Hong Kong for a political crime after Beijing imposed a national security law 18 months ago in response to months of pro-democracy protests in 2019.

[…] “Denise Ho has been the most vocal and popular artist in Hong Kong who dares to oppose Beijing,” Sunny Cheung, one of the activists who had travelled with Ho to the US, told the Guardian.

[…] There was no immediate response from Canadian authorities, but her detention may add to tensions between the two countries. It comes just a few months after the release of “the two Michaels”, Canadian citizens held in China for over 1,000 days. Critics including the Canadian government labelled their detention “hostage diplomacy”, in retaliation for the arrest of a Chinese executive on US fraud charges. [Source]

After her release on bail, Ho posted on Twitter:

Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs subsequently commented:

The arrests also earned international condemnation from entities like the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, the United Nations Human Rights Office, Germany, and the United States. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for the release of the Stand News editors and the protection of Hong Kong’s press freedoms. The Chinese state and its media outlets dismissed all criticism. At Reuters, David Stanway reported on the Chinese embassy in Britain’s response to criticism of the arrests:

“The rights and interests of Hong Kong residents, including freedom of speech and freedom of the press, are safeguarded in accordance with the law,” China’s embassy said late on Thursday.

[…] But the official Communist Party newspaper, the People’s Daily, said in an editorial on Friday that “freedom of the press” was being used as an excuse to sow “anti-China chaos” in Hong Kong. It accused foreign politicians of “recklessly discrediting” Hong Kong police.

[…] “Freedom has a bottom line, and violations of the law must be punished.” [Source]



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Thursday 30 December 2021

Christmas as Usual: CCP Detains Human Rights Defenders

While many look forward to relaxing during the December holiday season, the CCP typically leverages foreign distraction during this period to crack down on Chinese human rights defenders. Among those targeted in a recent wave of persecutions are prominent lawyers, activists, and journalists who have been arbitrarily detained, barred from leaving or entering China, or prosecuted in closed-door trials. PEN America described how the Chinese government has a history of locking up dissidents during December in order to evade international scrutiny: 

Expert commentators have long warned that Chinese authorities tend to pursue criminal trials against prominent dissidents in late December, when many members of the international community—such as diplomats, journalists, NGO workers, and human rights activists—are out-of-office or otherwise distracted with Christmas and New Year’s. Among the human rights community, this repressive tactic from Chinese authorities is so common it is referred to as a “Christmas surprise.”

In 2009, prominent dissident Liu Xiaobo, was tried on charges of inciting subversion on December 23, 2009, and sentenced to eleven years imprisonment on December 25 (Christmas). In 2017, human rights activist Wu Gan was sentenced to eight years imprisonment on Christmas, and that same day, human rights lawyer Xie Yang was declared guilty of inciting subversion. In 2018, human rights lawyer  was tried for subversion on December 26. In 2020, citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, who was arrested for critically reporting on the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, was sentenced to four years imprisonment on December 28, 2020, and two days after, on December 30, ten Hong Kong activists who had been arrested when trying to flee to Taiwan were given prison sentences ranging from seven months to two years. [Source]

Two notable figures likely facing imminent trials are Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi, members of the New Citizens Movement that authorities began hunting down in December of 2019. The two have been denied permission to meet with their families or lawyers and have reportedly been tortured during their two years in detention, leading to significant deterioration in their health. Their family members have expressed concern that the government may detain them indefinitely. China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) described the history and reasons behind the government’s prosecution of the pair:

Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi are human rights lawyers and leading figures in the “New Citizens Movement”, a civil society movement which has attempted to popularize a new form of civic engagement within China. In early December 2019, both men met with colleagues at an informal gathering of civil society advocates in the coastal city of Xiamen; in the days and months after the meeting, Chinese security forces apprehended many of the attendees. Ding Jiaxi was apprehended December 26, 2019 and Xu Zhiyong was apprehended in February 2020. Both Ding and Xu spent long periods of time incommunicado before being formally arrested; neither man had access to a lawyer until January 2021. Both men have alleged that they have been tortured while in custody. 

The indictments against Ding and Xu accuse them of forming the “Citizens Movement,” creating a Telegram group chat, and organizing the December 2019 Xiamen meeting. The indictments also point to both men’s writing—such as essays and articles—as “evidence” of their crimes. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has issued opinions deeming the detentions of Xu and Ding to be arbitrary under international law, and has called for their immediate release. [Source]

On International Human Rights Day, December 10, Chinese police prevented numerous human rights activists and lawyers from leaving their homes by physically locking them inside. That same day, the EU delegation to China held an event to discuss human rights in the country, and Chinese authorities reportedly shut down an entire road on which EU diplomats were expected to pick up one activist for the event. Tang Jitian was one rights attorney prevented from attending the event, and many fear that he has now been detained, as his whereabouts are currently unknown. 

Other prominent human rights defenders have recently been detained. In Hong Kong, Cambridge-educated barrister and journalist Dr. Margaret Ng, a recipient of the International Bar Association’s award for outstanding contributions to human rights, was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly conspiring to distribute seditious materials, along with journalists at Stand News. RSF Press Freedom laureate Zhang Zhan, a citizen journalist sentenced to four years in prison for reporting on the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, marked the one-year anniversary of her sentencing on Tuesday. After years in pretrial detention, human rights lawyers Li Yuhan, Qin Yongpei, and Hao Jinsong potentially face new criminal trials for defending other lawyers and speaking out against corruption and abuses in Hong Kong. Veteran attorneys Lin Qilei and Liang Xiaojun have also had their legal licenses suspended and revoked, respectively, for their defense of Hong Kong democracy protesters and other activists.  

Border controls are another arbitrary way for the CCP to punish activists. Wang Dan, a prominent leader of the 1989 democracy movement now living in exile in the U.S., was prevented from visiting his dying mother in China due to an entry ban imposed by the CCP. His mother, Wang Lingyun, passed away on Monday, alone in a Beijing hospital. Wang Dan shared his grief online, writing that “her greatest wish was that I would be able to come back to Beijing to be with her.” Exit bans impose similarly cruel restrictions. Zhang Qing, the wife of human rights activist Yang Maodong (also known as Guo Feixiong), appealed to Chinese authorities on Monday to let her husband leave China to visit her in the U.S. before she passes away from terminal cancer. In her open letter, she wrote, “Never could I imagine the Chinese authorities were capable of such inhumane cruelty – to keep him locked up when my life is coming to an end, it’s very shocking to me.”

Enabling some of these prosecutions is China’s opaque system of extralegal forced disappearance, Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (RSDL), which has been heavily documented by Safeguard Defenders. Erin Hale at Al Jazeera reflected on the Chinese government’s increasing use of RSDL over the past decade: 

Following changes to Chinese criminal law in 2012, police now have had the right to detain anyone – foreign or Chinese – for up to six months at a designated location without disclosing their whereabouts. Spain-based rights group Safeguard Defenders say that as many as 27,208 to 56,963 people have gone through China’s RSDL system since 2013, citing data from the Supreme People’s Court and the testimony of survivors and lawyers.

[…] [Co-founder of Safeguard Defenders Michael] Caster estimated that in 2020 between 10,000 to 15,000 went through the system, up from just 500 in 2013.

[…] William Nee, a research and advocacy coordinator at China Human Rights Defenders, said since RSDL was first employed almost a decade ago, use of the extrajudicial detention system has changed from an exception in its early days to a more widely used tool.

“Before, when Ai Wei Wei was taken away, they had to make an excuse that it was really about his business, or a tax issue or something like that. So there’s this trend, a decade or two ago, where they would use a pretence to detain someone when the real reason was their public participation or their political views,” said Nee. “There was a fear that [RSDL] was going to make it more routine ‘legal,’ given a veneer of legality and legitimacy to it. And I think that’s been well borne out.” [Source]



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CDT Editors’ Picks: The Best of 2021

CDT’s editors have made their annual selections of favorite content, from CDT and elsewhere, over the past year.

Sophie Beach, Operations and Communications Manager

Oliver Young’s insightful interview with Emeka Umejei, a lecturer at the University of Ghana’s Department of Communication Studies, provides an African perspective on the role of Chinese media in the region—a voice that is too often ignored in media reports on this topic. Umejei says. “Chinese media organizations frame African events to suit Chinese perspectives even when such narratives do not represent an African narrative.” Western writing on China in Africa often does the same, so hearing from more experts like Umejei would benefit us all.

… None of this is acceptable nor can it become acceptable. If powerful people can suppress the voices of women and sweep allegations of sexual assault under the rug, then the basis on which the WTA was founded – equality for women – would suffer an immense setback. I will not and cannot let that happen to the WTA and its players … [Source]

This seemingly simple statement from a global sporting association in support of one of its members was in fact revolutionary. The WTA offered immediate and unbending support for tennis star Peng Shuai in the wake of her disappearance after making sexual assault allegations against Zhang Gaoli, former Vice Premier and member of the Politburo Standing Committee, and announced they were pulling out of China. Simon’s statement was the most direct, clear-eyed, and ethical stance on China to come from a global corporation or organization in recent memory. He showed the way for other groups, individuals, organizations, corporations, and governments who feel the pressure of the Chinese market to take a stand for what is right and good. Now to see if anyone follows in his footsteps.

Bobby, CDT Chinese Editor

We’ve added many podcast and video updates to our 404 Archives series over the past year, but our conversation with Vicky Xu was the first time we’d done an original video interview. This followed CDT’s translation and serialization of the Chinese edition of the Xinjiang report “The Architecture of Repression,” for which Xu was the lead author. Through the interview, you can gain a better understanding of Xu’s real life and background, beyond her various roles and titles. The video edition includes about 20 minutes of highlights, and is accompanied by a full transcript. [An English version of the transcript will be available in the new year.]

On July 14, the various social media accounts of self-published media outlet Elephant Magazine and its founder Huang Zhangjin were completely blocked within the Great Firewall. The cause of the ban was related to the controversy over “colluding with foreign forces” by staff at the science video platform PaperClip in June. After Elephant Magazine’s accounts were blocked, all of its posts from this year also disappeared. CDT Chinese has compiled a total of 66 pieces (all dating from 2015-2021 and republished elsewhere) from Elephant Magazine’s WeChat public account, as a way of commemorating the account’s existence. Of course, this represents only a small part of their total output, but the fact that these articles were chosen for republication by editors elsewhere is an indicator of their outstanding quality. Elephant Magazine’s disappearance shows that in China’s current public opinion climate, politics still rules over literary or artistic expression and scientific debate, and those with dissenting views are stifled and silenced en masse in the name of “patriotism.”

Joseph Brouwer, CDT English Editor 

The trauma of the one-child policy was an all-too terrible theme of this year’s coverage. Then, the government mandated that women have but one child, or in the case of Guan County — no children. Now, in the government’s equally autocratic campaign against demography, women are to have two or, better yet, three children. The government has mandated that divorces, those notorious obstacles to procreation, undergo a “cooling-off” period — to already fatal effect. “Non-medically necessary” abortions are to be reduced, as are vasectomies. The push for births has been accompanied by cynically employed feminist rhetoric from government news agencies, which netizens see through: “​​As soon as they want access to your uterus, they start sweet-talking you.” Yet not all women are to give birth. Chinese officials targeted Uyghur women with coerced, and even forced, sterilizations as part of a “population optimization” drive. In an interview with CDT, historian Jeremy Brown explained that the one-child policy contributed to the anger that in part fueled the 1989 Beijing democracy movement. How will the three-child policy reverberate? 

This article traces China’s political trajectory from “Maoist self-sufficiency” through “Dengist pragmatism” to the “new moral age” of Xi’s Party-state through the unlikeliest of protagonists: ketamine, a party drug née battlefield anesthetic. Drugs are inextricably linked to the story of modern China. The “century of humiliation,” a nationalist narrative embraced by the CCP, purportedly began with the Qing dynasty’s defeat in the First Opium War. The Party aimed to end narcotic addiction during the early years of the P.R.C., although compelling historical evidence points to the CCP funding itself through opium sales while in the revolutionary base of Yan’an. Ketamine’s popularity rose amidst the chaos of Deng’s economic liberalization — its fall comes amidst Xi’s push for economic “stability.” The party is over, King argues. The Party is here to stay. 

Cindy Carter, CDT English Editor 

As censorship of cultural content and public discussion becomes more pervasive, automated, and sophisticated, it is important to understand not just the motivations driving that censorship, but also the specific mechanisms by which it is carried out. This makes CDT’s “process guides” to platform-based censorship essential reading. Some of this content is original, based on our team’s deep knowledge of censorship methods, past and present; some of the content is drawn from other authoritative sources, and translated or contextualized for CDT’s diverse community of readers. Combined with our translations of long-form essays, “404 Archives” deleted content, and “Netizen Voices” features, CDT readers can gain a full picture of how censorship threatens robust, inclusive public discourse, and how Chinese netizens use resourceful means to evade, outpace and subvert that censorship.

This October 2021 report by Vicky Xiuzhong Xu, James Leibold and Daria Impiombato shines a spotlight on the mechanisms of oppression that lie behind bland euphemisms such as “stability maintenance,” “de-extremification,’’ “becoming family,” and “optimizing population resources.” By detailing the organizations and processes involved in mass internment and surveillance, coercive labor assignments, obligatory home visits, and  draconian birth-reduction regulations, the report contributes greatly to a growing body of evidence (including Buzzfeed’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning four-part series on Xinjiang internment camps, The Xinjiang Papers, witness testimony at the Uyghur Tribunal and the tribunal’s summary judgment) pointing to the genocidal nature of Chinese government policy in Xinjiang. In November 2021, CDT published a Chinese translation of the report (full text).

Dong Ge, CDT Chinese Executive Editor

The phrase “propaganda train wreck” refers to official propaganda or other attempts to sway public opinion that backfire due to rudimentary mistakes or content that is out of touch with reality, triggering netizens to post angry, mocking, fact-checking or propaganda-debunking responses in social media comment sections. (This response is sometimes referred to as “being punched in the face.”) Each instance of a “propaganda train wreck” is a record of how members of the public join forces to voice resistance to official propaganda tactics, thus reflecting true public opinion on the Chinese internet.

The Safeguard Defenders website has published a series of articles on #WhereIsPengShuai, each of which is worth reading. I would like to recommend this paragraph from this article in particular:

Finally, about your actions putting her in greater, not lesser, danger? During my ten years or so in Beijing I would, among many other things, conduct what you might call exit interviews. That is: we would talk to people released from detention, arrest, or imprisonment, and we would ask about how their treatment changed with media- or diplomatic attention. Guess what? Every single person we have ever spoken to said the same thing; it improves, often significantly, with more attention. [Source]

Anne Henochowicz, Translations Coordinator

Of our in-house work, I was really moved by Lockdown Voices, the three-part series on the human toll of China’s “zero-COVID” policy. People have been forced to quarantine in shipping containers and stockpile for rolling lockdowns; one man’s health code turned yellow because Big Data decided he had been to the Philippines, when he had in fact only spent the night in a town just outside Xi’an. I also loved translating Liu Su’s heartfelt and fascinating lament on politics overwhelming science, from which I learned that tumbleweed, that icon of the American West, actually comes from Eurasia.

Beyond CDT, I have gotten a lot out of Rui Zhong’s incisive analysis of the censorship regime, especially in her recent piece on the silencing of Peng Shuai and Xianzi, where she argues that the ultimate goal behind keyword blocking and account take-downs is nothing less than the “destruction of online spaces and communities.” And I must sneak in a book recommendation, because the best fiction tells the truth: when I read about an entire busload of passengers who weren’t allowed to get off because one person’s health code turned red, it was as if one of Te-Ping Chen’s stories in “Land of Big Numbers” had come to life.

Kris, CDT Chinese Podcast Editor

For a long time, many battered women have turned to the police for help but have not received it; many of the victims have died tragically at the hands of their abusers, yet none of the responsible authorities have been held accountable for their inaction or dereliction of duty. The research report cited in this podcast once again highlights the failure of law-making as well as law enforcement in fighting against domestic violence in China.

With the city’s Tiananmen vigils already effectively banned by authorities since last year, the move came as little surprise to many.

Which is why dissident Chinese author Chang Ping, a former student leader back in 1989, spent the past year leading a group of anonymous activists to create an online version of the museum.

“We hope to save the spirit of 30 years’ candlelight commemoration in Hong Kong, which was an unparalleled act of resistance in human history,” Chang told AFP by phone from his home in Germany. [Source]

Eric Liu, CDT Chinese Editor

Transcribing this letter into text impacted me emotionally. I could clearly feel the pain, sorrow, and unwillingness in my heart. But what angered me most was that the article was immediately censored and no media outlet wrote about the story—even from the official point of view, telling people not to kill themselves. This reminds me of the line in “Das Leben der Anderen”: “The statistics office on Hans Beimler Street counts everything, knows everything: how many shoes I buy a year: 2.3; How many books I read a year: 3.2; And how many pupils graduate with straight A’s every year: 6347. But there’s one thing they don’t count, maybe because even bureaucrats find it painful, and that’s the suicides.”

[Editor’s note: reporting guidelines warn against detailed coverage of suicide notes, let alone full publication. In view of the attention and discussion this one had already attracted on Chinese social media, and especially given its subsequent censorship, we chose to include it in our Chinese-language archive of censored material with a content warning, and refrain from publishing it in English. If you or someone you know is in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 in the United States or find local resources in the International Suicide Prevention Wiki.]

The starting point for this remarkable research was a CDT Chinese language  article: [Sensitive Words Archive] Apple AirTags, China Version: Do Not Engrave with Sensitive Words. Following our article, the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto found clues and dug up a trove of facts about the censorship deployed by Apple, the largest company on Earth by market capitalization, in six regions. By comparing the Chinese version of 1045 sensitive words with other regions, we can understand not only the differences in regulations, but also how Apple has exported censorship from China to the world. The research also provides factual evidence to support our corporate ethics monitoring of multinational big techs.

Yakexi, CDT Chinese Editor

In February, audio social chat app Clubhouse gave platform to some unexpected discussions among Mandarin speakers. In a room named “新疆有个集中营？”(“Is there a concentration camp in Xinjiang?”), hundreds of people took turns sharing their thoughts and experiences on the human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The discussion, which went on for hours, was marked by poignant moments: ordinary Uyghur and Kazakh people recounted their personal stories about being persecuted or discriminated against in their homeland; some Han audience members broke down in tears and apologized for what minority people had experienced and for their own inability to help. One young man in his 20s said that when he was lining up to speak, he believed in Beijing’s rhetoric and wanted to refute “rumors” about Xinjiang, but the stories shared by other participants changed his mind. He was among dozens of self-identified Han audience members who apologized. It was a rare dialogue among Mandarin speakers from all over the world because those living in Mainland China are often isolated by the Great Firewall. It was also a rare public exchange between ordinary Han people and Uyghur people, as Beijing seeks to use grand narratives to justify abuse. CDT Chinese documented the discussion before censors moved in to shut down the app. (More: Clubhouse discussions on Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Xi Jinping.)

A team of journalists traced oil deliveries to North Korea by an oil tanker in violation of UN sanctions. It exposed the roles of several Chinese companies and businesspeople involved in the illicit deal. The journalists nailed down the culprits using court documents, news reports and other public records, and delivered the story with superb visual techniques. It shows new possibilities of doing investigative stories about China as Beijing restricts on-the-ground access for reporters.

Oliver Young, CDT English Editor

Perhaps the most comprehensive account of Peng Shuai’s initial accusation on Weibo, this CDT post captures with superb detail the cat-and-mouse game of online censorship and resistance around the most explosive #MeToo case in modern Chinese history. The post showcases netizens’ creativity, and reminds us that the CCP is as powerful as it is fragile. While the government sidesteps international pressure and whitewashes Peng Shuai, this remains an important record of her voice and netizens’ efforts to hear her.

Blinded by the illusion of moral righteousness, too many Western (and Chinese) observers of the great-power competition between China and the U.S. reduce their object of study to a security threat whose existence is inherently incompatible with their own country. They “collapse everything into a false binary and project fears on to a faceless other” while ignoring the ways in which their own societies wrestle with similar challenges, such as political oppression and technological abuse. Yangyang Cheng eloquently reminds us to center the humanity of the subjects we often overlook. This is a timely and timeless article. Every sentence is quotable. 

Samuel Wade, CDT English Executive Editor

“Tea-drinking” accounts are consistently interesting for their glimpses into the human dynamics between “guests” and the security officials questioning them. Most are less amusing than the one we translated in October, in which author “clickchicken” feigns innocence about their political posts on Twitter, receives incongruous mansplanation of Great Firewall scaling techniques, and endures “the greatest torture to which any modern person can be subjected: one by one, he read all of my tweets aloud.” The post concluded:

Compared to what I had imagined, they were more disorganized, simple, and crude. They were also more “real” than I had imagined. Once I discovered that those who work behind the tall walls are real human beings and not cold automatons, I instantly felt much more courageous, because of my belief in human fallibility. [Source]

However farcical, the incident was an effective deterrent: clickchicken adds that “I’m much more circumspect about what I do online. I don’t use Twitter anymore, and it’s gotten to the point that I care less and less about current events.” Chinese users of Twitter, other overseas services, and the VPNs used to access them have faced mounting pressure in recent years, including arrests and forced post or account deletions. 

One particularly extreme case appears in Darren Byler’s concise and vivid description of the surveillance apparatus behind Xinjiang’s camps, and the Western firms and technologies that have contributed. The book’s introduction, excerpted at MIT Technology Review, explains how Vera Zhou, a Hui student at the University of Washington, was detained for two years after visiting her boyfriend in Urumqi in 2017. Zhou was placed in a camp and later confined to her neighborhood under electronic monitoring for using a VPN to access foreign sites and services such as her university Gmail account—a sign, she was told, of “religious extremism.” Zhou’s experience reminded me of clickchicken’s. Each account is informative in its own right, but together, they illustrate how cruelly arbitrary enforcement of China’s information controls can be.

Xiao Qiang, CDT Editor in Chief



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Wednesday 29 December 2021

Photo: 1996 #256-11 Kunming Stone Forest of Luan, by Dan Lundberg

Framed against an opening in the leafy green trees, dramatic craggy grey karst peaks rise up into a cloudy sky.

1996 #256-11 Kunming Stone Forest of Luan, by Dan Lundberg (CC BY-SA 2.0)



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After Diplomatic Switch, Nicaragua Seizes Taiwan’s Embassy and Hands It Over to China

This weekend, Nicaragua and Taiwan butted heads over the terms of their diplomatic divorce. Nicaragua suddenly cut ties with Taipei in favor of Beijing in early December, and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega gave Taiwanese diplomatic staff two weeks to vacate the country. Pressed for time, Taiwan donated its embassy property to the Nicaraguan Catholic Church before the deadline, but Ortega intervened on Sunday by ordering the Taiwanese assets to be confiscated and handed over to Beijing. Lawrence Chung from the South China Morning Post reported on the diplomatic controversy:

Accusing Nicaragua of defying international laws and protocols, the Taiwanese foreign ministry said President Daniel Ortega’s government had illegally confiscated the embassy compound in Managua, the capital, and other assets belonging to Taiwan after switching ties from Taipei to Beijing on December 9.

“Regarding the Nicaraguan government’s illegal seizure of our embassy properties and unlawful transfer of them to the People’s Republic of China, it is totally unacceptable to our government and for this we express our strong protest,” the ministry said on Monday.

[…] Citing a statement by the Nicaraguan government, [the Ortega government] said the move was in line with the one-China policy of Managua that Taiwan was an inseparable part of China and therefore the People’s Republic of China government enjoyed ownership of the assets, which included furniture and facilities.

[…] [The Taiwanese foreign ministry] accused the Ortega government and Beijing government of working together against Taiwan and the Catholic Church. [Source]

Joseph Yeh from Focus Taiwan, Taiwan’s English-language national news agency, described how the Taiwanese government decided to donate its assets due to Ortega’s abrupt deadline to evacuate:

According to [Taiwan’s] MOFA, Taiwan transferred its assets to the Catholic Church of Nicaragua because the Ortega government set a two-week time limit for all Taiwanese staff at its embassy and technical mission in the country to leave before Dec. 23.

Such a demand was unreasonable as it is customary for countries to take at least a month to recall their respective personnel following the severance of diplomatic relations, MOFA said.

[…] To ensure its assets were properly taken care of, Taiwan’s embassy decided to sell its property to the Archdiocese of Managua, for the symbolic amount of US$1, it noted.

Both sides sealed the property transfer deal witnessed by a local lawyer on Dec. 22, with the Catholic Church of Nicaragua promising to make good use of the assets, according to MOFA. [Source]

One significant factor in Ortega’s decision to drop Taiwan for China was diminishing U.S. leverage over Nicaragua. Ben Blanchard and others from Reuters described how worsening ties between the U.S. and Nicaragua provided an opening for China:

The break with Taiwan is a blow to the United States. It follows months of worsening ties between Ortega and Washington, and came on the day the U.S. State Department said it had slapped sanctions on Nestor Moncada Lau, a national security adviser to Ortega, alleging he operates an import and customs fraud scheme to enrich members of Ortega’s government.

[…] Last month U.S. President Joe Biden ripped into Ortega, calling Nicaragua’s presidential election a “pantomime” as the former Marxist guerrilla and Cold War adversary of the United States won election for a fourth consecutive term.

One Taiwan-based diplomatic source, familiar with the region, said the move was not a surprise given Washington’s lack of leverage with Ortega due to the sanctions, and that looking to China for aid and support was a natural course of action.

“It appears that Ortega had had enough,” the source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. [Source]

Ortega’s decision to recognize Beijing over Taipei was likely coordinated with the Chinese government. The announcement occurred after a meeting in Tianjin between China’s deputy foreign minister Ma Zhaoxu and a Nicaraguan delegation led by Ortega’s son. Chinese aid arrived almost immediately. As the BBC reported, the day after Ortega cut ties with Taiwan, the Chinese government agreed to send one million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Nicaragua: 

Government representatives returned to the Central American state on Sunday with news of the donation.

Local media broadcast clips showing an Air China plane landing with the first 200,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine.

Officials said they were “extremely grateful” for restored relations with Beijing.

“We have come back with this great news that we have brought this donation of one million vaccinates to the Nicaraguan people,” said Laureano Ortega Murillo, the son of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega and one of his advisers.

Currently, only 38% of Nicaragua’s adult population is fully vaccinated but at least 67% have received one dose. [Source]

The hasty severance of ties may prove awkward for certain diplomats. Taiwan’s former ambassador to Nicaragua, Ivan Lee, began his role only one month ago, and the former Nicaraguan ambassador to Taiwan, Mirna Rivera, only 25 years old, graduated from Taipei’s Ming Chuan University on a foreign student scholarship from the Taiwanese government. In early December, she twice refused to meet with the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In addition, a mere day after breaking ties with Taiwan, the Nicaraguan government offered Nicaraguan citizenship to the previous Taiwanese ambassador Jamie Wu and his wife, ostensibly in honor of Wu’s 14 years of service in the country, where he had served until his retirement in November. It is not clear whether Wu has accepted the offer, and the Taiwanese government has reiterated that as a former public servant, Wu is forbidden from sharing classified information with third parties. 

Taiwan’s past attempts at bolstering its relationship with Nicaragua seem to have fallen flat. In 2017, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen visited the country and pledged deeper trade and investment ties. During the visit, Ortega vowed to fight “a just battle, one of principles,” for Taiwan’s international recognition. Erin Hale from Al Jazeera detailed Taiwan’s previous economic support to Nicaragua: 

Ortega’s government had relied on financial support from Taiwan including a $3m donation to police in 2018, and a $100m loan in 2019.

Other foreign aid from Taiwan, however, has taken the form of more benign school lunch projects, health care and agricultural development projects, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. [Source]

Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed “extreme regret” at Nicaragua for having “unilaterally terminated diplomatic relations.” China’s Foreign Ministry called Nicaragua’s decision “the right choice that is in line with the global trend and has people’s support,” while the U.S. State Department described Ortega’s November election a “sham” and stated that “without the mandate that comes with a free and fair election, Ortega’s actions cannot reflect the will of the Nicaraguan people.” Chiming in, Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin wrote that “Nicaragua flatly ending ties with Taiwan island is justice served.”

Nicaragua previously cut ties with Taiwan in 1985, when Ortega was president, but restored them in 1990, under Ortega’s successor Violeta Chamorro. This latest rupture adds Nicaragua to a series of countries that have severed official diplomatic ties with Taiwan over the past few years. In 2018, El Salvador, Burkina Faso, and the Dominican Republic cut ties, and in 2019 Kiribati and the Solomon Islands followed suit, a move which led in part to recent unrest in the Solomon Islands. Honduras could also join that group: earlier this month, President-elect Xiomara Castro appeared to be toying with the idea of switching ties to Beijing. 



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/12/after-diplomatic-switch-nicaragua-seizes-taiwans-embassy-and-hands-it-over-to-china/
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