Tuesday, 7 September 2021

Photo: The Historic Town of Dangkou (Whistles), by Haoyuan Kevin Xia

Close-up of eight brightly colored clay whistles in various shapes such as Chinese gourds, and Chinese and Japanese cartoon characters. The whistles, hanging from strings, are clear in the foreground; the background is a blur of bright colors.

The Historic Town of Dangkou (Whistles), by Haoyuan Kevin Xia (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/09/photo-the-historic-town-of-dangkou-whistles-by-haoyuan-kevin-xia/
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Taiwan Plus Media Platform Launched in Challenge to China’s Discourse Power

On August 30, Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture introduced a new English-language news and media streaming platform, Taiwan Plus (Taiwan+). The government-backed platform was established specifically for international audiences, with the goal of projecting a positive image of Taiwan to the world and countering China-centric narratives on Taiwan. Taiwan Today described President Tsai Ing-wen’s vision for the platform:

In a special video message marking the launch, President Tsai Ing-wen said the platform is expected to promote Taiwan’s experiences and perspectives on regional and global affairs while highlighting the country’s contributions to the international community.

The platform will also serve as a showcase for the achievements and diversity of Taiwan as a vibrant democracy in which freedom of speech and expression are cherished and protected, Tsai said. This is anticipated as helping people around the world understand the country’s resilience and draw inspiration, she added.

Taiwan’s story deserves to be told by local voices in new ways, Tsai said, adding that such a platform is important at this moment as the government continues growing global engagement and promoting what the country stands for. [Source]

The Taiwanese government gave the platform a hefty endorsement. In addition to the $28 million provided to support its operations, several high-ranking officials spoke on stage at the launch ceremony outside the National Taiwan Museum, including Taiwanese Vice-President Lai Ching-te and Taiwanese Minister of Culture Lee Yung-te, as well as other political figures and an award-winning musical guest. Patrick Frater at Variety reported on the personnel and content that constitute Taiwan Plus: 

It currently has 55 staff, though this may grow to 150 within a year. They are a mixture from the U.S., U.K, Canada, France, and Australia, as well as local industry professionals.

Content will be curated from Taiwanese public and private media organizations, as well as produced with an in-house team of regional and international journalists. It may also be open to co-production with international producers. [Source]

Based on the site’s initial content and the broader press coverage of its launch, Taiwan Plus has framed itself in contrast to Chinese state media and its coverage of Taiwan. Taiwanese lawmaker You Si-kun put it bluntly, stating that in the midst of China’s intimidation and political isolation of Taiwan, Taiwan Plus allows Taiwan to tell its stories to the world through its own voices. On its website, the Taiwan Plus mission statement described Taiwan’s precarious situation and the need for new voices: “At a time when Taiwan’s international presence is being suppressed, and many voices in the region are being silenced, Taiwan+ tells these stories in a way that informs, inspires and empowers.” One speaker at the launch ceremony even compared this mission to an existential contest between hunter and hunted, as detailed by Taiwan’s Central News Agency, which is tasked with managing Taiwan Plus: 

Meanwhile, in her remarks, St. Christopher and Nevis Ambassador Jasmine Elise Huggins, the dean of the foreign diplomatic corps in Taiwan, said she believed TaiwanPlus will offer greater insight into Taiwan.

It will reveal the history and share the stories of the “small great country that is Taiwan, in a manner that would change the consciousness of the world and shape their knowledge of who and what Taiwan really is,” she said.

“If the lion does not tell his story, the hunter will,” she said, quoting an African proverb.

“I wish Taiwan+ great success as it tells the story of Taiwan and its wonderful people not as that of the hunter but as that of the lion,” she said. [Source]

Taiwan has good reason to be concerned about “the hunter.” Building up to a potential physical war to reconquer what it views as a “renegade province,” China has waged an incessant information war against Taiwan’s domestic population and foreign allies, aiming to sow disinformation and peel off Taiwan’s international patrons. Much of China’s recent influence operations targeting Taiwan have revolved around the 2020 Taiwanese presidential elections, wherein Beijing bought out Taiwanese media outlets to bend content towards pro-Beijing narratives, deployed bots to spread disinformation on social media, and launched millions of cyberattacks. 

China’s battles over information are not limited to Taiwan; they are part of a larger effort to increase its “discourse power” (话语权) in the international arena by “telling China’s story well.” By leveraging its influence across different forms of media, Beijing attempts to mold the information consumed by global audiences, thereby gaining support for its policies and advancing its strategic interests. Major campaigns in China’s push for discourse power include reclaiming the narrative over mass incarceration and forced labor in Xinjiang, the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, China’s pandemic response, and reunification with Taiwan.

While Taiwan maneuvers to counter China’s international discourse power projection, some have wondered whether the government-backed Taiwan Plus will merely imitate mainland state media outlets in producing positive stories without much independent criticism. Rhoda Kwan at Hong Kong Free Press catalogued the somewhat skeptical attitudes of fellow journalists: 

“My concern is mostly about whether the government can really respect its promise of allowing @taiwanplusmedia to be independent, objective and truly critical rather than purely treating it as a ‘soft power image creator’ for Taiwan,” tweeted William Yang, president of Taiwan’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club and correspondent for Germany’s Deutsche Welle.

“The public should also bear in mind that the real function of an objective and independent media outlet is not simply pumping out ‘feel-good, positive’ stories about a place. It needs to be well-rounded, multi-faceted and unbiased.”

[…] His concerns were shared by some other local journalists. “[S]eeing all of this political support at launch makes me question the ‘independent’ aspect of this whole endeavour. I fear this platform will be little more than a marketing ploy to help Taiwan gain more positive attention,” said Daniel Kao, a graphics journalist for Commonwealth Magazine.

[…] “Although President Tsai Ing-wen has said she wants to continue developing press freedom in Taiwan, few concrete measures have been taken to improve journalists’ editorial independence and encourage media to raise the quality of the public debate,” Reporters Without Borders (RSF), whose Asian operations are based in Taipei, wrote in its 2021 annual press freedom rankings. [Source]

Other online reactions to the launch also questioned the new platform’s independence and objectivity: 

Taiwan’s success in this soft-power initiative will likely depend, at least to some extent, on producing objective content. Taiwan’s Central News Agency has promised to let the platform run independently from its other news departments and to respect the autonomy of the platform’s staff. Members of the new platform have also signaled their commitment to objectivity and have invited the public to help hold it to account:



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/09/taiwan-plus-media-platform-launched-in-challenge-to-chinas-discourse-power/
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Friday, 3 September 2021

Space for China’s LGBTQ+ Communities Continues to Shrink

Leaked documents revealed last weekend that Shanghai University has ordered its colleges to collect lists of LGBTQ+ students and report on their personal lives. Citing unspecified “relevant requirements,” the university of 55,000 students did not explain what it would do with the collected information, sparking grave concern among student activists about the potential for discrimination. The measure is an ominous sign amid rapidly shrinking space for LGBTQ+ and feminist communities in China and ongoing government attempts to reinforce cis-hetero social morality. At SupChina, Jiayun Feng detailed those affected by the university order: 

The school is targeting anyone who is “non-heterosexual” (非异性恋者 fēiyìxìngliànzhě), and “LGBT rainbow groups” (彩虹族群 cǎihóngzúqún), which it said include:

  • Lesbians (女同性恋者 nǚtóngxìngliànzhě)
  • Gays (男同性恋者 nántóngxìngliànzhě) 
  • Bisexuals (双性向者 shuāngxìngxiàngzhě) 
  • Transgender (跨性别者 ​​kuàxìngbiézhě)

Although it’s unclear at this point what the university needs the information for or whether the move was ordered by Chinese authorities, a large number of LGBT+ activists and supporters have raised serious concerns online, saying that they fear the school’s LGBT+ community will face unfair discipline and other forms of persecution. 

[…] The document goes on to explain the scope of the survey, saying that the targeted individuals not only include gay and transgender people, but also anyone who is “non-heterosexual.” Details demanded by the university include students’ “ideological positions” — such as descriptions of their political stances, social contacts, and life plans — as well as students’ “psychological condition,” including summaries of their overall health and “mental disorders” if they have any. [Source]

This is the latest in a long list of repressive actions against the LGBTQ+ community in China, including frequent suppression of online LGBTQ+ content through deletions and content-sharing restrictions. In January, the Cyberspace Administration of China updated government restrictions on self-publishing on social media, forcing users to obtain an official license if they wanted to cover subjects such as “politics, economy, military, foreign relations, major breaking news events and others.” A month later, Qin Chen at South China Morning Post described how this effectively kneecapped organizing and communication among LGBTQ+ communities:

“For our community, the best way to outreach is through these online platforms. If we lose [WeChat], we lose the ability to connect and advocate for the community. There’s no way out of this.”

[…] Chen Xiang, cooperation manager at Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays of China (PFLAG), an LGBT rights advocacy group, said he believes “the new rules will reduce the number of online commentaries and information available”.

Chen said he didn’t believe the new rules would directly affect PFLAG because the group promotes family and personal stories rather than news, but he worried minority voices could be silenced by the new rules, resulting in a homogenous society that only catered to mainstream views.

“If fewer people can comment on public events online, we will gradually lose a place to see things from a different perspective,” Chen said. “We might be back in a time when we can only read the things officials want us to read. [Source]

These concerns proved well-founded: in July, WeChat simultaneously deleted dozens of LGBTQ+ public accounts run by student groups at prominent Chinese universities such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Renmin University. Prior to this, these same student groups had endured harassment from the authorities. The reactions on social media were mixed, with some saying they supported the deletions, and others supporting the student groups with encouraging messages and the “We are all unnamed public accounts” movement.

In August, WeChat shut down a popular LGBTQ+ media site for reporting on events in the queer community. Later that same month, Tencent’s highly popular QQ messaging app appeared to block LGBTQ+ content from searches on the basis that it constituted “harmful information.” Protocol’s Zeyi Yang reported on the incident:

The software, available on both mobile and PC, allows users to find strangers and public group chats with key words. On Aug 30, searches with words like “gay,” “lesbian,” “LGBTQ,” and “蕾丝” (a Chinese slang term for lesbian) come back with a notice: “Use the Internet in a civil manner. Say no to harmful information.” QQ shows the same notice when users search for pornographic content. For other words like “同志 (Chinese slang for gay),” QQ only blocks the search results of group chats and doesn’t show the notice.

This practice could have started as early as in March 2021, when a Zhihu user posted a screenshot of a similar search result.

QQ was Tencent’s first massively popular product and enabled Tencent to rise to the rank of China’s most successful tech companies. While its popularity has dimmed after WeChat was released, QQ still has the second-largest number of users among social media platforms in China.” [Source]

After the publication of the Protocol article, QQ restored some of the blocked searches, but censorship of LGBTQ+ content remains pervasive, online and off. Soccer star Li Ying made headlines in June by coming out on Weibo, making her China’s first openly-gay female pro athlete, but after she was inundated with homophobic abuse, the post was quietly deleted. In March, the Oscar-winning Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” was released in China in an edited version that omitted the word “gay” and any references to the singer’s sexuality. In February, a court in Jiangsu ruled in favor of a mental health textbook that described homosexuality as a “psychological disorder,” calling the description a “perceptual difference” instead of a factual error. Even the long-running Shanghai Pride celebration was cancelled indefinitely in 2020.

Motivating the attacks against LGBTQ+ communities is a potent mix of nationalism and fear of Western influence. Historically, those who identify as LGBTQ+ have often been cast as deviants from socialist ideology or agents of foreign influence. Maryann Xue at South China Morning Post highlighted the connection between the increase in anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment and growing hostility towards the U.S.:

“There is a tendency in China for some people to relate homosexuality and LGBT people to Western lifestyles or capitalistic, bourgeois decadence, so this was in line with a moral panic,” said Hongwei Bao, an associate professor of media studies at the University of Nottingham and specialist in queer politics in China.

“Especially now, there’s tension between China-West relations, so there is likely to be a heightened sense of nationalism which sees LGBT issues, feminist issues, as Western, as unfit for China.” [Source]

Censorship against LGBTQ+ groups appears to have emboldened some social media users to express their prejudices more openly. Their posts proclaiming xenophobic, homophobic, or sexist attitudes are seen by millions online, as reported by Shawn Yuan for Al Jazeera:

“So glad that the government is finally taking some action on the LGBT organisations,” wrote Ziwuxiashi, a Weibo account with more than 500,000 followers. “The grief from [the supporters of the community] is our song of triumph!” 

China’s more conservative forces have often exhibited a vehement hatred towards homosexuality or gender nonconformity for an alleged “agenda to destroy traditional values,” according to some vocal opponents of the movement, including some that brand themselves as science writers such as Vaccine and Science, an account with more than five million followers.

“To target these groups is a good move because these students have learned so many bad things from foreign powers and are becoming their agents,” one user commented on Weibo.

“To advocate for equality is to stage colour revolution, to support feminism is the infiltration of Hong Kong independence movement, and to be pro-LGBT community is to receive monetary support from [US President Joe] Biden,” Wu, an organiser for an LGBTQ rights advocacy group in Shanghai, told Al Jazeera, describing some of the accusations levelled at them. “To label ordinary people with political marks, and then persecute them – that’s [the government’s] go-to tactic.” [Source]

Another factor motivating hostility toward LGBTQ+ individuals and groups has been the perceived threat to “traditional Chinese values” by the rise of gender-nonconformity. Platforms like Douyin and Weibo have recently suspended accounts of men who express themselves in ways that challenge dominant views of masculinity, while at the same time preserving the accounts of popular male crossdressers who reinforce gender stereotypes. The suspensions are part of a broader ban by the government, reported by the Associated Press: “Broadcasters must ‘resolutely put an end to sissy men and other abnormal esthetics,’ the TV regulator said, using an insulting slang term for effeminate men — ‘niang pao,’ or literally, ‘girlie guns.’” Some influential figures have endorsed discrimination against effeminate men when the issue has arisen in the past. In 2018, Wu Jing, the macho protagonist of “Wolf Warrior,” said that if his son were a sissy, he would “slap him in the face.”

Even the traditionally cosmopolitan haven of Hong Kong has not been insulated from these attacks. Despite the popularity of “Ossan’s Love,” a TV series about a romance between three men, lawmakers like Junius Ho have denigrated the show, calling it “marijuana coated in sugar,” and denouncing childless families as incompatible with traditional values and the “three-child policy.” Other lawmakers have attacked the Gay Games, scheduled to take place in Hong Kong later this year, and warned the city to merely “tolerate” but not promote homosexuality. Hong Kong is already riddled with legal impediments to greater equality for LGBTQ+ groups, which may become even harder to surmount as Beijing extends its influence. Forecasting the future and channeling the official stance on the matter, Global Times editor Hu Xijin claims that the LGBTQ+ community should not expect much more room for free expression: 



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/09/space-for-chinas-lgbtq-communities-continues-to-shrink/
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Thursday, 2 September 2021

Photo: The Historic Town of Dangkou, by Haoyuan Kevin Xia

A canal in the ancient town of Dangkou, Jiangsu Province. Both sides of the canal are lined with traditional two-story white houses with verandas, wooden windows and black-tiled roofs.

The Historic Town of Dangkou, by Haoyuan Kevin Xia (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/09/photo-the-historic-town-of-dangkou-by-haoyuan-kevin-xia/
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Alibaba Fires Employees Who Leaked Sex Assault Case, Invests In “Common Prosperity”

Once fêted at home and abroad as an emblem of China’s rising power, Alibaba has fallen on hard times. Spin-off Ant Group’s IPO was blocked at the eleventh hour by Xi Jinping’s personal fiat. Founder Jack Ma has all but disappeared from public view. Officials in Zhejiang, the province in which Alibaba’s headquarters is located, are under investigation for their ties to the company. State-owned enterprises are reportedly acquiring stakes in key portfolio businesses. A rape case has exposed Ali’s sordid corporate culture.

In August, a female Alibaba employee alleged on an internal message board that her manager raped her after compelling her to binge drink during a client dinner, and that higher-ups took action to cover up the incident. The manager was eventually fired, and he and the client are both under criminal investigation for “forcible indecency,” a lesser charge than rape. However, Alibaba has now fired 10 employees for leaking the scandal to the general public. At Bloomberg, Coco Liu and Zheping Huang broke the news:

Alibaba announced internally last week it fired the group for sharing a harrowing account posted on an internal forum by a colleague surnamed Zhou, who accused a former manager of rape. Their offenses include sharing screenshots of the woman’s post in the public domain after removing watermarks that bore their IDs, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing an internal matter. Another three people have been reprimanded for making inappropriate comments in public forums, they added.

[…] But Alibaba had little choice but to fire the 10 employees in question because they violated very strict policies against exposing content carried on employee forums, the people said. The internal platform — which is open to Alibaba’s 250,000 employees as well as many at fintech giant Ant Group Co. — is considered off-limits and the company has fired others for leaking information in the past, they added. Alibaba representatives didn’t immediately respond to a written request for comment.

[…] Alibaba made its decision to fire the 10 workers after wrapping up an internal investigation in past weeks, other people familiar with the matter said. It hasn’t announced the final results of that probe to the public, they said. [Source]

The #MeToo movement has been all but banned in China, so an internal campaign to address sexual violence and misogyny has been framed as a move to fix corporate culture. At The New York Times, Sui-Lee Wee and Raymond Zhong provided details on the sexist culture of a company that once bragged about its gender parity (in 2018, Jack Ma claimed that 49% of his workforce were women):

Many Alibaba departments use games and other ice-breaking activities to make co-workers feel at ease with one another. Kiki Qian joined the company in 2017. Her team welcomed her with a game of charades. When she lost, she said, she was punished by being made to “fly the plane,” as her co-workers called it. The stunt involved straddling a male colleague as he sat in an office chair. The colleague then lay back in the chair, causing Ms. Qian to fall on top of him, face first.

[…] Other former Alibaba employees said ice-breaking rituals included uncomfortable questions about their sexual histories. One former employee said she and other women at a team dinner had been asked to rank their male colleagues by attractiveness. Another said she had felt humiliated during a game in which employees were required to touch each other on the shoulders, back and thighs.

[…] Alibaba also gives employees a handbook of morale-boosting “Alibaba slang.” Several entries are laced with sexual innuendo. One urges employees to be “fierce and able to last a long time.” [Source]

Entertainers associated with Alibaba have also been targeted as part of a government effort to “clean up” celebrity culture. A recent screed on “sissy-boy” culture and societal collapse republished by China’s main Party and state mouthpieces, People’s Daily and Xinhua, celebrated a fine leveled against Alibaba and the banning and deplatforming of Zhao Wei and Gao Xiaosong, both of whom have been closely connected to the company.

As Alibaba’s corporate culture has come under public scrutiny, so have its business practices come under Party scrutiny. Now, amidst a centrally mandated push for “common prosperity,” Alibaba has found itself under even more pressure, particularly since its Hangzhou headquarters are located in Zhejiang Province, a pilot zone for the common prosperity program. China’s wealth distribution is grossly unequal: its Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, is unusually high at 0.465, and the wealthiest 1% currently own 30.6% of the country’s wealth. The Party expects private companies to donate some profits to remedy the gap. Earlier this week, Alibaba announced it would invest 100 billion yuan [$15.5 billion] towards common prosperity goals, and also establish a 20-billion-yuan “common prosperity development fund.” Such investments and donations may be less altruistic than they first appear. A 2020 study showed that companies are apt to be more charitable when their industry becomes the target of anti-corruption investigators. Almost all of China’s corporate giants are participating in the giveaways: Pinduoduo pledged 10 billion yuan [$1.54 billion] and the CEO of Meituan claimed that common prosperity is “built into the genes of Meituan” (the company is facing punishment for anticompetitive practices).

The state is also taking more a muscular approach to corralling Alibaba. Control over data is at the center of many of the new regulations. The city of Tianjin has asked all municipally controlled enterprises to move their data off of Alibaba’s cloud servers. At Reuters, Julie Zhu reported that state-backed firms intend to take a stake in a portion of Ant Group’s business, securing themselves access to Ant’s vast troves of user data:

The partners plan to establish a personal credit-scoring firm, said the people, adding that such a firm and ownership structure was one aspect of restructuring ordered by regulators who put a sudden stop to Ant’s blockbuster initial public offering (IPO) in November.

[…] Under the plan, Ant and Zhejiang Tourism Investment Group Co Ltd (ZJGVTT.UL) will each own 35% of the venture, while other state-backed partners, Hangzhou Finance and Investment Group and Zhejiang Electronic Port, will each hold slightly more than 5%, said one of the people.

[…] The proposed joint venture would collect, manage and analyse consumer data to score people’s credit, thereby bringing Ant’s main business-data operations together and making regulatory oversight easier, said one of the people. [Source]

Alibaba’s troubles are well summarized in a biting new iteration of a cartoon satirizing the relationship between entrepreneurs, the Party, and young nationalists. In the original cartoon, Winnie the Pooh (a stand-in for Xi Jinping), a hare (the titular character of Year Hare Affair, representing patriotic young Chinese) and a caricature of Jack Ma are seated around a table: the hare has one cookie on his plate, Jack Ma has a small pile of cookies, and Winnie has a giant pile of cookies. Winnie points to Jack Ma and tells the hare: “That Capitalist took away your cookies!” In the latest spoof, Jack Ma has but one cookie, the hare only crumbs, and Winnie an enormous pile of cookies covered with a red cloth. This time, Winnie tells the hare, “I’ll help you steal that Capitalist’s cookies.”

Winnie the Pooh, sitting in front of a plate stacked high with cookies, points at Jack Ma, who has a few cookies, and talks to a rabbit wearing a Red Star cap, who has only one cookie.



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/09/alibaba-fires-employees-who-leaked-sex-assault-case-invests-in-common-prosperity/
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Wednesday, 1 September 2021

“996” Ruled Illegal Yet Labor Researchers, Activists Still Arrested

The Supreme People’s Court has ruled the much-reviled “996” 72-hour work week illegal. The January death of a 22-year-old Pinduoduo employee after working a late shift focused public anger on 996 overtime culture, which plagues both white- and blue-collar employees of China’s tech giants. While the ruling is likely welcome news to overworked employees across China, it merely upheld rules already on the books, and came amidst the ongoing repression of China’s independent labor movement. At NPR, Bill Chappell covered the court’s ruling:

Under Chinese law, monthly overtime totals are essentially limited to 36 hours. Zhang refused to work illegal amounts of overtime — as dictated by his schedule — and was fired. The courier company said Zhang failed to fulfill the requirements of his probation period. But he disagreed, and an arbitration panel ordered his former employer to pay him a month’s salary of 8,000 yuan (about $1,237).

[…] The high court’s decision is based on at least 10 cases in which workers said they were being unfairly denied overtime pay and related compensation, including payment for injuries incurred while working overtime. Some of the cases also centered on disputes that erupted after employers sought to use special agreements with their employees to circumvent labor laws.

[…] Li fainted in a bathroom at work and died of a heart attack on Dec. 1 as he neared the end of a 12-hour overnight shift. His relatives sought compensation for his death as well as funeral expenses. In its ruling, the court affirmed that both the media company and the service company that directly hired Li bear joint responsibility for compensating the man’s family. [Source]

Alibaba founder Jack Ma was a prominent proponent of 996, calling it a “huge blessing” in 2019. Ma so enjoyed the term that he riffed on it while giving sex advice to his employees: “We want 669 in life. What is 669? Six times in six days; the emphasis is on nine.” That same year, tech employees disgusted by executives’ romanticization of overwork launched the 996.ICU GitHub campaign to protest and document abuse in the industry. Suji Yan, one of the initiators of the GitHub protest, gave his opinion on the court’s latest ruling to Bloomberg: “It’s a good sign that the supreme court is finally paying attention. This is about politics as much as it’s about rule of law given the recent crackdowns on companies like Alibaba and Meituan.” Both companies are now facing intense regulatory scrutiny.

The ruling against 996 aligns with Xi Jinping’s new push for “common prosperity,” a phrase employed by both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, but in profoundly different ways. What Xi means by it remains unclear, although a top official recently felt compelled to assert that it does not mean “killing the rich to help the poor.” The State Council’s latest five-year employment plan, published last Friday, emphasizes the need to increase employee wages and monitor excessive working hours. Caixin documented a raft of new guidelines from a number of government ministries: among the proposed protections is a recommendation that food delivery companies be more transparent about driver pay. Former Finance Minister Lou Jiwei said, “If there is no proper regulation, everyone will adopt 996, which will reduce jobs and be harmful to society.” 

Yet there is widespread skepticism about the sincerity of the government’s push for labor rights. One popular comment on Weibo captured the skepticism prevalent among the broader public: “Get back to me when you can enforce [the law].” At Fortune, Grady McGregor solicited opinion on the ruling from a number of experts, many of whom noted that workers remain in a precarious position:

The court did not restrict its judgment to the tech sector, but China’s tech giants are likely to be on high alert after years of popularizing 996 working habits. “Today’s court-issued essay will likely be taken to heart by the entire tech industry,” says Brock Silvers, chief investment officer of Kaiyuan Capital in Hong Kong.

[…] Dev Lewis, program lead at Digital Asia Hub, says it’s just as likely that firms will find new ways to keep their employees working long hours. “A ruling alone will not change a culture, especially one that is entrenched for several decades,” says Lewis. “The economic incentives remain the same, and companies tend to find creative loopholes.”

[…] Zhuang [Bo Zhuang, a China economist at Loomis Sayles] says that the 996 court statement and other populist measures may, in part, be aimed at helping President Xi cement his power for a third term in the lead-up to next year’s National Party Congress. “China is rolling out populist policies, including tech crackdowns, including common prosperity…and labor protection is part of those measures […] President Xi wants to be more secure and therefore more popular.” [Source]

The recent detentions of labor rights activists and researchers underscore the dichotomy in the Chinese state’s policy: it is intent on fostering better labor conditions, yet totally intolerant of outside participation in the process. In July, three members of a nonprofit Changsha labor advocacy group were handed prison sentences of two, three and five years, after being held in detention for over 700 days. On August 26, Fang Ran, a 26-year-old University of Hong Kong PhD candidate who researches labor movements, was detained by police in his hometown of Nanning, Guangxi Province. The South China Morning Post’s Mimi Lau reported on the reaction to his detention:

“I’m very shocked because Fang Ran is not a criminal who is capable of causing damage to the party. But rather, a young man born with a purpose,” the message [written by Fang’s father] said, adding that the student has been a Communist Party member since 2013.

[…] In February he [Fang Ran] hosted an online book club discussing a book about South Korean labour activism by Professor Hagen Koo. Koo’s work remains influential among mainland students who see parallels between the situation in China today and 1980s South Korea, where grass-roots activists were targeted by the authorities.

[…] “In the eyes of a state that refuses to acknowledge the existence of labour problems within its jurisdiction, studying such problems is itself a challenge to the authority of the state, an act of defamation and subversion,” [political scientist Lin Yao] said. [Source]



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/09/996-ruled-illegal-yet-labor-researchers-activists-still-arrested/
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

China Restricts Minors To Three Hours Of Online Gaming Per Week

This week, China extended restrictions on minors’ screen time. New regulations issued by the National Press and Publication Administration will limit minors’ online gaming to only three hours per week: one hour from 8:00-9:00 p.m. on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The move is part of a broader campaign by the Chinese government to promote healthier lifestyles among youth, and to crack down on tech companies’ growing influence on society. Chris Buckley of The New York Times described the impetus for these new regulations:

“Recently many parents have reported that game addiction among some youths and children is seriously harming their normal study, life and mental and physical health,” the administration said in an online question-and-answer explanation about the new rules. Parents, it said, had demanded “further restrictions and reductions in the time provided for minors by online gaming services.”

The new rules also reflect the government’s intensifying push for companies to jettison what the Chinese Communist Party says are unhealthy influences, especially among teenagers and children.

[…] Online gaming has been one of the most vibrant and profitable sectors of China’s internet industry, generating billions in revenue from players who pay to take part in online quests, wars and adventures. But there have been signs of growing official pressure for the companies to step more strictly in line with the demands for cultural conformity from Xi Jinping, China’s leader. [Source]

Previous regulations by the Ministry of Education limited minors to 90 minutes of game play on weekdays and three hours on weekends, and banned any weekday gaming between the hours of 10:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. Prior measures “also limited the monthly amount that minors could spend on microtransactions, with the maximum amount ranging from $28 to $57, depending on the child’s age.”

The new regulations, which take effect on September 1, will be enforced by requiring all gamers to register using their real names and government-issued identification. In order to prevent minors from logging on through their parents’ accounts and breaking the curfew, Tencent has introduced a special facial recognition function, dubbed “midnight patrol,” to further verify each user.

Although the rules were welcomed by some parents who struggle to limit their children’s screen time, many on Weibo reacted negatively to the new restrictions. “This is so fierce that I’m utterly speechless,” said one comment that received over 700 likes. Another commented sarcastically, “Why don’t you plan when I go to the toilet, eat meals and go to bed.” Brenda Goh at Reuters documented furious reactions among Chinese youth: 

“This group of grandfathers and uncles who make these rules and regulations, have you ever played games? Do you understand that the best age for e-sports players is in their teens?” said one comment on China’s Twitter-like Weibo.

“Sexual consent at 14, at 16 you can go out to work but you have to be 18 to play games. This is really a joke.” [Source]

The government’s plans fall under a series of measures intended to promote a healthy mindset among Chinese youth. As The Guardian explained, “The regulator said that the purpose of the new rules was to ‘effectively protect the physical and mental health of minors.’ It urged Chinese gaming companies to ‘always prioritise the social good and actively respond to societal concerns.’” The state has expressed concern about tech companies’ impact on youth, describing their video games as a threat to young people’s eyesight, education, and fitness. “By imposing these new rules, the Chinese government is hoping to create ‘positive energy’ among young people and to educate them with what Beijing considers ‘correct values,’” the BBC stated. 

Chinese authorities have already taken other steps to realize these changes through recent campaigns targeting teenage fan club culture, which the government argues negatively affects children’s mental health. Other efforts in this crusade for children’s well-being include the recent crackdown on the private tutoring industry, which many argue has a negative psychological impact on children. 

The new restrictions on video games are also seen as part of a larger crackdown on Chinese tech companies. As Josh Ye reports at The South China Morning Post, Chinese tech companies dominate the domestic and international gaming industries and thereby maintain considerable influence over Chinese gamers: 

“In 2020, China’s domestic gaming revenues rose more than 20 per cent to 278.7 billion yuan (US$43 billion) with almost half of the country now playing video games, according to statistics from government-backed China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association.

[…] Last August, Beijing’s municipal government launched the “Esports Beijing 2020” initiative, promising to provide major subsidies to teams, venues and games that promote local culture.

A month later, during the Beijing International Game Conference, the city announced its intention to become an “international capital of online games” by 2035. [Source]

However, the government views these companies’ influence as unhealthy. Earlier this month, the South China Morning Post reported that Chinese state media criticized Tencent’s video gaming products, calling them “spiritual opium.” The metaphor has precedent: in 2000, the People’s Daily described video games as “digital heroin.” This rhetoric has spooked investors wary of impending regulatory measures, triggering a sell-off that caused Tencent to lose $43 billion within just a few hours. Since its high point in February, Tencent has lost more than $400 billion in market capitalization. 

It is not clear what the long-term impact of the new regulations will be. Some analysts claim that investors’ fears are overblown, since gaming is but a small slice of Tencent’s overall revenue, and players under 18 account for a minor portion of its gaming revenue: 

But as the government tries to reign in Chinese tech companies and their domestic player base, it also risks driving young players to seek out foreign games in order to counteract the limited availability of domestic games: 

Others predict that the regulations will jeopardize the sustainability of the video game industry, since the restricted playing time may discourage minors from taking up gaming as a hobby and make them less likely to enjoy complex video games as they grow older. However the regulations play out, they join a host of other state-imposed measures intended to mold Chinese children:



source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/09/china-restricts-minors-to-three-hours-of-online-gaming-per-week/
Posted by at No comments:
Labels:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)