Friday, 24 July 2020

Translation: Lu Yuyu’s “Incorrect Memory,” Part 2

In 2016, citizen journalist  and his girlfriend at the time Li Tingyu were formally arrested after having been detained for over a month. The two had been chronicling “mass incidents” across China on the “Not News” (非新聞) blog and @wickedonnaa Twitter account since 2013. Reporters Without Borders awarded the detained Lu and Li a Press Freedom Prize in 2016. While Li was reportedly tried in secret and released in April 2017, Lu was sentenced to four years in prison that August for “ and provoking trouble,” a catch-all charge frequently used to prosecute activists.

Lu was released from prison last month, and on July 17 began sharing his account of his detention and treatment on Twitter. CDT has translated the second part below:

Endlessly interrogated. Most of the time they wanted me to identify the messages I posted publicly. Sometimes they’d intentionally put in some unrelated photos and text into the files. That was no big deal for me, I had a thing for remembering photos. Sometimes they’d ask me other questions.

“Who supported you?” Who sent you money?”  I don’t know them. Internet friends.

“Internet friends? Why would they give you money? Why did you have money from overseas?”  Because I wrote news for them to read. I started a crowdfunding campaign online. Why can’t people have internet friends from overseas?

“Have you made any plans recently?” Nope.

“Have you contacted anyone?” I haven’t used my phone in a long time.

“Why not?” Because I have social anxiety, and because I wanted to focus on what I like to do.

Jane [Li Tingyu’s English name] didn’t complain much, she doesn’t love to socialize. But one day she suddenly said she wanted to make more friends, that she didn’t have a single friend in Dali. I didn’t know how to respond, perhaps our life was too mundane for Jane. I used to have some friends in Dali, but I didn’t contact them after I came to the city. For one, I have changed; for two, I didn’t want to waste time.

“What’s this receipt about?” Someone paid to subscribe to our news and asked for a receipt.

“Who?” I don’t know. Internet friends.

“What’s ‘Humanitarian China’?” Is it really that hard to understand?

“Did you post on foreign websites? We found in your old computer screenshots of your posts on foreign websites.” I shot back, “Are websites divided into foreign and domestic?” Just present your evidence. Why bother asking me?

That old computer was sent to me by a friend from afar who thought typing on an iPad was inconvenient for me. But I accidentally broke the computer’s screen and stopped using it, and I didn’t want to throw it away.

“Why are you collecting this information? What’s your purpose?” It’s my hobby to document collective action, just like how I loved collecting postal stamps as a kid, and how I loved collecting Neofolk from all around the world in my youth. All were personal hobbies. Also, I am a peasant. I’ve lived at the bottom of the society. Isn’t it normal for me to care about the underprivileged?

“And so many people give you money for your personal hobbies?” They did it out of their own will. It’s not like I forced billions of people to pay me for my personal hobby.

“When did you start to document this? Why?” Around 2012. I didn’t like to passively accept information pushed on me by others. I loved to do research and find information on my own. So many big things happened around that time that changed my perception of the country. For example, Ai Weiwei, Chen Guangcheng, or places like Shaxi, Shifang, Qidong, Yinggehai. I also found information that no one knew. As I found more and more, I just wanted to document them.

“What keywords did you use in your searches?” Strikes, demonstrations, protests, roadblocks, etc. I can’t recall all of them without actually doing the searches.

“How much money do you receive every year?” I don’t know, I didn’t keep track. Around 50,000 or 60,000 yuan.

“If you want to document history, you can do so on your own computer. Why do you have to publish them?” History has to be public for the people. Otherwise, what’s the point?

“Why do you have the word DARK in your Sina usernames? Does this have a special meaning?” No, I just like DARK music.

“What do those knives mean in your profile pictures?” I took the pictures at the home of an old lady who was too poor to afford food, in Heizhiguo, Yunnan. I just took them randomly. I thought they looked nice. No special meanings.

“Don’t you know the information you post can negatively affect society?” I only document the truth. As for negative effects, that depends on who you are talking about, right? Sometimes I want to help those involved. But experience has shown me that’s not possible.

“You weren’t even at the scene. How do you know those things were true?” After I find the first piece of information, I keep looking for more on different websites, for cross references from different witnesses. I can also contact those who posted them to fact-check. I am sure that of those some 70,000 cases I posted, all are true. You have been investigating me for so long, did you find any of them to be made up?

“Why don’t you use the government press release?”  You seldom issue press releases. Even when you do, it’s often just a few paragraphs. With that being said, if I was able to find any government press releases, I put them together with other information I collected for cross reference. But I don’t adopt the government’s tone. I am just a civilian. I try to remain an independent third party.

Why do you use words like “crackdown”? Why don’t you use “deal with”? I think “crackdown” is more neutral. Like I’ve said, I’m not used to adopting the government’s narrative.

“Why do you keep doing it despite so many rounds of warnings? Don’t you know you were breaking the law?” I’m innocent, even according to your laws.

“Did you keep track of how many Sina Weibo accounts you’ve had? Why do you keep registering for new accounts when your old ones got censored?” I didn’t keep track, maybe around 1,000 accounts? I used to register by myself, but after I hit the limit I just bought them from Taobao. [Chinese]

Translation by Yakexi. CDT will continue to translate selected excerpts from Lu’s Twitter diary account of his detention as they are published. See also CDT’s translation of Part 1. 

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Thursday, 23 July 2020

Houston Consulate Ordered to Close Amid Sharpening U.S.-China Tensions

On Wednesday, the United States ordered China to “cease all operations and events” at its Houston consulate over suspicion of attempts to steal trade secrets and scientific research. The order, which must be fulfilled by Friday, comes as diplomatic tensions between Beijing and Washington are rapidly escalating, and as the Trump administration is doubling down on its anti-China message, notably in a “fiery” speech by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday. In a Wednesday evening press conference, President Trump stated that it was “always possible’ more Chinese missions would be closed. At The New York Times, Edward Wong, Lara Jakes, and Steven Lee Myers report on the allegations that U.S. officials are so far citing for the sudden action:

It was unclear what had immediately prompted the crackdown on the consulate, which must close by Friday, although the State Department said China was directing “massive illegal spying and influence operations.”

David R. Stilwell, who oversees policy for East Asia and the Pacific at the State Department, said in an interview that the Houston consulate had a history of engaging in “subversive behavior” and was the epicenter of research theft in the United States. He gave few details to support that assertion, though other American officials released a document with more information on Wednesday night.

He cited one example: He said the consul general, Cai Wei, the top Chinese official there, and two other diplomats were caught using false identification to escort Chinese travelers on May 31 to the gate area of a charter flight from George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

Mr. Stilwell said that some of China’s attempted scientific thefts in the United States had accelerated over the last six months, and could be related to efforts to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus, although he presented no evidence. […] [Source]

Axios reported this week that U.S. prosecutors have accused the San Francisco consulate of harboring a Chinese military researcher who is wanted by the FBI.

Local Houston KHOU 11 reported that the fire department Tuesday evening responded to a report of documents being burned in the courtyard of the consulate after the eviction order was issued—a practice that Vox notes is common when a diplomatic mission is abruptly abandoned.

The day prior, the U.S. Justice Department accused two Chinese hackers of targeting U.S. vaccine information as part of a broader cybertheft campaign that had previously targeted data on rights activists.

As Beijing sharply condemned the consulate closure as “a political provocation unilaterally initiated against China,” Houston Consul General Cai Wei expressed surprise to the local ABC affiliate, claiming that his mission was “friendship and mutual understanding” between China and the U.S. In a later interview with Politico on the eve of the deadline,  Cai claimed his post may defy the order.

At CNN, James Griffiths and Nicole Gaouette relay further statements from the Trump administration justifying the move as a needed protection measure, noting disparate words of caution both from colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and from commentators in China:

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the acting chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote on Twitter Wednesday that closing China’s consulate in Houston “needed to happen,” and claimed it is a “central node of the Communist Party’s vast network of spies.”

Sen. Angus King, an independent of Maine who caucuses with Democrats, told CNN’s John Berman on “New Day” Wednesday he was not aware of any “recent intelligence of particular Chinese activities, either with regard to our elections, or the whole confrontation between our two countries — theft of intellectual property” that may have driven the decision.

“There certainly is a good reason to confront China. My concern is, escalating this tension, is it really about confronting China, or does it have something to do with an election in four months?” King, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said. [Source]

Legal expert Jerome Cohen also expressed surprise and reservations about the move:

On Thursday, Secretary Pompeo levied further forceful remarks, which CNN’s Jennifer Hansler writes “appeared to cast the US-China competition as a modern day Cold War.”

“We must admit our truth that should guide us in the years and decades to come, that if we want to have a free 21st century, and not the Chinese century of which Xi Jinping dreams, the old paradigm of blind engagement with China simply won’t get it done,” he said. “We must not continue it and we must not return to it.”

“As President Trump has made very clear, we need a strategy that protects the American economy and indeed our way of life. The free world must triumph over this new tyranny,” he said.

“The truth is that our policies — and those of other free nations — resurrected China’s failing economy, only to see Beijing bite the international hands that were feeding it,” Pompeo continued. “We opened our arms to Chinese citizens, only to see the Chinese Communist Party exploit our free and open society.”

[…] His speech was the fourth and culminating event in a series of remarks from the administration against China. National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Attorney General Bill Barr delivered similar remarks on the threat from Beijing. [Source]

At The New York Times, Keith Bradsher and Steven Lee Myers situate the consulate closure into the rapidly proliferating diplomatic conflicts between Beijing and Washington, noting Chinese officials’ apparent caution to contain the diplomatic fallout:

Behind the scenes, senior Chinese officials seem to have little desire to escalate the tensions even further, concerned that any moves could play into President Trump’s hands as he mounts his re-election campaign. A highly visible showdown with China could distract Americans from Mr. Trump’s botched response to the pandemic and allow him to campaign as a leader who is defending his country against a foreign power.

“This is a classic game, to find an external distraction and rouse the people behind the president,” said Lau Siu-kai, a senior Beijing adviser on Hong Kong issues.

At the same time, Beijing cannot afford to appear weak in the face of the barrage of attacks from the United States. A rising sense of national pride, instilled by the country’s schools and amplified by state media, demands that Chinese leaders stand strong when challenged from abroad.

[…] The tough policies and tougher rhetoric from Washington indicate that the United States, not China, is setting the ever more confrontational tone in the bilateral relationship. “I think originally you could have faulted the Chinese for much of the imbalance,” said Orville Schell, the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, “but now the U.S. doesn’t seem as ardent about leaving the door open for remedy, as it is arching its back against China.” […] [Source]

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Wednesday, 22 July 2020

Photo: Landed, by Gauthier DELECROIX – 郭天

Landed, by Gauthier DELECROIX – 郭天 (CC BY 2.0)

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Translation: “Totalitarianism is Not the Other” by Zhang Jieping

 is the founder and CEO of Matters Lab, a decentralized content platform. Earlier this month, as fear reverberated following the first arrests under the hastily enacted national security law in Hong Kong, she posted a short essay of encouragement: “To counter fear, the first thing we need to do is take our speech back.” Last week on Matters, she published a lengthy essay titled “Under Totalitarianism, Our Fear, Resistance, and Love,” further reflecting on the new reality of life for Hong Kong, and warning that the line between freedom and totalitarianism is thinner than many think. An excerpt has been translated by CDT:

1. Totalitarianism is Not The Other

At 11:00 at night on June 30, like many people, I read the full text of the Hong Kong version of the National Security Law on my computer, line by line. While reading and  interpreting those unyielding yet vague sentences in my head, I felt as though I had returned to those days when I was a journalist reporting on China. Apart from a strong sense of confusion about space and time, the absurdity and bleak emptiness I felt in my heart were beyond words.

Fifteen years ago, I arrived in Hong Kong as a China reporter. One of the most frequent challenges I encountered was investigating why those who work on AIDS prevention and treatment, who survey lists of students that died in an earthquake, who advocate for environmental causes, who litigate on behalf of vulnerable populations, who write articles and poetry and publish books, and who organize house churches—why is it that they are the ones taken away? Between detention and trial, why did they disappear for days, even years at a time? What did they go through? What law did they break, what crime did they commit? And what do the charges even mean? How did they endure those long days of torment? How did they defend themselves? Who defended them? Can they even defend themselves within such a judicial framework? Those people who played a part in their arrest, who are they? Those huntsmen with parents, wives and children of their own, how do they carry out their work, what kind of mentality do they have?

Facing those who have been swallowed alive by darkness, I have countless questions.

I also know that for many people, the answer to these questions is so simple that they do not think of them as questions at all: it is simply “China”—that word says everything.

I remember in the office that Hong Kong colleagues used to listen to these stories with sympathy in their eyes, but would turn their heads to the other side, sigh, and say: that’s China for you. They weren’t wrong. Healthy people have no interest in probing a diseased system; people in bright places need not spend time gazing into the abyss. “China” is the reason for everything. Just stay away from it and everything will be okay. Just like what our parents taught us since we were young, just stay away from the bad guys, and our world and those in it will not turn bad.

Being in the midst of it, of course you know that’s not the case.

Evil is a whole set of mechanisms which operate silently in the day-to-day life of every ordinary person. Every person’s movement need only adapt to this system a little, or bend a little, and thus the abyss that will swallow us all is formed. The cost of freeing oneself from it will only rise higher and higher, far higher than what ordinary people can bear, to the point where even if you do leave, the tacit understanding you have as a result of interacting with this system will remain in your physical habits. By that time, no matter how great the resistance and struggle inside, from the outside everyone will have already coalesced into the same evil symbol.

The difficulty is that you don’t know when you are “in it” and when you can “stay out of it.”

People in democratic countries may feel that totalitarianism is far away. However, after the epidemic, as we enter into a Cold War world, the many policy decisions of democratic countries already contain elements of tyranny which have long been hidden within. If the political arena is reduced, even in a society under the rule of law, the operating elements of tyranny will spring up everywhere, in families, schools, workplaces, churches, in organizations large and small.

Totalitarianism is not the other, it is born within us. The movie “The Wave” uses a real social experiment that took place in a California high school in 1967 to tell us: once the external environment changes, politics and civilization itself can get sucked out to sea.

“The world is only five days away from totalitarianism.” This originally described the plot of the movie. It became a reality in Hong Kong in July.

The National Security Law, from promulgation to implementation, from confirmation of enforcement rules to the appointment of executive officers, to the arrival of the Office for Safeguarding National Security in Hong Kong as the fourth agency directly under the command of the central government—all of this took only nine days. The intermediate steps to get to this point are air-tight. Politically, this punctured the boundary of Hong Kong’s “autonomy” as a Special Administrative Region. In terms of the rule of law, it directly conflicted with the framework of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, threatening the spirit of the rule of law and procedural justice. It has essentially hollowed out the Hong Kong government, delegated power to the police, and moved Hong Kong one step closer to becoming a “police city.”

What does totalitarian life feel like? It’s not that a group of bad guys called “totalitarians” cross the border and drive straight in. It’s that the familiar people, familiar institutions, familiar behaviors and lives around us suddenly take on new forms.

The University of Hong Kong automatically erased the photo of a young alumnus sentenced to prison; public libraries have voluntarily formed blacklists and removed books by sensitive people; officials and the police decreed that voting in elections is a violation of the National Security Law; media bosses have quickly replaced content directors who are not friendly to Beijing; book fair organizers have threatened booksellers to self-censor; individuals on the top of official blacklists have publicly accused old acquaintances of being CCP thugs; on social media, changing names to hide one’s identity has become a trend, and people automatically predict which terms are considered “sensitive words” and replace them with alternatives; long lines are forming outside immigration agencies…

The reason why totalitarianism can spread like a cancer is that it is very good at getting our healthy cells to defect. Society is like the human body. If every organ and every blood vessel cannot perform its duty and maintain a healthy bottom line, the whole will face total defeat.

For this reason, when totalitarian power is overwhelming, what we have to fight against is not the other, but our own fear, suspicion, laxity, and echolalia. We cannot let every minute, every second of every day be scuttled by Great Games, mutually-assured destruction, and calculations. During this time, not being changed by totalitarianism is the biggest counterattack we can wage.

[…]

5. Vocation and Love 

Anyone who has a pursuit in life will refuse to resign when faced with a sudden loss of freedom: I don’t want to compromise, I don’t want to self-censor, I don’t want to waste my life in a game at the margins contemplating what can and cannot be said, I don’t want to be unable to discuss all the truly creative and exploratory things concerning this magnificent world, I don’t want to stop sailing in the world of ideas and simply stare down the days until the enemy is gone.

This unwillingness to resign is often the initial force supporting our resistance.

However, for individuals, resisting the shadow of tyranny is a long journey, requiring continuous practice and enduring energy. The lasting motivation behind this toil is not anger or stubbornness. It is not “what we don’t want.” It is “what we do want.”

After the National Security Law, the slogans on the streets of Hong Kong changed from “resistance,” “revenge,” and “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time,” to “I really love Hong Kong.” Although this is a strategy to avoid censorship, people seem to understand subconsciously that the darker the times, the more love is needed, because love is the only enduring force.

Love is not abstract. Take Hong Kong as an example. The Hong Kong we love needs to have a more concrete imagination. What is the way of life that we want to pursue or protect? What kind of social imagination? What do we think of our role in pursuit of this path? How do we combine this role with our own vocations and interests? In essence, what is it that you want to do the most in this lifetime?

It is Havel who said that he hated being labeled a “dissident” because a person with an abundant life is not defined by being “at odds with the voice of the regime.” After all, how important does the regime think it is? “Dissidents” are just people who, as they live their lives, find that they must stand up to power. They have life goals, interests that they cannot let go, and a faith that they’re willing to pay for. Only then do they have the courage and patience to “fight forever” against tyranny. They may be doctors, chefs, pilots, sociologists, musicians, writers, artists—ordinary people from all walks of life.

Only when every one of us establishes their life goal and does everything they can to protect it can we force politics to break through the goals of totalitarianism and return it to its only proper foothold: the individual.

We have been talking about the loss of freedom. But more importantly, what is the purpose of freedom? The purpose of freedom is to allow individuals to live a more autonomous life. And only the autonomy of life—where we know what kind of life we want to live, and we live it, instead of being driven by life—is the greatest motivation for defending freedom.

In this great era, I write to myself, and to encourage my friends. [Chinese]

Translated by an anonymous CDT contributor. Edited by Anne Henochowicz. 

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Translation: Lu Yuyu’s “Incorrect Memory,” Part 1

In 2016, citizen journalist Lu Yuyu and his girlfriend at the time Li Tingyu, were formally arrested after having been detained for over a month. The two had been chronicling “mass incidents”—the official name given to protests, riots, and other forms of social unrest—across China on the “Not News” (非新聞) blog and @wickedonnaa Twitter account since 2013. Reporters Without Borders awarded the detained Lu and Ting a Press Freedom Prize in 2016. While Li was reportedly tried in secret and released in April 2017, Lu was sentenced to four years in prison that August for “ and provoking trouble,” a catch-all charge frequently used to prosecute activists.

Lu was released from prison last month, four years after his initial apprehension in June 2016. He has detailed his experience in detention, and his opinion that the option to document protests “no longer exists in China” in a recent interview with William Yang.

On July 17, Lu shared the first entry of his account of his detention and treatment an Twitter:

His tweet reads: “Now that I’ve finally defeated my procrastination, let’s start at the top.”  Lu has  titled his account “Incorrect Memory”—an allusion to the CCP’s monopolization of PRC history by determining “correct” narratives. Recently, a foreign ministry spokesperson earned a lot of scorn after she claimed that a white paper on coronavirus response was intended to “leave a correct collective memory for all mankind.” The first part of Lu’s narrative has been translated in full below. CDT will continue to translate selected excerpts from Lu’s Twitter diary account of his time in detention as they are published.

Incorrect Memory 

-Lu Yuyu

Midday on June 15, 2016, the weather was as good as always. Having rice noodles at a noodle bar in the old city of Liuli, Jane [Li Tingyu’s English name] told me that a manager at the express delivery place had texted her multiple times, asking for us to retrieve our packages as soon as possible.

We didn’t sense anything unusual. After having noodles, we rushed back on our electric bikes. It was not far from the old city to Gantong, about seven li [three and a half km/two miles]. After we arrived at the express delivery place, Jane went in to get our packages. There was a corridor between the street and the station, about 10 meters long. I was waiting for her on the street when several men closed in on me. I had imagined countless times what this would be like and how I should react, but it happened too fast. I didn’t have the time to react or even to get scared. My hands were cuffed from behind and I was thrown into a nearby car, then they used a black cloth to cover my head and face. I thought maybe they didn’t know Jane was still inside the package station, which was an incredibly naive thought—several female officers took Jane from the package station. Jane yelled out my name as she was thrown into another car. By then, I had started to feel bad.

Then a middle-aged man told me they were from Dali Public Security Bureau, and that they were arresting me for this and that. I wasn’t in the mood to listen. They asked me to take them to where we were living. They had their people stationed all along the way, and the driver occasionally stopped to speak with them. When we were close to my home, I saw Jane in a car, her head and face covered in black cloth. That was the last time I saw her. Perhaps I’d never see her again.

They thoroughly searched our place. They took photos of me with everything. Xiao Huang was barking incessantly downstairs, I wondered who would take care of him. Just before Chinese New Year, Xiao Chou left. We thought he would come home after he was done playing, just like he used to do. But not this time, he never came back. We tried to find him but quickly gave up. He could be anywhere, and we were too busy. Jane asked me why I wasn’t upset and why I gave up searching. I said life was about bidding farewell anyway. What’s there to be upset about? I was just playing tough.

About two weeks ago, after many rounds of negotiations with Jane, we adopted Xiao Huang on the condition that we must neuter him after he grew up. I thought we should take him home first, and that we’d never neuter him. Xiao Huang was a bit wobbly in his steps at first but he settled in very quickly. On the third day, he climbed upstairs on his wobbly legs and slept next to me.

About two hours later, I was sitting in the tiger chair inside a room of the Dali Public Security Bureau. They asked me all kinds of questions. Everything I did was made public, there was nothing to hide. As I was answering their questions, I thought: What will happen to Xiao Huang? Will they release Jane?

The interrogation went past midnight and included several different police officers. They offered me food halfway through, but I had no appetite. They tested me for drugs. At 4 a.m. I was put into a car, I didn’t know where we were going. I asked if they had released Jane. One of them smirked and said, “You should worry about yourself.”

The car stopped about 30 minutes later. It was raining. After a brief conversation, they took me through several gates. The last gate had a sign that said “no men allowed.” I was stripped of all my clothing, and after changing into some stinky clothes, passed through that no-men-allowed gate.

The jail cell was about 30 square meters, and the outdoor space was about 10 square meters. You were only allowed outdoor access at certain times during the day. I had three cellmates. One of them quickly got up to make the bed for me and threw me a smelly blanket. I couldn’t sleep. At 7 in the morning, they came to do counts. I didn’t have breakfast, the food wasn’t appealing. At 8, I was interrogated again. They asked me to look at the messages I posted on Weibo. Didn’t Sina delete them already? Maybe Sina gave them this data from their backend? Or, maybe they had been collecting them from early on. I looked at these messages one after another until 1 a.m., when I went back to my cell to sleep.

During my interrogation, I asked them to take care of Xiao Huang, and if I could retrieve some cash for daily goods. One police officer told me that I won’t be getting out anytime soon, and that they found someone to take care of Xiao Huang. I didn’t know if he was telling the truth. He then told me it wasn’t convenient to get money, that Jane has 300 yuan, and that I should ask her to spare half of it. I said no, Jane also needed money. Later they said Jane will keep 200 yuan and I can have 100, and that they’ll let me get more later. I agreed.

Days went on like this, I was so exhausted. About four days later, I told them that from then on I wouldn’t answer any questions after 5 p.m. After that my interrogation sessions ended at 5 every day. The same day, I was asked to sign a notice. Only then did I learn that our case was being handled by a special task force of the Ministry of Public Security—Case 1517 Picking Quarrels and Provoking Trouble. That must be referring to the date January 7, 2015… No wonder my email kept getting hacked back then! [Chinese]

Translation by Yakexi.

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Tuesday, 21 July 2020

U.S. Government Sanctions Companies for Forced Labor in Xinjiang

The U.S. government has announced sanctions on 11 companies which allegedly use forced labor of Uyghurs—many of whom have been involuntarily transferred to work in factories from detention camps set up across Xinjiang—or otherwise contribute to repression in the region.


Reuters reports:

The step, which leaves the firms unable to buy components from U.S. companies without U.S. government approval, prompted an accusation of slander from China, which vowed to take measures to protect its companies’ rights.

The Commerce Department said the companies were involved in using forced labor by Uighurs and other Muslim minority groups.

Among them are numerous textile companies and two firms the government said were conducting genetic analyses used to further the repression of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.

It was the third group of companies and institutions in China added to the U.S. blacklist, after two rounds in which the Trump administration cited 37 entities it said were involved in China’s repression in Xinjiang. [Source]

Jeanne Whalen at The Washington Post has more on the companies impacted by the new rules:

Several of the companies were named in a report this year as running factories that used Xinjiang laborers compelled to work under a forced-labor program led by the government. The Chinese companies, including Changji Esquel Textile, Hefei Meiling and Nanjing Synergy Textiles, are suppliers to many Western companies, according to the report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a think tank founded and partly funded by the Australian government, with additional funding from Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and other companies.

In a letter to Commerce Secretary Ross dated Monday, Hong Kong-based Esquel Group asked to be removed from the list, saying the company “does not use forced labor, and we never will use forced labor.” It added: “We have been employing willing members of the Uyghur community and other minority groups since 1995 on a non-discriminatory basis.” The other companies couldn’t be reached immediately for comment.

Earlier this year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized a shipment of hair-weave products from another of the newly sanctioned companies, Hetian Haolin Hair Accessories, saying it had information indicating that the goods were made with the use of forced labor. The Associated Press mentioned that seizure in a subsequent investigation. The company could not be reached immediately for comment. [Source]

This news followed an investigative report by The New York Times which found that forced labor is being used to produce face masks and other PPE exported to countries, including the U.S., that are dealing with COVID-19 outbreaks.


The companies produce equipment primarily for domestic use, but The Times identified several other companies outside Xinjiang that use Uighur labor and export globally. We traced a shipment of face masks to a medical supply company in the U.S. state of Georgia from a factory in China’s Hubei Province, where more than 100 Uighur workers had been sent. The workers are required to learn Mandarin and pledge their loyalty to China at weekly flag-raising ceremonies.

The program is widely publicized in state media as a form of poverty reduction. The Human Rights Investigations Lab at the University of California, Berkeley and the Uyghur Human Rights Project have both collected dozens of videos and social media reports that document the recent labor transfers.

Uighurs have long been persecuted by the Chinese government, which says its tight control over Xinjiang is necessary to fight what it calls religious extremism. In a response to The Times, the spokesman for China’s Embassy in the U.S. said the program helps “local residents rise above poverty through employment and lead fulfilling lives.”

Quotas on the number of workers put into the labor program and the penalties faced by those who refuse to cooperate, however, mean that participation is often, in effect, involuntary. [Source]

[…]


(Read New York Times reporter Muyi Xiao’s full thread.)

Meanwhile, after the BBC showed him drone footage of apparently shackled prisoners in Xinjiang being put on trains, Chinese Ambassador to the U.K. Liu Xiaoming defended his government’s policies in the region, including allegations of mandated birth control and the forced sterilization of Uyghur women. At The Atlantic, Mei Fong puts recent reports of ethnic sterilization in the broader context of China’s family planning polices, which she says “have always been less about births, and more about control.”

Evidence of widespread internment camps, forced cultural and religious assimilation, mass surveillance, and other repressive policies in Xinjiang have led international experts to term what is happening there genocide, while activist groups have filed a lawsuit against the Chinese government at the International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity. The U.S. government recently imposed new Global Magnitsky Act sanctions against high-ranking Chinese officials responsible for rights violations in Xinjiang.

For The Guardian, Eveline Chao profiles Dilara, a young Uyghur woman in Turkey whose mother was detained in Xinjiang after visiting Turkey for a year to care for her newborn granddaughter:

For months after being released, her mother had to attend weekly flag-raising ceremonies at the camp, standing silently alongside rows of other Uighurs. Each time, she would post a video of it to WeChat. “Every fucking Monday,” Dilara said, pulling out her phone and loading up her mother’s account, “she posts, ‘Flag-raising ceremony.’” She scrolled down to the next several posts. “Flag-raising ceremony,” she repeated.

Dilara is aware there are large subject areas her mother avoids, because their calls are probably monitored. Her mother only feels safe mentioning the camps when saying something positive. She has bragged that she was the best student there, getting high marks in the monthly tests on “Xi Jinping thought” and Communist party doctrine.

What is most upsetting to Dilara – and what compels her to speak out – is that none of her Han Chinese friends know what is happening. During the year her mother was interned, she tried to tell her colleagues about the camps, but “they would always say, ‘No you must be wrong, that can’t be.’”. Her company paid for return trips to China every few months, and each time, her colleagues would ask why she wasn’t coming home too. “I kept telling them, we can’t go back, but they don’t believe me,” she said. [Source]

To learn more about the current situation in Xinjiang, listen to two podcasts, Lawfare on A Deep Dive on China and the Uighurs, and Darren Byler on the Uyghur people of Xinjiang, China on Time to Say Goodbye.

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Monday, 20 July 2020

CDT Censorship Digest, June 2020: A Power Struggle Over Memory

In 2020, CDT Chinese editors launched the CDT Censorship Digest series. The series will collect and quote from news and online speech that was censored by Chinese authorities during the previous month, as well as summarize efforts to preserve and strengthen freedom of speech in Chinese society. When relevant to CDT English readers, we will translate the Chinese series in part or in full. CDT has translated an excerpt from the full CDT Chinese digest for June, adapted to include links to English coverage when available:

CDT Chinese | Chinese Censorship Digest, June 2020: A Power Struggle Over Memory

In China, June is the season for an annual power struggle over memory: from the Tiananmen Democracy Movement of 31 years ago, to last year’s anti-extradition protests in Hong Kong, to the coronavirus outbreak of early this year—those in power are quick to forge a template for a collective memory, and to brand this the “correct collective memory” and force it on the populace. In “1984,” George Orwell explained, “Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”

So then, how do we get rid of a “correct collective memory”? The only way to challenge the official memory is by preserving the humble memories of the individual. Commemorating June 4, cheering on the Tiananmen Mothers, grieving Marco Leung (the first Hong Kong protester to die last June in anti-extradition rallies), recording “incorrect” memories during the epidemic by writing down ordinary people’s stories and leaving that truth on Weibo—by doing all of these things, Chinese people are contesting the official “correct collective memory.”

Disappearing Truth and the Actual Facts

The way Havel saw it, if society were based on lives filled with lies, then “living a life in truth” would become the most fundamental threat, and therefore would be the worst crime in that society. This is precisely why those who dare speak are always punished.

Volunteers for archiving project Terminus-2049 Cai Wei, Chen Mei, and Xiao Tang were detained in Beijing in April, and held under “residential surveillance in a designated location” on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” Xiao Tang was released after 25 days of detention. Cai and Chen were detained for 55 days, then on June 12 their families were informed they’d been arrested and were now detained in the Chaoyang District Detention Center. The crowd-sourced Terminus-2049 project has been archiving news that’s been deleted by authorities since 2018. The site had backed up articles deleted from WeChat and Weibo, and recently archived a large collection of pandemic related articles.

Rights activist and citizen journalist Zhang Zhan went missing in May after spending the previous month reporting on the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. On June 19, her family members were notified of her official arrest on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”

Imprisoned over four years ago in the widespread “Black Friday” or “709” crackdown, rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang was released from prison in April and moved to guarded isolation. Twenty-three days later, he was finally reunited with his family. After his release, he twice spoke with Deutsche Welle, describing the injustices of his case and the torture he suffered in detention.

On June 20, Hubei University’s CCP committee announced that professor Liang Yanping was expelled from the Party and banned from teaching. The university began investigating her in April after she praised Wuhan diary author Fang Fang on WeChat amid a surge of nationalistic outrage. Following this news, Fang Fang immediately issued her support of Professor Liang. Liang became the 16th professor dealt with for “incorrect speech” in the last three and a half years.

And this totalitarian control of speech is directed not only at those with the courage to speak out, but at all of the people.

The pandemic-related health QR code that emerged in Hangzhou, Suzhou, and other places has gone universal. In the name of “normalizing epidemic prevention and control” and unfurled under the banner of convenience, a so-called “upgrade” to the code was carried out, and government data collection and utilization was expanded. In the article “I Won’t Use a Smartphone, Are You Prepared to Let Me Die?” the author explains how much of an inconvenience universal smartphone reliance can be for some people.

On WeChat, @夙说天下 pointed out:

The emergence of the health QR allowed the government the convenience of central management. Three colors, red, yellow, and green, imposed across the board, avoiding a lot of trouble, and also providing the government with more data. And now that the normalization of the codes has been proposed, it surely won’t stop there. [Chinese]

Individual Recollections Outside the “Correct Collective Memory”

On June 8, foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying was questioned in her regular press briefing about a recent State Council Information Office white paper that provided a glowing account of Beijing’s coronavirus response that also defends against criticism of its opacity and misinformation about the virus. Hua said: “China issued the white paper not to defend itself, but to keep a record. The history of the combat against the pandemic should not be tainted by lies and misleading information; it should be recorded with the correct collective memory of all mankind.” The official MOFA Weibo account also spread this message, which many netizens called into question, recalling Beijing’s track record of lies and misinformation, some of which Hua’s department spreads to the world.

In the article “Is There a Correct ‘Collective Memory’?” an anonymous writer looked at the relationship between power and memory:

It isn’t hard to see that power is an essential core question. Here, power is closer to Foucault’s concept of power. The influence of power is ever present and pervasive in the production, storage, and dissemination of memory. Memory connects the past with the present, which relates to our emotions and identities. Foucault said that he didn’t study power, but he studied how power shapes autonomy. By putting his research in the domain of memory he is looking at how power affects our memory, and shapes our perception of self through memory. In this sense, so-called “correct collective memory” may be the means by which state power disciplines its subjects individuality. [Chinese]

The essay “From Miao Kexin to Li Wenliang: Memory isn’t Correct or Wrong, Only True or False” points out that the wording in “correct collective memory” and “positive energy” are two paths to the same destination of controlling minds:

The definition of “positive” or “negative energy” is very dialectical in nature. On one hand, so-called positivity and negativity depends only on what some people want or don’t want to see. However, regardless of these preferences, social reality has always existed, just as how in physics energy can’t be created from thin air or destroyed.

So-called “correct” or “wrong collective memory” is also like this. Anthropologists and sociologists admit that collective memories can be constructed and shaped. However, it can’t be constructed and shaped arbitrarily and indefinitely, as the corresponding social and historical facts are real. So, stipulating what type of collective memory is correct or what type is wrong, and directly eradicating or destroying the “wrong” collective memory is a ridiculous act of deception. [Chinese]

Early in June, Xi’s “positive energy” propaganda campaign became the subject of debate after a fifth-grade school girl committed suicide after leaving a class. Her teacher, known to be abusive, had reportedly criticized her work for “lacking ‘positive energy’,” leading netizens to debate the ethics of pushing political ideology on schoolchildren.

In “How Power Castrates Our Historical Memory,” sociology professor Guo Yuhua states “we are forgetting because some won’t let us remember”:

Only when civilization has been implemented into everyone’s normal life can the seemingly humble trivial experiences of ordinary people become extraordinary memories, and then naturally become part of the grand narrative.  [Chinese]

So, even though the commemoration of June 4 is personal, it is also extraordinary. Take for example Chen Siming and Zhang Wuzhou, who were detained for commemorating June 4, or the brave Tiananmen Mothers, who were this year given the U.S. State Department’s International Women of Courage award. Hong Kong’s insistence on commemorating the 31st anniversary of June 4, for example, or the over 10,000 people who commemorated Marco Leung, the first protester to die in 2019, a year after his death. As Professor Perry Link said on the 31st anniversary of June 4:

We remember June 4 because it was a historic turning point for one-fifth of the world. A turning point in a frightening direction. We hope it won’t be so much of a turning point as to throw the whole world into a ditch. But we don’t know. We’ll have to see.

We remember June 4 because, if we didn’t remember it, it could not be in our heads any other way. Could we possibly have imagined it? No.

We remember June 4 because there are people who dearly want us to remember. It comforts them to know that we remember.

We remember June 4 because there are also people who desperately want us not to remember. They want us to forget because forgetting helps to preserve their political power. How foul! We would oppose that power even if remembering massacres were the only way to do it.

We remember June 4 in order to remind ourselves of the way the Chinese government lies to itself and to others. It says the Chinese people have long since made their “correct judgment on the 1989 counterrevolutionary riot at Tiananmen Square.” But each year, on June 4, plainclothes police block people from entering the Square. Why? If the Chinese people all believe what the government says they believe, then why not let the people into the square to denounce the counterrevolutionaries? The presence of the police shows that the regime does not believe its own lies. […]  [Source]

On June 4, as the world’s eyes turned to Beijing 31 years after a massacre occurred there, news from a villa on the Spanish seaside shocked Chinese people across the globe. Former Chinese football star Hao Haidong and his new wife, former badminton champion Ye Zhaoying, solemnly publicly denounced the CCP, and announced support of the establishment of a “New Chinese Federation.” The former footballer told Apple Daily on June 20:

The way the Party dealt with June 4 and kept quiet about all the dead during the Cultural Revolution, and now you can’t bring it up. Forty years since Reform and Opening yet still people must set up stalls on the street. Is this proper? In the sports world, in order to bring home prizes, athletes’ ages are lied about. I can’t bear to see any of these things, and this is why I am breaking my relationship with the Communist Party!  [Chinese]

Hao’s statements were immediately ordered “subversive” and censored by national authorities.

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