New Factories Next To Detention Centers Fuel Concerns Over Forced Labor In Xinjiang

A new Buzzfeed News investigation shows that Xinjiang authorities have constructed massive factory facilities alongside internment camps where over one million ethnic minorities, primarily Uyghurs and Kazakhs, have been imprisoned. The investigation alleges that the detention camp factories use detainees’ forced, often unpaid, labor. The report is the fourth Buzzfeed investigation by Megha Rajagopalan and Alison Killing on detention in Xinjiang. Previous articles exposed the construction of new detention sites and the experiences of some who had been detained, among other topics. From the latest report:

[…] Collectively, the factory facilities identified by BuzzFeed News cover more than 21 million square feet — nearly four times the size of the Mall of America. (Ford’s historic River Rouge Complex in Dearborn, Michigan, once the largest industrial complex in the world, is 16 million square feet.)

[…] Detention camp factories are woven deeply into Xinjiang’s economy. The Washington, DC–based nonprofit research institute C4ADS compared the locations of the factories identified by BuzzFeed News to a database that compiles address information from China’s government registry for businesses. C4ADS identified 1,500 Chinese companies located at or right by the factories. Of those, 92 listed “import/export” as part of the scope of their business. BuzzFeed News found further information about these companies in corporate documents, state media reports, and other public data. According to trade data dating back to 2016, some of these companies have exported goods all over the world, including Sri Lanka, Kyrgyzstan, Panama, and France. One company sent pants to California.

[…] Much of the construction since 2017 has been concentrated in Xinjiang’s south and west: the regions with the highest numbers of Uighur and Kazakh people.

The programme is also heavily focused on the south of Xinjiang – over 30% of the factories built in camps since the start of 2017 are in Hotan, a prefecture with a high proportion of Uyghurs. Nearly 20% were in the Uyghur heartland of Kashgar. pic.twitter.com/WHQCj5HqZ1

— Alison Killing (@alisonkilling) December 28, 2020

The report profiled Dina Nurdybai, a young entrepreneur, who fled to Kazakhstan after months of forced labor in a detention camp. From Alison Killing and Megha Rajagopalan for Buzzfeed News:

The former detainees said they were never given a choice about working, and that they earned a pittance or no pay at all. “I felt like I was in hell,” Dina Nurdybai, who was detained in 2017 and 2018, told BuzzFeed News. Before her confinement, Nurdybai ran a small garment business. At a factory inside the internment camp where she was held, she said she worked in a cubicle that was locked from the outside, sewing pockets onto school uniforms. “They created this evil place and they destroyed my life,” she said.

[…] She said she was paid a salary of 9 yuan — about $1.38 — in a month, far less than prevailing wages outside the walls of the detention camp.

[…] Inside the factory building, the floor was divided up, grid style, Nurdybai said. It was not like the factories that she had seen while running her own business. “There were cubicles at about chin height so you couldn’t see or talk to others. Each had a door, which locked,” she said, from the outside. Each cubicle had between 25 and 30 people, she said.

On one occasion, one of the camp staff justified the locked cubicles by saying, “These people are criminals, they can seriously harm you.” Police patrolled the floor of the factory. [Source]

Buzzfeed’s investigation also alleged that workers from Xinjiang were transferred to factories across China. Earlier this year, an Australian Strategic Policy Institute report documented a policy by which over 80,000 Uyghur workers were transferred to factories across China, where they were forced to work while undergoing political indoctrination. Central Party authorities ordered media outlets to stay silent on the allegations. “Do not cover Xinjiang’s organizing of work positions for Uyghurs and other ethnic minority members in the interior,” read the internal propaganda directive. Major American companies and their suppliers have been implicated. A new cache of leaked documents revealed that Apple, which lobbied congress to “water down” a bill cracking down on forced labor in Xinjiang, has benefited from forced Uyghur labor. At The Washington Post, Reed Albergotti reported that Lens Technology—the company that supplies the iPhones’ glass screen—participated in a labor transfer program that used Uyghur workers:

“There’s really no way to give informed consent in Xinjiang any longer because the threat of extrajudicial detention is so extreme,” said Darren Byler, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder who studies Uighur migrants.

[…] Some Uighur workers have told human rights groups that they were given a choice between taking a job in a far-flung factory or being sent to a detention center. In some cases, workers have said that when they “accept” the job, they live in heavily guarded campuses and are rarely allowed to leave. In the evenings, when their shifts end, the Uighur workers say they are forced to take lessons in communist propaganda. Whether the Uighurs are paid, and exactly how much, is unclear.

[…] Labor transfers to Lens Technology go back to at least two years, according to the recently uncovered documents. A notice from the Turpan Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, posted on a Chinese job recruitment site in 2018, announced the planned transfer of 1,000 “surplus urban and rural labor” to Lens Technology. The notice instructs local towns and villages to publicize the effort in order to get voluntary sign-ups. To get a job, applicants must pass a “political review,” according to the posting, carried out by local police and approved by the National Security Brigade. [Source]

Earlier this month, a report documented widespread forced labor in Xinjiang’s cotton industry, which government officials defended as part of China’s poverty alleviation campaign. In response, the United States banned all cotton produced in Xinjiang. But in an interview with The Associated Press’ Ken Moritsugu, Xu Guixiang, an official in Xinjiang’s provincial publicity department, said that China plans to consolidate and expand its Xinjiang policies and dismissed the United States’ cotton ban as ineffectual:

“We cannot be complacent at this moment, because the threats are still out there,” [said Xu.]

[…] Xu said the party is consolidating the measures taken to date and would also explore ways to achieve sustained stability in multi-ethnic border areas such as Xinjiang, a western region about 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) from Beijing. To Xinjiang’s south is Tibet, another region marked by past unrest.

[…] He repeated the government’s vehement denials of forced labor, in which vocational training graduates are allegedly pressured to work in factories both in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China.

[…] “One can’t assume that Xinjiang companies can’t live without the U.S. market or some U.S. companies,” he said.[Source]

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/12/new-factories-next-to-detention-centers-fuel-concerns-over-forced-labor-in-xinjiang/

Alibaba Faces Antitrust Probe While New Regulations Challenge Ant Group’s Core Business

New announcements from China’s regulatory authorities have revealed broad plans to rein in Alibaba and Ant Group, as part of a concerted effort to strengthen state supervision of Jack Ma’s business empire. On Tuesday, multiple outlets reported that Ant Group, whose IPO was scuttled at the eleventh hour in early November, will fold its financial operations into a holding company that could be regulated much more like a bank. Bloomberg News reported on the details of the plan, which will entail higher capital requirements and curtail the fintech giant’s ability to extend loans:

The fintech giant is planning to move any unit that would require a financial license into the holding company, pending regulatory approval, said the people, who asked not be named because the matter is private. The plans are still under discussion and subject to change, the people said. Ant declined to comment.

The operations that Ant is looking to fold into the holding company include wealth management services, consumer lending, insurance, payments and MYbank, an online lender in which Ant is the largest shareholder, the people said. Under the financial holding company structure, Ant’s businesses would likely be subject to more capital restrictions, potentially curbing its ability to lend more and expand at the pace of the last few years.

That said, the proposals suggest Ant would still be able operate in financial services beyond its payments business, quelling investor concern about how to interpret the central bank’s Sunday message when it asked Ant to return to its roots as a payments provider.

[…] “Its growth would slow a lot,” said Francis Chan, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst in Hong Kong. The valuation of the non-payment businesses, including wealth management and consumer lending, could be slashed by as much as 75%, he said. [Source]

Ant Group’s personal lending business has been a key source of revenue for the company. Its previous ability to lend more freely than banks—fintech firms were not subject to traditional lenders’ higher minimum capital requirements—allowed it to more aggressively extend loans to Chinese consumers. But new regulations issued shortly after authorities took action to halt Ant Group’s IPO introduced significantly higher capital requirements for fintech firms, which could significantly change Ant’s profitability and later valuation. The Wall Street Journal’s Xie Yu reported that this week, regulators took even more deliberate steps to force Ant to move away from personal lending, telling it to switch back to its core e-payment business:

Chinese financial regulators moved to rein in Ant Group Co., the financial-technology giant controlled by billionaire Jack Ma, telling it to switch its focus back to its mainstay payments business and rectify problems in faster-growing areas such as personal lending, insurance and wealth management.

China’s central bank on Sunday criticized Ant for its behavior toward competitors and consumers, and what regulators said was problematic corporate governance. It said the company “despised” complying with regulations and engaged in regulatory arbitrage, without providing specifics. [Source]

Even prior to the announcement, Chinese media sources reported that Ant had unilaterally scaled back its personal lending products, seemingly in anticipation of regulations to come. Interconnected newsletter’s Kevin Xu wrote about those changes, which were first reported by Chinese IT publication InfoQ:

Based on the reporting, it looks like Ant Group is already making changes internally, in anticipation of larger changes to come. For one, its consumer lending product, Huabei (or “Just Spend”), has unilaterally reduced its lending amount (in some cases from 10,000 RMB to 3,000 RMB, as shown in the screenshot below). This change is framed as promoting more responsible spending behaviors to its mostly young users. More interestingly, Ant’s many (many) subsidiaries across China are also going through some corporate restructuring to isolate its financial service units from other product lines, possibly in preparation for adapting to new rules or even some government ownership. Alibaba is infamous for having a complicated, convoluted corporate structure. Ant is not much different. It is not just a financial services company, but has a large business portfolio in industries like cloud computing, infrastructure technology, and blockchain. [Source]

Separately, the State Administration of Market Regulation (SAMR) announced an antitrust investigation into Alibaba on December 24th, one of the first into a major Chinese tech company. SAMR announced that it was looking into a practice known as erxuanyi (two choose one), through which Alibaba forces merchants to sell exclusively on its platform. E-commerce rivals JD and Pinduoduo have long complained about the practice, with the former suing Alibaba in 2015. The Financial Times’ Ryan McMorrow and Tom Mitchell reported alleged retaliatory measures taken by Alibaba after one manufacturer refused to abide by the exclusivity rules:

Last year, for example, the world’s largest microwave-oven maker, Galanz group, accused Alibaba of directing traffic away from its store on Tmall after it started selling on rival site Pinduoduo. Galanz said its sales dropped calamitously after it failed to show loyalty to Alibaba.

JD and Pinduoduo, both backed by Tencent, have also sued Alibaba for such behaviour, alleging the company abused its dominant position to prevent merchants from selling on their platforms. Alibaba previously declined to comment on the lawsuit.

As of “Singles Day” last month, China’s biggest annual online shopping event, Alibaba was still seeking to restrict merchants from working with other e-commerce platforms, said a lawyer representing a major e-commerce platform in an antitrust lawsuit against Alibaba. While there was no explicit ban on doing so, merchants could see their page rank plummet on Taobao or Tmall after they began selling on competing platforms, the lawyer said.  [Source]

Analysts have diverged in interpreting the significance of the last two months’ slew of regulatory actions against China’s tech giants. Some have interpreted the moves as authorities’ attempts to zero in specifically on Jack Ma, whose outsized personality and outspokenness may have caught up with him. Others have welcomed the regulatory action as long awaited for a sector that had been allowed to operate untouched, to the potential detriment of consumers.

In November, it was reported that Xi Jinping personally oversaw the halting of Ant Group’s IPO, after hearing about a speech by Jack Ma in which he lambasted regulators for having a “pawn shop mentality.” But even with permission from the very top, as Lingling Wei reported for the Wall Street Journal, Chinese regulators are under pressure to balance expanding their oversight over big tech with taking care to avoid the perception of blocking innovation and entrepreneurship:

Chief among them is avoiding the perception of dealing a significant blow to entrepreneurship at a time when the private sector is seen to be losing ground to state-owned firms. In addition, the leadership is worried about a backlash from international investors at a time when Beijing wants to fend off growing doubts over its commitment to market reforms and to nurture more homegrown companies like Alibaba that can compete with their American counterparts.

To allay fears of the state overreaching, the officials said, authorities chose a deputy central-bank governor with a pro-market reputation to detail the actions against Ant this week in a publicized question-and-answer statement.

Pan Gongsheng, the deputy governor who previously oversaw the share sales for two of China’s biggest state-owned banks before moving to the People’s Bank of China, urged Ant to overhaul its business based on market and legal principles.

Still, Mr. Pan emphasized the need for the company to “integrate corporate development into overall national development,” according to remarks released by the central bank on Sunday. [Source]

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/12/alibaba-faces-antitrust-probe-while-new-regulations-challenge-ant-groups-core-business/

Photo: Wugongshan, China, by cattan2011

Wugongshan, China, by cattan2011 (CC BY 2.0)

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/12/photo-wugongshan-china-by-cattan2011/

Translation: Wei Zhou on National Optimism vs Personal Pessimism

An essay by writer Wei Zhou (@维舟) published to WeChat last week describes a dissonant way of thinking increasingly common in China, in which people are able to maintain optimism about the state and trajectory of the nation despite experiencing sustained personal hardships that would appear to lead towards pessimism. The essay on the “two selves” that, according to the author, work to reinforce allegiance to power and obscure awareness of individual liberty, was deleted within hours. It has been archived by CDT Chinese, and is translated in full below.

Wei Zhou｜The Two Selves of the Chinese

A Bilibili user named “speedymotor” (@飞奔的马达), after a long time spent scrutinizing videos, made an interesting observation:

“For all videos on macro-level topics, like domestic industrial upgrades and international relations, the comments on the bullet screen are generally super-optimistic. Basically, we keep getting better, and our enemies keep on degenerating. The vloggers who think this way get the highest praise. But for middle- and micro-level videos, like those on housing prices or young parents, the bullet screens are impossibly pessimistic. If the commenters aren’t completely giving up, they’re ranting non-stop. And anyone who tries to lighten the mood a little—vloggers who really aren’t so terrible—they get dumped on.

“Assuming these videos are targeted at a particular audience — young people — we can see a strange phenomenon: they show boundless hope for the future of the country, yet are completely despondent about their own personal prospects. It’s clear that the two are in fundamental conflict with each other.”

How did the youth of the internet age come to be so “schizophrenic”? Speedymotor (@飞奔的马达)  can’t explain it, save that this is perhaps “just part of our own Dickensian era”—”it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

Quite often, the people who hold these opposing views are one and the same. This seeming contradiction is all around us, and not just on Bilibili.

How do we explain this mentality? Some believe it is nothing more than that of “complacent slaves.” Others wonder if it is the manifestation of “information siloing,” where the grand narrative selectively reports a more hopeful vision, while life at the individual level is directly experienced but suppressed. “Can we voice our discontent with the grand narrative? Or are we reduced to mocking our own lives?” This implies that “macro-optimism is false optimism, while pessimism about oneself is valid pessimism.” Yet for many, both are true. At least, that’s how they see it.

Is that “schizophrenic”? For some, this mentality is perfectly reasonable. The future of the country is predictable, steady, long-term, incremental progress; while their own lot is immediate, tangible, the far-off future unable to quench a present thirst. And though it is not false that there is overall incremental growth, that growth must fall on every head. Then there is the problem of distribution. How much will an ordinary person be allotted if they are not on the same level as those with vested interests?

This viewpoint is very representative, and it corresponds to a common refrain among the younger generation: the country is fine, the pressure and exploitation I am subject to is because of the capitalists.

This isn’t even simply a problem of capital. It reflects people’s anxiety over social stratification and sensitivity to inequality. According to this logic, the problem isn’t the whole, it’s the mechanism of distribution.

Harem dramas and involution, so much in vogue these past few years, belie this line of thought: countless people are competing for limited resources within a closed system, and they pin their particular hopes on an ultimate power that is fair and impartial. As long as they work hard, they should get what they deserve.

It’s not such a strange idea. It’s not even a new one. There have always been those who “oppose corrupt officials but not the emperor”—the system itself is fine, it’s the people running it who are the problem—and so they moan and moan, “if only the sovereign/emperor/head of state knew.”

Even in England, the birthplace of liberalism, the Labor Party never went mainstream before they abandoned their radical program of land nationalization. People aren’t looking to tear everything down and start again. As Michael King observed, no matter where they come from, people seldom want to “destroy” the capitalist system: most people simply want the system to be more sensitive to their needs.

As for China, this underlying tradition runs even deeper. Eileen Chang once wrote that every rebellion in Chinese history was done in the name of “ridding the emperor of his evil advisors,” believing that their deception of the singular authority was the source of all their troubles. “Even the outlaws of Liangshan Marsh only fought against corrupt officials. Though he plundered homes, attacked cities and seized land, they remained ‘devoted to repaying Zhao Kuangyin.'”

Such “loyal opposition” is ubiquitous in recent Chinese history. Even as people complain about their personal predicaments, they genuinely believe that overall everything is fine, just that poorly trained and undisciplined grassroots cadres have made “errors,” that “the monk read the good scripture all sideways.” This being the case, what is increasingly required is the intervention of authority to “correct” these “errors.”

The question invariably becomes: How can I make my voice heard higher up, so that the emperor is not deceived? As a result, whether we speak of the “honest official” or the “disguised official making secret inspections,” a slavish admiration persists in the Chinese tradition. It’s as if it never occurred to anyone that it is this very system, in which it is so difficult to convey the wishes of the masses to the higher power, which is flawed.

In my opinion, only when these contradictory aspects are brought together can we truly understand the complexity of the Chinese mentality, that struggle which pierces through to its very heart.

You could say that the Chinese people have two selves. One is the “self as a member of the nation,” the self that thrives when the nation prospers; the other is the “self as a private individual,” detached from the grand narrative, only concerned with one’s actual lot. The weaker the latter, the more one longs to merge with the former, casting off one’s own petty troubles. “I don’t want to become me, I want to become us.”

In “Confucian Ideology and Chinese Historical Thought,” Huang Junjie made the keen observation that the historian Qian Mu put special emphasis on the elements of “man,” “but his so-called ‘man’ was ‘man’ as a member of a social group, not ‘man’ in the modern sense, the atomized, solitary ‘man.'”

Only when the social fetters of tradition were broken in the tumult of China’s modernization was the individual liberated. This same process, however, thrust the individual into the modern Colosseum of “every man for himself,” freeing them to face solitude and hardship on their own.

Here the labor pains of China’s social transformation are refracted: as modernity drove forward, the individual was extracted from their original social network, but then each was left on their own to face a nameless, massive force, giving rise to an enormous sense of powerlessness. This catalyzed two opposing desires: to fiercely defend their individual rights, but also, in moments of weakness, to join with a more powerful entity.

This is no reason to criticize people as “schizophrenic” or “lacking self-confidence.” It is, after all, the way of the world. It is hard for those who did not personally experience that onslaught of modernization to understand the shock of the atomized individual. If we say that tradition both protects and constrains, then your present freedom is bereft of that ready-made support. In this moment, loneliness and helplessness are inevitable

In truth, nearly every nation goes through this phase in the process of modernization. It’s just that the path of England and the United States guaranteed individual freedom as it gradually refined its social system, protecting their interests and welfare against unpredictable threats; while other nations have taken a more winding path: as the weak individual is made to conform once again with a large group (whether the “race” or the “nation”), he is required to live on for the collective.

Right now, either of these futures seems plausible. If the lowly wage slaves adopt the national narrative, it seems that even rich old Ma could instantly be turned into a nobody. As soon as this perilous sense of power overflows, it could easily cross borders. On the other hand, the Chinese awareness of their own rights has never been as strong as it is now among the youth. It’s hard to imagine them like the intellectuals of the May Fourth movement, sacrificing themselves, “abandoning the small family to care for the big family.”

Quite the opposite, this is a new phenomenon, a so-called “delicate egoism,” which really means “seeking personal gain by joining the collective.” In other words, “becoming us” is the means, “becoming me” is the end. Even as this is met with universal moral outrage, I am certain that this new person, possessed more clearly of his own rights and interests, will normalize the “selfishness” that was for millennia unspeakable; and that on the basis of “putting people first,” the Chinese people will at last be truly liberated. [Chinese]

Translation by Anne Henochowicz.

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/12/translation-wei-zhou-on-national-optimism-vs-personal-pessimism/

Photo: Yulin Bridge, Shaxi (Yunnan), by Rod Waddington

Yulin Bridge, Shaxi, by Rod Waddington (CC BY-SA 2.0)

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/12/photo-yulin-bridge-shaxi-yunnan-by-rod-waddington/

Citizen Journalist Zhang Zhan Is Jailed for COVID Reporting

Zhang Zhan, lawyer-turned-citizen journalist who documented the lockdown of Wuhan at the start of the COVID-19 epidemic, has been jailed for four years for her reporting. She was the fourth citizen journalist to be arrested and the only one to be formally indicted for “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” and has been on hunger strike in prison since shortly after her arrest in June 2020. The Washington Post’s Lily Kuo reported on Zhang’s sentencing:

In a closed-door trial that lasted less than three hours, authorities in Shanghai handed down the sentence to Zhang Zhan, 37, for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a charge often used against dissidents.

Zhang, a former lawyer turned activist, traveled to Wuhan in February, where she filmed from overwhelmed hospitals, neighborhoods and community centers, providing a rare window into the locked-down city. Her critical reports accusing the government of suppressing the voices of regular citizens and failing to inform residents of the reality of the situation contrasted with rosy state media coverage, one of the few sources of information. Zhang was detained in May.

Chinese authorities often hold sensitive trials involving human rights activists during the holiday season when much of the rest of the world is distracted. The proceedings, usually announced with little notice, are almost always held in secret. [Source]

V heavy security presence outside Shanghai Pudong court as Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan #张展 was just sentenced to 4 years in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” her lawyers said. After the verdict was announced, Zhang’s mother sobbed loudly in court. pic.twitter.com/IsldHgh0l8

— Laurie Chen (@lauriechenwords) December 28, 2020

Over the course of this year, the Chinese government has waged a concerted campaign to rewrite the history of its initial handling of the pandemic. It has heavily censored and manipulated media coverage of the outbreak—as documented in CDT’s compilation of leaked media directives from early 2020—fiercely resisted any calls for an independent investigation, and arrested several independent journalists in addition to Zhang Zhan, including Chen Qiushi, Li Zehua, and Fang Bin. Last week, The New York Times’ Vivian Wang reported in detail about Zhang’s tenacious effort to provide an unvarnished look at the lockdown of Wuhan:

In her first weeks, Ms. Zhang visited a crematory, a crowded hospital hallway and the city’s deserted train station. On March 7, when Wuhan’s top Communist Party official said residents should undergo “gratitude education” to thank the government for its anti-epidemic efforts, Ms. Zhang walked through the streets, asking passers-by if they felt grateful.

“Is gratitude something you can teach? If you can, it must be a fake gratitude,” she said into the camera afterward. “We’re adults. We don’t need to be taught.”

Ms. Zhang’s videos were often shaky and unedited, sometimes lasting just a few seconds. They frequently showed the challenges of independent reporting in China under the Party’s tightening grip. Many residents ignored Ms. Zhang or told her to leave. If they did talk, they asked her to point the camera at their feet.

[…] Ms. Zhang had never been a citizen journalist before traveling to Wuhan from Shanghai, where she lived, said Li Dawei, a friend who exchanged messages with her often while she was reporting. But she was stubborn and idealistic, he said, to a point that was sometimes difficult to understand. [Source]

From jail, Zhang refused to recognize the legitimacy of her arrest, and has been on hunger strike for months. Her lawyer has told the media that she may not survive these conditions. CNN’s Nectar Gan and James Griffiths reported that prison authorities have been restraining and force feeding her, using treatment that Amnesty International has said amounts to torture:

According to Amnesty International, at one point during her detention Zhang went on hunger strike, during which time she was shackled and force fed, treatment the group said amounted to torture.

Her lawyer Zhang Keke, who visited Zhang earlier this month while she was in detention, described on social media that Zhang had a feeding tube attached to her nose and mouth. He said her hands were tied to prevent her from removing the device, and that she suffered from constant headache and pain in her stomach and throat.

CNN did not immediately receive a response from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on allegations of Zhang’s mistreatment in detention.

Zhang’s lawyer said she attended Monday’s hearing in a wheelchair, as she had become frail during her time in detention. [Source]

“She has made up her mind that she wouldn’t comply with the trial, because she views compliance as an insult to herself.”

— William Yang (@WilliamYang120) December 28, 2020

The umbrella #ZhangZhan held in 2019 featured the writing "End socialism, CCP step down". For this she was detained for 2 months &, during this time, went on a hunger strike twice. This time court documents said her "record of three previous similar wrongdoings" would be a factor

— Stephen McDonell (@StephenMcDonell) December 28, 2020

If you’re watching @BBCWorld TV inside #China this is what your screen looks like today when our coverage of #ZhangZhan appears. Reporting on her 4-year sentence is being censored because the government here doesn’t trust its citizens to be in possession of knowledge about it. pic.twitter.com/v7na1lED1E

— Stephen McDonell (@StephenMcDonell) December 28, 2020

For a second year in a row, China has been named the most prolific jailer of journalists in the world. At the end of 2020, 47 journalists were remanded in prison. This year, Zhang is not the only dissident to be put on trial during the holiday season, a period that the Chinese government has historically used to prosecute its opponents. On Monday, ten of the 12 Hong Kongers who were arrested at sea while attempting to flee the city were also tried in a court in Shenzhen, after months of detention. Diplomats and family members of the ten were not allowed to witness the trial. After the ten reportedly pleaded guilty to the charge of illegally crossing the border, the Shenzhen court postponed judgement to an unspecified later date.

Meanwhile in Hong Kong, after initially being arrested under minor fraud charges and denied bail, pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai was granted HK$10 million bail by a higher court last week under strict conditions that ban him from using social media, talking to the press, or leaving his home. The decision was decried as “unbelievable” by People’s Daily on Monday, which called Lai, 72, “dangerous.” Lai is scheduled to return to court this week for a hearing as prosecutors have pressed to keep him behind bars.

source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/12/citizen-journalist-zhang-zhan-is-jailed-for-covid-reporting/

CDT Editors’ Picks 2020: The Best from CDT and Around the Internet

The year just past has been one unlike any other in recent memory, in China and around the globe. As the year began, residents of Wuhan were just learning about a new virus that had emerged in their city. By the end of January, the city of 11 million was under a strict lockdown, and the novel coronavirus had begun to spread around the world. Eleven months later, 1.76 million people have died globally, 80 million have been infected, and much of the world is still reeling from the disease’s impact—socially, economically, and politically. Throughout this time, the Chinese government has strengthened its censorship regime while escalating propaganda in an effort to shape the global narrative about COVID’s origins and spread. Medical workers and citizen journalists who shared information in the early stages of the disease have been admonished and jailed. Yet Chinese citizens online have continued to speak up for transparency, freedom of speech, and accountability—both around COVID and other issues, notably sexual assault and other forms of violence against women. The death of whistleblower doctor Li Wenliang sparked an outpouring of grief and calls for free speech. In Hong Kong, defenders of democracy have continued to stand up as their rights and freedoms have received blow after blow, and the city ended the year with several activists, journalists, lawmakers, and others in jail following implementation of the National Security Law in July. CDT editors have been closely following all these developments and more on a daily basis throughout the year, and here they offer their personal recommendations, from CDT and elsewhere, about China in 2020.

Embed from Getty Images

Sophie Beach, CDT English Executive Editor

• In the end, this is how you describe us:
  Banshee, shrew, whore, and hooker
  Fishwife, bitch, slutty man-eater.
  Look, this is how you belittle us”
  These lyrics from Mandopop star Tan Weiwei (Sitar Tan) are powerful in their own right, but they take on a new urgency in a year when China saw several especially brutal cases of violence against women in the national spotlight. Soon before Tan’s song hit the internet, screenwriter and activist Xianzi appeared at a court in Beijing to hold a powerful CCTV host, Zhu Jun, accountable for sexual harassment. Hundreds of Xianzi’s fans gathered in the cold outside the courthouse in solidarity. 
• In Pretty Lady Cadres, at ChinaFile, journalist Shen Lu shows that the personal remains political for women in China. She analyzes data on China’s leadership to show that positions held by women are sparser the higher up the ladder of political power in China they go. She further examines the institutional, cultural, and political barriers that create a glass ceiling for women in politics, writing: “With so few women in leadership positions, it’s little wonder the government has failed to prioritize policies that would improve the options and opportunities for women.” The balance of power and justice in China is still heavily weighted against the country’s women, but Tan Weiwei and Xianzi are two powerful examples of strong women fighting back.

Embed from Getty Images

Joseph Brouwer, CDT English Editor:

• Translation: “I Want People to View my Case as a Drill” – An Interview with Xianzi
  I have chosen this translation of an interview with Xianzi because she is hope. Xianzi appeared in court not as the defendant but as the petitioner, a seeming rarity for Chinese activists in 2020, and demanded that the state prosecute violence against women. I believe this interview shows Xianzi’s steely clarity of purpose. On December 2, the day of her trial, hundreds of her supporters ignored the cold to gather outside Beijing’s Haidian District Court. As the afternoon became the evening, a delivery driver with a large order of bubble tea and hand warmers arrived at the scene and yelled out, “Who are Xianzi and her friends?” In unison, the crowd said, “We all are!” We all are.

• Delivery Workers, Trapped in the System, from Chuang
  Delivery workers across the globe have risked their life to provide groceries, food, daily essentials, and medicine throughout the pandemic. This report exposes how algorithms designed by China’s billion-dollar delivery companies, Meituan and Elema, abuse delivery workers by forcing them to take dangerous risks, or face steep financial penalties.

John Chan, CDT English Editor

• Translation: Pop Singer Tan Weiwei’s New Album Spotlights Violence Against Women: Despite the introduction of a law to combat abuse in 2016, China has failed to stem a crisis of domestic violence. After a series of widely publicized, horrifying cases this year, Tan Weiwei’s song, “Xiao Juan,” broke taboos and firmly focused the spotlight on the endemic violence. CDT has translated its lyrics.
• Leaving Hong Kong, a Reuters Special Report: The stories about everyday Hong Kong people planning to immigrate abroad have stayed with me throughout this year. There is no punchline to Pak Yiu and Marius Zaharia’s piece for Reuters, about a family leaving everything behind to move to Glasgow in search of a better life for their children, only the methodical, heartbreaking documentation of their departure. Then there is Leo Ball’s animated video about his family’s plans to move: “I will miss the street stall fishballs and siu mai. I will miss the days when we could speak our minds. Some days, seven hours behind you, I will light a candle, sing a song.”
  https://twitter.com/leoball727/status/1290330587954216961

Dongge, CDT Chinese Executive Editor

• Minitrue Diary 2020 in English and Chinese: People used to know how these propaganda directives shaped China; this year they show vividly how they affect the world—one of the important differences between a new coronavirus outbreak in China and an Ebola outbreak in an African country is the huge propaganda machine that blocks coverage and distorts information until today. After 1.7 million people worldwide died as a result, people still have no idea about what happened in Wuhan a year ago now.
• 审查员交班日志 (A Censor’s Diary)
  These censorship logs give us an inside look at how Chinese internet censorship works in a meticulous and systematic way. They also include the kinds of news events and social phenomena that have kept Chinese authorities on their toes over the years.

Anne Henochowicz, Translation Coordinator

• I’m really into the CDT Chinese Guides (导览) series, both for synthesizing the big news stories and digging deeper to find underlying trends, in particular the October 29 guide to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) propaganda in the party-state’s response to Covid-19. Somehow, the inflated promises of TCM cure-alls and the manufacturers who benefitted has not made headlines in either the English or Chinese press, as far as I can tell. Public health is politicized–and monetized–everywhere.
• Jiayang Fan’s personal essay in The New Yorker about how she and her mother were trolled by Chinese nationalists and state media in the midst of New York’s pandemic lockdown, is a tour-de-force. It is a story of living between identities, of being loved and hated, of face and social media and survival and love. And it is an ode to her mother.
• For a fictional tale of liminality, this time between Chinese and Tibetan cultures, I recommend Tsering Döndrup’s short story “Baba Baoma,” translated by Christopher Peacock for High Peaks Pure Earth. Also, check out Paradise System’s compilation of comics from the early days of the pandemic in China, “First Wave.”

Tony Hu, CDT Assistant Manager
I have selected two Wailing Wall posts, netizens’ comments posted on Dr Li Wenliang’s Weibo after China held an “Fighting the Epidemic” Award Ceremony, which did not honor or even mention Dr Li’s name. The netizens were not happy about it and took their feelings online.

• 文亮真英雄，我们代表自己表彰您 (Wenliang Is a True Hero; We Honor You on Our Own Behalf.)
• 「窃人之财，犹谓之盗，况贪天之功以为己力乎？」（9月9-10日）(Those Who Steal from Others Are Thieves; Worse Are Those Who Dare to Steal Credit from the Benevolence of Heaven)

Joshua Rudolph, CDT English Editor and Special Projects Manager:

• CDT Chinese Censorship Digests (Chinese originals, and our English adaptations): In January—at the dawn of what would by December seem a watershed year for geopolitics and China’s place in the global order—CDT Chinese launched a regular monthly survey of developments in the censorship of expression, propaganda, and human rights defense in China. During an incredibly trying year for global human rights and for Beijing’s conduct at home and abroad, this series has taken a far more nuanced look at the overall situation of deteriorating civil liberties in China at a time when Beijing’s model of control is vying for international credibility.
• Human Rights Watch: World Report 2020: In the same vein, the 2020 World Report emphasized that the “deepening and increasingly sophisticated domestic repression show that China’s leaders view human rights at home as an existential threat,” and highlighted Beijing’s increasingly spirited efforts to influence global norms with that approach. With the world and current regime of norms—however flawed—seeming closer to a breaking point than ever before, understanding the CCP’s method of governance—and the ability it has to spread—is as essential as ever.

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Ryan, CDT Chinese Editor:

• CDT’s Special Project: China’s “Wailing Wall”（中国哭墙）Dr Li Wenliang, a 33-year-old ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital, was reprimanded by officials after warning about the “SARS-like virus” in December 2019. One month later, Li contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and died of the disease on February 7 2020.Li accepted interviews while in the hospital, where he shared the opinion that “there should be more than one voice in a healthy society,” and stressed a desire for “more openness and transparency.”After his passing, Chinese people began to gather at his last post on Weibo. In the comments section, they grieve, seek solace and share their everyday life with Li. Some people call it China’s “Wailing Wall,” and it now has more than 3.7 million likes and 1 million comments. CDT is gathering people’s comments in this project; from these comments, we can see an “internet wonder” where people rest their feelings and consciences.
• Hong Kong’s Lennon Walls: The Heartbeat of “Our Times” by The Initium: Twenty-three years after the handover of sovereignty, the Hong Kong National Security Law was directly set up by the National People’s Congress (NPC), bypassing the Hong Kong Legislative Council, and implemented directly in Hong Kong. It symbolizes the end of “One Country, Two Systems” in some ways.”Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times” is one of the most important slogans of the protests, but what is “Our Times”? And how do the Hong Kong people think of the “Liberation”? You may find the answers  through the posters and sticky notes on Hong Kong’s Lennon Walls, these Lennon Walls have been all over the streets of Hong Kong in 2019, people from different ages and classes have written their imaginations of Hong Kong on these walls.Hong Kong Baptist University’s Assistant Professor Li Yiu-tai’s team has been researching the Lennon Walls since 2019, collecting and analyzing textual materials (10,000 strokes in total) and images (2,076 images in total). In this project, Li’s team worked with The Initium, selected 412 of the materials for this online exhibition. I think this project reminds us that even they can tear down the Lennon Walls in the real world, they cannot eliminate the memories from the internet.

Tiger, CDT Chinese Editor:

• CDS档案｜武汉肺炎：“谣言”中的真相 (Wuhan Pneumonia: The Truth within the “Rumors”)
  How serious was the new coronavirus when it broke out in Wuhan? Officials blocked news, and “rumors” became the only way for the world to know the truth. CDT collected rumors initially circulated online during the new coronavirus outbreak.
• 【CDT导览】删、隐、止、私、封，审查员是如何审查网民言论的 (Deleting, Hiding, Prohibiting, Making Private, Sealing: How Internet Comments are Censored)
  How does China’s internet censorship work? This article is based on the work logs and research conducted by one censor working at Sina Weibo from 2011 to 2014, and analyzes some basic censorship operations and strategies.

Samuel Wade, CDT English Deputy Editor:

• Our three-month Minitrue Diary series included one to 11 leaked media directives for most days in the first 10 weeks of 2020. The orders span a period from the calm before the COVID storm, through the desperate early weeks of the outbreak, to Xi’s triumphant visit to Wuhan on the eve of the WHO’s declaration of a global pandemic. These directives represent only a small fraction of the total issued, but reading so many over an extended period offers insights rarely available from earlier, isolated leaks, from the emergence and development of themes to suggestions of pushback and impatience in the frequent “reminders” and repetitions.
• Even when we reject specific claims by the CCP, it is increasingly easy to unwittingly accept and reinforce its broader framing, which may be equally dubious. Gina Anne Tam and Catherine Chou brilliantly highlighted this danger at Radical History Review on June 4, arguing that “rather than streamlining Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the PRC into a ‘Greater China’ with ‘one country, several systems’ as its natural zenith, […] they are better understood as possessing divergent, independent histories that have only recently and unexpectedly been brought together by the force of Beijing’s ambitions.”

Wukefenggao, CDT Chinese Editor:

• 【CDT导览】从无到有的“翻墙罪”：为中国网民量身定做的“网络枷锁” (The Birth of Crime of “Scaling the Wall”: “Internet Shackles Customized for Chinese Netizens): The Chinese government first made public this year its decision to impose administrative penalties on internet users who circumvent the Great Firewall (翻墙), which was later cancelled under pressure. We’ve looked at the changes in the way the Chinese government has punished “scaling the Wall” over the past six years. Two important trends are: 1. a more clear definition of “The Crime of Scaling the Wall” will gradually take shape in the future; 2. a “scaling the Wall domain whitelist” or “scaling the Wall method whitelist” is likely to emerge and all Chinese internet users will face network regulations for their circumvention behavior.
• 乳透社·小反旗 This Youtube account was created by Chinese netizens to tease, insult, and spoof Chinese leader Xi Jinping. While such actions are normal in countries with free speech, it is a very high-risk action in China. The “乳 (辱) 包” (humiliating the “steamed bun,” or humiliating Xi Jinping) is a concept that started to gain popularity this year, where people get some kind of joy and emotional release in the stifling speech environment by criticizing the person who absolutely should not be criticized in the domestic public opinion environment. This account was hacked by the Chinese state in an attempt to seize access this year.

Xiao Qiang, Editor-in-Chief and Founder
I choose these three stories which together are what I found to be the most moving contents on Chinese social media (despite government censorship) in 2020.

• 李文亮医生的微博就是我们自己的哭墙 (Dr. Li Wenliang’s Weibo Is Our Own Wailing Wall)

• 被公共汽车拋下的人 (Migrant Worker Thrown off Public Bus by Digital Divide)

• 一个农村儿媳（女博士）眼中的乡村图景 (The Countryside Through a Daughter-in-law’s Eyes)

Yakexi, Liaison Editor:

• Lu Yuyu’s “Incorrect Memory”: These essays provided rare insight into China’s criminal justice system and the author’s experience as a journalist and activist living under a police state. Lu Yuyu, a citizen journalist who was released in June 2020 after spending four years in prison, has taken to the internet to release a detailed account of his arrest, trial, and imprisonment. Lu is co-founder of “Not News,” a blog that documents protests and civic engagement in China. In 2016, he and his partner Li Tingyu were arrested and sentenced to prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a vaguely defined offense that has increasingly been used to punish activism.
• Top 10 Ministry of Truth Directives of 2020 in Chinese and in English: How (not) to report on the coronavirus outbreak, how to control online discussions regarding the death of Dr. Li Wenliang, how to properly guide public opinion during the US elections… CDT has published leaked directives from the Chinese government to show what Big Brother thinks.

Yuri (雨里), CDT Chinese Editor:

• CDT导览】云极权主力——微信审查的证词、调查与反抗 (The Main Force of Digital Totalitarianism – Testimonies, Investigations, and Resistance to WeChat Censorship)
  This guide collects testimonies, investigations, and resistance to censorship on WeChat in order to present abundant views of the mechanisms and effects of WeChat censorship. WeChat has been the main force of China’s “big data totalitarianism” in recent years. During the pandemic, censorship of speech has not been contained or corrected, but has increased and caused more damage to civil society. Many citizens resist in different forms，but they were suppressed by the violent state apparatus. China’s big data totalitarianism needs more attention to be addressed by the international community.
• 武汉· 人间（Wuhan People）
  During the pandemic in China, users on Weibo spontaneously created the “Covid-19 Patients Seeking Help” super-topic channel, and thousands of requests for help from patients in the pandemic area were posted on the channel. Then their messages were censored. According to a user’s feedback, “The channel was successfully created on January 29, but on February 3, officials discovered it, and on February 4, the number of posts fell from more than 3,000 to 142.” The founder of Wuhan-People collected the messages of the patients that were not deleted on this website, hoping that more people would pay attention to and understand each of the sick compatriots, as a living human being like us, through their first-person voice, to understand the difficulties, pain, despair, and life and death they were facing at that time.

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source https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/12/cdt-editors-picks-2020-the-best-from-cdt-and-around-the-internet/