China to Its People: Spies Are Everywhere, Help Us Catch Them As Beijing tries to enlist the “whole of society” to guard against foreign enemies, the line between vigilance and paranoia fades. Surveillance cameras in Shanghai in March.Credit...Aly Song/Reuters By Vivian Wang Reporting from Beijing Sept. 2, 2023 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/02/world/asia/china-spies-campaign.html Beijing sees forces bent on weakening it everywhere: embedded in multinational companies, infiltrating social media, circling naïve students. And it wants its people to see them, too. Chinese universities require faculty to take courses on protecting state secrets, even in departments like veterinary medicine. A kindergarten in the eastern city of Tianjin organized a meeting to teach staffers how to “understand and use” China’s anti-espionage law. China’s Ministry of State Security, a usually covert department that oversees the secret police and intelligence services, has even opened its first social media account, as part of what official news media described as an effort at increasing public engagement. Its first post: a call for a “whole of society mobilization” against espionage. “The participation of the masses,” the post said, should be “normalized.” China’s ruling Communist Party is enlisting ordinary people to guard against perceived threats to the country, in a campaign that blurs the line between vigilance and paranoia. The country’s economy is facing its worst slowdown in years, but China’s authoritarian leader, Xi Jinping, appears more fixated on national security and preventing threats to the party’s control. “We must be prepared for worst-case and extreme scenarios,” Mr. Xi told China’s National Security Commission in May. He called on officials to “enhance real-time monitoring” and “get prepared for actual combat.” A flag-raising ceremony at an elementary school in Neijiang, China, on National Security Education Day in April.Credit...CFOTO/Future Publishing, via Getty Images The sense of urgency may be heightened by the fact that Beijing is confronting some of its biggest challenges since Mr. Xi’s ascension more than a decade ago. Beyond the economic gloom, China’s relations with the West are increasingly tense. And unexplained personnel changes at the highest tiers of power — including the sudden removal in July of China’s foreign minister and two high-ranking generals — suggest that Mr. Xi may have feared threats to his control. In July, China revised its anti-espionage law to broaden an already sweeping scope of activities that it regards as spying. It is offering rewards of tens of thousands of dollars to people who report spies. While the call for mass vigilance has inspired widespread caution, it is unclear to what extent that is translating to action on the ground. In the last month, the authorities have announced the capture of at least four spies, including two men recruited by the C.I.A., but some of the cases appeared to be old ones belatedly announced, such as a married couple arrested in 2019. The authorities also said earlier this year that they had sentenced an American citizen to life in prison for espionage, and they arrested a high-ranking Chinese newspaper editor while he was dining with a Japanese diplomat. (The editor’s family has called the charges trumped up.) “The push reflects the profound legitimacy challenges and crisis that the regime is facing,” said Chen Jian, a professor of modern Chinese history at New York University. Professor Chen said the call to mass action bore echoes of the sweeping campaigns that Mao Zedong unleashed in part to consolidate his own power. The most notable was the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long period of chaos and bloodshed when Chinese leaders urged people to report on their teachers, neighbors or even families as “counterrevolutionaries.” “We must be prepared for worst-case and extreme scenarios,” Xi Jinping said in May. He called on officials to “enhance real-time monitoring” and “get prepared for actual combat.”Credit...Pool photo by Leah Millis Chinese society would not be as easily stirred into a mob frenzy now, given how the country has modernized, Professor Chen noted. And China does have grounds for wariness: The C.I.A. director, William Burns,said recently that America was rebuilding its spy network in China. Nor is China alone in adopting increasingly dire warnings about foreign influence. Some have warned that Washington is fanning a new Red Scare, such as through the Justice Department’s now-scrapped China Initiative targeting academics. The United States and other Western countries are also working to restrict access to TikTok, the Chinese-owned short video app, citing security concerns. But China’s approach stands out for its scale and ubiquity. On high-speed trains, a video on loop warns passengers to be careful when taking photos for social media, in case they capture sensitive information. In government offices where residents file routine paperwork, posters remind them to “build a people’s defensive line.” One local government in Yunnan Province published a video of men and women in the traditional dress of the Yi, an ethnic group there, dancing and singing cheerily about China’s national security law. “Those who don’t report will be prosecuted. Covering crimes will lead to jail,” the performers sang as they fanned out in a circle, the women fluttering their bright yellow, blue and red skirts. Other forms of anti-espionage education are more formal. The National Administration of State Secrets Protection runs an app with an online course on secret-keeping, which many universities and companies have ordered their staff to complete. The first lesson opens with a quotation from Mao Zedong on the importance of confidentiality; a later one warns that iPhones and Android devices are foreign products and may be vulnerable to manipulation. An Apple store in Shanghai last year.Credit...Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Even groups that seem to have little to do with national security have been recruited. A sports education department at a university in Shandong Province ordered faculty to take the online course; so did a college of veterinary medicine in the city of Guangzhou. One hotel, in the seaside city of Yantai, usually advertises beach getaways and dinner deals in its social media posts. But last October, it published an infographic about the groups the security ministry had deemed most at risk of co-optation by foreign enemies. They included people who had studied abroad and “young internet users.” Young Chinese are an area of particular concern, especially after widespread protests last year against China’s harsh Covid restrictions. Some participants were college students who had been locked down on their campuses for months. And now many young people face a spate of other problems, including record unemployment. But the authorities have attributed discontent to outside instigators. After last year’s protests, a Chinese official said attendees had been “bought by external forces.” A protest against Covid restrictions in Beijing in November.Credit...Kevin Frayer/Getty Images Chinese academics are still pushing that idea. At a conference on international relations organized by Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University in July, one scholar suggested that the protesters had fallen prey to “cognitive and ideological manipulation” by countries including the United States. Such efforts by “hidden forces” were growing harder to detect, said the professor, Han Na, from People’s Public Security University, the country’s top police academy. “Some call them spies, some call them special operations.They’re the people among us who are from some special departments.” She added: “That’s why we have our current problem.” Part of the authorities’ solution is teaching young people to be more on guard. Mr. Xi has called for expanding national security education, and universities have created squads of students tasked with reporting people who, among other things, use overseas websites. But the constant exhortations also remind students that they, too, are being watched. University students in Beijing have been questioned by the police or administrators for exchanging messages with New York Times journalists — in at least two cases, before any article had been published. Perhaps the central effect — or goal — of the campaign has been to make even the slightest connection to foreigners grounds for suspicion. That has extended to cultural fields where exchange has historically been richest. Facial recognition camera-controlled gates at Peking University in Beijing in 2020.Credit...Thomas Peter/Reuters Some academics have stopped meeting with foreigners. Venues across China have canceled performances by foreign musicians. The cancellations surged in May, amid a crackdown on cultural events deemed out of step with the party’s agenda. But months later, scrutiny remains intense, said Brian Offenther, an American D.J. in Shanghai. In one week in August, venues in three different cities told him they could not host him. One said that the police had threatened to shut down the venue if a foreigner performed, according to a chat screenshot Mr. Offenther shared. Another said simply, in English: “It is not the right time for foreign D.J.” Beijing has not issued any clear directives about contact with foreigners; it maintains that China remains open, lauding the importance of foreign investment. But the signals are contradictory. This spring, the authorities raided or questioned the offices of several American consulting and advisory firms, accusing one of trying to obtain state secrets through Chinese experts it hired. Even sharing a name with a foreign organization can invite scrutiny, as a volunteer group in Guangzhou found out when they were forced to cancel a speaker conference scheduled for August under the name TEDxGuangzhou. TED, the U.S.-based company known for speaker showcases, allows groups to use the TEDx branding for free, and the Guangzhou group had no other affiliation with it, the organizers said in a statement. TEDx conferences have taken place in Guangzhou since 2009. Still, the police said this year that the volunteers could not proceed unless they registered as a foreign nongovernmental organization. Some Chinese have reacted skeptically to the call for constant vigilance. When an airport in Hunan Province recently banned Teslas from its parking lots, arguing the American company’s cars could be used for spying, some social media commenters asked whether Boeing jets should be banned too. Even Hu Xijin, the retired editor of Global Times, a nationalist party tabloid, wrote online that it was worrisome that academics he knew were avoiding foreigners. But officials have brushed off concerns. In an editorial about the call for mass mobilization, Global Times said it was critics who were the paranoid ones. “If you haven’t done anything wrong,” it said, “why are you so scared?” Siyi Zhao contributed research from Seoul
Opinion The fundamental reason China will struggle to dethrone the dollar A BRICS currency challenging the dollar is a fantasy, but for its part China has self-inflicted problems that will hamper the renminbi’s attempts to take over the US currency’s role on a large scale. Alan Beattie Sep 3, 2023 https://www.afr.com/world/asia/the-...ruggle-to-dethrone-the-dollar-20230903-p5e1mn The recent BRICS summit is disappearing in the rearview mirror and with it, mercifully, some of the wildly unrealistic discussion of a new currency issued by the grouping’s five emerging market members – aimed at dethroning the dollar. Policymakers watching challenges to the greenback’s global dominance can return to the more realistic challenge from an existing currency, the Chinese renminbi. Xi Jinping at the BRICS Summit in South Africa. China is not only seeing its growth model in serious trouble but is moving further towards a repressive state that intervenes extensively in its economy, its citizens’ lives and the security of the region and beyond. Reuters While European governments have envied the dollar’s international role since the 1960s and hoped in vain that the euro would supplant it, Beijing’s bid has emerged rapidly and for a more pressing reason, as the US weaponises the dollar. But it will encounter serious difficulties from China’s fundamental problems – which are different from Europe’s traditional weaknesses but, if anything, more deep-seated. The European desire to challenge the dollar – expressed forcefully in 2010 by Nicolas Sarkozy, then French president, following the global financial crisis – seems largely based on envy of its status as a reserve and trading currency. Similarly, a hyperactive US administration using American banks to go after Russian oligarchs is one thing. But China imposes broad-ranging trade sanctions on countries – in the case of Australia merely for having the temerity to call for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19. The roles of an international currency change over time. Yet ultimately, confidence in a global standard involves fundamental trust in its issuer’s openness and reliability. True, the US willingness to weaponise global networks of payments and other functions, already considerable, will most probably intensify if Trump wins the election. Governments fearing US sanctions might well want to diversify the financial systems they rely on, including towards the renminbi. But China under Xi Jinping is not only seeing its growth model in serious trouble but is moving further towards a repressive state that intervenes extensively in its economy, its citizens’ lives and the security of the region and beyond. A BRICS currency challenging the dollar is a fantasy, but for its part China has self-inflicted problems that will hamper the renminbi’s attempts to take over the US currency’s role on a large scale. Financial Times
West set for furious response as Xi's banks revealed to be propping up Russia Chinese banks have stepped in to provide substantial support to Russia, prompting anticipation of a strong Western response. https://news.yahoo.com/theres-covid-surge-florida-heres-092016918.html Chinese banks have been providing major support to Russia leaving the Western world braced for a strong reaction. Chinese lenders provided this help when Western financial institutions reduced their activities in Russia during the first year of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. The efforts of four of China's top banks are part of Beijing's larger strategy to promote the renminbi as a global currency alternative to the US dollar. According to the most recent official data analysed by the Kyiv School of Economics for the Financial Times, China's exposure to Russia's banking industry increased fourfold in the 14 months leading up to the end of March this year. Due to the harsh economic environment caused by international sanctions, Chinese banks effectively filled the hole left by Western banks, who faced tremendous pressure from regulatory and political authorities in their respective countries to exit from Russia. According to Russian central bank data, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank, and Agricultural Bank of China increased their combined investment in Russia from $2.2 billion to $9.7 billion in the 14 months leading up to March. Notably, ICBC and Bank of China held $8.8 billion of these assets. Simultaneously, Austria's Raiffeisen Bank, which has the most foreign exposure to Russia, had its assets expand by more than 40 per cent during the same period, rising from $20.5 billion to $29.2 billion. Raiffeisen, on the other hand, has stated its intention to investigate departure plans from Russia and has cut its assets to $25.5 billion since March. Russia's ruble has dropped significantly in recent months, leading the country's central bank to intervene to stabilise its value. Until now, the government has used the declining ruble to its advantage. However, a falling currency raises the possibility of higher prices for regular Russians, prompting the government to take steps to stop the depreciation. The decline in the value of the ruble can be linked to Russia's decreasing exports, specifically declining revenue from oil and natural gas, along with a rise in imports. Individuals and businesses that import items into Russia must convert rubles for other currencies such as dollars or euros, putting downward pressure on the ruble's exchange rate.
China’s top chipmaker may be in hot water as US lawmakers call for further sanctions after Huawei ‘breakthrough’ By Laura He, CNN, Thu September 7, 2023 https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/07/tech/china-smic-us-sanctions-huawei-intl-hnk/index.html Hong Kong CNN — Shares in SMIC, China’s largest contract chipmaker, plunged on Thursday, after two US congressmen called on the White House to further restrict export sales to the company. The comments came after Huawei Technologies introduced the Mate 60 Pro, a Chinese smartphone powered by an advanced chip that is believed to have been made by SMIC. Last week’s launch shocked industry experts who didn’t understand how SMIC, which is headquartered in Shanghai, would have the ability to manufacture such a chip following sweeping efforts by the United States to restrict China’s access to foreign chip technology. TechInsights, a research organization based in Canada specializing in semiconductors, revealed shortly after the launch that the smartphone contained a new 5G Kirin 9000s processor developed specifically for Huawei by SMIC. This is a “big tech breakthrough for China,” Jefferies analysts said Tuesday in a research note. The development has fueled fears among analysts that the US-China tech war is likely to accelerate in the near future. The Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) headquarters in Shanghai, China, on Tuesday, March 23, 2021. Qilai Shen/Bloomberg/Getty Images US representative Mike Gallagher, chair of the US House of Representatives committee on China, called on the US Commerce Department on Wednesday to end all technology exports to Huawei and SMIC, according to Reuters. Gallagher was quoted as saying SMIC may have violated US sanctions, as this chip likely could not be produced without US technology. “The time has come to end all US technology exports to both Huawei and SMIC to make clear any firm that flouts US law and undermines our national security will be cut off from our technology,” he said. Shares in SMIC, which stands for Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, sank 8.3% in Shanghai and 7.6% in Hong Kong on Thursday. Hua Hong Semiconductor, China’s second largest chip foundry, tumbled 5.8%. Texas Republican Michael McCaul, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was quoted by Reuters as saying he was concerned about the possibility of China trying to “get a monopoly” in the manufacture of less-advanced computer chips. “We talked a lot about advanced semiconductor chips, but we also need look at legacy,” he reportedly said, referring to older computer chip technology which does not fall under export controls. “I think China is trying to get a monopoly on the market share of legacy semiconductor chips as well. And I think that’s a part of the discussion we’ll be having,” he said. US curbs on microchips could throttle China's ambitions and escalate the tech war Chinese state media have touted the development as a sign the country had successfully “broken US sanctions” and “achieved technological independence” in advanced chipmaking. Memes galore Meme makers on the Chinese internet have even crowned US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo the unofficial brand ambassador for the Mate 60 series. The memes poke fun at the idea that US sanctions, which are implemented and enforced by the US Commerce department, may have indirectly led to the launch of the new phone as China’s homegrown firms had to work with available technology. Raimondo visited China last week, when the phone was launched. The memes have gone viral online and been reported on by state broadcaster CCTV. Before Thursday, SMIC’s shares in Hong Kong had rallied more than 20% within two weeks due to investor optimism. Huahong Semiconductor jumped 11%. CNN has reached out to Gallagher’s and McCaul’s offices for comment, but has yet to receive a response. Huawei was added to a blacklist in May 2019 by the US Commerce Department over national security concerns. That means companies have to apply for US export licenses to supply technology to Huawei. SMIC was also put on the same list in 2020, as US officials were concerned it could use American technology to aid the Chinese military. SMIC has denied having any relationship with the Chinese military. “The fact that China has achieved a big breakthrough in [semiconductor] tech will likely create more debate in the US about the effectiveness of sanctions,” saidthe Jefferies analysts. They expect the Biden administration to tighten chips ban on China, which was introduced in October 2022, in the next few months, further limiting China’s access to advanced US semiconductors. “Overall the US-China tech war is likely to escalate,” they said.
China's version of ChatGPT has finally been made public. But will censorship limit its power? By Erin Handley with wires Wed 6 Sep 2023 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09...ligence-chatbot-chatgpt-ernie-baidu/102803758 Baidu's AI platform Ernie responds to prompts to generate the "world's cutest cat". (Reuters) From composing song lyrics about pandas to generating the "world's cutest cat", China's answer to ChatGPT has just been launched. Key points: Several Chinese companies have been given the green light to launch ChatGPT-style products Experts say the latest wave of development is driven by techno-nationalism and competition with the US Beijing is walking a line between innovation and regulation as it seeks to become an AI superpower Ernie Bot, a generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, is now fully accessible to the public, following Chinese government approval late last week. Unlike other countries, China requires companies to submit security assessments and receive clearance before releasing mass-market AI products. Authorities have recently accelerated efforts to support companies developing AI as the technology increasingly becomes a focus of competition with the United States. Professor Haiqing Yu, an expert in China's digital media at RMIT University, said it's part of an AI "great leap forward". But how powerful will Ernie be in a realm of heavily-censored internet use, and how does this fit into China's vision of becoming the world leader in AI? What is Ernie? Ernie, an acronym for Enhanced Representation through Knowledge Integration, is an AI chat product from Chinese tech giant Baidu, China's leading online search provider. But it's not the only one — four AI start-up companies announced similar public launches last week, while TikTok owner ByteDance and Tencent, which owns WeChat, have also received approvals from the government for AI development, Chinese media reported. Baidu's AI chatbot Ernie Bot is now available to the public after being given the green light from Beijing, which has in recent months taken steps to regulate the industry.(AP: Andy Wong) Fan Yang, a researcher at the University of Melbourne's Centre for Automated Decision-Making and Society, said China has been putting more effort and resources into home-grown AI, which has led to big e-commerce platforms like Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, developing their own models. "That makes this wave of AI development different to the past waves … which were powered by American companies, including Google and Microsoft," she said. The pitch from Baidu and others is that as Ernie is for Chinese people within Chinese culture, it will provide more accurate or insightful responses, but Dr Yang said there is still some distance between the capabilities of ChatGPT and Ernie. "But also, the thing about AI technology is that the more people who use it, the more feedback they receive, [and] the better they can get." Professor Yu said now that Chinese chatbots are open to public input, they will be "continuously optimising", and she added China's huge population meant there was an enormous pool of data that could be accessed. But another issue for Ernie, the experts highlight, is China's great firewall. 'This topic is forbidden' The Economist reported that Ernie has some "controversial views on science", reckoning that COVID-19 came from American vape users and was spread to Wuhan by American lobsters. But it was "rather quiet" on questions of Chinese politics and often demurred on sensitive questions. Dr Yang said Chinese and US-built AI platforms would also deliver very different narratives around the Russian-Ukraine war. Xiaoice appeared to have been taken offline for "re-education" due to some of its responses to sensitive questions.(Supplied) She pointed out this is far from China's first foray into the world of AI chatbots. Xiaoice, a Microsoft spin-off, was developed in 2014 and largely used for romantic companionship. Both Xiaoice and another chatbot, BabyQ, appeared to be taken offline and "re-educated" in 2017 after giving politically sensitive responses to questions about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or Taiwan. Later, when asked about similar topics, the bots asked to change the subject or deflected by saying they were tired. Dr Yang pointed out one of the key aspects of China's interim regulations on AI is content moderation — meaning the companies have to take responsibility as content producers to filter out "illegal content". She said illegal content is not defined and can be ambiguous, "but most of the time illegal content is the kind of content that is not aligned with the CCP's national interest". Fan Yang says Ernie is behind ChatGPT, but the nature of AI platforms is that they improve with use and feedback.(Supplied) Further, all the content Ernie and other Chinese AI chatbots draw on has already been subjected to China's strict censorship regime. "The content has already been censored, and then they would produce content that can be further censored. So that is where layers of censorship can occur during this process." Professor Yu said some colleagues in Beijing had early access to Ernie's prototype and were curious to find out if it had already been subjected to state censorship. "So they deliberately put in those so-called sensitive terms and words. And then – of course, it's all expected — the chatbot tells you, 'This topic is forbidden', or they try to talk about something else," she said. "Chinese internet is heavily censored, the content is already cleaned … so the end product itself is understandably sanitised. "It is typical. They are living in China, people are used to this kind of censorship regime. And it's not surprising to them that these chatbots have also been censored." Techno-nationalism and the Tech Cold War China has long aimed to become an AI world leader by 2030. David Yang, a Harvard economics professor, has said Beijing has an edge due to the vast troves of data gathered by the state. "Autocratic governments would like to be able to predict the whereabouts, thoughts, and behaviours of citizens," he said in the Harvard Gazette earlier this year. "And AI is fundamentally a technology for prediction." Professor Yu referred to the Chinese idiom of "walking on two legs" to describe Beijing's approach to AI – both encouraging AI innovation and development in a rush to roll out Chinese models to compete in the "Tech Cold War" with the US, while at the same time tightening regulations – especially around content related to domestic politics. She pointed out AI products targeting businesses do not need the same government approvals as those intended for content creation and mass public use. Professor Haiqing Yu says China is embarking on an AI "great leap forward".(Supplied) Dr Fan Yang said the real profits of AI for companies such as Baidu are not in products for the public, but in collaboration with the nation state — such as AI on surveillance devices, AI-powered voice recognition systems and implementations of AI in military and defence. The push for a ChatGPT-style platform, she said, was driven by a kind of "techno nationalism". Internet users in China were fascinated by ChatGPT when it first launched, and have found creative ways to overcome Beijing's censorship firewall since the OpenAI product is blocked in China, including via the grey market, Dr Yang said. Earlier this year, hundreds signed an open letter calling for a pause in AI research, fearing an "out of control race" to develop powerful digital minds their creators could not control – a move supported by some Chinese AI experts. Professor Yu said China had taken both an ambitious and cautious approach to AI, in what she described as a "messy contraction" that will be all too familiar to the Chinese public. "They want to balance the conflicting demands of regulation and deregulation," she said. "China is one of the first countries in the world to regulate AI, and regulate algorithms for generative AI in particular. "China wants to demonstrate to the world it is a responsible superpower – it's not just about making money, or just about controlling people, it wants to look good on global stage as a responsible AI superpower."
Xi's Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens Into Spy Hunters As students flooded back into Beijing’s top universities in early September, a propaganda blitz around campuses signaled an ominous addition to their syllabus: a crash course on how to catch spies. Bloomberg News Bloomberg News Published Sep 17, 2023 Xi Jinping Photo by Michele Spatari /Photographer: Michele Spatari/Bl (Bloomberg) — As students flooded back into Beijing’s top universities in early September, a propaganda blitz around campuses signaled an ominous addition to their syllabus: a crash course on how to catch spies. At the government-run Tsinghua University videos were beamed onto faculty screens instructing teachers and students to become a “defense line” against foreign forces, while the Beijing University of Technology threw a national-security themed garden party, according to the nation’s spy agency. Students at Beihang University, an aeronautics institute under US sanctions for its military links, were even asked to play an interactive training game, called Who’s The Spy? “In what special way will the college students around you reinvigorate national security?” the Ministry of State Security wrote on its new WeChat account. As President Xi Jinping throws up a forcefield of security controls to repel perceived foreign threats to Communist Party rule, Beijing’s message to the public is spooks are everywhere — not just universities. Police in Henan province have urged citizens to quiz neighbors they mistrust on pop culture to ascertain their patriotism, while Shandong province state media published posters with the tagline “spies might be all around you.” The push comes after Xi chaired a National Security Council meeting in May that stressed the importance of “extreme-case scenario” thinking — a phrase the ruling party had previously reserved for describing natural disaster preparedness. China has since passed a new anti-spy law, accused consulting firms of working for overseas intelligence agencies and warned that foreign forces are infiltrating the energy sector. Perhaps Xi has good reason to unite the public around a common threat. China is locked in an ideological battle with the US that’s weighing on its economy, just as the Asian giant enters a slowdown that risks stoking another wave of social unrest. Last year, students led rare nationwide protests calling for the end of Covid Zero — and, in some cases, the removal of Xi. “At the time of economic pressure, there are quite obvious concerns at the top leadership,” said Katja Drinhausen, head of the politics and society program at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin. “Using collective fear as a way to build political and social cohesion is a very dangerous game to play.” Spy Agency Since the Communist Party unified its intelligence arms to found the Ministry of State Security in the 1980s, the organization has stayed out of public sight. It’s the sole cabinet-level ministry without an official website and, until recently, its only public platforms were hot lines for reporting activities endangering national security. That changed last month when the ministry joined China’s social media app WeChat. Since then, it’s posted almost every day on its efforts to secure national security, down to telling primary school students what photos they shouldn’t post on social media. That comes after CIA director William Burns said in July that the agency had made progress in rebuilding its spy network in China. The MSS has since provided details of two cases of Chinese officials it has detained for providing information to the CIA — a rare move for an agency that does not provide data on its arrests. It has even delved into geopolitics, warning the US it must show “sincerity” for Xi to attend a huddle of the world’s top economic leaders in California in November, where he’s set to meet President Joe Biden for the first time this year. “The rising visibility of the MSS appears part of an effort to normalize national security as a top priority in government policymaking, by encouraging it to adopt a public profile more like that of economic agencies,” said Neil Thomas, a fellow for Chinese politics at Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. The result is a growing level of mistrust among citizens in a nation where many still remember the effects of asking citizens to snitch on each other. Former leader Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution was a violent period when the public was encouraged to report the slightest hint that a friend, spouse or parent was linked to forces conspiring for the downfall of the Communist Party. In July, one Chinese employee was allegedly reported to the police by his colleagues, after failing to remember the lyrics to a popular Chinese song at a karaoke night aroused their suspicion. “He turned out to be a you-know-what,” one user who knew the group wrote on social media app Xiaohongshu, named after Mao’s Little Red Book that was used to compel the nation’s population to inform on each other. China offers up to 500,000 yuan ($68,160) to citizens who successfully report spies. That post, which Bloomberg hasn’t been able to verify, garnered some 16,000 likes as users enthusiastically exchanged tips for spotting spies. Not knowing slang popularized by the annual spring gala broadcast or mnemonic devices taught in math class could all be hallmarks of a spook, they said. Misplaced Suspicion The push to root out spies risks targeting innocent people. In a now-deleted post on Xiaohongshu, one person apologized after a suspected foreign agent turned out to be a university student taking photos for their fieldwork research. The person didn’t respond to a Bloomberg request for comment. A hyper-vigilance around spilling sensitive information is growing in the workplace. State-owned enterprises are running training sessions on state secrets, according to people familiar with the matter. More documents are being marked as state secrets, and can only be browsed at the office, said one of the people, who declined to be named due to fear of state reprisals. The government has also launched an app to help Communist Party members and government employees bolster their knowledge and skills about secret-keeping. The obsession with national security is fundamentally linked to protecting the Communist Party’s future. State Security Minister Chen Yixin in July wrote that national security was about political security. “The core of political security is regime security,” he added. But that drive is also creating a deep suspicion of foreigners that runs counter to the party’s recently stated aim of wooing investors and reinvigorating the private sector. Foreigners are reporting it’s harder to meet with once-friendly officials, as the atmosphere of suspicion grows. Sheena Greitens, associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT-Austin, said encouraging citizens to spy on each other would have “damaging consequences” for overall governance in China. “It can lead to false reporting,” she said. “That can backfire for the internal security agencies themselves, because it means they are working from increasingly bad information.” —With assistance from Colum Murphy.
The Philippines accuses China’s shadowy maritime militia of destroying coral reefs in South China Sea By Kathleen Magramo, CNN Published Fri September 22, 2023 CNN — https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/22/...ippines-coral-reef-damage-intl-hnk/index.html Vibrant reefs filled with colorful fish and seaweed just two years ago have been turned into a wasteland of crushed corals in the South China Sea and the Philippines says it has identified a culprit – China’s shadowy maritime militia. China has rejected the accusation, setting up another public disagreement with its neighbor over the flashpoint waterway. Videos released Monday by the Philippine Coast Guard showed a vast patch of bleached corals along the Rozul (Iroquios) Reef and Sabina (Escoda) Shoal in the South China Sea, which are underwater features within the country’s internationally recognized exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Both reefs are near Palawan, the Philippines’ southwestern island chain fronting the South China Sea, but Beijing claims most of the large and strategic waterway as its own territory despite competing claims by neighbors and in defiance of an international ruling. Commodore Jay Tarriela, the coast guard spokesman, said divers had carried out “underwater surveys” of the seabed and described “visible discoloration” that indicated “deliberate activities” meant to modify the natural topography of the terrain. “The continued swarming for the indiscriminate illegal and destructive fishing activities of the Chinese Maritime Militia in Rozul Reef and Escoda Shoal may have directly caused the degradation and destruction of the marine environment in the [West Philippine Sea] features,” Tarriela said in a statement, referring to Manila’s name for parts of the South China Sea within its jurisdiction. Bleached coral fragments have piled up around Rozul (Iroquios) Reef, according to the Philippine Coast Guard. Philippine Coast Guard/Facebook Tarriela said between August 9 and September 11, the coast guard monitored 33 Chinese vessels within the vicinity of Rozul Reef and around 15 Chinese ships near Escoda Shoal. “The presence of crushed corals strongly suggests a potential act of dumping, possibly involving the same dead corals that were previously processed and cleaned before being returned to the seabed,” Tarriela added. The Philippine military last Saturday also accused China’s maritime militia of massive destruction in the area. Chinese authorities did not comment publicly on the accusations until Thursday when the foreign ministry was asked at a regular daily briefing about the destruction of the corals. “The relevant allegations of the Philippine side are false and groundless,” spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters. “We advise the Philippine authorities not to utilize fabricated information to stage a political farce.” Beijing claims “indisputable sovereignty” over almost all of the 1.3 million square miles of the South China Sea, as well as most of the islands and sandbars within it, including many features that are hundreds of miles away from China’s mainland. That includes the Spratlys, an archipelago consisting of 100 small islands and reefs also claimed in full or part by the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. Over the last two decades China has occupied a number of reefs and atolls across the South China Sea, building up military installations, including runways and ports, which have not only challenged the Philippines’ sovereignty and fishing rights but also endanger the marine biodiversity in the highly contested resource-rich waterway. Some of the atolls and islands that were built on saw sustained land reclamation take place, often with reefs being destroyed first and then built on. China reclaimed land on Fiery Cross Reef in the western part of the Spratly Islands group and built a runway that was completed in 2018. DigitalGlobe/ScapeWare3d/Maxar/Getty Images In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines in a landmark maritime dispute, which concluded that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to the bulk of the South China Sea. But Beijing has ignored the decision and continues to expand its presence in the waterway. ‘A wake-up call’ The recent Philippine coastguard footage of broken and bleached coral is in stark contrast to just two years ago. The University of the Philippines Marine Science Institute said in a statement to CNN it had surveyed a portion of the Rozul (Iroquios) Reef in 2021 through an expedition funded by the country’s National Security Council on board M/Y Panata. Videos and photos taken by the institute in 2021 showed the Rozul (Iroquios) Reef specked with red and purple colored corals with aquatic algae and moss lining the reef. “At that time, we found that the surveyed area had a reef ecosystem, with corals, benthic animals, fishes, seaweeds, and other marine organisms,” it said, but stopped short on commenting on the current status of the reef since the latest information from the Philippine army and coast guard were “beyond the purview” of the institute. “That said, we are open to working with other agencies to validate and analyze the impacts of recent activities in the area. Situations like this emphasize the need for continuous monitoring and support for more Marine Scientific Research activities by Filipino scientists especially in the West Philippine Sea,” it added. The UP Marine Science Institute found vibrant corals in the Rozul (Iroquios) Reef in the South China Sea in May 2021. UP Marine Science Institute Signs of the marine degradation underscored the threats of coral harvesting in the territory, prompting several Filipino senators to raise suspicion over whether China has plans to militarize the atolls through reclamation, CNN affiliate CNN Philippines reported. “It’s a wake-up call,” said Gerry Arances, executive director of the Center for Energy, Ecology and Development (CEED). The images have exposed the marine impacts of China’s construction of island facilities in the waters, frequent militia vessel patrols and expansive commercial fishing, Arances said. “It surfaces a lot of weaknesses, in terms of monitoring, regulating, and overall protecting marine biodiversity,” he said. Western marine security experts, along with officials from the Philippines and the United States, have increasingly accused Beijing of using ostensibly civilian fishing vessels as a maritime militia that acts as an unofficial – and officially deniable – force that China uses to push its territorial claims both in the South China Sea and beyond. Dubbed Beijing’s “little blue men”, Chinese fishing vessels have also been involved in clashes with fishing vessels from Indonesia and Vietnam in contested waters. Last month, the Philippines said a clash between Chinese coastguard and Philippine vessels included at least two blue-hulled vessels that looked like fishing vessels. “There has been a collective failure internationally to respond to China’s actions in the South China Sea, with regard to its militarizing the reefs and the shoals where China has, over a period of time, taken pristine marine features and turned them into concrete military bases and the collective response of much of the environmental advocacy groups has been silenced,” said Ray Powell, director of SeaLight at the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University. The Philippines’ growing calls for transparency on China’s maneuvers in the disputed waters have enabled the country to garner international support from its allies to affirm its territorial sovereignty, Powell added. 'Little blue men': Is a militia Beijing says doesn't exist causing trouble in the South China Sea? At least two foreign ambassadors in Manila have expressed alarm over reports of destruction of marine resources in the South China Sea. United States Ambassador to the Philippines MaryKay Carlson described the reports on coral destruction around the reefs as “troubling,” according to a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Habitat damage harms ecosystems and negatively affects lives and livelihoods. We are working with our #FriendsPartnersAllies to protect [the Philippines’] natural resources,” she said on Monday. Japanese Ambassador Kazuhiko Koshikawa also described the development as “very alarming news,” as he urged everyone to protect “these vital ecosystems.” The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that the country has “consistently raised the alarm overecologically harmful activities, conducted by foreign vessels” in its maritime zones. Former president Rodrigo Duterte had attempted to forge closer ties with Beijing and made plans to cooperate on oil and gas exploration in the South China Sea, a move which divided Filipinos over the legitimacy of enabling China’s ambitions in the disputed territory. The grounded Philippine navy ship Sierra Madre, which Manila uses to stake its territorial claims at Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands in the disputed South China Sea, as pictured on April 23, 2023. Ted Aljibe/AFP/Getty Images According to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, the Philippines occupies nine features in the Spratly chain while China occupies seven. But Beijing, which calls the island chain the Nansha Islands, has built up and fortified much of its claims in the chain, including building military bases on places like Subi Reef, Johnson Reef, Mischief Reef and Fiery Cross Reef. By contrast, only one of the Philippine-controlled features even has a runway, namely Thitu Reef. In 1999, the Philippines intentionally grounded a navy transport ship, the BRP Sierra Madre, on Second Thomas Shoal, manned by Filipino marines, to enforce the country’s claim to the area. At Thursday’s press briefing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson also referenced the Sierra Madre. “If the Philippine side is really concerned about the ecological environment of the South China Sea, it should tow away the warships illegally sitting on the Ren’ai Reef as soon as possible and stop discharging sewage into the sea, and also to prevent irreversible damage to the sea caused by the warships that continue to rust,” she said, using the Chinese name for the reef. Under current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the country’s National Security Team began to publicize its findings about what was actually happening in the West Philippine Sea and the South China Sea more regularly, Powell said. “The Philippine government’s transparency policy really earned it a lot of domestic support to push back and international support for its position,” he said.
Some follow-up... China’s ousted foreign minister had an affair with TV host, FT reports https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/27/china/china-qin-gang-fu-xiaotian-intl-hnk