China calls them ‘kindness students.’ They’re actually victims of cultural genocide.; The Washington Post, January 10, 2020

Editorial Board, The Washington Post; China calls them ‘kindness students.’ They’re actually victims of cultural genocide.

"In the village with the barbed wire, government officials call the children “kindness students,” referring to the party’s supposed generosity in making special arrangements. But the glove bearing this generosity has a fist inside. As Adrian Zenz at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation has documented, in some Uighur-majority regions in southern Xinjiang, preschool enrollment more than quadrupled in recent years, exceeding the average national enrollment growth rate by more than 12 times. Why? Because parents, and in some cases both parents, have disappeared into the camps. China is carrying out cultural genocide and social reengineering on young minds when they are most impressionable.

China has claimed the campaign is a response to extremism and violence in Xinjiang a decade ago, but these methods far exceed what would be needed for counterterrorism. The punishment of the Uighur Muslims appears to fit the definition of crimes against humanity. The annual report of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, released Wednesday, says: “Security personnel at the camps subjected detainees to torture, including beatings; electric shocks; waterboarding; medical neglect; forced ingestion of medication; sleep deprivation; extended solitary confinement; and handcuffing or shackling for prolonged periods, as well as restricted access to toilet facilities; punishment for behavior deemed religious; forced labor; overcrowding; deprivation of food; and political indoctrination.”"

What CRISPR-Baby Prison Sentences Mean for Research; Nature via Scientific American, Janaury 6, 2020

David Cyranoski, Nature via Scientific American; What CRISPR-Baby Prison Sentences Mean for Research

"A Chinese court has sentenced He Jiankui, the biophysicist who announced that he had created the world’s first gene-edited babies, to three years in prison for “illegal medical practice”, and handed down shorter sentences to two colleagues who assisted him. The punishments put to rest speculation over whether the Chinese government would bring criminal charges for an act that shocked the world, and are likely to deter others from similar behaviour, say Chinese scientists."

A Surveillance Net Blankets China’s Cities, Giving Police Vast Powers; The New York Times, December 17, 2019

Paul Mozur and Aaron Krolik, The New York Times; A Surveillance Net Blankets China’s Cities, Giving Police Vast Powers

""China is ramping up its ability to spy on its nearly 1.4 billion people to new and disturbing levels, giving the world a blueprint for how to build a digital totalitarian state.

 Chinese authorities are knitting together old and state-of-the-art technologies — phone scanners, facial-recognition cameras, face and fingerprint databases and many others — into sweeping tools for authoritarian control, according to police and private databases examined by The New York Times."

China Uses DNA to Map Faces, With Help From the West; The New York Times, December 3, 2019

Sui-Lee Wee and Paul Mozur, The New York Times; China Uses DNA to Map Faces, With Help From the West

Beijing’s pursuit of control over a Muslim ethnic group pushes the rules of science and raises questions about consent. 

"The Chinese government is building “essentially technologies used for hunting people,” said Mark Munsterhjelm, an assistant professor at the University of Windsor in Ontario who tracks Chinese interest in the technology.

In the world of science, Dr. Munsterhjelm said, “there’s a kind of culture of complacency that has now given way to complicity.""

China Didn’t Want Us to Know. Now Its Own Files Are Doing the Talking.; The New York Times, November 24, 2019

Adrian Zenz, The New York Times;

China Didn’t Want Us to Know. Now Its Own Files Are Doing the Talking.

More disclosures reveal the full impact of the government’s repression of ethnic minorities — well beyond re-education camps.

"This Sunday, the contents of two more sets of documents — all of which I have reviewed — are being disclosed. Among the first batch, also leaked, is a confidential telegram signed by Zhu Hailun, Xinjiang’s deputy party secretary, which details how local authorities should manage and operate the “vocational skills training centers” — a euphemism for the internment camps. (All translations here are mine.) The second set of documents, a large cache of files and spreadsheets from local governments, reveals the internment campaign’s devastating economic and social impact on the families and communities it targets...

Thanks to these new document disclosures, we now have hard evidence — and the government’s own evidence — that in addition to implementing a vast internment program in Xinjiang, the Chinese Communist Party is deliberately breaking up families and forcing them into poverty and a form of indentured labor. For all its efforts at secrecy, the Chinese government can no longer hide the extent, and the reach, of its campaign of repression in Xinjiang.

Some important elements are still unknown. The total internment figure remains a well-guarded secret. (Based on the new evidence, I have revised my own estimate: I think that between 900,000 and 1.8 million people have been detained in Xinjiang since the spring of 2017.) Also missing from the official documents that have surfaced so far are precise records of how the detainees are treated and how, exactly, the process of re-education works. (About those things, however, we have witness accounts.) The confidential telegram and local files do not mention the use of physical violence — but for one notable exception. The telegram states that people who resist brainwashing must be singled out for “assault-style re-education.” Yet another sinister understatement, and it suggests that force and torture may, in fact, be widely used."

Data leak reveals how China 'brainwashes' Uighurs in prison camps; BBC, November 24, 2019

BBC; Data leak reveals how China 'brainwashes' Uighurs in prison camps

"The leaked Chinese government documents, which the ICIJ have labelled "The China Cables", include a nine-page memo sent out in 2017 by Zhu Hailun, then deputy-secretary of Xinjiang's Communist Party and the region's top security official, to those who run the camps...

The memo includes orders to:

• "Never allow escapes"
• "Increase discipline and punishment of behavioural violations"
• "Promote repentance and confession"
• "Make remedial Mandarin studies the top priority"
• "Encourage students to truly transform"
• "[Ensure] full video surveillance coverage of dormitories and classrooms free of blind spots"

The documents reveal how every aspect of a detainee's life is monitored and controlled: "The students should have a fixed bed position, fixed queue position, fixed classroom seat, and fixed station during skills work, and it is strictly forbidden for this to be changed.

"Implement behavioural norms and discipline requirements for getting up, roll call, washing, going to the toilet, organising and housekeeping, eating, studying, sleeping, closing the door and so forth."...

The leaked documents also reveal how the Chinese government uses mass surveillance and a predictive-policing programme that analyses personal data."

‘Absolutely No Mercy’: Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims; The New York Times, November 16, 2019

Austin Ramzi  and Chris Buckley, The New York Times; ‘Absolutely No Mercy’: Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims

 "The directive was among 403 pages of internal documents that have been shared with The New York Times in one of the most significant leaks of government papers from inside China’s ruling Communist Party in decades. They provide an unprecedented inside view of the continuing clampdown in Xinjiang, in which the authorities have corralled as many as a million ethnic Uighurs, Kazakhs and others into internment camps and prisons over the past three years. 

The party has rejected international criticism of the camps and described them as job-training centers that use mild methods to fight Islamic extremism. But the documents confirm the coercive nature of the crackdown in the words and orders of the very officials who conceived and orchestrated it.

Even as the government presented its efforts in Xinjiang to the public as benevolent and unexceptional, it discussed and organized a ruthless and extraordinary campaign in these internal communications. Senior party leaders are recorded ordering drastic and urgent action against extremist violence, including the mass detentions, and discussing the consequences with cool detachment.

Children saw their parents taken away, students wondered who would pay their tuition and crops could not be planted or harvested for lack of manpower, the reports noted. Yet officials were directed to tell people who complained to be grateful for the Communist Party’s help and stay quiet."

Scientists With Links to China May Be Stealing Biomedical Research, U.S. Says; The New York Times, November 4, 2019

Gina Kolata, The New York Times; Scientists With Links to China May Be Stealing Biomedical Research, U.S. Says
 
"The investigations have fanned fears that China is exploiting the relative openness of the American scientific system to engage in wholesale economic espionage. At the same time, the scale of the dragnet has sent a tremor through the ranks of biomedical researchers, some of whom say ethnic Chinese scientists are being unfairly targeted for scrutiny as Washington’s geopolitical competition with Beijing intensifies...

The alleged theft involves not military secrets, but scientific ideas, designs, devices, data and methods that may lead to profitable new treatments or diagnostic tools.

Some researchers under investigation have obtained patents in China on work funded by the United States government and owned by American institutions, the N.I.H. said. Others are suspected of setting up labs in China that secretly duplicated American research, according to government officials and university administrators...

The real question, [Dr. Michael Lauer, deputy director for extramural research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md] added, is how to preserve the open exchange of scientific ideas in the face of growing security concerns. At M.D. Anderson, administrators are tightening controls to make data less freely available."

TikTok’s Beijing roots fuel censorship suspicion as it builds a huge U.S. audience; The Washington Post, September 15, 2019

Drew Harwell and Tony Romm, The Washington Post; TikTok’s Beijing roots fuel censorship suspicion as it builds a huge U.S. audience

"TikTok’s surging popularity spotlights the tension between the Web’s global powers: the United States, where free speech and competing ideologies are held as (sometimes messy) societal bedrocks, and China, where political criticism is forbidden as troublemaking."

His Cat’s Death Left Him Heartbroken. So He Cloned It.; The New York Times, September 4, 2019

Sui-Lee Wee, The New York Times; His Cat’s Death Left Him Heartbroken. So He Cloned It.

"China’s genetics know-how is growing rapidly. Ever since Chinese scientists cloned a female goat in 2000, they have succeeded in producing the world’s first primate clones, editing the embryos of monkeys to insert genes associated with autism and mental illness, and creating superstrong dogs by tinkering with their genes. Last year, the country stunned the world after a Chinese scientist announced that he had created the world’s first genetically edited babies.

Pet cloning is largely unregulated and controversial where it is done, but in China the barriers are especially low. Many Chinese people do not think that using animals for medical research or cosmetics testing is cruel, or that pet cloning is potentially problematic. There are also no laws against animal cruelty."

Wary of Chinese Espionage, Houston Cancer Center Chose to Fire 3 Scientists; The New York Times, April 22, 2019

Mihir Zaveri, The New York Times; Wary of Chinese Espionage, Houston Cancer Center Chose to Fire 3 Scientists

"“A small but significant number of individuals are working with government sponsorship to exfiltrate intellectual property that has been created with the support of U.S. taxpayers, private donors and industry collaborators,” Dr. Peter Pisters, the center’s president, said in a statement on Sunday.

“At risk is America’s internationally acclaimed system of funding biomedical research, which is based on the principles of trust, integrity and merit.”

The N.I.H. had also flagged two other researchers at MD Anderson. One investigation is proceeding, the center said, and the evidence did not warrant firing the other researcher.

The news of the firings was first reported by The Houston Chronicle and Science magazine.

The investigations began after Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, sent a letter in August to more than 10,000 institutions the agency funds, warning of “threats to the integrity of U.S. biomedical research.”"

Scientist Who Edited Babies’ Genes Is Likely to Face Charges in China; The New York Times, January 21, 2019

Austin Ramzy and Sui-Lee Wee, The New York Times; Scientist Who Edited Babies’ Genes Is Likely to Face Charges in China

"Dr. He’s announcement raised ethical concerns about the long-term effects of such genetic alterations, which if successful would be inherited by the child’s progeny, and whether other scientists would be emboldened to try their own gene-editing experiments.

Scientists inside and outside China criticized Dr. He’s work, which highlighted fears that the country has overlooked ethical issues in the pursuit of scientific achievement. The Chinese authorities placed Dr. He under investigation, during which time he has been kept under guard at a guesthouse at the Southern University of Science and Technology in the city of Shenzhen."

Why 1984 Isn't Banned in China: Censorship in the country is more complicated than many Westerners imagine.; The Atlantic, January 13, 2019

Amy Hawkins, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, The Atlantic; Why 1984 Isn't Banned in China:

Censorship in the country is more complicated than many Westerners imagine.

"Western commentators often give the impression that Chinese censorship is more comprehensive than it really is, due, in part, to a veritable obsession with the government’s handling of the so-called three T’s of Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen. A 2013 article in The New York Review of Books states, for example, that “to this day Tiananmen is one of the neuralgic words forbidden—not always successfully—on China’s Internet.” Any book, article, or social-media post that so much as mentions these words, the conventional wisdom holds, is liable to disappear.

Even when it comes to the “three T’s,” though, things are a bit less simple than they appear."

Trump’s bizarre statement on China dishonors us all; The Washington Post, January 11, 2019

Dana Milbank, The Washington Post; Trump’s bizarre statement on China dishonors us all

"Asked an unrelated question on the White House South Lawn on Thursday, Trump volunteered a comparison between Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) — and the leaders of the People’s Republic of China.

“I find China, frankly, in many ways, to be far more honorable than Cryin’ Chuck and Nancy. I really do,” he said. “I think that China is actually much easier to deal with than the opposition party.”

China, honorable?

China, which is holding a million members of religious minorities in concentration camps for “reeducation” by force?

China, which, according to Trump’s own FBI director, is, by far, the leading perpetrator of technology theft and espionage against the United States and is “using illegal methods” to “replace the U.S. as the world’s leading superpower”?

China, whose state-sponsored hackers were indicted just three weeks ago and accused of a 12-year campaign of cyberattacks on this and other countries?

China, whose ruling Communist Party has caused the extermination of tens of millions of people since the end of World War II, through government-induced famine, the ideological purges of the Cultural Revolution, and in mowing down reformers in Tiananmen Square?

Trump has a strange sense of honor. In April, he bestowed the same adjective on the world’s most oppressive leader, North Korea’s nuclear-armed dictator: “Kim Jong Un, he really has been very open and I think very honorable from everything we’re seeing.”

Now, the president is declaring that China’s dictatorship, by far the world’s biggest international criminal and abuser of human rights and operator of its most extensive police state, is more honorable than his political opponents in the United States.

In Trump’s view, your opponents are your enemies — and your actual enemies are your friends. How can you negotiate with a man who thinks like this?"

Will the world embrace Plan S, the radical proposal to mandate open access to science papers?; Science, January 3, 2019

Tania Rabesandratana, Science; Will the world embrace Plan S, the radical proposal to mandate open access to science papers?

""In the OA movement, it seems to a lot of people that you have to choose a road: green or gold or diamond," says Colleen Campbell, director of the OA2020 initiative at the Max Planck Digital Library in Munich, Germany, referring to various styles of OA. "Publishers are sitting back laughing at us while we argue about different shades" instead of focusing on a shared goal of complete, immediate OA. Because of its bold, stringent requirements, she and others think Plan S can galvanize advocates to align their efforts to shake up the publishing system...

"The combined weight of Europe and China is probably enough to move the system," says astrophysicist Luke Drury, of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and the lead author of a cautiously supportive response to Plan S by All European Academies, a federation of European academies of sciences and humanities.

If Plan S does succeed in bringing about a fairer publishing system, he says, a transition to worldwide OA is sure to follow. "Somebody has to take the lead, and I'm pleased that it looks like it's coming from Europe.""

China thinks it can arbitrarily detain anyone. It is time for change: The lack of global outcry over the detention of two Canadians virtually guarantees the next such case; The Guardian, January 3, 2019

Michael Caster, The Guardian;

China thinks it can arbitrarily detain anyone. It is time for change

The lack of global outcry over the detention of two Canadians virtually guarantees the next such case

"Despite this – and although China has detained hundreds of Chinese human rights defenders and numerous foreign nationals under this and similar provisions, not to mention the arbitrary imprisonment or disappearance of some one million Uyghurs and Kazakhs across Xinjiang – it has generated shockingly limited international blowback.

In each case where China has not been held accountable, it virtually guarantees the next.

Any country that systematically denies the rights of its own citizens, and flaunts international norms, should worry us all because such abuses, as we are increasingly seeing, don’t stop at the colour of one’s passport."

Censoring China’s Internet, for Stability and Profit; The New York Times, January 2, 2019

Li Yuan, The New York Times; Censoring China’s Internet, for Stability and Profit

"For Chinese companies, staying on the safe side of government censors is a matter of life and death. Adding to the burden, the authorities demand that companies censor themselves, spurring them to hire thousands of people to police content.

That in turn has created a growing and lucrative new industry: censorship factories."

Their Art Raised Questions About Technology. Chinese Censors Had Their Own Answer.; The New York Times, December 14, 2018

Amy Qin, The New York Times; Their Art Raised Questions About Technology. Chinese Censors Had Their Own Answer.

Artificial intelligence bots. 3-D printed human organs. Genomic sequencing. 

These might seem to be natural topics of interest in a country determined to be the world’s leader in science and technology. But in China, where censors are known to take a heavy hand, several artworks that look closely at these breakthroughs have been deemed taboo by local cultural officials.

The works, which raise questions about the social and ethical implications of artificial intelligence and biotechnology, were abruptly pulled last weekend from the coming Guangzhou Triennial on the orders of cultural authorities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong...

“Isn’t contemporary art meant to raise questions, and start discussions about important subjects in actuality and those of our near future?” he wrote. “What are China’s reasons for organizing all these big expensive ‘contemporary art’ manifestations if these questions, the core of contemporary art, freedom of speech, freedom of mind, are ignored and undermined?”"

China got rid of one of the most oppressive practices of the Mao era. Now it’s coming back.; The Washington Post, December 18, 2018

Editorial Board, The Washington Post; China got rid of one of the most oppressive practices of the Mao era. Now it’s coming back.

"This has become one of the world’s most urgent human rights crises. Congress should pass the Uighur Human Rights Policy Act, which has bipartisan sponsorship in both chambers. In the House this includes Reps. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) and Thomas Suozzi (D-N.Y.), as well as the likely next speaker, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). The bill would create a U.S. special coordinator for Xinjiang to respond to the crisis and pave the way for applying Global Magnitsky Act sanctions on specific Chinese officials. It would increase vigilance against commerce that could abet the camp system. The Associated Press has found sportswear from one Xinjiang compound headed for Western markets. President Trump has been way too silent about the Xinjiang repression, although other administration officials have spoken out.

“Never again,” the vow to avoid another genocide, has meaning only if backed by action. China must hear loud and clear that the world will not stand by as Beijing attempts to destroy a people through forced labor and brainwashing."

Interview: Ai Weiwei: 'The mood in Germany is like the 1930s'; The Guardian, December 9, 2018

Kate Connolly, The Guardian; Interview: Ai Weiwei: 'The mood in Germany is like the 1930s'

"Ai took his nine-year-old son with him on a recent trip to Bangladesh – about which he is making a film – just as he has to other investigations, such as to Mexico, to investigate the 43 students who disappeared in a single day in 2014.

“He’s been with me to visit most refugee camps I’ve been to, as well as the poorest ghettos in Mexico, and cartel areas, the island of Lesbos in Greece. I don’t want to teach him anything, but by being exposed to this kind of information he has developed a basic sensitivity of what’s right or wrong. And he sees me arguing a lot with people.”"