Suspected Chinese State-affiliated Online Influence Campaign Urged Real-world Protests in U.S.

by Oliver Young | Sep 13, 2021

New research published by the cybersecurity firm Mandiant Threat Intelligence, in collaboration with Google’s Threat Assessment Group, has highlighted the dangerous evolution of Chinese influence operations online. A suspected Chinese government-affiliated network of hundreds of fake accounts, first detected in June 2019, has increased the scope of its activities, permeating more platforms, employing more languages, and even inciting users to take real-world action. Ryan Serabian and Lee Foster summarized these concerning new developments on the FireEye blog: The scope of activity, in terms...

"We want to make it clear that the intimidation stops with us. We will not help you spread this terror."

- Chow Hang-tung, Vice-chair of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China

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Netizens Force Baidu to Make Verbal “Prisoner Exchange,” Set “Dumbasses” Free

Sep 9, 2021

Chinese internet users have just scored a rare win against censorship. On September 3, the swear word shǎbī 傻逼, politely translated as “dumbass,” was banned from Baidu’s messaging forum Tieba. In the aughts, a mythical creature like the grass-mud horse might have been conjured to stand in for this piece of profanity. This time around, netizens chose an existing homophone that forced the hand of state media, and thereby, of Baidu: sǎnbīng 伞兵, “paratrooper.” To the state, this substitution was a verbal hostage situation. Xinhua News proclaimed “Paratroopers are the Best of the Best—We Must Not...

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U.S.-China Climate Change Talks Founder Over Xinjiang Sanctions

Sep 8, 2021

Chinese officials have warned John Kerry that deteriorating U.S.-China ties will impact bilateral cooperation on climate change. Kerry, who was in Tianjin for preliminary talks with his Chinese counterparts in preparation for the November COP 26 talks in Glasgow, has repeatedly iterated his hope that environmental policy could be divorced from other contentious issues in bilateral relations. At The Washington Post, Lily Kuo and Brady Dennis reported on top Chinese officials insistence that this is not the case: Wang called on the United States to stop treating China as “a threat and an...

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Civil society groups in Hong Kong continue to crumble under the weight of the National Security Law. The latest set of victims come from the spheres of media, civil rights, politics, and education, further proving President Xi’s intent to root out “hostile forces” from every part of society.  On Wednesday, police arrested four leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China and charged them with inciting subversion against state power. The alliance was responsible for organizing the annual Tiananmen Square vigil in Hong Kong. Authorities have accused...

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Netizens Force Baidu to Make Verbal “Prisoner Exchange,” Set “Dumbasses” Free

Sep 9, 2021

Chinese internet users have just scored a rare win against censorship. On September 3, the swear word shǎbī 傻逼, politely translated as “dumbass,” was banned from Baidu’s messaging forum Tieba. In the aughts, a mythical creature like the grass-mud horse might have been conjured to stand in for this piece of profanity. This time around, netizens chose an existing homophone that forced the hand of state media, and thereby, of Baidu: sǎnbīng 伞兵, “paratrooper.” To the state, this substitution was a verbal hostage situation. Xinhua News proclaimed “Paratroopers are the Best of the Best—We Must Not...

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Biden Calls Xi To Set Up “Guardrails” On The Relationship

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Frustrated by tepid progress in talks on trade, climate, and the South China Sea, among other issues, President Biden called President Xi Jinping for the first time in seven months last Thursday. It was only the second such call of Biden’s presidency, and comes after months of sometimes rancorous relations. At The New York Times, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and David E. Sanger reported on the Biden-Xi call: The call, which a senior administration official said lasted 90 minutes, came at a particularly delicate time. Tensions are growing over Taiwan and the South China Sea, and Mr. Biden is trying to...

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More Hong Kong Civil Society Groups Disband Under Pressure of National Security Law

Sep 10, 2021

Civil society groups in Hong Kong continue to crumble under the weight of the National Security Law. The latest set of victims come from the spheres of media, civil rights, politics, and education, further proving President Xi’s intent to root out “hostile forces” from every part of society.  On Wednesday, police arrested four leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China and charged them with inciting subversion against state power. The alliance was responsible for organizing the annual Tiananmen Square vigil in Hong Kong. Authorities have accused...

More Stories

Suspected Chinese State-affiliated Online Influence Campaign Urged Real-world Protests in U.S.

Sep 13, 2021

New research published by the cybersecurity firm Mandiant Threat Intelligence, in collaboration with Google’s Threat Assessment Group, has highlighted the dangerous evolution of Chinese influence operations online. A suspected Chinese government-affiliated network of hundreds of fake accounts, first detected in June 2019, has increased the scope of its activities, permeating more platforms, employing more languages, and even inciting users to take real-world action. Ryan Serabian and Lee Foster summarized these concerning new developments on the FireEye blog: The scope of activity, in terms...

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Q&A: Leta Hong Fincher on China’s Resilient Feminists

Jun 5, 2019

A former journalist, Leta Hong Fincher was the first American to receive a PhD in Sociology from Tsinghua University in Beijing. Her research there led to her first book, “Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China,” which examined rising gender inequalities in China today through the lens of economics, marriage, and the real estate market. Her widely acclaimed second book, “Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China,” examines the rise of a new feminist movement in China and profiles several of the key participants, including the...

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Sep 10, 2021

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Netizens Force Baidu to Make Verbal “Prisoner Exchange,” Set “Dumbasses” Free

Sep 9, 2021

Chinese internet users have just scored a rare win against censorship. On September 3, the swear word shǎbī 傻逼, politely translated as “dumbass,” was banned from Baidu’s messaging forum Tieba. In the aughts, a mythical creature like the grass-mud horse might have been conjured to stand in for this piece of profanity. This time around, netizens chose an existing homophone that forced the hand of state media, and thereby, of Baidu: sǎnbīng 伞兵, “paratrooper.” To the state, this substitution was a verbal hostage situation. Xinhua News proclaimed “Paratroopers are the Best of the Best—We Must Not...

More Stories

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

Sep 2, 2021

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

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Disappeared Businesswoman Briefly Reappears As Ex-husband’s Memoir On Elite Corruption Published

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Businesswoman Duan Weihong, who disappeared in 2017 after the arrest of politburo member Sun Zhengcai, resurfaced this past week to request that her ex-husband not publish an explosive memoir detailing elite corruption in China. Duan, who also goes by Whitney Duan, was a main focus of a 2012 New York Times investigation into then-Premier Wen Jiabao’s family wealth, and her name quickly became a sensitive term. Desmond Shum, Duan’s ex-husband and former business partner, believes she is being held under house arrest by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI). In an interview...

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Translation: The Curse of the Security Check

Jul 21, 2021

Anyone who has boarded an airplane in the last 20 years knows what stands between arrival at the terminal and waiting at the gate: shoes off, laptops out, water bottles emptied …. In China, similar checkpoints also await railway and subway passengers, among others. In an April WeChat post, translated in full below, Wei Sanhe recalls the personal indignities he has witnessed and suffered himself at security checkpoints, and reflects on the station in life of the ideal security official: The Curse of the Security Check Wei Sanhe 1 An officer blocked the young man in front of me at the train...

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Biden Calls Xi To Set Up “Guardrails” On The Relationship

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Frustrated by tepid progress in talks on trade, climate, and the South China Sea, among other issues, President Biden called President Xi Jinping for the first time in seven months last Thursday. It was only the second such call of Biden’s presidency, and comes after months of sometimes rancorous relations. At The New York Times, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and David E. Sanger reported on the Biden-Xi call: The call, which a senior administration official said lasted 90 minutes, came at a particularly delicate time. Tensions are growing over Taiwan and the South China Sea, and Mr. Biden is trying to...

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On August 30, Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture introduced a new English-language news and media streaming platform, Taiwan Plus (Taiwan+). The government-backed platform was established specifically for international audiences, with the goal of projecting a positive image of Taiwan to the world and countering China-centric narratives on Taiwan. Taiwan Today described President Tsai Ing-wen’s vision for the platform: In a special video message marking the launch, President Tsai Ing-wen said the platform is expected to promote Taiwan’s experiences and perspectives on regional and global affairs...

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Disappeared Businesswoman Briefly Reappears As Ex-husband’s Memoir On Elite Corruption Published

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Businesswoman Duan Weihong, who disappeared in 2017 after the arrest of politburo member Sun Zhengcai, resurfaced this past week to request that her ex-husband not publish an explosive memoir detailing elite corruption in China. Duan, who also goes by Whitney Duan, was a main focus of a 2012 New York Times investigation into then-Premier Wen Jiabao’s family wealth, and her name quickly became a sensitive term. Desmond Shum, Duan’s ex-husband and former business partner, believes she is being held under house arrest by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI). In an interview...

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Information Revolution

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In an in-depth report, Erika Kinetz of AP writes about a seven-month investigation by the Associated Press and the Oxford Internet Institute which, “found that China’s rise on Twitter has been powered by an army of fake accounts that have retweeted Chinese diplomats and state media tens of thousands of times, covertly amplifying propaganda that can reach hundreds of millions of people.” As government officials and state media take a more active and sometimes aggressive position on social media to defend their views to a global audience, much of the engagement has come from fake accounts. An...

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Netizens Force Baidu to Make Verbal “Prisoner Exchange,” Set “Dumbasses” Free

Sep 9, 2021

Chinese internet users have just scored a rare win against censorship. On September 3, the swear word shǎbī 傻逼, politely translated as “dumbass,” was banned from Baidu’s messaging forum Tieba. In the aughts, a mythical creature like the grass-mud horse might have been conjured to stand in for this piece of profanity. This time around, netizens chose an existing homophone that forced the hand of state media, and thereby, of Baidu: sǎnbīng 伞兵, “paratrooper.” To the state, this substitution was a verbal hostage situation. Xinhua News proclaimed “Paratroopers are the Best of the Best—We Must Not...

More Stories

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Translation: The Curse of the Security Check

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Anyone who has boarded an airplane in the last 20 years knows what stands between arrival at the terminal and waiting at the gate: shoes off, laptops out, water bottles emptied …. In China, similar checkpoints also await railway and subway passengers, among others. In an April WeChat post, translated in full below, Wei Sanhe recalls the personal indignities he has witnessed and suffered himself at security checkpoints, and reflects on the station in life of the ideal security official: The Curse of the Security Check Wei Sanhe 1 An officer blocked the young man in front of me at the train...

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

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

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China’s Top Officials Clash Over Environment and Economics

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China’s economic planners have wrested control over climate policy from bureaucrats in the environmental department, potentially jeopardizing efforts to meet emissions pledges made by Xi Jinping before the United Nation’s General Assembly in 2020. Addressing climate change is a central plank of China’s domestic and international policy—Xi attended a White House climate summit this April—but it is unclear whether Chinese leaders have the political will, or capacity, to achieve their lofty reform goals. At The Wall Street Journal, Sha Hua and Keith Zhai reported on the developments in China’s...

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More Hong Kong Civil Society Groups Disband Under Pressure of National Security Law

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Civil society groups in Hong Kong continue to crumble under the weight of the National Security Law. The latest set of victims come from the spheres of media, civil rights, politics, and education, further proving President Xi’s intent to root out “hostile forces” from every part of society.  On Wednesday, police arrested four leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China and charged them with inciting subversion against state power. The alliance was responsible for organizing the annual Tiananmen Square vigil in Hong Kong. Authorities have accused...

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Taiwan

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

Sep 7, 2021

On August 30, Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture introduced a new English-language news and media streaming platform, Taiwan Plus (Taiwan+). The government-backed platform was established specifically for international audiences, with the goal of projecting a positive image of Taiwan to the world and countering China-centric narratives on Taiwan. Taiwan Today described President Tsai Ing-wen’s vision for the platform: In a special video message marking the launch, President Tsai Ing-wen said the platform is expected to promote Taiwan’s experiences and perspectives on regional and global affairs...

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