Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement is rattling China’s leadership – and the world, Newsweek reports.
“We may be seeing a tragedy unfolding again right before our eyes,” said Stephen Roach, the former head of Morgan Stanley in Asia, referring to the prospect of a Tiananmen-like intervention.. He added: “You just have to hope cooler heads prevail, but it’s not yet clear that that will happen.”
In China’s internment camps, Muslims are reportedly subjected to forced indoctrination, torture, and even death. Yet some paid ads on Facebook and Twitter would have you believe they’re wonderful places, Vox reports.
The US-based social media giants have been enabling Chinese state-owned media to spread misinformation about the camps, investigations by the Intercept and BuzzFeed News revealed this week.
This week, the world got another indication Beijing has intensified its sharp power efforts when Twitter and Facebook announced they had taken down several hundred accounts “deliberately and specifically attempting to sow political discord” and undermine Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.
“This is some of the strongest evidence we have seen to date in public that the Chinese Party-state is engaged in influence operations on social media,” said Samantha Hoffman, a research fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Center. “I suspect that the evidence will continue to grow in the coming months,” she told VOA:
Yet there is concern among intelligence officials and analysts that this use of social media shows that the Chinese Communist party, which already controls the information environment inside of China, is moving ambitiously to control the narrative fed to the outside world.
“This is a big deal because it’s the first time that we’ve had confirmation of anything like this from any Western social media platforms,” Matt Schrader, a China analyst at The Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund, told VOA. “You have to start asking, is China looking beyond Hong Kong? Is it looking beyond Taiwan? Is it practicing these tactics to be able to influence people globally?”
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long regarded the over 1.5 million prisoners in China as a source of free labor for both the domestic and the export economy, says a new report from Citizen Power Initiatives for China (above). In addition to the prisoners who have been sentenced through China’s regular judicial system, there are untold numbers of prisoners who are part of the China’s less formal, but no less brutal, “re-education through labor” system. It is in fact through implementation of the laojiao economy (“reform-through-labor” is known as “laojiao” in Chinese), that Xinjiang region has been transformed into the largest cotton production area in China, the report observes:
As part of its strategy to suppress the Uyghur people, the CCP has started to move its primary textile and garment industry from coastal areas to Xinjiang. At the same time, China has forced over a million Uyghurs into so-called “vocational schools” and forced them to work in the factories to produce a cheap, steady supply of manufactured goods. …Every link of the cotton/textile/garment supply chain in Xinjiang is adulterated by forced labor, and as a result, should be banned from importation into the United States.
The China Forum – an initiative of Victims of Communism – convenes scholars, experts, and policymakers in the areas of trade and economics, foreign policy and security, and human rights and political development to help Americans understand the nature of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party, and key issues in US-China relations.
Confirmed speakers include:
- Greg Autry, Southern California Commercial Spaceflight Initiative, Founding Director
- Kyle Bass, Hayman Capital Management, Founder and CIO
- Bill Browder, Hermitage Capital Management, Founder and CEO
- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)
- Lt. Gen. Steven Kwast, US Air Force, Commander, Air Education and Training Command, Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Texas
- Nathan Law Kwun-chung, Hong Kong politician and activist
- Josh Rogin, The Washington Post, Columnist
- Matt Schrader, The German Marshall Fund of the United States, China Analyst, Alliance for Securing Democracy
- Dan Tobin, National Intelligence University, China Studies Faculty
- Dr. Adrian Zenz, European School of Culture and Theology, Professor
Schedule:
Thursday, September 26
Conference
Open to the public, registration required.
10:30 AM – 2:45 PM
Hart Senate Office Building, Central Hearing Room (216)
120 Constitution Avenue NE, Washington, D.C. 20002
Reception & Dinner
By invitation or sponsorship only.
5:00 – 8:00 PM
The Mayflower Hotel
1127 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. 20036. RSVP
