Tag: China

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international affairs privacy too much government

Privacy with Chinese Characteristics

China, internet

Governments must appear, at least some of the time, to be riding a silver stallion to rescue The People. All government rests on a kind of consent: not legal; not democratic; instead, the accommodation of the many to the few — to accept being ruled. This has been known since David Hume.

So when governments pretend to be more democratic, more contractual, than they actually are, it’s to maintain and increase power.

Take China.

In a fascinating report by Liz Wolfe, we learn that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is establishing new rules regulating corporations’ use of their customers’ data: “the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), necessarily weakens big tech companies, forcing onerous regulations that they will now have to comply with.”

This may sound all very consumer- and citizen-​oriented. But Ms. Wolfe not only notes that the regulations are burdensome, she observes that while China’s corporations will soon be prevented from doing things big tech companies routinely do in the West, the Chinese will pointedly not be protected from data collection by the government. 

Which is vast. 

Intrusive.

Often malign.

“Protection of consumer data, while fine and good, means nothing,” she writes, “if there’s no true rule of law binding governments to privacy-​protecting standards as well.”

Almost certainly China is trying to prevent in China what happened in America: the creation of powerful countervailing organizations competing with the government in one of the oldest activities of government: suppression of opinion to leverage power and revolutionize the State, changing policy from outside formal power centers.

Our social media — and other major tech corporations — have plied their incredible access to information to mold popular opinion for political and ideological purposes.

The CCP will not put up with that. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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by Paul Jacob international affairs video

Say My Name

Taiwan, China, citizenship

The term “Shanghaied” dates back to the 1850s, referring to Americans being kidnapped, sneaked onto ships, and transported across the Pacific Ocean, often to Shanghai, China.

Doesn’t happen so much anymore.

Unless you’re Taiwanese.

The subject came up on a just released Common Sense podcast featuring Joseph [last name withheld for his own protection], a sharp young Taiwanese lawyer working in Norway. He expressed concern that one day he might be repatriated to China, rather than returned to his home country of Taiwan.

Mighty big difference. 

The totalitarians running China regularly threaten and bully free and democratic Taiwan, and its citizens. The Chinazis claim Taiwan, just like they claimed Tibet. And just like Tibetans and Hong Kongers and Uighurs, the Taiwanese know well the ruthlessness of the Butchers of Beijing. 

Nobody wants to be sent there. 

But in recent years, Taiwanese nationals have been taken to China from Spain and the Czech Republic, despite fierce protestations from Taiwan. 

“I’m afraid of being targeted by the CCP [Chinese Communist Party],” Joseph explained, because “I’m registered as a Chinese citizen here in Norway” and “because we initiated this [legal] case.” 

Months back, I wrote about Joseph’s lawsuit to stop Norway from declaring him “Chinese” on official documents. Denied by a Norwegian court, he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. 

Last week, the European Court of Human Rights rejected his appeal. Norway and other European countries can continue to misidentify him and others to please Chinese totalitarians.

Still, I strongly sense we have not heard the last of Joseph, and certainly not the name “Taiwan.” You can’t keep a good man down.

Or a free and prosperous people. 

Not even the powerful Chinazis can do that. Not even with help from Western wimps.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency international affairs

Transparency with Chinese Characteristics

China, Covid, censorship, secrecy, Wuhan, lab, research, transparency

Chinese government officials are shocked, shocked — no wait, make that “extremely shocked!” — that the World Health Organization (no less) proposes “to further investigate whether the coronavirus emerged from a lab in Wuhan.” 

“We are asking China to be transparent, open and cooperate,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O.’s director-​general, “especially on the information, raw data that we asked for in the early days of the pandemic.”

But yesterday, at a Beijing news conference, the vice minister of the Chinese National Health Commission, Zeng Yixin, shared his feelings that “this plan revealed a lack of respect for common sense and an arrogant attitude toward science. We can’t possibly accept such a plan for investigating the origins.”

Instead, Zeng suggested searching for “signs of natural transmission … and the possibility that the virus may have first spread outside China” … or perhaps chasing after wild geese.

“[S]everal Chinese officials asserted that the W.H.O. inquiry got it right the first time,” explained The New York Times, “and that there was no evidence to justify renewed checks of the labs.”

“Renewed”? That supposes that labs at the Wuhan Institute of Virology have previously been inspected, forensically, and the personnel interviewed — not to mention a ton of essential evidence on the virus shared and analyzed. None of that has happened.

The joint WHO-​China investigation was no such thing. It was a transparent* scam to dismiss the lab-​leak theory as “extremely unlikely” without scrutiny. Even the head of the W.H.O. publicly backed away from its own finding, declaring that more investigation was needed.

Only major U.S. media still buy Chinazi gaslighting …

… or express surprise that the genocidal mobsters running China won’t cooperate in holding themselves accountable. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* No doubt, this marks the absolute zenith of transparency for the Chinese Communist Party.

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art: transparent /​ floater

ADDITIONAL LINKS

The Man the Media Missed — June 8, 2021

The Worshipful and the Incurious — June 3, 2021

The Sound of Sino-​Silence? — March 22, 2021

Now Safe to Blame? — March 8, 2021

Good Relations with Genocide? — November 24, 2020

Soft on China — April 29, 2020

Follow the (Media) Money — April 21, 2020

Categories
insider corruption media and media people

Major Media’s Cricket Chorus

Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, corruption

“How is this not a subject of bigger concern in the country?” Emily Jashinsky asked last week on The Hill’s morning TV program, Rising.

Hunter Biden’s “addiction and dysfunction are the public’s problems, too,” explained Jashinsky, culture editor at The Federalist, “given that Hunter was wrapped up in an influence-​peddling operation in which he traded on his father’s name to carry out lucrative business deals.”*

“That makes the sad work of reading his personal correspondence crucial,” she added, “given that his father is, you know, the president of the United States.”

Jashinsky pointed to items gleaned from Hunter’s bountiful laptop, which reinforce a narrative — first advanced during last fall’s presidential campaign and corroborated by a former business partner, but then and now ignored by most media — that Hunter not only profited off his father’s position, but also provided kickbacks to “Pop.” 

In a text Hunter sent his daughter, complaining that he doesn’t “receive any respect,” he elaborated: “I Hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family Fro 30 years. It’s really hard. But don’t worry unlike Pop I won’t make you give me half your salary.”

Now the New York Post’s Miranda Devine informs, “[W]hat we do know is that, while Joe was vice president, Hunter routinely paid at least some of his father’s household expenses” … which the headline dubbed “daddy pay care.”

“In a healthy country, our free press would be highlighting the Biden family as the very picture of elite corruption,” offered Jashinsky. “They would be pushing relentlessly for answers to the questions these emails continue raising.”**

“Instead, it’s mostly crickets,” in what she sadly called “this era of media corruption.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* “The Justice Department is investigating the finances of President-​elect Joe Biden’s son [Hunter], including scrutinizing some of his Chinese business dealings and other transactions,” the Associated Press reported last December. 

** In May, The Guardian disclosed: “Former FBI director Louis Freeh gave $100,000 to a private trust for Joe Biden’s grandchildren and met with the then-​Vice President in 2016 ‘to explore with him some future work options,’ emails reveal.”

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international affairs social media

Good-​bye, Google

China, Google, censorship

Is Google working for the Chinese government?

The group Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights believes that pro-​Chinazi partisans have been targeting its YouTube videos, triggering sanctions against Atajurt’s channel. Many of its thousands of videos provide testimony about how family members have been hauled off to internment camps in China’s Xinjiang region.

Alphabet/Google’s YouTube has penalized the Atajurt YouTube channel for alleged “harassment” because some of the videos provide proof of identity. Channel owner Serikzhan Bilash, an Atajurt cofounder, says this is important to establishing the credibility of the testimony.

On June 15, after a dozen of the channel’s videos were flagged for harassment, YouTube terminated the channel. After Reuters asked why, the channel was restored.

On June 22, YouTube locked another dozen videos and accused the channel of praising “criminal groups or terrorist organizations.” YouTube blames automated messages for such accusations. But it hasn’t stopped threatening the channel.

“There is another excuse every day. I never trusted YouTube,” Bilash says. “But we’re not afraid anymore, because we are backing ourselves up with LBRY. The most important thing is our material’s safety.”

LBRY is a blockchain protocol used by YouTube competitor Odysee, to which Atajurt has so far ported almost a thousand of its videos.

The large audiences of Google’s YouTube and other Big Tech social-​media forums make them appealing as a means of getting out a message. But as Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights and many others are discovering lately, you better have backup.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom international affairs

The 400 Million

“More than 50 million total deaths,” writes Washington Post columnist David Von Drehle, summing up the cost of Communist Mao Zedong’s decades of re-​making Chinese society from the “Great Leap Forward” to the “Cultural Revolution.” 

“… entirely self-​inflicted,” Von Drehle adds.

“A free market of ideas would never have settled on such terrible policies,” he declares, “and a limited government could not have enforced them.”

Exactly! Is it finally morning in Washington?

The columnist articulates two principles: (1) “a free society is a great solver of problems and finder of answers because more brainpower is better than less,” and (2) “while a big government can certainly give a great boost to a good idea, it can also put enormous force behind a bad idea — and when it does, the effects can be catastrophic.”*

He highlights China’s brutally enforced One Child policy, instituted in 1979, whereby the government, according to One Child Nation documentarian Nanfu Wang, bragged it had “successfully prevented 400 million babies from being born.” Through forced abortions and infanticide! 

“This draconian, ill-​considered measure,” Von Drehle charges, “has brought China to the brink of population decline at a time when the rising nation is still too poor, on a per capita basis, to support swelling ranks of elderly pensioners on the backs of a dwindling number of young workers.”

So, in 2016, “the all-​powerful government permitted couples to have two children,” he explains. “Birthrates have continued to drop, moving the Central Committee to raise the cap last month to three children.” 

Regardless of the number, what could be more totalitarian than the government deciding how many children you may have?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Like covering up a virus outbreak that turns into a pandemic killing almost 4 million people worldwide — and over 600,000 Americans?

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