China

Meltdown99

Taiwan president warns of 'catastrophic' consequences for peace if it falls to China

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/taiwan-president-warns-of-catastrophic-consequences-if-it-falls-to-china?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1633439630-1

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/taiwan-health-fires-social-media-50d7515e5fae00f5054062209e9306cc

 

China Fires Beijing Shanghai COVID-19 Government and politics

Crowds angered by lockdowns call for China's Xi to step down

By DAKE KANG and HUIZHONG WU

Today

SHANGHAI (AP) — Protesters pushed to the brink by China's strict COVID measures in Shanghai called for the removal of the country's all-powerful leader and clashed with police Sunday as crowds took to the streets in several cities in an astounding challenge to the government.

Police forcibly cleared the demonstrators in China's financial capital who called for Xi Jinping's resignation and the end of the Chinese Communist Party's rule — but hours later people rallied again in the same spot, and social media reports indicated protests also spread to at least seven other cities, including the capital of Beijing, and dozens of university campuses.

Largescale protests are exceedingly rare in China, where public expressions of dissent are routinely stifled — but a direct rebuke of Xi, the country’s most powerful leader in decades, is extraordinary.

Three years after the virus first emerged, China is the only major country still trying to stop transmission of COVID-19 — a “zero COVID” policy that regularly sees millions of people confined to their homes for weeks at a time and requires near-constant testing. The measures were originally widely accepted for minimizing deaths while other countries suffered devastating wavs of infections, but that consensus has begun to fray in recent weeks.

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Then on Friday, 10 people died in a fire in an apartment building, and many believe their rescue was delayed because of excessive lockdown measures. That sparked a weekend of protests, as the Chinese public’s ability to tolerate the harsh measures has apparently reached breaking point.

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered late Saturday in Shanghai, which experienced a devastating lockdown in the spring in which people struggled to secure groceries and medicines and were forcefully taken into centralized quarantine.

On a street named for the city in China's far west where the fire happened, one group of protesters brought candles, flowers and signs honoring those who died in the blaze. Another, according to a protester who insisted on anonymity, was more active, shouting slogans and singing the national anthem.

In a video of the protest seen by The Associated Press, chants sounded loud and clear: “Xi Jinping! Step down! CCP! Step down!” Xi, arguably China’s most dominant leader since Mao Zedong, was recently named to another term as head of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, and some expect him to try to stay in power for life.

The protester and another, who gave only his last name, Zhao, confirmed the chants. Both insisted on having their identities shielded because they fear arrest or retribution.

The atmosphere of the protest encouraged people to speak about topics considered taboo, including the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in which the ruling Communist Party had ordered troops to fire on pro-democracy student demonstrators, the unnamed protester said. Some also called for an official apology for the deaths in the fire in Urumqi in the Xinjiang region. One member of the Uyghur ethnic group that is native to Xinjiang and has been the target of a sweeping security crackdown shared his experiences of discrimination and police violence.

“Everyone thinks that Chinese people are afraid to come out and protest, that they don’t have any courage,” said the protester, who said it was his first time demonstrating. “Actually in my heart, I also thought this way. But then when I went there, I found that the environment was such that everyone was very brave.”

Initially peaceful, the scene turned violent in the early hours of Sunday. Hundreds of police surrounded the protesters and broke up the first more active group before they came for the second as they tried to move people off the main street. The protester said that he saw multiple people being taken away, forced by police into vans, but could not identify them.

The protester named Zhao said one of his friends was beaten by police and two were pepper sprayed. He said police stomped his feet as he tried to stop them from taking his friend away. He lost his shoes in the process, and left the protest barefoot.

Zhao said protesters yelled slogans, including one that has become a frequent rallying cry: “(We) do not want PCR (tests), but want freedom.”

On Sunday afternoon, crowds returned to the same spot and again railed against PCR tests. People stood and filmed as police started shoving at people.

A crowdsourced list on social media showed that there were also demonstrations at 50 universities. Videos posted on social media that said they were filmed in Nanjing in the east, Guangzhou in the south, Beijing in the north and at least five other cities showed protesters tussling with police in white protective suits or dismantling barricades used to seal off neighborhoods. The Associated Press could not independently verify all the protests.

In Beijing, students at the nation's top college, Tsinghua University, held a demonstration Sunday afternoon in front of one of the school's cafeterias. Three young women stood there initially with a simple message of condolence for the victims of the Urumqi apartment fire, according to a witness, who refused to be named out of fear of retribution, and images of the protest the AP has seen.

Students shouted “freedom of speech” and sang the Internationale, the socialist anthem. The deputy Communist Party secretary of the school arrived at the protest, promising to hold a schoolwide discussion.

Meanwhile, two cities in China’s northwest, where residents have been confined to their homes for up to four months, eased some anti-virus controls Sunday after public protests Friday.

Meanwhile, Urumqi, where the fire occurred, as well as the smaller city of Korla were preparing to reopen markets and other businesses in areas deemed at low risk of virus transmission and to restart bus, train and airline service, state media reported.

___

Wu reported from Taipei, Taiwan.

tempo_n_groove

This is something I want to keep track of.  Good for the people.  They are sick of it too.  It's time to move on.

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/technology-health-hong-kong-shanghai-covid-5452012336b1f8bbbd8b4658e87be453

 

China Beijing Hong Kong Shanghai COVID-19 Government and politics

Chinese users play cat-and-mouse with censors amid protests

By ZEN SOO

Today

HONG KONG (AP) — Videos of hundreds protesting in Shanghai started to appear on WeChat on Saturday night. Showing chants about removing COVID-19 restrictions and demanding freedom, they would stay up only a few minutes before being censored.

Elliot Wang, a 26-year-old in Beijing, was amazed.

“I started refreshing constantly, and saving videos, and taking screenshots of what I could before it got censored,” said Wang, who only agreed to be quoted using his English name, in fear of government retaliation. “A lot of my friends were sharing the videos of the protests in Shanghai. I shared them too, but they would get taken down quickly.”

MORE ON VIRUS OUTBREAK IN CHINA

• China eases virus controls amid effort to head off protests
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• EXPLAINER: Why are China's COVID rules so strict?

That Wang was able to glimpse the extraordinary outpouring of grievances highlights the cat-and-mouse game that goes on between millions of Chinese internet users and the country’s gargantuan censorship machine.

Chinese authorities maintain a tight grip on the country’s internet via a complex, multi-layered censorship operation that blocks access to almost all foreign news and social media, and blocks topics and keywords considered politically sensitive or detrimental to the Chinese Communist Party’s rule. Videos of or calls to protest are usually deleted immediately.

But images of protests began to spread on WeChat, a ubiquitous Chinese social networking platform used by over 1 billion, in the wake of a deadly fire Nov. 24 in the northwestern city of Urumqi. Many suspected that lockdown measures prevented residents from escaping the flames, something the government denies.

The sheer number of unhappy Chinese users who took to the Chinese internet to express their frustration, together with the methods they used to evade censors, led to a brief period of time in which government censors were overwhelmed, according to Han Rongbin, an associate professor at the University of Georgia’s International Affairs department.

“It takes censors some time to study what is happening and to add that to their portfolio in terms of censorship, so it’s a learning process for the government on how to conduct censorship effectively,” Han said.

In 2020, the death from COVID-19 of Li Wenliang, a doctor who was arrested for allegedly spreading rumors following an attempt to alert others about a “SARS-like” virus, sparked widespread outrage and an outpouring of anger against the Chinese censorship system. Users posted criticism for hours before censors moved to delete posts.

As censors took down posts related to the fire, Chinese internet users often used humor and metaphor to spread critical messages.

“Chinese netizens have always been very creative because every idea used successfully once will be discovered by censors the next time,” said Liu Lipeng, a censor-turned-critic of China’s censorship practices.

Chinese users started posting images of blank sheets of white paper, said Liu, in a silent reminder of words they weren't allowed to post.

Others posted sarcastic messages like “Good good good sure sure sure right right right yes yes yes,” or used Chinese homonyms to evoke calls for President Xi Jinping to resign, such as “shrimp moss,” which sounds like the words for “step down,” and “banana peel," which has the same initials as Xi's name.

But within days, censors moved to contain images of white paper. They would have used a range of tools, said Chauncey Jung, a policy analyst who previously worked for several Chinese internet companies based in Beijing.

Most content censorship is not done by the state, Jung said, but outsourced to content moderation operations at private social media platforms, who use a mix of humans and AI. Some censored posts are not deleted, but may be made visible only to the author, or removed from search results. In some cases, posts with sensitive key phrases may be published after review.

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A search on Weibo on Thursday for the term “white paper” mostly turned up posts that were critical of the protests, with no images of a single sheet of blank paper, or of people holding white papers at protests.

It's possible to access the global internet from China by using virtual private networks that disguise internet traffic, but these systems are illegal and many Chinese internet users access only the domestic internet. Wang does not use a VPN.

“I think I can say for all the mainlanders in my generation that we are really excited,” said Wang. “But we’re also really disappointed because we can’t do anything. … They just keep censoring, keep deleting, and even releasing fake accounts to praise the cops.”

But the system works well enough to stop many users from ever seeing them. When protests broke out across China over the weekend, Carmen Ou, who lives in Beijing, initially didn’t notice.

Ou learned of the protests only later, after using a VPN service to access Instagram.

“I tried looking at my feed on WeChat, but there was no mention of any protests,” she said. “If not for a VPN and access to Instagram, I might not have found out that such a monumental event had taken place.”

Han, the international affairs professor, said censorship “doesn't have to be perfect to be effective.”

"Censorship might be functioning to prevent a big enough size of the population from accessing the critical information to be mobilized,” he said.

China’s opaque approach to tamping down the spread of online dissent also makes it difficult to distinguish government campaigns from ordinary spam.

Searching Twitter using the Chinese words for Shanghai or other Chinese cities reveals protest videos, but also a near-constant flood of new posts showing racy photos of young women. Some researchers proposed that a state-backed campaign could be seeking to drown out news of the protests with “not safe for work” content.

A preliminary analysis by the Stanford Internet Observatory found lots of spam but no “compelling evidence” that it was specifically intended to suppress information or dissent, said Stanford data architect David Thiel.

“I’d be skeptical of anyone claiming clear evidence of government attribution,” Thiel said in an email.

Twitter searches for more specific protest-related terms, such as “Urumqi Middle Road, Shanghai,” produced mainly posts related to the protests.

Israeli data analysis firm Cyabra and another research group that shared analysis with the AP said it was hard to distinguish between a deliberate attempt to drown out protest information sought by the Chinese diaspora and a run-of-the-mill commercial spam campaign.

Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment. It hasn’t answered media inquiries since billionaire Elon Musk took over the platform in late October and cut back much of its workforce, including many of those tasked with moderating spam and other content. Musk often tweets about how he’s enacting or enforcing new Twitter content rules but hasn’t commented on the recent protests in China.

___

AP Business Writer Kelvin Chan in London and AP Technology Writer Matt O'Brien in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this story.

___

This story corrects that the Urumqi fire was on Thursday, Nov. 24, not Friday.

tempo_n_groove

I mentioned this in the vaccines page.  China has done a 180 on lockdowns since these protests.  The government must have shit their pants seeing the people rise up like this.

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/china-threatens-us-entities-over-balloon-incident-a9edd8db532f6cda9bace43b94051e7a

  

Japan government Japan China

China threatens US entities over downing of balloon

Today

BEIJING (AP) — China said Wednesday it will take measures against U.S. entities related to the downing of a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the American East Coast.

At a daily briefing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin gave no details and did not identify the targets of the measures.

China says the balloon was a unmanned weather airship that was accidentally blown off course and accuses the U.S. of overreacting in bringing it down with a missile fired from an F-22 fighter jet.

Since the Feb. 4 downing of the balloon, the United States has sanctioned six Chinese entities it said are linked to Beijing’s aerospace programs.

RELATED COVERAGE

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The U.S. House of Representatives subsequently voted unanimously to condemn China for a “brazen violation” of U.S. sovereignty and efforts to “deceive the international community through false claims about its intelligence collection campaigns.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken also canceled a visit to Beijing that many hoped would stabilize ties that have cratered amid disputes over trade, human rights, Taiwan and China's claim to the South China Sea.

While China denies the balloon was a military asset, it has yet to say what government department or company was responsible.

After initially expressing regret over the balloon's entry into U.S. airspace, China has returned spying accusations against Washington, alongside its threats of retaliation.

“China firmly opposes this and will take countermeasures in accordance with the law against the relevant U.S. entities that undermine China’s sovereignty and security,” Wang said at Wednesday's briefing.

China will “resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and its legitimate rights and interests," Wang said.

Also Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel said the Chinese balloon's intrusion was part of a pattern of aggressive behavior by Beijing.

Emanuel noted China’s recent beaming of military-grade laser on a Philippine coast guard patrol vessel, the harassment of U.S. planes by Chinese jets and China's opening of illegal police stations in the U.S., Ireland and other countries.

“The balloon to me is not an isolated incident,” Emanuel said.

If China wants to be a respected member of the international community, “then you act appropriately to certain basic premises. that is you don’t open police stations in other countries ignorant of their laws as if your laws don’t have any boundaries,” he said.

“This is not exactly the qualities and characteristics of the good neighbor policy,” the ambassador said, referring to China's outreach to countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

On Tuesday, Japan’s Defense Ministry said at least three flying objects spotted in Japanese airspace since 2019 were strongly believed to have been Chinese spy balloons. It said it has protested and requested explanations from Beijing.

Senior lawmakers in Japan’s governing party on Wednesday said they were considering expanding the Self Defense Force law to also include violations of Japanese airspace by foreign balloons.

___

Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.

mickeyrat

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4079680-china-imposes-export-controls-on-rare-minerals-used-to-make-semiconductor-chips/?fbclid=IwAR3lGXQdKTyY5OyvB8V7z8B3FD9fUjHJRRaNwLaTzQexfxFWEwUYc-p7Zsc

 

China imposes export controls on rare minerals used to make semiconductor chips

by Zack Budryk - 07/03/23 4:48 PM ET

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The Chinese government on Monday announced new limits on the exportation of two rare metals necessary for the production of semiconductors and electric vehicles.

Beginning Aug. 1., the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said exports of the metals germanium and gallium will be allowed only if exporters secure licenses from the ministry, a move it called essential to “protect national security and interests.”

Although the ministry did not go into detail about the reasons for the new restrictions, an editorial in the state-owned China Daily following the announcement blasted the Netherlands for its export controls on semiconductor components.

The editorial also noted that the U.S. is home to the largest germanium mines in the world but “seldom exploits them.” Russia, Belgium and Canada also produce germanium, while Russia, Ukraine, Japan and South Korea also produce gallium.

China leads the world in total production of both metals. The country produces about 650,000 kilograms of gallium per year, about 94 percent of global production. The nation has been dramatically increasing production since 2019, when environmental measures curtailed the use of similar metals.

The U.S., by contrast, has no current domestic source of the metal, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. China was also the largest germanium producer as of 2021,

continues......

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1709373033347957136?t=cweuAamYVb7kEt4SynqVbw&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1714750505446990334?t=ORNaL7pNYtXYakoJFjzAaw&s=19

mickeyrat

where are iPhones made?

https://twitter.com/ChudsOfTikTok/status/1715286544066441298?t=QpaZG7H6flc4MP_a6ltBeA&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1717654722763460659?t=AivDUpCzFqYOUGO-ujSo_w&s=19

https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1717654825670774988?t=e1BrFg3XCA372mWUilDfwQ&s=19

mickeyrat

https://twitter.com/igorsushko/status/1720697033718468746?t=-3Jnqp0U4qhuSbmRl665Ew&s=19

mickeyrat

this even before fuckstick assumes office.... unrelated to him specifically but add this to the projection of his tariffs on China?

strap in.

https://apnews.com/article/china-us-tech-semiconductor-chip-gallium-6b4216551e200fb719caa6a6cc67e2a4

mickeyrat

does a statement that this is seen as an attack on nato put a stop to it?

https://www.threads.net/@kyivpost.official/post/DECcPQmoxxs?xmt=AQGzoVxr-QRvg151ls-e6Dha0YxT1N0o24PowWNYm9HUmQ

https://www.threads.net/@iramiraira/post/DECP51KIGKW?xmt=AQGzkdTeP7wkrMFQpZghoUclIRPSdO3c__uNPhVHsHCFlg

mickeyrat

important read.....

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/china-military-budget-nuclear-stockpile-pentagon-report?r=ad9ei&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

shecky

shecky

Pres. Trump Sees China as #1 Threat, See More Here

Home | Newsfront

Tags: china | hackers | ports | power | grid | whitehouse

Biden White House: China Can Close Down Ports, Power Grid

By Eric Mack    |   Sunday, 05 January 2025 12:35 PM EST

The Biden White House made a stunning admission that Chinese hackers have the ability to cripple the American power grid and ports, and it is reportedly not just run-of-the-mill intrusions but increasingly sophisticated actors with unparalleled skills.

Jake Sullivan, national security adviser, had known about the Chinese hackers' ability to knock out critical infrastructure for more than a year, sources told The Wall Street Journal.

In the fall of 2023 he had warned telecommunications and technology executives in a secret White House meeting, seeking Big Tech's help in protecting American lives and infrastructure from hacks.

Since then there have been at least nine U.S. telecom companies hacked, according to deputy national security adviser for cybersecurity Anne Neuberger.

"We will never know regarding the scope and scale of this," she told the Journal. "They were very careful about their techniques."

The hacks have morphed from mere "keyboard warriors — once seen as the cyber equivalent of noisy, drunken burglars" to now be "soldiers" with "astonishing skill level and stealth," according to the Journal.

"They're going to take down our grid," far-east expert Gordon Chang told Newsmax's "Sunday Report." "They're going to take down everything we have. We are going to be like an 1850s country without the things that we've been accustomed to, that operate our country."

Former Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity expert Brandon Wales warned that hacks are the "key battlefield in any future conflict" with China, he told the Journal.

It is the front-line of cyberwarfare, he added, "designed to ensure they prevail by keeping the U.S. from projecting power, and inducing chaos at home."

"Cyberspace is a fiercely contested battlefield," Jake Sullivan told the paper. "We have made considerable progress, but serious vulnerabilities remain in sectors where we don’t have mandatory cybersecurity requirements."

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said the U.S. vulnerability is "breathtaking."

"It's shocking how exposed we are, and still are," he added.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington's spokesman Liu Pengyu blamed the U.S. for propaganda and warned the U.S. to stop its own hacking campaigns.

"Some in the U.S. seem to be enthusiastic about creating various types of 'typhoons,'" Pengyu told the Journal. "The U.S. needs to stop its own cyberattacks against other countries and refrain from using cybersecurity to smear and slander China."

Eric Mack ✉

Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.

Halifax2TheMax

shecky said:

Pres. Trump Sees China as #1 Threat, See More Here

Home | Newsfront

Tags: china | hackers | ports | power | grid | whitehouse

Biden White House: China Can Close Down Ports, Power Grid

By Eric Mack    |   Sunday, 05 January 2025 12:35 PM EST

The Biden White House made a stunning admission that Chinese hackers have the ability to cripple the American power grid and ports, and it is reportedly not just run-of-the-mill intrusions but increasingly sophisticated actors with unparalleled skills.

Jake Sullivan, national security adviser, had known about the Chinese hackers' ability to knock out critical infrastructure for more than a year, sources told The Wall Street Journal.

In the fall of 2023 he had warned telecommunications and technology executives in a secret White House meeting, seeking Big Tech's help in protecting American lives and infrastructure from hacks.

Since then there have been at least nine U.S. telecom companies hacked, according to deputy national security adviser for cybersecurity Anne Neuberger.

"We will never know regarding the scope and scale of this," she told the Journal. "They were very careful about their techniques."

The hacks have morphed from mere "keyboard warriors — once seen as the cyber equivalent of noisy, drunken burglars" to now be "soldiers" with "astonishing skill level and stealth," according to the Journal.

"They're going to take down our grid," far-east expert Gordon Chang told Newsmax's "Sunday Report." "They're going to take down everything we have. We are going to be like an 1850s country without the things that we've been accustomed to, that operate our country."

Former Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity expert Brandon Wales warned that hacks are the "key battlefield in any future conflict" with China, he told the Journal.

It is the front-line of cyberwarfare, he added, "designed to ensure they prevail by keeping the U.S. from projecting power, and inducing chaos at home."

"Cyberspace is a fiercely contested battlefield," Jake Sullivan told the paper. "We have made considerable progress, but serious vulnerabilities remain in sectors where we don’t have mandatory cybersecurity requirements."

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said the U.S. vulnerability is "breathtaking."

"It's shocking how exposed we are, and still are," he added.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington's spokesman Liu Pengyu blamed the U.S. for propaganda and warned the U.S. to stop its own hacking campaigns.

"Some in the U.S. seem to be enthusiastic about creating various types of 'typhoons,'" Pengyu told the Journal. "The U.S. needs to stop its own cyberattacks against other countries and refrain from using cybersecurity to smear and slander China."

Eric Mack ✉

Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.

So, have we moved on from drones, to domestic terrorists reported as foreign terrorists, back to drones, and now on to chiiiiiina? BOO!

Zod

i'm always shocked sensitive systems are connected to the internet.  why not make them off line.  It's hard to move info off/on the system, but you can't hack something if you can't connect to it?

mickeyrat

https://apnews.com/article/china-cyber-integrity-sanctions-534d16a4a9c37a46dd7046cc4fe0f751