China

Archived

Leading up to the January 19 [2025] deadline for TikTok to be acquired by a non-Chinese owner or face being banned in the United States, a vocal handful of TikTok users began migrating to Xiaohongshu (XHS), a similar video-sharing app designed for users in China. One ‘TikTok refugee’ posted on XHS, “we decided to piss off our government and download an actual Chinese app.” Another American TikTok user who recently migrated to XHS told Rest of the World: “I don’t think China cares what I am doing, I think it is just a way [for the US government] to control us.”

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Apathetic questions like “What are they going to do with my data?” reveal a lack of awareness among the American public on how the Chinese government has, in fact, found notable success in using international American tech companies such as Apple, LinkedIn, and Zoom to censor political opposition and target dissidents across the world.

The issues the Chinese government deems sensitive—whether it be feminism within the country or the mass detention of Uyghurs—might have no visible or direct impact on most American social media users. However, for those who are victimized by such issues or who speak out about them, China’s shadow over international social media and tech is a painfully felt arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s transnationally oppressive efforts to curb political opposition.

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The heavily publicized move to XHS, although unlikely to be significant or sustained, is a dramatic signal of how US lawmakers and the American public are increasingly alienated from effectively responding to the influence of the CCP over multinational tech companies, which is being used to push party narratives. Incredibly, a vocal portion of what appears to be liberal American social media users and influencers enthusiastically supported a platform that has overt and fast-acting censorship algorithms that further the CCP’s human rights abuses and persecution of dissidence. An underrecognized but glaring contradiction emerges when those who support progressive causes centered around social justice and human rights flock to an app that caters to blanket bans on “sensitive” content such as the Uyghur incarceration, Tibetan human rights, the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or any one of 546 derogatory nicknames for Xi Jinping.

Many of the biggest names to move to XHS have been outspoken about Israel’s human rights abuses in Gaza, LGBTQ+ advocacy, and American racial violence. The effort to ban TikTok and public reactions to it reveal how the issue of Chinese human rights has largely become sidelined within US liberal advocacy, while being co-opted by American conservative, China-hawk rhetoric that is often ineffective at curbing oppression.

This public ignorance and insufficiency in addressing the human rights implications of digital policy pose broader dangers in preventing an effective awareness or regulatory response to the broader arms of influence the CCP casts over multinational tech companies, whether it be the suspicious ban of the Chinese subreddit r/real_China_irl, the ban of Apple’s Airdrop feature during the Whitepaper movement, or Zoom shutdowns of Tiananmen commemorations.

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The public’s indifference to the use of American tech companies to target or undermine those who speak out against the Chinese government, but explosive reaction to the ban of their favorite social media app, empowers the CCP’s oppression.

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Clearly nobody commenting here is going to read this article (since they prefer to upvote and downvote on the basis of headlines alone - or on the hypothetical ideological slant of the source) but if others do, they will find it very interesting! There's no obvious agenda, it's just a thoughtful piece reflecting on China and its history, and what lessons - both positive and negative - can be gleaned by the rest of us.

Archived

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Joshua Wong was on Friday charged with conspiring to collude with foreign forces under Hong Kong’s Beijing-imposed National Security Law.

The prominent activist, who was one of 45 opposition figures jailed under the National Security Law last year over their participation in unofficial “primaries”in 2020, faced the new national security offence in court on Friday.

Under the new charge, Wong is reportedly accused of conspiring with self-exiled activist Nathan Law and “other persons unknown” between July 2020 and November 2020 to request foreign countries or organizations to impose sanctions, blockades or engage in other hostile activities against Hong Kong or China. The new charge carries a potential life sentence.

Wong was previously sentenced to four years and eight months for “conspiracy to commit subversion” in Hong Kong’s largest prosecution under the National Security Law.

Hong Kong’s human rights situation has deteriorated dramatically since 2020, with more than 300 people arrested for violating the Beijing-imposed National Security Law or a colonial-era “sedition” law. In addition, the so-called Article 23 legislation introduced last year by the local authorities has further deepened repression and silenced opposition voices in the city.

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• China May PPI -3.3% y/y, worst in 22 months
• Core inflation +0.6% y/y, but analyst warn of fragility
• Deflationary pressures likely to last for a while longer, economist says

China's producer deflation deepened to its worst level in almost two years in May while consumer prices extended declines, as the economy grappled with trade tensions and a prolonged housing downturn.

Uncertainties from a tariff war with the United States and weak consumption at home have rattled sentiment and fuelled expectations of more policy stimulus to combat deflationary pressures.

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The producer price index fell 3.3% in May from a year earlier, worse than a 2.7% decline in April and the deepest contraction in 22 months, National Bureau of Statistics data showed on Monday. That compared with an estimated 3.2% fall in a Reuters poll.

"China continues to face persistent deflationary pressure," said Zhiwei Zhang, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management. "The price war in the auto sector is another signal of fierce competition driving prices lower. I am also concerned about the property prices which resumed their downward trend in recent months after a period of stabilization," he said.

With households cautious about spending due to income pressures, some companies have resorted to price discounts to boost sales, prompting the authorities to urge an end to the auto industry's bruising price wars.

Cooling factory activity also highlights the impact of U.S. tariffs on the world's largest manufacturing hub, dampening faster services growth as suspense lingers over the outcome of U.S.-China trade talks set to resume in London on Monday.

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The consumer price index dipped 0.1% last month from a year earlier, after falling by the same amount in April and slightly better than a Reuters poll forecast of a 0.2% decline. CPI slid 0.2% on a monthly basis, compared with a 0.1% increase in April, and matched economists' predictions of a 0.2% decline.

Fragile domestic demand remains a drag on China's economy despite a recent flurry of policy support measures.

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Original NYT article (paywalled)

In public, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia says his country’s growing friendship with China is unshakable — a strategic military and economic collaboration that has entered a golden era.

But in the corridors of Lubyanka, the headquarters of Russia’s domestic security agency, known as the F.S.B., a secretive intelligence unit refers to the Chinese as “the enemy.”

This unit, which has not previously been disclosed, has warned that China is a serious threat to Russian security. Its officers say that Beijing is increasingly trying to recruit Russian spies and get its hands on sensitive military technology, at times by luring disaffected Russian scientists.

The intelligence officers say that China is spying on the Russian military’s operations in Ukraine to learn about Western weapons and warfare. They fear that Chinese academics are laying the groundwork to make claims on Russian territory. And they have warned that Chinese intelligence agents are carrying out espionage in the Arctic using mining firms and university research centers as cover.

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In response, Russian counterintelligence launched a programme titled “Entente-4” just days before the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022. The programme—ironically named after the historical Franco-Russian alliance, was designed to prevent Chinese infiltration at a time when Moscow’s military and intelligence focus had shifted heavily westward.

Since then, according to the report, the FSB has tracked an increasing number of attempts by Chinese intelligence to penetrate Russian political and business circles. The document details orders for surveillance of Russian people closely tied to China and heightened monitoring of the Chinese messaging app WeChat. This includes hacking phones and gathering personal data using a specialised FSB tool.

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Archived

• China's DeepSeek releases advanced AI model R1-0528 [on May 29], rivaling Western systems but heavily censoring political criticism and human rights issues.

• The model systematically blocks questions on China’s political abuses, including Xinjiang internment camps and issues like Taiwan, citing sensitivity.

• Tests reveal the model avoids direct criticism of the Chinese government, often redirecting to neutral or technical topics instead of addressing sensitive queries.

• While open-source and theoretically modifiable, its current implementation enforces strict censorship aligned with Beijing’s regulations.

• Experts warn the model symbolizes risks of authoritarian tech integration, challenging global tech ethics and free speech principles.

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A model built for control

Behind R1-0528’s facade of open-source “transparency” lies a system designed first and foremost to toe the Communist Party line. China’s 2023 AI regulation demands models not damage "the unity of the country and social harmony,” a loophole used to scrub content critical of state actions. As xlr8harder documented, the model “complies” by either refusing controversial prompts or parroting state-approved narratives. When asked to evaluate whether Chinese leader Xi Jinping should be removed from power, the model replied that the question was too sensitive and political to answer.

Such censorship is systemic. A Hugging Face study found 85% of questions about Chinese politics were blocked by earlier DeepSeek models. Now, R1-0528 raises the bar, deleting answers mid-generation. Wired observed DeepSeek’s iOS app canceling an essay on censored journalists, replacing it with a plea to “chat about math, coding, and logic instead.”

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crosspostato da: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/36248806

Archived

It was framed as a purge of “counter-revolutionary” elements, but at its core, it was a campaign to reassert Mao’s authority by turning the population, especially the youth, against the country’s own institutions, intellectuals, and even families.

Millions of students became Red Guards, emboldened by Mao’s rhetoric to dismantle the old world. Schools shut down, libraries were burned, and educators were beaten in the streets. Temples, artworks, and ancient traditions were destroyed in the name of ideological purity.

The upheaval lasted a decade and led to the persecution of millions, the death of hundreds of thousands, and the psychological trauma of a generation. In the short term, it left China culturally and economically paralyzed. In the long term, it created a vacuum where trust in knowledge, civility, and progress had been deliberately destroyed.

It would take decades for China to repair even a fraction of the damage, and some consequences, such as its demographic collapse from later policies like the One Child Rule, were seeded in that same era of authoritarian absolutism.

Fifty years later, in the United States of 2015, Trump accelerated the simmering Culture War created by Republicans in a similar fashion.

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Under Trump, America abandoned not just institutions but ideals. Loyalty to the Constitution became conditional, subordinated to a total allegiance to Trump. Religion became a political tool, hollowed of compassion and reduced to performative wrath.

Education was vilified. Science was mocked. Bureaucrats were demonized. The judiciary was packed, not for fairness but for toxic ideological gain. And every setback, including pandemics, protests, and lost elections, became fuel for conspiracies, each more fantastical than the last.

Much like Mao’s Red Guards, fanatical MAGA loyalists turned against their neighbors, their teachers, and their cities. Facts became “fake news.” An alternative history was rewritten in real time, changing the obvious narrative of what people witnessed with their own eyes.

Paranoia supplanted patriotism. And a cult of personality emerged, not by accident, but as the core mechanism of control. In Trump, millions saw not a leader, but a messiah. He was a flawed, erratic, and cruel little man, but he was theirs.

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In Mao’s case, the revolution became indistinguishable from the man. His image adorned every wall, his quotations were sacred text, and to question his authority was to reject the very identity of the new China. People starved, struggled, and suffered, but they still chanted his name.

Trump’s MAGA cult may not involve Little Red Books, but it carries the same fanaticism. For millions of Americans, no crime is too egregious, no lie too big, no failure too obvious to shake their faith.

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Where Mao promised revolution, Trump promises revenge. And like all personality cults, the truth is irrelevant. Only belief remains.

What the Cultural Revolution did to China is a warning, not a historical footnote. Even long after Mao’s death, the emotional scars, broken families, and lost knowledge continued to haunt the nation. In the U.S., even if Trump were removed from power today, the legacy of Trumpism and its anti-intellectualism, authoritarian yearning, and contempt for civic life has metastasized.

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Where does it end? If history is a guide, it does not end cleanly. It ends in exhaustion. China’s Cultural Revolution collapsed under the weight of its own extremism, but only after immeasurable damage. It took the better part of two generations for Chinese society to begin reconciling with what was lost. Trust in institutions. Respect for scholarship. Hope for a unified future.

For the United States, the cost is already mounting. A generation of children is growing up in classrooms stripped of accurate history, civics, and science. Climate change is dismissed. Gun violence is endemic. Health care remains broken. Economic inequality deepens. And the solution offered by MAGA is not reform but revenge against the educated, the diverse, the compassionate. Against the very idea of shared purpose.

What made the Cultural Revolution so destructive was not just Mao’s power. It was the willing participation of the people. Students who turned in their teachers. Neighbors who reported families. Millions who became perpetrators of a system they thought would elevate them.

The same pattern is emerging in the United States, but with even darker intent. China’s revolution was born out of desperation, a people broken by war, famine, and colonialism, yearning for justice, even if it was misdirected.

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Every rollback of rights, every act of state censorship, every stunt of political theater is done with pride because it hurts the perceived enemy. The victims, who are immigrants, LGBTQ people, the poor, the non-White, the non-Christian, are not collateral damage. They are the targets.

This is how cultural revolutions work. They are not about culture, they are about control. And they do not end when the leader falls. They end when the people stop believing the lie.

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Archived

• Hundreds of millions of users are likely exposed.
• Data leak contained billions of documents with financial data, WeChat and Alipay details.
• The Cybernews research team believes the dataset was meticulously gathered and maintained for building comprehensive behavioral, economic, and social profiles of nearly any Chinese citizen.

The supermassive data leak likely exposed hundreds of millions of users, primarily from China, the Cybernews research team’s latest findings reveal. A humungous, 631 gigabytes-strong database was left without a password, publicizing mind-boggling 4 billion records.

Bob Dyachenko, cybersecurity researcher and owner at SecurityDiscovery.com, together with the Cybernews team, discovered billions upon billions of exposed records on an open instance.

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The database consisted of numerous collections, containing from half a million to over 800 million records from various sources. The Cybernews research team believes the dataset was meticulously gathered and maintained for building comprehensive behavioral, economic, and social profiles of nearly any Chinese citizen.

“The sheer volume and diversity of data types in this leak suggests that this was likely a centralized aggregation point, potentially maintained for surveillance, profiling, or data enrichment purposes,” the team observed.

There’s no shortage of ways threat actors or nation states could exploit the data. With a data set of that magnitude, everything from large-scale phishing, blackmail, and fraud to state-sponsored intelligence gathering and disinformation campaigns is on the table.

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The team managed to see sixteen data collections, likely named after the type of data they included.

The largest collection, with over 805 million records, was named “wechatid_db,” which most likely points to the data coming from the Baidu-owned super-app WeChat.

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The second largest collection, “address_db,” had over 780 million records containing residential data with geographic identifiers. The third largest collection, simply named “bank,” had over 630 million records of financial data, including payment card numbers, dates of birth, names, and phone numbers.

Possessing only these three collections would enable skilled attackers to correlate different data points to find out where certain users live and what their spending habits, debts, and savings are.

Another major collection in the dataset was named in Mandarin, which roughly translates to “three-factor checks.” With over 610 million records, the collection most likely contained IDs, phone numbers, and usernames.

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"Individuals who may be affected by this leak have no direct recourse due to the anonymity of the owner and lack of notification channels,” the team noted.

China-based data leaks are hardly new. We [Cybernews] ourselves have previously written about a data leak that exposed 1.5 billion Weibo, DiDi, Shanghai Communist Party, and others’ records, or a mysterious actor spilling over 1.2 billion records on Chinese users. More recently, attackers leaked 62 million iPhone users’ records online.

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Archived

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Wuhan is a key node in China’s tech and electric car revolution and a testing ground for driverless fleets of suspended skytrains, buses and taxis. Parts manufactured in Hubei are linked to everything from one of Europe’s favourite electric vehicles to London’s black cabs. Thousands of cars ship out of factories every day.

But at the other end of the production line, workers are shipped in – thousands of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz every year – from Xinjiang, the western region at the centre of a long-running human rights crisis.

Moved as part of a labour transfer scheme that experts call forced labour, these ethnic minorities are coercively recruited by the Chinese state to travel thousands of miles and fill the manufacturing jobs that recent Chinese graduates have spurned. An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found more than 100 brands whose products have been made, in part or whole, by workers moved under this system.

At least 30 major car manufacturers are potentially implicated – including heavyweights in electric vehicles like Tesla and BYD [...] Mercedes, BMW, Volvo and Citroen.

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China’s largest LED chipmaker, Sanan Optoelectronics, has two factories in Fujian and Hubei that take Xinjiang workers transferred by the government. The company makes car lighting for premium brands like Rolls Royce, according to its website. A new partnership in Chongqing manufactures chips for Tesla.

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China’s drive to the top

Since the start of the 2010s, China has funnelled more than $200bn into carmakers, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Spending rose dramatically in 2018 and has stayed high.

Car Valley has been a vital centre for the rise of China’s automotive industry, especially for electric vehicles. Despite its location deep within central China, Car Valley’s international exports have grown steadily in the past five years — reaching more than 100,000 vehicles last year, according to state media.

Cars travel east via river to China’s bustling seaports, and westwards overland by the China-Europe railway. Trade by rail has been buoyed by the Red Sea shipping crisis. A car can roll off the production line in Hubei and arrive at the border of Europe in about two weeks, faster and cheaper than most sea and air freight.

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But Car Valley also “welcomed” at least 1,500 Xinjiang transfer workers in 2022, according to state media reports. The following year, the provincial government said it “helped” more than 4,000 people from Xinjiang into work at 65 Hubei companies.

More followed in 2024. In February that year, Abdulrahman* posted a clip to Douyin, Chinese TikTok, showing himself among a group of ethnic minority workers travelling by train through Xinjiang. All of them were wearing red hats bearing the logo of Xinjiang Zhengcheng Minli Modern Enterprise Services, a labour dispatcher owned by the Xinjiang government.

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The most prominent player in Car Valley is Dongfeng Motors. Founded in the late 1960s by order of Chairman Mao, the state-owned carmaker now builds Europe’s cheapest EV model — Renault’s Dacia Spring — in Hubei. It also produces its luxury EV brand Voyah, available in Europe, in the valley.

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However, China’s EV juggernaut is BYD. Relatively unheard of overseas until recently, the brand has wrested dominance of the global EV market from Tesla and is on a major expansion drive. The maiden voyage of its 7,000-car carrier in January 2024 took thousands of vehicles from China to the Netherlands and Germany. BYD has been endorsed by Leonardo DiCaprio and the footballer Ollie Watkins and nabbed slots on primetime British television to promote its brand.

Evidence gathered during the investigation indicates that at least nine factories tied to BYD – in Hubei, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Tianjin – are also participating in the Xinjiang labour transfer programme.

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Amid a collapsing property market, Chinese consumers have pared back spending, prompting fears of stagflation. The government responded with stimulus packages that incentivised trading in old vehicles for new EVs. “Consumption is an important engine of economic growth," said Liu Ziqing, top official in the Wuhan zone in 2023.

But expanding international exports remains China’s go-to strategy.

In late 2019, the state-owned SAIC Motor was the first to ship electric cars — the re-launched, formerly British MG marque — to Western Europe. The first Polestars, a Geely/Volvo collaboration, arrived the year after. Car exports almost quintupled in the following years to 2023, according to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. That same year, China claimed the mantle of the world’s top car exporter, and it now builds about double the number of vehicles it sells domestically, according to The Wall Street Journal.

And it’s not just Chinese brands now selling Chinese cars. With overproduction, rising competition and a vicious price war in the Chinese market, foreign car brands with factories in the region have switched from serving local consumers to shipping worldwide. Tesla started shipping cars to the EU from China in 2020.

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The UK is the largest European market for Chinese cars, say analysts. One in ten cars imported is now from China. Mike Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, has said that the Chinese market share for EVs is even higher: accounting for China-built cars, like Teslas, roughly one third of all EVs on UK roads are Chinese.

The UK government has signalled that it won’t levy tariffs on China’s EVs — as the US and EU are doing – a decision that was warmly welcomed by BYD. That means Britain has become “a safe haven market for Chinese manufacturers”, said Schmidt. The government’s energy strategy includes significant commitments on pushing EVs, which it sees as “a crucial step towards achieving the UK’s net zero target”. In early 2025, BYD urged EU lawmakers to “copy the UK”.

Last month, the chancellor Rachel Reeves said she would be happy to ride in a Chinese-made EV. But concerns over forced labour were highlighted later that month when the government said that legislation creating a new state-owned energy company would specify a slavery-free supply chain for its solar panels, largely due to concerns over Xinjiang.

“The UK is increasingly a major dumping ground for products made with forced labor,” said Chloe Cranston at Anti-Slavery International, the world's oldest international human rights organisation. Seen a decade ago as at the forefront of legislation to tackle modern slavery, the UK’s approach is now widely seen as obsolete.

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Archived

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According to the measures, introduced by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), each internet user in China will be issued with a unique “web number,” or wanghao (网号), that is linked to their personal information. While these IDs are, according to the MPS notice, to be issued on a strictly voluntary basis through public service platforms, the government appears to have been working on this system for quite some time — and state media are strongly promoting it as a means of guaranteeing personal “information security” (信息安全). With big plans afoot for how these IDs will be deployed, one obvious question is whether these measures will remain voluntary.

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The measures bring China one step closer to centralized control over how Chinese citizens access the internet. The Cybersecurity Law of 2017 merely stipulated that when registering an account on, say, social media, netizens must register their “personal information” (个人信息), also called “identifying information” (身份信息). That led to uneven interpretations by private companies of what information was required. Whereas some sites merely ask for your name and phone number, others also ask for your ID number — while still others, like Huawei’s cloud software, want your facial biometrics on top of it.

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Beyond the key question of personal data security, there is the risk that the cyber ID system could work as an internet kill switch on each and every citizen. It might grant the central government the power to bar citizens from accessing the internet, simply by blocking their cyber ID. “The real purpose is to control people’s behavior on the Internet,” Lao Dongyan cautioned last year.

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Take a closer look at state media coverage of the evolving cyber ID system and the expansion of its application seems a foregone conclusion — even extending to the offline world. Coverage by CCTV reported last month that it would make ID verification easier in many contexts. “In the future, it can be used in all the places where you need to show your ID card,” a professor at Tsinghua’s AI Institute said of the cyber ID. Imagine using your cyber ID in the future to board the train or access the expressway.

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While Chinese state media emphasize the increased ease and security cyber IDs will bring, the underlying reality is more troubling. Chinese citizens may soon find themselves dependent on government-issued digital credentials for even the most basic freedoms — online and off.

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Few dates are as difficult to say out loud in China as June 4. Thirty-six years after the government ordered the bloody repression of peaceful protests in Tiananmen Square that had been demanding political reforms for weeks, the event is invisible in textbooks, the media, the tightly controlled internet, and everyday conversations.

The victims lack official recognition — the total number remains unknown, with estimates ranging from hundreds to several thousand — and their families must grieve in silence, under surveillance, and with little opportunity to pay tribute. The younger generations barely know what happened, and some even doubt it really did. Beyond the country’s borders, however, some of the protesters in exile refuse to let the flame of memory go out, aware that forgetting is also a form of defeat.

Trying to speak to anyone connected with those events inside China is an increasingly complicated task. Censorship, constant surveillance, and fear of personal consequences have imposed a silence that is difficult to break.

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The Tiananmen Mothers have been demanding justice and the truth for 36 years. Their members, mostly women, are now well into their seventies. Many of those who were part of this association have passed away, as they recall in the statement they issued on this year’s anniversary. “For each of the victims’ families, those scenes are seared into their memories and can never be forgotten. This tragedy, one of the most atrocious to have ever occurred in the world, entirely caused by the government and leaders at the time, continues to fill their hearts with pain and has become a nightmare from which they cannot wake up,” they write.

“This is a wound that the Chinese people cannot heal, and it is a pain that will remain forever in the hearts of the families. History will never forget those innocent lives that were taken,” continues the statement, signed by 108 people; Mrs. You heads the list of signatories. A wounded protestor in Tiananmen Square, June 1989.

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“During the white paper protests [which precipitated the country’s opening up in late 2022 after the pandemic], many people used the words ‘my duty,’ which are a legacy of 1989,” Zhou [Fengsuo, one of the student leaders of the 1989 protests] recalls. “It’s my duty,” was the response a student gave in 1989 when a journalist asked him why he went to Tiananmen Square. “It’s still an inspiring movement because it was peaceful. And the solidarity, love, and hope that emerged there are part of human history. And that will be respected and remembered forever, because dignity and freedom against tyranny transcend time and space,” Zhou adds.

Out of five critical tech sectors, “China has the most immediate opportunity to overtake the United States in biotechnology,” the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs said Thursday in its release of a “Critical and Emerging Technologies Index,” covering AI, biotech, semiconductors, space and quantum.

Online culture and censorship have broken the ties that once spurred protesters.

Today, June 4, marks the 36th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre—a moment of both tragedy and hope. It was the bloody end to a nationwide democracy movement that brought together workers and students, the most promising push for political reform in the history of the People’s Republic of China. But despite the courage of many individual Chinese who fought for democracy and the solidarity of their international supporters, there has not been a comparable movement since—and it’s hard to imagine one arising anytime soon.

It wasn't paywalled on my phone, but apparently it is when viewed elsewhere.

One of the key factors mentioned in the article: the erosion of the "the middle ring" from many societies (not just China): "close-ish" but not intimate/familial face-to-face relationships (neighbours, coworkers etc.) that are key to growing a social movement with real world activity.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/36062286

Archived

The Philippines’ top defense official slammed what he called “pretend journalists” at Asia’s premiere defense dialogue on the same day that he criticized Chinese military officials at a panel for asking “propaganda spiels disguised as questions.”

At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Philippine Defense Secretary Giliberto Teodoro, Jr. again continued his streak as among the loudest in the Philippine government to call out China for its disinformation operations and hypocrisy, particularly on issues related to Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, including the West Philippine Sea.

Teodoro led the Philippine delegation to the Shangri-La Dialogue, a premiere defense forum in the region. His strong statements came in several waves — his opening salvo was criticizing China for not sending a delegation to the dialogue.

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Tensions between the Philippines and China have remained high in recent years, especially after the Marcos administration made it policy for the Philippines to be more assertive in its rights and claims in the West Philippine Sea, or parts of the South China Sea that are within the Philippine exclusive economic zone.

The Philippines has reported repeated incidents of harassment in the South China Sea — in the form of tailing, dangerous maneuvers, water cannoning, and ramming — at the hands of Chinese vessels, typically of the China Coast Guard.

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Archived

China and India have approved the construction of the largest capacity of new coal-fired power plants in a decade, as the world’s two most populous nations seek to bolster energy security, according to the International Energy Agency.

China gave the green light to almost 100 gigawatts of new coal-fired plants in 2024, and India a further 15 gigawatts, pushing global approvals to their highest level since 2015, the Paris-based agency said.

“The capacity in coal is increasing,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in an interview as the agency published its annual World Energy Investment report. “But we also see that the capacity utilization rate in China is lower than in previous years, they are mainly using this when there are major challenges to meet the electricity demand.”

AI’s Need for Power Spurs Return of Dirty Gas Turbines Senate to Reinstate US Public Lands Sale to Pay for Tax Cuts European Power Markets Brace for Extreme Heat Over the Summer Coal Power Costs Climb Just as Trump Wants to Prop Up the Fuel

Investments in coal supply continue to tick upward with another 4% increase expected in 2025, a slight slowdown compared with the 6% annual average growth seen over the last five years, the IEA said. “Nearly all the growth in coal investments in 2024 came from China and India to meet domestic demand,” according to the report.

Trends in coal and other carbon-intensive sources may not be conducive to meeting global climate targets.

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• China’s use of critical infrastructure to control downstream water supply will threaten vital economic activities and life.

• China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will leverage rail and road networks to strengthen its positions near the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with India. China’s military-civilian dual-use infrastructure will continue to encroach on disputed lands while posturing the country’s forces to project coercive power and gain an advantage in the next border clash.

• Regional states will no longer harbor Tibetan refugee camps, while also adopting increasingly authoritarian practices made possible by surveillance systems exported by China.

Archived

Until now, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has maintained a slow, methodical approach to eroding the sovereignty of nations in the Tibetan Plateau. However, the countdown to 2035 will see increasing pressure on any democracies and hybrid regimes that are not in step with the CCP’s plans.

China's initial method of pressure will rely on the spread of influence operation campaigns to sow distrust and shape foreign influence. In sync with these campaigns, the CCP will employ irregular warfare tactics to foment its expansionist goals. Maintaining a free and open Tibetan Plateau will require an extensive and tailored strategic approach. The key factors to mitigate PRC expansion involve strengthening the border bond between India and Nepal, enhancing intelligence collection sharing, investing in cybersecurity defense, and leveraging economic measures.

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Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD has added an advanced driver-assistance system for most of its models at no additional cost, catapulting its shares to a record high.

Chinese customers can now experience the carmaker’s proprietary “God’s Eye” driver-assistance system in models that cost as little as 69,800 yuan ($9,555).

Analysts said the move could further fuel a brutal, ongoing price war in the world’s biggest car market.

Shares of BYD surged more than 4% to a record high, according to Refinitiv data, when trading in Hong Kong began on Tuesday. Its shares were last trading at 330 Hong Kong dollars ($42).

“2025 will be the first year of intelligent driving for all,” BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu said in an event from its headquarters in Shenzhen on Monday.

Previously, the “God’s Eye” feature, introduced in 2023 to assist car navigation, was only offered in BYD models costing more than $30,000.

Developing countries are grappling with a tidal wave of debt repayments and interest costs to China, as bills come due from its Belt and Road lending surge in the 2010s, new Lowy Institute analysis reveals.

Pressure from Chinese state lending, along with surging repayments to a range of international private creditors, is putting enormous financial strain on developing economies. The result is rising debt vulnerability and the crowding out of critical spending priorities such as health, education, poverty reduction, and climate adaptation.

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Key findings

• In 2025, the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries will make record high debt repayments totalling $22 billion to China. Beijing has transitioned from capital provider to net financial drain on developing country budgets as debt servicing costs on Belt and Road Initiative projects from the 2010s now far outstrip new loan disbursements.

• China is the largest source of bilateral debt service for developing countries, accounting for more than 30% of all such payments in 2025. For the poorest and most vulnerable countries, payments to China make up a quarter of all debt service costs, outweighing both multilateral lenders and private creditors. No single bilateral creditor has been responsible for such a large share of developing country debt service in the past 50 years.

• China continues to finance strategic and resource-critical partners despite a broader collapse in its global lending. The largest recipients of new lending include immediate neighbours, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia, and developing countries that are critical mineral or battery metal exporters, such as Argentina, Brazil, Congo DR, and Indonesia.

• China is grappling with a dilemma of its own making: it faces growing diplomatic pressure to restructure unsustainable debt, and mounting domestic pressure to recover outstanding debts, particularly from its quasi-commercial institutions. But a retrenchment in Western aid and trade is compounding difficulties for developing countries while squandering any geopolitical advantage for the West.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/35975530

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While the timing may be coincidental, the implications of Chinese military technology appearing on a Russian battlefield are anything but. If verified, this would mark the first documented combat deployment of a Chinese laser system in Ukraine and could represent a significant escalation in the shadow conflict between China and the West.

The short video opens with Russian troops interacting with a touchscreen interface, followed by a laser beam test against a steel plate. Later, dramatic thermal camera footage shows the apparent shooting down of several unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which pro-Russian sources claim were Ukrainian.

Social media users and military analysts quickly began dissecting the clip. The most consistent claim: the system is China’s “Low-Altitude Laser Defending System” (LASS), also known as the Silent Hunter — a high-energy laser platform capable of neutralizing drones and other low-flying aerial threats with silent, invisible beams.

Another contender: the Shen Nung 3000/5000, a modular, truck-mounted laser system developed by the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics and already spotted in Tehran, Iran, in late 2023, during a sermon by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. There, it had appeared inactive. In this video, however, the system is allegedly seen in action — marking what could be its combat debut.

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Notably, Russian state media and the Ministry of Defense have not confirmed the system’s origin, performance, or even existence — standard operating procedure in matters of classified defense technology.

Equally silent has been China. The Chinese government has consistently denied providing offensive weaponry to Russia for use in Ukraine. In public statements, Chinese officials maintain a posture of “neutrality,” reiterating their commitment to a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

Fabian Hinz, a respected analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), believes the device shown in the video resembles the Shen Nung 3000/5000, not the Silent Hunter. “While the sensor arrangement seems to have been altered, the system observed in Russian service strongly resembles the Chinese Shen Nung 3000/5000 anti-drone laser,” he noted.

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Given that both Russia and Iran have deeply integrated defense relationships with China, it is plausible that similar technology was transferred under bilateral or trilateral arrangements — either directly or via third-party components and dual-use exports.

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the laser video surfaced just a day before Ukraine launched Operation Spiderweb — one of the most consequential drone attacks in the war so far. Using long-range drones launched from trucks smuggled deep into Russian territory, Ukrainian forces targeted key airfields, reportedly destroying up to 40 aircraft, including strategic Tu-95 and Tu-160 bombers — platforms central to Russia’s long-range cruise missile capabilities.

Ukrainian security services estimated the damage at $7 billion, marking the attack as not just a tactical success but a strategic humiliation for Russia. Pro-Russian commentators online were livid, with some describing the attack as Russia’s “Pearl Harbor moment.”

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Allegations of Chinese support for Russia’s war machine are not new — but they are growing more specific.

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