
China’s web censors go into overdrive as President Xi Jinping consolidates power - anthonyleecook
https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/26/china-web-censors-go-into-overdrive/
======
ilamont
I have one Chinese friend who employs a double entendre, calling him "Xitler"

In all seriousness, this is a black period for Chinese people and China's
neighbors. The fledgling democracy in Hong Kong, and democratic nations around
China's periphery including Taiwan, Japan, Nepal, and India should be very
wary dealing with a strongman who will stop at nothing to further his power
and nationalism-focused legacy.

~~~
ender89
Japan has nothing to worry about. The Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and
Security Between the United States and Japan, signed after WWII, basically
means that Japan AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA are responsible to ensure
the national security of Japan (It's actually mutual with the understanding
that the Japanese constitution forbids deploying armed forces abroad). In
other words, if china is actually aggressive towards Japan in any way, the
full force of the United States armed forces will stand with them. As one of
China's main trading partners, China doesn't want to pick a fight with the
united states any more than we want to pick a fight with China. Similarly,
South Korea has little to fear from China (even if they're propping up North
Korea to do it), since the US has a similar relationship there. Nepal and
Taiwan are screwed. India... its hard to imagine things going worse for India
to be honest. Lets focus on getting most of their people clean, proper toilets
before we start worrying about the influence of communist dictatorships, eh?

~~~
ilamont
Mutual defense treaties have a poor track record in the face of heavily armed,
aggressive regimes playing up real or imagined injustices while undermining
political and military obstacles. If the alliance is weak, disaster can
result.

Examples abound - Poland and France both had mutual defense treaties with
various allies that failed when Germany invaded. In Japan's backyard, the
Philippines lost territory in the South China Sea to China after it decided to
cut ties with the U.S. military. As soon as the U.S. pulled away, the Chinese
PLA moved right in. An international tribunal in The Hague ruled China's
actions were completely illegal, but China has since strengthened its hold by
building landing strips and military fortifications on the reefs and small
islets.

The Japan/U.S. alliance is strong, but relationships and power profiles can
change. Xi's not going anywhere, and he can play the long game when it comes
to the Diaoyutai and other territorial claims.

~~~
rbp
Minor quibble - UK entered WW2 because of their mutual defense treaty with
Poland

------
phyller
It's amazing to me how China is so effectively creating a 1984-type situation
without much stir among the rest of the world. These chat programs are _super_
important for everyday life in China. The same company that provides chatting
also provides your ability to pay for everything, and a credit score that
determines what you can buy, how much you pay, and more. So if you say
something you shouldn't, this could very easily be something where your entire
life is destroyed. If they choose, these ultimately government controlled
companies can easily make it so you can't buy things anymore, you are not
trusted anywhere, and even your friends all disconnect with you because your
bad score could affect theirs.

Pretty scary.

It will be interesting to see how the Chinese government reacts to globally
available, unfiltered internet via satellite, like the one SpaceX is making
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_(satellite_constellat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_\(satellite_constellation\))

~~~
coldtea
> _It 's amazing to me how China is so effectively creating a 1984-type
> situation without much stir among the rest of the world._

This is perhaps because of several things:

1) That's the way "the rest of the world's" governments and corporate
interests want their own countries to go, and have been pushing towards since
decades. The rest of the world's leaders (most of them) could not care less
for the lip service they pay to "freedom" et al.

2) A superpower gets to do whatever it likes "without much stir from the rest
of the world". Heck, France and Britain had 1/3rd of the world, outside or
their national borders, enslaved "without much stir from the rest of the
world" until well after WWII. And suddenly the "rest of the world" will care
for what China does to its own citizens?

3) It's nobody's business really what China does to its own citizens. There
are other countries with the worlds largest prison population and most police
shootings (by crazy amounts, like having 25% of the worlds prisoners for 4% of
the worlds population), and they continue in that path "without much stir
among the rest of the world". Why would it be different here?

~~~
mygo
It’s amazing to me that the argument of “don’t go after those guys for what
they are doing when those other guys are doing bad things too” never dies.
Even with all of its blatant fallacy. It will persist until the end of time.
And solve nothing.

~~~
Passthepeas
I think it does more to illustrate hypocrisy and priorities than anything;
it's like worrying about another driver's flat tire, when your own car is
literally on fire. Though I do understand and agree with your overall
sentiment.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Huh? No, these are simply USSR-style what-aboutisms that China has inherited.

~~~
coldtea
Accusation of "what-aboutism" is the real BS cold-war trick (notice how it's
also one-sided itself: it's an accusation against the other side of which the
good people of our side are clear).

It amounts to "put on blinders and follow your side when it accuses the other,
and never see things in perspective".

It generally means that only one side has the right to criticize (if the other
side answers back, it's "whataboutism") -- and that third parties shouldn't
call bot the pot and kettle black (it's whataboutism to even mention the pot),
and instead should listen to the pot accusing the kettle of blackness.

Even worse when it's not bloody business of the pot what the kettle does --
but they want to make it so anyway, because they like to boss other kitchen
implements around.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
There is nothing different from the above what aboutisms to the ones the USSR
used, they are actually almost verbatim. China throws around logical fallacies
(what aboutism, red herrings, slippery slopes) all the time, it makes me
wonder if chinese high schools teach their positive use in rhetoric/debate
classes.

I’m one of the first ones to criticize the USA, there is plenty that is wrong
to talk about! But open up a thread that is critical of the USA and you’ll
rarely see Americans bringing up problems in China, yet discussions about
China almost always lead back to discussions about the USA! When china is
ready to talk about its problems without referring to the USA, well, it will
be ready to become a superpower. Right now they just come off as insecure.

------
eddieplan9
Many sites hosted outside of China that Chinese expats frequent (like
[http://mitbbs.com](http://mitbbs.com)) have also been flooded with pro-
amendment messages.

Google Translate of the site:
[https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-
CN&tl=en&...](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-
CN&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mitbbs.com%2F)

~~~
tonylinn80
Not surprising at all. In fact, many of the Chinese expats (visitors of
mitbbs.com) are pro-china in general. They become less agreeing to western
values after spending years in US. (I am one of those examples myself)

~~~
cornholio
One should asume "pro-China" means against dictatorship and presidents for
life, right?

There is no people or culture on Earth that stands to gain from oligarchy.

~~~
phyller
I'm an American, I've had many close Chinese friends. What follows is
completely anecdotal, but I've spent a lot of time trying to wrap my mind
around it, for what it is worth.

Our cultures are incredibly different. At the same time our cultures are both
unusually strong. And for some reason, part of American culture seems to be
assuming everyone in the world is just like us, just in different
circumstances. This is extremely foolish.

It took me quite a while to be able to understand some things about my Chinese
friends that really confused and sometimes frustrated me. A big part of it is
the American concept of freedom and personal independence is practically part
of our DNA, while it is not valued very highly by many Chinese. Stability,
peace and order are highly valued. Of course it would be nice to be able to do
whatever you want, but it is much more important that the government is
strong. Period. And you get away with what you can as an individual (I've
noticed much less respect for the rule of law, much greater respect for
personal relationships). And of course many (not all) are highly patriotic, as
a great culture with a great history that has been under great pressure for
generations, and feels that the rest of the world doesn't respect them like
they should or wants to see them fail.

I guess I'd sum it up, that it seems to me an unusual amount of mainland
Chinese would choose strength over freedom, and almost all mainland Chinese
see themselves as part of a bigger society and a somewhat oppressive
government is inevitable and it is futile to resist.

In America, we would prefer to free 10 guilty people than unjustly imprison 1
innocent person. In China, the concept is reversed, it is better to imprison
10 innocent people than let 1 guilty person go free. I actually heard someone
say that. Think about it.

~~~
yusuke10
Alot of the opposite is true. Alot of the Chinese old timers remember the
brutality they suffered under Mao and are very upset at this current event.
Many of them want to sell their factories and move the money to HK (and
eventually out of China).

~~~
backspin
See the difference is you are talking about people who own a factory, but in
old days, the majority is those who were short on food and supplies.

------
AnimalMuppet
I could go downtown tonight, stand on the street corner, and shout "F--- the
president!" at the top of my lungs. What would happen? I might get dirty
looks. I might get some people shaking my hand. And I might - _might_ \- get
an angry tweet from the president. I probably would not get either arrested or
beaten up. (And this isn't a political statement. I could have done the same
under the previous president, with the same results except for the tweet.)

China's touchiness on these matters reveals the Communist Party's insecurity.

~~~
echevil
I think it's more just because of them afraid of "losing face" like almost all
Chinese people do. That's quite deep in Chinese culture.

Even the most powerful emperors in Chinese history (who would have nothing to
be afraid of) still executes those who talked ill of them

~~~
jerf
It's not just China. Being able to publicly yell "Fuck the $RULER" is an
anomaly in human history, not the norm.

In the US, the current party in power is always on the verge of instituting
totalitarianism. My plan is to start worrying about it when people face
systematic government consequences for actually mouthing off about the ruling
party. Right now, to a first approximation, nobody has in a long time. Any
examples that anxious partisans will rush to contradict me will simply further
demonstrate my point with how minor and unsystematic they are in the US.

(If anything gets you in trouble in 2018, it's not mouthing off about the
ruling party, it's pissing off the social media mob. That may yet be something
we have to culturally reckon with, but it remains the case that it's not the
government doing it.)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I suspect you're getting downvoted for this line:

> In the US, the current party in power is always on the verge of instituting
> totalitarianism.

And I'm pretty sure that you didn't mean it like people are taking it. Let's
start with, I don't know, FDR. He was on the verge of implementing
totalitarianism. Really! Just ask the Republicans of 1933! Clinton was. So was
Bush. So was Obama. So is Trump. Or so some vocal minority says.

I'm pretty sure jerf is dismissive of all that noise, and intends to ignore
it... within limits.

> My plan is to start worrying about it when people face systematic government
> consequences for actually mouthing off about the ruling party. Right now, to
> a first approximation, nobody has in a long time. Any examples that anxious
> partisans will rush to contradict me will simply further demonstrate my
> point with how minor and unsystematic they are in the US.

Downvoters, I think you're misreading one line, and reacting based on your
misread.

~~~
theandrewbailey
>> In the US, the current party in power is always on the verge of instituting
totalitarianism.

> And I'm pretty sure that you didn't mean it like people are taking it.

That blanket absolutist statement is at best false, and is easily disproven
with the current situation. Then the whole argument is undermined by the last
paragraph about angering the social media mob.

~~~
jerf
"easily disproven with the current situation."

If you mean that the current party isn't instituting totalitarianism, I would
agree with that. Trump has taken more steps to put down government power than
to pick it up. A totalitarian does not lower taxes, which is a form of
government power, nor does he cut regulations, which is obviously a form of
power. You can argue about the effectiveness, but there's no way to argue that
into an _increase_ in power.

If you mean that nobody is accusing Trump of being totalitarian... I have no
idea how you could possibly have that impression. Google "Trump" and
"authoritarian" together and start reading.

And if you don't fear the social media mob, poke them and see how you like it.
Talk is cheap; _prove_ you aren't afraid of them, and that you get away with
it, and I'll reconsider.

~~~
theandrewbailey
I understand that many people accuse Trump of being authoritarian. The
American people have a very diverse range of viewpoints. Some group somewhere
has always accused the sitting president of going out of bounds, being a
fascist, going to take our guns away, etc.

I don't doubt that the social media mob is dangerous, but I perceive that it
is mostly against the current US administration.

------
gigatexal
I hope that in my lifetime we see a revolution in China that overthrows the
current authoritarian state and things like the great firewall and quasi-
private/state run agencies go the way of the dodo bird.

Unfortunately I don't see big American companies doing anything but continuing
to court China and their growing class of wealthy consumers.

~~~
blackrock
Are you saying that you want to see 100 million dead Chinese people? Because
that is what you are implying.

You will not have a revolution without spilling blood.

~~~
tree_of_item
Don't know why you're downvoted, you're 100% correct. It's really easy to call
for a revolution when it's not _your_ country thrown in to turmoil.

------
natecavanaugh
My core belief has always been that as long as China has this culture of
authoritarian and heavy handed internet control, it will always have a self-
imposed limit on their ability to compete. I understand they have a deep
rooted value of stability and that they believe they're keeping their society
from running off the rails, but if they were to allow their citizens to
contribute more to the direction of the government, then the end of the U.S.
hegemony would not just be a possibility, but practically a foregone
conclusion (some seem to think it already is inevitable, but it's been
predicted for so long now, it's starting to feel like the forever predicted
rise of Linux on the desktop).

However, I'd be curious to hear good reasons for China's economy to dominate
the world stage even with this sort of thing constantly happening. I can kind
of understand the brute-force approach of just pure production from a gigantic
population, but India has a comparable population size, but not a comparable
economy, so I tend to think that a large population doesn't guarantee a large
economic output.

There is so much innovation I see happening in the tech of China, but their
fear of their own citizenry and fear of transparency make me think they'll
stay behind their potential.

This could all be my own Western bias for democracy, so I'd love to hear other
thoughts on this.

~~~
diego_moita
I want to think like that but would like to understand the details before
believing in it.

Recently, I read "China's Future" by David Shambaugh. He argues along the same
lines as you. He claims that the development driven by exports and government
investing is exhausted because of growing protectionism, competition from
nearby countries and growing inefficiency on government companies.

Meanwhile the country still has a lot inequality to solve, between west and
the east coast and rural and urban population. It is also getting old very
fast and doesn't have a good welfare network.

Therefore, the only path ahead is development of internal market. He claims
that for this the country needs transparency, the rule of law and diversity of
ideas but I don't think he made it very clear to me, however. Truth is that
autocratic countries (e.g: Russia, Turkey, Cuba, Belarus, etc) are very, very
bad at creating diversified economies. Let's see if China finds a way to do
it.

~~~
germainelol
Really agree on the inequality point, especially in the West around Xinjiang.
Some of the stories my friends have told me about growing up there were
ridiculous.

I think after you travel around China a bit, it's really difficult to see it
as a first world country that's at the forefront of innovation.

You can go to a city like Shenzhen and see all these cool products being
launched and huge skyscrapers, which is impressive given 30 years ago it was
just a fishing village overshadowed by Hong Kong. But then you travel around
and see that a lot of China consists of huge cities with shoddy living
conditions and very limited opportunities.

------
saagarjha
> “Winnie the Pooh” — the Xi’s online nickname

Anyone have the backstory for this?

EDIT: I see a couple of links below that compare him to Winnie the Pooh in
pictures. Is the intent behind it to be derogatory or is it just poking a bit
of fun?

~~~
bwang29
[https://www.google.com/search?q=winnie+the+pooh+tigger+xi+ji...](https://www.google.com/search?q=winnie+the+pooh+tigger+xi+jinping)

~~~
aje403
They look really cute together

------
jwilk
Apparently they also banned the letter "n":

[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=36939](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=36939)

------
peterwwillis
This seems like a fun new opportunity to find new ways to avoid censors.

One way would be to seed messages or websites with pre-loaded meanings, and
use new, unrelated comments to refer to them. Example of a social media feed:

8/15/2017: "Today at noon in the square."

9/15/2015: "I think it's evil and corrupt and we can not stand for it!"

10/22/2017: "The government has taken a new decision today that affects us
all."

11/10/2017: "We must protest this injustice!"

2/27/2018: "10-22-2017 + 9-15-2017 + 11-10-2017 + 8/15/2017"

Obviously this is clunky, but in theory you could chain together random bits
of other people's messages to post a new one, and a censorship bot would have
to be written to merge them all together to filter them; if some of these were
behind logins on other sites, this could be very difficult. You could also
make them less literal and more made up of memes and concepts with hidden
meanings.

------
JustAnotherPat
Remove everything and then let a merciful Xi Jinping give a little semblance
of freedom back. The Chinese will be cheering his name in the street!

------
cryptoz
> "I don’t agree"...phrases banned...

Wait, so you can't say "I don't agree with term limits" in China on Weibo?

Edit: Removed comment about Google.

~~~
kevin_b_er
They don't care. Authoritarian banning of conversations that might criticize
their new dictator is better than letting anything through.

------
jakecrouch
This is why the US should not worry about China as a long-term economic threat
- authoritarianism has never worked. The Soviet Union, 1930s Germany and
Italy, all collapsed. I think the Chinese realize this and are pessemistic
about their own future. The Constitution was designed to make the US
Government as weak as possible, because a strong government ultimately turns
on its people.

~~~
etrevino
I'm not sure why you say this. Germany and Italy didn't collapse-- they were
conquered. The Soviet Union _did_ collapse, it's true, but it collapsed
because of external pressures and sclerotic bureaucracy causing an inability
to adjust to internal problems. In all three cases there was an external force
contributing to the problem. However, there's no reason to assume that China's
authoritarian rule will collapse as well. Indeed, in several Soviet successor
states (including Russia), authoritarianism has reasserted itself.

Authoritarianism is easy to impose and democracy is fragile; the civic
discourse required for a strong and stable democracy relies upon a
considerable amount of mutual respect and rhetorical restraint.

~~~
irq-1
South Korea had decades of dictatorship with a relatively easy transition to
democracy and liberal capitalism.

~~~
etrevino
That's true. It's the maintenance of that democracy that's hard, though. Plus,
it was by no means certain that the country would become a democracy.

------
mrybczyn
I wonder if any tech companies are for or against this "surprising" turn of
events...

[https://phys.org/news/2017-10-china-xi-zuckerberg-cook-
beiji...](https://phys.org/news/2017-10-china-xi-zuckerberg-cook-beijing.html)

------
vfulco
Western corporate types will be freaked out and the dis-investment here will
accelerate

------
briga
From the outside looking in it seems like Xi has been doing a great job
leading China. Are there any serious contenders for Chinese leadership like
Navalny in Russia?

Not to mention that historically there have been many excellent leaders who
rules for decades. An arbitrary term limit can be useful to prevent
corruption, but it's also the reason for the fiasco that is Washington in
2018.

~~~
yusuke10
> From the outside looking in

Exactly, there's your problem. China is suffering from 300%+ debt, capital
outflows (hidden, unreported), fake gdp growth (several provinces have claimed
20-30% fake revenue), demographics time bomb, middle income trap, shrinking
population (800M estimated in 2100), corruption, pollution, belligerent
behaviors against all its neighbors (Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam,
Australia, India, etc), smart people wanting leave, rich people wanting to
leave, etc

~~~
briga
I can think of a number of first world nations sufferings from the same
issues.

~~~
neaden
No you can't. Even Greece doesn't have that level of GDP to debt, let alone
the level of potential fraud in official figures.

