
Dissidents Are Using Shortwave Radio to Broadcast News into China - jonbaer
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/08/how-dissidents-are-using-shortwave-radio-broadcast-news-china/158950/
======
jdietrich
A majority of shortwave stations are engaged in propaganda of some form or
another, beaming a message across international borders. The US has multiple
operations covering the Middle East, Asia, the CIS and Central America, most
of which were historically funded and controlled by the CIA.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Libert...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Liberty)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia)

 _> The station now uses more than 100 radio antennas located in countries all
around China, such as Thailand and Taiwan, which trade the signal — in effect,
playing a game of keepaway with the station’s broadcasting._

Shortwave broadcasters change transmitter sites and frequencies throughout the
day as a matter of routine, because the atmospheric conditions that allow
shortwave signals to travel beyond the horizon are constantly changing. Most
modern shortwave transmitters are steerable and frequency-agile, so they can
be reconfigured in a matter of seconds to provide the optimal coverage of the
target area. Efforts to evade jamming are really just an extension of the
normal operation of a shortwave station.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skywave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skywave)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALLISS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALLISS)

It's surprisingly difficult to jam a shortwave station within your own borders
due to a phenomenon called beam skip - at typical frequencies, there's a large
gap between the line-of-sight coverage area of a transmitter and the longer-
range signals that bounce off the atmosphere. It's just about viable for a
country the size of China, but it would require multiple overlapping
transmitter sites and would be unlikely to provide consistent jamming.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skip_zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skip_zone)

~~~
criddell
I bought a shortwave receiver a couple of years ago. I have great memories
from when I was around 9 or 10 (end of the 1970's) playing with a table top
radio and listening to all kinds of stuff on the shortwave bands.

With my radio, all I could receive were terrible religious stations. Shortwave
is dead in the US.

~~~
swiley
As far as voice goes about all I can here is radio free America (US
propaganda) and the religious stations. But I can hear all kinds of digital
stuff. I think once I was able to decode part of a RTTY transmission from
Germany. Another time I got half of an amerature Morse conversation, I think
the station I heard said they from Ontario.

If you listen carefully with the right space wether there’s all kinds of
stuff. I think most amerature voice uses SSB which is harder to tune than AM
(but I’m not totally sure) and that’s why you hear it less. Plus a lot of
shortwave users like digital since a lot of it is about minimalism and there’s
a limit to how small you can make a voice transmition.

------
euroclydon
As an US citizen, I feel like China's lack of free press and due process is
fundamentally at odds with my countries core values. So maybe we should
ratchet down trade with them.

Now if I'm China, and I'm looking at what Russia just did in the last
presidential election, I'm thinking, let's just buy ourselves a pro-China
candidate here in 2020. And I think our system is still vulnerable.

I don't even know how China got in the WTO in the first place. There were
rumors that they had some significant influence in the Clinton administration,
but I guess the promise of opening up the biggest market in the world to US
companies was too shiny. Bush was too busy going to war to piss anybody else
off. Who know's why Obama didn't do anything...

~~~
xster
Why do you think the US has a free press? The number of US media conglomerates
just went from 6 to 5 this week and they all have the same advertisers. I
don't see anyone having an iota of care about that.

~~~
codedokode
You could also note that today people are turning to Internet instead of
traditional media and what do we see there? A monopoly: Google controls almost
all search, advertising, mobile phone and user-generated video market (except
for adult video), Facebook owns all major Western social networks. So if the
government makes a deal with these two companies, they will be able to control
what majority of Internet users see on their screens. Wouldn't it be nice if
they would see only positive things about one candidate and negative news
about others? Both Facebook and Google are private companies and they are free
to moderate and censor content as they wish. In exchange for a good service,
for example, the government could make legislation more favourable for them.

But no matter how bad is this situation, it cannot be even remotely compared
to authoritarian countries.

~~~
fragmede
The US isn't China (or Russia, or Sweden), but when the number of
conglomerates in the US has shrunk from six to five, and those conglomerates
and their subsidiaries are all run by an elite class of billionares and
hundred-millionaires, all with strong ties to and from various politicians,
let's be honest that, _organizationally_ , the US doesn't look totally
different from China where there are _also_ only a small handful of companies
that control everything, the people that run the are ridiculously wealthy
compared to the middle class?

Especially since China's internal media companies are now run as for-profit
businesses, just like Comcast, Disney, AT&T, FOX - not the parts that Disney
bought, and CBS/Viacom, the five media conglomerates in the US.

It is _necessary_ to do the comparison between authoritarian regimes and
democratically elected governments where all citizens are subject to the rule
of law, because if you squint, they can look similar, and in these trying
times it is _extremely_ important to be aware of the key differences, even if
some things can't be 100% proven inside or outside of a court of law, or
haven't been yet.

Both candidates give giant piles of money to Facebook and Google, and the real
power isn't in pushing one or the other, the important thing is that we don't
look too hard behind the curtain. I'm all for adding select Internet companies
to the list with the five media conglomerates.

Amazon is paying people to post anti-union propaganda on Twitter. Walmart is
firing people for making pro-union posts online. Google controls what pops up
when I type in antifa and Facebook controls if I see my friends' activities
about political rallies in my News Feed.

What's the principled, moral stand going on in Hong Kong right now standing
against the Chinese authoritarian regime?

What's going on in Portland?

~~~
xster
Right. And since it's all about the dogma of Hong Kong these days, no one
spends another analytical moment beyond dogma to look at the fact that Hong
Kong 'press' is a monopoly too [1][2]. And such is the political nature of the
2 tiered colonial society whether it's in Ecuador or Chile or South Vietnam.
An imperial unelected governor (now chief executive) together with a small
group of elite ruling families (who control the functional half of the legco),
each overseeing a monopolized industry, dominates the political discourse and
wealth. Hong Kong never had their populist leader like Singapore's Lee Kuan
Yew to decolonialize and socialize their society. And it's not for lack of
trying. The first chief executive made a whole bunch of attempts to reform the
Hong Kong's economy (which can no longer just skim off the top of all China
trade like it could for the past decades). Productive sectors like digital
park, silicon park, medicine parks were all turned down. The colonial
oligarchy instead turned inwards to monetize their unregulated political and
legal systems, focusing on elite sectors like private banking, wealth
management, real estate etc which does nothing for the common people and the
youth where poverty rate is 20% and cost of housing per median annual income
is double that of San Francisco.

An extradition system strikes right at the heart of the private bankers'
clienteles but the moment the popular protest starts turning towards societal
or class problems like the lack of housing and breaking their House of
Lords++, a _single_ tycoon bought out all the newspapers' front pages urging
restraint for the protest [3].

[1] [https://beta.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-
myth...](https://beta.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myths-about-
hong-kong/2019/06/21/d72eb0b2-935e-11e9-b58a-a6a9afaa0e3e_story.html) [2]
[https://chinaworker.info/en/2013/10/21/4789/](https://chinaworker.info/en/2013/10/21/4789/)
[3] [https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Hong-Kong-protests/Hong-
Ko...](https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Hong-Kong-protests/Hong-Kong-s-Li-Ka-
shing-urges-no-violence-amid-weakening-economy)

------
taf2
I wonder if when starlink goes live globally if it will be something that
allows anyone anywhere to connect to the internet without any great firewall?
It would be like shortwave radio on steroids...

~~~
syedkarim
That's not true. Existing satellites can provide internet access across the
whole world, but the hardware required to access those satellites is often
highly regulated or just illegal for normal citizens to own. A Starlink
terminal will be just as illegal in China in the future as a BGAN/VSAT/Iridium
Certus terminal is today.

------
weld
It won't be long till dissidents are using FT8. Audio is dead.
[http://www.arrl.org/news/ft8-mode-is-latest-bright-shiny-
obj...](http://www.arrl.org/news/ft8-mode-is-latest-bright-shiny-object-in-
amateur-radio-digital-world)

~~~
SamPatt
Probably JS8Call instead. It's an FT8 fork that allows for arbitrary text.
Worth checking out.

~~~
kawfey
It'll take a ridiculously loooooong time for them to even say "CHINA BAD. HK
GOOD. DON'T BELIEVE TV."

VOA experimented successfully with using other MFSK modes that can be decoded
asynchronously, quickly, and with fldigi, and its now a regular occurrence.
[https://voaradiogram.net/](https://voaradiogram.net/)

~~~
SamPatt
That message would take about one minute to send. But it could be sent with
very low power and received well below the noise floor.

I'm not suggesting JS8 is the ideal communication mode for dissidents, only
that it's far better than FT8 for arbitrary text.

------
Mindless2112
_> Shortwave (really, AM) radio can be a powerful tool, but it can be drowned
out by a more powerful signal._

[https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/Chinese_Firedrake_Jammer](https://www.sigidwiki.com/wiki/Chinese_Firedrake_Jammer)

------
woliveirajr
> Shortwave (really, AM)

Just bought some am/fm/sw radio yesterday.

I was hopping to hear some SW radios, just like I did 30 years ago, when it
was a good way to learn a bit more of other languages.

I'm having trouble finding any... Does anyone still do it? Any
recommendations?

~~~
floren
There's quite a bit of Spanish-language broadcasting that you can pick up from
the US. Also check out Radio Havana Cuba; they have a strong signal and are
relatively close.

------
Animats
The Voice of America still has Mandarin short wave broadcasts.[1][2] Whether
anybody is still listening is a big question.

[1] [https://www.short-wave.info/index.php](https://www.short-
wave.info/index.php)

[2]
[https://www.insidevoa.com/p/6440.html](https://www.insidevoa.com/p/6440.html)

~~~
hnnmzh
I have listened to it many many years ago. It's filled with propaganda and
misinformation to incite disorder/riot and distrust of the government.

Another fun fact:

 _The intent of the legislation in 1948 was to protect the American public
from propaganda actions by their own government and to have no competition
with private American companies._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America)

~~~
pp19dd
Say what you will about the quality of the news reporting itself, I'll respect
that as a fair criticism, but it's not propaganda.

Unlike any other news agencies that I know of, VOA has an actual U.S. law in
place that legally separates editorial control from any political influence or
interference.

It's referred to as "the firewall" internally, and VOA's journalists receive
yearly training on that. The 1948 legislation you've cited has been updated
number of times, with the firewall codified in 1994.

The training isn't some random click here and sign this paper and we're
covered thing. It's a well-developed, focused, small group training with
comprehension discussions.

Here's an actual video of the exact training VOA journalists get. There is no
political interference in the newsrooms:
[https://www.insidevoa.com/a/4533468.html](https://www.insidevoa.com/a/4533468.html)

------
diminoten
I wonder why they've chosen to report on news themselves, rather than pipe in
AP/Reuters or something similar. Perhaps because no one else is covering the
same stories?

~~~
Mathnerd314
"It was his response to a dearth of Chinese-language news coverage that wasn’t
heavily influenced by the Chinese government." So maybe because
AP/Reuters/etc. are biased?

It also seems from browsing their site that most articles are
summaries/commentaries of other sources.

~~~
diminoten
There are hundreds of news outlets around the world covering China that aren't
biased towards PRC...

