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tardigrada

@tardigrada@beehaw.org

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tardigrada OP ,

This is not 'only' about trade or dominance in a particular market such as EVs or solar panels. China aims to leverage market dominance for political influence. The Chinese government wants to export not just products but its autocratic system.

tardigrada OP ,

There is much evidence about this and a strong body of research. As researcher in the Journal of Democracy write, for example:

China’s Threat to Global Democracy (here is the [archived link](China’s Threat to Global Democracy))

China’s economy is slowing, and the regime is coming under greater domestic pressure—witness the large-scale protests that broke out against Xi’s covid-zero policy in multiple cities and on dozens of university campuses in late 2022. Beijing is encountering growing international criticism and resistance on other fronts as well. Around the world, negative views of China have surged to highs not seen since the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre [...]

China’s rulers also have long understood what political scientists have proven empirically: Autocracies often fall in waves, as revolutionary activity in one country inspires popular uprisings in others [...]

The CCP has responded with stepped-up repression over the past decade—jailing dissidents, mobilizing security forces, censoring information, and preempting popular unrest. Yet China is now strong enough that it can do more than just hunker down in the face of foreign pressure. Xi believes that the CCP’s domestic power will be enhanced if authoritarianism is prevalent and democracies are dysfunctional—fellow despots will not punish China for rights abuses, and the Chinese people will not want to emulate the chaos of liberal systems. He thinks that preventing revolts against authoritarianism in other countries will lower the odds of such a revolt erupting in China. And he believes that silencing critics abroad will limit the challenges facing the CCP within China. Xi sees rolling back democracy overseas as part of his plan to secure his regime at home [...]

Beijing spends billions of dollars annually on an “antidemocratic toolkit” of nongovernmental organizations, media outlets, diplomats, advisors, hackers, and bribes all designed to prop up autocrats and sow discord in democracies. The CCP provides fellow autocracies with guns, money, and protection from UN censure while slapping foreign human-rights advocates with sanctions. Chinese officials offer their authoritarian brethren riot-control gear and advice on building a surveillance state; PRC trade, investment, and loans allow those dictators to avoid Western conditionality regarding anticorruption or good governance.

Beijing uses its globe-spanning media organs to tout the accomplishments of illiberal rule while highlighting democratic governments’ flaws and hypocrisies. China works with fellow authoritarian regimes, such as Vladimir Putin’s in Russia, to push autocrat-friendly norms of internet management in international institutions and standards-setting bodies.

These are some quotes, but whole article makes an interesting read.

tardigrada OP ,

This is related, particularly as the discussion is to a large part around cheap cars:

China: Carmakers Implicated in Uyghur Forced Labor - (February 2024)

China’s electric vehicle battery supply chain shows signs of forced labor, report says - (June 2023)

tardigrada OP ,

They have to stop the use of forced labour in China, the U.S. and wherever this bs happens. This "U.S. bad, China bad okay" stance is unbearable.

China’s biggest chipmaker SMIC warns of ‘fierce’ competition as it misses quarterly profit expectations (www.cnbc.com)

SMIC, China’s biggest contract chip manufacturer, is seen as critical to Beijing’s ambitions of cutting foreign reliance in its domestic semiconductor industry as the U.S. continues to curb China’s tech power. SMIC lags behind Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics, according to analysts....

International Criminal Court appeals for end of 'intimidation' of its staff, saying such threats could constitute an offence against the “administration of justice” (www.aljazeera.com)

The Hague-based office of ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said in a statement on Friday that all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence its officials must cease immediately....

tardigrada ,

Is anyone surprised?

tardigrada OP ,

Here's another one: https://www.hackingbutlegal.com/p/naomi-wu-and-the-silence-that-speaks-volumes

tardigrada OP ,

As one user in this thread said, it might be a feature required by the CCP.

Breakthrough promises secure and private quantum computing at home (www.physics.ox.ac.uk)

The full power of next-generation quantum computing could soon be harnessed by millions of individuals and companies thanks to a breakthrough by scientists at Oxford’s Department of Physics guaranteeing security and privacy. The advance promises to unlock the transformative potential of cloud-based quantum computing and is...

tardigrada OP ,

"Guaranteeing security and privacy" could a strong argument imho.

The race to decarbonise the world’s economy risks repeating the mistakes of the colonial era by building industries on forced and child labour, rights advocate warns (www.smh.com.au)

Almost 90 per cent of the global supply for polysilicon, a common raw material in electronic devices and solar panels, comes from China, and about half of that comes from Xinjiang, the north-western province that is home to the Uyghurs, says Grace Forrest, founder of Walk Free, a charity dedicating to fight forced labour....

Surveilling Alone: In the U.S., home security cameras are booming in an era of rising crime and declining trust. But they’re driving neighbors further apart. (www.thenewatlantis.com)

Today, a different form of efficient design is eliminating “eyes on the street” — by replacing them with technological ones. The proliferation of neighborhood surveillance technologies such as Ring cameras and digital neighborhood-watch platforms and apps such as Nextdoor and Citizen have freed us from the constraints of...

tardigrada OP ,

@driving_crooner

I was wondering the same, especially as the article doesn't mention any numbers or the like. But I didn't want to change the original title.

Slovenia: Privatised municipal surveillance ineffective to increase security, but good for "spying on innocent citizens walking through the park", group says (edri.org)

A CCTV company owned by the municipality of Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, had sued the Slovenian Data Protection Authority (DPA) in order to block the release of municipal CCTV system data. But the ruling of an administrative court made it clear that making the CCTV system data available is in the public’s interest, not...

"Digital sovereignty": German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein ditches Microsoft for Linux and Open Source alternatives (blog.documentfoundation.org)

Schleswig-Holstein, the northern German federal state, will be a digital pioneer region and the first German state to introduce a digitally sovereign IT workplace in its state administration. With a cabinet decision to introduce the open-source software LibreOffice as the standard office solution across the board, the government...

U.S. government blasts Microsoft for lax security measures in report on Chinese hacks (www.dhs.gov)

In its report published this week, the Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB) says that the June 2023 online breach by Chinese threat actors who accessed U.S. government emails right before Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was to visit China, was "preventable"....

Citizen Lab: "Not only the Chinese government, but also US-based firms, are complicit in the political and religious censoring of content on China-accessible platforms" (citizenlab.ca)

In its submission to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab gives recomnendations to hold Chinese and U.S. firms accountable for their involvement in online censorship and assisting victims of digital abuse and intimidation.

Editing memories, spying on our bodies, normalising weird goggles: Apple’s new Vision Pro has big ambitions (theconversation.com)

Apple Vision Pro is a mixed-reality headset – which the company hopes is a “revolutionary spatial computer that transforms how people work, collaborate, connect, relive memories, and enjoy entertainment” – that begins shipping to the public (in the United States)....

The Global Green Energy Transition Has an Uyghur Forced Labor Problem, Report Says (investorsforhumanrights.org)

The solar and electric vehicle industries are critical for the world's urgent transition away from fossil fuels. However, both industries source many of their critical inputs from the Uyghur Region, a region where the Chinese government is systematically persecuting the native Uyghur, Turkic, and Muslim-majority peoples,...

tardigrada OP ,

Forced labor appears to have a broader meaning than slavery as far as I can understand, for example, from the ILO definition or here. But I don't know either.

tardigrada OP ,

Texas wants solar energy but forced labor in China is a concern

While the deployment of affordable renewable energy is great for Texas, the broader solar supply chain is cause for concern. Unfortunately, many solar panel manufacturers are entirely reliant on cheap Chinese materials with opaque traceability and forced labor concerns in the Xinjiang province. The State Department has concluded that since Xinjiang produces 45% of the global polysilicon capacity and a significant amount of silicon metal, much of the global solar supply chain could include inputs made with forced labor from the region.

As a result, U.S. Congress passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in late 2021, creating a rebuttable presumption that all goods, made in whole or in part, from the region contain forced labor and are thus barred from entering U.S. commerce. Customs and Border Protection is tasked with enforcing the law and Congress specifically directed CBP to target polysilicon from Xinjiang. Since enforcement began in June 2022, CBP has detained over $2 billion in goods.

‘Significant security loophole’ found in Google software container system (therecord.media)

The issue affected Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), a system used to deploy, scale and manage how applications are “containerized.” GKE — the tech giant’s implementation of the open-source Kubernetes project — is used widely in healthcare, education, retail and financial services for data processing as well as...

tardigrada OP ,

Google makes billions from targeted advertising every year, don't expect it to improve privacy unless it's forced to by regulation or competition.

Yeah, I have been wondering my whole life that there are so many people believing in 'privacy tools' by companies like Google. This is one of the things that mystifies me most.

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