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CHINA MEDIA BULLETIN
Issue No.183: August 2024
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A monthly update of media freedom news and analysis related to China
For daily updates in the Chinese language, follow FH_China
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on X.
Analysis: To Combat Beijing’s Influence Operations, US Officials Need Sharper Tools and a Deft Touch
In the News:
Censorship and surveillance
Harassment and detentions
Hong Kong
Beyond China
Read Online
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To Combat Beijing’s Influence Operations, US Officials Need Sharper Tools and a Deft Touch
The arrest of a former top aide to New York’s governor reinforces the need for vigilance and strong enforcement, but a successful response will also depend on legal reforms and community trust.
By Yaqiu Wang
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On Tuesday, the US Department of Justice announced that Linda Sun, a former top aide to New York governor Kathy Hochul and former governor Andrew Cuomo, had been charged with acting as an agent of the Chinese government. A few weeks earlier, in two separate cases, US authorities convicted Chinese dissident Wang Shujun and charged another, Tang Yuanjun, for spying on the overseas Chinese prodemocracy community on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The prosecutions are just the latest in a series of such cases in recent years, as the US government steps up its response to CCP influence operations that undermine human rights and democracy on American soil. The growing focus on the threat is certainly needed and a positive development, but US officials face the challenge of maintaining a targeted, proportionate, and rights-respecting approach while also intensifying their overall efforts. Walking this line will require thoughtful policies, updated laws, and careful execution.
Among the many allegations of fraud and criminal conspiracy in Sun’s indictment
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, one stands out for those who are already familiar with Beijing’s international censorship efforts: In 2021, Sun, using her position in the New York State government, reportedly excised a mention of Beijing’s grave human rights crimes against the Uyghur ethnic minority population from Governor Hochul’s speech celebrating Lunar New Year.
The CCP, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, has launched a massive campaign to influence how the “China story” is told around the world. Suppressing information about the regime’s horrendous human rights abuses is a key part of this strategy.
Freedom House has extensively documented Beijing’s global influence campaign, including through a 2022 study
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that examined actions taken by the CCP and its affiliates to reshape information flows in 30 countries, from the United States to Kenya and Indonesia. Our research found that while some tactics rely on the traditional tools of public diplomacy, many others are covert, coercive, and potentially corrupt.
A key charge against Sun—as well as Wang
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and Tang
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—involves a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which requires anyone doing political or advocacy work on behalf of a foreign entity to disclose it and register with the Department of Justice. The indictment says Sun not only failed to register, but also actively concealed her work on behalf of Beijing.
Although federal prosecutors have more strictly enforced FARA vis-à-vis Chinese and other foreign entities in recent years, Freedom House research
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found that enforcement remains incomplete. Some media organizations designated by the State Department as part of Beijing’s diplomatic presence in the United States were not registered. Even those that had been registered were lax in submitting required reports and informational materials.
At the same time, FARA, first enacted in 1938, has itself faced criticism
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for its out-of-date and overly broad provisions. The law’s sweeping definitions of “foreign agent” and “foreign principal” make it harder to distinguish legal activity on behalf of a foreign power or entity from illegal activity, and can create an undue burden
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on nonprofits that engage in legitimate international development and humanitarian assistance work. Changes that would make FARA more effective in addressing its core policy goals and more relevant to the tactics of modern foreign influence campaigns are urgently needed. Both the Department of Justice and Congress are aware of this need, but attempts at reform have been caught up in partisan politics.
The arrests of Sun and others have also generated concerns among the Chinese diaspora community. Some worry that efforts to root out spies tied to the CCP can cast a pall of suspicion over the whole community, affecting the views of both US authorities and the larger American public. There are certainly good reasons for such fears, given the history of racial targeting associated with anticommunist “red scares” and antiterrorist crackdowns in the United States.
To prevent the worst outcomes, government responses to the CCP’s malign influence need to take into account possible negative spillover effects for the Chinese diaspora. Freedom House has long advocated
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for US law enforcement agencies to develop outreach strategies that will help them connect with diaspora communities targeted by the CCP. Indeed, building community trust is critical to the success of any effort to combat Beijing’s activities, and a number of agencies have made efforts in this direction.
Further engagement should center on the protection of victims of espionage, transnational repression, disinformation, and other forms of CCP interference, instead of looking at the issue primarily through a national security lens. US authorities should also keep in mind that many people in the Chinese diaspora came from a country where law enforcement agencies are regular and unaccountable perpetrators of abuse, which could contribute to their distrust of US law enforcement officials. Rather than going to the community and immediately asking people to identify suspected CCP agents, investigators might start by asking, “What are your needs? What do you worry about? How can we help?”
If diaspora residents come to see US authorities as just and accountable protectors rather than another threat to their community, the CCP will have already lost an important battle in its global influence campaign.
Yaqiu Wang is the research director for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan at Freedom House. This article was also published by the Diplomat
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on September 7, 2024.
Censorship and Surveillance
National internet ID system set off public outcry: On July 26, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) and the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) jointly announced a draft proposal
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, authorizing the government to centralize the identity verification process (a task currently handled by internet service providers) and issue national internet IDs usable across all platforms. The draft is open for public comments until August 25; on August 1, however, 67 social media and government-run apps launched
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beta-testing integrating the internet ID system. Netizens openly opposed the plan, raising concerns over heightened surveillance
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and questioning the proposal’s legality
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. More than eight
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articles critical of the proposal were removed from the Chinese internet. Weibo banned
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accounts belonging to Huang Yusheng and Lao Dongyan, two professors at Tsinghua University, following their verbal objection to the draft. On August 27, the authorities conceded
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amid overwhelming opposition, stating that the national internet ID only represents one identity authentication option and users may continue to access the internet without it.
Human corpse scandal revealed and censored: On August 8, lawyer Yi Shenghua posted
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on Weibo about a case involving the illicit trade of human remains. According to the indictment
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Yi uploaded, from 2015 to 2023, a company in Shanxi Province produced biomaterials with human remains trafficked from across the country, collecting 380 million yuan (more than $53 million) in revenue from the sales. A Shanghai-based news outlet, The Paper, broke the story
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on the same day. Both Yi’s posts
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and the report were deleted within 24 hours. Two reports, from news outlets Caixin
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and YiCai
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, respectively, and more than 20 Weibo hashtags
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referring to the case were censored. One week later, Yi was reportedly demoted
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from his position as director at his law firm.
Former police officer silenced: On August 5, former police officer Chen Zhiwei posted
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a video of himself holding up his national ID card while sharing his experience of judicial injustice, an increasingly popular practice of redress-seeking in China. In 2022, Chen was dispatched to the scene of a brutal assault
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by a group of men on four women at a restaurant in Tangshan. Chen came under investigation
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after being found to have lied about his response time, and was sentenced to 13 months in prison. In the posted video, Chen claimed that he was forced by a superior to falsify his response time and illegally interrogated while detained, and that his attempts to seek redress were deliberately dismissed or delayed by the authorities. On August 6, the local government denied
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Chen’s accusations. In response, Chen made another post
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with evidence supporting his claims; he also made another video stating that Tangshan police had traveled across province to his home to ask him to return to Tangshan to resolve the situation, but he had refused. All of Chen’s posts were deleted
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later that day.
Wukong released amid controversies: Before the August 20 release of Black Myth: Wukong, a role-playing video game produced by the Chinese company Game Science, a note
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from the game’s publisher
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to influencers overseas garnered attention. The note lists one Do and several Don’ts: players are encouraged to “enjoy the game” and are warned against talking about policies, feminism, COVID-19, and quarantine, among other things. Sexist
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remarks made by the game’s creators have resurfaced
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on the Chinese internet, stirring up further controversy. Weibo comments critical of the game’s creators were quickly censored. On August 21, Weibo declared
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that it had deleted 1,187 posts and banned 138 accounts that had reported or commented on the case, saying that they had “provoked gender animosity in the name of the game.”
Harassment and detentions
Released journalist detained again: Lawyer-turned- journalist Zhang Zhan, released in May after four years’ imprisonment for her COVID-19-related reporting in Wuhan, was detained
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again on August 30. Zhang’s August detention is reportedly linked to her advocacy for the release of another human rights activist, Zhang Pancheng. According to Amnesty International, Zhang Zhan has faced repeated police harassment
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during the past month.
Netizen punished over past VPN usage: As per an August 15 report
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by local Chinese media, a netizen in Fujian Province was summoned to the local police station for investigation and later subjected to administrative punishment for using virtual private network (VPN) software in 2020 to bypass China's internet restrictions and “illegally access foreign websites.” The case generated heated discussion
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online over the fact that the punishment was given four years after the alleged offense.
Defense lawyers reportedly denied access to evidence: On August 16, a pretrial hearing concerning Chen Pinlin (also known as Plato) took place in a Shanghai court. Chen was arrested in January 2024 and charged
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with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” for releasing a documentary on the nationwide White Paper Movement in 2023. Chen’s lawyers were denied
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the right to make a copy of evidence submitted by prosecutors until the hearing concluded, in clear violation of the Chinese Pretrial Conference Procedures. Both of Chen’s lawyers filed complaints against the court, according to the human rights group Weiquanwang.
Hong Kong
Editors convicted of sedition: Patrick Lam and Chung Pui-Kuen, former editors at the now-defunct Stand News, were convicted
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of “conspiracy to publish seditious materials” on August 29. The conviction marks the first
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sedition verdict against journalists in Hong Kong since 1997. Both men were arrested
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in 2021 after the national security police raided Stand News offices, and stood a 57-day trial
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in 2022 that focused on 17 articles published by the outlet, 11 of which were later deemed seditious by the government-appointed judge. Sentencing is reportedly set for September 26; the former editors could face up to two years’ imprisonment.
Ming Pao warns columnists: On August 15, the chief editor of the newspaper Ming Pao sent a note
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to the paper’s columnists, asking them to exercise extra discretion in their writing. The warning is reportedly related
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to one of the paper’s July op-eds, in which Chan Man-Mun, a law professor at Hong Kong University, challenged
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the new parole provision in Article 23 that allows the authorities to deny parole to prisoners based on national security concerns. Chan argued that the amendment is punitive and could violate the principle of retroactive effect. Hong Kong authorities called
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Chan’s remarks “inaccurate” and “misleading.”
New cybersecurity bill: Several Hong Kong–based commercial bodies, including the Asia Internet Coalition, which represents Amazon, Alphabet, Google, and Meta, made policy submissions against the cybersecurity bill
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proposed in July, according to a Bloomberg report
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on August 21. The bill would grant the government access to “connect equipment to or install programs on” Critical Computer Systems (CCSs) owned by private companies, and would be applicable to “all CCSs, regardless of whether they are physically located in Hong Kong or not,” raising concerns
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over excessive government power and extraterritorial reach.
Beyond China
TikTok may promote pro–CCP content: Evidence suggests that TikTok amplifies pro–Chinese Communist Party (CCP) content and suppresses anti–CCP content, according to a report
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by the Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University. TikTok’s content and algorithmic manipulation might have gained traction in shaping users’ perceptions, the study suggests. The results of the researchers’ psychological survey of more than 1,000 Americans show that longer TikTok screentime is significantly associated with more positive perceptions of Beijing’s human rights records.
Legal battle over diary ownership: A two-day trial commenced
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on August 19 in California to determine if Stanford University can retain the personal diaries and materials of Li Rui, a former secretary to Mao Zedong. This trial is related to the series of lawsuits filed by Li’s China-based widow since his death in 2019, in which she claims ownership of the materials and seeks their return to China. Between 2014 and 2018, Li reportedly instructed his daughter to transfer
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these materials, which document firsthand observations on party politics and key events like the Tiananmen Massacre, to Stanford for preservation in its extensive CCP historical archive. According to legal and academic critics, these lawsuits were likely orchestrated by the Chinese government to suppress sensitive historical accounts in the diaries. Li's widow mentioned in a 2019 interview with Voice of America
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that “Chinese authorities considered it inappropriate for Li’s daughter to take his diaries and requested their return, but she declined.”
Take Action
Access uncensored content: Find an overview comparing popular circumvention tools and information on how to access them via GreatFire.org, here
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or here
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. Learn more about how to reach uncensored content and enhance digital security here
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.
Support a prisoner: Learn how to take action to help journalists and free expression activists, including those featured in past issues of the China Media Bulletin here
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.
Visit the China Media Bulletin Resources section: Learn more about how policymakers, media outlets, educators, and donors can help advance free expression in China and beyond via a new resource section
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on the Freedom House website.
Copyright 2024 Freedom House
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