Four Takeaways From a Times Investigation Into China’s Expanding Surveillance State
China’s ambition to collect a staggering amount of personal data from everyday citizens is more expansive than previously known, a Times investigation has found. Phone-tracking devices are now everywhere. The police are creating some of the largest DNA databases in the world. And the authorities are building upon facial recognition technology to collect voice prints from the general public.
OTTAWA – A federal research unit detected what might be a Chinese Communist Party information operation that aimed to discourage Canadians of Chinese heritage from voting for the Conservatives in the last federal election.
The Sept. 13, 2021, analysis by Rapid Response Mechanism Canada, which tracks foreign interference, says researchers observed Communist Party media accounts on Chinese social media platform Douyin widely sharing a narrative that the Conservatives would all but sever diplomatic relations with Beijing.
The report, obtained by The Canadian Press through the Access to Information Act, was prepared just a week before Canadians went to the polls.
A look at the history of revolutionary China evokes parallels with present-day Canadian society. In specific terms, this relates to China’s Cultural Revolution, a socio-political movement spanning from 1966 until founder Chairman Mao Tse Tung’s death in 1976.
Feds @CMHC_ca looked for #discrimination in housing, discovered pricest realty is owned by Chinese. Conclusion? "Further research is needed" https://t.co/54Sof6PnrO #bcpoli #cdnpoli @TOAdamVaughan pic.twitter.com/SBtyMN8fn9
— Blacklock's Reporter (@mindingottawa) June 21, 2022
h/t RM
Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole claims foreign interference from China in the last election cost his party seats. But some media and national security experts are pushing back, arguing that it’s difficult to conclusively prove interference and that any intervention was unlikely to have been so decisive.
U.S.-based researcher Christopher Balding says he found evidence that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is obtaining data via smart coffee machines that are made in China, warning that such tactics may be employed against U.S. consumers.
Balding, who released a report via New Kite Data Labs, said issues with the Chinese internet-connected coffee machines are allowing CCP officials to collect data on Americans.
China has launched its third aircraft carrier, the first designed and built entirely in the country, marking a significant military advance for the Asian superpower.
The announcement comes as tensions between China and the US have ramped up in recent weeks over Beijing’s sabre-rattling towards self-ruled Taiwan, which it views as a breakaway province to be seized by force if necessary.
Launched in a Shanghai shipyard to great fanfare, the Fujian is more technically advanced than the other Chinese carriers.
Since 2019, China has been pursuing a new concept of war, known as “intelligentized warfare.” The idea is to operationalize artificial intelligence (AI) and the use of unmanned platforms (such as drones) in a way that subdues the enemy, ultimately without having to resort to conventional “hot” warfare.
Parallels have been drawn between the war in Ukraine and a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. While these situations differ in many respects, both countries exist outside of a collective security apparatus like NATO, and both face existential threats posed by much larger and hostile neighbors. Lacking nuclear weapons and outgunned in conventional terms, both the Ukrainian and Taiwanese militaries have little choice but to wage asymmetric warfare. Yet few people truly know, let alone understand, Taiwan’s current defense policy and the path forward.
Scientists in China say they have detected what could be the trace of a signal from an alien civilization.
The researchers have identified what they have called “suspicious” signals from space as part of a search for evidence of aliens, and work is ongoing to determine what they might be.
The signals were detected by China’s FAST radio telescope, also referred to as the “Sky Eye” telescope. With a dish diameter of 1,600 ft, it is the largest of its kind in the world, and since 2020 the telescope has been involved in researching possible alien life.
Recently the Biden administration issued new answers for Americans invested in Chinese companies with direct ties to Beijing’s military. Previously, U.S. policy was that Americans were forbidden to invest in companies included in a “blacklist” of Chinese companies directly involved in China’s military, and in producing applications used by the Communist regime to oppress its own people and threaten its neighbors. The new “answers” amount to a wholesale abandonment of a policy Americans of all political stripes supported.
On June 6, President Joe Biden, declaring a national emergency, granted a 24-month tariff exemption for solar cells and modules from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.
The biggest beneficiary of Biden’s move is none of those countries. It is China. The biggest victim is America.
Biden’s executive order essentially suspends a Commerce Department investigation, initiated by a California maker of solar panels, into blatant Chinese tariff evasion. Biden’s declaration of emergency does not formally end the investigation, but no tariffs during the 24-month period can be collected, even if Auxin Solar, the complainant, ultimately prevails.
Patrick Brown: Dual loyalties trope has no place in our politics
… The problematic tropes of “dual loyalties” or “ulterior motives” are two that regularly and unfairly follow members of various groups, fuelling bigotry and discrimination against some of the most marginalized. Unfortunately, the commentary around the Chinese community’s political engagement is no different. That should be a concern for Canadians because the reality is that when one group is maligned, we all are.
It is no secret that the Chinese-Canadian community had serious reservations about the current brand of conservatism in Canada, and particularly in the United States, which struggled to balance justified critiques of the Chinese government with sincere stakeholder engagement in the Chinese community and acknowledgement of anti-Asian racism.
I say he’s a slimy useful idiot for the CCP.
When Margaret McCuaig-Johnston first began speaking out against the Chinese communist regime’s human rights abuses, the former senior government official had been “a friend of China for 40 years” and had “helped them develop their innovation capacity.” Today, she says “Canadians should speak truth to power every time they meet with Chinese officials.”
Not sure the ChiComs are gonna care one way or the other.
Nine men brutally assaulted a group of four females in a restaurant after one resisted to being sexually harassed.
In the footage, captured on CCTV in the northeastern city of Tangshan, a man is seen walking over to a seated woman and putting his hand on her back.
When she pushes his hand away, he continues to stand over her, striking her in the face when she asks him to leave.
