Apple needs to grasp the situation. China simply has turned into a grand example of a hostile country. They have far too many known programs to literally steal technology and of course the related spying programs. It is hilarious that nobody at Apple has recognized that the worlds relationship with China is not sustainable. Beyond that there is likely intelligence that Apple does't know about driving the Tik-Tok ban.
In a nut shell Apple needs to stop making excuses and get out of China ASAP.
You're the one who needs to grasp the situation. If China was stealing Apple's technology, and pulling out of China would stop that, then Apple would do it. There is zero evidence that China is stealing Apple's technology, and zero evidence that China uses WeChat to steal technology from any US company.
But under your illogical reasoning, Apple should ignore the lack of any evidence, and simply stop doing business in China based on the rants of madman who will be out of office come January, or the generalized vague allegation that China "is a bad state."
Before you start typing furiously away at your keyboard, gather up your evidence (facts) that support WeChat is used to steal US technology, and one example of the "many known programs to literally steal technology and of course the related spying programs."
Oh STFU, the only one who doesn't grasp the situation is YOU... There is PLENTY of hard EVIDENCE that China STEALS anything and everything they can, if you don't believe it, get a new prescription for your glasses, CCP sympathizer!
Capital letters are not hard evidence. How about some policy based on knowledge and experience, rather than electioneering, sound bites and conspiracy theories? Fix things, don't blow them up!!
The US has basically claimed China itself is a 'bad' state. Let's forget for a moment about Huawei, Tik Tok and WeChat.
We also had the famous 'I hearby order...' tweet.
The US, if it truly believes China is untrustworthy, should break off ALL trade with China and stop cherry picking specific areas in trade deals.
China does have a terrible human rights record in some areas but if you actually dig into these things, few nations come up clean and the US really isn't in the best position to justify these 'sanctions' seeing it has been accused of human rights violation on home soil and abroad for longer than I can remember.
The Couso affair (document in Spanish) is a damning condemnation of human rights abuse, manipulation, cover up and potential war crimes by the US government.
This isn't to single out the US. Most nations have similar cases (in the hundreds). It is to say the US shouldn't waving the 'democracy' flag around and preaching when it has one of the worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states.
You conveniently forgot to post the link to China;
"Beijing’s totalitarian atrocities and global ambitions
One of the year’s most appalling examples of domestic repression—made more frightening by the absence of a coordinated international response—was the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing campaign of cultural annihilation in Xinjiang. Mass violations of the basic freedoms of millions of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the region, which were first brought to light in 2017, continued in 2019, with hundreds of thousands of people sentenced to prison or detained for forced indoctrination. The crackdown also included forced labor, the confinement of detained Muslims’ children in state-run boarding schools, and draconian bans on ordinary religious expression.
Beijing claimed in December that the mass detentions had ended, but evidence from leaked government documents and victims’ relatives contradicted the assertion. Even if it were true, conditions for residents would not be greatly improved. The deployment of tens of thousands of security officers and state-of-the-art surveillance systems enable constant monitoring of the general population, converting Xinjiang into a dystopian open-air prison.
These policies have contributed to China’s ranking as one of the 15 worst-performing countries in Freedom in the World 2020, and one of only 11 countries that Freedom House flagged for evidence of ethnic cleansing or some other form of forced demographic change.
The Communist Party’s totalitarian offensive in Xinjiang is the product of decades of experience in persecuting ethnic and religious minorities, combining coercive measures and technological developments that were previously applied to Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, and others. There are already signs that similar techniques will be expanded to China’s entire population. Examples in 2019 included a requirement for telecommunications companies to perform facial scans on all new internet or mobile phone subscribers, and reports that local authorities nationwide were purchasing equipment for mass collection and analysis of citizens’ DNA. Chinese officials are routinely promoted and transferred based on the perceived effectiveness of their repressive efforts, meaning both the technology and the personnel tested in Xinjiang are likely to spread across the country.
The United States and other democracies have made some important diplomatic statements against the repression in Xinjiang, and the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on specific Chinese entities associated with the campaign. But in general the world’s democracies have taken few steps to rally international opposition or apply meaningful collective pressure to halt China’s rights abuses, and elected leaders in Europe and elsewhere have often been tepid in their public criticism. Many undemocratic governments have been similarly mute or even supported Beijing, including those in countries that have received Chinese loans and other investments. The pattern of de facto impunity bolsters China’s broader efforts to demand recognition as a global leader and aids its relentless campaign to replace existing international norms with its own authoritarian vision.
US president Donald Trump poses for a photo with Chinese president Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Editorial Credit: Susan Walsh/AP/Shutterstock.
One aspect of this more assertive foreign policy that gained prominence in 2019 was Beijing’s apparent interventions in democratic elections. As with past Russian intrusions in the United States and elsewhere, China was suspected of sponsoring the spread of disinformation to create confusion around candidates and policies ahead of Taiwan’s January 2020 elections. The strategy may have backfired in this instance; domestic fears about Chinese encroachment helped the incumbent president defeat a more Beijing-friendly rival. Earlier, Chinese authorities were accused in November of seeking to fund a businessman’s election to Australia’s Parliament, and New Zealand’s intelligence chief spoke publicly about potential foreign influence on domestic politicians in April, a few months after the country’s opposition leader was accused of improperly hiding Chinese donations.
Beyond the context of elections, Freedom House research has shown that Chinese transnationalcensorship and propaganda activities are accelerating worldwide. For example, dozens of Swedish news outlets and journalists have been denounced by the Chinese embassy in that country for their reporting on China. Even a Russian newspaper was threatened with visa denials if it did not take down an article that mentioned China’s weakening economy. Beijing has also used paid online trolls to distort content on global social media platforms that are blocked in China itself, with tactics including the demonization of political enemies like Hong Kong’s prodemocracy protesters on Facebook and Twitter, and the manipulation of content-ranking systems on Google, Reddit, and YouTube. And the Chinese government is gaining influence over crucial parts of other countries’ information infrastructure through companies that manage digital television broadcasting and communications on mobile devices.
The past year featured a new wave of pushback against certain aspects of China’s global ambitions, with public resistance to the harmful effects of Chinese investment projects intensifying in host countries, and some politicians growing more vocal about protecting national interests against Beijing’s encroachment. Nevertheless, piecemeal responses are unlikely to deter the Chinese leadership in the long term."
Your attempt to compare the human rights records of the U.S. against China fails because the U.S. absolutely does not have one of the "worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states."
Your fealty to China is noted.
For the record, the U.S. will have a new Presidential Election this fall, and has the opportunity to either keep the existing administration, or opt for a new one.
China has never had that choice of governance.
How did you manage to miss the whole point?
Your 'scorecard' is irrelevant to what I was saying.
You can't go around justifying sanctions in the name of human rights breaches if you are guilty of them yourself.
Much less if you are actively seeking a trade deal with the same nation!
Your case crumbles and is seen for what it is. A farce. A demonstable farce!
"Your honor, clearly my client can NOT be accused of murder, as the only witness itself once committed murder; and therefor isn't allowed to do anything about other murderers." …? That's your logic?
The US has basically claimed China itself is a 'bad' state. Let's forget for a moment about Huawei, Tik Tok and WeChat.
We also had the famous 'I hearby order...' tweet.
The US, if it truly believes China is untrustworthy, should break off ALL trade with China and stop cherry picking specific areas in trade deals.
China does have a terrible human rights record in some areas but if you actually dig into these things, few nations come up clean and the US really isn't in the best position to justify these 'sanctions' seeing it has been accused of human rights violation on home soil and abroad for longer than I can remember.
The Couso affair (document in Spanish) is a damning condemnation of human rights abuse, manipulation, cover up and potential war crimes by the US government.
This isn't to single out the US. Most nations have similar cases (in the hundreds). It is to say the US shouldn't waving the 'democracy' flag around and preaching when it has one of the worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states.
You conveniently forgot to post the link to China;
"Beijing’s totalitarian atrocities and global ambitions
One of the year’s most appalling examples of domestic repression—made more frightening by the absence of a coordinated international response—was the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing campaign of cultural annihilation in Xinjiang. Mass violations of the basic freedoms of millions of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the region, which were first brought to light in 2017, continued in 2019, with hundreds of thousands of people sentenced to prison or detained for forced indoctrination. The crackdown also included forced labor, the confinement of detained Muslims’ children in state-run boarding schools, and draconian bans on ordinary religious expression.
Beijing claimed in December that the mass detentions had ended, but evidence from leaked government documents and victims’ relatives contradicted the assertion. Even if it were true, conditions for residents would not be greatly improved. The deployment of tens of thousands of security officers and state-of-the-art surveillance systems enable constant monitoring of the general population, converting Xinjiang into a dystopian open-air prison.
These policies have contributed to China’s ranking as one of the 15 worst-performing countries in Freedom in the World 2020, and one of only 11 countries that Freedom House flagged for evidence of ethnic cleansing or some other form of forced demographic change.
The Communist Party’s totalitarian offensive in Xinjiang is the product of decades of experience in persecuting ethnic and religious minorities, combining coercive measures and technological developments that were previously applied to Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, and others. There are already signs that similar techniques will be expanded to China’s entire population. Examples in 2019 included a requirement for telecommunications companies to perform facial scans on all new internet or mobile phone subscribers, and reports that local authorities nationwide were purchasing equipment for mass collection and analysis of citizens’ DNA. Chinese officials are routinely promoted and transferred based on the perceived effectiveness of their repressive efforts, meaning both the technology and the personnel tested in Xinjiang are likely to spread across the country.
The United States and other democracies have made some important diplomatic statements against the repression in Xinjiang, and the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on specific Chinese entities associated with the campaign. But in general the world’s democracies have taken few steps to rally international opposition or apply meaningful collective pressure to halt China’s rights abuses, and elected leaders in Europe and elsewhere have often been tepid in their public criticism. Many undemocratic governments have been similarly mute or even supported Beijing, including those in countries that have received Chinese loans and other investments. The pattern of de facto impunity bolsters China’s broader efforts to demand recognition as a global leader and aids its relentless campaign to replace existing international norms with its own authoritarian vision.
US president Donald Trump poses for a photo with Chinese president Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Editorial Credit: Susan Walsh/AP/Shutterstock.
One aspect of this more assertive foreign policy that gained prominence in 2019 was Beijing’s apparent interventions in democratic elections. As with past Russian intrusions in the United States and elsewhere, China was suspected of sponsoring the spread of disinformation to create confusion around candidates and policies ahead of Taiwan’s January 2020 elections. The strategy may have backfired in this instance; domestic fears about Chinese encroachment helped the incumbent president defeat a more Beijing-friendly rival. Earlier, Chinese authorities were accused in November of seeking to fund a businessman’s election to Australia’s Parliament, and New Zealand’s intelligence chief spoke publicly about potential foreign influence on domestic politicians in April, a few months after the country’s opposition leader was accused of improperly hiding Chinese donations.
Beyond the context of elections, Freedom House research has shown that Chinese transnationalcensorship and propaganda activities are accelerating worldwide. For example, dozens of Swedish news outlets and journalists have been denounced by the Chinese embassy in that country for their reporting on China. Even a Russian newspaper was threatened with visa denials if it did not take down an article that mentioned China’s weakening economy. Beijing has also used paid online trolls to distort content on global social media platforms that are blocked in China itself, with tactics including the demonization of political enemies like Hong Kong’s prodemocracy protesters on Facebook and Twitter, and the manipulation of content-ranking systems on Google, Reddit, and YouTube. And the Chinese government is gaining influence over crucial parts of other countries’ information infrastructure through companies that manage digital television broadcasting and communications on mobile devices.
The past year featured a new wave of pushback against certain aspects of China’s global ambitions, with public resistance to the harmful effects of Chinese investment projects intensifying in host countries, and some politicians growing more vocal about protecting national interests against Beijing’s encroachment. Nevertheless, piecemeal responses are unlikely to deter the Chinese leadership in the long term."
Your attempt to compare the human rights records of the U.S. against China fails because the U.S. absolutely does not have one of the "worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states."
Your fealty to China is noted.
For the record, the U.S. will have a new Presidential Election this fall, and has the opportunity to either keep the existing administration, or opt for a new one.
China has never had that choice of governance.
How did you manage to miss the whole point?
Your 'scorecard' is irrelevant to what I was saying.
You can't go around justifying sanctions in the name of human rights breaches if you are guilty of them yourself.
Much less if you are actively seeking a trade deal with the same nation!
Your case crumbles and is seen for what it is. A farce. A demonstable farce!
"Your honor, clearly my client can NOT be accused of murder, as the only witness itself once committed murder; and therefor isn't allowed to do anything about other murderers." …? That's your logic?
Contrary - Your honor, clearly i have committed plenty of murders, as the only witness itself committed murder, and therefor please look at ONLY the witness and absolve me of any crimes.
That is the starting point which you Trump supporters are "refusing" to acknowledge. You move to the 2nd step, looking at the crime of witness, and ask the rhetorical question - Is the witness clean? When the real question is - did the perpetrator commit the crime or not?
The Chinese government reads EVERYTHING that goes through WeChat. Nothing is too big or too small for them to use against people and suppress them. In China, if you complain about the police taking people's motorbikes (in a WeChat group), an hour to two later they will be knocking at your door - stick you in a steel frame chair (with your hands cuffed to the chair) and interrogate you. They won't beat you, but they will threaten to get your family involved if you don't co-operate, say you were wrong, and tell them how much you love the police.
Let's be clear, the Chinese police is a direct arm of the CCP. The information comes from Tencent, the Chinese firm that developed WeChat (oh, and they copied What's App and a few other apps to do that - then after WeChat was ready, the Chinese government banned What's App in China - just in case you didn't know that - look it up).
All kinds of sensitive information is shared on WeChat across the world - it doesn't have to be the plans or the data to a secret new something or other - but if it is a password to something (people are that dumb) or information indicating that someone (let's call them 'the bate') is friends with someone high up in a company the CCP wish to target, it gives them a way in to someone or something they want to target.
Example: An American firm is owned by a Chinese firm, the 'president' of this 'American' firm introduces him/herself to the bate (the reason for the '' is that the firm is not really American, and the president of the firm is no more than a puppet). After a month or two of exchanging pleasantries, they say that they want to invest in such and such a company (the target). The bate says 'oh I am friends with someone in that company, let me introduce you'. This 'president' is then introduced as 'a friend' of the bate, and as the president of an American company. Long story story short, the target ends up accepting a massive investment from the 'American' company without realising that the company is in fact owned and controlled by the Chinese government - because the person making the deal was a friend of a friend they trusted them. Later on, the Chinese government starts twisting the arms of people in this company via the 'American' company to do what they want them to do. It won't be clear to them that they are being manipulated by a foreign power either.
This scenario is my own writing - I didn't read about this example somewhere. It is simply an example of how soft power works and how the Chinese government creeps in. It is a very simplistic example, but I think you get the idea.
Using this kind of soft power, they then start leaning on their next targets using what they currently have under their thumb.
In real life, there are examples of this soft power at work - just in case you have the notion that this 'soft power' is not a serious threat to a country's democracy. The Canadian broadcaster CBC (Canada's version of the British BBC) is under the thumb of the CCP. It is not overt, but every now and then something happens that makes this pretty clear. Example - a Chinese news paper in Canada written by Chinese people in English (and not owned by the CCP, and who are not under the thumb of the CCP) was delivered en mass to Canadian's doors even to people that didn't subscribe to it. The paper had articles about what the Chinese government had been doing (such as hiding the existence of covid19 when they knew about it at least as early as Nov 2019). So what does the CBC do? They did a news program interviewing 'outraged' Canadians who were scared of the 'false information' and said how 'racist' the news paper was (a Chinese news paper written by Chinese people about China is apparently racist? Just you wait, this happens a lot - whenever someone does something outside of China that exposes the CCP - it will immediately be labeled as racist - even if it is not racist at all and is an actual fact of something that happened.)
Another example is the raising of the Chinese flag at an Australian police station. An authoritarian regime's flag being raised on a democratic country's soil (look it up). How do you think that happened? Soft power. WeChat helps them to do this because they can collect information about people (not just meta data, but people's conversations), and they use it.
OK, so why is Apple supporting this? In China WeChat is one of the main payment systems, along with AliPay.
The US government is saying that not only should WeChat be banned in the US, but that US companies should not use WeChat (is this correct?) I am not sure if this extends to the use of WeChat on iPhones in China to pay for Apps on the App Store (is this how payment of Apps works in China - people use WeChat to pay?) Could this be why Apple is against this? I am asking this because I don't know, but I have to think there must be a monetary reason why Apple wants to support the CCP.
I'm going to ask the question that may (or may not) be on everyone's minds: Is the CCP pressuring Apple that if they do not support WeChat, the CCP will retaliate against Apple in some way, shape or form? Because - Apple is all about PRIVACY... right? They drone on and on about it - but we know for a fact that WeChat is NOT about PRIVACY. So how could Apple possibly support this? It does not make any sense.
As for people trying to say that the US should not ban WeChat because they (the US) do bad things too (so we should keep letting China do bad things) - are you serious? I think that's a poor argument. In fact, I think it is disgusting. It's like saying a guy is raping women every week, but it's OK because this other guy is doing the same thing. No one would stand for that, but somehow it's OK to let China do that?
People need to realise that China doesn't only target the US (as in the Canada example above) but many other countries. Australia is in deep trouble with China (in order to understand how WeChat can be used, and Apple's position in all this, we need to understand what China is doing around the world, and how WeChat is part of that):
When Australia wanted to look into the origins of covid19 - to understand how it spread, and how to stop that kind of thing happening again (this is how science works, and it is perfectly logical and reasonable to do this) the Chinese government tried to stop them, and claimed they were being racist (this information is freely available, I suggest you read about it if you haven't already). Why would they try to stop someone doing scientific study on a virus that has caused hundreds of thousands of lost lives? Understanding the history of a virus, knowing how it has evolved up till now, helps us understand how it may change in the future. This is standard scientific practice. [EDIT: They did this because they want to claim that the virus did not originate in China, and therefore is not China's responsibility. Scientific data on the virus' origins can pin point when and where it emerged, and the CCP do not want this.]
They told Australia that if it persisted, China would stop importing Australian wine and other things in retaliation. A Chinese news paper (owned and run by the CCP) called Australia 'gum stuck on China's shoe that needs to be scraped off with a stone' or words to that effect (again, look it up). And this comment is interesting in the light of the fact that China owns vital infrastructure, including Port Darwin, and an airport in Australia. They also have a Chinese CCP member in Australia's government (the member of parliament admitted to this, but claimed they did not work for the CCP anymore - which is highly doubtful). They are constantly pushing other countries around - using land and property they own, but also information they have gleaned from WeChat, which is merely one of many tools used by the Chinese government.
Why would Apple want to support this?
As an aside (if this part is deemed too political please inform me and I will edit it out - but I do think people need to understand this):
Covid19 was renamed from the Wuhan virus by the WHO under pressure of the CCP. Why would they do this? Well, not long after China's own CDC (their own experts) said the virus originated in Wuhan, China, the CCP started saying the virus came from Italy (and they also tried saying Japan). It didn't go down well with the Chinese people they tested this story on. This was then morphed into it being from the USA - which apparently did go down well, because (you US citizens know this right?) your nation is being painted as releasing the Wuhan virus (sorry, Covid19) into China to the Chinese people. I.e. This is not a Chinese problem, and therefore not the problem of the CCP - so in the Chinese people's eyes, the CCP did nothing wrong after all, and it is all America's fault. And, by calling the virus Covid19 rather than the Wuhan virus (which is the point I am making here), it's clearly 'not from China' and the CCP has 'no culpability for hiding knowledge of the virus and allowing it to spread'. Of course, they do have knowledge that flights internal to China were banned to stop the spread (because they banned them), but international flights were encouraged (because they encouraged them) and yes, this is FACT not some nonsense tin foil conspiracy nut theory. It is absolute fact, and absolutely unforgivable. But no one seems to care.
A Chinese reporter in the USA called Simone Gao did an amazing documentary on this titled 'Coverup of the Century' (you can find it on Youtube). If you have any doubt that WeChat should be banned after seeing this very well researched documentary then there truly is no hope (a common comment on this documentary is that it is what unbiased, free press journalism, is supposed to be). I have to agree.
At the end of the day, Apple is leaving a seriously bad taste in my mouth. I have never ever thought to use the phase "Steve would not do this" but I think I would be absolutely correct in saying "Steve would not do this". What is Tim Cook doing to Apple, and via Apple to the USA on behalf of (it seems, I have no proof, but having thought about what I have written above) the CCP.
Edited to clarify why China is blocking Australia - see [EDIT] above.
The US has basically claimed China itself is a 'bad' state. Let's forget for a moment about Huawei, Tik Tok and WeChat.
We also had the famous 'I hearby order...' tweet.
The US, if it truly believes China is untrustworthy, should break off ALL trade with China and stop cherry picking specific areas in trade deals.
China does have a terrible human rights record in some areas but if you actually dig into these things, few nations come up clean and the US really isn't in the best position to justify these 'sanctions' seeing it has been accused of human rights violation on home soil and abroad for longer than I can remember.
The Couso affair (document in Spanish) is a damning condemnation of human rights abuse, manipulation, cover up and potential war crimes by the US government.
This isn't to single out the US. Most nations have similar cases (in the hundreds). It is to say the US shouldn't waving the 'democracy' flag around and preaching when it has one of the worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states.
You conveniently forgot to post the link to China;
"Beijing’s totalitarian atrocities and global ambitions
One of the year’s most appalling examples of domestic repression—made more frightening by the absence of a coordinated international response—was the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing campaign of cultural annihilation in Xinjiang. Mass violations of the basic freedoms of millions of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the region, which were first brought to light in 2017, continued in 2019, with hundreds of thousands of people sentenced to prison or detained for forced indoctrination. The crackdown also included forced labor, the confinement of detained Muslims’ children in state-run boarding schools, and draconian bans on ordinary religious expression.
Beijing claimed in December that the mass detentions had ended, but evidence from leaked government documents and victims’ relatives contradicted the assertion. Even if it were true, conditions for residents would not be greatly improved. The deployment of tens of thousands of security officers and state-of-the-art surveillance systems enable constant monitoring of the general population, converting Xinjiang into a dystopian open-air prison.
These policies have contributed to China’s ranking as one of the 15 worst-performing countries in Freedom in the World 2020, and one of only 11 countries that Freedom House flagged for evidence of ethnic cleansing or some other form of forced demographic change.
The Communist Party’s totalitarian offensive in Xinjiang is the product of decades of experience in persecuting ethnic and religious minorities, combining coercive measures and technological developments that were previously applied to Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, and others. There are already signs that similar techniques will be expanded to China’s entire population. Examples in 2019 included a requirement for telecommunications companies to perform facial scans on all new internet or mobile phone subscribers, and reports that local authorities nationwide were purchasing equipment for mass collection and analysis of citizens’ DNA. Chinese officials are routinely promoted and transferred based on the perceived effectiveness of their repressive efforts, meaning both the technology and the personnel tested in Xinjiang are likely to spread across the country.
The United States and other democracies have made some important diplomatic statements against the repression in Xinjiang, and the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on specific Chinese entities associated with the campaign. But in general the world’s democracies have taken few steps to rally international opposition or apply meaningful collective pressure to halt China’s rights abuses, and elected leaders in Europe and elsewhere have often been tepid in their public criticism. Many undemocratic governments have been similarly mute or even supported Beijing, including those in countries that have received Chinese loans and other investments. The pattern of de facto impunity bolsters China’s broader efforts to demand recognition as a global leader and aids its relentless campaign to replace existing international norms with its own authoritarian vision.
US president Donald Trump poses for a photo with Chinese president Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Editorial Credit: Susan Walsh/AP/Shutterstock.
One aspect of this more assertive foreign policy that gained prominence in 2019 was Beijing’s apparent interventions in democratic elections. As with past Russian intrusions in the United States and elsewhere, China was suspected of sponsoring the spread of disinformation to create confusion around candidates and policies ahead of Taiwan’s January 2020 elections. The strategy may have backfired in this instance; domestic fears about Chinese encroachment helped the incumbent president defeat a more Beijing-friendly rival. Earlier, Chinese authorities were accused in November of seeking to fund a businessman’s election to Australia’s Parliament, and New Zealand’s intelligence chief spoke publicly about potential foreign influence on domestic politicians in April, a few months after the country’s opposition leader was accused of improperly hiding Chinese donations.
Beyond the context of elections, Freedom House research has shown that Chinese transnationalcensorship and propaganda activities are accelerating worldwide. For example, dozens of Swedish news outlets and journalists have been denounced by the Chinese embassy in that country for their reporting on China. Even a Russian newspaper was threatened with visa denials if it did not take down an article that mentioned China’s weakening economy. Beijing has also used paid online trolls to distort content on global social media platforms that are blocked in China itself, with tactics including the demonization of political enemies like Hong Kong’s prodemocracy protesters on Facebook and Twitter, and the manipulation of content-ranking systems on Google, Reddit, and YouTube. And the Chinese government is gaining influence over crucial parts of other countries’ information infrastructure through companies that manage digital television broadcasting and communications on mobile devices.
The past year featured a new wave of pushback against certain aspects of China’s global ambitions, with public resistance to the harmful effects of Chinese investment projects intensifying in host countries, and some politicians growing more vocal about protecting national interests against Beijing’s encroachment. Nevertheless, piecemeal responses are unlikely to deter the Chinese leadership in the long term."
Your attempt to compare the human rights records of the U.S. against China fails because the U.S. absolutely does not have one of the "worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states."
Your fealty to China is noted.
For the record, the U.S. will have a new Presidential Election this fall, and has the opportunity to either keep the existing administration, or opt for a new one.
China has never had that choice of governance.
How did you manage to miss the whole point?
Your 'scorecard' is irrelevant to what I was saying.
You can't go around justifying sanctions in the name of human rights breaches if you are guilty of them yourself.
Much less if you are actively seeking a trade deal with the same nation!
Your case crumbles and is seen for what it is. A farce. A demonstable farce!
"Your honor, clearly my client can NOT be accused of murder, as the only witness itself once committed murder; and therefor isn't allowed to do anything about other murderers." …? That's your logic?
No, it's that the criminal can't (falsely) accuse the other of a crime to distract from his own crimes.
The Chinese government reads EVERYTHING that goes through WeChat. Nothing is too big or too small for them to use against people and suppress them. In China, if you complain about the police taking people's motorbikes (in a WeChat group), an hour to two later they will be knocking at your door - stick you in a steel frame chair (with your hands cuffed to the chair) and interrogate you. They won't beat you, but they will threaten to get your family involved if you don't co-operate, say you were wrong, and tell them how much you love the police.
Let's be clear, the Chinese police is a direct arm of the CCP. The information comes from Tencent, the Chinese firm that developed WeChat (oh, and they copied What's App and a few other apps to do that - then after WeChat was ready, the Chinese government banned What's App in China - just in case you didn't know that - look it up).
All kinds of sensitive information is shared on WeChat across the world - it doesn't have to be the plans or the data to a secret new something or other - but if it is a password to something (people are that dumb) or information indicating that someone (let's call them 'the bate') is friends with someone high up in a company the CCP wish to target, it gives them a way in to someone or something they want to target.
Example: An American firm is owned by a Chinese firm, the 'president' of this 'American' firm introduces him/herself to the bate (the reason for the '' is that the firm is not really American, and the president of the firm is no more than a puppet). After a month or two of exchanging pleasantries, they say that they want to invest in such and such a company (the target). The bate says 'oh I am friends with someone in that company, let me introduce you'. This 'president' is then introduced as 'a friend' of the bate, and as the president of an American company. Long story story short, the target ends up accepting a massive investment from the 'American' company without realising that the company is in fact owned and controlled by the Chinese government - because the person making the deal was a friend of a friend they trusted them. Later on, the Chinese government starts twisting the arms of people in this company via the 'American' company to do what they want them to do. It won't be clear to them that they are being manipulated by a foreign power either.
This scenario is my own writing - I didn't read about this example somewhere. It is simply an example of how soft power works and how the Chinese government creeps in. It is a very simplistic example, but I think you get the idea.
Using this kind of soft power, they then start leaning on their next targets using what they currently have under their thumb.
In real life, there are examples of this soft power at work - just in case you have the notion that this 'soft power' is not a serious threat to a country's democracy. The Canadian broadcaster CBC (Canada's version of the British BBC) is under the thumb of the CCP. It is not overt, but every now and then something happens that makes this pretty clear. Example - a Chinese news paper in Canada written by Chinese people in English (and not owned by the CCP, and who are not under the thumb of the CCP) was delivered en mass to Canadian's doors even to people that didn't subscribe to it. The paper had articles about what the Chinese government had been doing (such as hiding the existence of covid19 when they knew about it at least as early as Nov 2019). So what does the CBC do? They did a news program interviewing 'outraged' Canadians who were scared of the 'false information' and said how 'racist' the news paper was (a Chinese news paper written by Chinese people about China is apparently racist? Just you wait, this happens a lot - whenever someone does something outside of China that exposes the CCP - it will immediately be labeled as racist - even if it is not racist at all and is an actual fact of something that happened.)
Another example is the raising of the Chinese flag at an Australian police station. An authoritarian regime's flag being raised on a democratic country's soil (look it up). How do you think that happened? Soft power. WeChat helps them to do this because they can collect information about people (not just meta data, but people's conversations), and they use it.
OK, so why is Apple supporting this? In China WeChat is one of the main payment systems, along with AliPay.
The US government is saying that not only should WeChat be banned in the US, but that US companies should not use WeChat (is this correct?) I am not sure if this extends to the use of WeChat on iPhones in China to pay for Apps on the App Store (is this how payment of Apps works in China - people use WeChat to pay?) Could this be why Apple is against this? I am asking this because I don't know, but I have to think there must be a monetary reason why Apple wants to support the CCP.
I'm going to ask the question that may (or may not) be on everyone's minds: Is the CCP pressuring Apple that if they do not support WeChat, the CCP will retaliate against Apple in some way, shape or form? Because - Apple is all about PRIVACY... right? They drone on and on about it - but we know for a fact that WeChat is NOT about PRIVACY. So how could Apple possibly support this? It does not make any sense.
As for people trying to say that the US should not ban WeChat because they (the US) do bad things too (so we should keep letting China do bad things) - are you serious? I think that's a poor argument. In fact, I think it is disgusting. It's like saying a guy is raping women every week, but it's OK because this other guy is doing the same thing. No one would stand for that, but somehow it's OK to let China do that?
People need to realise that China doesn't only target the US (as in the Canada example above) but many other countries. Australia is in deep trouble with China (in order to understand how WeChat can be used, and Apple's position in all this, we need to understand what China is doing around the world, and how WeChat is part of that):
When Australia wanted to look into the origins of covid19 - to understand how it spread, and how to stop that kind of thing happening again (this is how science works, and it is perfectly logical and reasonable to do this) the Chinese government tried to stop them, and claimed they were being racist (this information is freely available, I suggest you read about it if you haven't already). Why would they try to stop someone doing scientific study on a virus that has caused hundreds of thousands of lost lives? Understanding the history of a virus, knowing how it has evolved up till now, helps us understand how it may change in the future. This is standard scientific practice. [EDIT: They did this because they want to claim that the virus did not originate in China, and therefore is not China's responsibility. Scientific data on the virus' origins can pin point when and where it emerged, and the CCP do not want this.]
They told Australia that if it persisted, China would stop importing Australian wine and other things in retaliation. A Chinese news paper (owned and run by the CCP) called Australia 'gum stuck on China's shoe that needs to be scraped off with a stone' or words to that effect (again, look it up). And this comment is interesting in the light of the fact that China owns vital infrastructure, including Port Darwin, and an airport in Australia. They also have a Chinese CCP member in Australia's government (the member of parliament admitted to this, but claimed they did not work for the CCP anymore - which is highly doubtful). They are constantly pushing other countries around - using land and property they own, but also information they have gleaned from WeChat, which is merely one of many tools used by the Chinese government.
Why would Apple want to support this?
As an aside (if this part is deemed too political please inform me and I will edit it out - but I do think people need to understand this):
Covid19 was renamed from the Wuhan virus by the WHO under pressure of the CCP. Why would they do this? Well, not long after China's own CDC (their own experts) said the virus originated in Wuhan, China, the CCP started saying the virus came from Italy (and they also tried saying Japan). It didn't go down well with the Chinese people they tested this story on. This was then morphed into it being from the USA - which apparently did go down well, because (you US citizens know this right?) your nation is being painted as releasing the Wuhan virus (sorry, Covid19) into China to the Chinese people. I.e. This is not a Chinese problem, and therefore not the problem of the CCP - so in the Chinese people's eyes, the CCP did nothing wrong after all, and it is all America's fault. And, by calling the virus Covid19 rather than the Wuhan virus (which is the point I am making here), it's clearly 'not from China' and the CCP has 'no culpability for hiding knowledge of the virus and allowing it to spread'. Of course, they do have knowledge that flights internal to China were banned to stop the spread (because they banned them), but international flights were encouraged (because they encouraged them) and yes, this is FACT not some nonsense tin foil conspiracy nut theory. It is absolute fact, and absolutely unforgivable. But no one seems to care.
A Chinese reporter in the USA called Simone Gao did an amazing documentary on this titled 'Coverup of the Century' (you can find it on Youtube). If you have any doubt that WeChat should be banned after seeing this very well researched documentary then there truly is no hope (a common comment on this documentary is that it is what unbiased, free press journalism, is supposed to be). I have to agree.
At the end of the day, Apple is leaving a seriously bad taste in my mouth. I have never ever thought to use the phase "Steve would not do this" but I think I would be absolutely correct in saying "Steve would not do this". What is Tim Cook doing to Apple, and via Apple to the USA on behalf of (it seems, I have no proof, but having thought about what I have written above) the CCP.
Edited to clarify why China is blocking Australia - see [EDIT] above.
Some actual evidence would be nice. All the Trumpers have is conspiracy theories used to distract from their own corruption and mismanagement.
.... So far, their evidence consists of: "We say China is bad. Therefor everything they do is bad. Even if it isn't."
Every corrupt autocracy needs an enemy to distract from their own corruption. And, in this case, in their politicized zeal, they transitioned from supposedly protecting American business and jobs to destroying them.
The US has basically claimed China itself is a 'bad' state. Let's forget for a moment about Huawei, Tik Tok and WeChat.
We also had the famous 'I hearby order...' tweet.
The US, if it truly believes China is untrustworthy, should break off ALL trade with China and stop cherry picking specific areas in trade deals.
China does have a terrible human rights record in some areas but if you actually dig into these things, few nations come up clean and the US really isn't in the best position to justify these 'sanctions' seeing it has been accused of human rights violation on home soil and abroad for longer than I can remember.
The Couso affair (document in Spanish) is a damning condemnation of human rights abuse, manipulation, cover up and potential war crimes by the US government.
This isn't to single out the US. Most nations have similar cases (in the hundreds). It is to say the US shouldn't waving the 'democracy' flag around and preaching when it has one of the worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states.
You conveniently forgot to post the link to China;
"Beijing’s totalitarian atrocities and global ambitions
One of the year’s most appalling examples of domestic repression—made more frightening by the absence of a coordinated international response—was the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing campaign of cultural annihilation in Xinjiang. Mass violations of the basic freedoms of millions of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the region, which were first brought to light in 2017, continued in 2019, with hundreds of thousands of people sentenced to prison or detained for forced indoctrination. The crackdown also included forced labor, the confinement of detained Muslims’ children in state-run boarding schools, and draconian bans on ordinary religious expression.
Beijing claimed in December that the mass detentions had ended, but evidence from leaked government documents and victims’ relatives contradicted the assertion. Even if it were true, conditions for residents would not be greatly improved. The deployment of tens of thousands of security officers and state-of-the-art surveillance systems enable constant monitoring of the general population, converting Xinjiang into a dystopian open-air prison.
These policies have contributed to China’s ranking as one of the 15 worst-performing countries in Freedom in the World 2020, and one of only 11 countries that Freedom House flagged for evidence of ethnic cleansing or some other form of forced demographic change.
The Communist Party’s totalitarian offensive in Xinjiang is the product of decades of experience in persecuting ethnic and religious minorities, combining coercive measures and technological developments that were previously applied to Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, and others. There are already signs that similar techniques will be expanded to China’s entire population. Examples in 2019 included a requirement for telecommunications companies to perform facial scans on all new internet or mobile phone subscribers, and reports that local authorities nationwide were purchasing equipment for mass collection and analysis of citizens’ DNA. Chinese officials are routinely promoted and transferred based on the perceived effectiveness of their repressive efforts, meaning both the technology and the personnel tested in Xinjiang are likely to spread across the country.
The United States and other democracies have made some important diplomatic statements against the repression in Xinjiang, and the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on specific Chinese entities associated with the campaign. But in general the world’s democracies have taken few steps to rally international opposition or apply meaningful collective pressure to halt China’s rights abuses, and elected leaders in Europe and elsewhere have often been tepid in their public criticism. Many undemocratic governments have been similarly mute or even supported Beijing, including those in countries that have received Chinese loans and other investments. The pattern of de facto impunity bolsters China’s broader efforts to demand recognition as a global leader and aids its relentless campaign to replace existing international norms with its own authoritarian vision.
US president Donald Trump poses for a photo with Chinese president Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Editorial Credit: Susan Walsh/AP/Shutterstock.
One aspect of this more assertive foreign policy that gained prominence in 2019 was Beijing’s apparent interventions in democratic elections. As with past Russian intrusions in the United States and elsewhere, China was suspected of sponsoring the spread of disinformation to create confusion around candidates and policies ahead of Taiwan’s January 2020 elections. The strategy may have backfired in this instance; domestic fears about Chinese encroachment helped the incumbent president defeat a more Beijing-friendly rival. Earlier, Chinese authorities were accused in November of seeking to fund a businessman’s election to Australia’s Parliament, and New Zealand’s intelligence chief spoke publicly about potential foreign influence on domestic politicians in April, a few months after the country’s opposition leader was accused of improperly hiding Chinese donations.
Beyond the context of elections, Freedom House research has shown that Chinese transnationalcensorship and propaganda activities are accelerating worldwide. For example, dozens of Swedish news outlets and journalists have been denounced by the Chinese embassy in that country for their reporting on China. Even a Russian newspaper was threatened with visa denials if it did not take down an article that mentioned China’s weakening economy. Beijing has also used paid online trolls to distort content on global social media platforms that are blocked in China itself, with tactics including the demonization of political enemies like Hong Kong’s prodemocracy protesters on Facebook and Twitter, and the manipulation of content-ranking systems on Google, Reddit, and YouTube. And the Chinese government is gaining influence over crucial parts of other countries’ information infrastructure through companies that manage digital television broadcasting and communications on mobile devices.
The past year featured a new wave of pushback against certain aspects of China’s global ambitions, with public resistance to the harmful effects of Chinese investment projects intensifying in host countries, and some politicians growing more vocal about protecting national interests against Beijing’s encroachment. Nevertheless, piecemeal responses are unlikely to deter the Chinese leadership in the long term."
Your attempt to compare the human rights records of the U.S. against China fails because the U.S. absolutely does not have one of the "worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states."
Your fealty to China is noted.
For the record, the U.S. will have a new Presidential Election this fall, and has the opportunity to either keep the existing administration, or opt for a new one.
China has never had that choice of governance.
How did you manage to miss the whole point?
Your 'scorecard' is irrelevant to what I was saying.
You can't go around justifying sanctions in the name of human rights breaches if you are guilty of them yourself.
Much less if you are actively seeking a trade deal with the same nation!
Your case crumbles and is seen for what it is. A farce. A demonstable farce!
"Your honor, clearly my client can NOT be accused of murder, as the only witness itself once committed murder; and therefor isn't allowed to do anything about other murderers." …? That's your logic?
No, it's that the criminal can't (falsely) accuse the other of a crime to distract from his own crimes.
"The overall situation of human rights in China continues to deteriorate," said Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for human rights, after two days of talks with Chinese officials in Washington...Chinese people needed to be able to voice legitimate grievances and play a "meaningful role in the political development of their own society," he said.
During the talks with the Chinese side, led by Chen Xu, a director general from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the US also raised the issue of China's crackdown on the Uighurs, as well as the self-immolations by about 40 Tibetans. The US delegation also raised concerns about freedom of expression, including Internet freedom, labor rights and legal reforms...
"US officials voiced concern about the lack of access to legal counsel for detained activists, and again called for the release of lawyers and democracy activists languishing in jail, including Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo. They also raised the cases of prominent Chinese rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who has been held virtually incommunicado since 2009, and wheelchair-bound Ni Yulan, who was jailed after working with her husband to protect alleged victims of government-backed land grabs".
And then two years later, 2014:
The United States has expressed strong concern after China jailed Uighur academic Ilham Tohti for life. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was "deeply disturbed" at the move. He and the White House both called for Tohti's immediate release. China's foreign ministry said it was opposed to foreign interference in China's judicial sovereignty.
Tohti was jailed on Tuesday after Chinese authorities accused him of promoting separatism. Several of his students have been arrested on similar charges.
'Peaceful dissent'
Ilham Tohti has spoken out on behalf of the Muslim Uighur minority group, who live in Xinjiang in China's far west. He has called for dialogue between Beijing and the Uighurs as a way of reducing tensions.
In a statement, Mr Kerry called Tohti's sentence "retribution" by Beijing for Tohti's promotion of human rights for Uighur citizens, and said his detention "silenced an important moderate Uighur voice". The White House said civil society leaders like Tohti play a "vital role" in reducing ethnic tensions in China. "We stress the importance of Chinese authorities differentiating between peaceful dissent and violent extremism," it said.
The US has basically claimed China itself is a 'bad' state. Let's forget for a moment about Huawei, Tik Tok and WeChat.
We also had the famous 'I hearby order...' tweet.
The US, if it truly believes China is untrustworthy, should break off ALL trade with China and stop cherry picking specific areas in trade deals.
China does have a terrible human rights record in some areas but if you actually dig into these things, few nations come up clean and the US really isn't in the best position to justify these 'sanctions' seeing it has been accused of human rights violation on home soil and abroad for longer than I can remember.
The Couso affair (document in Spanish) is a damning condemnation of human rights abuse, manipulation, cover up and potential war crimes by the US government.
This isn't to single out the US. Most nations have similar cases (in the hundreds). It is to say the US shouldn't waving the 'democracy' flag around and preaching when it has one of the worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states.
You conveniently forgot to post the link to China;
"Beijing’s totalitarian atrocities and global ambitions
One of the year’s most appalling examples of domestic repression—made more frightening by the absence of a coordinated international response—was the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing campaign of cultural annihilation in Xinjiang. Mass violations of the basic freedoms of millions of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the region, which were first brought to light in 2017, continued in 2019, with hundreds of thousands of people sentenced to prison or detained for forced indoctrination. The crackdown also included forced labor, the confinement of detained Muslims’ children in state-run boarding schools, and draconian bans on ordinary religious expression.
Beijing claimed in December that the mass detentions had ended, but evidence from leaked government documents and victims’ relatives contradicted the assertion. Even if it were true, conditions for residents would not be greatly improved. The deployment of tens of thousands of security officers and state-of-the-art surveillance systems enable constant monitoring of the general population, converting Xinjiang into a dystopian open-air prison.
These policies have contributed to China’s ranking as one of the 15 worst-performing countries in Freedom in the World 2020, and one of only 11 countries that Freedom House flagged for evidence of ethnic cleansing or some other form of forced demographic change.
The Communist Party’s totalitarian offensive in Xinjiang is the product of decades of experience in persecuting ethnic and religious minorities, combining coercive measures and technological developments that were previously applied to Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, and others. There are already signs that similar techniques will be expanded to China’s entire population. Examples in 2019 included a requirement for telecommunications companies to perform facial scans on all new internet or mobile phone subscribers, and reports that local authorities nationwide were purchasing equipment for mass collection and analysis of citizens’ DNA. Chinese officials are routinely promoted and transferred based on the perceived effectiveness of their repressive efforts, meaning both the technology and the personnel tested in Xinjiang are likely to spread across the country.
The United States and other democracies have made some important diplomatic statements against the repression in Xinjiang, and the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on specific Chinese entities associated with the campaign. But in general the world’s democracies have taken few steps to rally international opposition or apply meaningful collective pressure to halt China’s rights abuses, and elected leaders in Europe and elsewhere have often been tepid in their public criticism. Many undemocratic governments have been similarly mute or even supported Beijing, including those in countries that have received Chinese loans and other investments. The pattern of de facto impunity bolsters China’s broader efforts to demand recognition as a global leader and aids its relentless campaign to replace existing international norms with its own authoritarian vision.
US president Donald Trump poses for a photo with Chinese president Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Editorial Credit: Susan Walsh/AP/Shutterstock.
One aspect of this more assertive foreign policy that gained prominence in 2019 was Beijing’s apparent interventions in democratic elections. As with past Russian intrusions in the United States and elsewhere, China was suspected of sponsoring the spread of disinformation to create confusion around candidates and policies ahead of Taiwan’s January 2020 elections. The strategy may have backfired in this instance; domestic fears about Chinese encroachment helped the incumbent president defeat a more Beijing-friendly rival. Earlier, Chinese authorities were accused in November of seeking to fund a businessman’s election to Australia’s Parliament, and New Zealand’s intelligence chief spoke publicly about potential foreign influence on domestic politicians in April, a few months after the country’s opposition leader was accused of improperly hiding Chinese donations.
Beyond the context of elections, Freedom House research has shown that Chinese transnationalcensorship and propaganda activities are accelerating worldwide. For example, dozens of Swedish news outlets and journalists have been denounced by the Chinese embassy in that country for their reporting on China. Even a Russian newspaper was threatened with visa denials if it did not take down an article that mentioned China’s weakening economy. Beijing has also used paid online trolls to distort content on global social media platforms that are blocked in China itself, with tactics including the demonization of political enemies like Hong Kong’s prodemocracy protesters on Facebook and Twitter, and the manipulation of content-ranking systems on Google, Reddit, and YouTube. And the Chinese government is gaining influence over crucial parts of other countries’ information infrastructure through companies that manage digital television broadcasting and communications on mobile devices.
The past year featured a new wave of pushback against certain aspects of China’s global ambitions, with public resistance to the harmful effects of Chinese investment projects intensifying in host countries, and some politicians growing more vocal about protecting national interests against Beijing’s encroachment. Nevertheless, piecemeal responses are unlikely to deter the Chinese leadership in the long term."
Your attempt to compare the human rights records of the U.S. against China fails because the U.S. absolutely does not have one of the "worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states."
Your fealty to China is noted.
For the record, the U.S. will have a new Presidential Election this fall, and has the opportunity to either keep the existing administration, or opt for a new one.
China has never had that choice of governance.
How did you manage to miss the whole point?
Your 'scorecard' is irrelevant to what I was saying.
You can't go around justifying sanctions in the name of human rights breaches if you are guilty of them yourself.
Much less if you are actively seeking a trade deal with the same nation!
Your case crumbles and is seen for what it is. A farce. A demonstable farce!
"Your honor, clearly my client can NOT be accused of murder, as the only witness itself once committed murder; and therefor isn't allowed to do anything about other murderers." …? That's your logic?
No, it's that the criminal can't (falsely) accuse the other of a crime to distract from his own crimes.
"The overall situation of human rights in China continues to deteriorate," said Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for human rights, after two days of talks with Chinese officials in Washington...Chinese people needed to be able to voice legitimate grievances and play a "meaningful role in the political development of their own society," he said.
During the talks with the Chinese side, led by Chen Xu, a director general from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the US also raised the issue of China's crackdown on the Uighurs, as well as the self-immolations by about 40 Tibetans. The US delegation also raised concerns about freedom of expression, including Internet freedom, labor rights and legal reforms...
"US officials voiced concern about the lack of access to legal counsel for detained activists, and again called for the release of lawyers and democracy activists languishing in jail, including Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo. They also raised the cases of prominent Chinese rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who has been held virtually incommunicado since 2009, and wheelchair-bound Ni Yulan, who was jailed after working with her husband to protect alleged victims of government-backed land grabs".
And then two years later, 2014:
The United States has expressed strong concern after China jailed Uighur academic Ilham Tohti for life. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was "deeply disturbed" at the move. He and the White House both called for Tohti's immediate release. China's foreign ministry said it was opposed to foreign interference in China's judicial sovereignty.
Tohti was jailed on Tuesday after Chinese authorities accused him of promoting separatism. Several of his students have been arrested on similar charges.
'Peaceful dissent'
Ilham Tohti has spoken out on behalf of the Muslim Uighur minority group, who live in Xinjiang in China's far west. He has called for dialogue between Beijing and the Uighurs as a way of reducing tensions.
In a statement, Mr Kerry called Tohti's sentence "retribution" by Beijing for Tohti's promotion of human rights for Uighur citizens, and said his detention "silenced an important moderate Uighur voice". The White House said civil society leaders like Tohti play a "vital role" in reducing ethnic tensions in China. "We stress the importance of Chinese authorities differentiating between peaceful dissent and violent extremism," it said.
LOL.... Defending the Orange Traitor and Criminal with distraction and the "WhatAbout!' defense... Got it!
The US has basically claimed China itself is a 'bad' state. Let's forget for a moment about Huawei, Tik Tok and WeChat.
We also had the famous 'I hearby order...' tweet.
The US, if it truly believes China is untrustworthy, should break off ALL trade with China and stop cherry picking specific areas in trade deals.
China does have a terrible human rights record in some areas but if you actually dig into these things, few nations come up clean and the US really isn't in the best position to justify these 'sanctions' seeing it has been accused of human rights violation on home soil and abroad for longer than I can remember.
The Couso affair (document in Spanish) is a damning condemnation of human rights abuse, manipulation, cover up and potential war crimes by the US government.
This isn't to single out the US. Most nations have similar cases (in the hundreds). It is to say the US shouldn't waving the 'democracy' flag around and preaching when it has one of the worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states.
You conveniently forgot to post the link to China;
"Beijing’s totalitarian atrocities and global ambitions
One of the year’s most appalling examples of domestic repression—made more frightening by the absence of a coordinated international response—was the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing campaign of cultural annihilation in Xinjiang. Mass violations of the basic freedoms of millions of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the region, which were first brought to light in 2017, continued in 2019, with hundreds of thousands of people sentenced to prison or detained for forced indoctrination. The crackdown also included forced labor, the confinement of detained Muslims’ children in state-run boarding schools, and draconian bans on ordinary religious expression.
Beijing claimed in December that the mass detentions had ended, but evidence from leaked government documents and victims’ relatives contradicted the assertion. Even if it were true, conditions for residents would not be greatly improved. The deployment of tens of thousands of security officers and state-of-the-art surveillance systems enable constant monitoring of the general population, converting Xinjiang into a dystopian open-air prison.
These policies have contributed to China’s ranking as one of the 15 worst-performing countries in Freedom in the World 2020, and one of only 11 countries that Freedom House flagged for evidence of ethnic cleansing or some other form of forced demographic change.
The Communist Party’s totalitarian offensive in Xinjiang is the product of decades of experience in persecuting ethnic and religious minorities, combining coercive measures and technological developments that were previously applied to Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, and others. There are already signs that similar techniques will be expanded to China’s entire population. Examples in 2019 included a requirement for telecommunications companies to perform facial scans on all new internet or mobile phone subscribers, and reports that local authorities nationwide were purchasing equipment for mass collection and analysis of citizens’ DNA. Chinese officials are routinely promoted and transferred based on the perceived effectiveness of their repressive efforts, meaning both the technology and the personnel tested in Xinjiang are likely to spread across the country.
The United States and other democracies have made some important diplomatic statements against the repression in Xinjiang, and the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on specific Chinese entities associated with the campaign. But in general the world’s democracies have taken few steps to rally international opposition or apply meaningful collective pressure to halt China’s rights abuses, and elected leaders in Europe and elsewhere have often been tepid in their public criticism. Many undemocratic governments have been similarly mute or even supported Beijing, including those in countries that have received Chinese loans and other investments. The pattern of de facto impunity bolsters China’s broader efforts to demand recognition as a global leader and aids its relentless campaign to replace existing international norms with its own authoritarian vision.
US president Donald Trump poses for a photo with Chinese president Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Editorial Credit: Susan Walsh/AP/Shutterstock.
One aspect of this more assertive foreign policy that gained prominence in 2019 was Beijing’s apparent interventions in democratic elections. As with past Russian intrusions in the United States and elsewhere, China was suspected of sponsoring the spread of disinformation to create confusion around candidates and policies ahead of Taiwan’s January 2020 elections. The strategy may have backfired in this instance; domestic fears about Chinese encroachment helped the incumbent president defeat a more Beijing-friendly rival. Earlier, Chinese authorities were accused in November of seeking to fund a businessman’s election to Australia’s Parliament, and New Zealand’s intelligence chief spoke publicly about potential foreign influence on domestic politicians in April, a few months after the country’s opposition leader was accused of improperly hiding Chinese donations.
Beyond the context of elections, Freedom House research has shown that Chinese transnationalcensorship and propaganda activities are accelerating worldwide. For example, dozens of Swedish news outlets and journalists have been denounced by the Chinese embassy in that country for their reporting on China. Even a Russian newspaper was threatened with visa denials if it did not take down an article that mentioned China’s weakening economy. Beijing has also used paid online trolls to distort content on global social media platforms that are blocked in China itself, with tactics including the demonization of political enemies like Hong Kong’s prodemocracy protesters on Facebook and Twitter, and the manipulation of content-ranking systems on Google, Reddit, and YouTube. And the Chinese government is gaining influence over crucial parts of other countries’ information infrastructure through companies that manage digital television broadcasting and communications on mobile devices.
The past year featured a new wave of pushback against certain aspects of China’s global ambitions, with public resistance to the harmful effects of Chinese investment projects intensifying in host countries, and some politicians growing more vocal about protecting national interests against Beijing’s encroachment. Nevertheless, piecemeal responses are unlikely to deter the Chinese leadership in the long term."
Your attempt to compare the human rights records of the U.S. against China fails because the U.S. absolutely does not have one of the "worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states."
Your fealty to China is noted.
For the record, the U.S. will have a new Presidential Election this fall, and has the opportunity to either keep the existing administration, or opt for a new one.
China has never had that choice of governance.
How did you manage to miss the whole point?
Your 'scorecard' is irrelevant to what I was saying.
You can't go around justifying sanctions in the name of human rights breaches if you are guilty of them yourself.
Much less if you are actively seeking a trade deal with the same nation!
Your case crumbles and is seen for what it is. A farce. A demonstable farce!
"Your honor, clearly my client can NOT be accused of murder, as the only witness itself once committed murder; and therefor isn't allowed to do anything about other murderers." …? That's your logic?
No, it's that the criminal can't (falsely) accuse the other of a crime to distract from his own crimes.
"The overall situation of human rights in China continues to deteriorate," said Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for human rights, after two days of talks with Chinese officials in Washington...Chinese people needed to be able to voice legitimate grievances and play a "meaningful role in the political development of their own society," he said.
During the talks with the Chinese side, led by Chen Xu, a director general from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the US also raised the issue of China's crackdown on the Uighurs, as well as the self-immolations by about 40 Tibetans. The US delegation also raised concerns about freedom of expression, including Internet freedom, labor rights and legal reforms...
"US officials voiced concern about the lack of access to legal counsel for detained activists, and again called for the release of lawyers and democracy activists languishing in jail, including Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo. They also raised the cases of prominent Chinese rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who has been held virtually incommunicado since 2009, and wheelchair-bound Ni Yulan, who was jailed after working with her husband to protect alleged victims of government-backed land grabs".
And then two years later, 2014:
The United States has expressed strong concern after China jailed Uighur academic Ilham Tohti for life. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was "deeply disturbed" at the move. He and the White House both called for Tohti's immediate release. China's foreign ministry said it was opposed to foreign interference in China's judicial sovereignty.
Tohti was jailed on Tuesday after Chinese authorities accused him of promoting separatism. Several of his students have been arrested on similar charges.
'Peaceful dissent'
Ilham Tohti has spoken out on behalf of the Muslim Uighur minority group, who live in Xinjiang in China's far west. He has called for dialogue between Beijing and the Uighurs as a way of reducing tensions.
In a statement, Mr Kerry called Tohti's sentence "retribution" by Beijing for Tohti's promotion of human rights for Uighur citizens, and said his detention "silenced an important moderate Uighur voice". The White House said civil society leaders like Tohti play a "vital role" in reducing ethnic tensions in China. "We stress the importance of Chinese authorities differentiating between peaceful dissent and violent extremism," it said.
Got it!
You probably do but it's inconvenient for you to acknowledge it. If we were to listen to you it all started with the current President and every other administration ignored it.
Apple needs to grasp the situation. China simply has turned into a grand example of a hostile country. They have far too many known programs to literally steal technology and of course the related spying programs. It is hilarious that nobody at Apple has recognized that the worlds relationship with China is not sustainable. Beyond that there is likely intelligence that Apple does't know about driving the Tik-Tok ban.
In a nut shell Apple needs to stop making excuses and get out of China ASAP.
You're the one who needs to grasp the situation. If China was stealing Apple's technology, and pulling out of China would stop that, then Apple would do it. There is zero evidence that China is stealing Apple's technology, and zero evidence that China uses WeChat to steal technology from any US company.
But under your illogical reasoning, Apple should ignore the lack of any evidence, and simply stop doing business in China based on the rants of madman who will be out of office come January, or the generalized vague allegation that China "is a bad state."
Before you start typing furiously away at your keyboard, gather up your evidence (facts) that support WeChat is used to steal US technology, and one example of the "many known programs to literally steal technology and of course the related spying programs."
Oh STFU, the only one who doesn't grasp the situation is YOU... There is PLENTY of hard EVIDENCE that China STEALS anything and everything they can, if you don't believe it, get a new prescription for your glasses, CCP sympathizer!
Capital letters are not hard evidence. How about some policy based on knowledge and experience, rather than electioneering, sound bites and conspiracy theories? Fix things, don't blow them up!!
Fix things? Banning Chinese spying apps, reducing American manufacturing reliance on them and decoupling the US from them IS fixing things.
The US has basically claimed China itself is a 'bad' state. Let's forget for a moment about Huawei, Tik Tok and WeChat.
We also had the famous 'I hearby order...' tweet.
The US, if it truly believes China is untrustworthy, should break off ALL trade with China and stop cherry picking specific areas in trade deals.
China does have a terrible human rights record in some areas but if you actually dig into these things, few nations come up clean and the US really isn't in the best position to justify these 'sanctions' seeing it has been accused of human rights violation on home soil and abroad for longer than I can remember.
The Couso affair (document in Spanish) is a damning condemnation of human rights abuse, manipulation, cover up and potential war crimes by the US government.
This isn't to single out the US. Most nations have similar cases (in the hundreds). It is to say the US shouldn't waving the 'democracy' flag around and preaching when it has one of the worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states.
You conveniently forgot to post the link to China;
"Beijing’s totalitarian atrocities and global ambitions
One of the year’s most appalling examples of domestic repression—made more frightening by the absence of a coordinated international response—was the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing campaign of cultural annihilation in Xinjiang. Mass violations of the basic freedoms of millions of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the region, which were first brought to light in 2017, continued in 2019, with hundreds of thousands of people sentenced to prison or detained for forced indoctrination. The crackdown also included forced labor, the confinement of detained Muslims’ children in state-run boarding schools, and draconian bans on ordinary religious expression.
Beijing claimed in December that the mass detentions had ended, but evidence from leaked government documents and victims’ relatives contradicted the assertion. Even if it were true, conditions for residents would not be greatly improved. The deployment of tens of thousands of security officers and state-of-the-art surveillance systems enable constant monitoring of the general population, converting Xinjiang into a dystopian open-air prison.
These policies have contributed to China’s ranking as one of the 15 worst-performing countries in Freedom in the World 2020, and one of only 11 countries that Freedom House flagged for evidence of ethnic cleansing or some other form of forced demographic change.
The Communist Party’s totalitarian offensive in Xinjiang is the product of decades of experience in persecuting ethnic and religious minorities, combining coercive measures and technological developments that were previously applied to Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, and others. There are already signs that similar techniques will be expanded to China’s entire population. Examples in 2019 included a requirement for telecommunications companies to perform facial scans on all new internet or mobile phone subscribers, and reports that local authorities nationwide were purchasing equipment for mass collection and analysis of citizens’ DNA. Chinese officials are routinely promoted and transferred based on the perceived effectiveness of their repressive efforts, meaning both the technology and the personnel tested in Xinjiang are likely to spread across the country.
The United States and other democracies have made some important diplomatic statements against the repression in Xinjiang, and the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on specific Chinese entities associated with the campaign. But in general the world’s democracies have taken few steps to rally international opposition or apply meaningful collective pressure to halt China’s rights abuses, and elected leaders in Europe and elsewhere have often been tepid in their public criticism. Many undemocratic governments have been similarly mute or even supported Beijing, including those in countries that have received Chinese loans and other investments. The pattern of de facto impunity bolsters China’s broader efforts to demand recognition as a global leader and aids its relentless campaign to replace existing international norms with its own authoritarian vision.
US president Donald Trump poses for a photo with Chinese president Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Editorial Credit: Susan Walsh/AP/Shutterstock.
One aspect of this more assertive foreign policy that gained prominence in 2019 was Beijing’s apparent interventions in democratic elections. As with past Russian intrusions in the United States and elsewhere, China was suspected of sponsoring the spread of disinformation to create confusion around candidates and policies ahead of Taiwan’s January 2020 elections. The strategy may have backfired in this instance; domestic fears about Chinese encroachment helped the incumbent president defeat a more Beijing-friendly rival. Earlier, Chinese authorities were accused in November of seeking to fund a businessman’s election to Australia’s Parliament, and New Zealand’s intelligence chief spoke publicly about potential foreign influence on domestic politicians in April, a few months after the country’s opposition leader was accused of improperly hiding Chinese donations.
Beyond the context of elections, Freedom House research has shown that Chinese transnationalcensorship and propaganda activities are accelerating worldwide. For example, dozens of Swedish news outlets and journalists have been denounced by the Chinese embassy in that country for their reporting on China. Even a Russian newspaper was threatened with visa denials if it did not take down an article that mentioned China’s weakening economy. Beijing has also used paid online trolls to distort content on global social media platforms that are blocked in China itself, with tactics including the demonization of political enemies like Hong Kong’s prodemocracy protesters on Facebook and Twitter, and the manipulation of content-ranking systems on Google, Reddit, and YouTube. And the Chinese government is gaining influence over crucial parts of other countries’ information infrastructure through companies that manage digital television broadcasting and communications on mobile devices.
The past year featured a new wave of pushback against certain aspects of China’s global ambitions, with public resistance to the harmful effects of Chinese investment projects intensifying in host countries, and some politicians growing more vocal about protecting national interests against Beijing’s encroachment. Nevertheless, piecemeal responses are unlikely to deter the Chinese leadership in the long term."
Your attempt to compare the human rights records of the U.S. against China fails because the U.S. absolutely does not have one of the "worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states."
Your fealty to China is noted.
For the record, the U.S. will have a new Presidential Election this fall, and has the opportunity to either keep the existing administration, or opt for a new one.
China has never had that choice of governance.
How did you manage to miss the whole point?
Your 'scorecard' is irrelevant to what I was saying.
You can't go around justifying sanctions in the name of human rights breaches if you are guilty of them yourself.
Much less if you are actively seeking a trade deal with the same nation!
Your case crumbles and is seen for what it is. A farce. A demonstable farce!
"Your honor, clearly my client can NOT be accused of murder, as the only witness itself once committed murder; and therefor isn't allowed to do anything about other murderers." …? That's your logic?
No, it's that the criminal can't (falsely) accuse the other of a crime to distract from his own crimes.
"The overall situation of human rights in China continues to deteriorate," said Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for human rights, after two days of talks with Chinese officials in Washington...Chinese people needed to be able to voice legitimate grievances and play a "meaningful role in the political development of their own society," he said.
During the talks with the Chinese side, led by Chen Xu, a director general from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the US also raised the issue of China's crackdown on the Uighurs, as well as the self-immolations by about 40 Tibetans. The US delegation also raised concerns about freedom of expression, including Internet freedom, labor rights and legal reforms...
"US officials voiced concern about the lack of access to legal counsel for detained activists, and again called for the release of lawyers and democracy activists languishing in jail, including Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo. They also raised the cases of prominent Chinese rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who has been held virtually incommunicado since 2009, and wheelchair-bound Ni Yulan, who was jailed after working with her husband to protect alleged victims of government-backed land grabs".
And then two years later, 2014:
The United States has expressed strong concern after China jailed Uighur academic Ilham Tohti for life. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was "deeply disturbed" at the move. He and the White House both called for Tohti's immediate release. China's foreign ministry said it was opposed to foreign interference in China's judicial sovereignty.
Tohti was jailed on Tuesday after Chinese authorities accused him of promoting separatism. Several of his students have been arrested on similar charges.
'Peaceful dissent'
Ilham Tohti has spoken out on behalf of the Muslim Uighur minority group, who live in Xinjiang in China's far west. He has called for dialogue between Beijing and the Uighurs as a way of reducing tensions.
In a statement, Mr Kerry called Tohti's sentence "retribution" by Beijing for Tohti's promotion of human rights for Uighur citizens, and said his detention "silenced an important moderate Uighur voice". The White House said civil society leaders like Tohti play a "vital role" in reducing ethnic tensions in China. "We stress the importance of Chinese authorities differentiating between peaceful dissent and violent extremism," it said.
Got it!
You probably do but it's inconvenient for you to acknowledge it. If we were to listen to you it all started with the current President and every other administration ignored it.
Screwing up the American economy, exports and undermining its technical powerhouses? Yeh, that was Trump. Still is.... Except now he's moved on to defunding Social Security to pay for his mistakes.
Apple needs to grasp the situation. China simply has turned into a grand example of a hostile country. They have far too many known programs to literally steal technology and of course the related spying programs. It is hilarious that nobody at Apple has recognized that the worlds relationship with China is not sustainable. Beyond that there is likely intelligence that Apple does't know about driving the Tik-Tok ban.
In a nut shell Apple needs to stop making excuses and get out of China ASAP.
You're the one who needs to grasp the situation. If China was stealing Apple's technology, and pulling out of China would stop that, then Apple would do it. There is zero evidence that China is stealing Apple's technology, and zero evidence that China uses WeChat to steal technology from any US company.
But under your illogical reasoning, Apple should ignore the lack of any evidence, and simply stop doing business in China based on the rants of madman who will be out of office come January, or the generalized vague allegation that China "is a bad state."
Before you start typing furiously away at your keyboard, gather up your evidence (facts) that support WeChat is used to steal US technology, and one example of the "many known programs to literally steal technology and of course the related spying programs."
Oh STFU, the only one who doesn't grasp the situation is YOU... There is PLENTY of hard EVIDENCE that China STEALS anything and everything they can, if you don't believe it, get a new prescription for your glasses, CCP sympathizer!
Capital letters are not hard evidence. How about some policy based on knowledge and experience, rather than electioneering, sound bites and conspiracy theories? Fix things, don't blow them up!!
Fix things? Banning Chinese spying apps, reducing American manufacturing reliance on them and decoupling the US from them IS fixing things.
Actually, it's breaking things. American things. It's why American farmers are receiving billions in welfare and Apple and other American tech companies are being put at risk.
Trump runs things from his ass instead of any level of knowledge, expertise and common sense. Without his propaganda outlets to cover for him he would have even been abandoned by his cult.
The US has basically claimed China itself is a 'bad' state. Let's forget for a moment about Huawei, Tik Tok and WeChat.
We also had the famous 'I hearby order...' tweet.
The US, if it truly believes China is untrustworthy, should break off ALL trade with China and stop cherry picking specific areas in trade deals.
China does have a terrible human rights record in some areas but if you actually dig into these things, few nations come up clean and the US really isn't in the best position to justify these 'sanctions' seeing it has been accused of human rights violation on home soil and abroad for longer than I can remember.
The Couso affair (document in Spanish) is a damning condemnation of human rights abuse, manipulation, cover up and potential war crimes by the US government.
This isn't to single out the US. Most nations have similar cases (in the hundreds). It is to say the US shouldn't waving the 'democracy' flag around and preaching when it has one of the worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states.
You conveniently forgot to post the link to China;
"Beijing’s totalitarian atrocities and global ambitions
One of the year’s most appalling examples of domestic repression—made more frightening by the absence of a coordinated international response—was the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing campaign of cultural annihilation in Xinjiang. Mass violations of the basic freedoms of millions of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the region, which were first brought to light in 2017, continued in 2019, with hundreds of thousands of people sentenced to prison or detained for forced indoctrination. The crackdown also included forced labor, the confinement of detained Muslims’ children in state-run boarding schools, and draconian bans on ordinary religious expression.
Beijing claimed in December that the mass detentions had ended, but evidence from leaked government documents and victims’ relatives contradicted the assertion. Even if it were true, conditions for residents would not be greatly improved. The deployment of tens of thousands of security officers and state-of-the-art surveillance systems enable constant monitoring of the general population, converting Xinjiang into a dystopian open-air prison.
These policies have contributed to China’s ranking as one of the 15 worst-performing countries in Freedom in the World 2020, and one of only 11 countries that Freedom House flagged for evidence of ethnic cleansing or some other form of forced demographic change.
The Communist Party’s totalitarian offensive in Xinjiang is the product of decades of experience in persecuting ethnic and religious minorities, combining coercive measures and technological developments that were previously applied to Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, and others. There are already signs that similar techniques will be expanded to China’s entire population. Examples in 2019 included a requirement for telecommunications companies to perform facial scans on all new internet or mobile phone subscribers, and reports that local authorities nationwide were purchasing equipment for mass collection and analysis of citizens’ DNA. Chinese officials are routinely promoted and transferred based on the perceived effectiveness of their repressive efforts, meaning both the technology and the personnel tested in Xinjiang are likely to spread across the country.
The United States and other democracies have made some important diplomatic statements against the repression in Xinjiang, and the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on specific Chinese entities associated with the campaign. But in general the world’s democracies have taken few steps to rally international opposition or apply meaningful collective pressure to halt China’s rights abuses, and elected leaders in Europe and elsewhere have often been tepid in their public criticism. Many undemocratic governments have been similarly mute or even supported Beijing, including those in countries that have received Chinese loans and other investments. The pattern of de facto impunity bolsters China’s broader efforts to demand recognition as a global leader and aids its relentless campaign to replace existing international norms with its own authoritarian vision.
US president Donald Trump poses for a photo with Chinese president Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Editorial Credit: Susan Walsh/AP/Shutterstock.
One aspect of this more assertive foreign policy that gained prominence in 2019 was Beijing’s apparent interventions in democratic elections. As with past Russian intrusions in the United States and elsewhere, China was suspected of sponsoring the spread of disinformation to create confusion around candidates and policies ahead of Taiwan’s January 2020 elections. The strategy may have backfired in this instance; domestic fears about Chinese encroachment helped the incumbent president defeat a more Beijing-friendly rival. Earlier, Chinese authorities were accused in November of seeking to fund a businessman’s election to Australia’s Parliament, and New Zealand’s intelligence chief spoke publicly about potential foreign influence on domestic politicians in April, a few months after the country’s opposition leader was accused of improperly hiding Chinese donations.
Beyond the context of elections, Freedom House research has shown that Chinese transnationalcensorship and propaganda activities are accelerating worldwide. For example, dozens of Swedish news outlets and journalists have been denounced by the Chinese embassy in that country for their reporting on China. Even a Russian newspaper was threatened with visa denials if it did not take down an article that mentioned China’s weakening economy. Beijing has also used paid online trolls to distort content on global social media platforms that are blocked in China itself, with tactics including the demonization of political enemies like Hong Kong’s prodemocracy protesters on Facebook and Twitter, and the manipulation of content-ranking systems on Google, Reddit, and YouTube. And the Chinese government is gaining influence over crucial parts of other countries’ information infrastructure through companies that manage digital television broadcasting and communications on mobile devices.
The past year featured a new wave of pushback against certain aspects of China’s global ambitions, with public resistance to the harmful effects of Chinese investment projects intensifying in host countries, and some politicians growing more vocal about protecting national interests against Beijing’s encroachment. Nevertheless, piecemeal responses are unlikely to deter the Chinese leadership in the long term."
Your attempt to compare the human rights records of the U.S. against China fails because the U.S. absolutely does not have one of the "worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states."
Your fealty to China is noted.
For the record, the U.S. will have a new Presidential Election this fall, and has the opportunity to either keep the existing administration, or opt for a new one.
China has never had that choice of governance.
How did you manage to miss the whole point?
Your 'scorecard' is irrelevant to what I was saying.
You can't go around justifying sanctions in the name of human rights breaches if you are guilty of them yourself.
Much less if you are actively seeking a trade deal with the same nation!
Your case crumbles and is seen for what it is. A farce. A demonstable farce!
"Your honor, clearly my client can NOT be accused of murder, as the only witness itself once committed murder; and therefor isn't allowed to do anything about other murderers." …? That's your logic?
No, it's that the criminal can't (falsely) accuse the other of a crime to distract from his own crimes.
"The overall situation of human rights in China continues to deteriorate," said Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for human rights, after two days of talks with Chinese officials in Washington...Chinese people needed to be able to voice legitimate grievances and play a "meaningful role in the political development of their own society," he said.
During the talks with the Chinese side, led by Chen Xu, a director general from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the US also raised the issue of China's crackdown on the Uighurs, as well as the self-immolations by about 40 Tibetans. The US delegation also raised concerns about freedom of expression, including Internet freedom, labor rights and legal reforms...
"US officials voiced concern about the lack of access to legal counsel for detained activists, and again called for the release of lawyers and democracy activists languishing in jail, including Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo. They also raised the cases of prominent Chinese rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who has been held virtually incommunicado since 2009, and wheelchair-bound Ni Yulan, who was jailed after working with her husband to protect alleged victims of government-backed land grabs".
And then two years later, 2014:
The United States has expressed strong concern after China jailed Uighur academic Ilham Tohti for life. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was "deeply disturbed" at the move. He and the White House both called for Tohti's immediate release. China's foreign ministry said it was opposed to foreign interference in China's judicial sovereignty.
Tohti was jailed on Tuesday after Chinese authorities accused him of promoting separatism. Several of his students have been arrested on similar charges.
'Peaceful dissent'
Ilham Tohti has spoken out on behalf of the Muslim Uighur minority group, who live in Xinjiang in China's far west. He has called for dialogue between Beijing and the Uighurs as a way of reducing tensions.
In a statement, Mr Kerry called Tohti's sentence "retribution" by Beijing for Tohti's promotion of human rights for Uighur citizens, and said his detention "silenced an important moderate Uighur voice". The White House said civil society leaders like Tohti play a "vital role" in reducing ethnic tensions in China. "We stress the importance of Chinese authorities differentiating between peaceful dissent and violent extremism," it said.
Got it!
You probably do but it's inconvenient for you to acknowledge it. If we were to listen to you it all started with the current President and every other administration ignored it.
Screwing up the American economy, exports and undermining its technical powerhouses? Yeh, that was Trump. Still is.... Except now he's moved on to defunding Social Security to pay for his mistakes.
George, so I suppose you think you save face by changing the subject? I don't know why you're still carrying on since you lost the first round, and using Mr. Obama's own White House blog as proof.
The US has basically claimed China itself is a 'bad' state. Let's forget for a moment about Huawei, Tik Tok and WeChat.
We also had the famous 'I hearby order...' tweet.
The US, if it truly believes China is untrustworthy, should break off ALL trade with China and stop cherry picking specific areas in trade deals.
China does have a terrible human rights record in some areas but if you actually dig into these things, few nations come up clean and the US really isn't in the best position to justify these 'sanctions' seeing it has been accused of human rights violation on home soil and abroad for longer than I can remember.
The Couso affair (document in Spanish) is a damning condemnation of human rights abuse, manipulation, cover up and potential war crimes by the US government.
This isn't to single out the US. Most nations have similar cases (in the hundreds). It is to say the US shouldn't waving the 'democracy' flag around and preaching when it has one of the worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states.
You conveniently forgot to post the link to China;
"Beijing’s totalitarian atrocities and global ambitions
One of the year’s most appalling examples of domestic repression—made more frightening by the absence of a coordinated international response—was the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing campaign of cultural annihilation in Xinjiang. Mass violations of the basic freedoms of millions of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the region, which were first brought to light in 2017, continued in 2019, with hundreds of thousands of people sentenced to prison or detained for forced indoctrination. The crackdown also included forced labor, the confinement of detained Muslims’ children in state-run boarding schools, and draconian bans on ordinary religious expression.
Beijing claimed in December that the mass detentions had ended, but evidence from leaked government documents and victims’ relatives contradicted the assertion. Even if it were true, conditions for residents would not be greatly improved. The deployment of tens of thousands of security officers and state-of-the-art surveillance systems enable constant monitoring of the general population, converting Xinjiang into a dystopian open-air prison.
These policies have contributed to China’s ranking as one of the 15 worst-performing countries in Freedom in the World 2020, and one of only 11 countries that Freedom House flagged for evidence of ethnic cleansing or some other form of forced demographic change.
The Communist Party’s totalitarian offensive in Xinjiang is the product of decades of experience in persecuting ethnic and religious minorities, combining coercive measures and technological developments that were previously applied to Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, and others. There are already signs that similar techniques will be expanded to China’s entire population. Examples in 2019 included a requirement for telecommunications companies to perform facial scans on all new internet or mobile phone subscribers, and reports that local authorities nationwide were purchasing equipment for mass collection and analysis of citizens’ DNA. Chinese officials are routinely promoted and transferred based on the perceived effectiveness of their repressive efforts, meaning both the technology and the personnel tested in Xinjiang are likely to spread across the country.
The United States and other democracies have made some important diplomatic statements against the repression in Xinjiang, and the Trump administration has imposed sanctions on specific Chinese entities associated with the campaign. But in general the world’s democracies have taken few steps to rally international opposition or apply meaningful collective pressure to halt China’s rights abuses, and elected leaders in Europe and elsewhere have often been tepid in their public criticism. Many undemocratic governments have been similarly mute or even supported Beijing, including those in countries that have received Chinese loans and other investments. The pattern of de facto impunity bolsters China’s broader efforts to demand recognition as a global leader and aids its relentless campaign to replace existing international norms with its own authoritarian vision.
US president Donald Trump poses for a photo with Chinese president Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Editorial Credit: Susan Walsh/AP/Shutterstock.
One aspect of this more assertive foreign policy that gained prominence in 2019 was Beijing’s apparent interventions in democratic elections. As with past Russian intrusions in the United States and elsewhere, China was suspected of sponsoring the spread of disinformation to create confusion around candidates and policies ahead of Taiwan’s January 2020 elections. The strategy may have backfired in this instance; domestic fears about Chinese encroachment helped the incumbent president defeat a more Beijing-friendly rival. Earlier, Chinese authorities were accused in November of seeking to fund a businessman’s election to Australia’s Parliament, and New Zealand’s intelligence chief spoke publicly about potential foreign influence on domestic politicians in April, a few months after the country’s opposition leader was accused of improperly hiding Chinese donations.
Beyond the context of elections, Freedom House research has shown that Chinese transnationalcensorship and propaganda activities are accelerating worldwide. For example, dozens of Swedish news outlets and journalists have been denounced by the Chinese embassy in that country for their reporting on China. Even a Russian newspaper was threatened with visa denials if it did not take down an article that mentioned China’s weakening economy. Beijing has also used paid online trolls to distort content on global social media platforms that are blocked in China itself, with tactics including the demonization of political enemies like Hong Kong’s prodemocracy protesters on Facebook and Twitter, and the manipulation of content-ranking systems on Google, Reddit, and YouTube. And the Chinese government is gaining influence over crucial parts of other countries’ information infrastructure through companies that manage digital television broadcasting and communications on mobile devices.
The past year featured a new wave of pushback against certain aspects of China’s global ambitions, with public resistance to the harmful effects of Chinese investment projects intensifying in host countries, and some politicians growing more vocal about protecting national interests against Beijing’s encroachment. Nevertheless, piecemeal responses are unlikely to deter the Chinese leadership in the long term."
Your attempt to compare the human rights records of the U.S. against China fails because the U.S. absolutely does not have one of the "worst records for spying and abuse of sovereign states."
Your fealty to China is noted.
For the record, the U.S. will have a new Presidential Election this fall, and has the opportunity to either keep the existing administration, or opt for a new one.
China has never had that choice of governance.
How did you manage to miss the whole point?
Your 'scorecard' is irrelevant to what I was saying.
You can't go around justifying sanctions in the name of human rights breaches if you are guilty of them yourself.
Much less if you are actively seeking a trade deal with the same nation!
Your case crumbles and is seen for what it is. A farce. A demonstable farce!
"Your honor, clearly my client can NOT be accused of murder, as the only witness itself once committed murder; and therefor isn't allowed to do anything about other murderers." …? That's your logic?
No, it's that the criminal can't (falsely) accuse the other of a crime to distract from his own crimes.
"The overall situation of human rights in China continues to deteriorate," said Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for human rights, after two days of talks with Chinese officials in Washington...Chinese people needed to be able to voice legitimate grievances and play a "meaningful role in the political development of their own society," he said.
During the talks with the Chinese side, led by Chen Xu, a director general from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the US also raised the issue of China's crackdown on the Uighurs, as well as the self-immolations by about 40 Tibetans. The US delegation also raised concerns about freedom of expression, including Internet freedom, labor rights and legal reforms...
"US officials voiced concern about the lack of access to legal counsel for detained activists, and again called for the release of lawyers and democracy activists languishing in jail, including Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo. They also raised the cases of prominent Chinese rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who has been held virtually incommunicado since 2009, and wheelchair-bound Ni Yulan, who was jailed after working with her husband to protect alleged victims of government-backed land grabs".
And then two years later, 2014:
The United States has expressed strong concern after China jailed Uighur academic Ilham Tohti for life. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was "deeply disturbed" at the move. He and the White House both called for Tohti's immediate release. China's foreign ministry said it was opposed to foreign interference in China's judicial sovereignty.
Tohti was jailed on Tuesday after Chinese authorities accused him of promoting separatism. Several of his students have been arrested on similar charges.
'Peaceful dissent'
Ilham Tohti has spoken out on behalf of the Muslim Uighur minority group, who live in Xinjiang in China's far west. He has called for dialogue between Beijing and the Uighurs as a way of reducing tensions.
In a statement, Mr Kerry called Tohti's sentence "retribution" by Beijing for Tohti's promotion of human rights for Uighur citizens, and said his detention "silenced an important moderate Uighur voice". The White House said civil society leaders like Tohti play a "vital role" in reducing ethnic tensions in China. "We stress the importance of Chinese authorities differentiating between peaceful dissent and violent extremism," it said.
Got it!
You probably do but it's inconvenient for you to acknowledge it. If we were to listen to you it all started with the current President and every other administration ignored it.
Screwing up the American economy, exports and undermining its technical powerhouses? Yeh, that was Trump. Still is.... Except now he's moved on to defunding Social Security to pay for his mistakes.
George, so I suppose you think you save face by changing the subject? I don't know why you're still carrying on since you lost the first round, and using Mr. Obama's own White House blog as proof.
LOL.... Change the subject? I was responding to one of your rather ridiculous posts -- this one featuring distraction and "whataboutism" -- you know, the one trying to change the subject to some imaginary thing that happened years ago!
Try to keep up! I know that's hard for a Trumper -- you're used to one line simple lies. But work on it. You'll get better!
The Chinese government reads EVERYTHING that goes through WeChat. Nothing is too big or too small for them to use against people and suppress them. In China, if you complain about the police taking people's motorbikes (in a WeChat group), an hour to two later they will be knocking at your door - stick you in a steel frame chair (with your hands cuffed to the chair) and interrogate you. They won't beat you, but they will threaten to get your family involved if you don't co-operate, say you were wrong, and tell them how much you love the police.
Let's be clear, the Chinese police is a direct arm of the CCP. The information comes from Tencent, the Chinese firm that developed WeChat (oh, and they copied What's App and a few other apps to do that - then after WeChat was ready, the Chinese government banned What's App in China - just in case you didn't know that - look it up).
All kinds of sensitive information is shared on WeChat across the world - it doesn't have to be the plans or the data to a secret new something or other - but if it is a password to something (people are that dumb) or information indicating that someone (let's call them 'the bate') is friends with someone high up in a company the CCP wish to target, it gives them a way in to someone or something they want to target.
Example: An American firm is owned by a Chinese firm, the 'president' of this 'American' firm introduces him/herself to the bate (the reason for the '' is that the firm is not really American, and the president of the firm is no more than a puppet). After a month or two of exchanging pleasantries, they say that they want to invest in such and such a company (the target). The bate says 'oh I am friends with someone in that company, let me introduce you'. This 'president' is then introduced as 'a friend' of the bate, and as the president of an American company. Long story story short, the target ends up accepting a massive investment from the 'American' company without realising that the company is in fact owned and controlled by the Chinese government - because the person making the deal was a friend of a friend they trusted them. Later on, the Chinese government starts twisting the arms of people in this company via the 'American' company to do what they want them to do. It won't be clear to them that they are being manipulated by a foreign power either.
This scenario is my own writing - I didn't read about this example somewhere. It is simply an example of how soft power works and how the Chinese government creeps in. It is a very simplistic example, but I think you get the idea.
Using this kind of soft power, they then start leaning on their next targets using what they currently have under their thumb.
In real life, there are examples of this soft power at work - just in case you have the notion that this 'soft power' is not a serious threat to a country's democracy. The Canadian broadcaster CBC (Canada's version of the British BBC) is under the thumb of the CCP. It is not overt, but every now and then something happens that makes this pretty clear. Example - a Chinese news paper in Canada written by Chinese people in English (and not owned by the CCP, and who are not under the thumb of the CCP) was delivered en mass to Canadian's doors even to people that didn't subscribe to it. The paper had articles about what the Chinese government had been doing (such as hiding the existence of covid19 when they knew about it at least as early as Nov 2019). So what does the CBC do? They did a news program interviewing 'outraged' Canadians who were scared of the 'false information' and said how 'racist' the news paper was (a Chinese news paper written by Chinese people about China is apparently racist? Just you wait, this happens a lot - whenever someone does something outside of China that exposes the CCP - it will immediately be labeled as racist - even if it is not racist at all and is an actual fact of something that happened.)
Another example is the raising of the Chinese flag at an Australian police station. An authoritarian regime's flag being raised on a democratic country's soil (look it up). How do you think that happened? Soft power. WeChat helps them to do this because they can collect information about people (not just meta data, but people's conversations), and they use it.
OK, so why is Apple supporting this? In China WeChat is one of the main payment systems, along with AliPay.
The US government is saying that not only should WeChat be banned in the US, but that US companies should not use WeChat (is this correct?) I am not sure if this extends to the use of WeChat on iPhones in China to pay for Apps on the App Store (is this how payment of Apps works in China - people use WeChat to pay?) Could this be why Apple is against this? I am asking this because I don't know, but I have to think there must be a monetary reason why Apple wants to support the CCP.
I'm going to ask the question that may (or may not) be on everyone's minds: Is the CCP pressuring Apple that if they do not support WeChat, the CCP will retaliate against Apple in some way, shape or form? Because - Apple is all about PRIVACY... right? They drone on and on about it - but we know for a fact that WeChat is NOT about PRIVACY. So how could Apple possibly support this? It does not make any sense.
As for people trying to say that the US should not ban WeChat because they (the US) do bad things too (so we should keep letting China do bad things) - are you serious? I think that's a poor argument. In fact, I think it is disgusting. It's like saying a guy is raping women every week, but it's OK because this other guy is doing the same thing. No one would stand for that, but somehow it's OK to let China do that?
People need to realise that China doesn't only target the US (as in the Canada example above) but many other countries. Australia is in deep trouble with China (in order to understand how WeChat can be used, and Apple's position in all this, we need to understand what China is doing around the world, and how WeChat is part of that):
When Australia wanted to look into the origins of covid19 - to understand how it spread, and how to stop that kind of thing happening again (this is how science works, and it is perfectly logical and reasonable to do this) the Chinese government tried to stop them, and claimed they were being racist (this information is freely available, I suggest you read about it if you haven't already). Why would they try to stop someone doing scientific study on a virus that has caused hundreds of thousands of lost lives? Understanding the history of a virus, knowing how it has evolved up till now, helps us understand how it may change in the future. This is standard scientific practice. [EDIT: They did this because they want to claim that the virus did not originate in China, and therefore is not China's responsibility. Scientific data on the virus' origins can pin point when and where it emerged, and the CCP do not want this.]
They told Australia that if it persisted, China would stop importing Australian wine and other things in retaliation. A Chinese news paper (owned and run by the CCP) called Australia 'gum stuck on China's shoe that needs to be scraped off with a stone' or words to that effect (again, look it up). And this comment is interesting in the light of the fact that China owns vital infrastructure, including Port Darwin, and an airport in Australia. They also have a Chinese CCP member in Australia's government (the member of parliament admitted to this, but claimed they did not work for the CCP anymore - which is highly doubtful). They are constantly pushing other countries around - using land and property they own, but also information they have gleaned from WeChat, which is merely one of many tools used by the Chinese government.
Why would Apple want to support this?
As an aside (if this part is deemed too political please inform me and I will edit it out - but I do think people need to understand this):
Covid19 was renamed from the Wuhan virus by the WHO under pressure of the CCP. Why would they do this? Well, not long after China's own CDC (their own experts) said the virus originated in Wuhan, China, the CCP started saying the virus came from Italy (and they also tried saying Japan). It didn't go down well with the Chinese people they tested this story on. This was then morphed into it being from the USA - which apparently did go down well, because (you US citizens know this right?) your nation is being painted as releasing the Wuhan virus (sorry, Covid19) into China to the Chinese people. I.e. This is not a Chinese problem, and therefore not the problem of the CCP - so in the Chinese people's eyes, the CCP did nothing wrong after all, and it is all America's fault. And, by calling the virus Covid19 rather than the Wuhan virus (which is the point I am making here), it's clearly 'not from China' and the CCP has 'no culpability for hiding knowledge of the virus and allowing it to spread'. Of course, they do have knowledge that flights internal to China were banned to stop the spread (because they banned them), but international flights were encouraged (because they encouraged them) and yes, this is FACT not some nonsense tin foil conspiracy nut theory. It is absolute fact, and absolutely unforgivable. But no one seems to care.
A Chinese reporter in the USA called Simone Gao did an amazing documentary on this titled 'Coverup of the Century' (you can find it on Youtube). If you have any doubt that WeChat should be banned after seeing this very well researched documentary then there truly is no hope (a common comment on this documentary is that it is what unbiased, free press journalism, is supposed to be). I have to agree.
At the end of the day, Apple is leaving a seriously bad taste in my mouth. I have never ever thought to use the phase "Steve would not do this" but I think I would be absolutely correct in saying "Steve would not do this". What is Tim Cook doing to Apple, and via Apple to the USA on behalf of (it seems, I have no proof, but having thought about what I have written above) the CCP.
Edited to clarify why China is blocking Australia - see [EDIT] above.
Some actual evidence would be nice. All the Trumpers have is conspiracy theories used to distract from their own corruption and mismanagement.
.... So far, their evidence consists of: "We say China is bad. Therefor everything they do is bad. Even if it isn't."
Every corrupt autocracy needs an enemy to distract from their own corruption. And, in this case, in their politicized zeal, they transitioned from supposedly protecting American business and jobs to destroying them.
If you are busy and do not have time to look through all the below material, I would HIGHLY suggest you watch this - directly mentions WeChat various times: Simone Gao documentary, 1 hour long, viewed over 2 million times - discusses how China hid the virus and lied about human to human transmission, including monitoring people via WeChat and using it as a tool of suppression:
Very interesting video that covers various topics but focuses on Canada's CBC extremely worrying pro CCP anti democratic news stories calling Chinese journalists racist against China when they were talking about the Chinese Government (i.e. it would be like saying someone was racist for saying the Nazis were bad - when the Nazis are not a race - a government is NOT a race) and attempts to conflate the CCP with the Chinese people which is again helping the CCP:
Google: Australia threatened by China virus China's government attempting to use economic coercion to stop Australia looking into virus further. This is in support of the comments I made about how the CCP is trying to remove the link between the CCP and the Virus:
As you can see, the information is out there. You do not need to look very far to find it. It is not as if you have to join some secret club, have a special handshake, and follow some mumbo jumbo. Using WeChat for business communication is a serious danger not only for businesses but freedom in general. Ignoring this threat is like walking on a bed of snakes and pretending that none of them will bite you.
I said nothing about Trump. I find it strange how people often attempt to inject something about Trump when talking about China's CCP. I don't live in the US. I am not American. I do not really follow American politics. China affects the ENTIRE WORLD. How can you not understand that? This is NOT about Trump.
That said, your comment about protecting American businesses - well China is constantly draining information from around the world and using it to it's own ends. IP theft is a thing, it is ABSOLUTELY real.
The point is - these are copied from the militaries of the world - who are 'well protected' and yet the CCP still manages to steal their data. Compared to this, stealing information from businesses is child's play, and WeChat makes this even easier.
So again, what is Apple doing!? It makes NO sense.
The Chinese government reads EVERYTHING that goes through WeChat. Nothing is too big or too small for them to use against people and suppress them. In China, if you complain about the police taking people's motorbikes (in a WeChat group), an hour to two later they will be knocking at your door - stick you in a steel frame chair (with your hands cuffed to the chair) and interrogate you. They won't beat you, but they will threaten to get your family involved if you don't co-operate, say you were wrong, and tell them how much you love the police.
Let's be clear, the Chinese police is a direct arm of the CCP. The information comes from Tencent, the Chinese firm that developed WeChat (oh, and they copied What's App and a few other apps to do that - then after WeChat was ready, the Chinese government banned What's App in China - just in case you didn't know that - look it up).
All kinds of sensitive information is shared on WeChat across the world - it doesn't have to be the plans or the data to a secret new something or other - but if it is a password to something (people are that dumb) or information indicating that someone (let's call them 'the bate') is friends with someone high up in a company the CCP wish to target, it gives them a way in to someone or something they want to target.
Example: An American firm is owned by a Chinese firm, the 'president' of this 'American' firm introduces him/herself to the bate (the reason for the '' is that the firm is not really American, and the president of the firm is no more than a puppet). After a month or two of exchanging pleasantries, they say that they want to invest in such and such a company (the target). The bate says 'oh I am friends with someone in that company, let me introduce you'. This 'president' is then introduced as 'a friend' of the bate, and as the president of an American company. Long story story short, the target ends up accepting a massive investment from the 'American' company without realising that the company is in fact owned and controlled by the Chinese government - because the person making the deal was a friend of a friend they trusted them. Later on, the Chinese government starts twisting the arms of people in this company via the 'American' company to do what they want them to do. It won't be clear to them that they are being manipulated by a foreign power either.
This scenario is my own writing - I didn't read about this example somewhere. It is simply an example of how soft power works and how the Chinese government creeps in. It is a very simplistic example, but I think you get the idea.
Using this kind of soft power, they then start leaning on their next targets using what they currently have under their thumb.
In real life, there are examples of this soft power at work - just in case you have the notion that this 'soft power' is not a serious threat to a country's democracy. The Canadian broadcaster CBC (Canada's version of the British BBC) is under the thumb of the CCP. It is not overt, but every now and then something happens that makes this pretty clear. Example - a Chinese news paper in Canada written by Chinese people in English (and not owned by the CCP, and who are not under the thumb of the CCP) was delivered en mass to Canadian's doors even to people that didn't subscribe to it. The paper had articles about what the Chinese government had been doing (such as hiding the existence of covid19 when they knew about it at least as early as Nov 2019). So what does the CBC do? They did a news program interviewing 'outraged' Canadians who were scared of the 'false information' and said how 'racist' the news paper was (a Chinese news paper written by Chinese people about China is apparently racist? Just you wait, this happens a lot - whenever someone does something outside of China that exposes the CCP - it will immediately be labeled as racist - even if it is not racist at all and is an actual fact of something that happened.)
Another example is the raising of the Chinese flag at an Australian police station. An authoritarian regime's flag being raised on a democratic country's soil (look it up). How do you think that happened? Soft power. WeChat helps them to do this because they can collect information about people (not just meta data, but people's conversations), and they use it.
OK, so why is Apple supporting this? In China WeChat is one of the main payment systems, along with AliPay.
The US government is saying that not only should WeChat be banned in the US, but that US companies should not use WeChat (is this correct?) I am not sure if this extends to the use of WeChat on iPhones in China to pay for Apps on the App Store (is this how payment of Apps works in China - people use WeChat to pay?) Could this be why Apple is against this? I am asking this because I don't know, but I have to think there must be a monetary reason why Apple wants to support the CCP.
I'm going to ask the question that may (or may not) be on everyone's minds: Is the CCP pressuring Apple that if they do not support WeChat, the CCP will retaliate against Apple in some way, shape or form? Because - Apple is all about PRIVACY... right? They drone on and on about it - but we know for a fact that WeChat is NOT about PRIVACY. So how could Apple possibly support this? It does not make any sense.
As for people trying to say that the US should not ban WeChat because they (the US) do bad things too (so we should keep letting China do bad things) - are you serious? I think that's a poor argument. In fact, I think it is disgusting. It's like saying a guy is raping women every week, but it's OK because this other guy is doing the same thing. No one would stand for that, but somehow it's OK to let China do that?
People need to realise that China doesn't only target the US (as in the Canada example above) but many other countries. Australia is in deep trouble with China (in order to understand how WeChat can be used, and Apple's position in all this, we need to understand what China is doing around the world, and how WeChat is part of that):
When Australia wanted to look into the origins of covid19 - to understand how it spread, and how to stop that kind of thing happening again (this is how science works, and it is perfectly logical and reasonable to do this) the Chinese government tried to stop them, and claimed they were being racist (this information is freely available, I suggest you read about it if you haven't already). Why would they try to stop someone doing scientific study on a virus that has caused hundreds of thousands of lost lives? Understanding the history of a virus, knowing how it has evolved up till now, helps us understand how it may change in the future. This is standard scientific practice. [EDIT: They did this because they want to claim that the virus did not originate in China, and therefore is not China's responsibility. Scientific data on the virus' origins can pin point when and where it emerged, and the CCP do not want this.]
They told Australia that if it persisted, China would stop importing Australian wine and other things in retaliation. A Chinese news paper (owned and run by the CCP) called Australia 'gum stuck on China's shoe that needs to be scraped off with a stone' or words to that effect (again, look it up). And this comment is interesting in the light of the fact that China owns vital infrastructure, including Port Darwin, and an airport in Australia. They also have a Chinese CCP member in Australia's government (the member of parliament admitted to this, but claimed they did not work for the CCP anymore - which is highly doubtful). They are constantly pushing other countries around - using land and property they own, but also information they have gleaned from WeChat, which is merely one of many tools used by the Chinese government.
Why would Apple want to support this?
As an aside (if this part is deemed too political please inform me and I will edit it out - but I do think people need to understand this):
Covid19 was renamed from the Wuhan virus by the WHO under pressure of the CCP. Why would they do this? Well, not long after China's own CDC (their own experts) said the virus originated in Wuhan, China, the CCP started saying the virus came from Italy (and they also tried saying Japan). It didn't go down well with the Chinese people they tested this story on. This was then morphed into it being from the USA - which apparently did go down well, because (you US citizens know this right?) your nation is being painted as releasing the Wuhan virus (sorry, Covid19) into China to the Chinese people. I.e. This is not a Chinese problem, and therefore not the problem of the CCP - so in the Chinese people's eyes, the CCP did nothing wrong after all, and it is all America's fault. And, by calling the virus Covid19 rather than the Wuhan virus (which is the point I am making here), it's clearly 'not from China' and the CCP has 'no culpability for hiding knowledge of the virus and allowing it to spread'. Of course, they do have knowledge that flights internal to China were banned to stop the spread (because they banned them), but international flights were encouraged (because they encouraged them) and yes, this is FACT not some nonsense tin foil conspiracy nut theory. It is absolute fact, and absolutely unforgivable. But no one seems to care.
A Chinese reporter in the USA called Simone Gao did an amazing documentary on this titled 'Coverup of the Century' (you can find it on Youtube). If you have any doubt that WeChat should be banned after seeing this very well researched documentary then there truly is no hope (a common comment on this documentary is that it is what unbiased, free press journalism, is supposed to be). I have to agree.
At the end of the day, Apple is leaving a seriously bad taste in my mouth. I have never ever thought to use the phase "Steve would not do this" but I think I would be absolutely correct in saying "Steve would not do this". What is Tim Cook doing to Apple, and via Apple to the USA on behalf of (it seems, I have no proof, but having thought about what I have written above) the CCP.
Edited to clarify why China is blocking Australia - see [EDIT] above.
Some actual evidence would be nice. All the Trumpers have is conspiracy theories used to distract from their own corruption and mismanagement.
.... So far, their evidence consists of: "We say China is bad. Therefor everything they do is bad. Even if it isn't."
Every corrupt autocracy needs an enemy to distract from their own corruption. And, in this case, in their politicized zeal, they transitioned from supposedly protecting American business and jobs to destroying them.
If you are busy and do not have time to look through all the below material, I would HIGHLY suggest you watch this - directly mentions WeChat various times: Simone Gao documentary, 1 hour long, viewed over 2 million times - discusses how China hid the virus and lied about human to human transmission, including monitoring people via WeChat and using it as a tool of suppression:
Very interesting video that covers various topics but focuses on Canada's CBC extremely worrying pro CCP anti democratic news stories calling Chinese journalists racist against China when they were talking about the Chinese Government (i.e. it would be like saying someone was racist for saying the Nazis were bad - when the Nazis are not a race - a government is NOT a race) and attempts to conflate the CCP with the Chinese people which is again helping the CCP:
Google: Australia threatened by China virus China's government attempting to use economic coercion to stop Australia looking into virus further. This is in support of the comments I made about how the CCP is trying to remove the link between the CCP and the Virus:
As you can see, the information is out there. You do not need to look very far to find it. It is not as if you have to join some secret club, have a special handshake, and follow some mumbo jumbo. Using WeChat for business communication is a serious danger not only for businesses but freedom in general. Ignoring this threat is like walking on a bed of snakes and pretending that none of them will bite you.
I said nothing about Trump. I find it strange how people often attempt to inject something about Trump when talking about China's CCP. I don't live in the US. I am not American. I do not really follow American politics. China affects the ENTIRE WORLD. How can you not understand that? This is NOT about Trump.
That said, your comment about protecting American businesses - well China is constantly draining information from around the world and using it to it's own ends. IP theft is a thing, it is ABSOLUTELY real.
The point is - these are copied from the militaries of the world - who are 'well protected' and yet the CCP still manages to steal their data. Compared to this, stealing information from businesses is child's play, and WeChat makes this even easier.
So again, what is Apple doing!? It makes NO sense.
I was talking about evidence. Not propaganda and selective 'facts'.
We do have hard evidence that Russia has attacked our last two elections and is proceeding to attack this one as well. But for some reason Trump and his Trumpers ignore that and hyperfocus on China hate. Why is that? Could Russia be aiding Trump and China just a distraction?
If you are busy and do not have time to look through all the below material, I would HIGHLY suggest you watch this - directly mentions WeChat various times:
Simone Gao documentary, 1 hour long, viewed over 2 million times - discusses how China hid the virus and lied about human to human transmission, including monitoring people via WeChat and using it as a tool of suppression:
Very interesting video that covers various topics but focuses on Canada's CBC extremely worrying pro CCP anti democratic news stories calling Chinese journalists racist against China when they were talking about the Chinese Government (i.e. it would be like saying someone was racist for saying the Nazis were bad - when the Nazis are not a race - a government is NOT a race) and attempts to conflate the CCP with the Chinese people which is again helping the CCP:
Google: Australia threatened by China virus China's government attempting to use economic coercion to stop Australia looking into virus further. This is in support of the comments I made about how the CCP is trying to remove the link between the CCP and the Virus:
As you can see, the information is out there. You do not need to look very far to find it. It is not as if you have to join some secret club, have a special handshake, and follow some mumbo jumbo. Using WeChat for business communication is a serious danger not only for businesses but freedom in general. Ignoring this threat is like walking on a bed of snakes and pretending that none of them will bite you.
I said nothing about Trump. I find it strange how people often attempt to inject something about Trump when talking about China's CCP. I don't live in the US. I am not American. I do not really follow American politics. China affects the ENTIRE WORLD. How can you not understand that? This is NOT about Trump.
That said, your comment about protecting American businesses - well China is constantly draining information from around the world and using it to it's own ends. IP theft is a thing, it is ABSOLUTELY real.
The point is - these are copied from the militaries of the world - who are 'well protected' and yet the CCP still manages to steal their data. Compared to this, stealing information from businesses is child's play, and WeChat makes this even easier.
So again, what is Apple doing!? It makes NO sense.
I was talking about evidence. Not propaganda and selective 'facts'.
We do have hard evidence that Russia has attacked our last two elections and is proceeding to attack this one as well. But for some reason Trump and his Trumpers ignore that and hyperfocus on China hate. Why is that? Could Russia be aiding Trump and China just a distraction?
Around 11 different sources - is 'selective'? Well look, just Google it yourself. I just provided suggestions and tried to select from a variety of different sources on purpose to avoid being 'selective', but whatever.
Australia being bullied by China is propaganda. Um, OK. That's weird. I'm sure you know more than people in Australia do, apparently.
You clearly did not read my reply where I think I made it pretty clear I don't give a toss about Trump.
As for China 'hate' - this is getting a bit much. I am deeply concerned about the plight of the Chinese people in China due to what the CCP is doing to them, and what CCP is doing to the world. Everyone should be concerned about this. Don't think for a moment that what happened to Hong Kong is going to be the end of their aggression. Long after Trump is out of power, this is still going to be an issue for the world. It's not going to magically disappear.
At the end of the day, China uses WeChat to monitor people - Chinese people know that all too well. By pushing WeChat to remain in use Apple are supporting the CCP to suppress the Chinese people.
If you don't want to understand, that's up to you. No one can open your eyes for you.
We do have hard evidence that Russia has attacked our last two elections and is proceeding to attack this one as well. But for some reason Trump and his Trumpers ignore that and hyperfocus on China hate. Why is that? Could Russia be aiding Trump and China just a distraction?
PS I should add that as for what Russia has been up to, I would certainly agree with you that it is also deeply concerning.
If you are busy and do not have time to look through all the below material, I would HIGHLY suggest you watch this - directly mentions WeChat various times:
Simone Gao documentary, 1 hour long, viewed over 2 million times - discusses how China hid the virus and lied about human to human transmission, including monitoring people via WeChat and using it as a tool of suppression:
Very interesting video that covers various topics but focuses on Canada's CBC extremely worrying pro CCP anti democratic news stories calling Chinese journalists racist against China when they were talking about the Chinese Government (i.e. it would be like saying someone was racist for saying the Nazis were bad - when the Nazis are not a race - a government is NOT a race) and attempts to conflate the CCP with the Chinese people which is again helping the CCP:
Google: Australia threatened by China virus China's government attempting to use economic coercion to stop Australia looking into virus further. This is in support of the comments I made about how the CCP is trying to remove the link between the CCP and the Virus:
As you can see, the information is out there. You do not need to look very far to find it. It is not as if you have to join some secret club, have a special handshake, and follow some mumbo jumbo. Using WeChat for business communication is a serious danger not only for businesses but freedom in general. Ignoring this threat is like walking on a bed of snakes and pretending that none of them will bite you.
I said nothing about Trump. I find it strange how people often attempt to inject something about Trump when talking about China's CCP. I don't live in the US. I am not American. I do not really follow American politics. China affects the ENTIRE WORLD. How can you not understand that? This is NOT about Trump.
That said, your comment about protecting American businesses - well China is constantly draining information from around the world and using it to it's own ends. IP theft is a thing, it is ABSOLUTELY real.
The point is - these are copied from the militaries of the world - who are 'well protected' and yet the CCP still manages to steal their data. Compared to this, stealing information from businesses is child's play, and WeChat makes this even easier.
So again, what is Apple doing!? It makes NO sense.
I was talking about evidence. Not propaganda and selective 'facts'.
We do have hard evidence that Russia has attacked our last two elections and is proceeding to attack this one as well. But for some reason Trump and his Trumpers ignore that and hyperfocus on China hate. Why is that? Could Russia be aiding Trump and China just a distraction?
Around 11 different sources - is 'selective'? Well look, just Google it yourself. I just provided suggestions and tried to select from a variety of different sources on purpose to avoid being 'selective', but whatever.
Australia being bullied by China is propaganda. Um, OK. That's weird. I'm sure you know more than people in Australia do, apparently.
You clearly did not read my reply where I think I made it pretty clear I don't give a toss about Trump.
As for China 'hate' - this is getting a bit much. I am deeply concerned about the plight of the Chinese people in China due to what the CCP is doing to them, and what CCP is doing to the world. Everyone should be concerned about this. Don't think for a moment that what happened to Hong Kong is going to be the end of their aggression. Long after Trump is out of power, this is still going to be an issue for the world. It's not going to magically disappear.
At the end of the day, China uses WeChat to monitor people - Chinese people know that all too well. By pushing WeChat to remain in use Apple are supporting the CCP to suppress the Chinese people.
If you don't want to understand, that's up to you. No one can open your eyes for you.
He's only in this to protect the CCP, and derail the thread with whataboutisms; so add the facts to the thread for other readers, and then move on. There's no other way forward; all that happens otherwise is that the thread gets muddled to the point where everyone ignores both his delusions and your facts.
Comments
Contrary - Your honor, clearly i have committed plenty of murders, as the only witness itself committed murder, and therefor please look at ONLY the witness and absolve me of any crimes.
That is the starting point which you Trump supporters are "refusing" to acknowledge. You move to the 2nd step, looking at the crime of witness, and ask the rhetorical question - Is the witness clean? When the real question is - did the perpetrator commit the crime or not?
Let's be clear, the Chinese police is a direct arm of the CCP. The information comes from Tencent, the Chinese firm that developed WeChat (oh, and they copied What's App and a few other apps to do that - then after WeChat was ready, the Chinese government banned What's App in China - just in case you didn't know that - look it up).
All kinds of sensitive information is shared on WeChat across the world - it doesn't have to be the plans or the data to a secret new something or other - but if it is a password to something (people are that dumb) or information indicating that someone (let's call them 'the bate') is friends with someone high up in a company the CCP wish to target, it gives them a way in to someone or something they want to target.
Example: An American firm is owned by a Chinese firm, the 'president' of this 'American' firm introduces him/herself to the bate (the reason for the '' is that the firm is not really American, and the president of the firm is no more than a puppet). After a month or two of exchanging pleasantries, they say that they want to invest in such and such a company (the target). The bate says 'oh I am friends with someone in that company, let me introduce you'. This 'president' is then introduced as 'a friend' of the bate, and as the president of an American company. Long story story short, the target ends up accepting a massive investment from the 'American' company without realising that the company is in fact owned and controlled by the Chinese government - because the person making the deal was a friend of a friend they trusted them. Later on, the Chinese government starts twisting the arms of people in this company via the 'American' company to do what they want them to do. It won't be clear to them that they are being manipulated by a foreign power either.
This scenario is my own writing - I didn't read about this example somewhere. It is simply an example of how soft power works and how the Chinese government creeps in. It is a very simplistic example, but I think you get the idea.
Using this kind of soft power, they then start leaning on their next targets using what they currently have under their thumb.
In real life, there are examples of this soft power at work - just in case you have the notion that this 'soft power' is not a serious threat to a country's democracy. The Canadian broadcaster CBC (Canada's version of the British BBC) is under the thumb of the CCP. It is not overt, but every now and then something happens that makes this pretty clear. Example - a Chinese news paper in Canada written by Chinese people in English (and not owned by the CCP, and who are not under the thumb of the CCP) was delivered en mass to Canadian's doors even to people that didn't subscribe to it. The paper had articles about what the Chinese government had been doing (such as hiding the existence of covid19 when they knew about it at least as early as Nov 2019).
So what does the CBC do? They did a news program interviewing 'outraged' Canadians who were scared of the 'false information' and said how 'racist' the news paper was (a Chinese news paper written by Chinese people about China is apparently racist? Just you wait, this happens a lot - whenever someone does something outside of China that exposes the CCP - it will immediately be labeled as racist - even if it is not racist at all and is an actual fact of something that happened.)
Another example is the raising of the Chinese flag at an Australian police station. An authoritarian regime's flag being raised on a democratic country's soil (look it up). How do you think that happened? Soft power.
WeChat helps them to do this because they can collect information about people (not just meta data, but people's conversations), and they use it.
OK, so why is Apple supporting this?
In China WeChat is one of the main payment systems, along with AliPay.
The US government is saying that not only should WeChat be banned in the US, but that US companies should not use WeChat (is this correct?) I am not sure if this extends to the use of WeChat on iPhones in China to pay for Apps on the App Store (is this how payment of Apps works in China - people use WeChat to pay?)
Could this be why Apple is against this? I am asking this because I don't know, but I have to think there must be a monetary reason why Apple wants to support the CCP.
I'm going to ask the question that may (or may not) be on everyone's minds: Is the CCP pressuring Apple that if they do not support WeChat, the CCP will retaliate against Apple in some way, shape or form?
Because - Apple is all about PRIVACY... right? They drone on and on about it - but we know for a fact that WeChat is NOT about PRIVACY. So how could Apple possibly support this? It does not make any sense.
As for people trying to say that the US should not ban WeChat because they (the US) do bad things too (so we should keep letting China do bad things) - are you serious? I think that's a poor argument. In fact, I think it is disgusting. It's like saying a guy is raping women every week, but it's OK because this other guy is doing the same thing. No one would stand for that, but somehow it's OK to let China do that?
People need to realise that China doesn't only target the US (as in the Canada example above) but many other countries. Australia is in deep trouble with China (in order to understand how WeChat can be used, and Apple's position in all this, we need to understand what China is doing around the world, and how WeChat is part of that):
When Australia wanted to look into the origins of covid19 - to understand how it spread, and how to stop that kind of thing happening again (this is how science works, and it is perfectly logical and reasonable to do this) the Chinese government tried to stop them, and claimed they were being racist (this information is freely available, I suggest you read about it if you haven't already).
Why would they try to stop someone doing scientific study on a virus that has caused hundreds of thousands of lost lives? Understanding the history of a virus, knowing how it has evolved up till now, helps us understand how it may change in the future. This is standard scientific practice. [EDIT: They did this because they want to claim that the virus did not originate in China, and therefore is not China's responsibility. Scientific data on the virus' origins can pin point when and where it emerged, and the CCP do not want this.]
They told Australia that if it persisted, China would stop importing Australian wine and other things in retaliation. A Chinese news paper (owned and run by the CCP) called Australia 'gum stuck on China's shoe that needs to be scraped off with a stone' or words to that effect (again, look it up). And this comment is interesting in the light of the fact that China owns vital infrastructure, including Port Darwin, and an airport in Australia. They also have a Chinese CCP member in Australia's government (the member of parliament admitted to this, but claimed they did not work for the CCP anymore - which is highly doubtful).
They are constantly pushing other countries around - using land and property they own, but also information they have gleaned from WeChat, which is merely one of many tools used by the Chinese government.
Why would Apple want to support this?
As an aside (if this part is deemed too political please inform me and I will edit it out - but I do think people need to understand this):
Covid19 was renamed from the Wuhan virus by the WHO under pressure of the CCP. Why would they do this? Well, not long after China's own CDC (their own experts) said the virus originated in Wuhan, China, the CCP started saying the virus came from Italy (and they also tried saying Japan). It didn't go down well with the Chinese people they tested this story on. This was then morphed into it being from the USA - which apparently did go down well, because (you US citizens know this right?) your nation is being painted as releasing the Wuhan virus (sorry, Covid19) into China to the Chinese people.
I.e. This is not a Chinese problem, and therefore not the problem of the CCP - so in the Chinese people's eyes, the CCP did nothing wrong after all, and it is all America's fault.
And, by calling the virus Covid19 rather than the Wuhan virus (which is the point I am making here), it's clearly 'not from China' and the CCP has 'no culpability for hiding knowledge of the virus and allowing it to spread'. Of course, they do have knowledge that flights internal to China were banned to stop the spread (because they banned them), but international flights were encouraged (because they encouraged them) and yes, this is FACT not some nonsense tin foil conspiracy nut theory. It is absolute fact, and absolutely unforgivable. But no one seems to care.
A Chinese reporter in the USA called Simone Gao did an amazing documentary on this titled 'Coverup of the Century' (you can find it on Youtube). If you have any doubt that WeChat should be banned after seeing this very well researched documentary then there truly is no hope (a common comment on this documentary is that it is what unbiased, free press journalism, is supposed to be). I have to agree.
At the end of the day, Apple is leaving a seriously bad taste in my mouth.
I have never ever thought to use the phase "Steve would not do this" but I think I would be absolutely correct in saying "Steve would not do this". What is Tim Cook doing to Apple, and via Apple to the USA on behalf of (it seems, I have no proof, but having thought about what I have written above) the CCP.
Edited to clarify why China is blocking Australia - see [EDIT] above.
No, it's that the criminal can't (falsely) accuse the other of a crime to distract from his own crimes.
https://www.sinodaily.com/reports/US_slams_deteriorating_human_rights_in_China_999.html
"The overall situation of human rights in China continues to deteriorate," said Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for human rights, after two days of talks with Chinese officials in Washington...Chinese people needed to be able to voice legitimate grievances and play a "meaningful role in the political development of their own society," he said.
During the talks with the Chinese side, led by Chen Xu, a director general from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the US also raised the issue of China's crackdown on the Uighurs, as well as the self-immolations by about 40 Tibetans. The US delegation also raised concerns about freedom of expression, including Internet freedom, labor rights and legal reforms...
"US officials voiced concern about the lack of access to legal counsel for detained activists, and again called for the release of lawyers and democracy activists languishing in jail, including Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo. They also raised the cases of prominent Chinese rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who has been held virtually incommunicado since 2009, and wheelchair-bound Ni Yulan, who was jailed after working with her husband to protect alleged victims of government-backed land grabs".
And then two years later, 2014:
The United States has expressed strong concern after China jailed Uighur academic Ilham Tohti for life. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was "deeply disturbed" at the move. He and the White House both called for Tohti's immediate release. China's foreign ministry said it was opposed to foreign interference in China's judicial sovereignty.
Tohti was jailed on Tuesday after Chinese authorities accused him of promoting separatism. Several of his students have been arrested on similar charges.
'Peaceful dissent'
Ilham Tohti has spoken out on behalf of the Muslim Uighur minority group, who live in Xinjiang in China's far west. He has called for dialogue between Beijing and the Uighurs as a way of reducing tensions.
In a statement, Mr Kerry called Tohti's sentence "retribution" by Beijing for Tohti's promotion of human rights for Uighur citizens, and said his detention "silenced an important moderate Uighur voice". The White House said civil society leaders like Tohti play a "vital role" in reducing ethnic tensions in China. "We stress the importance of Chinese authorities differentiating between peaceful dissent and violent extremism," it said.
LOL.... Defending the Orange Traitor and Criminal with distraction and the "WhatAbout!' defense... Got it!
You probably do but it's inconvenient for you to acknowledge it. If we were to listen to you it all started with the current President and every other administration ignored it.
Screwing up the American economy, exports and undermining its technical powerhouses? Yeh, that was Trump. Still is.... Except now he's moved on to defunding Social Security to pay for his mistakes.
LOL.... Change the subject? I was responding to one of your rather ridiculous posts -- this one featuring distraction and "whataboutism" -- you know, the one trying to change the subject to some imaginary thing that happened years ago!
Try to keep up! I know that's hard for a Trumper -- you're used to one line simple lies. But work on it. You'll get better!
Sure.
The below contains links that @GeorgeBMac has requested in support of what I wrote in a previous post. Most (but not all) of them do not talk about WeChat which is really what this thread is supposed to be about, but they do support my comments about what China has been doing, and in that vein, how Apple supporting the CCP over WeChat does not make any sense.
If you are busy and do not have time to look through all the below material, I would HIGHLY suggest you watch this - directly mentions WeChat various times:
Simone Gao documentary, 1 hour long, viewed over 2 million times - discusses how China hid the virus and lied about human to human transmission, including monitoring people via WeChat and using it as a tool of suppression:
Very interesting video that covers various topics but focuses on Canada's CBC extremely worrying pro CCP anti democratic news stories calling Chinese journalists racist against China when they were talking about the Chinese Government (i.e. it would be like saying someone was racist for saying the Nazis were bad - when the Nazis are not a race - a government is NOT a race) and attempts to conflate the CCP with the Chinese people which is again helping the CCP:
How China is gobbling up millions of acres of land, vital infrastructure and companies in Australia
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7725675/How-China-owns-Australia-buying-infrastructure-land-water.html
How China's CCP has taken control of Port Darwin in Australia for 99 years, a very important and strategic port:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-12/why-did-northern-territory-sell-darwin-port-to-china-what-risk/10755720
Google search: australia gum on shoe china
About 3,850,000 results
Suggest this article first:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/29/chewing-gum-stuck-on-the-sole-of-our-shoes-the-china-australia-war-of-words-timeline
Google: Australia threatened by China virus
China's government attempting to use economic coercion to stop Australia looking into virus further. This is in support of the comments I made about how the CCP is trying to remove the link between the CCP and the Virus:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8264031/Chinese-ambassador-threatens-destroy-Australias-economy-coronavirus-probe.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-australia-china/australia-rejects-chinese-economic-coercion-threat-amid-planned-coronavirus-probe-idUSKCN2290Z6
Connected with the above story:
'You will feel more pain': China's chilling new threat to devastate Australia's economy if it supports America in a 'new Cold War' (mentions the above stories)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8353231/China-warns-Australia-feel-pain-economic-punishment.html
March earlier this year (well before the US was in the throws of Covid19): China Will Do Anything to Deflect Coronavirus Blame - points to Italy as the starting point of Covid19:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/30/beijing-coronavirus-response-see-what-sticks-propaganda-blame-ccp-xi-jinping/
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3903271
As you can see, the information is out there. You do not need to look very far to find it. It is not as if you have to join some secret club, have a special handshake, and follow some mumbo jumbo.
Using WeChat for business communication is a serious danger not only for businesses but freedom in general. Ignoring this threat is like walking on a bed of snakes and pretending that none of them will bite you.
On to @GeorgeBMac later comments on Trump:
I said nothing about Trump. I find it strange how people often attempt to inject something about Trump when talking about China's CCP. I don't live in the US. I am not American. I do not really follow American politics. China affects the ENTIRE WORLD. How can you not understand that? This is NOT about Trump.
That said, your comment about protecting American businesses - well China is constantly draining information from around the world and using it to it's own ends. IP theft is a thing, it is ABSOLUTELY real.
China's Harbin Z 20 is a virtual clone of America's Black Hawk.
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-tested-black-hawk-copy-z20-helicopter-on-advanced-destroyer-2019-7?r=US&IR=T
South China morning post called "China’s Z-20 Black Hawk lookalike"
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3033088/chinas-z-20-black-hawk-lookalike-and-flying-saucer-concept
A bunch of fighter jets that are near copies:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/g23303922/china-copycat-air-force/
The point is - these are copied from the militaries of the world - who are 'well protected' and yet the CCP still manages to steal their data. Compared to this, stealing information from businesses is child's play, and WeChat makes this even easier.
So again, what is Apple doing!? It makes NO sense.
I was talking about evidence. Not propaganda and selective 'facts'.
We do have hard evidence that Russia has attacked our last two elections and is proceeding to attack this one as well. But for some reason Trump and his Trumpers ignore that and hyperfocus on China hate. Why is that? Could Russia be aiding Trump and China just a distraction?
Around 11 different sources - is 'selective'? Well look, just Google it yourself. I just provided suggestions and tried to select from a variety of different sources on purpose to avoid being 'selective', but whatever.
Australia being bullied by China is propaganda. Um, OK. That's weird. I'm sure you know more than people in Australia do, apparently.
You clearly did not read my reply where I think I made it pretty clear I don't give a toss about Trump.
As for China 'hate' - this is getting a bit much. I am deeply concerned about the plight of the Chinese people in China due to what the CCP is doing to them, and what CCP is doing to the world. Everyone should be concerned about this. Don't think for a moment that what happened to Hong Kong is going to be the end of their aggression. Long after Trump is out of power, this is still going to be an issue for the world. It's not going to magically disappear.
At the end of the day, China uses WeChat to monitor people - Chinese people know that all too well.
By pushing WeChat to remain in use Apple are supporting the CCP to suppress the Chinese people.
If you don't want to understand, that's up to you. No one can open your eyes for you.
PS I should add that as for what Russia has been up to, I would certainly agree with you that it is also deeply concerning.