Learning China’s Forbidden History, So They Can Censor It
An article on the New York Times discusses the business of censorship in China, showing just how far the Chinese government is willing to go to brainwash their people. I can imagine that in a few years from now, young people growing up in China will be living in an alternate reality fully controlled by their masters in government. They’ll be ideal docile slaves knowing only what their masters want them to know, and thinking only what their masters want them to think.
Here’s a quote from the New York Times article (“Learning China’s Forbidden History, So They Can Censor It”, January 2nd 2019):
For Chinese companies, staying on the safe side of government censors is a matter of life and death. Adding to the burden, the authorities demand that companies censor themselves, spurring them to hire thousands of people to police content.
That in turn has created a growing and lucrative new industry: censorship factories.
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China has built the world’s most extensive and sophisticated online censorship system. It grew even stronger under President Xi Jinping, who wants the internet to play a greater role in strengthening the Communist Party’s hold on society. More content is considered sensitive. Punishments are getting more severe.
Once circumspect about its controls, China now preaches a vision of a government-supervised internet that has surprising resonance in other countries. Even traditional bastions of free expression like Western Europe and the United States are considering their own digital limits. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube have said that they would hire thousands more people to better keep a handle on their content.
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The workers are almost all college graduates in their 20s. They are often unaware of, or indifferent to, politics. In China, many parents and teachers tell the young that caring about politics leads only to trouble.
To overcome that, Mr. Yang and his colleagues developed a sophisticated training system. New hires start with weeklong “theory” training, during which senior employees teach them the sensitive information that they didn’t know before.
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Beyondsoft has developed an extensive database based on such information that Mr. Yang calls one of its “core competencies.” It also uses anti-censorship software to regularly visit what it calls anti-revolutionary websites that are blocked by the Chinese government. It then updates the database.
New employees study the database much like preparing for college entrance exams. After two weeks, they have to pass a test.
And let’s not forget the “reeducation centers” that they’ve also set up, forcing people who think differently to undergo “free education.” From and article on Vox (“China’s reeducation camps for Muslims are beginning to look like concentration camps”, October 24th 2018):
The Chinese government recently admitted that it’s forcing religious minorities into “reeducation camps” as part of its crackdown on extremism — but new details show that these centers have a lot more in common with concentration camps.
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Earlier this month, the BBC reported that Chinese authorities in Xinjiang had revised a law designed to promote the use of detention centers “to carry out the educational transformation of those affected by extremism.”
As Vox’s Jen Kirby notes, China has previously tried to deny or downplay the existence of these centers. But human rights groups, witness testimony, and media reports have shown Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in the region being detained and tortured in mass numbers, and forced to undergo psychological indoctrination — like studying communist propaganda and giving thanks to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
A United Nations human rights panel estimates that Chinese authorities have imprisoned as many as 1 million Uighurs. But a Hong-Kong based human rights group puts the number even higher: between 2 million and 3 million.
Today simply speaking the truth is quite often also regarded as “extremism” and not just in China. So you can imagine how easily someone living in China might end up in one of these brainwashing centers.
Apart from the massive and large scale brainwashing going on in China, the New York Times article also shows how much control China has on the companies there. This is why it’s a huge risk to be doing business with companies in China, as we’ve recently seen with all the news surrounding Huawei. If you’re using (networking, computing, and communications) equipment from Huawei, it would be wise for you to assume that the Chinese government can easily gain access to your information via Huawei. Here’s from an article on The Australian (“China used Huawei to hack network, says secret report”, November 3rd 2018):
Secret intelligence reports given to Australian officials outlined a case in which Chinese espionage services used telecommunications giant Huawei’s staff to get access codes to infiltrate a foreign network.
The Weekend Australian has confirmed from a national security source that the intelligence highlighted the Chinese company’s role in cyber espionage.
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The Weekend Australian has confirmed that the attempted breach related to a foreign network, not an Australian one.
It is understood company officials were pressed upon to provide password and network details that would enable Chinese intelligence services to gain access.
It is not known if the attempted hack, which occurred in the past two years, was successful.
All of this combined with the “citizen score” that China is currently rolling out to track and monitor their slaves shows that they are on track to fulfilling George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”. I wouldn’t want to be living in China, and I’m glad I don’t.
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