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Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters

bloomberg.com

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Re: Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters

#31

Post by mensetmanusman »

alphabetting wrote: post #26
lucubratory wrote: post #25

Remember: if you see something, say something. But when China does it there's actual outrage. I wish people here had the same outrage about us doing the same thing in the West, where that outrage could actually possibly have an impact on the real world other than just propping up two-minutes hate on the official enemies. Getting mad about China's numerous repressive measures achieves literally nothing, because they d…

In July, one Chinese employee was allegedly reported to the police by his colleagues after failing to remember the lyrics to a popular Chinese song at a karaoke night aroused their suspicion. “He turned out to be a you-know-what,” one user who knew the group wrote on social media app Xiaohongshu, named after Mao’s Little Red Book that was used to compel the nation’s population to inform on each other. China offers up…

Not anymore, but the red scare of MccArthyism was real.

Re: Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters

#32

Post by janalsncm »

inglor_cz wrote: post #9
bell-cot wrote: post #3

Worth adding to the Evil Overlord List: When making decisions about my security forces, I will bear in mind the example of East Germany's supposedly all-knowing and all-powerful Stasi...and of how utterly useless they proved to be. Better to be accidentally killed by the Hero's comic-relief Sidekick than to have my Evil Empire collapse without the Hero having had to lift a finger.

Stasi was very efficient in suppression of German dissent. East Germany collapsed on the account of persistent information inflow from the West (TV, radio, zero language barrier against West Germany), plus its ideological allies (the Warsaw Pact led by USSR) abandoning them. A country of 17 million isolated in a sea of non-friendly powers would be unviable. Once USSR dropped the Brezhnev Doctrine of Limited Sovereign…

> there isn't really an efficient way to supply dissenting news to Chinese people in Chinese en masse

What exactly would you like to tell them? A large percentage of Chinese have access to VPNs, travel to other countries, and talk with people from all over. The trade offs that Americans have implicitly made, accepting high street crime in exchange for “freedom” won’t universally be accepted as better. They are a cultural choice.

The average Chinese isn’t eating grass or cowering from Big Brother. Economically, they’re doing significantly better than their parents. The red hot post-war economy Americans reminisce about? Chinese have been living that reality for 40 years now. In America we have recessions once a decade, but up until this year the average Chinese never even knew what a recession was.

Re: Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters

#33

Post by gmerc »

prewett wrote: post #8
jagraff wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea with campaigns like these is not to actually root out spies - it's to get people to self censor because they're afraid that their neighbor is going to report them to the government. If everyone is afraid of saying any forbidden ideas, nothing "subversive" can spread because everyone lives in too much fear to spread it. Knowledge of this campaign is more important than the function of the campaign its…

It's kind of impressive to watch Xi continually double-down on disastrous policy. The memory of the Cultural Revolution is still there, and nobody wants to revisit those times. But after the disastrous Shanghai lockdowns, a lot of ordinary people realized that the government can just arbitrarily lock you up and destroy your ability to earn money / run your business. Young people who sacrificed their childhood to rele…

I think it’s a global phenomenon. We are seeing a rise of fascism across the globe, the policy and leadership choices made by key parties in the largest western countries is not seem like they learned from the 1920s at all

Most nuclear armed nations are now ruled by old men with quasi autocratic power concentrated like at no time in the last 80 years. Even the US had a brush with an authoritarian coup attempt and languishes on whether to roll the dice on that again.

Re: Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters

#34

Post by gmerc »

bell-cot wrote: post #3

Worth adding to the Evil Overlord List: When making decisions about my security forces, I will bear in mind the example of East Germany's supposedly all-knowing and all-powerful Stasi...and of how utterly useless they proved to be. Better to be accidentally killed by the Hero's comic-relief Sidekick than to have my Evil Empire collapse without the Hero having had to lift a finger.

You’ll be surprised how many people you can surveil with StateGPT

don’t laugh - it’s vastly more accurate than xKeyScore and other keyword reliant systems and it has the ability to catch meaning, even if you speak somewhat obfuscated. Not perfect by any means, but a vast improvement on the state of full time surveillance. Regulated industries are already racing adoption for compliance scanning, in combination with Whisper it’s a clear pivot point in surveillance capabilities for anyone who isn’t the NSA

One of the reasons it’s a mistake to withdraw on “the technology is flawed, it hallucinates” - A bit of inaccuracy, an occasional execution of a wrongly accused person isn’t a dealbreaker for countries. What matters is the improvement over the status quo

Re: Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters

#35

Post by AtlasBarfed »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #29

I went to school with someone who grew up in Ukraine before the fall of the wall, and her comment was that society twisted itself into distrusting and ratting on neighbors for ‘bad’ behavior. Low trust societies are the worst for the citizens and the best for the corrupt in power. These activities are great for keeping the status quo.

But... that comes with a huge economic penalty in general system corruption, reduced cooperation, productivity, efficiency. Low morale/patriotism. And eventually the central powers fragment.

Really the USSR lasted as long as it did because the Great War had a lasting mass perception of survivalism, and the power vacuum bringing the Warsaw Pact under Russia's economic dominance. Eventually it fell apart.

Somehow Putin reversed that (likely because of oil revenues), but the oil age is coming to an end, and Putin is allegedly failing in health. When he dies or is deposed, Russia will fragment I think.

But this time, there is a military power that is greater than Russia, at least in conventional terms: Ukraine. It will have a trained, battle-hardened, motivated, fully NATO-supplied army, with deep NCO-deep ties to NATO militaries, equipment, officers, etc. It will have trust of its allies and a critical mission to NATO of being the new line of defense with Russia.

What will likely happen once Putin falls is that Belarus will effectively become allied with Poland, Ukraine, and the NATO-member Balkans. Ukraine will become a pivotal multi-decade military and diplomatic leverage over parts of crumbling Russia: George, Armenia, and/or Azerbaijan will align with them.

So what happens then? Kalingrad declares independence? What about the thin sliver of Russia between the Black and Caspian seas, isn't that where the oil fields are, or the Kalmyks decide the time is right? Bashkirs? Chechens of course?

What if post-putin results in separate power centers in Volgograd/St Petersburg, and Moscow all essentially dividing the spoils?

Re: Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters

#36

Post by AtlasBarfed »

drt5b7j wrote: post #21

He's paranoid about spies because he know how much effort China has made to place spies everywhere abroad, and he assumes that the West is doing the same.

He's turning China into North Korea. A great collapse and starvation is coming.

Re: Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters

#37

Post by nradov »

janalsncm wrote: post #32
inglor_cz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stasi was very efficient in suppression of German dissent. East Germany collapsed on the account of persistent information inflow from the West (TV, radio, zero language barrier against West Germany), plus its ideological allies (the Warsaw Pact led by USSR) abandoning them. A country of 17 million isolated in a sea of non-friendly powers would be unviable. Once USSR dropped the Brezhnev Doctrine of Limited Sovereign…

> there isn't really an efficient way to supply dissenting news to Chinese people in Chinese en masse What exactly would you like to tell them? A large percentage of Chinese have access to VPNs, travel to other countries, and talk with people from all over. The trade offs that Americans have implicitly made, accepting high street crime in exchange for “freedom” won’t universally be accepted as better. They are a cult…

Americans have made no such trade off. The amount of street crime is quite low in most of the country. It's only a noticeable problem in a few large cities that have been wrecked by failed progressive policies. My city has literally zero murders most years, and those few that have occurred have been private disputes rather than street crime.

Re: Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters

#38

Post by inglor_cz »

janalsncm wrote: post #32
inglor_cz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stasi was very efficient in suppression of German dissent. East Germany collapsed on the account of persistent information inflow from the West (TV, radio, zero language barrier against West Germany), plus its ideological allies (the Warsaw Pact led by USSR) abandoning them. A country of 17 million isolated in a sea of non-friendly powers would be unviable. Once USSR dropped the Brezhnev Doctrine of Limited Sovereign…

> there isn't really an efficient way to supply dissenting news to Chinese people in Chinese en masse What exactly would you like to tell them? A large percentage of Chinese have access to VPNs, travel to other countries, and talk with people from all over. The trade offs that Americans have implicitly made, accepting high street crime in exchange for “freedom” won’t universally be accepted as better. They are a cult…

" Economically, they’re doing significantly better than their parents."

Are you sure about the really young cohorts? AFAIK youth unemployment in China is so bad that they stopped releasing the stats.

Re: Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters

#39

Post by czDRZ-akk »

alphabetting wrote: post #26
lucubratory wrote: post #25

Remember: if you see something, say something. But when China does it there's actual outrage. I wish people here had the same outrage about us doing the same thing in the West, where that outrage could actually possibly have an impact on the real world other than just propping up two-minutes hate on the official enemies. Getting mad about China's numerous repressive measures achieves literally nothing, because they d…

In July, one Chinese employee was allegedly reported to the police by his colleagues after failing to remember the lyrics to a popular Chinese song at a karaoke night aroused their suspicion. “He turned out to be a you-know-what,” one user who knew the group wrote on social media app Xiaohongshu, named after Mao’s Little Red Book that was used to compel the nation’s population to inform on each other. China offers up…

Considering the article doesn’t link to the post in question, or even show a screenshot, I hardly find this to be a compelling anecdote.

This portion of the article loses even more credibility since the author clearly doesn’t understand the Chinese social media landscape, nor what “Mao’s Little Red Book” is actually called in Chinese.

Re: Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters

#40

Post by morbicer »

jagraff wrote: post #6
tromp wrote: post #5

> Police in Henan province have urged citizens to quiz neighbors they mistrust on pop culture to ascertain their patriotism, while Shandong province state media published posters with the tagline “spies might be all around you.” All this campaign will do is generate a ton of false positives. They'll end up duplicating Russia's practice of reporting people you don't like as unpatriotic. The US also has some experience…

I think the idea with campaigns like these is not to actually root out spies - it's to get people to self censor because they're afraid that their neighbor is going to report them to the government. If everyone is afraid of saying any forbidden ideas, nothing "subversive" can spread because everyone lives in too much fear to spread it. Knowledge of this campaign is more important than the function of the campaign its…

Astute observation. Soviet Union did the same thing, even turning children against parents so the "forbidden thoughts" are not mentioned even in the privacy of home. Thought police.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlik_Morozov

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