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How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

economist.com

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Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#71

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

vacuity wrote: post #60
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't apply the same logic to any country's history. It wouldn't make sense to hold modern China accountable for the Qing, or the civil war, or the Cultural Revolution. Like the original commenter, my biggest concern by far with the Chinese government is their repeated public statements that they plan to violently conquer a neighboring country and integrate it into their own. The US has undertaken a lot of military…

I agree that China should be regarded as a particularly problematic country, but I would like the US to have a more comprehensive and introspective attitude. The US can stop the mutual bullying and take the high ground. That doesn't change the facts about China, but shifts in foreign policy and/or PR can at least give the US a better grounds as the primary opposing actor to China, if not incentivize China to change t…

I don't agree that a comprehensive attitude is appropriate. I have plenty of criticisms of US foreign policy, but China's plans for Taiwan are absolutely incomparable to any of them. There's quite a lot of diplomatic compromises that I think the US ought to make if they would secure Taiwanese independence, but right now the Chinese government are themselves completely unwilling to introspect or take a comprehensive attitude about it.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#72

Post by whimsicalism »

casenmgreen wrote: post #58
popcalc wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past 40 years how many countries has the US invaded and how many has China?

China historically has been ruled by committee and has been inward-looking. China is now a dictatorship. Dictatorships sooner or later, if they think they can get away with it, invade their neighbours. When you see a dictatorship which is under no threat engaging in a massive military build-up, invasion is on the way.

the demise of China’s rule by committee has been vastly overstated in the West imo.

i wonder about this ‘dictatorship inevitably goes to war’ - a glance at WW2 and you could be forgiven for concluding the exact opposite re: the Iberian peninsula

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#73

Post by captainbland »

bearjaws wrote: post #4

Soon enough anything that is even remotely a security threat (pretty much any non-trivial app) will require clearance and in office work. The North Korean hacks into several companies are an example of how bad it is now, add in some good deep fake technology and soon you will not be able to distinguish who is actually working for your company.

> in office work

Doesn't this result in more over the shoulder opportunities by insider threat actors (i.e. spies) in conventional open office settings? Unclear how this meshes with outsourcing also.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#74

Post by whimsicalism »

cyanydeez wrote: post #50
gcr wrote: post #16

[flagged]

Except, there were communist infiltration plans in the 1950s. The same as theres coordinated russian plans supporting conservative nationalists. If you want rational protectionism, America would need to stop treating businesses as the unit of concern and enact stronger worker privacy and consumer protections. The same way CIA backdoors are intrinsic unsafe, so are lax employee and consumer protections.

great, we are rehabilitating mccarthyism now

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#75

Post by casenmgreen »

eximius wrote: post #67
popcalc wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past 40 years how many countries has the US invaded and how many has China?

The US government is a meandering blob of racoons in a trenchcoat. Occasionally a hand will _do_ evil but even odds whether they realize it or meant it. Partially depends on which particular raccoon is where. Some of the racoons are evil. China is actively directed by a small group of well coordinated, evil raccoons. See, you know, the constant genocide.

Yes.

This is really exactly my take, too.

The US Government has done incredibly stupid and catastrophically foolish and harmful things - being hoodwinked into Vietnam by the French, for example - but the Government is not inherently, actually evil, in any way, shape or form.

This is not the case for China.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#76

Post by inglor_cz »

As a non-Chinese and a non-American, I care less about the usual geopolitical games, including spying, and more about how the Chinese government treats its own citizens. No freedom of speech or conscience, no political freedoms: just work and be an obedient small truckle in the mechanism of the Leviathan. Plus the return of the Cult of Personality, which once even the CCP tried to abandon, but ultimately failed. These are not results of American meddling, these are their own internal choices.

I don't buy the explanation that being unfree is somehow intrinsic to East Asian cultures. We have had plenty of authoritarian regimes in Europe, too, and several hundred years ago few people could call themselves personally free.

I don't want this model of governance to spread around the globe again. It has been tried before, with disastrous results. Unless we abandon the concept of universal morality completely, treating your own people as disposable serfs is wrong.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#77

Post by sandworm101 »

throw10920 wrote: post #7
bearjaws wrote: post #4

Soon enough anything that is even remotely a security threat (pretty much any non-trivial app) will require clearance and in office work. The North Korean hacks into several companies are an example of how bad it is now, add in some good deep fake technology and soon you will not be able to distinguish who is actually working for your company.

> Soon enough anything that is even remotely a security threat [...] will require clearance and in office work. I think this is one of those things that sucks but may be necessary. You need to trust the knowledge workers that make up your economy to not send your research to a hostile nation so they can take advantage of your R&D investments. And you need to know that your critical infrastructure (beyond Internet and…

>> vulnerable to being slowly pwned and then shut down all at once in a catastrophic event

A few years ago everyone thought that would happen to Ukraine, that Russian hackers would shut down everything from water delivery to weapon systems. The hackers almost certainly tried, yet the lights remained on. Imho we overestimate the power of "nation-state hackers" and underestimate the resilience of our systems.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#79

Post by thinkingemote »

In the UK Chinese funded international masters/phd students have to send back to China reports about their fellow students as a condition of their funding.

There's no mandatory spying expected if the position is funded privately or by the host institution.

I expect that the spying is just limited to their fellow state funded students although I have heard of significant tension between mainland and Hong Kong students about this. I don't know if Hong Kong students have to spy.

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