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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

#131

Post by asdff »

crop_rotation wrote: post #105
inglor_cz wrote: post #76

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. Thes…

While I don't like the lack of freedoms in China, the Chinese government has done an amazing job lifting it's people out of poverty. I am not Chinese but I think most people around the world would gladly take that over being poor (most western people do not know how bad and undignified life in poverty can be)

[flagged]

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#132

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

inglor_cz wrote: post #76

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. Thes…

Have you actually ever been to China or spoken with any Chinese people in China? (Not expats, but, say, taxi drivers and businessmen.)

Frankly, they're practically as free as Americans and Europeans. In some respects they're more free. There's far less violent crime and property crime, too, so living in the city feels more free in ways which should be obvious -- women can walk around alone at night and not fear for their own safety. Imagine walking around Memphis at midnight, alone and unarmed, or parts of London... even as a man, it would be very ill-advised.

China's business culture, also, is very explicitly laissez-faire, competition between firms is brutal, and there's less red tape than you'd get in Europe.

They do a lot of things right.

> treating your own people as disposable serfs

How do you mean? How is the average Shanghai banker any more or less of a serf than a banker in Frankfurt or Indianapolis? Democracy?

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#134

Post by pphysch »

anramon wrote: post #124

Amazing how this site's comments have been decaying in quality since a few years now. Obvious propaganda article, from a media that doesn't even try to hide that it's mainly a propaganda media, is commented on seriously without any kind of reality filter, and it gets to the top comments...

It's a full-blown relapse to Cold War anti-intellectualism.

Not good, but the incompetent capitalist class cheers on the scapegoating.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#135

Post by Spooky23 »

wruza wrote: post #55
NemoNobody wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experian was hacked and 168 million Americans had all of lives information stolen - the data that is supposed to verify who I am and tracks all of my financial life, everywhere I've ever lived and of course my social security number. Not one thing to fix this was done. Anyone could buy my information and be me, NOTHING was done to fix this insanely huge problem.

But they can’t fake notarization, can they? What I’m getting from your comment is that they can send a screenshot of your id and that’s enough. If so, it is indeed a problem on the employers/legislation side. Expecting your numbers to not leak was a bad plan from the beginning. You should be able to publish these without any serious consequences for anyone involved (apart from deanonymization-related issues basically…

It’s pretty trivial to commit a variety of frauds against you, and moderate difficult to get valid ID impersonating you. I worked with a non-federal US government entity that employed many investigators who spent 80% of their time looking into what you’re talking about. With the exception of simple frauds addressed with facial recognition (usually people impersonating dead or disabled relatives to avoid consequences of DWI or divorce), they felt that they weren’t scratching the surface.

The US is plagued by stupid right wing people who think that ID is satanic, and stupid left wing people who think that ID by nature will marginalize poor people. Because we’ve allowed the federal government to outsource ID to the states, the US is stuck with inadequate identity framework for a long time.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#136

Post by monadINtop »

Cyph0n wrote: post #126
monadINtop wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any numbers that would verify that? Or even any other statement on that issue? Pretty sure determining the "scale" of any kind of intelligence activity is unbelievably murky, as you might be able to imagine.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_State_Security_(...

Nice a Wikipedia article. Where can I find any indication of comparative scale compared to any other nation, like I asked?

Just going by a blind guess and knowledge of the world, I guess it's pretty much correlated with economy and geopolitical dominance, so I'd expect America to be number one simply as a result of it's wealth and strategic dominance in the last century, and then China somewhere around the level of the rest of NATO or Russia or something (though I'm sure rapidly rising, which would explain the growing anxiety of the corporate mouthpieces in The Economist).

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#137

Post by Cyph0n »

devsda wrote: post #26
NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #9

Is this... not a normal practice for all intelligence services of the world? Emigrants always have ties to the originland.

> Emigrants always have ties to the originland. China can coerce it's diaspora through their family ties and social circle back home[1]. That isn't normal and is very difficult to pull off in democratic countries. 1. https://www.propublica.org/article/operation-fox-hunt-how-ch...

There are sufficient “loopholes” that would allow Western democracies to do this. The only difference is that China is forthright about what it does & is willing to do.

Look at the Assange fiasco for example, or Guantanamo Bay, or the use of rendition to allied states by the CIA, or sitting in on torture conducted by allies (recently in Yemen), etc.

Not to mention the complete disregard of international law when it comes to Israel, and in the same, hypocritical breath, repeatedly insisting that the Russians must follow international law (which they should).

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#139

Post by asdff »

popcalc wrote: post #31
casenmgreen wrote: post #20

[flagged]

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

The americans had their own justifications for those actions that were supporter by a coalition of nations, and none of that was to conquer territory. China on the other hand is flatly trying to conquer territory and limit the freedoms of the people who live there afterwards. They are, in fact, the bad guys here.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#140

Post by alecco »

graemep wrote: post #68
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?

There is a lot wrong with the US, and I (not American BTW) will criticise it quite freely and frequently BUT comparing the US to China is just ridiculous. What the US does can be criticised by its citizens, and protested. People can be punished. Wrongdoing can be exposed. Plenty of people in the US criticise the invasion of Iraq. I doubt many Chinese will find it safe to criticise the occupation of Tibet. Democracies…

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