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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

#151

Post by casenmgreen »

whimsicalism wrote: post #72
casenmgreen wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> dictatorship inevitably goes to war

But that's not what I wrote.

I may be completely wrong, but what I think is that a dictatorship will, sooner or later, go to war if it thinks it can win.

So if you have say Russia next door, but you're strong enough Russia think it can't win, you do not get invaded.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#152

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

asdff wrote: post #143
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> Imagine walking around Memphis at midnight, alone and unarmed Says it all about your biases that you seriously think this is actually a dangerous proposition in terms of real statistical risk.

Memphis had 63.9 homicides per 100,000 people in 2023.

I don't have stats for individual Chinese cities, but China's rate is 0.46 per 100,000 people. In China, it's plausible that the cities are safer than the countryside, and I don't think that Beijing's number is substantially higher than the national average.

Basically, you are 139x more likely to be murdered in Memphis.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#153

Post by mardifoufs »

whatever1 wrote: post #96
tehjoker wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

whom did america genocide last year?

Unequivocally supporting and providing complete material support for a country that has been accused (or investigated for) of genocide by credible sources (MSF, ICJ) comes pretty close. Especially when most of the bombs used for said genocide were provided willingly by the US, knowing that it will be used to level a city to the ground.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#154

Post by casenmgreen »

hooverd wrote: post #94
casenmgreen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The US govt has no agency, got it.

In all things, there are factors which encourage, and factors which discourage, and in the end, you get what you get.

The French worked as hard as possible to get American military support in Vietnam so they could remain the colonial power. They did a very good job of it.

It was all an appalling tragedy. All the Vietnamese wanted was independence, and in particular from the appalling misrule of the French.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#155

Post by kasey_junk »

Schnitz wrote: post #84

I disagree with this being presented as if it was special. It’s standard operating procedure for intelligence agencies worldwide.

Do you have an example of a western government only letting someone come home to visit ailing parents in exchange for spying on their countrymen in a foreign nation?

I’m sure it happens just because there are lots of people. But I’m having a hard time coming up with a western nation that has a significant political dissident diaspora. I’d guess that the war on terror might generate one somewhere?

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#156

Post by oivey »

mistrial9 wrote: post #25
throw10920 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> You need to trust the knowledge workers unfortunately among many circles, it is the opposite. More and more "zero trust" .. more logging and audit, more spot checks, more re-logins .. It is a culture clash, always-on networking has made it much worse, since security professionals have endless lists of problems they see.

You cut off the part of the quote that says you can’t trust people by default, misrepresenting what who you quoted was saying.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#157

Post by Cyph0n »

monadINtop wrote: post #136
Cyph0n wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

In a nutshell, it has a unique structure, a wider mandate, and operates a bit differently than your typical intelligence service - especially domestically.

"One of the largest and most secretive intelligence organizations in the world, it maintains powerful branches at the provincial, city, municipality and township levels throughout China."

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#158

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

luckydata wrote: post #145
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Not even remotely true.

That Chinese cities are safer is obviously true. That there's tremendous small-firm competition and a more or less hands-off attitude towards private business is also true, which people who buy anything from China or speak with Chinese business partners quickly come to realize.

Frankly, I'm not even convinced that the average Chinese person has less say in his or her Government than the average American or (especially) European.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#159

Post by webdoodle »

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…

> 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.

You won't be protesting in the U.S. without significant risks to your economic and social status. BTW - The Iraq war was several wars ago, and most of the people chatting here weren't even born for the first Iraq war.

2017 became the year the censors and suspensions of anti-social media started. Now with A.I. mods owned by an entitled parasitic elite, we get a highly censored world were your only recourse is offline, often in solitude.

If you care to test your theory, that you can criticise who you like in the U.S., I suggest you protest Israel, loudly and often.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#160

Post by nickdothutton »

demarq wrote: post #130
thinkingemote wrote: post #79

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…

> 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. That's a major claim, do you have a link to an article or source?

Not the OP but I found this interesting so went digging [1].

>Amongst other things, the contract also commits the recipient to “regularly submit” a formal “Situation Report” (called the Study/Research/Training Situation Report for Personnel Studying Abroad 出国留学人员学习/研修情况报告) to the relevant Chinese embassy or consulate, and “participate in annual PhD student reviews” there.

[1] https://ukctransparency.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/China...

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