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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

#241

Post by protomolecule »

peutetre wrote: post #238
protomolecule wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you seriously think it's possible, than you yourself should be worried a lot -- the last thing the West needs is even stronger China with its enormous industrial base and control of Siberian resources.

It's already started. China sees Russia's annexation of Outer Manchuria as a great historical wrong: https://lansinginstitute.org/2024/02/16/chinas-global-triump... China has reverted to using Chinese place names for cities and regions in the Far East. e.g. "Vladivostok" is now officially "Haishenwai": https://cepa.org/article/goodbye-vladivostok-hello-haishenwa... https://asiatimes.com/2023/03/china-eyes-russias-far…

Be worried then

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#242

Post by dang »

RandomThoughts3 wrote: post #235
throw10920 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

You broke the site guidelines so badly in this thread that I've banned the account. I don't want to ban you, but you've been crossing the line frequently and badly:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42521228

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42514626

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42503012

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42490292

- and we already asked you to stop (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41228950).

We simply can't have people being this abusive to others on this site, regardless of how much you know or feel you know.

Also, please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with, as it will eventually get your main account banned as well.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#243

Post by dang »

throw10920 wrote: post #233
RandomThoughts3 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

You also unfortunately broke the site guidelines in this thread, by perpetuating this tedious flamewar. Please don't do that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#244

Post by fspeech »

demarq wrote: post #222
fspeech wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Published papers and patents are public information.

then why not look it up? sending someone abroad to compile information on other people just seems off, even if some of that is public. These are supposed to be students.

"then why not look it up?"

Why do people write literature reviews? You write about what you think is significant.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#245

Post by lazyeye »

DonHopkins wrote: post #237
lazyeye wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, you can point out what you believe to be the bad behavior of the West and nobody will accuse you of being racist...

That's because "the West" is not a race. Maybe there's a reason you're so butt-hurt that people keep accusing you of being racist. Have you tried just not being racist?

Your comment is ridiculous.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#246

Post by singularity2001 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #77
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…

>> 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.

my theory is that behind the scenes the Ukraine is a proxy Warzone for nation state hackers and while the support of weapons was limited the support in countering online attacks would be rather unlimited

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#247

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

kasey_junk wrote: post #155
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?

The FBI targeted an Canadian scientist of Chinese origin and his family members because he declined to spy on China for them.[0,1]

After he declined to spy on China, the FBI accused him of being a Chinese spy. The accusations turned out to be completely spurious, and the FBI agent involved was found to have knowingly spread lies about the scientist. But before his name was cleared, he was fired by his university, and the FBI made all sorts of public declarations that he was a spy.

0. https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/27/1027350/anming-h...

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Anming_Hu

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#248

Post by asdff »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #152
asdff wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Factor out the domestic violence, bar fights, and gang activity, and how many of these are random people minding their own business that happen to get shot for walking around at midnight? Probably zero I'm guessing.

Re: How China turns members of its diaspora into spies

#249

Post by corank »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #132
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 t…

Have you tried using Google in China? Or post anything that the government/party doesn't like online?
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