1/ THREAD: The
@WSJ
ran checks on China's most popular social media platforms in the weeks before the Party Congress, searching for the names of Chinese leader Xi, the standing committee members and its 31 provincial and region Party chiefs. Here's what we found:
1/ THREAD: The extended Shanghai lockdown is morphing into a logistics disaster as trucks trickle into the city, leaving empty containers piling up at the world's largest port. What's happening with cargo there: w/
@yoyominnie
@Kubota_Yoko
@wsj_douglasj
1/ The impact of U.S. chip export controls towards China is more human than tech:
@WSJ
combed thru corporate filings to identify 43 American senior executives in 16 listed Chinese chip firms.
They now have to chose between their citizenship & for some, the startups they founded.
If Eileen Gu is China’s golden girl, then Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu is China’s golden boy. Nicknamed “ice fairy” by fans, the figure skater has amassed the support of thousands in China with his looks & talent, with many turning up in Beijing to show support
The first press conference of the Beijing Winter Olympics set the tone of what would be the main issues for the event over the next two weeks. Nonstop questions on Peng Shuai, Xinjiang, Rule 50 of the Olympic charter…
The figure skating short program is the only thing that has beaten Nathan Chen. And he conquered the demons from 2018 by turning in the most impressive performance today. via
@louiseradnofsky
@bzcohen
4/ Weibo (1): Weibo doesn't allow users without a Chinese cellphone number (no overseas users) to even search for Xi Jinping's name in the app. You need to register and log-in with a Chinese number (linked to your ID) to do so.
3/ In his 10 years in power, Xi presided over a boom in censorship that has muzzled online debate in entirely new ways. Influencers with dissenting views silenced, new laws limit online speech, and companies are fined for not policing web content.
Still, the results were a shock.
16/ I spoke to WeChat users who were banned forever from their account as they had shared this picture. In the past, Wechat would suspend you for a day or a week over politically sensitive topics, but not this time. With this incident, it was a complete ban for all who shared.
9/ Baidu Tieba: The true irony is that Chinese internet users can discuss U.S. politicians such as President Biden much more freely. Compare the zero results of Chinese leader Xi to 184,000 comments on Biden, with opinions ranging from respect to disgust.
5/ Weibo (2): Results are almost all articles or videos in some way linked to state media or government agencies. No surprise.. EXCEPT, the comments are also hidden from view... this post has 366 comments but only 3 are viewable.
7/ When you try and search on Baidu's online forum Tieba for Chinese President Xi Jinping, its a blank slate. Up pops a message: 抱歉,根据相关法律法规和政策,相关结果不予展现。"Sorry, according to related laws and policies, the results cannot be shown."
17/ I turned to Telegram to chat with one user to avoid being surveilled. But after a few mins, the state interference made it almost impossible to chat. They didn't cut my call directly, but made the line so broken you heard bits and bobs, and you constantly heard yourself echo.
@WSJ
2/ We analysed Douyin (China's TikTok), Weibo, Baidu's online forum Tieba, the Quora-like Zhihu (知乎)and searched for WeChat blogs using the Sogou search tool.
Breaking: Yahoo said it pulled its services in China, citing an "increasingly challenging business and legal environment"
It's the second US well-known tech name to downsize in a month. Linkedin shuttered its social networking site mid-October.
via
@WSJ
15/ Wechat is the worst censorship offender: and the
#sitongbridge
incident is the most recent example. Large numbers of Chinese lost access to the ubitquitous chat messaging app after sharing a photo of a rare protest act in Beijing ahead of the Congress.
Users of China's do-everything app WeChat have had their accounts blocked as part of a campaign to kill discussion of a rare protest in Beijing, part of the Communist Party's efforts to cleanse China's internet of even the whiff of dissent.
@lizalinwsj
13/ Keep in mind Douyin’s global counterpart TikTok, run by the same parent company Bytedance, is filled with user-generated memes and spoofs of leaders such as Biden and Putin. No such thing in China.
8/ Baidu Tieba: Chinese netizens get the same reply when they search for anyone else on the Standing Committee: Li Keqiang, Han Zheng, Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji. Other politicians with similar levels of censorship include Xinjiang Party chief 马兴瑞.
18/ In China, where independent opinion polls are almost nonexistent, social media has been a way to gauge people’s opinions, even under censorship. But the online scrubbing highlights how difficult it is to figure out how popular is China’s most forceful leader since Mao.
1/ Marriott International, Delta Airlines, H&M, Zara: there are many reasons why China is the elephant in the room when it comes to Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter. Why this matters: w/
@_KarenHao
Her husband of 12 years was on board China Eastern Flight 5735, the jetliner that nosedived into the mountains of Guangxi barely 40 mins before they were to land. He appeared in her dream last week, and she said, "I've been waiting for you to come. Our interviews with family: 1/
12/ Douyin takes 1st prize for censorship, boot-licking. For Xi, you only find videos from state/Party media. Lots of CCTV discussing Xi’s trips to the hinterland. I found this gem of an account: “Foreign Affairs Thinktank” with “golden thoughts from Xi.” 1 mln followers… hmmm🤔
25/ The one thing I did gleam from my research was who the next upcoming heavyweights might possibly be :) 陈敏尔, the Chongqing party chief, was the most heavily censored on all the platforms I searched. With censorship akin to Standing Committee members. Rising star maybe?
14/ Even searches for public sentiment about Mr. Xi’s wife, Peng Liyuan, a famous folk singer in her own right, yield nothing on most platforms. A close analogy would be Google censoring results for Melania Trump or Michelle Obama.
10/ Same scenario when it came to Sogou's WeChat search portal (a common way to browse WeChat blog posts). Searching ‘Yang Jiechi,' China's pointman on foreign affairs, returned the result: 呀!没有找到相关的微信公众号文章 (Ya! No related official WeChat posts found)
21/ How have things tightened under Xi? Our checks show there is zero public discussion on senior politicians now. Compare that to 2011 (pre-Xi), when Zhang Dejiang, a former vice premier was pummeled by social media users for negligence after the Wenzhou high speed rail crash.
22/ In 2011, there was censorship of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao too. But users got around it by using creative nicknames. Under Xi... Xiaohongshu banned 564 nicknames for Xi in 2 months, including “Adolf Xi-tler”. via
@CDT
@EricLiu_USA
Researchers say the censorship is worse this time becos Xi is pursuing a precedent-breaking 3rd term. Still, the censoring could backfire by obscuring Chinese leaders’ understanding of citizen needs & gripes, particularly with the lack of democratic institutions like a free press
23/ Lets not forget Xi introduced the "Heroes & Martyrs Law" criminalizing slander of Party heroes in order to control its version of history. And the fines against content platforms have grown huge. Weibo was fined about $2.6 mln in 2021 over content.
20/ Because China has blocked out a lot of foreign news websites and information sources, there is little to balance the steady stream of state-television anchors or Foreign Ministry spokespeople waxing lyrical about Mr. Xi, or footage of him being cheered by crowds on visits.
1/ Here’s a Saturday Essay
@Joshchin
and I wrote for the
@WSJ
about China’s surveillance state. The excerpt lifts from our new book, but it’s worth a read as this was some of the best access we’d been given by a city agency running a surveillance system.
1/Thread: For American tech companies in China, the writing is on the wall. It’s also on paper, in a secretive government policy brief: known as Document 79.
Our investigation into China's plans to 'delete' American technology: w/
@Kubota_Yoko
19/ It's also tough to assess support for his policies. A Zhihu post on a speech by Mr. Xi to the People’s Liberation Army in which he called for “the motherland to be unified”—a reference to taking control of Taiwan, appeared to have attracted 219 comments. None could be viewed.
First it was Intel, then Walmart got entangled. Could Tesla be next? The electric carmaker chooses New Year Eve to open its latest dealership in Xinjiang, a region that has become a litmus test for foreign companies operating in China. Our
@WSJ
story:
1/ China needs more transparency now to rebuild trust. It’s doing exactly the opposite. From financial to supply chain data, Chinese firms have been reluctant to share information after a sweeping data security law passed. Our investigation: w/
@ByChunHan
Happy Valentines Day ❤️ made with covid test tubes from our hotel’s testing team. The volunteers have been nothing short of amazing. Really brought a smile to faces as we get past the mid point of covering the
#Beijing2022WinterOlympics
1/ Sony becomes the latest foreign company to be hung out to dry in China for nationalistic reasons. The company's social media account (Weibo) was shut last week, and it was over a post from Oct 12, in which nationalists singled out for insulting China's war heroes and martyrs.
#Japanese
electronics giant
#Sony
, banned from posting on
#China
’s Sina Weibo, should be held accountable for defaming Chinese
#Korean
War hero Qiu Shaoyun.
Great scoop by
@erichschwartzel
‘Top Gun: Maverick’ proved too pro-American for Tencent, one of China’s largest internet companies, which backed out of the film amid mounting U.S.-China tensions
There’s as many Chinese media in the press mixed zone waiting for Japanese figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu as there was waiting for Chinese skater Jin Boyang. A testament to the devoted following Hanyu has in China. He was unplaced in today’s men’s free skate.
Barely a day after she was unveiled as the final torch bearer, Dinigeer Yilamujiang made her Olympic debut. Post event, she left media waiting for her in -12 degrees temperatures for more than an hour, failing to show up at the press zone. W/
@yuenok
1/
#China
just imposed its latest sweeping lockdown in Shanghai, a city of 25 million. Here's a thread on what they did and why the potential economic impact mat pack a huge punch this time: w/
@yoyominnie
@jamestareddy
Walmart is the latest U.S. company caught in the middle over Xinjiang, with Chinese citizens saying they canceled Sam's Club memberships after Walmart appeared to stop stocking some products from Xinjiang in their China stores.
@lizalinwsj
@SarahNassauer
10/ When Shanghai reopens, factories will be rushing to get goods to the ports and out, leading to higher shipping rates, and a huge rush of stuff out to other global ports. Like a bubble bursting. US/EU ports will then be overwhelmed again, like they were months before.
1/ Thread:
@DanStrumpf
and I found China is leading the world in the building of new semiconductor factories... A move that could eventually make Western countries reliant on China for the supply of many basic chips used in mobile phones, cars, electronics
1/ The U.S. is in the advanced stages of discussing new sanctions on Chinese surveillance companies over sales to Iran's security forces.
A thread on China's involvement in Iran's surveillance state:
@WSJ
exclusive: w/
@benoitfaucon
Canadian cybersecurity researchers found security flaws in an app all Beijing Winter Olympic Games attendees must download. Loopholes possibly allow hackers to steal personal information and monitor message traffic. Our
@wsj
report:
2/ Many in China's chip space expected limits on semiconductors and equipment, what caught most off guard was the policy restricting "US persons" from supporting and developing China's advanced chip industry. (w/
@_KarenHao
)
As the hashtag "Sams Club, Xinjiang" climbed to the top of Weibo's social media charts... Carrefour China, which is now run by Suning and a fierce rival to Walmart, posted this on Weibo. Pics of all their Xinjiang products with the caption: "I come from Xinjiang."
2/ The crux of the problem is trucking. Shanghai has closed its city to many trucks coming in, and the risk of being suddenly asked to quarantine is terrifying enough that even though truck payments to drive there have doubled, no driver wants to do it.
Media have focused a lot on geopolitics when writing about China recently. It’s stories like these that remind us that we are all human beings, and honors their memories. Sad that China isn’t affording Western media this chance.
1/
@WSJ
Exclusive: TikTok says its trying to distance itself from its Chinese parent. But its still hiring for TikTok-related positions within China, and many staffers in China continue to work on its team, including data scientists. via
@raffaelehuang
1/ Nvidia has flown under the radar for a long time, with most folks thinking its a company that makes gaming chips. What's less known, is how deep the company's links to China are: w/
@DanStrumpf
4/ Truck drivers say instant noodles and portable gas stoves are must-haves on their trips. And videos on social media show them living in their vehicles for days, unable to get out at service stations. Here’s one passing about on the tub they use as a temporary toilet/restroom.
A Facebook post by Ho Ching,
#Singapore
’s version of a First Lady, critiquing Shanghai’s system of mass lockdowns and testing has gone viral in
#China
. “We cannot lockdown forever,” she writes, encouraging Shanghai to adopt Pfizer’s vaccine. 1/
And finally, Germany’s Metro hypermarket. They displayed Xinjiang products at the entrance of their store, with the poster “Metro Xinjiang Products.”
Talk about creative competition…
When Hanyu tried a 4A jump and fell. Audible gasps erupted from the crowd. He also received as warm a reception from the Chinese spectators as homegrown Jin Boyang. Good story via
@shashamimi
: “His face is like jade…”
9/ In the short term, fewer containers from Shanghai to ports in the US and Europe means that those overworked ports in Long Beach have breathing room to clear their backlog. In the longer term however, the ripple effect will be massive.
After changing my profile picture on Douyin, the Chinese cousin of TikTok, to the cover of "Surveillance State," a book co-written w/
@joshchin
. It took the app less than 5 mins to revert to my old profile photo. I concluded: Tencent & ByteDance's censorship is the most stringent.
1/ After
@akanakis
pointed out that the cover of Surveillance State was censored on Wechat, I quickly changed the profile pictures on my Wechat, Weibo, Zhihu, Taobao account to see what happened. After a few mins, our book cover was censored on Wechat and stayed up on the rest.
@_KarenHao
3/ We searched through the most recent Chinese stock exchange filings to figure out which executives were affected. Many crucial executives in the C-suite: founders, chairmen, chief technical officers, and others labeled as part of "core research teams: held U.S. citizenship.
4/ They come from firms across the spectrum: chip design, chip-making materials and equipment. Many are viewed as promising national champions in the Chinese semiconductor industry. The policy was directed very much at the heart of China's attempt to move up the chip value chain.
1/ China wants foreigners back. It may be too little, too late. For many, China is shifting from a land of opportunity to a source of risk. via
@WSJ
@Kubota_Yoko
and I:
Chinese social media apps WeChat and Douyin have been a huge source of disinformation in Singapore. Particularly over Covid with theories about vaccinations etc. Many Douyin videos eventually make it to apps such as WhatsApp and get sent around.
National Day Rally: Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong warns citizens against foreign influence efforts on social media and messaging apps like WeChat in his Mandarin speech, saying some messages have an “ulterior aim” of making them take sides or lose trust in the government.
#NDR2022
3/ Trucking in & out of Shanghai is about half of what it was before, & the situation is deteriorating. Truckers need a 48-hr negative PCR, a host of digital codes and approvals to enter cities around Shanghai. In Suzhou, Kunshan, local govts have even barred trucks from Shanghai
While the rest of the world is learning to work from home, Shanghai’s finance workers are learning to live at work. That means: sleeping on cots by their desk, and doing laundry in office restrooms.
1/ CNKI, one of the biggest and most widely followed Chinese academic databases, is now subject to a cybersecurity probe. The move is in line with the country's moves to increasingly obscure data about itself and its economy. via
@raffaelehuang
@WSJ
1/
#Tesla
's opens a new store in Xinjiang, a region at the center of U.S. genocide allegations. A post on their official Weibo about opening the store. It says “On the last day of 2021, we meet in Xinjiang. In 2022, let us together launch Xinjiang on its electric journey!”
#China
So close, yet so far. In
#China
’s Olympic closed loop, 闭环,you can only see regular Beijing life from the shuttle bus, which brings you from hotel to media center to the various venues where the Games are. There isn’t an link between ordinary China and the games.. 1/
State media running videos of Chinese Uyghur athlete Digineer Yilamujiang’s family watching her “light” the Olympic flame.
#China
’s choice for the final Olympic torch bearer was scrutinised by activists, and seemed very staged.
1/ Thread: The pandemic has given Chinese President Xi the best opportunity to promote TCM at home and abroad. Why has that sparked such intense debate about public health experts? My colleague
@qianweizhang
and I break it down.
5/ The drastic dip in trucking is compounded by many warehouse closures in Shanghai, because of rising covid cases. Now, completed goods are accumulating in factories bcos of this, and manufacturers have halted production after raw materials & parts deliveries were disrupted.
6/ The spillover is now hitting the ports. Empty containers are stacking up in Shanghai, the world's largest container port. Factories in the Zhejiang and Jiangsu region use Shanghai as a logistics hub, and no trucks into Shanghai = no cargo to fill these containers.
Almost all of the executives moved to China’s chip industry after spending years working in Silicon Valley for U.S. chip makers or equipment firms like Intel, Applied Mat. Many were drawn to China through initiatives similar & including the country’s “Thousand Talents” program.
5/ A sampling of the affected:
- AMEC, one of China’s largest chip equipment makers: 7 senior execs (including Gerald Yin, its chairman and founder) VPs and GMs.
- GigaDevice, up and coming designer of flash chips for autos/PCs: Deputy chairman and a director are U.S. citizens.
1/ The recent data dump from a Chinese hacking for hire firm on GitHub was extensive, but many signs pointed to one thing: a laser-focus by the hacker's clients on controlling threats from the country's periphery and ethnic minorities. w/
@austinramzy
and
@hwclarence
9/ The technology is nothing without the people there to make it work, and the rule will likely force them to decide between their jobs and their U.S. citizenship or PR status. Analysts say China will double down on efforts to make it lucrative for these executives to stay.
1/ In China, most apps have changed their home page to black and white since Nov 30, the day of Jiang Zemin's death. The only thing remaining in color? Photos of Xi Jinping and the Politburo:
7/ Shanghai's port is still operational, but containers are now sitting around for much longer before leaving.
The avg time a container carrying imports spends at port is 8.3 as of Monday, more than double the waiting time before lockdown was imposed.
Shanghai finance workers are working and living - around the clock - in their offices to keep China’s financial heart ticking, as the city imposes strict lockdowns
@yuenok
@natashakhanhk
@caocli
Wechat is having a bit of an awakening. Chinese (and many Shanghainese) are posting and reposting a video on the “Voices of April” - of Shanghai residents and their difficulties experienced over the lockdown month of April. Videos are taken down by censors as quickly as they post
1/ Got my hands on some e-renminbi! It’s accepted in all the places in the closed loop, and very convenient. The card functions like any regular credit card and you just need to wave the card in front of a POS machine to use it for payment.
#BeijingOlympics2022
An unusual and mostly forgotten pledge Chinese President Xi Jinping signed eight years ago is now back to haunt him. Beijing’s 2013 promise to protect Ukraine in a nuclear attack may further muddy its stance on Russia’s invasion. via
@WSJ
@jamestareddy
8/ No cargo means less reason to call at Shanghai's port. Shipping consultants say Shanghai will be hit by a raft of blank sailings over the next 1-2 weeks. Others are shifting to alternate ports such as Ningbo.
Then, to rub it in further. Chinese social media users posted photos of Hema supermarket (run by Alibaba)’s own Xinjiang campaign. “Looking for Xinjiang” it’s called. Here are Xinjiang carrots and red dates.
5 days after the crash, she dreamed of him. She was in a room she did not recognise, and just knew she was waiting for him, he opened the door and walked in. She asked him to come and visit her ever so often. "Did it hurt?" she asked. He smiled, and said he was alright. 10/
11/ one interesting point I noted was that China definitely knows about this Achilles heel: there were a few media reports and shares of a chart of executives in China impacted by the rule. Within a day, all these pieces had been deleted off the internet. Likely censored.
6/ Others:
- Montage Technology, Chinese chip designer: 3 senior execs: Stephen Kuong, its founder/director, an MD, a director on the board.
- Verisilicon: Wayne Wei-Ming Dai. Chairman/President/CEO/Founder, an EVP and senior VP.
8/ Not uncommon at all to find talent programs mentioned in their bios, although its hard to tell if that's the main reason the executives made the switch. Here's the chairman of ACM Research, who provides systems for chipmaking. Its main customers are Chinese.
1/ An Alibaba researcher was the first to sound the alarm on the Log4j software threat. Then China reprimanded the company. How a clash in cybersecurity reporting protocols unfolded yesterday:
@WSJ
Exclusive: China is planning new restrictions on its live streaming industry, as authorities seek to limit the negative values and impact from the sector. w/
@QiZHAI
Here's what its planning, and why:
1/
@WSJ
Exclusive: Pro-China Twitter accounts are using hashtag flooding: a tactic previously employed by K-pop fans, to drown out criticism of the Beijing Winter Olympics on the platform: via
@georgia_wells
and I.
Chip giant Intel apologized after setting off a social-media backlash with a letter asking suppliers to avoid sourcing from Xinjiang. “We deeply apologize for the confusion caused to our respected Chinese customers, partners and the public."
@lizalinwsj
1/ After
@akanakis
pointed out that the cover of Surveillance State was censored on Wechat, I quickly changed the profile pictures on my Wechat, Weibo, Zhihu, Taobao account to see what happened. After a few mins, our book cover was censored on Wechat and stayed up on the rest.
Some local media have reported these personal stories but online trolls have lashed out on those that did.
@DSORennie
has a great column on the lack of information transparency post the MU 5735 accident