worldwide surveillance run by Chinese Communist Party oncoming

5-16-19     The 97% drop in refugee numbers escaping Tibet is due to new technology which has allowed China to build a nearly impassable digital and securitized border wall along its southern and western borders. In Tibet, and also in Xinjiang, the homeland of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims which has become a widely reported technological dystopia, the border is patrolled by drones, cameras and an interconnected system that allows soldiers to rapidly monitor – and apprehend – any Tibetan, Uyghur or Kazakh attempting to flee. The digital wall also prevents the vast majority from even trying….

  Cities like Lhasa now have comprehensive networks of CCTV cameras and numerous checkpoints, allowing authorities to keep track of all those who enter and leave. More recently, police stations and CCTV cameras with facial recognition technology have spread to villages in the countryside, especially along the border.

  “In Lhasa alone there are more than 600 convenience police stations,” said Tsultrim, who said increasing numbers of security staff are being sent to rural areas.  “In recent year, more than 21,000 officials were sent to the countryside around [Tibet].”  This is in addition to at least 12,000 security staff working primarily in urban areas.

  In fact since 2008 the ability of Tibetans to even move across the country has worsened.  Tibetans now need to get permission to visit, for example, Lhasa, and according to sources, numerous checkpoints exist around cities and at borders between neighboring districts and provinces. Surveillance and facial recognition technologies can also identify when Tibetans are outside of their home areas, further impeding their ability to reach the border….

  More challenges await those Tibetans who finally reach the border.  China Daily, a government newspaper, reported on the deployment of a Chinese-made integrated frontier monitoring system with advanced radars, acoustic monitoring devices, and drones.  A spokesperson said that anyone trying to cross the border would be detected by the system, which automatically notifies soldiers.

  China has also deployed GGJ-2 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles that can operate at high altitude for up to 20 hours along both the Tibet and Xinjiang borders, designed to monitor and, if necessary, conduct offensive activities in regions where troops cannot be stationed. …

  In just over a decade Tibet has been cut off from the world, both physically and digitally.  The most visible sign of this digital apartheid is along the heavily controlled border.  In late 2017 the Kerung border crossing between Nepal and Tibet re-opened, after being closed for more than two years due to damage caused by an earthquake in 2015.  While the border remains open, Tibetans rarely cross.  Instead traffic mostly consists of Chinese travelers and business-people entering Nepal.  “Before 2008, there were lots of Tibetans escaping from Tibet to Nepal, but now its Chinese who are flourishing in Nepal,” said Dalha.  On a recent visit to the area, he noted that many signs were in Chinese, and that several Nepali shopkeepers could speak basic Chinese.  A crossing that once connected Tibet with South Asia now connects China with Nepal.  https://codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/china-digital-wall-tibet/

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5-9-19    In early 2016 police began making routine checks on Atawula’s home.  Her husband was regularly called to the police station.  The police informed him they were suspicious of his WeChat activity--

he regularly spoke to friends in Turkey, which they viewed as potentially extremist behaviour.  Atawula’s children began to cower in fear at the sight of a police officer.  The family decided to move to Turkey to escape the oppressive surveillance.  Atawula’s husband, worried for her safety if she was also arrested, decided to send her ahead while he stayed in Xinjiang and waited for the children’s passports.  “The day I left, my husband was arrested,” Atawula said.    https://codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/uyghur-women-fighting-china-surveillance/

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Elsa B. Kania

@EBKania

Replying to @EBKania

  Moreover, it's worth noting that many of the companies that are deeply complicit in these activities have been quite actively expanding globally, including pursuing partnerships with Western companies and universities in the process.

2

11:15 AM - Apr 15, 2019

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8-24-18   The MIT-SenseTime Alliance on Artificial Intelligence, a program within the MIT Quest for Intelligence, has announced funding for 27 projects involving about 50 principal investigators from departments and labs within engineering, science, architecture and planning, management, and the humanities and social sciences.

  SenseTime, a leading artificial intelligence company founded by MIT alumnus Xiao’ou Tang PhD ’96, jointly created the alliance with MIT earlier this year to define the next frontier of human and machine intelligence.    http://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-sensetime-alliance-funds-projects-human-machine-intelligence-0824

( the next frontier after Xinjiang and Tibet, it seems).

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  Xinjiang Tangli Technology Co., Ltd. develops artificial intelligence based security products.  The company was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Urumqi, China.  Xinjiang Tangli Technology Co., Ltd. operates as a former subsidiary of Shenzhen SenseTime Science Tech Limited.  As of April 15, 2019, Xinjiang Tangli Technology Co., Ltd. operates as a subsidiary of Leon Technology Co., Ltd.  https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=607759585

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4-16-19   SenseTime, China’s surveillance giant, has offered up a fig leaf. The company says it has exited a police technology venture in Xinjiang, a western region where government efforts to crush Muslim extremism have put over a million Uighurs in re-education camps. The deal may ease some PR risk before a mooted offshore flotation, but the $6 billion startup still sells facial recognition software to security forces. Monday’s move provides foreign backers like Fidelity International with only thin reputational cover.…

  But SenseTime and its peers still sell tools that enable the some of the worst tendencies of Chinese officialdom.  They will almost certainly export to questionable regimes abroad too.  SenseTime’s investors get to wash Xinjiang off their hands, but there is sure to be plenty of dirt left over. -Pete Sweeny …

  In July last year, SenseTime also shed its 49% stake in SenseNets, a facial recognition firm it had helped found in 2015.  

  Victor Gevers, co-founder of non-profit organisation GDI.Foundation, tweeted in February that an online database belonging to SenseNets containing names, ID card numbers, birth dates and location data was left unprotected for months.  The exposed data also showed about 6.7 million location points linked to people, tagged with descriptions such as “mosque”, “hotel”, “internet cafe” and other places where surveillance cameras were likely to be found.

  Instead of going on the offensive over the Gevers tweet, SenseNets has adopted a different approach and remained silent.  A call to the company’s general phone number listed on its website was answered by a female representative who said the company does not have anyone in charge of media relations and there was no need for an interview.  -South China Morning Post’s Li Tao

  https://www.breakingviews.com/considered-view/chinese-surveillance-giant-offers-up-a-fig-leaf/

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4-18-19    Every year since 2015 China has ranked last in the annual Freedom on the Net Index.8  The CCP has made no secret of its desire to export its concepts of internet and information ‘sovereignty’,9 as well as cyber censorship,10 around the world.11  Consistent with that directive, this research shows that Chinese companies are playing a role in aiding surveillance and providing sophisticated public security technologies and expertise to authoritarian regimes and developing countries that face challenges to their political stability, governance and rule of law….

  Sometimes, the relevance and significance of the CCP’s presence within technology companies is dismissed or trivialised as merely equivalent to the presence of government relations or human resources departments in Western corporations. However, the CCP’s expectations of these committees is clear.22 The CCP’s constitution states that a Party organisation ‘shall be formed in any enterprise … and any other primary-level work unit where there are three or more full party members’.23  Article 32 outlines their responsibilities, which include encouraging everyone in the company to ‘consciously resist unacceptable practices and resolutely fight against all violations of Party discipline or state law’.   Article 33 states that Party committees inside state-owned enterprises are expected to ‘play a leadership role, set the right direction, keep in mind the big picture, ensure the implementation of Party policies and principles, and discuss and decide on major issues of their enterprise in accordance with regulations’.24…

  The CCP recognises the threat posed by an open internet to its grip on power—and, conversely, the opportunities that dominance over global cyberspace could offer by extending that control.33

  In a 2017 article published in one of the most important CCP journals, officials from the Cyber Administration of China (the top Chinese internet regulator) wrote about the need to develop controls so that ‘the Party’s ideas always become the strongest voice in cyberspace.’34  This includes enhancing the ‘global influence of internet companies like Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu [and] Huawei’ and striving ‘to push China’s proposition of internet governance toward becoming an international consensus’….

  Many of the companies covered in this report collaborate with foreign universities on the same kinds of technologies they’re using to support surveillance and human rights abuses in China.  For example, CETC—which has a research partnership with the University of Technology Sydney, the University of Manchester and the Graz Technical University in Austria—and its subsidiary Hikvision are deeply implicated in the crackdown on Uyghurs in Xinjiang.  CETC has been providing police in Xinjiang with a centralised policing system that draws in data from a vast array of sources, such as facial recognition cameras and databases of personal information.  https://www.aspi.org.au/report/mapping-chinas-tech-giants

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who took YOUR data?

6-21-2013   British spy agency GCHQ has secretly tapped more than 200 fiber-optic cables carrying phone and internet traffic and has been sharing data with the U.S. National Security Agency, according to a news report.

  The spy operation, which included placing intercepts at the landing points of transatlantic undersea cables where they surface in the U.K., has allowed the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) to become the top interceptor of phone and internet data in the world, according to the Guardian newspaper, which broke the story based on documents leaked by former NSA systems administrator Edward Snowden.  https://www.wired.com/2013/06/gchq-tapped-200-cables/

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  National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials.

  By tapping those links the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans.  The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot.   https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-infiltrates-links-to-yahoo-google-data-centers-worldwide-snowden-documents-say/2013/10/30/e51d661e-4166-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html?utm_term=.2dc2dbfc7264    and https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/the-nsas-three-types-of-cable-interception-programs/553/?noredirect=on#document/p1/a129985

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  NSA documents state that under RAMPART-A, foreign partners “provide access to cables and host U.S. equipment.”  This allows the agency to covertly tap into “congestion points around the world” where it says it can intercept the content of phone calls, faxes, e-mails, internet chats, data from virtual private networks, and calls made using Voice over IP software like Skype.

  The program, which the secret files show cost U.S. taxpayers about $170 million between 2011 and 2013, sweeps up a vast amount of communications at lightning speed.  According to the intelligence community’s classified “Black Budget” for 2013, RAMPART-A enables the NSA to tap into three terabits of data every second as the data flows across the compromised cables – the equivalent of being able to download about 5,400 uncompressed high-definition movies every minute.  https://theintercept.com/2014/06/18/nsa-surveillance-secret-cable-partners-revealed-rampart-a/

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The back of two satellite antennae at GCHQ’s surveillance base in Bude, England. Photo: Education Images/UIG/Getty Images

    The technology was designed by Endace, a little-known New Zealand company.  And the important customer was the British electronic eavesdropping agency, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ.

  Dozens of internal documents and emails from Endace, obtained by The Intercept and reported in cooperation with Television New Zealand, reveal the firm’s key role helping governments across the world harvest vast amounts of information on people’s private emails, online chats, social media conversations, and internet browsing histories.

  The leaked files, which were provided by a source through SecureDrop, show that Endace listed a Moroccan security agency implicated in torture as one of its customers.  They also indicate that the company sold its surveillance gear to more than half a dozen other government agencies, including in the United States, Israel, Denmark, Australia, Canada, Spain and India.

Some of Endace’s largest sales in recent years, however, were to the United Kingdom’s GCHQ, which purchased a variety of “data acquisition” systems and “probes” that it used to covertly monitor internet traffic….

  ENDACE says it manufactures technology that allows its clients to “monitor, intercept and capture 100% of traffic on networks .” The Auckland-based company’s motto is “power to see all” and its logo is an eye.

  The company’s origins can be traced back to Waikato University in Hamilton, New Zealand.  There in 1994 a team of professors and researchers began developing network monitoring technology using university resources….

  By March 2011 GCHQ’s aim was to tap into 415 of the 10Gs cables, and its longer-term goal was to “grow our internet access to 800 10Gs.”  The agency wanted to build what it described as the largest covert surveillance apparatus in the world.  And in an effort to fulfill that plan, it turned to Endace’s technology.

  Leaked documents and emails from Endace, obtained by The Intercept, lay out a series of deals the company made with GCHQ to help it broaden its mass surveillance capabilities.   A confidential February 2010 Endace statement of work for GCHQ, for instance, outlined a £245,000 ($299,500) deal to upgrade “monitoring solutions” for the British agency that were designed to intercept large amounts of internet traffic and send it into “memory holes” — repositories used to store the data….

  Notably, the Medusa status reports reveal that Endace was using taxpayers’ money to develop the new equipment for GCHQ.  They state that the Medusa system was being built for “FGA” with funding from the Foundation of Research Science and Technology, the body that handed out New Zealand government research grants.

  In 2010 Endace received two grants totaling $11.1 million.   A public announcement for the first grant--issued in July 2010-- said the funding was for “50% of the cost of a series of substantial product developments over the next two years,” but did not say what the products were nor who they were for….

  Endace’s sales lists include finance industry giants such as Morgan Stanley, Reuters and Bank of America.  Endace’s website says it provides financial companies with its monitoring technology to help “high-frequency traders to monitor, measure and analyze critical network environments.”   https://theintercept.com/2016/10/23/endace-mass-surveillance-gchq-governments/

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1-29-19   Indictments are only one part of a larger warning the Justice Department has sounded since Bill Clinton was president--that Huawei and other Chinese telecommunications companies are arms of the Chinese government and that they could plant spyware in communications at the heart of U.S. infrastructure systems like the power grid, the air traffic control network and nuclear plants.  https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/arm-chinese-state-what-s-behind-huawei-indictments-n963776

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  Elsa B. Kania, adjunct senior fellow with the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security:  “It (Huawei)  is a Chinese tech company operating within a system which Xi Jinping has declared the Party leads everything.  And like any other Chinese company, Huawei is expected to have a Party secretary and Party committee who exercise some rather ambiguous position in terms of its leadership and management.”  https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2019/02/18/beijings-denial-of-huawei-control-bucks-expert-analysis.html

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Angela Merkel on US as one global adversary; Dolkun Isa

  In February this year Interpol withdrew the red-corner notice against Dolkun Isa.  China responded angrily.  Chinese foreign ministry issued a statement saying, China expresses its dissatisfaction at Interpol revoking the notice for Dolkun Isa.  Dolkun Isa is a terrorist as determined by the Chinese government.

  Meng Hongwei is said to have been on the radar of Xi Jinping administration of China for allowing withdrawal of the red-corner notice against Dolkun Isa.  The Chinese intelligence personnel were keeping an eye on the movements of Meng Hongwei.  https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/interpol-meng-hongwei-arrest-china-uyghur-muslims-xinjiang-1358357-2018-10-08

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  Dolkun Isa (shown), executive chairman of the World Uyghur Congress, speaks on his phone at the organization’s Munich office July 6, 2015.  REUTERS/David Lague

2-24-18     Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress, said the accusations against Isa were purely political.  “China is unable to produce any actual evidence of its accusations against him,” he said in a statement.  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang/china-upset-as-interpol-removes-wanted-alert-for-exiled-uighur-leader-idUSKCN1G80FK

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  Mr. Meng was not in a position to affect specific notices; Interpol is run by a secretary general, now Jürgen Stock of Germany.  But it is noteworthy that, in February, Interpol canceled a Red Notice pushed by Beijing in pursuit of a persecuted Uighur dissident, Dolkun Isa, who fled China in the 1990s.  Also, Interpol responded to complaints of abuse, installing new safeguards for Red Notices and giving individuals a channel to challenge them.  The watchdog group Fair Trials has just published a report and scorecard on Interpol’s reforms, saying the agency has made promising first steps, although more are needed.

  This is all the more reason Mr. Meng’s disappearance looks extremely odd, exposing the arbitrary and opaque methods of China’s leaders, who operate far outside any concepts of rule of law and due process. Mr. Meng returned to Beijing in late September.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/another-ominous-turn-in-china/2018/10/09/105cd348-cb30-11e8-a360-85875bac0b1f_story.html?utm_term=.16cc7fb40fce

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  Mr. Meng was not in a position to affect specific notices; Interpol is run by a secretary general, now Jürgen Stock of Germany.  But it is noteworthy that, in February, Interpol canceled a Red Notice pushed by Beijing in pursuit of a persecuted Uighur dissident, Dolkun Isa, who fled China in the 1990s.  Also, Interpol responded to complaints of abuse, installing new safeguards for Red Notices and giving individuals a channel to challenge them.  The watchdog group Fair Trials has just published a report and scorecard on Interpol’s reforms, saying the agency has made promising first steps, although more are needed.

  This is all the more reason Mr. Meng’s disappearance looks extremely odd, exposing the arbitrary and opaque methods of China’s leaders, who operate far outside any concepts of rule of law and due process.  Mr. Meng returned to Beijing in late September.    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/another-ominous-turn-in-china/2018/10/09/105cd348-cb30-11e8-a360-85875bac0b1f_story.html?utm_term=.16cc7fb40fce

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5-15-19    German Chancellor Angela Merkel lumped in the United States with Europe’s other global adversaries on Wednesday, arguing that the countries on the continent need to band together against the challenges posed by Russia, China and the U.S.

https://www.newsweek.com/angela-merkel-identifies-us-global-rival-along-china-and-russia-europe-must-1426742

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there is another cup

-in Community 

by Messenger Eliazbth Clare Prophet, S. U. Press, 2002, pp. 215, 218, 1.        https://books.google.com/books?id=T-Sx8q6ZOn4C&pg=PA215&dq=clare+prophet+betray&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjD27KxoJ7iAhWPsJ4KHT4sAUoQ6AEIODAD#v=onepage&q=clare%20prophet%20betray&f=false

inside China today

 

1)     Huawei chairman Liang Hua (shown) (stated in very shrewd worm-tongue mode):  ”Where we are operating globally we are committed to be compliant with the locally applicable laws and regulations in that country.  There are no Chinese laws requiring companies to collect intelligence from a foreign government or implant back doors for the government."   https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-05-14/huawei-offers-sign-no-spy-pacts-governments-uk-embarks-5g

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-Beijing’s Central Business District.  The Trump administration accuses China of forcing foreign companies to hand over technological secrets.    Thomas Peter/Reuters

2)   3-4-19    Approval is essentially automatic in the 2,975-member congress, which is tightly controlled by the Communist Party, although there is some room for last-minute amendments.  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/business/china-foreign-investment.html

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3)     FBI Director Christopher Wray clarified that while there was no alleged illegal conduct by the Chinese Communist Party, it is public record that, under China’s Cybersecurity Law, Huawei and other Chinese companies must furnish Chinese government access to its data, undermining U.S. national security.  This statement encapsulates a new broadly held view of U.S. policymakers:  all Chinese companies are controlled by the Party.

  Western governments should not automatically conclude that Chinese companies are acting as agents of the Party because such firms are ultimately still in charge of their own business decisions.  But the lines have been dangerously blurred. Chinese domestic laws and administrative guidelines, as well as unspoken regulations and internal party committees, make it quite difficult to distinguish between what is private and what is state-owned.  https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/02/07/we-cant-tell-if-chinese-firms-work-for-the-party/

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4)   "Tech entrepreneurs are seeking to burnish their Party credentials, gain brownie points," said Duncan Clark, the chairman of Beijing-based investment advisory firm BDA….But now the Party "is more directly controlling the fate of Chinese tech ventures.  Falling foul of the Party is costly.”…

  The difference in China, observers say, is that the Party has virtually unchecked power.  It can deliver heavy blows to big tech companies with little warning.  Tencent, the world's biggest gaming company, took a hit to its profits and lost billions in market value after Chinese regulators stopped approving licenses to make money from new online games.  Tencent attributed the problem to a bureaucratic reshuffle in Beijing, and government statements expressed concern that video games are causing addiction and bad eyesight among young people….

  Figuring out "how to integrate the Party into corporate management and let it actually play a leading role — these are major issues for non-public companies in their Party building," Ofo CEO Dai Wei told Xinhua.  The startup's big investors include e-commerce company Alibaba (BABA).  The committees also often hold monthly sessions for employees' Party education….

  "To the extent these companies are viewed as arms of the Chinese government, that does not play well internationally," Paul Triolo, head of global tech policy at Eurasia Group, said.    https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/02/tech/china-tech-communist-party/index.html

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5)   8-6-18  Unlike America and many other nations, where multiple and co-equal branches of government can be at odds with one another, all portions of China's government are ultimately subject and accountable to the Communist Party.  As a result there's often less transparency in China's rule-making process.  Companies can be caught off guard by regulations, and "there is no independent judiciary," as D. Firestein, founding executive director of the China Public Policy Center at the University of Texas, bluntly put it….

  Chinese regulations often require foreign companies to partner with a state-run Chinese firm if they're going to open shop there.  That's happened to GM, Volkswagen, Qualcomm, and Intel, for instance.  And that intrinsically involves sharing intellectual property and technology with the Chinese partner.  There's good old-fashioned copyright violations:  Chinese companies brazenly copy patents, brands, logos and such. (Nor, as mentioned above, can foreign companies always rely on Chinese courts to shutdown this behavior.)  Finally, there's outright commercial espionage:  Chinese actors physically breaking in or hacking into foreign companies — either on foreign soil or within China--and making off with trade secrets.  https://theweek.com/articles/788219/what-like-business-china

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6)   8-24-17   The presence of Party units has long been a fact of doing business in China where Party organizations exist in nearly 70 percent of some 1.86 million privately owned companies, the official China Daily reported last month.

Companies in China, including foreign firms, are required by law to establish a Party organization, a rule that had long been regarded by many executives as more symbolic than anything to worry about.

  One senior executive whose company was represented at the meeting told Reuters some companies were under “political pressure” to revise the terms of their joint ventures with state-owned partners to allow the Party final say over business operations and investment decisions.  He said the company’s joint venture partner was pushing to amend their agreement to include language mandating party personnel be “brought into the business management organization”, that “Party organization overhead expenses shall be included in the company budget”, and that posts of board chairman and Party secretary be held by the same person….

  Of the 13 executives, all from different foreign companies, Reuters interviewed for this story, 8 expressed concerns about increasing demands from the Party or noted increased activity from Party groups.  They all spoke on the condition that they and their companies not be identified given the sensitivity of discussing relations with the Party.  Just two of 20 major multinationals queried by Reuters - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) and Nokia NOKA.HE - confirmed having Party units in their China operations.  Most did not respond to questions on the subject….While plans to expand Party organizations in foreign companies have been a quiet concern for several decades, only under Xi has “some real muscle” been put behind the goal, said

Jude Blanchette, who studies the CC Party at the Conference Board’s China Center for Economics and Business in Beijing.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-congress-companies/exclusive-in-china-the-partys-push-for-influence-inside-foreign-firms-stirs-fears-idUSKCN1B40JU

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7)    4-7-2016    Mao Zedong frequently quoted Three Kingdoms in his speeches. In 1943 he encouraged his Communist comrades to come together to defeat the Kuomintang, saying “three cobblers with their wits combined equal Zhuge Liang the master mind.”  This common idiom alludes to the famous Three Kingdoms military strategist, Zhuge Liang.  Years later, Deng Xiaoping called Cao Cao--another Three Kingdoms character--a “first-class politician” who was able to “unify China” under one mission.

  Chinese President/CCP Chairman Xi Jinping has also alluded to Three Kingdoms Period (220-280 A.D.) in his professional career.  When Xi was sent to the countryside town of Liangjiahe during the Cultural Revolution in 1968, he often shared stories with his colleagues about classic Chinese novels like Three Kingdoms as they slept in a lice-infested cave.  In a November 2015 speech in Singapore, Xi said that the characters from classics such as Three Kingdoms and Water Margin demonstrate the core values of the Chinese people:  loyalty, humility and determination….

  The main villain of the Three Kingdoms is Cao Cao, a ruthless leader who used alliances to turn neighboring states into vassals and routinely broke those alliances as soon as he saw an opening to strike.  Cao Cao’s famous quote in the story is “I would rather betray the whole world then have the world betray me.”  Likewise China uses its economic influence to coerce weaker states into submission.  It builds infrastructure in Latin America and Africa but rarely ever teaches the local workers how to maintain it, creating a system of dependence.  In return China demands that these countries give up their natural resources to China for years or even decades.   

       -Leland Lazarus is an M.A. candidate at the Fletcher School, Tufts University

Gen. Rangel urge overthrow of Maduro

Venezuelan General Rangel (shown) says that he lived in Cuba for six years, which helped him “grasp the reality of all that the Cuban people live, the Cuban people who have been subjected to the yoke of the Castro-communist dictatorship for over 60 years.  They live in conditions of poverty that they blame on the embargo and it is false,” he says of the Cubans.  “They have created a cocoon for those at the top of the Castro Communist regime that does not allow the resources of the country, which are many, to trickle down to the Cuban state.”

  Rangel goes on to accuse the Castro regime of using “psycho-terror tactics” in Cuba “similar to what they are doing to Venezuela … they have planted in us all that psycho-terror that has caused fear of participation in seeking the change we need in the people and the military.”  Rangel concludes urging Venezuelan soldiers to, like him, publicly renounce Maduro, as not doing so is a betrayal to the Venezuelan people.   https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/05/14/venezuelan-general-implies-cuba-killed-chavez-install-maduro-power/

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 CARACAS - A Venezuelan air force general has called on his country’s armed forces to rise up against President Nicolas Maduro, who remains in power with military support despite a sweeping economic crisis….

  The commander of the Air Force, Gen. Pedro Juliac, denounced Rangel as a traitor on Twitter.  Juliac’s tweet carried a photo of Rangel with a cross over it, and the phrase:  “Traitor of the people and of the Revolution.”  “Those without morals will never be able to damage the country, let alone the Bolivarian military aviation.  We will win — Long Live the Revolution.”  https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/05/14/world/venezuelan-general-calls-military-uprising-maduro/#.XNuoL7Q-Cu4

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5-13-19  Rangel was an active military officer who fled to Colombia last month, according to a source close to Venezuela’s military who asked not to be identified.  http://todaycostarica.com/general-tells-military-to-rise-up-against-nicolas-maduro-regime/

Chinese investments in foreign ports

-Chinese investment in foreign ports

1-12-17    Investments into a vast network of harbors across the globe have made Chinese port operators the world leaders.  Its shipping companies carry more cargo than those of any other nation — five of the top 10 container ports in the world are in mainland China with another in Hong Kong. Its coastguard has the globe’s largest maritime law enforcement fleet, its navy is the world’s fastest growing among major powers and its fishing armada numbers some 200,000 seagoing vessels….

  Nearly two-thirds of the world’s top 50 had some degree of Chinese investment by 2015, up from about one-fifth in 2010, according to FT research.  And those ports handled 67 per cent of global container volumes, up from 42 per cent in 2010, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence, the maritime and trade data specialists.  If only containers directly handled by Chinese port operators are measured, the level of dominance is reduced but still emphatic.  Of the top 10 port operators worldwide, Chinese companies handled 39 per cent of all volumes, almost double the second largest nation group, according to data from Drewry.  https://ig.ft.com/sites/china-ports/

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10-9-18   “We handed over control of our most important port to a company that's not even in the European Union," Nouchoutidis says. "The EU pushed us to do it. ... They will see the damage to our interests in a few years.”  https://www.wbur.org/npr/642587456/chinese-firms-now-hold-stakes-in-over-a-dozen-european-ports

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2-26-2006  Mr. WATERS:  Other than that, the rest of the terminals, which comprises about 80 percent of those terminals we're talking about, are operated by foreign entities, primarily shipping lines.

DAVIDSON:  So United States companies have eight, foreign companies have 80.  Those companies managing U.S. terminals are all over the world, in China, Denmark, Singapore, South Korea.    https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5234177

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  PSA (Port of Singapore Authority) operates terminals in 15 countries, Denmark's Maersk Line has 76 ports in 41 countries,  Switzerland's Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC) has 35 terminals in 22 countries, while Dubai's DP World runs 77 ports in 40 countries.  So if we just look at the raw numbers it would seem as if China's maritime movements are in step with the rest of the world….

  China’s International port holdings also tend to be very strategically positioned, not only connecting together like a dot-to-dot across the map of Eurasia but also linking in with the overland Silk Road at key junctions, providing China with a new array of options for getting commodities and goods in and out of  the country -- a series of backdoors, if you will.  Theoretically if one shipping trade lane goes down China can bypass it by increasing the flow through another.

  Example: The $10 billion Kyauk Phyu Special Economic Zone in Myanmar isn’t only becoming a Chinese shipping/manufacturing epicenter on the cusp of Southeast and South Asia, but is one of the points where China's maritime and overland Silk Roads connect, with a corridor that shoots north to Kunming in southwestern China that is already being provisioned with gas and oil pipelines. This provides China with a direct route to the sea for energy shipments coming from the Middle East that completely bypasses the heavily U.S.-influenced Strait of Malacca, which could theoretically be flipped off like a switch in a time of crisis, cutting China off from most of its west-bound maritime trade routes….

  Another key area where China’s port acquisitions diverge from those of other countries is the fact that they are often not only developing mere seaports but complete transport-centric economic zones, which generally include manufacturing areas, business centers, power plants, and, occasionally, residential housing projects.  With China, emerging markets can get an entire slate of development in one fell swoop.  https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/09/06/chinas-seaport-shopping-spree-whats-happening-as-the-worlds-ports-keep-going-to-china/#6786c6c04e9d

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