China under Xi is becoming less free even as he preaches openness abroad.

2-11-16  

  Badiucao has made a career out of tackling China’s difficult political and social issues.  A new ebook Watching Big Brother: Political Cartoons by Badiucao collects his work and offers a glimpse into Badiucao’s perspective on the state of free speech in China.

  Born in Shanghai but now residing in Australia, Badiucao utilizes satire and pop culture references — even Communist Party propaganda images — in his cartoons to get his point across. http://cbldf.org/2016/02/watching-big-brotherchinese-cartoonist-watches-back/

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  If anything, China under Xi is becoming less free even as he preaches openness abroad. That has ramifications for investors concerned about their own reputational risk.  It also poses a broader challenge to the West as China holds out its centralized model of government as a viable alternative to Western-style democracy.  For the leaders of some poorer countries weighing different paths to development, a top-down system may be appealing—especially if it comes with cash to finance high-cost roads, bridges and power plants….

  So far the police state in Xinjiang doesn’t appear to be reassuring investors, even as tourism picks up and a rush of government spending lures workers in search of well-paying jobs.  Almost no foreign companies have located there and the region’s economy slowed last year.  China sees that as a temporary setback.  But as the Xinjiang campaign continues to draw unwelcome scrutiny it is focusing attention not only on China’s treatment of Muslims but Xi’s vision for the nation’s future.    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-01-24/inside-the-vast-police-state-at-the-heart-of-china-s-belt-and-road

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1-29-19 Beijing. 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/67744093.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst   

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1-29-19  

-Kashgar  (Wikimedia Commons)

  Lately the Xi’s government has announced a five-year plan aimed at “Sinicizing” Islam to make it “compatible with socialism”.  Activists, however, warned that this campaign would gradually lead to a total eradication of Islam – with which some 23 million Chinese still identify in the country.

Thanks to the Chinese government propaganda, the Uyghurs are perceived as trouble makers by most Han Chinese and as such, are told that these ‘terrorists’ must be restrained and ‘reeducated’ or ‘reprogramed’ to accept the new reality in China that has no room for dissension, dialogue and debate.  Not surprisingly, the frustrated Uyghurs who increasingly find themselves cornered against the wall and are denied the rights to their culture, plus the political and economic windfalls that have hitherto benefitted the Han settlers to their mineral-rich region have sometimes reacted violently by attacking Han settlers and the trigger-happy police with knives....

  It is also feared that this repugnant campaign of mass detention of Muslims is set to expand, as the regional governments within PRC with sizeable Muslim populations are dispatching officials to detention centers in Xinjiang with the explicit aim of learning to and adopting the same criminal measures.   https://www.eurasiareview.com/29012019-the-uyghurs-detained-in-their-own-land-oped/
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1-8-19   In September 2017, the state-run Chinese Central Television (CCTV) program “Glorious China” described how the CCP built the world’s largest surveillance network, boasting more than 20 million cameras in a system with interconnected artificial intelligence (AI) and big data.  This year more than 170 million cameras were deployed as part of the Safe City program, and 400 million more cameras are to be installed in the next three years across China’s cities and countryside.  https://www.theepochtimes.com/huawei-and-the-creation-of-chinas-orwellian-surveillance-state_2747922.html

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  The exiled writer Ma Jian, who has compared Xi’s China to 1984, told The New York Times that, “to Chinese readers I am a dead man,” referring to the total ban on his books on the mainland.  In July of last year the political cartoonist Jiang Yefei was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power” and “illegally crossing the border.”

https://boingboing.net/2019/01/13/laobaixing.html

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12-2-18  Two Chinese dissidents, including political cartoonist Jiang Yefei, were  deported from Thailand back to China last month despite having been granted refugee status by

the United Nations.  Jiang and fellow pro-democracy activist Dong Guangping were imprisoned upon their return to China and have not been heard from since.

  Jiang originally fled to Thailand in 2008 after he was briefly imprisoned and tortured in China for criticizing the government’s response to the Sichuan earthquake.  His wife Chu Ling said that he also had attempted to bring an “alternative torch relay” highlighting human rights abuses to China ahead of the Beijing Olympics the same year, but the package containing the torch was intercepted by authorities.  http://cbldf.org/2015/12/chinese-cartoonist-deported-from-thailand-jailed-in-china/

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11-22-15   “We have expressed our concern to the government of Thailand about their deportation,” she said, pointing out that the move came just months after the country was criticized for deporting 109 ethnic Uighurs to China....

  “It seems clear that the forced return of these two activists was a deliberate, premediated rights violation by the Thai junta at China’s behest,” Richardson said.  “Prime Minister Prayut should recognize that Thailand is moving toward the sort of pariah status reserved for the most rights-abusing countries, and right these wrongs.”   Thailand’s generals have cultivated warmer ties with China since seizing power in a 2014 coup.  https://www.chiangraitimes.com/united-nations-blasts-thai-junta-for-deporting-chinese-refugees-accepted-by-canada.html

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