Apple Removes New York Times Apps from iTunes Store in China
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
This has been reported quite a bit for several years; see, e.g.,
http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/05/18/407619652/h... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/15/business/media/in-hollywoo... http://origin.www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/Dire...
Now try doing that in China. Make the PLA the enemy or portray a corrupt out of control official in Chongqing like Bo Xilai. Not allowed, because it is way too close to the truth for comfort, maybe.
Example is Battle Los Angeles (2011) and American Sniper (2015). So such things are in effect "soft propaganda".
In China, to protect themselves against such soft influence, they enact regulations. Letting people watch all US movies without a filter is effectively letting US set the cultural standards and values.
I am not advocating for such a strategy, but since some other countries don't have the technological capability to make engaging soft cultural influence movies, I get where they're coming from.
Another film example is Act of Valor (2012). An enjoyable demonstration of real military hardware, accompanied by god mode special forces operators, jumping in to any country, saving the world from super villains. This film provides a sense of security to the US and it's allies whilst simultaneously instilling fear in it's enemies.
All respect to the real heroes out there, military and otherwise.
No, it's letting the people set the cultural standards and values, by deciding what to watch and what not to watch.
Assuming that is okay for a moment. Your solution to that is to give another small group of people the power to explicitly override that decision-making, by fiat, without even having to go through the motions of convincing propaganda.
Which is better how exactly? Because this latter small group of people will be "benevolent dictators", acting in the larger group's best interests even as they override its decisions? They certainly claim to be that, but why should we believe them over the other guys?
To me it seems that U.S. likes to portray government in a negative way in films, and in real life a sizeable portion of the people are also not happy with the government. The reverse is true in China.
I mentioned the difference in people-government relationship earlier but didn't think of the link to the media and film industry: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13203027
The existence of dissatisfaction with the American government probably drives production of subversive films, rather than the other way around. People are usually predisposed to media that fits their views, not the other way around.
Red Dawn, a remake of a 1980s action movie about a Soviet invasion of the United States, was originally shot featuring China as the antagonist invading the United States. According to Mr. Shiao, however, the Chinese are “not interested in their country being perceived as a violent military threat to the lives of average Americans.”
and
A 'Captain Phillips' executive identified the tone of the film as a source of discomfort for censors, particularly “the big Military machine of the U.S. saving one U.S. citizen. China would never do the same and in no way would want to promote this idea.”
While I think censorship an unwise and ultimately self-defeating policy, and also agree with the basic premise that a good many of the rules are just dressed up protectionism, I can't really blame China for declining to import overt propaganda. China makes lots of propagandistic films, but the propaganda is mainly about what China should be like. It'll be some time before they produce an overtly anti-American film like Brother 2 or Valley of the Wolves (as opposed to striaght-up propaganda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_8lSjcoSW8) and I doubt whether it would be well-received here if they did.
I was watching Argo on my Chinese IPTV streaming service in Shenzhen with my Chinese roommate and my roommate was blown away by the idea that the movie was based on a true story. He said that the Chinese government would never take such extreme steps to rescue its citizens from any such situation. I never really thought about his comment and his shock (it was a lot of shock) until reading this just now. Wow, interesting.
Argo is a deeply troubling film. From the one-dimensionality of the Iranians to the complete lack of historical context ignoring prior US meddling and interfering in internal Iranian affairs[1]. The involvement of the CIA in the production[2]. The historical inaccuracies of the film[3]. The timing of the release of the film given Iranian-Western relations over its nuclear program.
For me Argo is basically unwatchable US patriotic screen-fodder bordering on propaganda.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'état#Unite...
[2] https://www.amazon.de/CIA-Hollywood-Agency-Shapes-Television...
“Argo and Zero Dark Thirty are only the latest film productions the CIA has influenced in the 15 years since the Agency opened its official liaison office to Hollywood […]”
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argo_(2012_film)#Historical_in...
Essentially it extrapolates from an (apparently genuine) GIA document produced during the 1990s, laying out a rough 'recipe' for turning a country towards western democracy by cultural, institutional, and political influence (or subversion, depending on your point of view) - essentially the 'soft power' approach of American diplomacy, backed up by the 90s-era conviction that we'd entered the 'end of history' following the fall of the USSR and that it was only a matter of time before every country switched to democracy and free markets because That's What Works. So this film is 50% a review of history from the Chinese and communist perspectives (worth remembering that Chinese history goes back ~5000 years so they see Marxism as a political technology rather than an identity), and 50% a how-to guide on spotting insidious Western cultural viruses.
Amusingly enough some of their complaints overlap with the complaints of western conservatives about 'cultural Marxism' which alleges that the entertainment industry is bent on unmaking national social consenses and replacing them with one world globalist tyranny. I wouldn't be surprised to find some films are considered objectionable by both communists and conservatives.
Miraculous ladybug also defies the trope, but in a mixed race context (Chinese-French).
And thanks for the movie tips!
Hollywood is huge, everyone has their own standards.
>Perhaps they just couldn't find an actor that looked the role?
Of course they could, but the problem is it seems as if they wouldn't dare try. They stopped looking after "the one hot female lead we put in every sci-fi movie now."
Note that for this reason, there was no controversy about the casting of the GIS protagonist in Japan itself. The vocal critics have all been Asian Americans. But that doesn't really say much, as this movie is being judged as an American one rather than a Japanese one; the lack of Asian American actors getting roles like these bothers me also.
Because Asian Americans are more aware of the lack of diversity in roles for Asians in American movies. Japanese people would have no idea about that because where they live, every hero on every screen in every Japanese movie is Japanese.
I'm well aware of the style in anime to present characters as "stateless", and why it's done, but that isn't the problem. Asian actors appearing to not be on equal footing with Caucasian and African American actors when it comes to the roles they're allowed to portray is the problem.
I'm sick of seeing the same few faces in everything.
Are they? Anime characters do not seem to be bound by typical (or even possible) hair and eye colours. Couldn't such characters be, well, ethnic Japanese people who happen to have an unusual hair colour? That seems to be the general assumption.
In ghost in the shell, the protagonist is a robot or cyborg, ethnicity isn't fixed.
yes, it's a conscious design choice[0,1]. They're not "obviously Caucasian" so much as "not obviously anything."
[0]http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Mukokuseki
[1]https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Mukokuseki-rarely-appear-in-W...
Hollywood wants major established Hollywood names that are perceived as major draws in and of themselves in major roles on any major projects. Insofar as the output of that process has apparent racial bias (and it does, significantly) it's largely an effect of the fact that the process by which one becomes an established Hollywood name with big perceived drawing power involves many, many sources of bias.
So China has been fact checking for twenty years longer than the internet has existed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Taiwan https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2016/taiwan
Ruling party: Taiwan's president is indeed from the Democratic Progressive Party. [1]
Self identification: More than 80 percent of respondents self-identified as Taiwanese, compared with 8.1 percent who identified themselves as Chinese and 7.6 percent who identified as both. [2]
Fully democratic: Not only does Taiwan have open elections and tolerate political demonstrations even the US wouldn't, but people have had referendum powers since 2003. This power was used stop the building of casinos in Penghu despite the moneyed interests pushing for them: [3]
1) http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35336411
2) http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2016/05/28/20...
3) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-15/casinos-r...
Today Taiwan has a ridiculous number of political parties (nearly 300) with 3-4 of them actually having seats in the house, tho effectively Taiwan is a 2 party country with sweeping swings in number of seats and leadership between the Democratic Progressive Party and the Chinese National Party.
Thats the only difference.
china presents an image that is almost North Korean to the rest of the world, even though this is far from the truth. The current leadership, which came of age during the cultural revolution, is even worse than the previous leaders in this regard, and they probably don't realize how bad they look (with the fake hair dye, but everything else also).
If the Communist party decided to replace all online censorship with modals saying how wrong the website was, and you could just click through the modal, I would consider that progress in China.
I don't give breaks to golden parachutes or to lobbied appointments.
Reply to below: I am not talking about government censorship, which is obvious, since I just talked about it. I am talking about companies using fake news as an excuse to block what they believe is fake news.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_China
Or are you talking about in the West? (Why ask for extant examples for things that are being proposed, but not yet enacted, regarding fake news?)
I'm not well read on this topic but I would like to be. I've never heard this solution presented, likely due to my lack of research. Can you provide citations of this solution being suggested and/or implemented?
Besides that, while I agree it is better than pure blocking I still feel it would be a government over-reach. I wouldn't like a company doing it either.
> Introduced by Congressmen Adam Kinzinger and Ted Lieu, H.R. 5181 seeks a “whole-government approach without the bureaucratic restrictions” to counter “foreign disinformation and manipulation,” which they believe threaten the world’s “security and stability.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-24/obama-signs-counter...
But instead of controlling the media they want to fund their own "fact-based" counter propaganda by building centralized media strategies with input from across the government, including the intelligence agencies, department of energy, state, etc. Additionally they want to partner and fund private firms, NGOs, and local journalists to help them.
> The first priority is developing a whole-of-government strategy for countering THE foreign propaganda and disinformation being wages against us and our allies by our enemies. The bill would increase the authority, resources, and mandate of the Global Engagement Center to include state actors like Russia and China as well as non-state actors. The Center will be led by the State Department, but with the active senior level participation of the Department of Defense, USAID, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the Intelligence Community, and other relevant agencies. The Center will develop, integrate, and synchronize whole-of-government initiatives to expose and counter foreign disinformation operations by our enemies and proactively advance fact-based narratives that support U.S. allies and interests.
> Second, the legislation seeks to leverage expertise from outside government to create more adaptive and responsive U.S. strategy options. The legislation establishes a fund to help train local journalists and provide grants and contracts to NGOs, civil society organizations, think tanks, private sector companies, media organizations, and other experts outside the U.S. government with experience in identifying and analyzing the latest trends in foreign government disinformation techniques. This fund will complement and support the Center’s role by integrating capabilities and expertise available outside the U.S. government into the strategy-making process. It will also empower a decentralized network of private sector experts and integrate their expertise into the strategy-making process.
It's not clear how explicit this will be. Hopefully it will be obvious, so the public doesn't have to then invest in identifying the US propaganda, which is countering Russian/China propaganda.
H.R. 5181 establishes a Global Engagement Center, funds it, creates an official in charge of it who works for the Board of Broadcasting Governors and makes them immune to civil law.
With the passage of the resolution, the Executive Branch is empowered to reinterpret prior domestic propaganda protections so that American citizens that do not believe official US narrative can be engaged/targeted by influence operations.
So is China.
If Wen Jiaobao's family didn't accumulate so much wealth, why would they have blocked nytimes in the first place? It must be true, they never even tried refuting the facts presented in theat seminal article.
This should be a badge of honor for any news source.
The NY Times doesn't publish anything about China that they don't publish about many other countries. Certainly coverage of the U.S. and U.K. is much more challenging to those authorities.
[0] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/01/china-bashing.html
I don't see it at all. The Times' reporting is equally critical, and in much greater volume, of the U.S., U.K., and probably others. The job of journalists, to a great extent, is to inform the public about problems; afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. It's not bias against China, it's the same journalism practiced everywhere about everyone.
The link doesn't really back up its claims. These are the NYT headlines it cites as "bashing":
* Hong Kong Protesters Seek Democracy.
* Discovery of Melamine-Tainted Milk Shuts Shanghai Dairy.
* Index of China’s Manufacturing Rose Sharply in December.
* Telecom Company to Pay $3 Million in China Bribe Case.
* China: Xinjiang Enacts a Curb on Dissent.
* A pioneering editor who resigned amid [government
censor] controversy last fall … named editor in chief of
a new publication.
* China and 10 Southeast Asian nations ushered in the
world’s third-largest free-trade area.
* Chinese Businesses Resist Eviction by Developers.
* U.S. Duties on Pipes From China Approved.
* China Executes Briton Despite Appeals.
"China bashing" is simply a euphemism for being critical on china, any kind of criticism is applied the term. The CPC just cannot accept criticism from anyone in any form, so they block it all out. Only low value news sources like CNN and Fox remain.
Chinese are incredibly self critical in china but do not like it when foreigners are. Face is a huge deal in Chinese culture.
I understand it as being overly or gratuitously critical of China but of course, it's hard to define objectively. Personally, I feel like most American media is biased against China but I hold a relatively positive view of China.
In the south China sea, rather than accept a treaty that all neighboring countries including China signed, China prefers to go by an old Chinese map. Rather than accept the international ruling upholding the treaty, China condemned it and increased their militarization of international waters.
To the best of my knowledge, China has territorial disputes with every single one of its many neighbors, though they may back off their claim to 20% of Tajikistan since Tajikstan ceded just under 1% of its territory a few years ago.
I can see why a Chinese citizen might like their foreign policy, but it sure is rough for their neighbors: https://www.facebook.com/notes/tarek-fatah/chinas-border-dis...
Westerners would have a more negative perception of china if they read/watched more of the Chinese media. It is so crass and biased (in a way western media could ever get away with) that you can't help but think things are very messed up.
My 9 years just ended. Granted, Beijing is more of a difficult situation than southern china, I could handle living in Guilin, liuzhou, or even Nanning (well, the latter is maybe too hot).
It is an interesting question.
> The NY Times doesn't publish anything about China that they don't publish about many other countries. Certainly coverage of the U.S. and U.K. is much more challenging to those authorities.
I don't think that is true. Some of us marched against the Iraq war post 911 in quite substantial numbers. I still remember the demo in DC that went from the Mall to Navy Yard. It was huuuuge as the incoming President would have it.
Did New Times put a front page picture with screaming headline about our demonstrations? Nope. (I think Washinton Post mentioned it in the Metro section.)
Compare to when Egyptians took to the streets. It was certainly front page on The New York Times, our self designated "paper of record".
And regardless, my main point was they challenge U.S. authority more than Chinese authority, which also seems hard to debate if you look at their website.
Are you telling me that if the equivalent of /The Patriot Act/ was created in China, or Russia, or take-your-pick-enemy-dujour, and passed unread by the legislature of that nation The New York Times would not skewer them in print and run multipage spreads in the Sunday Magazine detailing every questionable aspect?
Remind me: How did The New York Times cover that event.
Here are some facts: The Times broke, and heavily reported the NSA illegal surveillance story under Bush, Snowden's leaks, Hillary Clinton's email server, Trump's tax non-payment, and much, much more.
I'm not here to be their defender, but it doesn't help advance knowledge or our world to bash them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/20/us/nation-challenged-safet...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/21/us/nation-challenged-safet...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/23/us/a-nation-challenged-civ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/23/weekinreview/aftermath-the...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/24/us/war-on-terrorism-stirs-...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/25/opinion/liberties-in-a-tim...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/27/technology/living-under-an...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/01/arts/arts-online-cybersnoo...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/01/us/nation-challenged-lawma...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/02/us/a-nation-challenged-con...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/03/us/a-nation-challenged-leg...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/03/us/nation-challenged-safet...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/04/opinion/toward-a-balanced-...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/04/us/a-nation-challenged-con...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/05/us/a-nation-challenged-leg...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/10/us/nation-challenged-legis...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/12/us/nation-challenged-legis...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/13/us/nation-challenged-congr...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/13/us/nation-challenged-legis...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/18/us/nation-challenged-house...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/25/us/a-nation-challenged-the...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/26/us/a-nation-challenged-sec...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/26/us/nation-challenged-legis...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/27/us/nation-challenged-legis...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/24/opinion/journal-wait-until...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/opinion/liberties-uncivil-...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/us/nation-challenged-law-b...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/01/opinion/abroad-at-home-it-...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/01/us/nation-challenged-liber...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/02/opinion/justice-deformed-w...
http://web.archive.org/web/20011013055359/http://nytimes.com...
http://web.archive.org/web/20011014065756/http://nytimes.com...
Front page worthy, in your opinion?
And a no robots showed up on Oct 19, 2001: http://web.archive.org/web/20011019003114/http://nytimes.com...
And no archive of record for Oct 26, 2001 (Bush signed on this date): October 26, 2001: http://web.archive.org/web/20011026031103/http://www.nytimes...
We can try to find out. Did NYT ever run a single page on SORM-2 in Russia?
http://imgur.com/rd6WRMl Jan 19, 2003 front page picture with link to inside story
http://imgur.com/tyau0FK Jan 19, 2003 inside page
Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/19/us/threats-responses-rally...
Jan 20 Editorial supporting protests http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/20/opinion/a-stirring-in-the-...
Here's the NYT top story on Feb 16, 2003: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/16/world/threats-responses-pr...
Here's a low-res picture of the front page, with 3 pictures of the demonstrations: http://imgur.com/KN6YhEx
But I don't know what to make of this:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/...
Per archive.org, it was "Saved 3 times between April 5, 2013 and May 27, 2015".
[p.s. edit: and unfortunately archive.org does not have Jan. 19, 2001 recorded:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030101000000*/http://www.nytim...]
Note even if the app is in the App Store, it isn't necessary that it will work. Nytimes app needs a connection to nytimes.com get news. So the app is useless without a VPN, and you can also get the app if you set your region to the USA (I have both Chinese store and USA apps on my idevices, some apps like didi and xiami aren't on the USA store).
I remember that Reddit bans foreign news outlets from its news subreddits.
I remember that Facebook censored people trying to post Snowden Documents in the US.
This is a global phenomenon. We should do everything in our power to reverse this trend in the United States so that we have the credibility to criticize China for doing the same.
Google already bowed years ago. They tried to stay out of China on principle with search didn't they? But in the end the market was just too big and they entered it.
It's easy to take a principled stance against North Korea (where users don't get a choice) or a smaller country that's pretty big like even Iran if they wanted to.
China is just too big for people to resist. At a certain point you're not going to grow much unless you go to China.
If Apple told them to pound sand and got banned from the UK, how much sales could they recoup if they kept Irish Apple stores extra well-stocked? If the response to Brazil's VAT is any example, thrifty entrepreneurs will do all the hard work of getting iPhones into the UK for a modest but very profitable overhead. A couple iPhones sold at 25% markup is more than enough to pay for a RyanAir round-trip and a week living in a cheap flat.
Assuming you build it yourself, sideloading of open source apps is free (no developer account required) for anyone running iOS 9 and Xcode 7 or later.
You have to fax questions to the Chinese Internet regulator?
One aspect I found interesting was the hypothesis that states like China use censorship also as a strategic tool to strengthen their own business (Baidu vs Google for example).
[It seems reasonable to note, here, that the same logic applies to coverage of the American government -- despite the lack of censors. Perhaps they leverage access to privileged information -- why leak something important to someone who dredges up garbage about you the other six days a week.]
* throttling of all foreign internet at particular times * effective blocks on sites because they load dependencies from blocked sites. * Temporary local blocking (e.g. It's easier and reliable from my home internet to load reddit, but from a coffee shop 1km away it's noticeably less reliable) * interrupting of pageloads based on keywords. e.g. if you try download a page from a non-blocked domain that features keywords "free tibet" then the connection will get interrupted.
The gov places blocks on whole regions like Tibet/Uighur areas regularly, but I also believe that they have profiles down to a very granular level on which router/IPS has what level of trust. Public wifi is often unreliable for loading foreign websites or connecting to a VPN, whereas big hotels or my home wifi can be fine. I'm 80% sure this is real and not imagination :)
There's a ton of US propaganda in the New York Times. China doesn't appreciate that much.
source: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/commu...
"Blocking misinformation will help protect the [Facebook's] brand and credibility."
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/facebook-an...
I'll take "What's the punishment for criticizing Chinese political figures in China?" for $100, Alex.
Am I reading that right? Seems like the Times is not-so-subtly implying that Apple tipped off the Chinese authorities. Maybe they mentioned the scathing nature of the article that could potentially paint China in bad light.
For those that didn't read that article, it unveils billions of dollars in perks given to Foxconn/Apple: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/technology/apple-iphone-ch...
good thing Google has a backbone
Yes, they must bow to local laws. But not taking some of the spoils and directing that via back channel donations into subversive software like TOR - that is a choice they have.
[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023036659045774495... [2] https://sophosnews.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/google-warnin...
https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-chin...
Disclaimer: I work for FB, this is my personal opinion
Rumors for sure, just answering your question.
Not really. NYT has solidly established themselves as a fake news site. It's very reasonable to protect the public from such propaganda sites that post fake news, do you not agree?
(Also, touchbar = Darth Vader. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NCm_-GZ-Dc )