Chinese Cops Now Spying on American Soil | Hacker News Reader

Chinese Cops Now Spying on American Soil

thedailybeast.com

45 pointsytNumbers47 comments

While this is alarming in the context of ethnic cleansing in Western China, it's not really remarkable that foreign intelligence is operating in the US; what country on Earth does not have foreign intelligence agents operating in it?

It's not about foreign intelligence, but rather the systematic surveillance and persecution of politically troublesome ethnic minorities – even abroad.

I don't imagine many foreign regimes have an intelligence operation in the U.S. dedicated to monitoring their own citizens.

I think you might be surprised.

Russia, I would expect. Cuba, maybe, although that'd be incredibly expensive given the number of ex-pats here relative to the government's budget. Iran conceivably. Mayyyybe North Korea, although are there enough to matter?

Who else would bother?

(Sure would have been nice were Saudi Arabia keeping track of their subjects while on American soil prior to 9/11.)

Elements of the Saudi government likely assisted the effort, hence the ongoing lawsuits

The United States collects information on every phone call its citizens make domestically but you find it implausible that they keep tabs on US citizens abroad? If anything, what's striking here is how hamfistedly the Chinese government is conducting this program, but I suppose that is because intimidation is the point.

I was specifically and explicitly discussing foreign operations on U.S. soil. Why are you beating me up for not talking about what the U.S. government is doing abroad?

I thought it was reasonable to extrapolate from what the US does. And in some cases, for instance, the Five Eyes countries often cooperate as a way of bypassing their own laws, so it's directly related.

Anyway, for a specific US example, Russia alerted the US about the Tsarnaev brothers. Anecdotally I heard from a South Korean about a visit in Japan from some official with photos warning him to stop associating with some North Koreans he'd met. Call me pessimistic but I think this is going on all the time everywhere.

For those who just read the headline and are thinking about (or even commenting on) cops being "physically" in the U.S. to spy on people, no, it is not what's happening. The headline is grossly misleading.

The only news here is relatives calling overseas Chinese (who are Uighurs) to collect information on their overseas employment, ID and financial information (presumably instructed by the police).

It is invasion of privacy, of course. But I don't think it is that bad of a measure to counter religious extremism and radicalism. Similar measures are in place or planned in U.S. (Muslim registry, surrendering your social media accounts upon immigration check-in).

The bulk of the article then goes on and on talking about China's influence and old news about reports within China on human rights and surveillance (which you have seen a millions times in every news about China).

Honestly I am amused by the fact that Western media need to recount back all the past events whenever some new information about China emerges. I don't know, it feels like they are just doing this to please their readers by reinforcing the negative image of China.

Full disclosure: I am an overseas Chinese who hasn't been contacted by the police, but then again I am not a Uighur.

> it feels like they are just doing this to please their readers by reinforcing the negative image of China.

It's not like China has been doing a good job on removing this negative image of themselves, aren't they? Granted, not that they should care, they just pay attention at their own game.

Either yanks or russians pulling strings in MENA to satisfy their geopolitical ambitions, or the CPC doing the same in Subsaharan Africa, or major cities of the western world.

It shouldn't really surprise you to see headlines like this.

What I mean is double standard in reporting:

Does every negative article about UK talk about brexit?

Does every negative article about Trump talk about his sexist remark? (Granted, Trump might be in similar situation as China)

Does every negative article about Russia talk about annexation of Crimea?

Not that I've seen.

Edit: confusing wording.

Yes.

I’m not sure what your point is here?

I am too lazy to google, but here is the first result when searching for "russia election meddling", which does not talking about annexation of Crimea (hence proving your third "yes" wrong):

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/03/trump-russia...

The point is, every news article that is negative towards China will talk about all the previous negative articles about China regardless of their age or relevance.

Your point was muddled. You asked do I read everything about Russia annexing Crimea, I replied “yes.” Not that every article about Russia was also about crimea. That isn’t true, nor is it true that every even negative article about China mentions Uighurs.

My bad, fixed my wording.

Do send me an article that talks about something negative about Chinese government but doesn't mention Uighurs if you come across one. I would like to keep it.

My contact information is pretty easy to find.

You don’t really need to look very far, see:

https://www.wsj.com/news/types/china-news

https://www.nytimes.com/topic/destination/china

https://www.cnn.com/china

https://www.economist.com/sections/china

Look at any article that is negative and not about xinjiang. Eg China lending crisis doesn’t mention Uighurs at all. I personally recommend the Economist’s recent article in Tianjin’s current building bust. I mean, I saw derelict skyscraper husks when I first visited tianjin in 1999, that’s still a think in 2018???

I mean sure, if the article is about economics and real estate, then it is unlikely that it would include political stuff.

A more charitable interpretation of my comment would be that I am referring to stories on Chinese politics (human rights, surveillance, etc).

There are plenty of human rights abuses in eastern China against Hans even that get reported without mentioning Uighurs. I’m sure you can find a few those in the current stack of China articles from those sites, they make them easy to find.

Eg they released Liu Xiaobao’s widow today from imprisonment for...reasons. No references to xinjiang: https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-lets-widow-of-dissident-n...

First, that was from last month, before the Uighur issue was blowing up, not today.

Second, that was a positive followup to a negative story, not a new negative story.

Only a Chinese could view that as a positive but ok; in the west we consider it negative because it reminds everyone she was imprisoned in the first place, not to mention her husband’s plight.

Sorry, I didn’t look at the time stamp, wsj just doesn’t cover China as frequently as they used to. Here is one from August 2nd on nyt: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/world/asia/china-sun-weng...

Oh, and if you consider safe vaccines a human right: https://www.economist.com/china/2018/07/26/a-vaccine-scandal...

Nary anything about xinjiang.

China doesn’t really care what the rest of the world thinks about it, so they aren’t thinking of their international image when they do things like this.

Reading the Chinese press makes this even more obvious, and leads to an even poorer image of China than CNN could ever accomplish. The western media actually makes China look better in that way.

I think that's a mistake to say; I'd say rather that their goals of national unity without domestic challenge override their international image in this case. It's really no different than Trump's obsession with purging immigrants overriding the hit to the US' reputation that his policies have caused

With Trump, however, most Americans know he is hurting our image abroad. In China, they are almost completely oblivious to global PR.

What do you base that claim on?

US western media talks a lot about how trump is damaging our image. Chinese media never even mentions how Xi or decisions made in China are giving it a bad reputation.

Perhaps, but you are assuming, I think unjustifiably, that Chinese people are unable to use their imaginations or what information they can find online (the censorship is largely reactive). Also, Chinese papers often will highlight foreign criticism to rebut it and foreign criticism can sometimes be a galvanizing force. On a more basic level I have to imagine that when Chinese people heard Xi Jingping talking about his principle of non-interference in internal affairs they have some idea that he's rejecting foreign criticism.

Additionally, China is a global power and has to care about its reputation to the extent it affects its international projects.

It isn’t a bad assumption. Many Chinese have no idea where France is let alone about what France thinks of them. Even in the cities where people are more educated, they are dumbfounded when Vietnam riots against them, completely unaware of the reasons why they might do that. At any rate, China has always been self centered throughout their 5000 years of history, it’s even in the name 中国 that literally means center of the world.

Chinese papers are very weird. They attempt to rebut foreign criticism without even repeating what that criticism is. GlobalTimes does this all the time in their editorials, it is totally surreal. I’ve had cases where I’m reading chinadaily and I have to go to a foreign news source to understand what they are actually railing against; eg the article would be like “the Dalai Lama did something, it was wrong!” without ever elaborating about what “it” was.

Many Americans have no idea Puerto Rico is part of the United States or that we bombed the island when an independence movement broke out; I'm not really sure you can attribute that to their iron grip on the media. Or educated people are baffled as to why North Korea would distrust them. Honestly, you could make a lot of these criticisms of any place.

Sure, but they are mostly aware of the hurricane that happened in Puerto Rico and the USA was somehow negligent even if they didn’t know PR was actually a territory.

China has third-world media problems; e.g. how do we get these people not to show there reverence for Xi so strongly. The USA has first world media problems (Trump says CNN is fake news). The same with education and an awareness of world affairs. They aren’t equivalent at all, they are on totally different scales.

They're conducting full-on ethnic cleansing and using the War on Terror as a cover. The US is involved in enough human rights atrocities that it might not be in a great place to criticize, but let's not kid ourselves here.

> But I don't think it is that bad of a measure to counter religious extremism and radicalism. Similar measures are in place or planned in U.S. (Muslim registry, surrendering your social media accounts upon immigration check-in).

While it’s true that “similar measures are in place in the US,” I’m not sure everyone agrees it’s “not that bad of a measure...” People in the US have been outraged over these proposals; using them as an example of normalization is disingenuous at best.

It is true that not everyone agrees it is not a bad measure. But that's not what I mean. What I mean is:

- "I" don't think it is not bad.

- Some policy makers in the U.S. are doing similar things, so there are at least some people who (agrees with me and) also think it is not bad.

If these people are so terrible then why are they going out of their way to annoy the ones who have left the country and may possible help their relatives leave the country?

Do they think that if they prosecute them enough the West will accept them as refugees? (I don't see that happening post-Syria or being good for China if it did.)

Probably to prevent them from getting involved in activism.

If I understand your question, I would think that China would welcome a total diaspora of the Uighur if they would leave China alone once abroad.

Both seem unlikely (especially the odds of getting everyone to leave) so they operate on the assumption that all Uighur are threats.

In Machiavellian power politics (which is how the Communist party operates), you want to keep all potential usurpers under your control. If any can escape, they will, and they will come after you. This is China reminding them that even though they are not in China, they are not free from China’s influence.

And make no mistake, the folks they’re doing this to are essentially the “nobility” or “landed gentry” of Chinese society. These people have connections and skills such that they will be fine if China does not want them, and they would likely be among the political leaders / influencers in the event of a collapse of single-party rule.

I wonder how many of these people are somehow related to ROC, that would be a powerful fuel to fire the CPC paranoia.

Even so, I guess that most chinese in exclaves like Vancouver, Montreal, Eastern Australia, and NZ don't suffer this harassment.

    "Now..."

This has been going on (at least elsewhere) for a while [0] now.

[0]: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8556736.stm

Serves as a sobering reminder why ubiquitous surveillance is bad.

Spying is always bad, when its the other guy doing it. Isn't the rule pretty much, its ok as long as you don't get caught?

These aren’t really spies though, just some police offers trying to track down and apprehend people wanted in the PRC, like what happened with the booksellers in HK and Thailand.

It would be like US cops or FBI going to Beijing to try and abduct someone.

Hey that's every other Jackie Chan movie!

Which way? I think the first US one with chris rock was Chinese police coming to the USA, and the second one was USA police going to China. Unless you mean super cop, which was...mainland police in HK?

The term Orwellian almost seems an understatement for what China is doing. Astonishing.

Who is not spying?

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