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Comment by wiradikusuma | Hacker News Reader

The question is, how did the Chinese immigration know?

for each applicant do select count(*) from people_who_pissed_us where social_username = applicant.fb.username?

Ha, you've no idea how good they are at this.

It's a high-tech surveillance state presiding over 1.5 billion people with a history of crushing (quite literally, sadly) or 'disappearing' any signs of dissent.

Anecdotally: I once partnered with a Chinese cultural institute for a big event and ended up having my Gmail hacked as part of the compensation. They gotta know you're not a Tibetan separatist after all!

That's pretty crazy.

Any idea how they hacked your Gmail account? MITM/intercepting your password? How did you find out? Did Google inform you some IP in a bizarre location signed in?

Not sure, could have been as mundane as me using one of the staff laptops to login to Google - a no-no in retrospect.

Yep, a warning similar to this one, but in Gmail: https://news-cdn.softpedia.com/images/news2/Google-Extends-S...

One infers their systems are highly integrated (tax/crime/social/banking/education/gps all unified)

Or even as simple as a procedure:

(1) search for the applicant on google/baidu

(2) if the searches reveal support or sympathy for dissident or seditious activity, deny the visa application.

One would think, but at the same time knowing the bureaucratic garbage that happens at tech companies (and I would think communist party HQ is a bit worse), I imagine their system is likely a giant mess and it probably took a number of months to get back about the visa.

It's actually quite surprising how un-integrated US government agencies and systems are.

It's not a bug, it's a feature

Decentralization is what most of the founding fathers wished for. It is indeed a feature, and one we must all be vigilant of.

Yes but it's also the primary source of a lot of government waste (the same type of waste the conservatives are against).

I think it makes sense to separate local, state, and federal governments, but there's surprisingly little government data sharing between even federal government agencies, even when there's jurisdiction overlap.

It may be the price to pay in to avoid your government becoming a highly efficient oppression machine

not that integrated, as matter of fact until last few years and maybe still even nowadays labor bureau database was not linked to Visa EEB database, so i could get work permit on invalid visa although they should be strictly linked

i guess they are quite thorough only when it comes down to dissent (though my wife in gov job hit immediately career ceiling after marrying me and everyone around her even newcomers kept growing except her, sure just coincidence /s and we both can't still really publicly say what we want because she has there parents and rest of family)

It's not that hard. When you apply for a visa you must state if you're a journalist or not. After that, a quick Google should suffice, especially if the articles written by her became popular.

> a quick Google

After switching of The Great Firewall for ones own browser, that pesky thing blocks useful information.

But the government doesn't block itself. I'm sure the Chinese government can access the open Internet.

Architect of China’s ‘Great Firewall’ Bumps Into It

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/world/asia/china-internet...

What constitutes journalism?

I remember in the mid-2000s that online-journalists whose sites had millions of impressions per month were denied journalism visas because they weren’t traditional established print newspapers - then there was a debate about the difference between a blogger and a journalist.

I’d like to know if a non-journalist who maintained a very popular blog, such as an influential software engineer, who occasionally blogs about political or topical stories, constitutes a journalist or not. If they’re in the country for an industry conference but write about political events on their blog while they’re in the country have they violated their visa?

That's a very valid question and from their documents, it looks like they define journalist as someone who does it professionally as a career:

"The term "resident foreign journalists" means career journalists who are dispatched by foreign media organizations to be stationed in China for a period of not less than six months for news coverage and reporting."

http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/ywzn/mtyw/press_1/t944225.h...

> I’d like to know if a non-journalist who maintained a very popular blog, such as an influential software engineer, who occasionally blogs about political or topical stories, constitutes a journalist or not.

A good question. Consider also that a blogger, lacking an influential institution such as Buzzfeed or the NYT at their back, may find themselves in much deeper trouble than a denied visa. Arrest, prison, espionage charges, etc. have happened to foreigners, including televised confessions:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/world/asia/china-confessi...

China is really good at keeping track of dissent.

Other replies seem to suggest that China is amazingly good at filtering out dissidents in their visa application process...

Actually it’s just that if you want to be a foreign journalist and live in China, you need to apply for a special Journalist visa. The process of application for those is much more difficult than other types of visa.

Which makes it very easy to select which media to approve.

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