China pressured Concordia University to cancel event with Uighur activist (2019) | Hacker News Reader

China pressured Concordia University to cancel event with Uighur activist (2019)

cbc.ca

297 pointsbaylearn86 comments

Chinese diplomats even go after Children books: China gets German children's book about COVID withdrawn

https://www.dw.com/en/china-gets-german-childrens-book-about...

"The Chinese consulate in Hamburg promptly threatened the Carlsen publishing house with filing criminal charges, demanding the recall of the book as well as a public apology."

> Moritz already knows something about Corona.

> "The virus comes from China and from there it spread over the entire world", he says. "When you get infected, you can get a strong cough and fever. Sometimes also the lung gets sick, so that you can't breath well anymore."

https://imgur.com/a/fyB8CnE

When I traveled to China about 10 years ago and we were about to land in Beijing everyone was shown a short movie on the inflight entertainment system (of China Southern airlines). It started with: "Swine influenza comes from America, spreads around the world."

You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4uEJIsbVyI

They've also used influence to keep the Dalai Lama and others from speaking, it's kind of the opposite side of the cancel culture phenomena. The wikipedia article has dozens of examples of China trying to influence local/national politics under the guise of the "Confucius Institutes". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Confucius_Institu...

Australia is riddled with this kind of Chinese pressure, particularly at universities.

My university went as far as to install an ugly out of place confucious statue. This was followed by being pressured to cancel a talk from the Dalai Llama. Then more recently PRC supporting students engaged in suppression of pro Hong Kong students with no consequences.

Just like Confucius centers that spread propaganda like in the USA? I have no problem if they want to set up a private NGO but they shouldn't be on public university grounds or be connected to them or contributing money to public universities.

It's remarkable how much soft power China has. I've seen some Australian news videos on YouTube that highlight the issues you're referring to. In America, I've been seeing the same, although in a quieter way:

China is seemingly the only power that can quiet the American far left, who have for the past several years been obsessed with "justice" and "equity", EXCEPT when it comes to China. As a recent example, LeBron James took to Twitter to speak against new voting laws in Georgia (https://thepostmillennial.com/lebron-james-boycott-georgia-m...), and drew much criticism in Twitter replies because of his hypocrisy on more clear cut issues of human rights. He's been mostly quiet on the NBA's ties to China, and has even made comments in the past that have been described as repackaged Chinese government propaganda (https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/what-did-lebron-james-...). Similarly, Apple is known for being "woke", and has a history of left-leaning political activism like curating app store content or enacting changes like replacing the pistol emoji with a squirt gun emoji (https://www.newsweek.com/apple-replaces-gun-emoji-water-pist...). But Apple and others reportedly lobbied against bills that would ban the use of forced labor (https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/30/apple-nike-coca-cola-lo...). Tim Cook has also sat quietly as over 150 Asian activist groups asked him for more concrete action (https://www.imore.com/coalition-activist-groups-pen-open-let...).

I guess in the end everyone only cares about issues to the extent it does not affect their own finances, and to the extent they can continue feeling membership in their political tribe even if they're being unprincipled.

I went to UTAS and they also have a random out of place Confucius statue, are you from a different University? I heard some rumour that it was donated kinda randomly, and they didn't realise how big it was going to be.

>PRC supporting students engaged in suppression of pro Hong Kong students with no consequences.

Could you give more details, here? What were the PRC-supported students doing against the pro-Hong Kong students, and how did the university respond? That sounds pretty insane.

When you have properties & lobbyists with ties to the mainland not much you can fight off

Sure you can, with just an ounce of courage. This is shameful behavior. I hope that the leaders that frequent this forum can do better and set an example.

The CCP regularly uses pressure, including torture, to get their way.

https://bitterwinter.org/new-tortures-target-church-of-almig...

The funny thing is the more they do this the more we get to hear about the plight of the Uighurs.

Not really. They just have to keep up this pressure and people who have financial interests in China will make it go away.

The then Norwegian PM and later ones bent over backwards on behalf of Norwegian salmon when the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel prize, for instance.

It is shameful, but the Uighur genocide is largely being ignored. Nobody wants to be punished by the Chinese market forces.

Are you refering to those creepy youtube videos, about how happy the uighurs are? Or those fake offence videos, were they claim to be offended by news they cant even watch behind the great fire wall?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNfQ4wEfUxM

They are probably referring to concentration camps and forced sterilization [1]. The situation is described as a genocide by some human rights organizations [2].

[1] https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-a-milli...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/09/chinas-treatme...

(2019)

2019? This needed to be posted?

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