Hi everyone, I have three questions start the discussion today, but please weigh in with anything you want. I will be in and out throughout the day. Thanks
Facebook announced they will start labeling CCP propaganda accounts on its platforms, and stop taking ads from them in the US. The PRC government is not happy. Is that move by Facebook reasonable, too much, or not enough? Here are my comments on the move from yesterday’s newsletter:
The new policies cover “state-controlled media outlets” not just from China. As I have said repeatedly, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are key to the CCP’s global propaganda efforts and its goal of increasing China’s international discourse power.
It is impressive how skillfully China uses information decoupling and platform asymmetry to push its propaganda agendas. The “wolf warrior” diplomats and propaganda organs are making their case globally on American platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube; CCP outlets like CGTN/CCTV/CRI, People’s Daily and China Daily are allowed to broadcast and distribute inside the US and other countries and Wechat is integral to the information consumption of the global Chinese-speaking diaspora. Meanwhile, foreign media are effectively blocked from broadcasting or publishing inside China, and from disseminating information on Chinese social media like Weibo and Wechat. PRC officials constantly talk about the dangers of decoupling, but at least when it comes to information they are aggressively and successfully pursuing a very comprehensive agenda of information decoupling in which they control the messaging for the domestic audiences while spreading unfettered their messaging globally.
Are Huawei’s 5G ambitions in the developed world under serious threat now?;
Does June 4, 1989 matter much in the PRC 31 years later?
This from Brookings regarding future Chinese economic policies looks interesting' its due out in a couple of days:
"How will China reform its economy as it aspires to become the next economic superpower? It's clear that China is the world's next economic superpower. But what isn't so clear is how China will get there by the middle of this century. It now faces tremendous challenges such as fostering innovation, dealing with an aging population, and coping with a less accommodating global environment. Whether China succeeds or fails in economic reform will have a large impact, not just on the country’s development, but also on stability and prosperity for the whole world. In a new book — "China 2049 Economic Challenges of a Rising Global Power," edited by Brookings Senior Fellow David Dollar and Peking University economists Yiping Huang and Yang Yao — top Chinese and American scholars offer in-depth analyses on these challenges and provide a series of policy recommendations.
This is another ham-handed effort to deflect criticism from Facebook's contribution to social and political chaos in the United States. Even though known Chinese propaganda outlets will be identified it will do nothing to stop the scores or hundreds of clandestine operators who will continue to pursue their misinformation activities on behalf of China on Facebook.
Zuckerberg is trying to curry favor with the Administration as an anti-China ally while hoping to avoid the President's ire towards social media. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg maintains obscene profits from domestic political advertising that is also full of misinformation. What is the difference between Chinese, Russian, Iranian or American misinformation?
1. It would probably be difficult to draw the line between propaganda and simply jingoistic sentiments. In this day and age of fake news, half-truths, and conspiracy theories the liminal spaces between objective reality, personal opinion, state sponsorship, and pure fabrications are more indistinct and uncertain than ever before. Perhaps this is well illustrated in the Chinese term for 'propaganda', 宣传, which transliterated literally means 'propaganda' but in usage reflects a wide range of activities, from 'publicity' to 'information dissemination' to flat-out 'propaganda'. I believe that Hu Xijin once said the role of the news media is to simultaneously deliver accurate news and to align the people's opinions with the state and party. Certainly, most western observers would put this under the catch-all term 'propaganda', but I do think there is a degree of subtlety lost in translation.
None of this is to say that the CCP's efforts to bend public perception is laudable or even acceptable; it's simply to say that separating the wheat from the chaff, the actual news and opinions from the bullshit, will be a much more challenging task than it may appear from a surface-level glance. Certainly you can't just say all pro-China (or even pro-CCP) sentiments is propaganda; at least some, maybe most of these posts would be genuine beliefs being expressed by individuals (and yes, these people do exist). Some organizations and individuals are obviously part of the propaganda machine, see: Hu Xijin. But other parts of the social media ecosystem is less easily categorized. And the CCP can always start new accounts or find sympathetic westerners to post for them.
Of course, this isn't even considering the fact that labeling certain organizations as organs of state propaganda would likely start a rather unhealthy precedent, as groups across the political spectrum begin demanding other organizations and individuals be labeled as propaganda spreaders on various social media platforms. Just think about Donald Trump's and the White House's Twitter accounts; they sure aren't unbiased sources, and left-leaning social media users would surely demand these be labeled propaganda. I personally don't believe that labeling these accounts as CCP propaganda organs on any social media platforms will provide enough benefits to outweigh the costs and unintended consequences, especially since they're still not full-on banning these accounts. In any case, Zuckerberg and Dorsey should expect some rough times ahead.
2. I won't pretend to know more about tech and telecommunications than I do, which is not much on the technical side. Still, it appears that all headwinds are against Huawei now, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Their ambitions are certainly stymied, though I wouldn't go as far as to say that the company is doomed; they still have a huge domestic market for their products, so even in the worst-case scenario (for them) Huawei will still be around for a while longer.
I would like to put in my two cents in regards to Nokia and Ericsson though, which is that they are still quite a ways behind Huawei in terms of 5G technology and infrastructure, meaning they probably won't be taking Huawei's place for a few years at least. Rather than them fully taking the place of Huawei, it's more like 5G will be delayed for several years and then arrive balkanized across different countries.
Whether Huawei is hired or not to build the 5G infrastructure in a country depends on how much leading politicians value cost savings and effectiveness of the technology against the political backlash from constituents and the United States as well as the risk of espionage by China. For Five Eyes, Japan, South Korea, India, Taiwan, and a few others, this is obviously a no-go. Germany's having a harder time with this because they know full well where all their auto factories are located nowadays. Western EU nations certainly won't embrace Huawei, but there won't be such a dramatic opposition as we see in the States either. As for Eastern Europe, Central and South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, I suppose this is an open question. I'm not terribly sure how these regions will respond, trapped between political pressures and economic incentives.
3. The wording of the question is rather important here, I feel. Whether or not the June 4th Incident matters or not depends very much on whether you're talking about the world, Chinese people as a whole, Hong Kong, or mainland. For mainland PRC, I genuinely don't think it matters terribly much nowadays.
My father participated in the protests as a college student and political radical, but he left before the suppression and later went on to join MOFCOM. He nowadays takes a similar stance as Hu Xijin, being that the Massacre was a terrible tragedy but that the Party is neither evil nor fully unredeemable. It's a rather difficult sentiment to understand, I think, from an outside perspective.
The public conversation on the event outside the mainland is colored by the fact that the most vocal opponents of the CCP, the intellectuals and dissidents who faced the harshest crackdown, are not representative of the population of greater China. This is not to say that they aren't courageous or eloquent, or that their point isn't valid, simply that the event in the minds of the Chinese isn't as one-sided as most outsiders would assume.
The Chinese people aren't lotus-eaters, and they recognize the many faults of the CCP. Complaints about the Party for corruption, bureaucratic incompetence, pollution, and other miscellaneous complaints are common parlor room fodder. Most mainlanders would welcome reform to the Party and a greater say in the political system. But it would be inaccurate to assume that most mainlanders think like those famous intellectual dissidents living overseas, or like Hong Kong protesters. They're not waiting for the CCP to collapse, they're not all longing to be freed from tyranny, and they're certainly not hoping for the United States to come 'liberate' them. Rather, it's a balancing of costs and benefits, and for now at least the benefits considerably outweigh the costs of sticking with the Party. For most who remember the June 4th Incident, the costs clearly weren't great enough to abandon the Party, and the rest are either dead or in exile, so it doesn't seem that the event matters too much nowadays in the mainland.
Difficult challenge for Facebook for sure, and I applaud them doing something, but it shouldn't be Facebook alone facing down the CCP, we need a whole of society response in defense of liberal values.
Agree with all the Huawei analysis--frustrated with Europe's lack of gumption on this issue (though I sympathize with their loathing of Trump and astonishment that we could elect someone like that)--how will the chip ban affect them though? It sounds like the Chinese chips are a few years behind the cutting edge, so if Huawei's chips are a few years behind, and the West's other 5G tech is a few years behind, how does it all work out?
Amazing to hear the Tiananmen story, agree the event just seems irrelevant to mainland people these days. I wish it weren't so. It's easy to forget about horrible injustices (whether Tiananmen, the GLF, Cultural Revolution, concentration camps or whatever) when one is satisfied with one's own material situation--just look at the opposition to BLM and addressing the legacy of slavery in the United States.
What s Chinese policy on Sinocism and news letters of this kind? Bill, have u tried to distribute it on Chinese platforms? Sorry if this is common knowledge. Am ignorant of it.
have prc subscribers, payment can be an issue because i don't take wechat pay or alipay (working on it), also have occasional problems getting through email filters.
1. To whatever extent tiktok, weibo, wechat, and various other Chinese owned or operated social media platforms operate legally in the US, they should be forced to show disclaimers when you create accounts or access the websites that say something along the lines of "this platform is monitored by the Communist Party of China. Please be aware that you have no expectation of privacy or confidentiality when using this platform. For further information go to ......."
I'm not in favor of fully blocking these platforms for various reasons, but if we warn people what the dangers of smoking are on a pack of cigarettes we should be at least as honest about the dangers inherent here.
1. It doesn't go far enough. Access should be reciprocal anything less will not have any effect.
2. As a European, I'm not sure. I find there's been relatively little attention for it recently (at least in the Netherlands). I think most European countries have made their peace with it. Also nothing in most of the EU countries' actions towards China recently would suggest they might reconsider. They couldn't even put out a half-decent HK statement. I think they've decided that the investment deal is too important. We'll have to wait and see if they actually manage to get something out of that (unlikely, but one can hope).
3. I agree with what Krisztan Orban posted. Which, for now, makes it the rest of the world's responsibility to not let it fade into memory.
... therefore it may seem that 8964 does not matter, but in fact it matters a lot, as it presents a rallying point for everybody seeking an alternative to the regime. If it did not matter, the CCP would not try to suppress its memory so badly.
No.3. I am from Hungary. Our equivalent of 8964, the 1956 anti-communist uprising was seemingly forgotten by the late 80s. Young people did not even know what it was, and only the die-hard few dared to talk about it to their friends. The communist regime delivered the goodies (home, car, fridge) and in exchange, people were content with forgetting. Then in 1989/90, the communist regime fell and the floodgates of memory burst open. All of a sudden, everybody had a story, and these were retold over and over again. Today, 30 years after the collapse of communism, and 63 years after the uprising, 1956 is the one historic event that makes the whole country proud. When the CCP falls, as sooner or later every regime does, 8964 will become a powerful, unifying historical memory for China.
re: #3 - It matters little in the PRC. My undergrads knew little or nothing of it. A few were interested, and I gave them videos. Without media attention and inability to talk in public about 64, the event is about as meaningful to people in their thirties and early forties as Kent State is in the US for anyone today under 60. I have a somewhat cynical comment on how CCP can do away with 64 at http://chinareflections.com/index.php/104-comments-on-the-news/402-how-to-end-june-4-et-al
1. 1) The challenge with all communications platforms is to leave all responsibility for the content to Facebook, twitter etc. A rough comparison is if our traditional mail delivery companies should be responsible for what we write in the letters. The mailman have to open all letters to give his OK to deliver it in your mailbox. Of course is the content visible for the "mailman" in the technical platforms but who to write the rules for doing the censoring. Algorithms can sort out the worst but questionable messages are hidden in ordinary sentences. To censor the sender is also a very blunt action. The only way to handle the situation is for us to become better to evaluate the content and decide if it is "right or wrong" from my perspective. I am afraid that if so many of us need the technical platforms in our lives to express ourselves and see what others want to say to us and others, we have to live with this. If you believe in the theory of Platon, what comes after total democracy where everyone is allowed to say their meaning without being punished, is tyranny.
re: #1 - Are facebook and twitter available on the mainland? No. The answer doesn't need to be more complicated than that. But all American social media posts, including those from foreign sources, should have real name ID attached. Democracy is about standing up and being unafraid to say what you want to say. Otherwise, it is hiding behind a front, just as CCP and Russia do now.
sorry for long delay. Yes, real name recognition is Chinese policy now. A few years ago, I thought that would be wrong for American free speech, but now I see the damage done by bots from Russia and China and within the US and by people who would otherwise never want it known what they were saying. We are not anonymous when we march in a demonstration - there are videos everywhere. Tossing written matches in a tub of gasoline is not free speech, it is irresponsible and potentially dangerous. If you won't say it in public, why say it at all? Social media is not a bunch of your close friends in whom you can confide. It is absolutely public speech.
3. I think the significance of June 4,1989 today has less to do with the violence of that moment and more to do with the stratification of history and memory in the PRC.
I lived in NW Guizhou for the last two years, and for the first time that I spent any extended amount time in a Chinese no-one mentioned 8964 to me in private conversation. The missing day is real. With that being said, my friends, students, neighbors, etc. were all acutely sensitive to PRC's wealth stratification, power disparities, and general standard of life differences between the coasts and the interior.
I therefore think 8964 maintains a certain significance, as it highlights the stark fact that history and memory are reserved for a certain elite few in the modern PRC.
I'd expect one result of this to be the start of a "cat and mouse game" of new Facebook accounts and pages popping up out of nowhere and disappearing as soon as they are labelled as funded by State Media, only to be replaced by a new crop. Also, I've seen a situation where some pro-China Youtube channels run by "useful fool" Western expats appear to be indirectly funded by State media, by, for example, having the expat hired on the side by a provincial tourist bureau to do travel promotion videos. So, not funded directly by State Media, but its rather obvious there's no way they would have gotten that gig if they hadn't been churning out content parroting CCP propaganda.
1. China’s use of social media has been a total disaster. While it looks like tactical skill it is actually a strategic blunder. Wolf warrior responses have made the CCP the “enemy” of Australian democracy. An example, the Chinese Australian Ambassador responded to the idea that we suggested an independent COVID inquiry with “student won’t come, we won’t buy your commodities” with the global times in support... then the CCP acted upon the threat. The result Australian citizens have “turned” as they haves linked - reasonable request = rabid CCP response = unreasonable action.
Other cultures may respond differently but ours has seen the workers just assume the CCP are bad guys, then the farmers have just accepted they have to seek other markets. Some business leaders quoted the usual “don’t stir up the horses” 2 months ago. Now they are silent.
A question, not on Bill's list, I keep coming back to... Global Times is to China as <which media outlet> is to the US?
Obviously not expecting perfect comparisons and while gauging Chinese public opinion is a difficult question, always a question in my mind how mainstream the views expressed in GT are.
I think they are very mainstream. The CCP has built up a lot of political capital as a result of China’s rise and the lifting of 300 million people out of poverty. The masses are more than willing to let the CCP handle foreign affairs as long as the money keeps flowing. The Chinese are very proud of the gains they have made in the last 40 years. They view the 19th and early 20th centuries as disastrous for China because the central government was weak. They are content to trade civil liberties for a strong central government.
3. If the PLA gets deployed to maintain order in HK, I don't see how references to June 4 go away in global media which must influence at least some policymakers... sadly the younger generation on the mainland don't seem to be aware of the history of June 4, so perhaps not
How do you guys feel about the comment by Lighthizer on the Phase 1 trade deal? A sign that DT is overwhelmed by the protest and/or prepare to compromise on this front?
Facebook’s actions are a step in the right direction but further strong measures are required. You see how fast the PRC agreed to allow foreign airlines to resume flying to China once the US threatened to stop Chinese carriers flying to the USA. This should have been done months ago. 老共吃硬不吃軟。可惜，很多所為中國通的美國人還不懂。
I agree that it seems the party 吃硬不吃軟, but I worry this also helps them domestically because it plays into the narrative that "the Chinese people" are being bullied by foreign forces.
Bill talks about this a lot in the newsletter, there are no "reformers" who we would be "losing" by adopting more reciprocal policies. The CCP will find plenty of ways to whip up domestic hatred of some "other" regardless of what the West does.
The CCP has public opinion firmly in its iron grip (in many ways it is a reflection of public opinion) and I don’t think there is much we can do to change that. 還有，基本上老百性不是很關心政治。他們最關心的是安居樂業, 生活水準最重要. 因此，the ONLY way the CCP will come under criticism is if standards of living start to stagnate or even go down. And the only way I see this happening is if export markets are denied them. This means short term pain for the North American and European consumer.
1) This is certainly a reasonable move by Facebook. The key question is whether Facebook/Twitter should go further in reducing the ability of PRC propaganda accounts on their platform?
2) Yes--looks like most of 5 Eyes and Developed Europe will be looking to Nokia/Ericsson for a solution. I would be interested to see what larger nations like India/Brazil decide to do around their 5G infrastructure and Huawei.
2. Maybe, I'm not a tech person but I seem to feel the US is overestimating it's capacity here especially if Europe Japan isn't on the same page.
3.no, especially since it's increasingly difficult to convince neutral actor that the people who go those protest who them post obvious anti all Chinese stuff after is still sincer
And again my fav hobby horse: we need to respond to the lies spread on Chinese media outside of China. Putonghua online media, news and radio outside of China is full of CCP nonsense. This needs to be better monitored. We need to be able to insist that anti-Western fake news is taken down from WeChat, on request. Social media is media and should be licensed. Regulate Facebook and Twitter properly, and you can then solve the information asymmetry problem by also regulating WeChat.
Problem is then you have to take down anti-china fake news, of which there are plenty. Also most fake news these days are not fake as such, it s usually selective, misrepresentation of selected incidents. But once u go done that road.... Am just thinking aloud. No solution springs to mind. Although as someone else said earlier, real ID across the board might be the only fair answer. But then that is chicom policy in China! So we seem to go round and round in circles.
June 4th is still a very symbolic event in modern history of China. It still matters in my opinion even if younger generation seems unaware of the event due to the information blocked by the government.
1&3 are similar issues. There has to be a voice that can be communicated to ordinary Chinese people that gives an honest version of their history and of current affairs. We have a duty to provide an accurate view of works history in Chinese: no fluffing up, no need to make ourselves look good, critical of all where necessary. Truth bombs.
For #1 is this also revenge for China not allowing FB to operate in China? PRC is going to have trouble putting much pressure on US tech companies it doesn’t allow in China.
I wouldn't call it revenge necessarily, since they were blocked many years ago when relations were much more favorable and Zuckerberg personally went to ridiculous (some would say pathetic) lengths to regain access in subsequent years. Taking that history into account, latest moves by FB do seem to reflect that, like many companies, they are now being forced to balance their interests vis a vis China against their interests in their core market. This is what has been missing up til now, and it doesn't look like the balance has yet tipped in China's favor. At least for US companies....
If I were Zuck I'd be playing up my anti China credentials and make Apple and others with business in China squirm. It'd be a novelty for him to seem like the better company for a change.
For #2 I think Hauwei is a no go for the US balancing coalition with China: the 5 eyes, Japan, South Korea, and maybe India. Germany, France, etc. are probably in between. They are going to have substantial trade ties with China and won’t perceive China as a threat. Europe probably wants a world where China and the US compete.
Huawei's ambitions are certainly under threat. What that means for 5G developments is separate question and complicated. The Open Radio Access Network and "virtualized radio access" are important developments for which Huawei seems under-prepared. Rakuten, Mavenir, Dish and others are out front; Huawei, Nokia, Ericsson playing catch-up a bit. It is, of course, possible to go from world-beater to "legacy business" in a short time...
To your point, Huawei benefitted a lot from getting into the game late and jumping straight into tech that the rest of the world spent decades developing. 5g is the first thing they have really seeded on their own, but tech marches on.
Will this whole 5g effort be the equivalent of when every property in America in the mid 90s spent billions to wire cat5 hookups only to have wifi appear a few years later and make it all obsolete?
It could be, but more likely IMO is that Huawei and others build out hardware networks (towers etc.), as they have already done. They will make money. But the software that runs the systems will eventually be deployable across more than one hardware system, which is pretty much the premise of ORAN and VRAN. It might not be so easy to hold onto a vertical monopoly, even if a company thinks it has built one.
There's always a possibility 5G gets leap frogged somehow but I don't see anything on the immediate horizon that could replace it lock stock and barrel any time soon. Still I've made the point that the US got out of building networks because its a crappy business. Our ask is that we someone else besides China to invest their capital in this crappy business. Ericsson's return on equity is in the low single digits.
Is it usual to Hu and the Global Times to put out material presenting a revisionist viewpoint on Twitter? I'm new to this and was totally blindsided by that.
It’s important to understand that the Chinese view the last 150 years of Chinese Western relations as a terrible humiliation and loss of face. They will say and do whatever is required to gain the upper hand and, most importantly, keep treasure flowing from North America into China.
This from Brookings regarding future Chinese economic policies looks interesting' its due out in a couple of days:
"How will China reform its economy as it aspires to become the next economic superpower? It's clear that China is the world's next economic superpower. But what isn't so clear is how China will get there by the middle of this century. It now faces tremendous challenges such as fostering innovation, dealing with an aging population, and coping with a less accommodating global environment. Whether China succeeds or fails in economic reform will have a large impact, not just on the country’s development, but also on stability and prosperity for the whole world. In a new book — "China 2049 Economic Challenges of a Rising Global Power," edited by Brookings Senior Fellow David Dollar and Peking University economists Yiping Huang and Yang Yao — top Chinese and American scholars offer in-depth analyses on these challenges and provide a series of policy recommendations.
This is another ham-handed effort to deflect criticism from Facebook's contribution to social and political chaos in the United States. Even though known Chinese propaganda outlets will be identified it will do nothing to stop the scores or hundreds of clandestine operators who will continue to pursue their misinformation activities on behalf of China on Facebook.
Zuckerberg is trying to curry favor with the Administration as an anti-China ally while hoping to avoid the President's ire towards social media. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg maintains obscene profits from domestic political advertising that is also full of misinformation. What is the difference between Chinese, Russian, Iranian or American misinformation?
1. It would probably be difficult to draw the line between propaganda and simply jingoistic sentiments. In this day and age of fake news, half-truths, and conspiracy theories the liminal spaces between objective reality, personal opinion, state sponsorship, and pure fabrications are more indistinct and uncertain than ever before. Perhaps this is well illustrated in the Chinese term for 'propaganda', 宣传, which transliterated literally means 'propaganda' but in usage reflects a wide range of activities, from 'publicity' to 'information dissemination' to flat-out 'propaganda'. I believe that Hu Xijin once said the role of the news media is to simultaneously deliver accurate news and to align the people's opinions with the state and party. Certainly, most western observers would put this under the catch-all term 'propaganda', but I do think there is a degree of subtlety lost in translation.
None of this is to say that the CCP's efforts to bend public perception is laudable or even acceptable; it's simply to say that separating the wheat from the chaff, the actual news and opinions from the bullshit, will be a much more challenging task than it may appear from a surface-level glance. Certainly you can't just say all pro-China (or even pro-CCP) sentiments is propaganda; at least some, maybe most of these posts would be genuine beliefs being expressed by individuals (and yes, these people do exist). Some organizations and individuals are obviously part of the propaganda machine, see: Hu Xijin. But other parts of the social media ecosystem is less easily categorized. And the CCP can always start new accounts or find sympathetic westerners to post for them.
Of course, this isn't even considering the fact that labeling certain organizations as organs of state propaganda would likely start a rather unhealthy precedent, as groups across the political spectrum begin demanding other organizations and individuals be labeled as propaganda spreaders on various social media platforms. Just think about Donald Trump's and the White House's Twitter accounts; they sure aren't unbiased sources, and left-leaning social media users would surely demand these be labeled propaganda. I personally don't believe that labeling these accounts as CCP propaganda organs on any social media platforms will provide enough benefits to outweigh the costs and unintended consequences, especially since they're still not full-on banning these accounts. In any case, Zuckerberg and Dorsey should expect some rough times ahead.
2. I won't pretend to know more about tech and telecommunications than I do, which is not much on the technical side. Still, it appears that all headwinds are against Huawei now, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Their ambitions are certainly stymied, though I wouldn't go as far as to say that the company is doomed; they still have a huge domestic market for their products, so even in the worst-case scenario (for them) Huawei will still be around for a while longer.
I would like to put in my two cents in regards to Nokia and Ericsson though, which is that they are still quite a ways behind Huawei in terms of 5G technology and infrastructure, meaning they probably won't be taking Huawei's place for a few years at least. Rather than them fully taking the place of Huawei, it's more like 5G will be delayed for several years and then arrive balkanized across different countries.
Whether Huawei is hired or not to build the 5G infrastructure in a country depends on how much leading politicians value cost savings and effectiveness of the technology against the political backlash from constituents and the United States as well as the risk of espionage by China. For Five Eyes, Japan, South Korea, India, Taiwan, and a few others, this is obviously a no-go. Germany's having a harder time with this because they know full well where all their auto factories are located nowadays. Western EU nations certainly won't embrace Huawei, but there won't be such a dramatic opposition as we see in the States either. As for Eastern Europe, Central and South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, I suppose this is an open question. I'm not terribly sure how these regions will respond, trapped between political pressures and economic incentives.
3. The wording of the question is rather important here, I feel. Whether or not the June 4th Incident matters or not depends very much on whether you're talking about the world, Chinese people as a whole, Hong Kong, or mainland. For mainland PRC, I genuinely don't think it matters terribly much nowadays.
My father participated in the protests as a college student and political radical, but he left before the suppression and later went on to join MOFCOM. He nowadays takes a similar stance as Hu Xijin, being that the Massacre was a terrible tragedy but that the Party is neither evil nor fully unredeemable. It's a rather difficult sentiment to understand, I think, from an outside perspective.
The public conversation on the event outside the mainland is colored by the fact that the most vocal opponents of the CCP, the intellectuals and dissidents who faced the harshest crackdown, are not representative of the population of greater China. This is not to say that they aren't courageous or eloquent, or that their point isn't valid, simply that the event in the minds of the Chinese isn't as one-sided as most outsiders would assume.
The Chinese people aren't lotus-eaters, and they recognize the many faults of the CCP. Complaints about the Party for corruption, bureaucratic incompetence, pollution, and other miscellaneous complaints are common parlor room fodder. Most mainlanders would welcome reform to the Party and a greater say in the political system. But it would be inaccurate to assume that most mainlanders think like those famous intellectual dissidents living overseas, or like Hong Kong protesters. They're not waiting for the CCP to collapse, they're not all longing to be freed from tyranny, and they're certainly not hoping for the United States to come 'liberate' them. Rather, it's a balancing of costs and benefits, and for now at least the benefits considerably outweigh the costs of sticking with the Party. For most who remember the June 4th Incident, the costs clearly weren't great enough to abandon the Party, and the rest are either dead or in exile, so it doesn't seem that the event matters too much nowadays in the mainland.
Thanks for the great insights on 3)
Really enjoyed the comment Michael, thanks.
Difficult challenge for Facebook for sure, and I applaud them doing something, but it shouldn't be Facebook alone facing down the CCP, we need a whole of society response in defense of liberal values.
Agree with all the Huawei analysis--frustrated with Europe's lack of gumption on this issue (though I sympathize with their loathing of Trump and astonishment that we could elect someone like that)--how will the chip ban affect them though? It sounds like the Chinese chips are a few years behind the cutting edge, so if Huawei's chips are a few years behind, and the West's other 5G tech is a few years behind, how does it all work out?
Amazing to hear the Tiananmen story, agree the event just seems irrelevant to mainland people these days. I wish it weren't so. It's easy to forget about horrible injustices (whether Tiananmen, the GLF, Cultural Revolution, concentration camps or whatever) when one is satisfied with one's own material situation--just look at the opposition to BLM and addressing the legacy of slavery in the United States.
Not just German car factories but also their customers; it's astonishing how many VWs you see.
It doesn't seem that Hu thinks 8964 was a terrible tragedy, more like a legitimate 'policing' action with limited regretable outcomes.
Thanks for your thoughts.
Thanks for this thoughtful response, you read 3. the way I meant it, and your view accords quite closely with my mine
What s Chinese policy on Sinocism and news letters of this kind? Bill, have u tried to distribute it on Chinese platforms? Sorry if this is common knowledge. Am ignorant of it.
have prc subscribers, payment can be an issue because i don't take wechat pay or alipay (working on it), also have occasional problems getting through email filters.
I see. Yes u absolutely should. I hope it works out.
1. To whatever extent tiktok, weibo, wechat, and various other Chinese owned or operated social media platforms operate legally in the US, they should be forced to show disclaimers when you create accounts or access the websites that say something along the lines of "this platform is monitored by the Communist Party of China. Please be aware that you have no expectation of privacy or confidentiality when using this platform. For further information go to ......."
I'm not in favor of fully blocking these platforms for various reasons, but if we warn people what the dangers of smoking are on a pack of cigarettes we should be at least as honest about the dangers inherent here.
1. It doesn't go far enough. Access should be reciprocal anything less will not have any effect.
2. As a European, I'm not sure. I find there's been relatively little attention for it recently (at least in the Netherlands). I think most European countries have made their peace with it. Also nothing in most of the EU countries' actions towards China recently would suggest they might reconsider. They couldn't even put out a half-decent HK statement. I think they've decided that the investment deal is too important. We'll have to wait and see if they actually manage to get something out of that (unlikely, but one can hope).
3. I agree with what Krisztan Orban posted. Which, for now, makes it the rest of the world's responsibility to not let it fade into memory.
Reciprocity accross the board will rebalance relationships.
... therefore it may seem that 8964 does not matter, but in fact it matters a lot, as it presents a rallying point for everybody seeking an alternative to the regime. If it did not matter, the CCP would not try to suppress its memory so badly.
No.3. I am from Hungary. Our equivalent of 8964, the 1956 anti-communist uprising was seemingly forgotten by the late 80s. Young people did not even know what it was, and only the die-hard few dared to talk about it to their friends. The communist regime delivered the goodies (home, car, fridge) and in exchange, people were content with forgetting. Then in 1989/90, the communist regime fell and the floodgates of memory burst open. All of a sudden, everybody had a story, and these were retold over and over again. Today, 30 years after the collapse of communism, and 63 years after the uprising, 1956 is the one historic event that makes the whole country proud. When the CCP falls, as sooner or later every regime does, 8964 will become a powerful, unifying historical memory for China.
re: #3 - It matters little in the PRC. My undergrads knew little or nothing of it. A few were interested, and I gave them videos. Without media attention and inability to talk in public about 64, the event is about as meaningful to people in their thirties and early forties as Kent State is in the US for anyone today under 60. I have a somewhat cynical comment on how CCP can do away with 64 at http://chinareflections.com/index.php/104-comments-on-the-news/402-how-to-end-june-4-et-al
1. 1) The challenge with all communications platforms is to leave all responsibility for the content to Facebook, twitter etc. A rough comparison is if our traditional mail delivery companies should be responsible for what we write in the letters. The mailman have to open all letters to give his OK to deliver it in your mailbox. Of course is the content visible for the "mailman" in the technical platforms but who to write the rules for doing the censoring. Algorithms can sort out the worst but questionable messages are hidden in ordinary sentences. To censor the sender is also a very blunt action. The only way to handle the situation is for us to become better to evaluate the content and decide if it is "right or wrong" from my perspective. I am afraid that if so many of us need the technical platforms in our lives to express ourselves and see what others want to say to us and others, we have to live with this. If you believe in the theory of Platon, what comes after total democracy where everyone is allowed to say their meaning without being punished, is tyranny.
re: #1 - Are facebook and twitter available on the mainland? No. The answer doesn't need to be more complicated than that. But all American social media posts, including those from foreign sources, should have real name ID attached. Democracy is about standing up and being unafraid to say what you want to say. Otherwise, it is hiding behind a front, just as CCP and Russia do now.
Yes I see what u r getting at. But isn't that chicom policy?
sorry for long delay. Yes, real name recognition is Chinese policy now. A few years ago, I thought that would be wrong for American free speech, but now I see the damage done by bots from Russia and China and within the US and by people who would otherwise never want it known what they were saying. We are not anonymous when we march in a demonstration - there are videos everywhere. Tossing written matches in a tub of gasoline is not free speech, it is irresponsible and potentially dangerous. If you won't say it in public, why say it at all? Social media is not a bunch of your close friends in whom you can confide. It is absolutely public speech.
3. I think the significance of June 4,1989 today has less to do with the violence of that moment and more to do with the stratification of history and memory in the PRC.
I lived in NW Guizhou for the last two years, and for the first time that I spent any extended amount time in a Chinese no-one mentioned 8964 to me in private conversation. The missing day is real. With that being said, my friends, students, neighbors, etc. were all acutely sensitive to PRC's wealth stratification, power disparities, and general standard of life differences between the coasts and the interior.
I therefore think 8964 maintains a certain significance, as it highlights the stark fact that history and memory are reserved for a certain elite few in the modern PRC.
I'd expect one result of this to be the start of a "cat and mouse game" of new Facebook accounts and pages popping up out of nowhere and disappearing as soon as they are labelled as funded by State Media, only to be replaced by a new crop. Also, I've seen a situation where some pro-China Youtube channels run by "useful fool" Western expats appear to be indirectly funded by State media, by, for example, having the expat hired on the side by a provincial tourist bureau to do travel promotion videos. So, not funded directly by State Media, but its rather obvious there's no way they would have gotten that gig if they hadn't been churning out content parroting CCP propaganda.
1. China’s use of social media has been a total disaster. While it looks like tactical skill it is actually a strategic blunder. Wolf warrior responses have made the CCP the “enemy” of Australian democracy. An example, the Chinese Australian Ambassador responded to the idea that we suggested an independent COVID inquiry with “student won’t come, we won’t buy your commodities” with the global times in support... then the CCP acted upon the threat. The result Australian citizens have “turned” as they haves linked - reasonable request = rabid CCP response = unreasonable action.
Other cultures may respond differently but ours has seen the workers just assume the CCP are bad guys, then the farmers have just accepted they have to seek other markets. Some business leaders quoted the usual “don’t stir up the horses” 2 months ago. Now they are silent.
A question, not on Bill's list, I keep coming back to... Global Times is to China as <which media outlet> is to the US?
Obviously not expecting perfect comparisons and while gauging Chinese public opinion is a difficult question, always a question in my mind how mainstream the views expressed in GT are.
I think they are very mainstream. The CCP has built up a lot of political capital as a result of China’s rise and the lifting of 300 million people out of poverty. The masses are more than willing to let the CCP handle foreign affairs as long as the money keeps flowing. The Chinese are very proud of the gains they have made in the last 40 years. They view the 19th and early 20th centuries as disastrous for China because the central government was weak. They are content to trade civil liberties for a strong central government.
3. If the PLA gets deployed to maintain order in HK, I don't see how references to June 4 go away in global media which must influence at least some policymakers... sadly the younger generation on the mainland don't seem to be aware of the history of June 4, so perhaps not
How do you guys feel about the comment by Lighthizer on the Phase 1 trade deal? A sign that DT is overwhelmed by the protest and/or prepare to compromise on this front?
Facebook’s actions are a step in the right direction but further strong measures are required. You see how fast the PRC agreed to allow foreign airlines to resume flying to China once the US threatened to stop Chinese carriers flying to the USA. This should have been done months ago. 老共吃硬不吃軟。可惜，很多所為中國通的美國人還不懂。
他们不是我不懂， 故意不理，利益冲突。
I agree that it seems the party 吃硬不吃軟, but I worry this also helps them domestically because it plays into the narrative that "the Chinese people" are being bullied by foreign forces.
Bill talks about this a lot in the newsletter, there are no "reformers" who we would be "losing" by adopting more reciprocal policies. The CCP will find plenty of ways to whip up domestic hatred of some "other" regardless of what the West does.
The CCP has public opinion firmly in its iron grip (in many ways it is a reflection of public opinion) and I don’t think there is much we can do to change that. 還有，基本上老百性不是很關心政治。他們最關心的是安居樂業, 生活水準最重要. 因此，the ONLY way the CCP will come under criticism is if standards of living start to stagnate or even go down. And the only way I see this happening is if export markets are denied them. This means short term pain for the North American and European consumer.
1) This is certainly a reasonable move by Facebook. The key question is whether Facebook/Twitter should go further in reducing the ability of PRC propaganda accounts on their platform?
2) Yes--looks like most of 5 Eyes and Developed Europe will be looking to Nokia/Ericsson for a solution. I would be interested to see what larger nations like India/Brazil decide to do around their 5G infrastructure and Huawei.
3) Sadly less and less.
1. Yes and all should apply
2. Maybe, I'm not a tech person but I seem to feel the US is overestimating it's capacity here especially if Europe Japan isn't on the same page.
3.no, especially since it's increasingly difficult to convince neutral actor that the people who go those protest who them post obvious anti all Chinese stuff after is still sincer
It is very reasonable to label the official CCP propaganda accounts.
And again my fav hobby horse: we need to respond to the lies spread on Chinese media outside of China. Putonghua online media, news and radio outside of China is full of CCP nonsense. This needs to be better monitored. We need to be able to insist that anti-Western fake news is taken down from WeChat, on request. Social media is media and should be licensed. Regulate Facebook and Twitter properly, and you can then solve the information asymmetry problem by also regulating WeChat.
Problem is then you have to take down anti-china fake news, of which there are plenty. Also most fake news these days are not fake as such, it s usually selective, misrepresentation of selected incidents. But once u go done that road.... Am just thinking aloud. No solution springs to mind. Although as someone else said earlier, real ID across the board might be the only fair answer. But then that is chicom policy in China! So we seem to go round and round in circles.
On #2, Huawei: I believe the threat to the company depends on how all these adverse actions will impact Huawei's innovation ability.
June 4th is still a very symbolic event in modern history of China. It still matters in my opinion even if younger generation seems unaware of the event due to the information blocked by the government.
#1 why not the same policy by fb for all of the 5 eyes?
#2 - yes, and the CCp are not sure how to react to this in light of recent developments
#3 - in prc is an open question. To overseas Chinese people - it appears that yes it does matter
1&3 are similar issues. There has to be a voice that can be communicated to ordinary Chinese people that gives an honest version of their history and of current affairs. We have a duty to provide an accurate view of works history in Chinese: no fluffing up, no need to make ourselves look good, critical of all where necessary. Truth bombs.
For #1 is this also revenge for China not allowing FB to operate in China? PRC is going to have trouble putting much pressure on US tech companies it doesn’t allow in China.
I wouldn't call it revenge necessarily, since they were blocked many years ago when relations were much more favorable and Zuckerberg personally went to ridiculous (some would say pathetic) lengths to regain access in subsequent years. Taking that history into account, latest moves by FB do seem to reflect that, like many companies, they are now being forced to balance their interests vis a vis China against their interests in their core market. This is what has been missing up til now, and it doesn't look like the balance has yet tipped in China's favor. At least for US companies....
If I were Zuck I'd be playing up my anti China credentials and make Apple and others with business in China squirm. It'd be a novelty for him to seem like the better company for a change.
For #2 I think Hauwei is a no go for the US balancing coalition with China: the 5 eyes, Japan, South Korea, and maybe India. Germany, France, etc. are probably in between. They are going to have substantial trade ties with China and won’t perceive China as a threat. Europe probably wants a world where China and the US compete.
Huawei's ambitions are certainly under threat. What that means for 5G developments is separate question and complicated. The Open Radio Access Network and "virtualized radio access" are important developments for which Huawei seems under-prepared. Rakuten, Mavenir, Dish and others are out front; Huawei, Nokia, Ericsson playing catch-up a bit. It is, of course, possible to go from world-beater to "legacy business" in a short time...
To your point, Huawei benefitted a lot from getting into the game late and jumping straight into tech that the rest of the world spent decades developing. 5g is the first thing they have really seeded on their own, but tech marches on.
Will this whole 5g effort be the equivalent of when every property in America in the mid 90s spent billions to wire cat5 hookups only to have wifi appear a few years later and make it all obsolete?
It could be, but more likely IMO is that Huawei and others build out hardware networks (towers etc.), as they have already done. They will make money. But the software that runs the systems will eventually be deployable across more than one hardware system, which is pretty much the premise of ORAN and VRAN. It might not be so easy to hold onto a vertical monopoly, even if a company thinks it has built one.
There's always a possibility 5G gets leap frogged somehow but I don't see anything on the immediate horizon that could replace it lock stock and barrel any time soon. Still I've made the point that the US got out of building networks because its a crappy business. Our ask is that we someone else besides China to invest their capital in this crappy business. Ericsson's return on equity is in the low single digits.
In short, revive Worldcom!
With respect to 3. I want to ask:
Is it usual to Hu and the Global Times to put out material presenting a revisionist viewpoint on Twitter? I'm new to this and was totally blindsided by that.
It’s important to understand that the Chinese view the last 150 years of Chinese Western relations as a terrible humiliation and loss of face. They will say and do whatever is required to gain the upper hand and, most importantly, keep treasure flowing from North America into China.
That wasn't quite what I was getting at. Being 'semi-official' party mouthpieces I really wasn't expecting them to mention it at all.