China

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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Tue Oct 06, 2020 1:21 pm

Roland Boers seems to have been on hiatus over the summer but has recently posted links to a number of essays/book chapters of great interest. I will provide links here on a weekly basis, so as not to be overwhelmed.

‘Discovering Chinese Socialism: A Personal Account’ (2017)
https://stalinsmoustache.files.wordpres ... ialism.pdf
Here, some of the most common misconceptions are addressed.

The whole shebang can be found through his home page
https://stalinsmoustache.org/chinese-marxism/

It is virtually impossible not to be affected by the 'infantile disorder' as a Western Marxist at some point in one's education, these essays go a good ways in refuting all of that destructive nonsense.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Mon Oct 12, 2020 2:33 pm

A Dialectical Leap?(2018)
https://stalinsmoustache.files.wordpres ... l-leap.pdf
short & sweet

Chinese Trust in Government(2019)
https://stalinsmoustache.files.wordpres ... rnment.pdf
Boy, ain't that relevant today?
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Wed Oct 28, 2020 4:59 pm

Image

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Chinese mainland reports 20 new imported COVID-19 cases
Xinhua | Updated: 2020-10-28 10:13
BEIJING -- The Chinese mainland reported 20 new imported COVID-19 cases Tuesday, bringing the total number of imported cases to 3,284, the National Health Commission said Wednesday.

Of the new imported cases, seven were reported in Shanghai, six in Shaanxi, two in Guangdong, and one each in Tianjin, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Henan and Sichuan, the commission said in its daily report.

Among all the imported cases, 3,017 had been discharged from hospitals after recovery while 267 remained hospitalized, the commission said.

No deaths had been reported from the imported cases.

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202010/ ... 8176a.html

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Xinjiang reports 22 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, 19 asymptomatic ones
Xinhua | Updated: 2020-10-28 10:29
URUMQI -- Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region reported 22 new confirmed COVID-19 cases and 19 asymptomatic ones on Tuesday, the regional health commission said Wednesday.

All the cases were reported in Shufu County of south Xinjiang's Kashgar Prefecture.

Xinjiang had a total of 22 existing confirmed cases and 161 asymptomatic ones as of Tuesday, all in Shufu County.

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202010/ ... 81796.html

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Imported cold food likely culprit in Beijing cluster
By DU JUAN | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2020-10-28 13:36

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Frozen seafood products made of imported shrimps are seen inside a sealed freezer at a supermarket in Beijing, on June 19, 2020. [File photo/Agencies]
Cold-chain food contamination is a likely cause of the recent COVID-19 resurgence in Beijing, according to a research paper by medical authorities and universities published in the National Science Review last week.

The paper said Beijing's June cluster of novel coronavirus infections probably originated in high-risk overseas areas. It added that cold-chain transportation could become the new route of transmission.

On June 11, a patient was found to be associated with the Xinfadi wholesale market, which sells fruit, meat and vegetables in Beijing. That case broke the city's 56-day string with no new confirmed local cases.

The authorities immediately launched a major round of coronavirus tests for people who had been to the market, as well as for food items sold there

Up to five salmon samples tested positive, including one sample whose unopened packaging was contaminated.

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202010/ ... 819a9.html

Hmm, wonder where them salmon come from?
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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Thu Nov 05, 2020 2:33 pm

Beijing just yanked Ant Group's IPO to show Jack Ma who's really in charge

Hong Kong (CNN Business)Beijing just showed tech titan Jack Ma and the rest of China's billionaire tycoons who's really in charge.

Chinese regulators stunned financial markets on Tuesday when they slammed the brakes on Ant Group's highly anticipated initial public offering just days before its shares were scheduled to start trading in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Ma's financial tech firm was set to raise $37 billion and become the biggest share sale in history.
The Shanghai Stock Exchange said in a late night statement that it had postponed the Ant Group IPO because of "major issues" that might cause the company "not to meet the listing conditions or disclosure requirements." That came after the Chinese central bank and other Chinese government officials called in Ma and Ant Group executives for talks Monday.
The Shanghai bourse is "fulfilling its responsibility of self regulation," Wang Wenbin, spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told reporters on Wednesday. "It is a decision made to better safeguard the capital market stability and protect investors' rights and interests."

It's not yet clear if or when the IPO will resume. Ant Group said in a statement that it would stay in "close communications" with regulators and the Shanghai exchange.
But the unprecedented intervention serves as a cautionary tale for Chinese entrepreneurs with lofty ambitions, even Communist Party members such as Ma. It also means that even if Ant satisfies new regulatory requirements, its massive business will only move forward under the watchful eye of China's strict regulators.

'The tallest nail gets hammered down'

Investors are already wary about what it could mean. Shares in Alibaba (BABA), the e-commerce giant that Ma co-founded, plunged 8% in New York on Tuesday.

The plunge wiped more than $68 billion off Alibaba's market value, based on the value of shares in New York.

"There's a saying in China: 'The tallest nail gets hammered down,'" said Duncan Clark, author of "Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma Built" and founder of investment advisory firm BDA China. And it would seem Ma just got hammered by the Chinese government, he said.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange's announcement comes just over a week after Ma said avoiding systemic risk is important, but publicly criticized Chinese regulators for stifling innovation by being too risk averse.

"What we need is to build a healthy financial system, not systematic financial risks," the Ant Group co-founder said at a conference in Shanghai. "To innovate without risks is to kill innovation. There's no innovation without risks in the world."
On Monday, Chinese regulators summoned Ma and other Ant executives to conduct what authorities called "regulatory interviews." Ant Group said that the two sides exchanged "views regarding the health and stability of the financial sector."
Ma's comments "clearly didn't resonate in the halls of power in Beijing," wrote Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst for Asia Pacific at Oanda, in a note on Wednesday. "There's only one big boss in China, and it's not Jack Ma."
For the last few years, entrepreneurs like Ma were valued for helping China and the Chinese Communist Party achieve their greater goals by stimulating consumption and driving efficiency, according to Clark.
But lately, Chinese President Xi Jinping and the party has made it clear that private companies are on a tighter leash. In September, the party published an unusually frank set of guidelines that emphasized the need for "politically sensible people" in the private sector who will "firmly listen to the party and follow the party."

With the Ant announcement,"it seems that Xi's emphasis on state-owned enterprises isn't just talk," Clark said.
"The regulator is keen to reassert itself," he added.
Ant, an affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba, has inserted itself into every aspect of financial life for hundreds of millions of Chinese. It offers an array of products, such as digital payments through its popular app Alipay, instant credit and small loans, wealth management products and insurance products.

China's financial technology industry has "outpaced the ability of the regulators in being able to provide guidelines especially in the online co-lending business and pure loan facilitation," Jefferies analysts wrote in a Wednesday research note.
But it now looks like Beijing is taking steps to correct that.
What remains unclear is whether Beijing is trying to tilt the balance of power back to state-owned banks, or if regulators are genuinely concerned and uncomfortable about Ant's lending practices, Clark said.
Rise of the Chinese regulator
One issue "is exactly which regulator, if any, has oversight" on Ant and other Chinese financial tech companies, according to the analysts at Jefferies.
China's Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission — one of the regulators that summoned Ma and his team — proposed new rules on Monday for online lenders. The rules mean that Ant would have to set aside more cash for the loans it facilitates and would place more credit risk on its balance sheet, according to several analysts.
China's state-run media on Wednesday pointed to the tougher regulatory stance as a sign that authorities want to keep the country's largest tech companies in check.
"Financial Big Techs — increasingly seen as rivals to traditional banks — will inevitably be subject to more supervising curbs," reported state-run tabloid The Global Times reported, citing experts.
State-run news agency Xinhua was definitive in its assessment: "Each participant in the market must respect the rules, and no one can make exceptions."

Clark, of BDA China, said that Ant may have also been "a victim of its own success."

The IPO would have valued the company at more than $310 billion, more than major US investment banks such as Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS). And there was huge demand for shares in Shanghai and Hong Kong, with the Shanghai leg of the IPO more than 870 times oversubscribed.

That likely made Chinese regulators nervous, according to Clark.
"Once this company was public, would they be able to control it, and the lending that it would be making?" he said.
Will Ant's IPO eventually get the green light?
It is "unfortunate timing" that Ant got caught up in China's regulatory changes, said Hao Hong, managing director and head of research at investment bank Bocom International. But he still expected Ant to revive its plans to go public.
"Ant will need to regroup and [retry] the IPO in about six months," Hong said. "In the end, the IPO will go through."
David Erickson, finance lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Business School and former co-head of global equity capital markets at Barclays, agreed.
"There will likely be some resolution that involves an amended filing that ultimately leads to an IPO," he predicted.

https://us.cnn.com/2020/11/04/tech/ant- ... index.html

bolding added

"Nails"; I think every civilization has had a similar saying. But nice try, you racist swine.

The whole tone of this piece from CNN Business wreaks of disapproval, bwahaha.

Tail, meet dog. But try telling that to the trots & manhattan Maoists wed to their petty booj idealism.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Thu Nov 19, 2020 1:32 pm

China Is More Democratic Than America, Say the People

Overall, 78% of people believe that democracy is important; around the world, that number ranges from 92% in Greece (the “cradle of democracy”) to 50% in Iran (a “theocratic republic,” according to the Central Intelligence Agency).


However, even 40% of those living in bona fide democracies (those countries classified as “free” by Freedom House) believe that their country is not, in fact, democratic.

Charted below are the survey results from 20 countries, and they illustrate some startling beliefs — not least that 73% of Chinese consider China to be democratic, whereas only 49% of Americans believe the same about the U.S.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... t-disagree
See chart at link, italics added.

meanwhile....
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So what to do about this embarrassing deficit? More democracy? Nope, more propaganda(tasks 7-10). Because any semblance of functional democracy in the USA is restricted to the oligarchy, even as it was in the beginning. Everything else is manipulated thru multiple avenues, from the structure of government to the entertainment provided by the ruling class. And nowadays ya even gotta pay for your bread&circuses and your mental blinkers. Kinda like the injustice system where ya gotta pay for your ankle bracelet and probation officer. Whadda racket! Capitalist efficiency!

The Chinese deficiencies listed on that paper are pretty hysterical. 'Economic instability'? Must have been written prior to the past six months, in the face of covid China rebounds with gusto while the US founders in death and the difference is the CCP.

They claim the communists have contempt for human life. We look at the comparative death stats from covid and wonder how they think they can get away with such an easily demonstrable lie. Meanwhile nations around the globe solicit help from communist China and Cuba as do some US cities.

That the US capitalists dare to fault anyone for environmental degradation is the very height of hypocrisy. Hey Joe, how bout that fracking? Even as China leads in sustainable technology today.

The Chinese outplay the US in international relations because they are honest and reasonable unlike the US which can only be trusted to interfere in your internal politics at the first opportunity. They wield their capitalist sector as a tool for the greater good (even as it serves as a shield against the capitalist West too) under the direction of the CCP while anarchic Western capitalism lays waste nations and the very environment which sustains us.

I know which side I'm on.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Mon Nov 30, 2020 2:46 pm

200 candles for Engels, a man who helped shape history
China Daily Global | Updated: 2020-11-30 09:57


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The launch event in Beijing on Saturday for commemorative stamps marking the 200th anniversary of Friedrich Engels' birth anniversary. Celebrations were also held across Europe. [LU PENG/XINHUA]

LONDON/BERLIN-Despite the raging coronavirus pandemic, Friedrich Engels' 200th birth anniversary, which fell on Saturday, was celebrated mostly online in various countries in Europe.

In the western German town of Wuppertal, Engels' birthplace, a community festival as well as concerts, exhibitions, tours and discussions were planned in what was known as "The Year of Engels."

Due to the extended restrictive measures amid a surge in COVID-19 cases, most public events commemorating his birth were moved online.

Wuppertal's central library launched an exhibition named "Mensch Engels" (Human Engels) on its main webpage, displaying Engels' personality and his achievements.

The online exhibition showcased the legacies of Engels, including pictures, sketches and manuscripts to commemorate the great thinker.

A new documentary Friedrich Engels-The Underestimated has been aired on local television a week before Engels' birthday.

The film referred to Engels and Karl Marx as "one of the most famous duos in world history," focusing on their lives and their efforts to develop Marxist theories.

A series of themed readings, lectures and discussions are planned in the coming weeks, probably being shown online depending on the pandemic situation.

Lars Bluma, a scholar at the Historic Center of Wuppertal, said the city had labeled 2020 as "the Year of Engels," and planned over 100 activities. Posters featuring a young spirited Engels, renowned as "a thinker, a doer and a Wuppertaler," are seen across the city.

'Beyond its time'

Calling Engels "the most famous son of the city," Bluma said Engels is still remembered because his thoughts are "beyond its time".

"We do not see him as a historical person that after his death we have nothing to talk about. Actually there are lots of ideas and thoughts that we should grasp even though we are in the 21st century," said Bluma.

In Manchester, Britain, an online event organized by the Chinese Consulate General in Manchester was held on Thursday to mark Engels'200th birthday.

The event saw a reproduction of the scene on Engels' 70th birthday, including performances of a piece of Beethoven's music, a segment of the opera La Dame aux Camelias and recitation of a poem by Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.

It also included a playback of the recent unveiling of the "Friedrich Engels Room" in Chetham's School of Music in Manchester and the premiere of a documentary about Engels' life in Manchester.

During the online event attended by more than 300 people, representatives from the Chinese consulate general and Chinese businesses and students in Britain were seen laying wreaths in front of the Engels statue in Manchester.

Richard Leese, deputy mayor of Manchester, said Engels' research in Manchester on social issues laid a solid foundation for the publication of The Communist Manifesto in late February 1848.

On the occasion of his 200th birth anniversary, Leese said Manchester is ready to advance its cooperation with China in a bid to pursue an inclusive and sustainable recovery from the pandemic.

Earlier last week, to commemorate Engels' birth, China's National Academy of Governance and Manchester City Council held an online seminar about industrial restructuring and economic recovery of cities.

Representatives from both sides discussed such issues as industrial restructuring, innovation and sustainable development.

In the autumn of 1842, Engels moved to Manchester, which was then known as "Cottonopolis" and started working for his family's textile business. In Engels' "second hometown", Engels and Marx started to develop groundbreaking theories that changed the course of history.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20201 ... 984ce.html

Oh no, these people ain't communists. The infantile left told me so.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Thu Dec 17, 2020 2:51 pm

China's Probe Change-5 Reaches Earth With New Lunar Samples

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Scientists and technicians at the Change-5 landing site, China, Dec 17, 2020. | Photo: Twitter/ @otinfo

Published 17 December 2020

It drilled into the lunar surface for samples that record evolutionary events and grabbed material on the surface.


China's Change-5 probe touched down on Earth in the early hours of Thursday, bringing back the world's freshest lunar samples in over 40 years.

It marks a conclusion of China's current three-step lunar exploration program of orbiting and landing and bringing back samples, which began in 2004.

The capsule will be airlifted to Beijing for opening, and the moon samples will be delivered to the research team for analysis and study, said the China National Space Administration (CNSA).

“China will make some samples available to scientists in other countries,” said Pei Zhaoyu, deputy director of the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center.

Change-5 was launched on Nov. 24, and its lander-ascender combination touched down on the north of the Mons Rumker in the Ocean of Storms on the near side of the moon on Dec. 1.

This site was chosen because it had a younger geological age than the sampling areas of the United States and the Soviet Union over 40 years ago, and had never been sampled.


Though lunar samples were brought back in U.S. and Soviet missions, scientists need more samples of different ages to piece together a complete history of the moon.

Change-5 drilled into the lunar surface for samples that record evolutionary events and grabbed material on the surface. Using modern analytical technologies, scientists will unravel the mysteries of volcanic activities and meteorite impacts over the past billion years.

The Change-5 mission has accomplished several firsts for China, including the first moon sampling, the first liftoff from an extraterrestrial body, the first rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit, and the first spacecraft carrying samples to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere at high speed.

China is drawing up plans for future lunar exploration, including constructing a basic version of a scientific research station.

"We hope to cooperate with other countries to build the international lunar scientific research station, which could provide a shared platform for lunar scientific exploration and technological experiments," Pei said.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Chi ... -0001.html

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China Completes Spacecraft Rendezvous, Docking in Lunar Orbit

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Image showing the rendezvous and docking of the ascender of Change-5 probe with the orbiter-returner combination, Dec. 6, 2020. | Photo: Xinhua

The orbiter-returner combination of the Change-5 probe gradually approached the ascender of the probe and captured it with holding claws.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced that the ascender of Change-5 probe successfully rendezvoused and docked with the orbiter-returner combination in lunar orbit at 5:42 a.m. (Beijing Time) on Sunday.

Change-5 is one of the most complicated and challenging missions in Chinese aerospace history, as well as the world's first moon-sample mission in more than 40 years.

The Change-5 probe, comprising an orbiter, a lander, an ascender, and a returner, was launched on Nov. 24, and its lander-ascender combination touched down in the Ocean of Storms, on the near side of the moon on Dec. 1.

After the samples were collected and sealed, the ascender of Change-5 took off from the lunar surface on Dec. 3.

Although China's spacecraft had carried out several rendezvous and docking operations in low-Earth orbit, an unmanned rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit, around 380,000 km away, is much more difficult.

The orbiter-returner combination gradually approached the ascender through long-range guidance and short-range autonomous control, and captured the ascender with holding claws.

The high-precision accelerometers helped measure velocity changes so that the relative velocity between the ascender and orbiter-returner combination could be controlled as finely as possible, a key to accomplishing automatic rendezvous and docking.


The acceleration during rendezvous and docking is much smaller than that during the liftoff of a spacecraft, and the high-precision accelerometers can realize the precise measurement of tiny acceleration.

The microwave radar, the probe's only instrument for long-distance measurement in lunar orbit, guided the unmanned rendezvous and docking operation.

This radar is composed of a host unit and a responding unit, respectively installed on the orbiter and the ascender. When the two machines approach to a distance of about 100 km, the radar starts to work.

The two spacecraft continue adjusting their flight attitudes in accordance with the radar signals until the docking mechanism on the orbiter captures and locks the ascender.

There is a huge difference in mass between the two, increasing the difficulty of docking. Holding claws are used in the docking mechanism to weaken the impact, but this requires a higher degree of precision from the microwave radar in terms of angle measurement.

"We used an innovative error-compensation algorithm to further improve the angle-measurement accuracy, which greatly enhanced the chances of a successful, precise docking," said He Zhongqin, a designer on the microwave radar project.

Invisible lunar dust might also have affected the ascender equipped with the responding unit, and interfered with the accuracy of angle measurement. The designers solved this problem by helping the responding unit to put on a dust cover made of special materials.

The radar team repeatedly tested and upgraded their equipment in ground experiments to ensure infallible function and performance.

Next, the orbiter-returner will separate from the ascender, and wait for the right time to return to Earth. The Change-5 probe is expected to bring about 2 kg of lunar samples back to Earth.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Chi ... -0006.html

'Bells & whistles' of the Chinese Century
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 18, 2021 2:52 pm

Latest on the COVID-19 outbreak
chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2021-01-18 08:25
We provide the latest updates and crucial information on the global COVID-19 pandemic here.

Jan 18

China

Latest data released by National Health Commission by midnight, Jan 17, 2021.
Image

Chinese mainland reports 93 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases
Xinhua | Updated: 2021-01-18 11:14
BEIJING -- The Chinese mainland on Sunday reported 109 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 93 locally transmitted cases and 16 arriving from outside the mainland, the National Health Commission said Monday.

Of the locally transmitted cases, 54 were reported in Hebei, 30 in Jilin, seven in Heilongjiang, and two in Beijing, the commission said in its daily report.

Two new suspected cases arriving from outside the mainland were reported in Shanghai on Sunday, said the commission, adding that no deaths related to the disease were reported.

https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202101/ ... a34b4.html

For context, there were more new cases of #19 in my county.
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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Fri Feb 05, 2021 2:49 pm

Why Do These Uighur Witnesses' Stories Constantly Change?

Two months ago we documented astonishing changes over time in the testimony of a Uyhgur woman who had claimed to have been incarcerated in China:

Over the years [Sayragul] Sautbay has given several interviews. The details of her story continued to change in anti-Chinese directions.
In early interviews Sautbay claimed to have been an instructor working in a re-education camp. In later interviews she claims to have been a detainee.
In more recent interviews she claims that she had seen torture and violence in the camps. In earlier interviews she had refuted such claims.
In one story she claims to have observed mass rape. In older interviews she insisted that she had observed no violence at all.
While she now claims that detainees in the camp were forced to eat pork she had earlier claimed that no meat was served in the camps.
The changes in her story came after Sautbay had fallen into the hands of a propaganda group:

After she had gained asylum in Sweden Sautbay joint up with a U.S. financed Uighur organization. Her story then changed dramatically. The party member and language teacher had became a detainee. There was suddenly extensive violence in the camp and people who earlier never got meat were suddenly made to eat pork.
...
The Swedish Uyghur association is part of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, a CIA affiliated organization that has in recent years gained prominence as part of the U.S. driven anti-China campaign.
A similar change can be observed in the testimony of another Uyghur woman who currently makes the rounds through the media. Tursunay Ziawudun, a Uyghur woman who last year moved to the United States, now claims to have observed mass rape in Chinese detention camps.

The BBC headlined yesterday: 'Their goal is to destroy everyone': Uighur camp detainees allege systematic rape

First-hand accounts from inside the internment camps are rare, but several former detainees and a guard have told the BBC they experienced or saw evidence of an organised system of mass rape, sexual abuse and torture.
Tursunay Ziawudun, who fled Xinjiang after her release and is now in the US, said women were removed from the cells "every night" and raped by one or more masked Chinese men. She said she was tortured and later gang-raped on three occasions, each time by two or three men.

Ziawudun was first interviewed (video) at the office of the Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights organization in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on October 15, 2019. An English summary of the interview is here. There are no allegations of rape or overly harsh treatment. The biggest problem seem to have been 'urinary disorders' which some people developed because the camp buildings were new and the concrete had not yet completely dried out.

The organization which did the first interview with Ziawudun acted as a broker between such persons and 'western' media:

The Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights Organization has provided enormous amount of information about the Chinese concentration camps and the dystopian regime in Xinjiang. We have hosted journalists from all around the world including Hong Kong, Japan, Russia, the United States, Canada, Britain, France, and Germany, among others.
...
Leading media outlets including CNN, the BBC and the New York Times had all visited Atajurt’s office in Almaty; journalists and human rights activists were aware of how valuable a source of information Atajurt was.
Atajurt had also propagandized the case of Sayragul Sautbay who later continued to change her testimony:

I knew about the trial through the efforts of a group called Atajurt, cofounded by Serikzhan Bilash, a Chinese-born ethnic Kazakh, one of more than 200,000 oralmandar, or ‘returnees’, now living in Kazakhstan. Atajurt was set up in 2017 with the purpose of defending the human rights of ethnic Kazakhs in Xinjiang. Sauytbay’s husband, an oralman who, like Bilash, was now a Kazakh citizen, had at first been reluctant to publicise her case, but Bilash persuaded him that foreign attention was her best hope. ‘We’ve never had a trial like this, open to the public, to foreign journalists,’ he told me on the steps outside the court. ‘This will show the world what is happening in Xinjiang.’
There is no information on who has financed the quite sizeable Atajurt. Kazakhstan has since shut the organization down and Serikzhan Bilash, its founder, has fled to Turkey. Tursunay Ziawudun also moved from Kazakhstan to Turkey before coming to the U.S.

Two weeks after her interview with Atajurt Tursunay Ziawudun was interviewed by the U.S. government controlled Radio Free Asia:

Authorities took Ziyawudun to an internment camp on April 11, 2017 without offering her or her family a reason, amid a rollout of a new policy of mass incarceration in the region, she said, although “the situation was not so severe, as it was only when they had just started arresting people” and she was released after one month, in part due to poor health.
Ziawudun was again detained in the following year:

However, Ziyawudun was unable to obtain a passport and could not join her husband in Kazakhstan, and on March 10, 2018 was again detained without reason.
This time, she said, the situation at the facility had become much worse, and many of the dozen women she shared quarters with endured poor treatment, including forced sterilization.

There is however no direct claim that she has been raped or observed raping. There is talk of rape in the interview but the claims are indirect, ambiguous and were prompted by the interviewer:

When asked about recent reports by former detainees of rape and other abuse in the XUAR camp system, Ziyawudun broke down.
“We were all helpless and unable to defend ourselves,” she said.

“We all went through all kinds of mistreatment, but even when we saw such abuse we were powerless to do anything about it.”

Camp officials would come in the middle of the night and take women away, she said.

“They would shout, ‘Get up and come with us,’ and after that, we would never see them again,” she said.

Well, could it be that those women were released?

A second interview with Tursunay Ziawudun was published by BuzzFeed News on February 15 2020:

Ziyawudun, 41, is one of just a handful of Uighur Muslims who have made it out of one of China’s now-notorious camps for Muslim minorities and gone abroad — to neighboring Kazakhstan.
After nearly 10 months locked up without ever being charged with a crime, Ziyawudun was released in December 2018. In Kazakhstan, Ziyawudun thought she was finally safe after months of nightmares, interrogations, and ritual humiliations at the hands of camp officials. Her long hair was lopped off, she was forced to watch endless hours of state propaganda on television, and every second of her life was filmed by security cameras. Each night, she had struggled to sleep, terrified she might be raped.

Her husband is a citizen of Kazakhstan, and she was initially granted a visa to stay. Things were looking up. But last year, she was given some terrible news — she must return to China to apply for a new type of Kazakh visa if she wanted to stay.

The Kazakh government says this is a procedural matter, but Ziyawudun knows that returning to China will likely mean she will be sent back to captivity.

Ziyawudun was detained twice. The first time was in April 2017:

[T]he police drove them to a place that they called a “vocational training school.” At the time, Ziyawudun was terrified — but in the context of the many worse things that followed, the facility now seems tame to her.
“To be honest, it wasn’t that bad,” she said. “We had our phones. We had meals in the canteens. Other than being forced to stay there, everything else was fine.”

In the evenings, the instructors taught the detainees to do traditional Chinese dances in the yard of the building, she said. Sometimes there were lectures — an imam working for the state might come in and talk about how important it was to avoid “extreme” practices like wearing headscarves.

Ziyawudun was released a few weeks later.

In March 2018 she was again detained in a reeducation facility. The conditions, she says, were harsher but not unbearable:

Nobody discussed rape in the camp. All conversations were monitored by guards or surveillance cameras. But it was on Ziyawudun’s mind all the time. If she were raped, she knew, there would be no one to tell about it, no place to report the crime. After all, she had landed in the camp because authorities felt she was “unreliable.” If one of the women were raped, who would believe them? She had never felt more vulnerable in her life.
...
The real torture, she discovered, took place in silence, in the inmates’ minds.
“I wasn’t beaten or abused,” she said. “The hardest part was mental. It’s something I can’t explain — you suffer mentally. Being kept someplace and forced to stay there for no reason. You have no freedom. You suffer.”

Ziyawudun was released in December 2018 and had since then lived in Kazakhstan. She eventual move to Turkey.

In September 2020 the U.S. based Uyghur Human Rights Project had picked her up to use her for their agitation against China:

Tursunay Ziyawudun, one of only a handful of Uyghur concentration camp survivors known to have reached the outside world, has arrived safely in the United States.
...
"We are tremendously relieved that Tursunay is now safe in the United States,” said UHRP Executive Director Omer Kanat. “UHRP warmly thanks governments who have rescued at-risk Uyghurs. Every rescue is a godsend.”
As one of the few people able to provide eyewitness testimony about what happens in the camps, Ms. Tursunay is a critical witness. She spent nine months in detention, where she suffered malnutrition, dehydration, forcible ingestion and injection of unknown drugs, and physical and mental torture. Her testimony will be vitally important for future atrocity-crimes determination processes and tribunals.

The Uyghur Human Rights Project will be assisting with Ms. Tursunay’s resettlement and is mounting an appeal to ensure that she receives immediate treatment for a serious health condition. Donations to help cover her living costs and medical treatment may be earmarked by sending a brief note.

Neither in her interview with Atajurt nor in her interviews with RFA or BuzzFeedNews does Tursunay Ziawudun claim she was raped. The Uyghur Human Rights Project report of her arrival In the U.S. says she had suffered from several forms of mistreatment but rape is not mentioned as one of them.

Like in the case of Sayragul Sautbay it is only months after she has received the appropriate coaching that Tursunay Ziawudun makes the outrageous rape claims. The BBC knows that these claims are likely bogus as it carefully notes:

It is impossible to verify Ziawudun's account completely because of the severe restrictions China places on reporters in the country, but travel documents and immigration records she provided to the BBC corroborate the timeline of her story.
The facts indeed corroborate the timeline, but they corroborate not one of the other claims Ziawudun makes.

There are many more details in Tursunay Ziawudun BBC story that differ from her previous accounts. Her "earrings were yanked out" where previously "Police told the women to take off their necklaces and earrings." In the BuzzFeed interview she said: “I wasn’t beaten or abused.” In her later BBC account she is beaten heavily:

"Police boots are very hard and heavy, so at first I thought he was beating me with something," she said. "Then I realised that he was trampling on my belly. I almost passed out - I felt a hot flush go through me."
Small details also differ. Where there previously was a bucket to pee in during the night there is now a hole in the ground.

Parts of what she tells the BBC seems to be from a bad porn script:

"They don't only rape but also bite all over your body, you don't know if they are human or animal," she said, pressing a tissue to her eyes to stop her tears and pausing for a long time to collect herself.
"They didn't spare any part of the body, they bit everywhere leaving horrible marks. It was disgusting to look at.

"I've experienced that three times. And it is not just one person who torments you, not just one predator. Each time they were two or three men."

The accounts of both women, Sayragul Sautbay and Tursunay Ziawudun, have 'evolved' after they have been handled through a chain of organizations set up to propagandize against China's anti-terror and development program in Xinjiang.

Like the Swedish organization which handled Sautbay, the U.S. based Uyghur Human Rights Project which handles Ziawudun is part of the infamous World Uyghur Congress:

As this investigation establishes, the WUC is not a grassroots movement, but a US government-backed umbrella for several Washington-based outfits that also rely heavily on US funding and direction. Today, it is the main face and voice of a separatist operation dedicated to destabilizing the Xinjiang region of China and ultimately toppling the Chinese government.
While seeking to orchestrate a color revolution with the aim of regime change in Beijing, the WUC and its offshoots have forged ties with the Grey Wolves, a far-right Turkish organization that has been actively engaged in sectarian violence from Syria to East Asia.

None of these links seem to have troubled the WUC’s sponsors in Washington. If anything, they have added to the network’s appeal, consolidating it as one of the most potent political weapons the US wields in its new Cold War against China.

The claims by the women of rape in the re-education camps in Xinjiang are as believable as the ones Nyirah al-Sabah made about babies allegedly thrown out of Kuwaiti incubators:

Her story was initially corroborated by Amnesty International, a British NGO, which published several independent reports about the killings and testimony from evacuees. Following the liberation of Kuwait, reporters were given access to the country. An ABC report found that "patients, including premature babies, did die, when many of Kuwait's nurses and doctors ... fled" but Iraqi troops "almost certainly had not stolen hospital incubators and left hundreds of Kuwaiti babies to die." Amnesty International reacted by issuing a correction, with executive director John Healey subsequently accusing the Bush administration of "opportunistic manipulation of the international human rights movement".

Posted by b on February 4, 2021 at 16:24 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/02/t ... .html#more
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Sat Feb 06, 2021 6:24 pm

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Atlantic Council pens anonymously authored expose calling for regime change in China
Posted Feb 06, 2021 by Alan MacLeod

Originally published: MintPress News (February 3, 2021)

Influential D.C. think tank the Atlantic Council has printed a 26,000-word report laying out its strategy for combating China. Published anonymously, the report states that “the single most important challenge facing the United States” in the twenty-first century is China’s growth to rival their own power.

To do so, the report states that the U.S. must use “the power of its military,” the dollar’s role as the global reserve currency, and American control over technology and communication to suffocate the nation of 1.4 billion people. It advises President Biden to draw a number of “red lines” past which the U.S. would directly intervene (presumably militarily). These include Chinese attempts to expand into the South China Sea, an attack on the disputed Senkaku Islands, or moves against Taiwan’s independence. A North Korean strike on any of its neighbors would also necessitate an American response against China, the report insists, because “China must fully own responsibility for the behavior of its North Korean ally.” Any backing down from this stance, the council states, would result in national “humiliation” for the United States.

Perhaps most notably, however, the report also envisages what a successful American China policy would look like by 2050: “the United States and its major allies continue to dominate the regional and global balance of power across all the major indices of power;” and that head of state Xi Jinping “has been replaced by a more moderate party leadership; and that the Chinese people themselves have come to question and challenge the Communist Party’s century-long proposition that China’s ancient civilization is forever destined to an authoritarian future.” In other words, that China has been broken and that some sort of regime change has occurred.

Repping the national security state

The Atlantic Council is a NATO-offshoot organization funded by the U.S. and other allied governments, including the Gulf dictatorships. Among its largest corporate sponsors include weapons manufacturers like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing. Its board of directors is full of high statespeople like Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice as well as senior military figures such as retired generals Wesley Clark, David Petraeus, H.R. McMaster, James “Mad Dog” Mattis, Lt. General Brent Scowcroft and Admiral James Stavridis. At least seven former CIA directors are also on the board. Thus, the council could be said to represent the consensus opinion of the national security state.

The organization has been responsible for much of the most hawkish, bellicose rhetoric surrounding Russia and China for some time. For instance, it has put out a number of studies that claim that virtually every European political party outside the establishment beltway — from Labour and UKIP in the U.K. to Syriza and Golden Dawn in Greece and PODEMOS and Vox in Spain — are secretly controlled by Russia, functioning as the “Kremlin’s Trojan Horses.”

“The Longer Telegram”
The council’s new anonymous report, named “the Longer Telegram,” is a direct reference to American diplomat George Kennan’s 1946 “Long Telegram.” Kennan’s report, sent from Moscow, argued that the U.S. should completely abandon its wartime alliance with the Soviet Union and immediately pursue a strategy of hostile “containment,” and is considered one of the founding documents of the Cold War. By consciously associating itself with Kennan, the Atlantic Council is implicitly heralding the arrival of a new global conflict with China.

Kennan is appreciated among historians for being one of the most straightforward talkers in the national security establishment. In 1948 he outlined what the U.S. position and interests were:

We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population…. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity…We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction…We should cease to talk about vague and… unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

Biden takes the helm
Throughout 2020, President Biden’s team quietly stated that their entire industrial and foreign policy would revolve around “compet[ing] with China,” with their top priorities being “dealing with authoritarian governments, defending democracy and tackling corruption, as well as understanding how these challenges intersect with new technologies, such as 5G, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and synthetic biology.” The Trump administration had already begun a global campaign to damage Chinese giants like Huawei and TikTok. From his team’s statements, it appears likely that Biden will carry on its anti-Beijing stance.

However, many top officials in Washington see the prospect of a hot war with China as a distant one. “Most of the U.S.-China competition is not going to be fighting World War Three…It’s going to be kicking each other under the table,” one source told the Financial Times in May. Others argue for a worldwide culture war against Beijing, including the Pentagon commissioning “Taiwanese Tom Clancy” novels, intended to demonize China and demoralize its citizens, bombarding its people with stories of the deaths of their (only) children.

Whatever Washington decides to do, it appears that the groundwork has already been laid at home. Just three years ago, Americans had a neutral view of China (and nine years ago it was strongly favorable). Today, the same polls show that 73% of Americans dislike China, with only 22% holding a positive opinion of the country. Thus, it is far from clear that there will be much public pushback at all to a coming second Cold War.

https://mronline.org/2021/02/06/atlanti ... -in-china/

bolding added

Damn near a 'who's who' of imperialism. And anyone who fails to recognize that the US populace is the most intensively propagandized on Earth is a goddamned fool.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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