AI Dreams and Authoritarian Nightmares

BY OLIVIA SHEN

 

July

https://thechinastory.org/yearbooks/yearbook-2019-china-dreams/chapter-5-ai-dreams-and-authoritarian-nightmares/#

In  2017, the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) announced its ambitious plan to lead the world in the development and application of artificial intelligence (AI). China aims to become the global centre for AI innovation by 2030. Government agencies have released five strategic papers in recent years articulating how AI will profoundly change human society and stressing the importance of harnessing its potential.¹

China’s ministries, local authorities, companies, and the scientific and academic communities are underwriting its AI ambitions through extensive financing and political support. Meanwhile, state media is helping popularise AI in the public consciousness, linking it to China’s continued prosperity and modernisation. Citizens are starting to see the benefits of AI throughout the economy, from smart devices and robots that provide daily conveniences to autonomous vehicle trials easing congestion in major cities. Unsurprisingly, the Chinese are more optimistic than other nationalities about the potential for AI to do good.² They also appear to be confident in China’s AI capabilities, with fifty-five percent believing they are already leading or leapfrogging ahead of other countries in AI development.³

The Dark Side of AI

On the darker side of China’s AI ambitions are efforts to harness AI for public security. The Chinese government has not been shy about experimenting with AI for authoritarian ends. This is starkly evident in Xinjiang province, where the government’s Strike Hard Campaign 严厉打击暴力恐怖活动专项动 is turning Xinjiang into a testing ground for the use of innovative technologies for social control. Facial recognition, machine learning, natural language processing, and genetic profiling allow authorities to keep the community in check with unprecedented efficiency, scale, and secrecy. More than one million Uyghurs and Kazakhs have been sent to ‘political education’ camps, many of them arbitrarily detained for activities that are by no means illegal under Chinese law⁴ (see Chapter 7 ‘Schemes, Dreams and Nightmares: China’s Paradox(es) of Trust’, pp.197–209).

To domestic constituents, China’s government promotes AI as an accurate scientific tool for monitoring and preventing security threats and unrest. The State Council’s 2017 New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan declares:

AI technologies can accurately sense, forecast, and provide early warning of major situations for infrastructure facilities and social security operations; grasp group cognition and psychological changes in a timely manner; and take the initiative in decision-making and reactions — which will significantly elevate the capability and level of social governance, playing an irreplaceable role in effectively maintaining social stability.⁵

This faith in AI may be misguided. As the saying goes, ‘Garbage in, garbage out’. If an AI system is built on biased assumptions or poor data, it is likely to codify existing prejudices and inequalities or generate inaccurate results.

Relying on AI in security and law enforcement settings can have its pitfalls. In London, recent trials of live facial recognition by the Metropolitan Police produced inaccurate matches ninety-six percent of the time.⁶ In the United States, AI algorithms deployed to predict crime have discriminated unfairly against African Americans because the systems are trained using historical crime data collected by police with a record of targeting minorities.⁷ Biased AI systems are prone to error, overlooking or misidentifying security threats because the algorithms have been trained to look for the wrong indicators. In the Strike Hard Campaign, authorities are directed to collect information about suspicious individuals. However, many of the behaviours that are deemed suspicious are either integral to the Islamic faith (for example, collecting money for mosques, going on Hajj) or innocuous activities (curiously including welding and using too much electricity, as well as spending time abroad).⁸ Such inherent biases create a pernicious feedback loop. Muslims, welders, and frequent flyers are more likely to be flagged as security threats and investigated, which then validates subjecting these groups to even more invasive monitoring. Far from being neutral tools, algorithms are what AI ethicist Cathy O’Neil calls ‘opinions embedded in code’.⁹

The Chinese government has a vested interest in presenting AI as scientific, precise, and unimpeachable. If it portrays AI as an objective guarantor of security and other public goods, its citizenry can trust that AI will only harm those individuals who deserve it — criminals, terrorists, separatists, cheats, and other social undesirables. This narrative has been powerful in justifying mass surveillance. China’s first national video surveillance program, Skynet 天网, is based on a Chinese idiom about the inescapability of justice (天网恢恢, 疏而不漏 — ‘heaven’s net is wide, but nothing escapes it’). State media calls the system ‘the eyes that safeguard China’ and claims it has helped police make numerous arrests.¹⁰ Ironically, ‘Skynet’ is the name of the superintelligence in The Terminator movies that is intent on destroying humankind. China’s Skynet is no killer robot, but the potential for repressive uses of AI is growing as Beijing rapidly expands its surveillance apparatus and access to citizens’ data.

Surveillance Cameras
Source: Pixabay

Big Data Gets Bigger

From 2020, two programs due for completion will combine to collect and aggregate a massive trove of information about Chinese citizens, their movements and their behaviours. The first is Skynet’s successor, Sharp Eyes 雪亮 (literally, ‘snow-bright’), which will blanket all key public places and major industries with live surveillance cameras.¹¹ Like Skynet, the name of the program is deliberate and symbolic. ‘Sharp Eyes’ derives from a Cultural Revolution–era saying, ‘the eyes of the masses are bright as snow’ 群众的眼睛是雪亮的, which encouraged people to snitch on political subversives. It is a chilling reminder of a time when neighbours and relatives denounced one another for party disloyalty¹² (see also Chapter 1 Forum ‘Xi Jinping’s War on “Black and Evil” ’, pp.43–46).

The year 2020 will also see the national rollout of the Social Credit System that tracks the trustworthiness of companies, government agencies, and citizens. Social credit metes out punishments and rewards based on compliance with government regulations and court orders, among other metrics for good citizenship. The worst offenders are added to a blacklist; the most compliant are added to a ‘red list’. The system requires regulatory agencies and companies to frequently update information to the lists.¹³

Authorities can also request access to the data that companies collect in the course of delivering products, services, content, and advertising to their customers. Research by the US-based Center for Data Innovation suggests that consumer data quantity is one of the few crucial areas for AI development where China already has an advantage over the United States.¹⁴ This is partly thanks to China’s lead in mobile payment technologies. With an estimated forty-five percent of the Chinese population using mobile payments, including on omniscient applications such as WeChat, information is continuously being digitised as people go about their daily lives. Companies such as Tencent, owner of WeChat, vacuum up data about what people buy, how they communicate, where they travel, the news they read, the charities to which they donate, and the games they play.

Data collection is also increasingly global. Companies such as Global Tone Communication Technology, an offshoot of the Central Propaganda Department, boasts that it gathers ten terabytes of unstructured global data (equivalent to 4,000 hours of high-definition video streaming) through its media monitoring business each day.¹⁵ The Chinese Academy of Sciences estimates that China will hold twenty percent of global data, or forty-four billion terabytes, by 2020.¹⁶

Push for Privacy

In an increasingly data-driven and surveillance-rich world, citizens in many countries are demanding more privacy and transparent uses of their personal information. In 2018, Europe passed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to enshrine protections for personal data including a right to be free from ‘automated processing’ by algorithms. The United States is also debating federal data privacy laws, with some states, such as California, pushing ahead with their own versions of the GDPR.

China is grappling with similar concerns and challenges. It is a common misconception that China is devoid of privacy debates or protections. Many netizens were outraged when Baidu founder Robin Li 李彦宏 claimed in 2018 that Chinese were less sensitive about privacy and would exchange privacy for convenience or efficiency.¹⁷ Following a series of high-profile data breaches and scams, citizens have called for stronger privacy laws in recent years.

Facial recognition is now commonplace in China
Source: batuhan demirtas, Flickr

The government has responded to those calls, but in a manner that targets unscrupulous businesses while maintaining its own access to citizens’ data. In 2016, the National People’s Congress adopted the Cyber Security Law, which bans online service providers from collecting and selling users’ personal information without consent. A 2018 Personal Information Security Specification, modelled on Europe’s GDPR, further establishes national standards for seeking user consent and collecting, storing, and sharing personal data.¹⁸ So far, the new regulations have been strictly enforced, with government watchdogs cracking down on smartphone applications that illegally or excessively collect users’ data.¹⁹

While companies are constrained from violating people’s privacy, the same cannot be said for the government itself. The very Cyber Security Law that offers better consumer protections also stipulates that online platforms must provide technical support and assistance to government agencies for the purposes of safeguarding national security and investigating criminal activities.²⁰ China’s national security laws, particularly the 2017 Intelligence Law, invest security agencies with sweeping powers to ensure that companies cooperate with intelligence work. The Cyber Security Law further cements those powers. New e-commerce laws that took effect in January 2019 also require e-commerce operators to provide data to the authorities when requested, validate users’ real identities, prevent illegal content or activity online, and retain transaction information for no less than three years.

The government throws the book at companies that misuse their customers’ data or breach their privacy. However, it shows few signs of curbing its own data mining, surveillance, and censorship capabilities, and advances in AI are rapidly expanding those capabilities. The kinds of technologies seen in Xinjiang are becoming the new normal across much of China. Cities such as Suzhou and Weihai have launched ‘police cloud’ 警务云 databases that use machine learning to parse massive volumes of data about residents for crime prevention and prediction.²¹ Facial recognition is now so commonplace it is used for shaming jaywalkers and dispensing toilet paper in public toilets.²² Meanwhile, the Cyberspace Administration will soon require social media algorithms to steer users towards online content that promotes ‘mainstream values’ such as party policies and Xi Jinping Thought.²³

From Privacy to AI Ethics

Advances in AI have deepened Chinese concerns about privacy and data. In the 2018 China Economic Life Survey 中国经济生活大调查, jointly run by Tencent’s research arm and state media, almost eighty percent of respondents said they thought some applications of AI would compromise their privacy. More than thirty percent also worried that AI would threaten their livelihoods.²⁴

In an effort to boost public trust, the government has made a range of commitments to build AI that is ethical and beneficial for society. The State Council’s New Generation AI Development Plan includes a goal to establish laws, regulations, and ethical norms for AI by 2025. Beijing has joined the international effort to develop technical AI standards that will also grapple with ethics and safety risks.²⁵ In May 2019, the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology released the ‘Beijing AI Principles’, which call for AI to be responsible, diverse, open, and beneficial for humanity.²⁶ The principles carry the endorsement of Peking University, Tsinghua University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and China’s largest tech firms, including Tencent, Baidu, and Alibaba. Encouragingly, the Beijing Principles are broadly consistent with other AI ethics frameworks recently agreed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the G20.²⁷

These positive signs of China’s engagement on AI ethics contrast with China’s aggressive use of the same technologies to manage, and in some cases repress, its own people. Yet for China, there is no contradiction. Social management and safeguarding internal security are part and parcel of the AI dream. According to the party line, to eschew the capabilities of AI would in fact be unethical. But even if the Chinese population accedes to this argument, international observers are far more sceptical.

International ‘Techlash’

One risk for China is that its use of authoritarian AI leads to an international backlash that stunts its AI ambitions. Western media coverage over the past year has highlighted China’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, with growing emphasis on the role of technology in enabling those abuses. The ongoing scrutiny has prompted some players in the AI field to restrict research and technology transfers.

In October 2019, the United States added twenty-eight Chinese firms to a list of entities barred from buying American products and components, citing human rights concerns. According to the US Department of Commerce, the new listings specifically target firms involved ‘in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention and high-technology surveillance against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups’.²⁸ This includes companies such as Hikvision, Dahua, Yitu, and SenseTime — some of the world’s largest manufacturers of video surveillance products.

Hikvision: of the world’s largest manufacturers of video surveillance products
Source: Raysonho, Wikipedia

This is the first time human rights have been explicitly declared a US foreign policy interest resulting in the listing of entities.²⁹ Some speculate the entities listing was motivated more by US trade war tactics than by genuine human rights concerns, coming as it did on the eve of trade negotiations. Nevertheless, the move amplifies concerns about working with China on new technologies. After employee protests, Google terminated a project to build a censored version of its search engine for the Chinese market.³⁰ Bad publicity also forced American company Thermo Fisher to cease selling DNA sequencers to authorities in Xinjiang for genetic mapping.³¹

Ethical considerations are complicated by the fact that many AI technologies are ‘dual use’. Beneficial and harmful AI can be almost indistinguishable at a technical level. Prominent American geneticists who have shared DNA samples with China’s Institute of Forensic Science have subsequently discovered that their research was used for genetic profiling.³² Australian universities have also been implicated, with the University of Technology Sydney and Curtin University forced to review their research approval processes after their academics were involved in projects that may have aided Chinese government surveillance.³³

Despite impressive investment and progress in indigenous AI development, China still needs global supplies of AI talent and knowhow. With the onset of the China–US trade war, Beijing is particularly sensitive to the risk of overreliance on US producers for critical technological inputs. Crucially, China has not yet succeeded in establishing a local semiconductor industry to produce the chips that power AI computing.³⁴ China is also still catching up to the United States and others — albeit rapidly — in terms of quality patents, fundamental research, and attracting international expertise. China files more patents, for example, than any other country but only thirty-seven percent are maintained after five years.³⁵ Programs such as the Thousand Talents 千人计划 have not been able to attract the best and brightest scientists and academics to return to China in the long term.³⁶ Human rights and reputational concerns are likely to further deter foreign talent from working with Chinese firms, conducting joint research, investing in Chinese companies, or sharing data, all of which will also slow the pace of China’s AI development.

The government’s continued use of authoritarian AI also undermines the credibility of its efforts to influence global standards and governance. It is difficult to imagine countries welcoming China to the global negotiating table while millions of Uyghurs remain in detention. It is equally difficult to imagine China coming to the table for meaningful negotiations with other countries that publicly criticise its human rights record and cut off its supply chains. There are concerns, too, that China is rapidly exporting its authoritarian AI to at least fifty-four countries, frequently packaging the technology into the Belt and Road Initiative.³⁷

A Comfortable Panopticon

China’s burgeoning ocean of data, combined with its growing AI capabilities, generates new opportunities and temptations for social control. If China looks set to continue pursuing more authoritarian applications of AI, one key question is how its citizens might respond. Will there come a tipping point where they object?

Mural by graffiti artist Banksy in London, 2007
Source: ogglog, Flickr

Ordinary Chinese are not naive. Aware that Big Brother is watching, they tend to moderate their behaviour accordingly. An interesting example of this is the case of Tay, Microsoft’s AI chatbot that notoriously began posting inflammatory and offensive tweets just hours after it was launched in 2016. Tay was first tested as Xiaoice
小冰 in China, where it gained a strong following over eighteen months with no such off-script moments. One reason for this difference is that Chinese netizens closely follow online rules. They generally do not harass, smack talk, or troll each other because there is always the possibility that the state is listening in.³⁸ The online environment thus resembles English philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s concept of a ‘panopticon’ — a prison in which the inmates never know whether they are being watched and are therefore motivated to act as though they are always being watched.

A panopticon might sound chilling to some, but for others it is a comfort. Decades of Communist rule have inured much of the population to government intrusion while coopting them with its benefits. China has a deeply embedded and historical tradition of promoting good moral behaviour. Where fraud, corruption, and cheating are rife, systems that bolster trust and deter wrongdoing are considered necessary and even welcome.³⁹ Social credit, for example, is far more controversial outside China than within. The Party-state encourages all its citizens to contribute to systems of community policing. In many rural locations where Sharp Eyes is piloted, locals can tune into the live surveillance feeds and report their neighbours’ transgressions.⁴⁰ Hebei province has released a ‘debtor map’ 老赖地图 app that allows users to blow the whistle on wealthy-
looking debt dodgers in their vicinity.⁴¹

Many Chinese accept automated monitoring as a small price to pay for stability, prosperity, and social harmony. Those who follow the rules reap the spoils of an ascending China. Those who step out of line pay the costs. China’s dreams of AI development are inextricably linked with the use of AI as a tool for social engineering. If China should succeed at both — vastly expanding its AI capabilities and universally deploying those capabilities towards controlling its citizens — its AI dream could turn into a nightmare for any who dare to dissent.

Notes

¹

See Jeffrey Ding, Deciphering China’s AI Dream: The Context, Components, Capabilities, and Consequences of China’s Strategy to Lead the World in AI, Oxford: Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford, March 2018, online at: www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/Deciphering_Chinas_AI-Dream.pdf

²

Ford Motor Company, Looking Further with Ford: 2018 Trends, Detroit: Ford Motor Company, 2018, online at: social.ford.com/content/dam/fordsocial/en_US/articles/fords-2018-trend-report-what-to-know-about-the-year-ahead/2018%20Looking_Further_with_Ford_Trend%20Report_.pdf

³

Jeff Loucks, Susanne Hupfer, David Jarvis, and Timothy Murphy, Future in the Balance? How Countries are Pursuing an AI Advantage: Insights from Deloitte’s State of AI in the Enterprise, 2nd Edition Survey, London: Deloitte, 2020, online at: www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/cognitive-technologies/ai-investment-by-country.html

⁴

Tanner Greer, ‘48 ways to get sent to a Chinese concentration camp’, Foreign Policy, 13 September 2018, online at: foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/13/48-ways-to-get-sent-to-a-chinese-concentration-camp/

⁵

See Graham Webster, Roger Creemers, Paul Triolo, and Elsa Kasia, ‘Full translation: China’s “New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan” (2017)’, New America, 1 August 2017, online at: www.newamerica.org/cybersecurity-initiative/digichina/blog/full-translation-chinas-new-generation-artificial-intelligence-development-plan-2017/

⁶

Lizzie Dearden, ‘Facial recognition wrongly identifies public as potential criminals 96% of time, figures reveal’, The Independent, 7 May 2019, online at: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/facial-recognition-london-inaccurate-met-police-trials-a8898946.html

⁷

Rashida Richardson, Jason M. Schultz, and Kate Crawford, ‘Dirty data, bad predictions: How civil rights violations impact police data, predictive policing systems, and justice’, NYU Law Review, May 2019, online at: www.nyulawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/NYULawReview-94-Richardson-Schultz-Crawford.pdf

⁸

Human Rights Watch, China’s Algorithms of Repression: Reverse Engineering a Xinjiang Police Mass Surveillance App, New York: Human Rights Watch, 1 May 2019, online at: www.hrw.org/report/2019/05/01/chinas-algorithms-repression/reverse-engineering-xinjiang-police-mass-surveillance

⁹

Cathy O’Neil, ‘The era of blind faith in big data must end’, TED Conferences, 7 September 2017, online at: www.ted.com/talks/cathy_o_neil_the_era_of_blind_faith_in_big_data_must_end

¹⁰

Zak Doffman, ‘China deploys “breakthrough” surveillance technology to arrest 13,000 “terrorists” ’, Forbes, 18 March 2019, online at: www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/03/18/xinjiang-claims-13000-terrorist-arrests-justify-high-tech-population-control/#318b2241455c

¹¹

Simon Denyer, ‘China’s watchful eye’, The Washington Post, 7 January 2018, online at: www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/01/07/feature/in-china-facial-recognition-is-sharp-end-of-a-drive-for-total-surveillance/

¹²

Josh Rudolph, ‘Sharper eyes: Surveilling the surveillers (Part 1)’, China Digital Times, 9 September 2019, online at: chinadigitaltimes.net/2019/09/sharper-eyes-surveilling-the-surveillers-part-1/

¹³

Louise Matsakis, ‘How the West got China’s Social Credit System wrong’, WIRED, 29 July 2019, online at: www.wired.com/story/china-social-credit-score-system/

¹⁴

Daniel Castro, Michael McLaughlin, and Eline Chivot, Who is Winning the AI Race: China, the EU or the United States?, Washington, DC: Center for Data Innovation, August 2019, online at: www2.datainnovation.org/2019-china-eu-us-ai.pdf

¹⁵

Samantha Hoffman, Engineering Global Consent: The Chinese Communist Party’s Data-Driven Power Expansion, Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Institute, October 2019, online at: www.aspi.org.au/report/engineering-global-consent-chinese-communist-partys-data-driven-power-expansion

¹⁶

Chinese Academy of Sciences, China’s AI Business Ready to Lead the World, Beijing: Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2 June 2017, online at: english.cas.cn/newsroom/news/201706/t20170602_177674.shtml

¹⁷

‘Baidu chief under fire for privacy comments’, CRI Online, 28 March 2018, online at: en.people.cn/n3/2018/0328/c90000-9442509.html

¹⁸

Samm Sacks, ‘China’s emerging data privacy system and GDPR’, Commentary, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 9 March 2018, online at: www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-emerging-data-privacy-system-and-gdpr

¹⁹

Cao Yin, ‘Illegal data collection by apps targeted’, China Daily, 26 January 2019, online at: www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201901/26/WS5c4ba316a3106c65c34e69ea.html

²⁰

Rogier Creemers, Paul Triolo, and Graham Webster, ‘Translation: Cybersecurity Law of the People’s Republic of China (Effective June 1, 2017)’, New America, 29 June 2018, online at: www.newamerica.org/cybersecurity-initiative/digichina/blog/translation-cybersecurity-law-peoples-republic-china/

²¹

Human Rights Watch, China: Police ‘Big Data’ Systems Violate Privacy, Target Dissent, New York: Human Rights Watch, 19 November 2017, online at: www.hrw.org/news/2017/11/19/china-police-big-data-systems-violate-privacy-target-dissent

²²

Nick Statt, ‘China is fighting toilet paper thieves with facial recognition software’, The Verge, 20 March 2017, online at: www.theverge.com/2017/3/20/14986640/china-toilet-paper-theft-facial-recognition-machine

²³

Nector Gan, ‘China’s internet regulator orders online AI algorithms to promote “mainstream values” ’, South China Morning Post, 11 September 2019, online at: www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3026784/chinas-internet-regulator-orders-online-ai-algorithms-promote

²⁴

Frank Hersey, ‘Almost 80% of Chinese concerned about AI threat to privacy, 32% already feel a threat to their work’, TechNode, 2 March 2018, online at: technode.com/2018/03/02/almost-80-chinese-concerned-ai-threat-privacy-32-already-feel-threat-work/

²⁵

Jeffrey Ding, Paul Triolo, and Samm Sacks, ‘Chinese interests take a big seat at the AI governance table’, New America, 20 June 2018, online at: www.newamerica.org/cybersecurity-initiative/digichina/blog/chinese-interests-take-big-seat-ai-governance-table/

²⁶

Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, Beijing AI Principles, Beijing: Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, 28 May 2019, online at: www.baai.ac.cn/blog/beijing-ai-principles

²⁷

See the OECD Principles on AI at: www.oecd.org/going-digital/ai/principles/; and the G20 AI Principles in: www.mofa.go.jp/files/000486596.pdf. China also signed on to the G20 AI Principles as a G20 member.

²⁸

Ana Swanson and Paul Mozur, ‘US blacklists 28 Chinese entities over abuses in Xinjiang’, The New York Times, 7 October 2019, online at: www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/us/politics/us-to-blacklist-28-chinese-entities-over-abuses-in-xinjiang.html

²⁹

Amy K. Lehr and Efthimia Maria Bechrakis, ‘The US blacklisted 28 Chinese entities over repression of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. What does this mean for human rights?’, Critical Questions, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 11 October 2019, online at: www.csis.org/analysis/united-states-blacklisted-28-chinese-entities-over-repression-muslim-minorities-xinjiang

³⁰

Cal Jeffrey, ‘Controversial search engine Project Dragonfly “terminated” Google VP tells Congress’, TechSpot, 17 July 2019, online at: www.techspot.com/news/81003-controversial-search-engine-project-dragonfly-terminated-google-vp.html

³¹

Sui-Lee Wee, ‘China uses DNA to track its people, with the help of American expertise’, The New York Times, 21 February 2019, online at: www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/business/china-xinjiang-uighur-dna-thermo-fisher.html?emc=edit_th_190222&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=878883400222

³²

Ibid.

³³

Sophie McNeill, Jeanavive McGregor, Meredith Griffiths, Michael Walsh, and Echo Hui, ‘UTS, Curtin unis announce reviews over links to surveillance tech used by Chinese Government’, ABC News, 16 July 2019, online at: www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-16/australian-unis-to-review-links-to-chinese-surveillance-tech/11309598

³⁴

James A. Lewis, Learning the Superior Techniques of the Barbarians: China’s Pursuit of Semiconductor Independence, China Innovation Policy Series, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, January 2019, online at: csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/190115_Lewis_Semiconductor_v6.pdf

³⁵

Lulu Yilun Chen, ‘China claims more patents than any country — most are worthless’, Bloomberg, 26 September 2018, online at: www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-26/china-claims-more-patents-than-any-country-most-are-worthless

³⁶

David Zweig and Huiyao Wang, ‘Can China bring back the best? The Communist Party organizes China’s search for talent’, The China Quarterly, 12 September 2013: 590–615.

³⁷

Steven Feldstein, ‘China is exporting AI surveillance technology to countries around the world’, Newsweek, 23 April 2019, online at: www.newsweek.com/china-ai-surveillance-technology-world-1403762

³⁸

Amy Webb, The Big Nine, New York: Public Affairs, 2019, p.120.

³⁹

Bing Song, ‘The West may be wrong about China’s Social Credit System’, The Washington Post, 30 November 2018, online at: www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/11/29/social-credit/?noredirect=on

⁴⁰

Charles Rollet, ‘China public video surveillance guide: From Skynet to Sharp Eyes’, IPVM, 14 June 2018, online at: ipvm.com/reports/sharpeyes

⁴¹

Alexandra Ma, ‘China reportedly made an app to show people if they’re standing near someone in debt — a new part of its intrusive “social credit” policy’, Business Insider, 23 January 2019, online at: www.businessinsider.com/china-app-shows-map-of-people-in-debt-for-social-credit-system-report-2019-1

NPC sets stage for Hong Kong natsec law

TRIVIUM CHINA

The National People’s Congress (NPC) approved a resolution on establishing a national security mechanism in Hong Kong today.

What that means: The NPC Standing Committee will now get to work drafting a national security law for the city.

• The new law will give the mainland security services the authority to operate in the city and punish acts that “threaten national security.”

Lawmakers have been touting the move (Xinhua 1):

• Bai Chunli, president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the legislative move is completely reasonable and legitimate.”
• “’It will certainly win the support of all Chinese people,’ Bai said.”

The law has drawn backlash from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (US DoS):

• “I certified to Congress today [May 27] that Hong Kong does not continue to warrant treatment under United States laws in the same manner as U.S. laws were applied to Hong Kong before July 1997.”

What that means: The US President can impose sanctions on Hong Kong.

Chinese officials say they don’t care (SCMP):

• These threats [by the US] are what we expected… We have prepared for the worst case scenario,’ said Ruan Zongze, [executive vice president] at China Institute of International Studies, a think tank under China’s foreign ministry.”

Get smart: There are a lot of unknowns here.

• We don’t know what will be in the national security law.
• We don’t know when the law will be passed.
• We don’t know how the law will be enforced.
• We don’t know what sanctions – if any – the US will impose.

Bottom line: Given all the unknowns, it’s too early to tell the practical implications for doing business in Hong Kong.
 

read more

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US DoS: PRC National People’s Congress Proposal on Hong Kong National Security Legislation
Xinhua: Chinese lawmakers deliberate draft decision on Hong Kong national security legislation
SCMP: China prepared for international backlash over Hong Kong national security law
Xinhua: National security legislation not to bring any changes to fundamentals of HK's financial system: monetary authority head
Xinhua: 香港商界：国家安全立法巩固香港国际金融中心地位

Baloch People’s Congress condemn nuclear test

Date: 27-May-2020 Ref No: B03/S001 

Press Release

 Baloch People’s Congress condemns in the strongest words Pakistan’s nuclear tests in Balochistan. It’s a violation of the United Nations treaty of nuclear non-proliferation (NTP) and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test 

BanTreaty (CTBT), as the nuclear tests on Baloch soil were against the consensus of Baloch Nation. Baloch People’s Congress insists on the implementation of CTBT, TPNW, and Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for 

Nuclear Damage INFCIR/556 for the responsible countries including sanctions on them for nuclear tests on 28th May 1998 and storage of Weapons of Mass Destruction on Baloch land against the will of Baloch Nation. 

The effects of nuclear radiation have spread in the entire region and the lives and health of millions of people are endangered as people are suffering from cancer, organ failure, and other mysterious diseases. The availability of potable water and the level of underground water has decreased drastically since 1998 because of nuclear radiation. 

The tests and nuclear facilities in Balochistan are the cause of destruction and contamination of the environment. There is an acute shortage of clean drinking water in urban and rural areas. A large segment of the population was forced to migrate to different locations as the region is badly suffering from drought and famine to date as a result of nuclear activity.

Pakistan’s nuclear experiments on 28th May 1998 have taken 1000’s of innocent lives, put families through unbearable pain due to numerous types of cancer, abnormal births, and destroyed the environment and ecology of our homeland beyond recovery. The lack of a remedy and international action in the past 22 years to provide justice to Baloch Land and Nation has deepened our scars.

We request the International community, UNODA, members of NTP, CTBT and TPNW and leaders of the free world to implement strict actions against Pakistan as her nuclear arsenal grows by the blessings of China. Due 

to the nature of a rogue and unstable state this arsenal of weapons of mass destruction can easily get in the hands of terrorists and can be a direct threat to the international community.

Baloch People’s Congress is proud to be led by the pioneer in the movement against the nuclearization of Baloch Land. As Islamabad announced the nuclear tests in Balochistan and was successful in silencing all the 

voices except the next morning, 16 May 1998 Prof. Naela Quadri Baloch (Chairperson BPC) with her students was on the streets of Shaal to protest for the preservation of our homeland, it was the first anti-nuclear 

protest in South Asia and BPC will continue the mission they started. It is, therefore, the national duty of every son and daughter of Baloch Nation to let the world know about what has happened and is happening in 

Balochistan, and continue the struggle to defend our homeland. 

Baloch Siddik Azad,

 Secretary 

General, Baloch People’s Congress balochpeoplescongress@gmail.com

The story of a weird world I was warned never to tell'

By Sarah McDermottBBC World Servic 22 February 2018

 
• Stories

The story of a weird world I was warned never to tell'

By Sarah McDermottBBC World Service

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Image captionPauline Dakin (Photo: Penguin)

Pauline Dakin's childhood in Canada in the 1970s was full of secrets, disruption and unpleasant surprises. She wasn't allowed to talk about her family life with anyone - and it wasn't until she was 23 that she was told why.

There was always something unusual about Pauline Dakin's family.

"My brother and I would say, 'What do you think is wrong with our family? Why are we so weird?' But that was the mystery that just didn't get answered."

Pauline's parents, Warren and Ruth, had separated when she was five, the summer before she started school. Warren, a successful businessman, was a heavy drinker who could become violent and a point came when Ruth just couldn't take it any more.

When Pauline was seven, Ruth took the children on a holiday to Winnipeg, more than 1,000 miles (1,600km) from their home in Vancouver. But when they arrived Ruth told them they were never going back.

"There was no opportunity to say goodbye, it was just this abrupt, severing of relationships," Pauline says.

Image captionWarren, Ruth, Teddy and Pauline, circa 1969

When she asked her mother why she had done this, there was never a good explanation.

"She would only say, 'I'm sorry, I can't tell you, when you're older I will tell you.'"

The same thing happened again four years later - this time the family moved to New Brunswick, on Canada's eastern coast.

Apart from this, life was quite normal for Pauline's family - they'd start again and build a new life in a new town. But below the surface Pauline was confused, anxious and falling into depression.

"I knew something bad was happening," she says. "I didn't know what it was, but there was always a sense of something dire that was unspoken."

By the time Pauline was 11 she'd attended six different schools in nearly as many years and had lost touch with her dad.

Image captionWith her mum and brother on her graduation day from the University of New Brunswick in 1987

But another man had come into the family's life, a church minister called Stan Sears. Pauline's mother had met Stan at a support group for the families of alcoholics - Stan was a counsellor there and Ruth had gone to him when she was struggling with Warren's drinking and preparing to leave him.

Both times that Pauline's family had disappeared Stan's family had moved in lockstep with them.

"So whatever had been going on they were part of, I knew that," Pauline says.

Once in New Brunswick, they put down roots. By 1988, at the age of 23, Pauline had graduated from university and was working on a local newspaper in the city of Saint John, when her mother telephoned with an unexpected proposal.

"She said, 'OK, I'm ready to explain all of these strange things that have happened throughout your life.'"

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Pauline Dakin spoke to Outlook on the BBC World Service

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Pauline was to meet her mother outside a motel halfway between the two cities they were living in. When she arrived, Ruth slipped a note and an empty envelope into Pauline's hands.

The note read: "Don't say anything. Take your jewellery off. Put it in the envelope. I'll explain, just don't talk."

"It was just the most bizarre thing," Pauline remembers. "I thought, 'Who are you? What are you doing ?' But I did what she told me."

Her mother took her to a motel room where Pauline was surprised to find Stan Sears waiting for them.

Stan and Ruth told Pauline that for the past 16 years they had been on the run from the mafia and that Pauline's family had been targeted because her father, Warren, had been involved in organised crime. She couldn't wear her jewellery because it needed to be tested for bugs.

Image captionWarren Dakin was a successful businessman

"It was unbelievable," Pauline says. "But I remember a feeling of terror coming over me that this might be something we could never escape."

Stan explained that it had all started after he had counselled a mafia kingpin who wanted to turn his back on his criminal past. When the mob discovered that the man had broken its code of silence and come to Stan for counselling they had assassinated him - and had then come after Stan thinking he probably knew too much.

Later, when Ruth - the embittered ex-wife of a mobster - had started working as a secretary at Stan's church, she too had become a target.

"I was then told that each of us had somebody following us, keeping an eye on us from a distance," Pauline says, "and that there had been many attempts to either kidnap, poison or kill me but that these agents had intervened to keep me safe many times over the years."

As well as this government-sanctioned taskforce, Stan also explained that there were shadowy communities - towns or villages in different parts of the country - where people who'd been targeted by the mafia could go into protective custody. This was known as the "weird world".

After years on the run, Pauline's mother said that she was going to "go inside" for protection. She was going to disappear again.

Stan was already living in one of these communities called Place of Hope, he said, but his wife hadn't wanted to go inside with him, so he was now living there alone and working in this weird world with its agents.

Image captionPauline aged about 23

Stan and Ruth told Pauline that this was their chance to finally be together, they had been in love for many years, but they had never been able to act on their feelings.

Pauline was in shock, it was too much to take in.

"I was sick with fear and sadness and it just felt like life was shattering all around me," she says.

Pauline spent that weekend listening to Stan and Ruth's stories, which explained many of the odd things that had happened while she was growing up, like the time she had come home to find her mother throwing away all the food from their fridge.

"The story at the time was that the food had gone bad, but I remember thinking, 'Ketchup and mustard don't go bad, there are things in there that don't go bad quickly. Why would you do that?'"

Stan explained that they had received word that somebody was trying to poison them, so everything had to be thrown away.

And there was the time her family had gone hiking in the middle of the school week and stayed overnight in a mountain cabin. People had been coming after them, Stan explained, and they had to get away for a day or two.

Then there was the day the family had skipped school to go bowling, and the time the children had come home from school and been rushed through the house, told to scrub their feet in the bath and made to wear plastic bags over their socks for the rest of the day.

There was a sinister reason for all of these strange episodes.

"As unbelievable as it sounds there were all these explanations that made pieces that had been so troubling fall into some kind of a pattern, a narrative," Pauline says.

Image captionStan and Ruth camping in the early 1990s

When it was time for Pauline to leave Stan asked if he could put a transmitter on her car to make it easier for the "good guys" to follow her and make sure she was safe. He also gave her a small transistor radio that he said had a broadcast function, so that Pauline could send a call for help.

"He warned me: 'Only use it if your life is really in danger because people will respond and put their life on the line for you.'"

Pauline returned to the home she was renovating with her boyfriend and to her job in the newsroom, but she was struggling to come to terms with what she'd been told and growing more and more fearful by the day.

She was constantly looking over her shoulder for people or cars that might be following her, and became too scared to eat at restaurants in case somebody tried to slip something into her food. She planned escape routes from inside her own home and assumed that her telephone line was bugged.

Over time more and more alarming information came from Stan and Ruth about the weird world, including the news that many people they knew weren't really the people they seemed to be.

"The story was that some people who had been around us during my childhood, who were involved with organised crime, had been picked up - arrested, killed or otherwise disappeared - and then replaced by doubles," Pauline says.

"Sometimes the double was put in place by the 'good guys' and sometimes the double would be put in place by the 'bad guys', so you were never 100% sure whose double it was. It was espionage."

The doubles, Stan explained, spent months studying home videos to learn how to behave convincingly, and used specialist plastic surgeons and make-up artists to perfect their disguises.

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Pauline encountered these doubles from time to time. On the day her brother got married, for example, she met her father and her aunt for the first time in years. Both, she was told, were doubles.

"My mother was so upset at that wedding because her sister was supposed to be a double," Pauline recalls. "She kept saying, 'But look at her toes, those are exactly Penny's toes, how could you make somebody else's toes look like that?'"

Pauline remembers looking at her dad that day. He had a nevus - a little overgrowth of cells just over the iris of his eye - how on Earth could it have been replicated, she wondered.

"But when I said that to Stan he said, 'Oh, it's contact lenses and there's prosthetics, and there's this and there's that.' There was always an answer," she says.

Pauline and her mother also received dozens of letters from people inside the weird world - from her father and godfather, for example, who were being held in a top secret prison there, Stan said. The handwriting always looked authentic, and the letters talked about things from their shared past.

They were convincing. "Who on Earth would have time to forge them if they weren't real?" Pauline wondered.

Image captionAn excerpt of a letter to Ruth and Pauline from inside the "weird world"

Despite being plagued by doubts, Pauline always had to acknowledge that the two people telling her this incredible story were her mother and Stan - the most trustworthy people she knew.

"It was a crazy story and I did have some challenges believing it," she says. "But if I couldn't trust them, who could I trust?"

Pauline began to feel that her work as a reporter covering school board meetings and town council meetings was irrelevant when her own life was in constant danger. And being sworn to secrecy had placed a gulf between her and her boyfriend, and everyone else in her life.

"I just thought, 'I can't live like this,'" Pauline remembers. She decided that she would go inside with her mother.

Stan told Pauline there was work inside that she could do, that there was a community of good people there that she could be part of. He was building a cottage for himself and her mother and said he could arrange for one to be built for her too. He brought her carpet samples and showed her plans and a photo of the horse that she would have.

Pauline left her job, sold her house and broke up with her boyfriend. She moved to Halifax in Nova Scotia, where she found work and a new home while she and her mother waited for word that it was safe to go inside.

"We were told there had been threats against family members and that if we were to disappear again all hell would rain down on anybody left behind," Pauline says.

"The intelligence gatherers were telling us [through Stan] that the mob had some sense that we might be planning to disappear so they were threatening us. We were always on hold."

Image captionPauline on her wedding day in 1990, with Stan, who gave her away

Pauline met Kevin who would later become her husband. Stan gave Pauline away on her big day - of course she couldn't invite her real father - and Kevin was allowed in on the dreadful secret. Kevin agreed that he would go inside too.

But the time was never right. By 1993, five years after she had been let into the secret, Pauline's doubts had reached a climax.

"I was at war with myself and I wanted to find some definitive way to prove it right or wrong," she says.

Pauline decided to set up a sting at a time she knew Stan was visiting her mother.

"I called her and said, 'Somebody's broken into my house. What should I do?'"

Pauline's mother replied: "I'll ask our friend and call you back."

Stan had made it clear to Pauline and Ruth that they must never go to the police to report any of the threats and strange goings-on in their lives - the police, he said, couldn't be trusted. If there was ever any trouble they should come to him and he would let them know if he got word of any plots that put them in danger. He had a special contraption implanted in his wallet for receiving messages.

"It would do a Morse code dash and dots message and he would then take out a little notepad and decipher it," Pauline says.

Ruth called Pauline back a few minutes later.

"I was terrified because it was the moment that I was going to get the answer to this horrible quandary that I'd been living with," she says

Ruth said she couldn't talk on the phone, Pauline must go to her house immediately.

Once there Pauline listened, horrified, as Ruth and Stan told her that two people had been picked up just down the street from her house earlier that day, that they had photographs of her, they had been following her and were looking for certain things in her house.

"When she said that I knew the whole thing was a hoax," Pauline says.

"Because there had been no break-in - I made it up.

"That was the moment I knew all of those severed relationships, all of the crazy running, all of the strangeness, it was all a lie."

Pauline was so shell-shocked and angry it was a week before she could confront her mother. When she did, Ruth was horrified and upset - but not because she believed Pauline's accusations against Stan. What worried her was that if Pauline no longer believed the story she would be putting herself in danger.

When Pauline confronted Stan he told her there must have been a mistake; the report about the men who had been picked up after searching her house must have been incorrect. There would be an investigation, he assured her.

"My memory of that night is how sad he was," she says, "I was no longer one of them."

Pauline spent months trying to convince her mother that Stan had been lying to them, while her mother tried to convince Pauline that she was wrong. They reached a stand-off.

"I was furious and resentful and I thought I hated Stan for a long time," Pauline says. "But I finally decided that my mother was not in on this. Stan was making it up, but I just couldn't think why he would have done it."

In her search for an answer, Pauline went to see a psychiatrist.

"I said, 'What do you think this could be? He's clearly not schizophrenic. He does not appear to be psychotic. He's a professional and well respected. People always talk about what a great guy he is, what could be going on?'"

The psychiatrist suggested that it sounded like a case of folie à deux - a syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief are transmitted from a dominant personality (Stan), to a less dominant personality (Ruth).

Pauline and her father, Warren, reconnected after many years. But he was by now quite ill with emphysema, and he'd started drinking again.

"I thought about telling him," Pauline says. "But then I thought it would enrage him and that would not be good for him. I just didn't think there was anything to gain from it."

Pauline's relationship with her mother never entirely recovered, though it improved when Pauline started a family.

Image captionPauline with her two daughters

"When I had children things changed," Pauline says, "because they became a focus for all our love."

Ruth developed cancer, which eventually killed her in 2010. But she spent the last nine months of her life living with Pauline.

"I hadn't fully forgiven her at that point, but we both knew that we were out of time to sort through this," Pauline says. "We had to find some place of peace, and eventually we did."

Ruth never stopped believing Stan's story, even after his death when the letters from the weird world dried up, there were no more messages about the activities of the mafia, and there couldn't really be any doubt it had all been a figment of his imagination.

"Shortly before she died she tried to warn me to be careful," Pauline recalls. "I said to her, 'I don't need to be any more careful than anybody else.'"

"And she said, 'Oh, Polly, if you don't believe this how you must've hated me.' And I said, 'No, I didn't hate you. I've been really angry at you, but I do love you.'"

Image captionPauline and her brother Ted

Four years ago, still trying to understand why Stan had concocted the elaborate hoax, Pauline came across an article in a medical journal about a condition called delusional disorder.

"As I read this article I thought, 'This completely describes Stan, somebody who is in every respect normal and competent, but has this crazy delusion,'" she says.

Pauline contacted the author of the paper, a psychiatrist at Harvard University. He was very excited to hear her story. Stan had all the hallmarks of a person with delusional disorder, he said. Another academic, the leading expert on the disorder, agreed.

Finding a reason for what Stan did to her family may have helped Pauline come to terms with her past, but it can't ever repair the damage that he did to their lives.

"I feel very sad for my mother," Pauline says.

"She had such a difficult life and she was vulnerable to Stan, mostly because he was a gentle, caring guy - too bad he had this terrible delusion.

"But I also feel sad for myself and my brother - two little kids whose lives were hijacked."

Pauline Dakin worked for many years for Canada's national broadcaster, CBC, and is now assistant professor at the school of journalism at the University of King's College, Halifax NS. She is the author of Run, Hide, Repeat: A memoir of a fugitive childhood, published by Viking.

All images courtesy of Pauline Dakin, unless stated otherwise.