No issue is more important in international politics today than the state of the relation between the US and China. That relation has, however, become increasingly unstable. Both sides may be moving to the brink of war. Here is a genuinely insightful piece on the topic by Ray Dalio, the founder and CIO of Bridgewater Investment.
China and Iran are among the most inhospitable places in the world for free expression. The two countries jail the most writers, 90 and 57 respectively, but also occupy the top two positions in PEN America’s Writers at Risk Database. Iran showed the largest increase, following ongoing nationwide protests in 2022, with 39 new cases of detention or imprisonment. Iran is also the largest jailer of women writers globally, with 16 of 42 women in custody being in Iran. China is not far behind, with 11 women writers behind bars.
Censorship of the digital media is a global problem. China is particularly active in controlling and restricting its citizens’ access to the media. This detailed report from Toronto University’s Citizen Lab examines how Chinese censorship works. The lessons to be drawn from the study have clearly much wider implications.
Missing Links: A comparison of search censorship in China – The Citizen Lab
How a triple whammy of censorship, Covid and Big Tech cuts left China’s media on its knees
Ji Siqi and Yuanyue Dang in Beijing
South China Morning Post
Published: 6:00am, 24 Apr, 2023
On the first Friday of this month, around 80 video reporters and editors attended a meeting on the sixth floor of The Beijing News building near the heart of the Chinese capital.
They had been summoned to witness the end of a six-year joint venture between what was formerly one of China’s most outspoken daily newspapers and the technology giant Tencent.
The official explanation given for the break-up was business restructuring, with daily management of the Wevideo team being returned to the state-owned paper. The team’s bold coverage had already been reined in as the authorities further consolidated their grip on the domestic media.
But, according to several people close to the matter, the direct cause was the withdrawal of investment from Tencent, which meant a quarter of the team’s workforce had to leave. The Beijing News and Tencent have yet to respond to requests for comment.
For the industry, many of the problems have already been there for 10 years, and they have kept worsening, especially in the past three yearsBeijing-based news editor
Wevideo’s fate tolled yet another bell for China’s media industry, which has been sinking rapidly in the past few years amid intensified censorship and an exodus of capital.
Many industries – especially in the private sector – have been weakened by regulatory crackdowns and the effects of a strict zero-Covid strategy that lasted for almost three years, but while some anticipate better times, for many Chinese media workers any talk of recovery is just wishful thinking.
“For the industry, many of the problems have already been there for 10 years, and they have kept worsening, especially in the past three years,” said a Beijing-based news editor who has been in the industry for 20 years. “Now it’s already the epilogue.”
While the pandemic added to the woes of the media industry around the world – from content creators to distributors – as advertising revenue dwindled further, stifling censorship has further accelerated the death of the market-oriented segment of the industry in China, where most news outlets are completely reliant on state funding and serve as propaganda tools.
It was also compounded by a slew of cost-cutting actions by China’s biggest technology firms in the face of economic headwinds, including exiting noncore businesses.
“The censorship has greatly exacerbated the dilemma,” the Beijing-based news editor said. “Capital has more and more concerns when entering the industry.
“If no capital is willing to enter any more, the industry will only wane.”
Eleven days after the Wevideo restructuring, the biggest fire in Beijing in decades broke out at a hospital, killing at least 29 people.
But in the following eight hours, not a single Chinese media outlet reported on the incident, and the army of online censors stamped out any mention on social media platforms.
Patients and doctors climb out windows to flee deadly fire at Beijing hospital
One former journalist, using the pseudonym Lilian Yang, said it was another level of censorship compared to her experience when covering another deadly fire that broke out in a building converted into tiny flats on the outskirts of Beijing in 2017.
Back then, videos about the fire started to trend on social media within minutes, and she and a few colleagues at the newspaper were sent to the scene immediately. Though she was asked to return to the office halfway through the day as the local authorities began to apply pressure, her colleagues managed to get a story published.
Similar pressure surfaced more frequently in the following two years, with more “red lines” about what could be reported gradually emerging. But the sharpest tightening began months after the Covid-19 pandemic began in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province.
“More and more topics were not allowed to be covered, and because we had fewer stories to do, our remuneration declined sharply,” she said.
She decided to join an exodus of reporters from the newspaper and, after a few attempts, found work at an online media outlet specialising in feature stories.
Unlike Chinese newspapers or magazines, all of which must be overseen by a government agency, online media outlets that distribute their content on social media platforms and news aggregation apps do not receive direct orders from the authorities, but the lack of state backing also means they face the risk of suspension or permanent closure if any content crosses the line set by the authorities.
About a year after she joined the new company, its accounts were banned by a range of platforms – with no reason given – and the team was later disbanded.
Such bans were “destructive” for content distributors, the Beijing-based news editor said, as their old names, or any new names including key elements from the old brands, were not allowed to be used if they tried to recreate their accounts.
That means more than 90 per cent of their old readers would be lostBeijing-based news editor
“That means more than 90 per cent of their old readers would be lost,” he said.
Meanwhile, the reasons behind suspensions or shutdowns were usually vague, and that led to more self-censorship.
“That means there is always a sword of Damocles hanging over your head, and sometimes self-censorship is stricter than external censorship,” he said.
“Because you don’t want to touch the ceiling of censorship, you always want to be a little farther away from the ceiling. But the point is, where is the ceiling? No one knows. So the self-censorship will only be stricter and stricter.”
In August, an influential health platform with tens of millions of followers called Dingxiang Yuan – also known as DXY – was suspended from publishing articles on all Chinese social media platforms for a month.
Regular employees at the science-based platform – also backed by Tencent – were not told the reasons for its suspension, said former staff writer Oscar Zhang – another pseudonym.
Previously, it had closely followed up pandemic lockdowns, debunked Covid-19 misinformation and criticised the government’s promotion of a traditional medicine called Lianhua Qingwen to treat the respiratory disease.
A month after the ban was lifted, Zhang was laid off and the features team he worked for dissolved, substantiating a rumour he had heard before the ban.
“Because DXY is also a tech company, it had to cut costs against the background of economic headwinds,” he said. “It was very difficult to bring the company direct benefits through pure content creation, thus teams like ours would bear the brunt.”
At the peak of the Chinese tech boom around 2016, tech giants such as Tencent and Alibaba began to aggressively build up media portfolios in the news and entertainment sectors. They are now beating a hasty retreat.
Ant Group, an affiliate of Alibaba, began to withdraw investments from various influential Chinese media outlets, including the financial magazine Caixin and tech news site 36Kr, in late 2021.
Apart from cost-cutting, a key driver behind the moves was a document issued by the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planning agency, in October 2021 that reiterated a ban on private enterprise investment in news organisations – a ban that had been enforced relatively laxly.
Tencent has also been downsizing its media-related workforce as it has pulled resources out of noncore business.
A staff writer for a Tencent News original content curation team focusing on in-depth analysis of the entertainment industry said she was laid off in the summer of 2022 along with all her teammates. On the same afternoon, a few other similar content creation teams working on different projects were also wiped out.
Everyone was very nervous, and all departments felt that they were going to be gone soonTencent News staff writer
There had been some signs of hardship months before, she said, as more project ideas were rejected because they were “unprofitable”.
“But in the past, the company would not think about it this way, as long as the content had social value the idea would be passed.” she said.
Then, at the beginning of the year, a few colleagues on her team were forced to leave due to unsatisfactory performance, and in the following months, as she anxiously watched the company gradually cut employee benefits – from masks to paper towels – she knew what was awaiting her.
“Everyone was very nervous, and all departments felt that they were going to be gone soon,” she said.
Across the globe, politics today is beset by illusions, conspiracy theories, apocalyptic visions, wishful thinking, false certainties, ungrounded ideologies – deceptive beliefs of all kinds. These delusions lead to terrible political choices and equally terrible outcomes.
It is urgent to return to the realities of politics, if we are to make sense of where we are and take care of what must be done to assure human survival and flourishing. Political realism is what the hour demands from us.
THE PROMISE AND PROBLEMS OF POLITUCAL REALISM
A conference at Berkeley, May 4-5
After the indictment of Donald Trump for paying hush money to a porn star so as not to damage his reputation with his evangelical base before the 2016 election, the Young Republicans put out a statement that illustrates perfectly the moral bankruptcy of current Republicanism. Trump, it proclaimed, “can be said to be our psyche from id to super-ego—as does no other figure; his soul is totally bonded with our core values and emotions.” Yes, indeed, their values are totally bonded with Trump’s. Who could say it better?
This is, unfortunately, no laughing matter given their threat to wage “total war.” We may want to call it the “hush money war” – a truly noble cause. But a threatened war, nonetheless.
Statement on President Trump’s Indictment
March 30, 2023
Today, our nation careens toward tyranny at an unprecedented pace. An impudent cabal of radical figures abandons all propriety in their dogged attacks on President Donald J. Trump. We have taken a decisive step away from the values that define our national character.
Every utterance that has escaped these monsters’ lips since President Trump first came down the escalator has built toward this moment; each falsehood, each misdirection, each deliberate misportrayal found its culmination in Alvin Bragg’s desperate action today.
Radical leftist interests, beholden to an elite, internationalist cabal have taken the unprecedented step of indicting President Donald J. Trump, the leading candidate for the 2024 presidential election.
Every American feels today the solid grasp of the Fifth Column on his throat; henceforth, we must openly acknowledge what so many have long known: that control of our nation’s fate has long been prised from our grasp. Let anyone who celebrates this downfall of our republic be forever branded a traitor to our nation. No one who mocks the people’s will can claim the title of an American.
President Trump embodies the American people—our psyche from id to super-ego—as does no other figure; his soul is totally bonded with our core values and emotions, and he is our total and indisputable champion. This tremendous connection threatens the established order.
The fix has always been “in” against our President, but his motivation and love for the American people drove him to pursue the national excellence that his unique vision perceived lay within our reach. In doing so, he opened so many eyes to reality.
Last summer, in Tampa Florida, addressing a crowd of thousands of youths, President Trump stated that if he backed down from challenging the regime, he would have been left alone. That the regime now sheds the mask of “democracy” and unveils its true and hideous face shows how committed President Trump is to standing with the people. Every American owes him thanks.
Despite our tremendous success holding marquee protests in Manhattan for critical rightwing causes, today we remain at home. Let our silence be a condemnation of the captivity of our nation; a polemic on the state of our republic. We will not allow another Fedsurrection; we will not be pawns in the Deep State’s perpetual effort to delegitimize Americans’ fundamental right of assembly.
President Trump assured us that he was our retribution. Now we must return the rejoinder: our victory will be the joint vindication that our great President Donald J. Trump and our American people both deserve. This is Total War.
The US appears increasingly faced with an unwanted coalition of opponent states. The question is how to deal with that situation. Daniel Drezner of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy has just published some helpful thoughts on the matter.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/03/19/us-china-russia-relations-00087633
Drezner is surely right in arguing that the US should seek to prevent the emerging coalition of China, Russia, and Iran (plus, potentially North Korea) from hardening into a solid political, economic, and military alliance of hostile forces. He concludes that “given the unsteady state of the world, repairing the Sino-American relationship is the option that offers the most promise.” This is, undoubtedly, a reasonable proposal. but is it a realistic one? Drezner understands that it is an option that both President Joe Biden and his Republican opponents are unlikely to embrace in the current unstable state of American politics.
But it is not only the condition of American politics that makes a rapprochement with China difficult to achieve. For it is far from clear that China’s president Xi Jinping would allow his coalition-building with Russia and Iran to be interrupted. For economic reasons, it would certainly be in the interest of China to keep its relations with the US and its allies on course. But are economic considerations first and foremost in Xi’s mind? Xi’s words may suggest that they are, but the evidence of his actions speaks differently. They reveal, instead, a great deal of belligerence on Xi’s part driven by his ideological commitments rather than utilitarian calculations.
This new collection contains my piece on “Facts, Possibilities, and the World: Three Lessons from the Tractatus”
The other day I came across a reference to The War against the West – a book on Nazi ideology published in 1938 by a Hungarian philosopher. The discovery was, like all real discoveries, unexpected. Having noted a volume on Weimar intellectuals on my bookshelf by Wolfgang Bialas I had searched the internet to find out what my old acquaintance had been up to. It turned out that among other things he had edited a volume of essays on The War against the West – a book he called the most penetrating analysis of Nazi ideology.
That certainly sparked my interest, since I had long obsessed about that weird amalgam of beliefs. But what really caught my attention was that the author of the volume turned out to be Aurel Kolnai, who had been one of my colleagues at the University of London at the beginning of my teaching career. A lecturer at Bedford College, he was an elderly, odd looking man whom I saw here and there at various official occasions. He was, I found out, a Hungarian exile, a refugee from both Nazism and Communism. He was also a devout Catholic and he had written a book on sex and disgust in which dicey passages were composed in Latin. I had heard all this from my friend Bernard Williams who considered Kolnai to be an interesting and original philosopher. But I never made any attempt to learn more about him at that time.
Bialas’ words, however, made me curious. Our library catalogue showed that we had a number of Kolnai’s books in Berkeley. One of the was called A Political Memoir. I have a long-standing interest in philosophical autobiographies and memoirs – asking myself how philosophers sought to interpret their own lives in philosophical terms. A Political Memoir seemed ta good place to get some quick insight into Kolnai’s thinking. After that I could turn to the 700 pages of the War against the West.
The Political Memoir has turned out to be a fascinating opening into an unusual mind. I find myself glued to its pages. Kolnai was born in 1900 into a Jewish Hungarian family. The story he tells of the first fifty-five years of his life is at the same time the story of Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. He reveals himself as a keen and discerning observer of the terrible things that were transforming the world. Essential to his story is his conversion to Catholicism from an indifferent attachment to the Jewish religion when he is in his late twenties. But his course on that road is far from usual. He acquires early on a devotion to the work of G. K. Chesterton, the English Catholic writer, and it is this influence that determines his conversion. Kolnai is, in fact, in his own words an “Anglomaniac.” He admires, in particular, the conservatism of the English. When he finally gets to London he feels, at last, at home though financial worries will eventually take him to teach in America. A Political Memoir depicts an unusual person writing about his own times and himself in an intelligent and highly individual fashion. Now I feel that I need to read more of Kolnai’s works.
What a surprise!
Chung Pui-Kuen, the former editor of the now defunct Hong Kong STAND NEWS, is currently on trial for publishing a number of “seditious” articles. Stand News trial: Ex-Hong Kong editor accused of sedition says politicians should be free to criticise authorities – Hong Kong Free Press HKFP (hongkongfp.com)
In defense of his editorial decisions Chung has told the court that “the space for free speech should permit the most fierce criticism and accusations, especially when the target is the authorities,” because government corruption might otherwise be the result. And he warned that “the government’s suppression of critical voices or opinions will cause hatred more easily” than any articles published in Stand News. Chung defended, in particular, the publication of two interviews with two politicians from the democratic opposition.
It was important that their voices were heard and preserved for the historical record, he argued, “Some would say journalism is to provide the first draft of history. While it can be flawed, incomplete, or with potential mistakes… at least it provides a basis for future discussions.”
Chung’s words are particularly remarkable because they were spoken at the same time as Hong Kong’s big show trial against 47 of its former democratic leaders is under way. His words sounded like a ringing defense of their right to speak and to hold the opinions they did. Their trial is certainly extraordinary. The 47 are accused of behavior that in other places would be considered part of the normal business of politics: organizing to win an election, trying to select the most promising candidates, proposing to stop the government’s budget, if they won a majority, and possibly even forcing the government to resign. But the authority’s understanding seems to have been that they were allowed to run only as long as they would not win and would be unable to enact their proposed policies.
Agency, Democracy, and Contemporary China:
Workshop on Jiwei Ci’s Political Philosophy
Monday, February 6th 2023, 10:00–18:00
Art History Seminar Room, East Asian Library, UC Berkeley
(First Floor of the C. V. Starr East Asian Library, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States)
Schedule
(In Berkeley PST unless Noted)
Each presenter will have 40 minutes for both the presentation and Q&A. The recommended length of the presentation is 15 to 20 minutes so that we will have some good time for discussion. However, presenters can choose to structure the 40 minutes in ways they prefer. The Zoom link for remote participants is what follows:
https://stanford.zoom.us/j/98656476041?pwd=dVVNd2VtT1pBS3Q3bmhCbjR6VXRXZz09
10:00: Opening remarks by Simon Sihang Luo, Shoufu Yin, and Wenqing Zhao
10:10: John Dunn (Cambridge University) (Note: 18:10 London GMT)
10:50 Michael Nylan (University of California, Berkeley)
11:30 End of the Morning Session
11:30-13:00 Informal Lunch
13:00 Hans Sluga (University of California, Berkeley)
13:40 Timothy Cheek (University of British Columbia)
14:20 Simon Sihang Luo (Stanford University)
15:00 Short break
15:20 Trenton Wilson (Princeton University) (Note: 18:20 Princeton EST)
16:00 Closing Remarks and Final Roundtable: Jiwei Ci (University of Hong Kong) (8:00 Hong Kong CST) and Nicholas Tampio (Fordham University)
18:00 Dinner for presenters and invited guests
Contact (in case needed):
Simon Sihang Luo: +1 917 691 8374
Shoufu Yin: +1 510 708 1493
