Espionage Mandate
No matter the domestic political divisions these days, there seems little doubt that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as the monopoly power in the government of mainland China, is hostile to the modern industrial West. It isn’t as if the CCP made any effort to hide this hostility, either. What may be more surprising is just how overt the attitude is as expressed in official policy.
Andreas Fulda, a China scholar at the University of Nottingham in the UK, is an academic who has studied, taught, and written extensively on contemporary China. His critical work explaining the Chinese government has earned him official hostility in China and even at home. His writings include items like the one this article is excerpted from:
In 2023, China’s party-state revised its anti-espionage law, broadening its definition of what constitutes national security threats and espionage. It means Western businesspeople, academics, and journalists are increasingly at risk in China.
Even conventional methods of gathering information – such as conducting due diligence on supply chains – may be considered unlawful under the law’s ambiguous provisions.
Foreign executives have been banned from leaving China due to business disputes. After three years of being denied exit from China, Irish businessman Richard O’Halloran, who was a director at CALS Ireland (China International Aviation Leasing Service), was only reunited with his family in January 2022.
The long arm of the Chinese law reaches far into other countries when it comes to speech the CCP finds objectionable. It starts with Chinese nationals living abroad, whose families in China are used as hostages by the regime if the nationals criticize their homeland while abroad. Other Chinese citizens living in the same country may be forced to monitor their fellows and report back lest their families at home lose their jobs or apartments, or find themselves brought in for police interrogation.
This extends well into ethnic Chinese emigrant communities outside mainland China, whose members are approached by strangers working for the Chinese state unofficially—strangers who pressure them conform, to show loyalty to their roots and heritage. It even goes so far as for non-Chinese citizens of foreign countries to experience virtual and even real pressure campaigns against them for speaking critically of CCP rule, if these critics are reckoned to be influential enough to merit aggressive pressure campaigns.
Xi’s CCP is a paranoid police state, to put it simply—one that recognizes no boundaries when it comes to exerting pressure even far away from home. Domestic companies with ties to and business with China are similarly expected to conform and self-censor, to keep quiet about China if they don’t have something good to say.
It would be fair to imagine that this campaign has had a significant influence on how we perceive China nowadays, through a lens that is far too rosy and insufficiently critical. One can only hope that our own governments are doing enough to counter this type of aggression, perhaps using means and methods that are subversive and out of plain view.
The pressure campaigns orchestrated by the CCP are meant to work the systems of open and democratic societies by subverting the system of free speech and the right to petition our political leaders. These campaigns are undoubtedly working. The question is to what extent.
Hi. I have some free time this week but also a big to-do list. On that list is a Liz Cheney update. Maybe tomorrow.
Hello Everyone!
Yes, I am still alive is bedraggled and frantic...lol..this is gonna be long, I apologize, been a while
It has been a rough two weeks...the eye news ( getting the new glasses tomorrow morning, though I don't think they help with this. Crazy Holiday schedule and stuff...and then there is the end of the year stuff at work. complicated by the fact that QB is discontinuing their desktop version and I have to go online...started this process last week, and I still have not migrated to the online in a way that I can work with it yet...I need to talk to 100 specific specialist ( slight exaggeration...lol)..I had to cancel the payment I made for the year for the regular QB and the payroll part ( which I don't need except for figuring the taxes for me., and NO WAY am I linking my bank account to them and letting them manage the whole thing...sigh...then they charged me a monthly fee at the non discounted rate, which I will have to fix, once they get the migration right ( the Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet totals aren't matching and looks like the Payroll stuff didn't migrate and I have to recreate that...double sigh...then the way I pay my payroll taxes online has changed and I have to wait a week for them to MAIL ME a new code...triple sigh
I finally got my new laptop to behave, as long as it doesn't backslide...lol..during which I had to uninstall and reinstall Google, and then reset the whole computer, which was long, but, the real pain was recovering Google and my personal email once I did that everything else was easy
I have been reading headlines to keep up, and listen to a few pods, but, I haven't posted anywhere in like two weeks, I don't think. and I am avoiding bad news things as much as I can.
The Dispatch for some reason turned off all my newsletter and pod subscriptions, Ryan told me to reset the password, that didn't work, then he said I got on a list of people who wanted them all turned off, so he took me off the list, but, that was Friday and even with a slow week end, today I should have gotten something...if I was conspiracy minded ( I did, btw, re check them all and they just disappeared again). I would thin someone over there doesn't like me and did this on purpose...lol
All that said, as tired as I am and it won't quit till the end of the month and maybe beyond if I can't get all my EOY stuff done...I did have an awesome Christmas, though I did get THREE 2023 Holiday Barbies, (lol)but all of them are the blonde one...I am trying to get the brown haired , but not dark skinned one, but they want $65 to $100 dollars for one on Ebay and I just refuse to pay that...my sister is returning one and will give me cash, the other two people don't save receipts...sigh...thinking of putting the third one on E-Bay and selling it for a reasonable price ...
Ok, sorry for the book, I miss you guys a lot and some day I hope to be able to be more regular again
XO
I have an adorable pic of one of my kitties and if I can figure out how to link it I will share...
I had to undergo an Unemployment and BWC audit, both of which I was proved correct...and they both owe me money>>