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Evidence shows that Dahua Technology Is behind Xinjiang’s Surveillance Network

IPVM, a U.S. based company focusing on video surveillance, released a video report on Thursday, November 5, which revealed a secret it discovered in the products of Dahua Technology, a partially state-owned publicly traded company based in China which sells video surveillance products and services. The report stated that the wording “EM_NATION_TYPE_UYGUR” was found in the code of a product downloaded from Dahua Technology’s website.

These English words mean “ethnic type: Uyghur.” Next to these words are the Chinese characters of “维族 (新疆),” meaning “Uyghur (Xinjiang).” One can tell that this video surveillance software has a facial recognition function for Uyghur facial features.

IPVM contacted Dahua Technology for an explanation, but Dahua declined to comment. IPVM reported that the relevant information on Dahua Technology’s website was deleted about 30 minutes after IPVM made the contact.

Dahua Technology, headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, is one of China’s largest artificial intelligence companies. As of 2019, it occupied the second largest share of the global video surveillance equipment and service market, with an annual revenue of US$3.7 billion. The company has 16,000 employees.

Governments around the world have strongly condemned the concentration camps in Xinjiang that imprison millions of Uyghur Muslims. The huge video surveillance network has enabled Chinese police to arrest and repatriate Uyghur Muslims who had fled across the country.

Dahua and many artificial intelligence companies in China have participated in the construction of this network. They use artificial intelligence technology to design facial recognition software based on the facial features of the Uighurs, and they help the police to achieve all-round control of the Uighurs. Wherever Uighurs flee, they will be located quickly, detained or deported.

IPVM discovered that more than a dozen public security units in China have installed such software. Dahua claims it has won almost $1 billion in massive Xinjiang police surveillance deals.

The US government sanctioned Dahua in October 2019 because of its complicity in human rights abuses against Uyghurs. In response, Dahua bragged about how this showcased its “strong technology.” South China Morning Post reported that, last month, the company changed its product brand and still promoted its products on Amazon.

Dahua Technology’s main competitors are Hikvision, Megvii Technology, SenseTime and Yitu Technology. All of them have participated in the Xinjiang video surveillance network projects. Several of them are also on the United States’ sanctions list.

Source: Voice of America, November 5, 2020
https://www.voachinese.com/a/Dahua-racist-Uyghur-tracking-revealed-20201105/5649563.html

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology

Chinese Officials Sacked for “Carrying Politically Problematic Books”

China’s Hunan provincial government website announced on October 29 that Chen Zehui, a former deputy mayor of Changsha city, was expelled from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and transferred to the procuratorial organ for investigation and prosecution. The notice alleges that Chen violated political discipline and that he purchased books and periodicals from abroad, which had serious political problems, stored them privately, and read them for a long time. Other charges include the violation of the CCP’s code of conduct, the acceptance of gifts of particularly large amounts, and suspicion of taking bribes.

A highlighted charge is about purchasing and reading “banned books.” A civil rights activist Huang Xiaomin told Radio Free Asia that, “The purpose is definitely to nip it in the bud and punish a few individuals as an example to others. It is to intimidate officials who wanted to spread views dissenting from those of the CCP.  …  One main reason is that some open-minded officials are increasingly aware of the problems in the current Chinese society.”

Similar incidents occurred in Huainan city of Anhui province. According to the Supreme People’s Procuratorate’s website, in June, Li Zhong, the former deputy mayor of Huainan City along with a member of the CCP committee of the city government, were investigated and disciplined for violating political discipline, bringing in books and magazines with serious political problems into the country without permission, as well as embezzling public funds.

Another mainland Chinese newspaper Beijing News reported in March that Li Bin, a mid-level officer at Chongqing city’s police bureau, was probed for “serious violation of discipline and the law.” The authorities accused Li of “losing his ideals and secretly bringing books with serious political problems into the country and reading and storing them.”

Source: Radio Free Asia, November 2, 2020
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/zhengzhi/QL-11022020035358.html

Briefings | | |   Government/Politics

Global Times: China Announced Sanctions against U.S. Companies

Global Times recently reported that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced sanctions against U.S. companies including Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon. The sanctions were in response to the U.S. Arms sales to Taiwan. This happened five days after the United States announced its US$1.8 billion defense sales to Taiwan for a HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System), SLAM-ER (Standoff Land Attack Missile-Expanded Response) extended range air-to-surface missiles, F-16 fighter jet new reconnaissance pod, and more. The Chinese announcement indicated these U.S. companies (and individuals) played a very ugly role in threatening China’s national interests. The deal may also extend to General Atomics’ unmanned aircraft and Boeing’s land-based harpoon anti-ship missiles, which may add another US$24 to the sales. China took this as a serious violation of the ‘One China’ principle and the provisions of the three Sino-US Joint Communiqués. It was also a serious interference in China’s internal affairs.

Source: Global Times, October 26, 2020
https://world.huanqiu.com/article/40RU7MbCRhr

Briefings | | |   US-China Relations

China’s State Banks’ Profits Fall and Bad Debts Rise

China’s big five state banks announced their financials on Friday October 30 and stated that their profits and debts have continued to deteriorate.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), which has the largest number of assets, posted a 4.7 percent decline in third-quarter profits.

The Bank of Communications (BoCom) reported a drop in net profits of 12.36 percent year-on-year in the first three quarters. The bank’s non-performing loan ratio was 1.67 percent, an increase of 0.2 percentage points from the end of the previous year.

The Bank of China’s net profit dropped 8.7 percent year-on-year, and the group’s asset impairment losses were nearly 100 billion yuan, an increase of 60 percent year-on-year. The total debt was 22.6 trillion yuan, an increase of 8.68 percent over the end of the previous year. The non-performing loan ratio was 1.48 percent, an increase of 0.11 percentage points over the end of the previous year.

According to Chinese media, in the first half of this year, at least 1,300 bank outlets and branches were closed. A total of 26,000 state bank employees were laid off.

China’s Securities Daily newspaper quoted Pan Helin, a professor from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law. He stated that, although only a small portion of the publicly listed banks disclosed their third-quarter financial reports, they are the best performers in the industry and their profitability is stronger than the unlisted banks. Among the large number of unlisted banks, based on the financial reports of nearly a hundred companies that have already disclosed their financial performances, profits have fallen sharply. According to Securities Daily, the proportion of loss-making companies is as high as 75 percent. 31 companies saw a double digit drop in net profits.

Reuters reported that Guo Yi, an analyst with Wanlian Securities, said the degree of economic recovery will impact expectations for the asset quality of banks, with banks likely to see corporate loan repayment pressure peaking around mid-2021.

Earlier in the year, the Chinese government asked banks to lower mortgage standards in order to reduce corporate losses and curb the impact of the epidemic. The government also asked banks to delay corporate loan repayments to increase economic liquidity. It is hard to tell how many bad loans will be brought to the banks through the use of this measure. Experts believe that the consequences will be unraveled in the next few months.

Source: Voice of America, October 30, 2020
https://www.voachinese.com/a/China-banks-seen-facing-persistent-bad-loan-pressures-after-third-quarter-earnings-drop-20201030/5641898.html

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources

U.N. Gave Names of Uighur Dissidents to China, Said Former Employee

Emma Reilly, a former employee of the United Nations Human Rights Council, said in an interview with a British radio station on Sunday that the UN Human Rights Council secretly provided the Chinese government with the names of Uyghur dissidents who came to the Human Rights Council to testify against China’s human rights violations, and that this situation has lasted for many years.

Reilly said that before each meeting of the UN Human Rights Council, the Chinese government would ask the United Nations whether specific individuals were planning to attend the session. Her boss provided the Chinese government with a list of Uyghur dissidents.

Reilly said, “It is completely against the rules to hand over that kind of information to any government, but the UN makes an exception for China, and only for China. It gives them the names, and China uses that information to harass these people’s family members who are still based in China.”

Reilly said she has been denouncing this since 2013, and this has been going on for years. For speaking out, the UN deprived Reilly of all functions.

The U.S. Congress is now investigating Reilly’s allegations against the UN. Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), an outspoken critic of China, told the Washington based Free Beacon that he is investigating the allegations in his role as the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s lead Republican.

“The U.N. was founded on protecting human rights,” McCaul said. “If this report is true, it is very troubling. We are looking into these allegations.” Sources at the Foreign Affairs Committee also confirmed they are probing the allegations, which could implicate the U.N. in China’s efforts to spy on the Uighur community.

Source: Voice of America, November 3, 2020
https://www.voachinese.com/a/un-misconduct-report-probed-11032020/5646966.html

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

Global Poll Showed Overwhelming Negative Reviews of China for the Pandemic

Taiwanese news site NewTalk recently reported that, according to a global poll commissioned by the British newspaper The Guardian, China’s handling of the pandemic received an overwhelming negative score. Out of 25 countries surveyed, around 80 percent of the people in 24 countries recognized China as the origin of the virus, and that the Chinese government spent a significant effort on covering it up as well as shirking its responsibilities. China is the only country in which the sample population questioned the belief that the government was leading the global anti-pandemic operations. The international poll surveyed 26,000 people in 25 countries, and is for now the poll with the widest coverage. The global population (except China) clearly felt disappointed at how the Chinese dealt with the virus, and how the Chinese diplomats feverishly faked an image of a selfless helper to the world. Among the countries holding China responsible, Nigeria (98 percent), Greece (97 percent), South Africa (97 percent) and Spain (96 percent) were leaders in the poll. Saudi Arabia (83 percent) and the United States (84 percent) were the most generous toward China. Only 52 percent of the Chinese people surveyed thought the virus originated in China and 90 percent of the Chinese believed China was the biggest leader in the world against the virus, while nearly nobody else in the world recognized that leadership.

Source: NewTalk, October 29, 2020
https://newtalk.tw/news/view/2020-10-29/486108

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

Huawei in the Submarine Fiber Optic Cable Market

Submarine fiber optic cables are considered one of the most important infrastructures in the digital age. They carry almost all Internet information transmissions around the globe. In recent years, China has risen rapidly in this field, which Western companies have traditionally dominated. Among the 400 some submarine optical cables in the world, the Chinese telecom company Huawei Marine has constructed or upgraded 105 of them.

TeleGeography, a Washington based telecommunications market research and consulting firm, has been mapping the world’s submarine cables. The latest statistics show that there are currently 406 submarine cables in the world. Alan Mauldin, the company’s research director, told Voice of America (VOA) that although China’s Huawei Marine has a relatively small market share, it has become one of the world’s four largest submarine cable contractors and has constructed most of the world’s submarine cables. The other three are SubCom in the U.S., the Alcatel Group in France, and NEC in Japan.

Huawei Marine was once a subsidiary of Huawei. After the U.S. launched a series of sanctions against Huawei in June of last year, Huawei sold the company to Hengtong, China’s other top fiber optic cable manufacturer. Hengtong claims to be a private enterprise. Its founder, Cui Genliang, is both the chairman of the group and the head of the company’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) committee.

According to data from Huawei Marine’s official website, the company has so far built or upgraded 105 submarine cables around the world. One recent project in December 2015 was the upgrade of the West Africa Submarine Cable System (WACS) that provides high-speed network access for 14 countries along the west coast of Africa from South Africa to the United Kingdom.

China’s state media People’s Daily reported last week that Chinese companies have not only become important global integrators in the construction of submarine cables, but also possess the world’s leading optical communication technology in submarine cable transmission, with “the production and sales of optical fiber cables accounting for more than half of the world’s market share.”

Compared with Huawei’s mobile communication equipment, the security risks posed by China’s submarine cable business have rarely been mentioned. However, in recent months there have been signs that the United States has begun to pay close attention. In April this year, the U.S. Department of Justice rejected the inclusion of Hong Kong in a fiber optic cable network across the Pacific Ocean due to national security considerations. The project, Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN), involves a number of technology companies in the United States, including Facebook and Google. The original plan for the optical cable’s landing station in Hong Kong was to be operated by China’s Chengdu Dr. Peng Telecom & Media Co., Ltd. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a press release: “Routing undersea cables through Hong Kong would provide the People’s Republic of China with a strategic opportunity to collect the private information of our citizens and sensitive commercial data. Hong Kong is subject to intrusive Chinese government laws that put the Chinese Communist Party’s demands for information ahead of the privacy of U.S. consumers.”

Earlier this year, the U.S. State Department put forward an initiative to protect network infrastructure, which also included submarine cables in the five major clean areas. So far, more than 40 countries have responded to the US’s “Clean Network” initiative.

In addition, a member of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently called for a more rigorous review of submarine cables. Geoffrey Starks, who once served in the U.S. Department of Justice, said the FCC “must ensure that adversary countries and other hostile actors can’t tamper with, block, or intercept the communications they carry.”

Source: Voice of America, October 31, 2020
https://www.voachinese.com/a/us-china-battle-over-submarine-cables-20201031/5642937.html

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology

Grain Companies Issued Notice of Increase in the Price of Rice

Two price increase notices that the grain companies in Hunan and Jiangxi provinces issued in October have been circulating on the Internet. A notice from Jiangxi province stated that COVID 19 and natural disasters this year affected several major grain producing areas across the country Some areas had rain for two consecutive months prior to the harvest season, so overall rice production dropped by about 30 percent compared to previous years. The notice predicted that the minimum increase per ton of rice would be between 200 and 500 yuan (US$30-75). A notice from a grain company in Hunan province stated that the reduced grain production output has resulted in the price being highly competitive. Therefore, the purchase price of the rice will be based on the market rate on the day of the purchase.

Due to flooding in dozens of provinces across the country, along with pest infestation, droughts, and hail this year, China has seen much lower grain production compared to prior years. The grain that the state-owned grain warehouse received was only two-thirds of last year’s level. The official CCTV reported that in previous years farmers would go to the market to sell their grain, but this year the grain merchants have been visiting the farmers homes to buy grain. The price for corn even reached 2600 yuan (US$389) per ton, the highest in the last four years.

According to China’s agricultural commodity futures website, China recently granted a rice import license to 43 rice companies in Myanmar. The reason it switched from its major rice importing countries such as India, Vietnam and Thailand this year was because these countries have either refused to sell, have restricted grain exports, or have increased the price.

Source: Aboluowang, October 31, 2020
https://www.aboluowang.com/2020/1031/1518272.html

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources