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China’s Surveillance Industry Produces New Generation of Billionaires

The Chinese surveillance industry, a network of hundreds of millions of cameras, is generating more and more tycoons. The four billionaires with the largest amount of money have total assets exceeding $12.1 billion.

Gong Hongjia, founder of Hikvision, has a net worth of 7.2 billion. Dai Lin, chairman of the board of Tiandy’s, is estimated to have a personal wealth of 1.4 billion. The other two billionaires are Fu Liquan, the chairman of Dahua Tech, and Huang Li, the head of Wuhan Guide Infrared Co.

In 2015, Dai Lin developed the industry’s first infrared-free 24-hour full-color camera and in 2016 he launched the Ultra-Low Light Box Camera, which delivers high resolution color pictures in a dark environment at 0.0008 lux illumination. Dai Lin’s facial recognition system, which was developed in 2017, can achieve a recognition accuracy of more than 90 percent.

Human rights organizations worry that China’s use of surveillance technology for big data collection is used to strengthen social control and intensify the government’s suppression of civil rights. Out of national security considerations, the U.S. government has blacklisted products from Hikvision and Dahua from official purchases.

China plans to implement a comprehensive and real time public security monitoring network by 2020. According to official data, the Chinese government’s domestic security spending in 2017 accounted for 6.1 percent of total government spending, or about 1.2 trillion yuan (US$180 billion).

Source: Central News Agency, February 23, 2019
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/201902230205.aspx

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology

RFA: Foreign Students Spread Chinese Ideology in Western Countries

Recently, in two incidents, Chinese students used language on campus to attack Tibetans and Uighurs who differed from China’s official values. Radio Free Asia reported that some analysts have said foreign students have been spreading Chinese ideology in Western countries.

Chemi Lhamo, a Tibetan female student in Canada, was elected as the president of the student union, which triggered a reaction from the Chinese students. They accused Lhamo of being for “Tibetan independence” and posted harsh messages on Lhamo’s social media accounts.

In addition, at the Xinjiang Re-education Camp lecture that McMaster University recently held in Canada, a Chinese student suddenly screamed at the speaker, former Canadian Uyghur President Rukiye Turdush, and made a number of swearing slurs. Prior to the lecture, Chinese students in a WeChat group had discussed how to plan the disruption of the lecture and also informed the Chinese Consulate of the activity.

The two incidents seem to have had the effect, gradually, of increasing the outside world’s realization that China’s nationalist sentiments are on the rise in the West. Chinese students seem to be extremely sensitive when dealing with ethnic issues involving Tibet and Xinjiang.

The two incidents on the Canadian university campus are similar to the experience of Wang Qianyuan, a Chinese student at Duke University, and Yang Shuping, a Chinese student at the University of Maryland. Wang Qianyuan tried to reconcile a confrontation between a pro-Chinese government group and some independent Tibetan demonstrators; Yang Shuping publicly criticized China’s air quality. They all suffered from a large number of Chinese “Fenqing” (referring to Chinese youth who display a high level of Chinese nationalism) because what someone did or said did not conform to the choices of the Chinese government.

One interviewee told RFA that, even after the students who are brainwashed in China step outside of China, they continue to spread the Chinese (party) ideology on foreign campuses. These Chinese students stick with each other and have little interaction with the mainstream society in the country where they live. They interact with each other using Chinese social media. Their behavior will cause resistance and resentment against the Chinese community overseas because it is not easy for many Canadians, as in these cases, to tell the difference between Chinese government and Chinese foreign students. At the same time, it is not easy for these Chinese students to exercise their individual rights. When they study abroad, the Chinese government constantly monitors their behavior and activities.

Source: Radio Free Asia, February 15, 2019
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/shaoshuminzu/hj-02152019095052.html

Briefings | | |   Government/Politics

RFA: Two More Confucius Institutes Closed in Holland and in the U.S.

The famous Dutch university, Leiden University, announced on February 19 that it will close its Confucius Institute at the end of August this year. The university posted an official statement on its website stating that, since “the Confucius Institute’s activities no longer align with the University’s China strategy and the direction that it has taken in recent years,” therefore it will end the contract with the Confucius Institute when it expires on August 31, 2019.

In addition, the University of Minnesota announced on Thursday that the Confucius Institute has drawn attention from legislators, domestic organizations, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, so the school will close its Confucius Institute at the end of this semester.

Currently 13 universities in the U.S. have already closed the Confucius Institutes on their campuses.

Source: Radio Free Asia, February 24, 2019
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/Xinwen/7-02242019125213.html

Briefings | | |   Government/Politics

Chinese Student Uses Robot to Do His Homework

Recently a junior high school student in China bought a handwriting robot to do his homework. The robot is able to mimic the user’s handwriting. The media exposure caused a buying spree for the product.

According to a mainland Chinese media report, a woman surnamed Zhang said that she found out that her daughter, a third year junior high school student, completed her handwriting homework within only two days and that the writing was neat and had no typos or even edits. While cleaning her daughter’s room, Zhang found the robot machine. The instruction manual said that it could imitate various handwriting styles. After she was questioned, her daughter admitted that she purchased this handwriting robot for 800 yuan (US$120) on the Internet.

Now there are hot sales online for a number of writing robots. The price ranges from 400 yuan (US$60) to 1,200 yuan (US$180). Once the software is downloaded, it allows the machine to recognize the user’s handwriting. If you place a pen on the front end, it can start mimicking the user’s handwriting on paper and write the specified content. A store said that after the Chinese New Year, most of the customers who inquired about the handwriting robots were students. They were concerned about whether the imitation of the writing style was good and whether the teacher would be able to discover that it was a robot’s writing.

Source: Central News Agency, February 21, 2019
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/201902210042.aspx

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology

WeChat Banned over 40,000 Official Accounts in 2019

WeChat is a Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. Counting monthly active users, it is one of the world’s largest standalone mobile apps; it has over 1 billion monthly active users. On February 23, WeChat released a statement that the platform has severely resisted vulgar and harmful content and fraud activities and has blocked more than 40,000 official accounts. WeChat users can register for an official account, which enables them to push feeds to subscribers, interact with subscribers, and provide them with services.

In the announcement, WeChat said that the vulgar and false exaggerated content hurt the user’s aesthetic and reading experience and affected the ecological health of the platform. In this regard, so far since the beginning of 2019, WeChat has banned and processed 966 official accounts that sent pornographic and violent information and deleted 2,267 related articles; it has blocked 36,556 official accounts for sending vulgar content and deleted 73,318 related articles; it has banned 3,070 official accounts for spreading exaggerated and misleading information and deleted 3,447 related articles.

Source: The Paper, February 24, 2019
https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_3032502

Briefings | | |   Information/Technology

Putin to Launch “Independent Internet”

In his annual state of the nation address on Wednesday, February 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia must guard against the possibility of Western countries blocking Russia from the global Internet, and that (therefore) it is necessary for Russia to create its own cyberspace.

Putin endorsed legislation now working its way through parliament that would authorize the state to control the exchange points that connect Russia’s Internet resources to those of the outside world. On February 12, the State Duma adopted the first reading of this “Internet-isolation” bill.

Once the bill is finally approved, the legislation will require the local Internet, known as the RUnet, to pass through exchange points managed by Russia’s telecommunications regulator, Roskomnadzor. Once in force, the system will protect Russia in the event of a cyberwar while also filtering Internet traffic to the country.

Russian media reported on February 11 that a test, which will cut off all data routes connecting Russia to outside cyberspace, will occur before April 1, though a firm date has yet to be set.

Source: The Paper, February 21, 2019
https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_3018136

Briefings | | |   Geo-Strategic Trend

Quality Award for Beijing’s Best Known Pharmacy of Chinese Medicine, Tong Ren Tang, Revoked Due to Repeated Product Fraud

On February 19, the State Administration of Markets (of China) issued a notice revoking the title of China Quality Award that the China Tong Ren Tang (Group) Company had previously received. The notice, that the General Administration of Market Supervision issued, revealed that the award was revoked because Tong Ren Tang’s subsidiary used expired honey for production and was suspected of changing the date of production.”

Tong Ren Tang is a household brand name in Chinese medicine in Beijing, with over a hundred years of history. The Tong Ren Tang (Group) has six secondary groups, three institutes, and five directly affiliated subsidiaries. It has won the China Quality Award and the Beijing Municipal Government Quality Management Award. By the end of 2017, it had more than 2,600 kinds of products in six major categories, such as medicine and health foods, 36 production bases, 105 modern production lines, and a national engineering center. The group system has a total of 2,121 retail terminals and 488 medical service terminals.

As the company expanded, it was also frequently found to have breached quality control. At the end of 2018, the State Food and Drug Administration issued a statement that 63 batches of licorice (licorice tablets) that Beijing Tong Ren Tang and other enterprises produced did not meet qualifications. In 2017 alone, due to a number of quality problems, Tong Ren Tang’s subsidiaries were “blacklisted” 10 times.

Source: 163.com, February 20, 2019
https://news.163.com/19/0220/00/E8DUGJOK00018AP1.html

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources

China’s Securities Industry Had a Tough Time in 2018

The China Securities Industry Association recently published the data on how security companies performed in 2018. According to the report, the industry slid in both revenue received and in profits. The total income of 131 securities companies in 2018 was 266.3 billion yuan (US $42.3 billion), a downward slide of 14.47 percent from the 2017 level. The total profit was 66.6 billion yuan (US$10.6 billion), down 41 percent from the 2017 level. 106 companies were profitable in 2018, short by 14 from a year ago.

Some companies reduced employees’ salaries. Some even started layoffs.

GF Securities, one of the top ten securities companies, reduced employee’s salaries by a total of 189 million yuan (US $30 million) in 2018, an average cut of 18,000 yuan (US $2,900) per employee.

Huaxia Life Insurance plans to reduce its staff. According to its internal documents, each business unit is required to cut 5 percent of its staff by the end of February. If it doesn’t cut its staff, it has to cut total salaries by 5 percent.

Source: Sohu, January 25, 2019
http://www.sohu.com/a/291523447_465270

Briefings | | |   Economy/Resources