China

Archived

The threat of a Chinese military invasion of Taiwan dominates global discussion about the Taiwan Strait. Far less attention is paid to what is already happening—Beijing is slowly squeezing Taiwan into submission without firing a shot.

Instead of launching a full-blown attack, China is ramping up a full spectrum of coercion: political meddling, economic pressure, information operations, legal manoeuvres, cyberattacks and diplomatic isolation, all conducted within the pressure cooker of constant military threats. The goal? Wear Taiwan down bit by bit until it has no choice but to give in to Beijing’s demand for unification.

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The international community can’t afford to ignore China’s evolving tactics. These coercive strategies don’t just increase tensions; they create a serious risk of miscalculation that could spiral into a larger conflict. That’s why it’s important to keep a close watch on these developments. By tracking China’s actions, policymakers can better understand where the red lines are, strengthen deterrence efforts and help Taiwan remain a resilient democracy.

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One example of coercion is when countries engage with Taiwan in ways deemed unacceptable, Beijing typically responds with strong rhetoric in official statements designed to deter further interaction. [...] in 2024, Beijing’s most common grievance (representing 48 percent of observations) was foreign governments ‘violating China’s One-China principle’—a broad category that encompassed any action perceived as recognising Taiwan as distinct or autonomous, even if it fell short of full diplomatic recognition. Another 22 percent of criticisms stemmed from foreign officials meeting with Taiwanese counterparts, reflecting former president Tsai Ing-wen’s increased participation in international security forums.

In another form of coercion, Beijing consistently and deliberately revokes the tariff-free status of Taiwanese exports as a means of leverage and punishment, as indicated in the graph below. Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which is responsible for cross-strait relations policy, has characterised this form of coercion as ‘economic oppression’. In 2024 alone, China imposed trade restrictions on 169 Taiwanese exports, primarily through the removal of tariff-free status; the only exception was polycarbonate, which faced anti-dumping tariffs. Machinery and parts constituted the largest category of Taiwanese exports, followed by plastics.

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[What the linked article illustrates] is only data on two coercion tactics from one year. In future, ASPI intends to expand State of the Strait by developing a searchable public database and assessment platform. That interactive tool will visualise coercion data across domains and years, distil key insights and help policymakers track long-term trends with greater clarity.

The goal is simple: to help decision-makers and the public understand how China is ramping up the pressure, how close we are to a tipping point, and how these tactics are affecting Taiwan’s government, society, and decision-making. Over time, State of the Strait will become an essential resource for tracking China’s tactics and shaping the strategies to counter them.

Safeguard Defenders, a human rights group focused on China, has reviewed data related to arrests, prosecutions, trials, and sentencing, comparing them with previous reports since Xi Jinping came to power.

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The only significant ongoing trend is the reduction in information provided in the reports, contributing to the PRC’s attempts to render China an informational black hole for outside observers, the group says.

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• Transparency in China's criminal justice system continues to decline as SPP and SPC reports remove key data (see below under each section) from their submissions to Congress.

• To make matters worse, the China Judgments Online/Wenshu database—significantly flawed at its best—has effectively been discontinued as of 2024. Prior to this, an analysis covering 2013 to 2020 showed that 35-45% of verdicts announced by the SPC were missing from the database annually. Earlier analyses provide further details and context.

• Since Xi came to power, China has seen approximately 18.5 million prosecutions, with its courts issuing 17 million verdicts (at the first instance) and with approximately 10.5 million arrests (not detentions).

• No data of any kind exists on the number of people detained within the regular criminal justice system, only on those that police later seeks to have arrested.

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Archived

Taiwan's National Immigration Agency (NIA) has revoked the residence permits of two more Taiwan-based Chinese influencers after concluding they had openly advocating for China's unification of Taiwan by force.

[...] The NIA said Xiao Wei (小微) and En Qi (恩綺) are required by law to leave Taiwan shortly, but did not specify the deadline for the two to go.

The NIA said the decision to revoke their family-based long-term residence permits came after the agency consulted with [Taiwan's] Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), which supervises cross-strait exchanges.

Last week, the NIA had revoked the residence permit of another Chinese national, identified by her surname Liu (劉), who openly advocated in her social media account -- Ya Ya in Taiwan (亞亞在台灣) -- for China's unification of Taiwan by force.

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Archived

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While the financial, economic, technological, and national-security implications of DeepSeek’s achievement have been widely covered, there has been little discussion of its significance for authoritarian governance. DeepSeek has massive potential to enhance China’s already pervasive surveillance state, and it will bring the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) closer than ever to its goal of possessing an automated, autonomous, and scientific tool for repressing its people.

Since its inception in the early 2000s, the Chinese surveillance state has undergone three evolutions. In the first, which lasted until the early 2010s, the CCP obtained situational awareness — knowledge of its citizens’ locations and behaviors — via intelligent-monitoring technology. In the second evolution, from the mid-2010s till now, AI systems began offering authorities some decision-making support. Today, we are on the cusp of a third transformation that will allow the CCP to use generative AI’s emerging reasoning capabilities to automate surveillance and hone repression.

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China’s surveillance-industrial complex took a big leap in the mid-2010s. Now, AI-powered surveillance networks could do more than help the CCP to track the whereabouts of citizens (the chess pawns). It could also suggest to the party which moves to make, which figures to use, and what strategies to take.

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Inside China, such a network of large-scale AGI [artificial general intelligence] systems could autonomously improve repression in real time, rooting out the possibility of civic action in urban metropolises. Outside the country, if cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — where China first exported Alibaba’s City Brain system in 2018 — were either run by a Chinese-developed city brain that had reached AGI or plugged into a Chinese city-brain network, they would quietly lose their governance autonomy to these highly complex systems that were devised to achieve CCP urban-governance goals.

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As China’s surveillance state begins its third evolution, the technology is beginning to shift from merely providing decision-making support to actually acting on the CCP’s behalf.

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DeepSeek [...] is this technology that would, for example, allow a self-driving car to recognize road signs even on a street it had never traveled before. [...] The advent of DeepSeek has already impelled tech experts in the United States to take similar approaches. Researchers at Stanford University managed to produce a powerful AI system for under US$50, training it on Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental. By driving down the cost of LLMs, including for security purposes, DeepSeek will thus enable the proliferation of advanced AI and accelerate the rollout of Chinese surveillance infrastructure globally.

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The next step in the evolution of China’s surveillance state will be to integrate generative-AI models like DeepSeek into urban surveillance infrastructures. Lenovo, a Hong Kong corporation with headquarters in Beijing, is already rolling out programs that fuse LLMs with public-surveillance systems. In Barcelona, the company is administering its Visual Insights Network for AI (VINA), which allows law enforcement and city-management personnel to search and summarize large amounts of video footage instantaneously.

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The CCP, with its vast access to the data of China-based companies, could use DeepSeek to enforce laws and intimidate adversaries in myriad ways — for example, deploying AI police agents to cancel a Lunar New Year holiday trip planned by someone required by the state to stay within a geofenced area; or telephoning activists after a protest to warn of the consequences of joining future demonstrations. It could also save police officers’ time. Rather than issuing “invitations to tea” (a euphemism for questioning), AI agents could conduct phone interviews and analyze suspects’ voices and emotional cues for signs of repentance.

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Archived

China has entered an ‘Age of Sarcasm’. Anywhere outside of state-sponsored parties, entertainment shows, or the comedies and skits on television, China’s rulers and official corruption have become the main material for the sarcastic humor that courses through society. Virtually anyone can tell a political joke laced with pornographic innuendo, and almost every town and village has its own rich stock of satirical political ditties. Private dinner gatherings become informal stage shows for venting grievances and telling political jokes; the better jokes and ditties, told and retold, spread far and wide. This material is the authentic public discourse of mainland China, and it forms a sharp contrast with what appears in the state-controlled media. To listen only to the public media, you could think you are living in paradise; if you listen only to the private exchanges, you will conclude that you are living in hell. One shows only sweetness and light, the other only a sunless darkness. — Liu Xiaobo, Chinese human rights activist, 2010 Nobel Peace Prize

Since the victory of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over the Kuomintang (KMT) in the Chinese Civil War, and the subsequent retreat of the Republic of China (ROC/ Taiwan) to the island of Taiwan, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been the recognizable state of mainland China. During this time, China was certainly an independent actor forging their own destiny, but wasn’t really a player in the global arena at large, having been incorrectly viewed by Western intelligence agencies as a Soviet satellite or proxy. Reality was far different and much has changed the last 70+ years as China is now the second most powerful empire, the third largest in area (influence/hegemony), and the second strongest military power in the world.

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In the early 2010’s, Xi Jinping came to power and with him has brought a far more assertive China, creating Chinese-led investment banks for international lending, as well as consolidating his own personal power. Political repression has increased greatly under Xi, with routine human rights violations against marginalized parts of Chinese society and regular purges of political opponents. Since 2017, the CCP has been engaged in a harsh crackdown (genocide?) in Xinjiang, with over a million people—mostly Uyghurs but including other ethnic and religious minorities—imprisoned in internment camps. The Chinese congress in 2018 also altered their constitution to remove the two-term limit on holding the Presidency of China, permitting Xi Jinping to remain president of the PRC (and general secretary of the CCP) for an unlimited time. Xi is a dictator, in effect.

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China passed a national security law in Hong Kong that gave the government wide-ranging tools to crack down on dissent and Chinese citizens had to endure some of the most draconian measures in the entire world during the COVID pandemic.

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What China is trying to do is expand its ever growing soft power [globally] into regions they hope to one day project hard power. This gives them diplomatic leverage over weaker countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, thus gaining greater control of their resources gradually, as well as their fidelity in global affairs.

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While it’s great that these places [in less developed regions] will indeed develop, it will be in the interests of the corporate-owned economy (I.E. political and economic elites in these locales) and that of China’s domestic leadership class. Sure, these countries will have newly built infrastructure and will modernize but the benefit is really for empire, not the people. Nothing about the internal subjugation of the working class and poor will change whether it’s American or Chinese empire partaking in the looting. In fact, one could argue that repression of the mass populace will be more acute in areas controlled by China as their leaders don’t pay lip service to optics about democracy, human rights, etc.

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China is simply updating the playbook of empire, evolving its own variant of neocolonialism, and there’s no reason to think China won’t eventually use its expanding military power to protect these Chinese investments across Africa, Asia, and Latin America once they come under threat of rebel forces, rival regimes, leaders who won’t adhere to their interests, etc. It’s how imperialism works and China is already expanding its military presence into the Solomon Islands, having signed a security agreement with their government, as well as their existing base in Djibouti. China also has investments across nearly the entire African coastline that will allow for possible future Chinese naval bases and military assets. They’ve also been building many artificial islands that they turn into military installations in the South China Sea. International waters claimed as their own. Prompting fierce condemnation from Vietnam, the Philippines, and other countries with their own claims.

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Taking control of the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea would allow them to control globally important semiconductor and microchip industries in Taiwan, as well as to dominate vital commercial shipping lanes, which they could use as leverage to force the US out of the region, and would open doors for further power projection in the Indo-Pacific where China wants to dominate.

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besides these possible future conflicts, there’s a very real present day war where China has vested, though highly understated, interests—the Russo-Ukrainian War. Sure, China has tried to portray itself as an independent party but essentially no one views it as such besides dogmatic China and Russia supporters. China has been crucial in propping up Moscow’s economy in the face of devastating Western sanctions, buying more oil and gas than ever before and with plans only to increase. The Chinese have also been providing non-lethal aid (armor, tech to field drones, etc.) pretty much since the invasion began. Their “peace plan” also functioned more as a line in the sand than a true peace proposal. It said nothing about the roughly 20% of Ukraine occupied by Russia, only called for a ceasefire and end to Western sanctions (a non-starter as Beijing knows), and had absolutely nothing to say about future security guarantees for Ukraine. Sounds more like “Russian peace.”

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What’s evident is the Chinese empire has grown vastly more assertive the last decade. [...] What’s not evident is how all the escalating tensions with the US will ultimately unfold. From the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan strait to the South China Sea and Eastern Europe on down to the Middle East and Africa, geopolitical tensions are coming to a head in ways we’ve not seen in 80+ years.

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Archived

Beneath the glossy façade of China’s economic rise lies a grim reality—one the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would rather the world ignore. Xinjiang, home to the Uyghur people, has become a sprawling open-air prison, where mass detentions, coercive assimilation, and relentless state surveillance have transformed an entire ethnic group into a community of silent sufferers.

Beijing’s official narrative presents its policies in Xinjiang as counter-terrorism measures, but the evidence tells a different story—one of cultural erasure, forced labour, and crimes against humanity. A Bloody History of Betrayal

China’s repression of the Uyghurs is neither new nor accidental. For centuries, the Uyghur homeland—historically known as East Turkestan—has been caught in the crosshairs of competing dynasties. The Qing Dynasty saw periods of both empowerment and oppression for the Uyghurs, but with the rise of Communist China in 1949, the noose tightened. Led by the ruthless Wang Zhen, the Chinese military crushed Uyghur resistance, dismantling local autonomy and imposing brutal land reforms that dispossessed Uyghur farmers. Residents watch a convoy of security personnel armed with batons and shields patrol through central Kashgar in western China's Xinjiang region, 2017. | AP

The CCP’s justification? National security. The reality? A calculated effort to bring Xinjiang under Beijing’s iron grip.

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China’s crackdown intensified under Xi Jinping, who declared a “People’s War on Terror” in Xinjiang. The result was the creation of sprawling concentration camps—euphemistically branded vocational training centres—where over a million Uyghurs were detained without trial. Survivors’ testimonies paint a horrifying picture: brainwashing sessions, forced renunciations of Islam, physical abuse, and sexual violence.

Children were forcibly separated from their parents and placed in state-run orphanages to be indoctrinated with Communist Party ideology. The goal was clear—break the Uyghur spirit and erase their cultural identity, one generation at a time.

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China’s assault on Uyghur culture extends far beyond mass incarceration. In an effort to Sinicize Xinjiang, the government has outlawed Islamic practices, demolished mosques, and criminalized fasting during Ramadan. Uyghur-language schools have been shut down, and replaced with Mandarin-only education designed to erase native identity.

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China’s treatment of the Uyghurs also serves a strategic purpose. Xinjiang is a key node in Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, and the CCP views the Uyghur population as an inconvenient obstacle. By forcibly relocating Uyghurs and resettling Han Chinese in their place, Beijing aims to neutralize resistance while cementing its economic dominance in the region.

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The forced labour industry in Xinjiang is another grotesque element of this oppression. Uyghur detainees are exploited in textile and agricultural sectors, supplying global brands with products tainted by modern-day slavery. Companies worldwide have been complicit, either through direct sourcing or willful ignorance.

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Archived

Just one year after its passage, Hong Kong’s Article 23 law has further squeezed people’s freedoms and enabled authorities to intensify their crackdown on peaceful activism in the city and beyond, Amnesty International said.

“Over the past year, Article 23 has been used to entrench a ‘new normal’ of systematic repression of dissent, criminalizing peaceful acts in increasingly absurd ways,” said Amnesty International’s China Director Sarah Brooks.

“People have been targeted and harshly punished for the clothes they wear as well as the things they say and write, or for minor acts of protest, intensifying the climate of fear that already pervaded Hong Kong. Freedom of expression has never been under greater attack.”

People convicted and jailed for peaceful expression

The Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (known as Article 23) took effect on 23 March 2024. Amnesty International’s analysis shows that 16 people have since been arrested for sedition under Article 23. Five of them were officially charged under the law, and the other 11 were released without charge. None of those arrested is accused of engaging in violence, while the authorities have accused two of them of inciting violence without yet disclosing any details.

Three of the charged individuals – after facing around three months’ pre-trial detention – were convicted for, respectively, wearing a T-shirt and mask printed with protest slogans; criticizing the government online; and writing protest slogans on bus seats. They were sentenced to between 10 and 14 months in prison.

The remaining two charged people have been held in detention awaiting trial since November 2024 and January 2025, respectively. They are accused of publishing “seditious” posts on social media platforms.

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• Beijing’s diplomatic rhetoric advocates upholding international rules and norms, but this diverges sharply from both its words to party officials at home and its actions abroad that undermine and violate international laws and institutions.
• Beijing benefits from an international order in which other powers are restrained by rules that it claims are biased and so chooses not to follow. This explains how Foreign Minister Wang Yi can both promise to “safeguard … the international system with the United Nations at its core” and reject inconvenient international rulings as “a political circus dressed up as a legal action.”
• Polls suggest Beijing’s rhetoric is resonating with other countries, as Beijing offers itself as a new partner of choice to provide stability in an uncertain world. Its actions instead suggest it intends to divide democracies and create more freedom of action for Beijing.

Archived article

“We are ready to work with the international community, including Australia, to safeguard the victory in the Second World War and the international system with the United Nations at its core,” said Wang Yi (王毅), foreign minister of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), to Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong on February 21 [...] This is the latest statement over many years in which the PRC presents its foreign policy as reinforcing the international order that the United States and Europe claimed to uphold.

However, Beijing’s status quo language belies the fundamental changes to the international order that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been pursuing. Beijing has benefited enormously from the international system to date, but especially when other powers are restrained by rules it claims are biased and so chooses not to follow.

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Since early 2017, Beijing has presented the PRC as a responsible power that upholds the status quo of the old international order. That message has often come from the very top. [...] For example, Xi Jinping told the World Economics Forum in January 2017 that “We should adhere to multilateralism to uphold the authority and efficacy of multilateral institutions. We should honor promises and abide by rules.”

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Later, Wang Yi told the China-France Strategic Dialogue “China adheres to multilateralism and supports the rules-based multilateral trading system with the WTO at its core” (FMPRC, January 24, 2019). The refrain has continued to the present day. Last fall, Xi criticized European tariffs on electric vehicles at the 19th G20 Summit, saying, “We should press ahead with reforming the World Trade Organization (WTO) [and] oppose unilateralism and protectionism … It is important to avoid politicizing economic issues, avoid fragmenting the global market, and avoid taking protectionist moves in the name of green and low-carbon development."

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These words from the CCP leadership may be soothing to the outside world, but they diverge sharply from internally oriented words for the Party faithful that emphasize struggle and change [...]. Here and with select partners, Xi has been clear for years about his desire to change the international system. In his first international trip as CCP general secretary in 2013, Xi told a Russian audience about the need for a “New Type of International Relations” that amounts to a fundamental restructuring of the values embedded in international institutions and the application of the CCP’s so-called “consultative democracy” on a global scale [...]. More recently, Xi’s speech at a study session of the Central Committee in 2023—which was reprinted in the 2025 New Year’s issue of Qiushi, the Party’s theory journal—repeatedly noted the challenge that the PRC’s development constitutes to the Western-centric order.

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This divergence in rhetoric suggests that the words of CCP leaders should not be taken at face value and that instead Beijing should be judged by its actions. However, there, too, it has consistently violated rules and norms that do not align with its preferences.

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One notable example of Beijing’s claim to uphold international law is in the South China Sea. In 2002, Beijing entered into a non-binding agreement, the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) nations. This committed the parties to “universally recognized principles of international law” and noted “their respect for and commitment to the freedom of navigation in and over flight above the South China Sea” per the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

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Beijing’s behavior gives lie to these commitments. In 2016, a Tribunal [...] found unanimously in the Philippines favor that the PRC had breached its obligations under no fewer than 16 articles of the Convention, was often “aware of, tolerated, protected, and failed to prevent” harmful activities, and “has not cooperated or coordinated with the other States bordering the South China Sea” to attempt to resolve them.

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In 2024, the spokesperson for the PRC Embassy in Manila responded to a question about the ruling, characterizing is as “essentially a political circus dressed up as a legal action … China does not accept or recognize it, and will never accept any claim or action thereon”.

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Last year, the PRC Coast Guard escalated the confrontation with Philippine counterparts, leading to physical ship-to-ship altercations in which at least 8 sailors were injured powerful water cannons to damage Philippines supply ships [...] The PRC has claimed areas like the sea around Second Thomas Shoal where these clashes took place as its own territorial waters. As such, it argues that freedom of navigation does not apply and that the Coast Guard can engage in so-called domestic law enforcement operations. Such aggressive and dangerous operations have continued in 2025 and remain in violation of international law (YouTube/Associated Press, February 1).

Other examples also reveal Beijing’s commitment to international order and global governance as a cynical effort to exploit the rules. In reality, its policies have capitalized on the restraint of other countries in areas like trade and international law. For instance, Wang Yi’s discussion of international cooperation in the auto sector is undermined by the PRC’s predatory, brute-force economics that have long been antithetical to the trading order.

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Additionally, the PRC has used the World Bank to legitimize its mass repression in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region through vocational programs.

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Beijing’s ostensible support for international rules and institutions that restrain the United States and European powers will continue to be a theme as long as the CCP leadership sees that the narrative has traction. Concerns about the Trump Administration’s inconsistency make the CCP’s status quo narrative seem soothing. However, American and European governments should not mistake these narratives for anything other than a wedge to divide democracies and create more freedom of action for Beijing.

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The rise of Chinese private security companies in Myanmar will reshape conflict dynamics. This report to the UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries highlights how such companies are proxies for the Chinese State, importing authoritarianism, intensifying militarisation, undermining human rights, and exploiting legal loopholes to operate with impunity.

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Since Myanmar’s 2021 coup, widespread human rights abuses have underscored urgent concerns about the role of foreign private security companies (PSCs), most of which are from China. This report examines the human rights implications of Chinese PSCs operating in Myanmar, not merely as commercial actors but as State-connected forces blurring the line between private security and military intervention. This analysis focuses on how these actors undermine civil and political rights and how their unchecked power exacerbates the nation’s human rights crisis. We present our findings to inform the United Nations OHCHR Work Group on the Use of Mercenaries’ inquiry into the impact of mercenaries and private military and security companies.

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The legal framework provides only vague guidelines on the use of force. While the Penal Code (1861) requires that any private use of force be proportionate (Art. 99), its provisions do not prevent excessive force in practice. The Private Security Service Law (2025) allows PSCs to detain offenders, but its only reference to the use of force is that PSCs may defend themselves under the Penal Code (Arts. 28.v-vi), leaving room for inconsistent practices and potential abuse in volatile settings.

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Chinese economic interests are deeply entwined with Myanmar’s strategic landscape, notably through the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC), a key pillar of China’s global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). What began as a series of infrastructure projects has evolved into a broader effort to secure China’s supply chains, energy security, and regional influence. As Myanmar’s State capacity has collapsed, the security risks to these investments have surged, directly impacting the human rights of local populations.

Chinese interests have suffered collateral damage in conflict zones across Myanmar. At least 23 of 34 Chinese infrastructure projects are located in areas marked by instability, including Rakhine, northern Shan State, and the central lowlands.[8] Incidents, such as the seizure of a Chinese-owned nickel processing plant in Sagaing[9] and the occupation and subsequent burning of the Alpha Cement factory in Mandalay, underscore the vulnerability of these investments.

Moreover, public perceptions of China’s support for the military have provoked targeted attacks, with 32 factories allegedly damaged in the months following the coup, amounting to losses of US$37 million. Such violence not only endangers property but also directly threatens the right to a safe, secure environment.

In response to escalating security challenges, China has increasingly pressed all actors for greater protection of its assets. This pressure has led to disproportionate measures by the military, including the imposition of martial law, harsh crackdowns that have claimed at least 22 protesters’ lives, and punitive 20-year sentences for at least 28 campaigners. High-profile incidents, like the October 2024 bombing of the Chinese consulate in Mandalay, show that anti-China sentiment remains high. Consequently, China’s demand for robust security mechanisms has grown, prompting an expansion of Chinese PSCs in Myanmar.

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When the military seized power in 2021, six of the nine registered foreign PSCs in Myanmar were Chinese. These companies, tasked with protecting CMEC projects and Chinese personnel, offer services from static guarding to surveillance and risk assessments, particularly in areas where Chinese assets face local resistance.

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Chinese PSCs as proxies of the Chinese government

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China remains fundamentally aligned with the Myanmar military, operating under the belief that a military victory will best serve its broader economic and strategic objectives. Even as the military loses territorial control, it continues to dominate key urban centres, infrastructure, and economic zones vital to Chinese business. Through arms shipments, infrastructure investments, and security cooperation, China backs the military, indirectly contributing to severe human rights abuses, including threats to life, liberty, and due process.

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Archived

Beginning in 1979, the Chinese government decided to implement the well-known—and highly controversial—one-child policy to try to confront, to the greatest extent possible, the problem of the country’s exponential population growth. The rule envisaged, as its name implies, the bearing of a single child with limited exceptions. In case of non-compliance, the consequences could range from loss of job or party membership to more extreme ones such as reproductive violence.

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While the one-child policy was the universal law, there were some exceptions introduced that allowed families to have more than one child in very specific cases. These mostly concerned families that were part of an ethnic minority group or whose first child was born with a handicap. Other exceptions included allowing for more than one child if the family’s first kid was a daughter or they lived in rural areas.

It’s important to note that many of these exceptions conceded by the Communist Party were directly related to the difficulty in enforcing the policy in rural areas. In less developed and rural areas, families often relied on their children for labor power, meaning that implementing the one-child policy required a larger social change than needed in urban areas. Additionally, rural families were harder to monitor.

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Although gender may seem to be a less obvious element of China’s one-child policy, it was a crucial component. Not only did this cultural gender preference cause a large demographic imbalance between boys and girls, but it also led to phenomena like mass adoptions and even infanticides of baby girls. The government has also occasionally contributed to unethical and extreme measures by carrying out forced abortions and sterilisations in order to make families comply with the policy.

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The one-child policy, which reigned in the country for more than 30 years, has also resulted in the development of an entire generation of children—who are now also adults —that do not appear in Chinese state records. People who fall into this group are popularly called “Heihaizi“, China’s “black children” who could not obtain a hukou— an official household registration. Such children were primarily second-born or later children who, upon birth, had no recognized right to exist due to this family planning policy.

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For the millions of Heihaizi, this administrative hole causes devastating consequences. They can’t access regular public services such as healthcare, get legally married, or even use public transportation. Moreover, they can’t go to school and get a formal education as normal citizens, and when they become adults, they can’t legally get a job.

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Moreover, despite the promises of the Chinese Communist Party, a great number of people have not yet been able to obtain official registration. The fines to be paid by Heihaizi and their families are still very high, and acquiring the documents necessary for a life in the open still seems to be a utopia for many.

[This is a piece by Research Scholar of East Asia Studies in History Division, Lund University, Sweden.]

Unable to find a domestic spouse, some Chinese men have turned to “purchasing” foreign brides. The growing demand for these brides, particularly in rural areas, has fuelled a rise in illegal marriages. This includes marriages involving children and women who have been trafficked into China primarily from neighbouring countries in south-east Asia.

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Determining the extent of illegal cross-border marriages in China is challenging due to the clandestine nature of these activities. But the most recent data from the UK’s Home Office suggests that 75% of Vietnamese human-trafficking victims were smuggled to China, with women and children making up 90% of cases.

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The Woman from Myanmar, an award-winning documentary from 2022, follows the story of a trafficked Myanmar woman who was sold into marriage in China. The film exposes the harsh realities faced by many trafficked brides.

It captures not only the coercion and abuse many of these women endure, but also their struggle for autonomy and survival in a system that treats them as commodities. Larry, a trafficked woman who features in the documentary, explained that she saw her capacity to bear children as her pathway to survival.

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Here is the article in Chinese.

"It is a long-standing tradition of the Chinese Communist Party to use foreigners to voice its propaganda for added credibility," said Mareike Ohlberg, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund.

Foreign influencers cooperate with the Chinese government, the media and third parties to create and boost content that supports government narratives, Ohlberg said. One of the most common topics that foreign influencers focus on is whitewashing human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The U.N. Human Rights Office and groups like Amnesty International estimate that more than 1 million people – mostly Uyghurs – have been confined in internment camps in Xinjiang.

One of the most recent and maybe most popular foreign characters in China is a French national, Marcus Detrez, who became a media sensation in 2024.

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Last year, Detrez posted a series of historic photographs on the Chinese social media platform Douyin that depicted life under the Japanese occupation in the early 20th century. He claimed the images were taken by his grandfather and said he wanted to donate them to China.

Detrez enjoyed a few months of celebrity treatment from Chinese authorities, including touring across China, while state media outlets profiled him as a hero. In February, however, historians exposed Detrez as a fraud. The photographs he claimed were unique family heirlooms turned out to be publicly available online in various museums around the world.

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One of the pioneers on Chinese social media is a Russian internet celebrity, Vladislav Kokolevskiy, known in China as Fulafu. He amassed 12.89 million followers on Douyin, where he posts short video clips praising life in China.

In November 2023, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute wrote that in China, Fulafu has “become a household name through his ostentatious displays of affection for China,” identifying him as a Chinese government propagandist.

[...]

Among them is [also] Gerald Kowal, known also as Jerry Guo, an American who has risen to popularity in China after an interview with state-owned CCTV in 2020. At the time, Kowal had been posting series of short videos critical of New York City authorities’ handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. He also repeated debunked conspiracy theories, claiming, for example, that the U.S. military brought the coronavirus to China. CCTV broadcasted his interview from New York live.

The China Newsweek magazine profiled Kowal in May 2020 as “one of the most influential internet celebrities,” calling him a “war correspondent” for his videos from pandemic-stricken New York.

[...]

The success of a large number of foreign influencers is closely tied to multichannel networks or MCNs, which are third-party organizations that promote the growth of certain content creators, operating behind the scenes.

One of the MCN industry leaders is YChina, founded in 2016 by Israeli businessman Amir Gal-Or and his Chinese partner and former classmate, Fang Yedun, as part of Gal-Or's “Crooked Nuts Research Institute,” which focuses on documenting the lives of foreigners in China.

[...]

Chinese democracy activists in exile have accused YChina of supporting Chinese government propaganda about Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

In July 2024, the China Public Diplomacy Association, which is under the supervision of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, gathered more than 30 foreign influencers from 25 countries to participate in a training camp and visit various cities in China. The bloggers were asked to record their experiences on video and share them online.

[...]

China’s state-controlled media outlets [like Xinhua News Agency] boost such bloggers, presenting them to domestic audiences within the narrative of a prosperous nation under the Communist Party.

[...]

In using these foreign bloggers, the Chinese Communist Party wants to show that life in China is not what rights groups and China’s critics abroad say it is. The government exploits the idea that unless “you come and see, you have no right to judge,” the German Marshall Fund’s Ohlberg said.

The core of this idea is “very hypocritical,” Ohlberg added, because “the Communist Party allows these people to go only where it wants them to go and see only what it wants them to see. And if you're critical, you certainly won't get the opportunity to go on a field trip.”

According to Karar Newspaper journalist Feyza Nur Çalıkoğlu, Istanbul’s 16th and 18th Administrative Courts approved the extradition of the two Uyghurs to China based on the claim that “there is no serious, concrete material evidence that they will be subjected to persecution if extradited to their country.” However, the lawyer representing the two Uyghurs has appealed to the Constitutional Court, arguing that this ruling is in direct contradiction to the Turkish government’s previous commitment that Uyghurs will “never be extradited to China” and that the decision violates international agreements.

[...]

Both Uyghurs, Mahemuti Anayeti and Aierken Abuduwaili, fled China’s genocidal policies in East Turkistan and arrived in Turkey at different times years ago. Speaking to Karar, the lawyer representing Anayeti and Abuduwaili, Abdullah Tıkıç, stated: “The approval of the extradition of Uyghur Turks to their country of origin is a violation of Law No. 6458 on Foreigners and International Protection, the UN Convention on Civil and Political Rights, the UN Convention Against Torture, and the Geneva Convention.”

[...]

The UN, EU, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have repeatedly reported and documented China’s crackdown on Uyghurs. More than ten countries, including the United States and Canada, have officially recognized China’s policies against Uyghurs as genocide. Additionally, more than 40 countries, including Turkey, have condemned China for human rights violations against Uyghurs. In its official report, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded that China has committed crimes against humanity against Uyghurs.

Archived

The statement was delivered during an Interactive Dialogue with Ben Saul, UN Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights, and it highlighted the increasing misuse of counter-terrorism and national security legislation to persecute writers, journalists and others for exercising their right to freedom of expression.

In Hong Kong, the ongoing national security trial of journalist, writer and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai is emblematic of the NSL’s devastating impact on freedom of expression and is a stark illustration of the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities’ unrelenting efforts to silence critical voices. If convicted, Jimmy Lai faces a potential life sentence.

[...]

Archived

In the past 50 years, China has built around 500 new cities. The country’s sprawling new urban areas have been instrumental to its economic surge, but it’s not all rosy. In fact, a lot of these new buildings are empty.

By 2021, over 17% of the urban homes built in China since 2001 remained unoccupied. Although official data is lacking, that figure has undoubtedly only grown since 2021. By some estimates, there are between 20 million and 65 million empty houses in China, enough to house entire countries. This is a big problem, both economically and environmentally

A new study published in Nature Communications estimates that these unused homes collectively release 55.81 million tons of carbon dioxide annually — a staggering 6.9% of all emissions from China’s residential sector, or more than countries like Portugal or Mongolia.

[...]

This also led to a boom in real estate investment which in turn, has had a predictable (but problematic) side effect: people started to see housing more as an asset than a place to live.

We’ve seen this story before. In countries like the United States before the 2008 financial crisis or Japan in the 1980s, speculative real estate investment created massive bubbles that eventually collapsed, leaving economic turmoil in their wake.

However, in the new study, researchers didn’t look at this. Instead, Hefan Zheng and colleagues from Tsinghua University, Beijing, looked at the environmental impact of these houses.

[...]

Unused homes are not just an economic inefficiency — they are a major environmental liability.

The carbon footprint of these empty homes stems from two main sources.

• The production of cement, steel, and other materials used in these buildings accounts for much of their environmental impact. Each square meter of newly built housing emits hundreds of kilograms of CO₂.

• The other source is heat. Even when unoccupied, many of these homes consume energy. In northern China, where central heating systems operate city-wide, many empty homes still receive heating, wasting vast amounts of energy. In 2020, these unused homes produced about as much CO₂ as a mid-sized country.

[...]

The scale of unused housing in China results from a mix of policy incentives, economic speculation, and urban planning misalignment. In particular, some of the investments seem to have been misguided.

[...]

In addition to the economic ticking bomb that empty houses pose, the houses also pose an environmental conundrum. If China is serious about decarbonizing its residential sector, reducing unused housing should be a priority.

The most straightforward approach could be a tax. Introducing taxes on empty properties would discourage speculative holding and push owners to rent or sell unoccupied homes, making the entire system more efficient. Some cities could offer incentives to convert unused apartments into affordable housing or public rental units.

[...]

However, if inaction prevails, these ghost homes will continue haunting China’s real estate market and its climate ambitions.

Archived

China scored 9 out of 100 and was rated “not free” in the Freedom in the World 2025 report by Freedom House, which ranked 195 countries and 13 territories on political rights and civil liberties for 2024.

"China’s authoritarian regime has become increasingly repressive in recent years. The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to tighten control over all aspects of life and governance, including the state bureaucracy, the media, online speech, religious practice, universities, businesses, and civil society associations," the report reads.

In Freedom House’s transnational repression report released in mid-February, China was named a major perpetrator of transnational repression in 2024. The Chinese regime has also been the “most prolific perpetrator” of transnational repression over the past decade, according to the NGO.

Chinese regime-controlled Hong Kong scored 40 points and was listed as a “partly free” territory. Taiwan continued to be rated “free,” with 94 points.

Hong Kong earned 9 points in political rights and 31 points in civil liberties, for a total score of 40 points. It dropped a point from last year to reach a new low of 40, down from 61 in 2017.

[...]

“The territory’s most prominent prodemocracy figures have been arrested under its provisions, and NSL charges or the threat of charges have resulted in the closure of political parties, major independent news outlets, peaceful nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and unions,” the summary reads.

Tibet under the CCP’s rule scored 0 points and continued to be listed as a “not free” territory. Specifically, Tibet received minus 2 points for “political rights” and 2 points for “civil liberties.”

Freedom House noted that “Tibet is ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government based in Beijing, with local decision-making power concentrated in the hands of Chinese party officials. Residents of both Han Chinese and Tibetan ethnicity are denied fundamental rights, and authorities are especially rigorous in suppressing any signs of dissent among Tibetans.”

The report did not separately assess freedom in the Xinjiang region, the Uyghur region ruled by the CCP.

[...]

Sun Kuo-Hsiang, professor of international affairs and business at Nanhua University in Taiwan, told The Epoch Times on Feb. 27 that Freedom House’s report is credible, as “it truthfully reflects the control model of China’s current political system, legal environment, and social system.”

He said the main reason for the lack of freedom is the political system in mainland China, which is a totalitarian model.

“From the perspective of democratic standards, there are no elections, no multiparty competition, and citizens have no real right to participate in politics,” Sun said.

In the short term, the situation in China will get worse, he said.

“With China’s expanding of its influence, especially in the global south [developing countries], those countries are facing the same situation,” Sun said.

[...]

The CCP’s attitude toward overseas dissidents will not change either, he noted.

“It will only intensify overseas surveillance, cyberattacks, espionage, and other transnational repression activities to suppress them,” he said.

In the long run, the CCP’s transnational repression may backfire on China’s global influence. According to Sun, it may “weaken China’s soft power, and cause more countries to take precautionary measures against China.”

[...]

He suggested that Western countries strengthen their precautions against the CCP’s export of its totalitarianism and transnational repression by “restricting the CCP setting up institutions in their countries … paying special attention to the institutions established by the CCP, providing political asylum to Chinese people, and legislating to protect dissidents.”

Lai said everyone who has lived in China can relate to the political life reflected in the freedom index.

[...]

Here you can download the study, The Chinese Communist Party’s influence over businesses (pdf).

[There is no summary on the website https://www.ui.se/english.]

The study on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influence over businesses analyses, first, how changes in Chinese laws, intra-Party regulations, and policies have created new means for the Party to exercise its influence. Secondly, the study examines CCP influence in practice by analysing three dimensions: ownership, party organisation presence, and political signalling.

Summary:

• Over the past 15 years, regulatory changes that initially focused on stateowned enterprises (SOEs) have also increasingly affected privateowned enterprises (POEs). Key reforms emphasise mixed ownership and reinforcing Party leadership in corporate governance, blurring the lines between state and private ownership.
• There are still important differences in Party influence between SOEs and POEs; for example, SOEs have embedded political governance, where the Party organisation is represented on the board, while no such rules exist for POEs. However, SOE policies often serve as models for regulating POEs.
• Ownership: The mixed ownership reform has resulted in a large number of SOEs acquiring stakes in POEs. This indirectly gives the party more influence over POEs, also sometimes when it is a minority post. The most obvious cases are government “golden shares” in hightech companies such as ByteDance, Weibo, and Tencent. Some of the interviewees also highlighted golden shares as one more direct aspect of the CCP’s influence over businesses.
• Party organisation presence: By law, all private companies with CCP members must establish party organisations. The extent to which this law has been implemented is not entirely clear, although most large private companies have party organisations. While many observers claim that Party organisation activities are limited to social activities and have little influence over corporate governance, there is also abundant research showing that Party organisation presence in POEs on an aggregate level affects corporate governance.
• CCP membership among company managers is another possible way for the CCP to influence POEs. Many entrepreneurs actively seek to become party members in order to gain political influence that can help their businesses thrive. However, as the Party continuously tightens ideological and political control of Party members, they might become more incentivised to adapt companies’ activities to be more in line with the intentions of the CCP.
• Political signalling: The overall influence that the Party exercises over POEs through political signalling is substantial. Chinese as well as foreign companies have to be constantly aware of changes in the political environment. Through new legislation and the publication of Party documents and speeches by leaders, the CCP leadership signals that **private entrepreneurs must follow the leadership of the Party. **This message has become ever more clear and strong during Xi Jinping’s reign.
• Swedish company representatives emphasised that the fact that the CCP completely dominates politics and society is something that is a starting point when doing business in China and was seldom raised as a problem. However, they acknowledged that the political changes in recent years, including political centralisation and increasing nationalism, were the political factors most affecting businesses.
• The consequences of political influence over Chinese companies are in some ways more dramatic for Chinese companies outside China than for those within China. As Chinese companies have expanded their presence far beyond China’s borders, the CCP’s obsession with political control increasingly clashes with Western ideals of businesses operating independently from political influence, at least of the CCP variety.

Today, March 10, 2025, Tibetans worldwide commemorate the 1959 uprising in Tibet.

After nearly 70 years of repressive Chinese state rule, government policies that seek to forcibly assimilate non-Han peoples in China under President Xi Jinping represent an alarming turn for the worse for Tibetans.

While the Chinese government’s crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang received global attention, the slow drip of news about its intensifying repression against Tibetans has garnered less notice due to ever more intrusive and watertight policing, surveillance, and censorship in Tibetan areas.

In Tibet, there is no independent civil society, freedom of expression, association, assembly, or religion. Under the pretext of national policing campaigns such as “the anti-gang crime crackdown” and the “anti-fraud” crackdown, the Chinese government has decimated what little Tibetan civil society remained, shut down Tibetan websites that promote Tibetan language and culture, and closed privately funded schools; even those that followed the government-approved curriculum.

Tibetans are told how to live their lives: use Mandarin Chinese as the medium of instruction in schools, relocate en masse from their long-established villages to new government-built and managed settlements, silently witness their rivers being dammed to generate electricity for large-scale mining or to power regions far away in China. Any questioning of government policies, however mild, can result in arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture, and long-term imprisonment.

[...]

Governments that profess support for the human rights of Tibetans should step up their assistance to Tibetan groups worldwide that document rights and report on abuses in Tibet, advocate in international forums, and seek to preserve Tibetan identity and culture.

Thailand's deportation of 40 Uyghurs to China last week was in the Southeast Asian country's best interest due to the possibility of retaliation from Beijing if the group was sent elsewhere, a Thai minister said on Thursday.

Thailand's government has repeatedly defended the secretive deportation, which came despite calls from United Nations human rights experts who said the Uyghurs would be at risk of torture, ill-treatment and "irreparable harm" if returned to China.

Human rights groups accuse China of widespread abuses of Uyghurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic minority numbering about 10 million in its northwestern region of Xinjiang. Beijing denies any abuses.

Russ Jalichandra, Thailand's vice minister for foreign affairs, in a statement on Thursday said some countries had offered to resettle the Uyghurs, walking back previous comments by Thai officials that no such proposals had been made.

He did not name the countries.

The United States, Canada and Australia were among countries that had offered to resettle the Uyghurs but Bangkok took no action for fear of upsetting China.

[...]

Archived version

The daughter of Uyghur economist Ilham Tohti, who was given a life sentence on separatism-related charges in China in 2014, said recently her ongoing goal is to ensure as many people as possible are aware of the oppression her people have suffered.

Jewher Ilham, 30, who was separated from her now 55-year-old father in February 2013 at a Beijing airport by Chinese authorities and currently resides in the United States, told Kyodo News she has not returned to China since that day and that her father's current location is unknown.

Ilham Tohti, a former professor at Minzu University of China in Beijing, was barred from leaving the country to take up a position as a visiting scholar at a college in the United States.

He was then detained in January 2014 and convicted in September that year following a closed-door trial.

[...]

As the detention of many Uyghur people at Chinese facilities for "re-education" has come to light since 2018, Jewher Ilham said she believes conditions for the ethnic group have been "deteriorating year by year." She led the production of a 2023 documentary film collecting the stories of people from the Uyghur, Kazakh, and Uzbek ethnic minorities who fled China to escape oppression.

[...]

She insisted China's ruling Communist Party continues the practice of forced labour because it bolsters the world's second-largest economy. Jewher Ilham urged companies worldwide to end interactions with Chinese supply chains suspected of using slave labour.

[...]

In 2022, a report from the United Nations (UN) said "serious human rights violations" have been committed in Xinjiang in the context of Beijing's application of strategies against terrorism and extremism, with those placed in "vocational educational and training centres" subject to torture, abuse and inhuman treatment between 2017 and 2019.

[...]

• Before the British government handed over Hong Kong in 1997, China agreed to allow the region considerable political autonomy for fifty years under a framework known as “one country, two systems.”
• In recent years, Beijing has cracked down on Hong Kong’s freedoms, stoking mass protests in the city and drawing international criticism.
• Beijing imposed a national security law in 2020 that gave it broad new powers to punish critics and silence dissenters, which has fundamentally altered life for Hong Kongers.

Archived

China pledged to preserve much of what makes Hong Kong unique when the former British colony was handed over in 1997. Beijing said it would give Hong Kong fifty years to keep its capitalist system and enjoy many freedoms not found in mainland Chinese cities.

But more than halfway through the transition, Beijing has taken increasingly brazen steps to encroach on Hong Kong’s political system and crack down on dissent. In 2020, Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong. Since then, authorities have arrested dozens of pro-democracy activists, lawmakers, and journalists; curbed voting rights; and limited freedoms of the press and speech. In March 2024, Hong Kong lawmakers passed Article 23, an additional security legislation that further cements China’s rule on the city’s rights and freedom. These moves have not only drawn international condemnation, but have also raised questions about Hong Kong’s status as a global financial hub and dimmed hopes that the city will ever become a full-fledged democracy.

[...]

Sky Net is China’s overarching overseas fugitive recovery operation. Launched in 2015, it includes the notorious Operation Fox Hunt started in 2014. It does not include ad hoc operations, such as the anti-telecom fraud campaign that forced the return of 230,000 individuals in the span of just over a single year (April 2021 – July 2022).

The methodology for China’s forced return operations were laid out in the CCDI’s 2018 written legal interpretation to the National Supervision Law. The mix of overt and covert means explicitly include the use of:

• Extraditions
• Deportations
• Persuasion to return
• Luring and entrapment
• Kidnapping

[...]

Last week, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) released its annual report. It provides a rare glimpse of insight into some of the Chinese Communist Party’s operations, as official data are increasingly hard to come by.

Beyond the steep increase in the use of extra-judicial incommunicado detentions in Liuzhi [the Chinese Communist Party's secret detention system], the annual report also provides an update on the CCP’s flagship operation for “overseas fugitive recovery”.

In 2024, a reported 1597 individuals were captured under Sky Net. While the data does not provide a breakdown of how many of those individuals were forcefully returned from abroad, past research and official data sets indicate that would be most of the reported number.

This latest number puts the total amount of individuals forcefully returned to China under Operations Fox Hunt and Sky Net at almost 14,000 from over 120 countries and regions between 2014 and 2024.

Archived

[...]

For their own people [the Chinese Communist Party, CCP, has] imposed a dystopia, including the “great firewall” to control information from the outside. It also exerts strict control over domestic Internet information, uses a vast surveillance camera network with facial recognition and monitors financial transactions done online. If the CCP can think of any way to impose more control over their subjects they will do it.

Abroad they traditionally used RICE (Reward, Ideology, Coercion and Ego) techniques to not only recruit spies, they have used it to win over politicians, scientists and other useful people. They have weaponized overseas Chinese community groups, taken over their media and even set up police stations around the world.

Through software like ByteDance’s TikTok they are capable of sweeping data collection, while Chinese hackers steal all sorts of information and attack online systems. Huawei used their telecommunications equipment to collect yet more.

They have worked to subvert algorithms even in foreign Web sites by flooding the Internet with disinformation and misinformation. Their infamous “little pink” and “50-cent” armies roam the Internet spreading their agenda.

MAKING PROPAGANDA

AI is taking this to an exponentially higher level.

The CCP is investing heavily in AI because it opens opportunities for the CCP’s United Front Work Department (UFWD) and Ministry of State Security (MSS) to vastly increase its power worldwide.

While Hailuo [a very popular AI used to create videos which is based in Shanghai] can be very useful in creating propaganda, TikTok owner ByteDance’s just released OmniHuman-1, which is explicitly for deepfakes and is shockingly good. It is able to produce videos from pictures, video and audio fed by the user to create videos realistic enough to require paying attention.

[...]

The gullible will fall for outrageous deepfakes in partisan social media, but these are pretty easy to discredit. It is the more subtle videos that are concerning because they can be used subtly to change the narrative, such as editing a video of the US Secretary of State and swap out “one China policy” for “one China principle.”

[...]

The release last month of DeepSeek-R1 AI by Hangzhou-based High Flyer rightly attracted a vast amount of attention. Users amused themselves trying to get around the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) imposed censorship, but more alarmingly hackers discovered unprotected data ports [in Deepseek], that data was being shared with TikTok and many reminded us that by law they must share any data with the CCP.

[...]

Perhaps intentionally to avoid widespread press scrutiny, the most powerful AI agent ever, UI-TARS, was released during the DeepSeek hoopla. AI agents by American companies require a paid subscription but offer powerful research capabilities and other functions by taking over a browser and doing work for you.

Unlike previous AI agents, UI-TARS comes in two varieties, one taking over the browser like the others, but with a second option to take over the entire computer or phone.

It can install software, scrape any bit of data it likes and make all sorts of modifications all on its own following whatever instructions it is given whether online or not. That could completely change how we work, play and communicate on our devices.

UI-TARS is open source, so unlike the American AI agents, developers can access, modify and distribute the software for free. This should encourage widespread adoption, including under different branding as long as they retain the original copyright notice, license text and notices in the source code, which non-coders never read.

Why would they do this for free instead of requiring a subscription? To make sure it gets on to as many devices as possible.

How nice of ByteDance, the developer of UI-TARS.

[...]

Soon people will be downloading off-brand UI-TARS without knowing it, and there could be hundreds or even thousands of brands running it. Your [...] AI agent running on UI-TARS can act as spyware tracking your every move and stealing all your data for Beijing, and it will know everything about you — opening up blackmail opportunities on a massive scale.

[...]

As is the case on TikTok, results playing up the CCP line would also be prioritized and content scrubbed from the results as DeepSeek-R1 AI does now, albeit still rather clumsily. DeepSeek-generated articles and books, propaganda videos made with Hailuo AI and deepfake videos made or modified by OmniHuman would feature prominently.

Millions of people around the world could soon be constantly surveiled through their own cameras and microphones, monitored and tracked and living in an alternate information reality — just like in China.

The CCP would have the ability to control nearly every aspect of these people’s lives — just like in China.

But unlike the Chinese, they would not even know how much power they have lost to the CCP.

New data released by the Chinese Communist Party's internal policing body shows a major 46.15% increase in the use of the Liuzhi system from 2023 to 2024. Over the course of last year, 38,000 people were detained by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI).

Liuzhi, or retention in custody, is very similar in design to the better-known residential surveillance at a designated location system (RSDL), which is traditionally used against lawyers, rights defenders and dissidents.

Both systems consist of incommunicado detentions in solitary confinement at secret locations for a period of up to six months.

Unlike RSDL however, the Liuzhi system resides entirely outside the legal system and is treated as an internal party matter (even though many of its victims are likely not party members). In Liuzhi, one does not even theoretically have a right to legal counsel.

For more information on CCDI, Liuzhi and related issues, see our longer report on this (16 Dec 2024).

Key findings from the latest report on the use of Liuzhi:

• The number of investigations of “discipline violations” rose from 626,000 in 2023 to 877,000 in 2024, an increase of 40.09%.

• The number of people placed into Liuzhi rose from 26,000 in 2023 to 38,000 in 2024, an increase of 46.15%.

• Based on the above, the use of Liuzhi, the harshest form of investigation, rose not only in total number of instances used, but also relative to all investigations: 4.15% of those investigated placed into Liuzhi 2023, and 4.33% of those investigated placed into Liuzhi 2024.

• Of the 889,000 people given disciplinary sanctions of any sort, 17,000 regarded people in the financial sector, 94,000 within State-Owned Enterprises, and 60,000 people within the pharmaceutical sector.

• The** total number of victims since the system was implemented in 2018 is now likely close to - or slightly above - 200,000**. All are victims of the CCDI’s systematic and widespread use of arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances and torture (due to the prolonged use of solitary confinement).

The Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide released a report in January 2025, “Eight Years On, China’s Repression of the Uyghurs Remains Dire: How China’s Policies in the Uyghur Region Have and Have Not Changed.” The report is authored by Rian Thum, Senior Lecturer in East Asian History, at the University of Manchester.

[...]

The [new] report finds that, given the available information, all of the policies that led to accusations of mass atrocities in the Uyghur region continue, and some are expanding. These findings should prompt deeper research into the nature of mass atrocities facing the Uyghur population and spark urgent, effective responses. In particular, the report recommends further research into emerging repressive strategies, including the intense network of electronic and human surveillance, curbs on religious practice, and the destruction of cultural heritage.

[...]

A list of boarding schools (pdf) newly built or expanded with new dormitories in 2023 and 2024. The sources are Chinese government construction tenders (formal requests for bids from contractors on a project) and state-approved media, with links to the sources provided in the table. Some of the sites are geolocated by comparison using details from the tender or media sources.

A list of prisons and kanshousuo (pdf), a type of internment facility, that have either been newly built or expanded from 2019 onward. Geolocation (associating names of documented facilities to exact coordinates) is based on the work and available sources on the Xinjiang Victims Database. Expansion and new construction dates are based on data satellite imagery, in most cases from Google Earth.

Using the list of kanshousuo identified by Xinjiang Victims Database from satellite imagery and government documents, this spreadsheet (pdf) provides an estimate of total kanshousuo capacity in Xinjiang at Chinese government standards. Government standards, available at Archive Today, dictate cell capacity of eight or 16 prisoners for the two standard cell sizes. Cell sizes and numbers were identified from the unroofed outdoor section that is mandated for each cell and is visible in satellite imagery. Google Earth and Apple Maps were the sources for satellite imagery.