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Seems all fine, right?
Pro-EU leader claims Moldova victory despite alleged Russian meddling
Moldova’s pro-EU President Maia Sandu has claimed a second term after a tense election run-off seen as a choice between Europe and Russia. With most votes counted Sandu had won 55%, and in a late-night speech she promised to be president for all Moldovans.
Her rival Alexandr Stoianoglo, who was backed by the pro-Russian Party of Socialists, had called for a closer relationship with Moscow.
During the day the president’s national security adviser said there had been “massive interference” from Russia in Moldova’s electoral process that had “high potential to distort the outcome”.
Russia had already denied meddling in the vote, which came a week after another key Eastern European election in Georgia, whose president said it had been a “Russian special operation”.
15·7 days agoThis is maybe a devastating example why centralization and central planning is a bad and dehumanizing act for individuals in a society. There is a good documentary about China’s so-called “Ghost Children”. These are those who were born as younger siblings during China’s One Child policy.
The documentary was made in 2014. It shows how quickly things can change, and how people suffer now and then due to bad politics.
It’s really worth your time.
China’s Ghost Children – (video, 36 min)
Second or third children born illegally during China’s One Child Policy - implemented between 1979 and 2015 to curb the country’s population growth by restricting many families to a single child - are banned from marrying, having children or simply boarding a train. Condemned to a non-life, these ghost children do not officially exist according to the Chinese state. ARTE Reportage goes in search of these ‘Haihaizi’, those children who should not have been born.
[Edit typo.]
8·8 days agoIn a piece published in November 2022, Nobel Economist Daron Acemoglu argues that China’s economy is rotting from the head.
For a while, [China’s leader] Xi, his entourage, and even many outside experts believed that the economy could still flourish under conditions of tightening central control, censorship, indoctrination, and repression [after Xi secured an unprecedented third term (with no future term limits in sight), and stacked the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee with loyal supporters]. Again, many looked to AI as an unprecedentedly powerful tool for monitoring and controlling society.
Yet there is mounting evidence to suggest that Xi and advisers misread the situation, and that China is poised to pay a hefty economic price for the regime’s intensifying control. Following sweeping regulatory crackdowns on Alibaba, Tencent, and others in 2021, Chinese companies are increasingly focused on remaining in the political authorities’ good graces, rather than on innovating.
The inefficiencies and other problems created by the politically motivated allocation of credit are also piling up, and state-led innovation is starting to reach its limits. Despite a large increase in government support since 2013, the quality of Chinese academic research is improving only slowly.
[…] The top-down control in Chinese academia is distorting the direction of research, too. Many faculty members are choosing their research areas to curry favor with heads of departments or deans, who have considerable power over their careers. As they shift their priorities, the evidence suggests that the overall quality of research is suffering.
Xi’s tightening grip over science and the economy means that these problems will intensify. And as is true in all autocracies, no independent experts or domestic media will speak up about the train wreck he has set in motion […]
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2·21 days agoAddition:
TikTok Has Pushed Chinese Propaganda Ads To Millions Across Europe – ( July 2024, updated September 2024)
According to TikTok’s newly public advertising library, ads from China’s largest state media outlets touting everything from China Covid lockdowns to tourism in the troubled Xinjiang region have been broadcast to millions of the platform’s European users.
TikTok Ads Paid for by Chinese Media Target European Users – (August 2023)
Chinese media sponsored over a thousand ads on TikTok targeting European audiences. Additionally, accounts that carefully obscure their connections to China may pose further risks in coordinated information manipulation campaigns.
This are just two examples, there is much more across the web.
This is very good. We need more of this ‘grassroots media’.
It’s real …
Forced organ harvesting and transplant tourism – (May 2024)
China’s new Regulation on Donation and Transplantation of Human Organs takes effect May 1, 2024 […] However, experts suggest the regulatory change will not lead to transparency, bring an end to China’s transplant tourism business, or protect prisoners of conscience and ethnic groups from crimes in organ transplantation, including forced organ harvesting.
I guess this is just an introduction into the story, but I also feel it is a bit too long. A sentence or two would have been sufficient.
1·28 days agoClimate Action Tracker for China
- Policies and action: insufficient
- NDC (nationally determined contributions) target against modelled domestic pathways: highly insufficient
- NDC target against against fair share: insufficient
- Overall rating: highly insufficient
[Edit for clarity.]
Read what Al Jazeera has been reporting on and you know the answer to your question.
As an addition:
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In 2015, two years after kicking off its massive Belt and Road initiative, China launched its “Digital Silk Road” project to expand access to digital infrastructure such as submarine cables, satellites, 5G connectivity, etc. In a report published this year, the UK-based human rights group ‘Article 19’ argues that the project is about more than just expanding access to Chinese technology, but rather to export its brand of digital authoritarianism across the word. Here is a brief article about it where you can also download the 80-page report (April 2024): China: The rise of digital repression in the Indo-Pacific – (Archived link)
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There is also an interesting first-hand research about how Chinese people cope with constant surveillance in their country by Canadian researcher Professor Ariane Ollier-Malaterre (March 2024): Digital surveillance is omnipresent in China. Here’s how citizens are coping (in French: La surveillance numérique est omniprésente en Chine. Voici comment les citoyens y font face)
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Does China have a tech company which does NOT develop spyware?
I don’t know the reason for the prompt in this particular case, of course, but there is a persistent form of racism in China, namely the prejudice that the Han Chinese are more advanced than other cultures inside and outside of China. Some experts say this view is even promoted by the government’s propaganda.
There is also a good video by a foreigner living in China (19 min): CHINA: RACISM: China’s Ugly, Disturbing yet Open Secret — (archived link).
Last year, Human Rights Watch urged the Chinese government to combat anti-black racism on Chinese social media.
[Edit typo.]
There is a good article by the China Media Project from April 2024 about the Chinese Communist Party’s AI policy:
Tracking Control: Bringing AI to the Party — [Archived link]
China’s release this week of new draft rules governing the generation of AI content, coming just months after the launch of ChatGPT, might give the impression leaders are scrambling to catch up. But for years now, the Chinese Communist Party has planned to power up AI innovations — even as it contains them.
Corrected. Sorry, and thanks @[email protected]
ICC’s Karim Khan announces arrest warrant application for Israeli and Hamas leaders
[Regarding Israel, the arrest warrants so far go against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.]
Just stumbled upon this on social media as a message to democratic countries:
In a video posted on Xitter, a Russian soldier who defected to Ukraine says his unit were using Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet via an IP address in Latvia. They were paying for the subscription over Telegram.
I assume you agree that they will continue to interfere, but, yes, for now there is reason to celebrate a bit :-)