Chinese Censors Crack Down on Tweets
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ABCDE Democracy Dies in Darkness SUNDAY, JANUARY 6, 2019 Chinese censors crack down on tweets Police head to doorsteps in interviews to The Washington Post that to pressure Twitter users authorities are sharply escalating the Twit- to delete messages ter crackdown. It suggests a wave of new and more aggressive tactics by state cen- by Gerry Shih sors and cyber-watchers trying to control the Internet. HONG KONG — The 50-year-old software Twitter is banned in China — as are engineer was tapping away at his computer other non-Chinese sites such as Facebook, in November when state security officials YouTube and Instagram. But they are filed into his office on mainland China. accessed by workarounds such as a virtual They had an unusual — and nonnego- private network, or VPN, which is software tiable — request. that bypasses state-imposed firewalls. Delete these tweets, they said. While Chinese authorities block almost The agents handed over a printout of all foreign social media sites, they rarely 60 posts the engineer had fired off to his have taken direct action against citizens 48,000 followers. The topics included U.S.- who use them, preferring instead to quietly China trade relations and the plight of monitor what the Chinese are saying. underground Christians in his coastal prov- But recently, Internet monitors and ince in southeast China. activists have tallied at least 40 cases of When the engineer did not comply Chinese authorities pressuring users to after 24 hours, he discovered that someone delete tweets through a decidedly low-tech had hacked into his Twitter account and method: showing up at their doorsteps. deleted its entire history of 11,000 tweets. Even for a country accustomed to cen- “If the authorities hack you, what can sorship, a crackdown on Twitter is surpris- you do?” said the engineer, who spoke on ing because the service, like Google and the condition of anonymity for fear of land- Facebook, is used by a relatively small num- ing in deeper trouble with authorities. “I ber of people, at least by Chinese standards. felt completely drained.” An estimated 10 million Chinese use In Beijing and other cities across Twitter, according to some tech-industry China, prominent Twitter users confirmed watchers. (Twitter does not issue statis- SUNDAY, JANUARY 6, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 2 ‘Twitter has become their biggest target to take down’ tics on China.) That is a minuscule figure to be detained by police. (His name is cen- compared with those on government- sored on the Weibo service.) approved messaging and app sites: 1 bil- Last summer, when the Chinese gov- lion for WeChat and hundreds of millions ernment tried to break up a nationwide on Weibo, according to state figures. labor movement, tech-savvy student sup- But in the past two years, as the space porters informed the world via Twitter. for political speech has all but vanished in An elite class of businesspeople with President Xi Jinping’s China, Twitter has ties to the upper echelons of the Com- played an increased role. It has become munist Party as well as media profession- a cyber-window to the outside world, a als are increasingly sneaking peeks at the release valve for the disaffected, a virtual banned service, according to Ho. teahouse for politically minded Chinese at “They all read it,” he said. “For the home and abroad. government, the threat exceeds that of any- Bankrupt mom-and-pop investors thing else. Twitter has become their biggest fume about the lack of financial regula- target to take down.” tions. Disgruntled farmers pass around That’s precisely what’s happening now. videos of land seizures or police thuggery. He Jiangbing, a financial commenta- Muslims from China’s far west share pic- tor, said police came to his Beijing living tures of loved ones locked away in state- room to warn about his tweets. operated reeducation centers. Days earlier, officials visited the It has started to resemble the free- Guangzhou home of Ye Du, a well-known wheeling Twitterscape in other tightly con- writer and supporter of the late Nobel trolled nations such as Saudi Arabia and Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, to hand Egypt. him a printout of 802 tweets he needed to And to the Chinese Communist Party, delete, Ye said in an interview. that means it is a rising threat. Meanwhile, all 30,000 tweets from the “Twitter is the fastest, simplest, most account of Wu Gan, an activist serving an important gathering place if you care about eight-year prison sentence, were deleted in Chinese politics. It’s extremely hot right November, which suggested a government now,” said Ho Pin, the New York-based pub- hack, said Yaxue Cao, a Washington-based lisher of the Mirredia Group, a leading pur- activist. veyor of sensitive Chinese political news. Cui Haoxin, a Muslim poet, was In late November, the wife of renowned taken to a police station and interrogated photographer Lu Guang took to Twitter to recently — partly because of his tweets seek help for her missing husband, believed calling attention to Islamophobia in China. SUNDAY, JANUARY 6, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 3 PHOTOS BY YAN CONG FOR THE WASHINGTON POST He Jiangbing, below, shows his Twitter profile on his phone in China, where the site is banned. Twitter has played an increased role in recent years as the government clamps down on political speech. SUNDAY, JANUARY 6, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 4 “They not only violated my personal form but, until recently, rarely intervened. freedom of speech, but they’re effectively That helped cultivate Twitter’s reputation violating a foreign company and a foreign as a safe space for an improbable and col- country’s Internet sovereignty,” Cui said. orful cast of Chinese voices. Interest among Chinese users skyrock- The veteran journalist Gao Yu, for one, eted in early 2017 after the fugitive billion- tweets prodigiously despite living under aire Guo Wengui began using Twitter and house arrest after being charged with YouTube to air sensational — and largely leaking state secrets in 2015. Bao Tong, a unsubstantiated — allegations of corrup- purged 86-year-old Communist Party offi- tion against Chinese leaders. cial and former top aide to Chinese leader The campaign would have been Zhao Ziyang, set up an account last year unthinkable on Chinese social media. But and hurls daily criticism of the Xi admin- it played out dramatically over several istration to 137,000 followers. (Calls by months on Twitter, drawing in a new gen- foreign journalists to Bao’s home are fre- eration of Chinese users. quently cut off, but his access to Twitter For months, Guo and his support- appears to be rarely interrupted.) ers shared corporate records and satellite He, the Beijing-based columnist, said images of California mansions allegedly there are fears that a full-scale crackdown linked to senior Communist Party officials. on Twitter would choke off the last online “We tend to see cycles of tightening venue in China for open intellectual debate. and relaxing, and China is clearly in a Last year, He wrote pointed comments tightening phase currently as the economy on Weibo and WeChat urging the Chinese slows down and domestic and intentional central bank to lower reserve requirements challenges loom large,” said Dali Yang, an for lenders because, in his estimation, the expert on Chinese politics. Chinese economy was struggling. The Ministry of Public Security and “I never touched politics. I’m not a the Cyberspace Administration of China, dissident, and I’m not a celebrity,” he said. the Internet regulator, did not respond to “They still took away my voice.” requests for comment. When police visited him last month The first time Chinese state security to warn him about tweeting, He did not actively sought out Twitter users was in promise to stop. He’s not sure he could. 2011, when Chinese dissidents, inspired by “We go to Twitter because we have no the wave of uprisings in the Arab world, choice,” He said. “For people like us, if you tried to use the platform to mobilize pro- have to hold in your thoughts, it feels like tests, said Yaqiu Wang, a China researcher dying.” at Human Rights Watch. [email protected] After that movement fizzled, Chinese authorities have kept an eye on the plat- Luna Lin in Beijing contributed to this report. ABCDE Democracy Dies in Darkness TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2019 Chinese troops sit on Afghan doorstep While U.S. looks for exit, ping’s economic ambitions over the past rival tiptoes into region seven years have brought a wave of major it has flooded with cash investment projects, from the resource-rich Caspian Sea to Cambodia’s coastline. by Gerry Shih The modest facility in Tajikistan — which offers a springboard into Afghani- NEAR SHAYMAK, TAJIKISTAN — Two miles stan’s Wakhan Corridor a few miles away above sea level in the inhospitable high- — has not been publicly acknowledged by lands of Central Asia, there’s a new power any government. watching over an old passage into Afghani- But its presence is rich in significance stan: China. and symbolism. For at least three years, Chinese troops At a moment when the United States have quietly monitored this choke point might consider a pact that would pull in Tajikistan just beyond China’s western American troops out of Afghanistan, China frontier, according to interviews, analysis appears to be tiptoeing into a volatile region of satellite images and photographs, and critical to its security and its continental firsthand observations by a Washington ambitions. Post journalist. Already, the retreat of old powers and While veiled in secrecy, the outpost of arrival of the new are on display in Tajiki- about two dozen buildings and lookout tow- stan, a tiny, impoverished country that ers illustrates how the footprint of Chinese served as a gateway into Afghanistan for hard power has been expanding alongside U.S.