Leave no dark corner -- China is building a digital dictatorship

[LadyLiberty]

China is building a digital dictatorship to exert control over its 1.4 billion citizens. For some, “social credit” will bring privileges — for others, punishment.

Dandan Fan is very much the modern Chinese woman.  A marketing professional, she’s diligent and prosperous — in many ways she’s a model Chinese citizen.  But Dandan is being watched 24 hours a day.  A vast network of 200 million CCTV cameras across China ensures there’s no dark corner in which to hide.

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-18/china-social-credit-a-model-citizen-in-a-digital-dictatorship/10200278?pfmredir=sm

[LadyLiberty]

I find this extremely disturbing.

[TomSea]

A very interactive article. Yes, the Chinese Government has been totalitarian really forever at least, for us here.  They have such a large populace, the government must also feel a need to be so overbearing.  Maybe for the weekend, this could be stickied (meaning put at the top).  Thanks for posting and next week, unstickied.  It will be at the top of the World News forum if one is looking for it, in the pink at the top.

Or perhaps next week, we might just have a generic "China" thread at the top. Any input is welcomed, since we have quite a few Chinese stories.

[truth_seeker]

James Damore was a Google employee, tasked with a research piece on gender equality inside the firm.

He wrote his true findings, and he was summarily fired at Google.

Google's motto, is "Do No Evil," yet for a price they willingly assist the Chinese government, to cover up human rights violations, etc.

Google "manages" search results, distorting them via their secret algorithms.

Then lies about all of this, and much more.

The company should be broken up.   

[To-Whose-Benefit?]

Are Xi Jinping’s demands for Communist Party loyalty a bigger threat to China than Donald Trump’s trade war?

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/2165218/are-xi-jinpings-demands-communist-party-loyalty-bigger-threat

As Chinese officials prepared a response to US President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs, they spent hundreds of hours over the past few months on another urgent task: showing their fealty to President Xi Jinping.

In a meeting room in one government ministry in Beijing, officials stacked up piles of papers across a long meeting table to prepare a submission to Xi’s ruling Communist Party. The documents, painstakingly compiled from materials detailing party-government interactions over the last five years, were designed to demonstrate that the ministry had followed the party’s instructions, according to two people involved in the process.

The exercise came as part of Xi’s bid to consolidate power in the nation of 1.4 billion people, where he is now China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. It is part of a wider campaign announced in March to revamp the government – both in Beijing and administrations in far-reaching provinces – to ensure it obeys the party’s wishes.

[Sanguine]

This story from yesterday goes along with this one.

http://www.gopbriefingroom.com/index.php/topic,332946.msg1799251.html#msg1799251

[To-Whose-Benefit?]

How tensions with the West are putting the future of China’s Skynet mass surveillance system at stake.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2165372/how-tensions-west-are-putting-future-chinas-skynet-mass

[To-Whose-Benefit?]

China Mulls Ban On All Foreign TV Shows During Prime Time

[excerpt]

https://www.inkstonenews.com/society/chinese-tv-channels-will-not-be-allowed-air-foreign-programs-during-prime-time/article/2165198

China wants to expand a ban on foreign TV shows during the evening prime-time hours, according to the latest proposal by the country’s media watchdog.

Since 2004, the country has banned the broadcast of foreign TV movies and serials during the peak 7-10pm viewing hours. Now, according to a proposal by state censor the National Radio and Television Administration, all foreign programming – such as animations and documentaries – will be ineligible for broadcast during those hours.

And there will be more general limits on imported programs – including dramas and documentaries – outside of prime time.


“Its main concern is to ensure ‘ideological purity’,” said Beijing-based political commentator Wu Qiang.