#one china principle

[kneedeepincynade]

Gonzaloid and sisonite wanted for actual revolutionary work instead of just attacking Chinese fishing vessels as the United States and the Philippines provoke China with a joint military drill

The post is machine translated

Translation is at the bottom

The collective is on telegram

⚠️ L'ESERCITAZIONE CONGIUNTA TRA USA E FILIPPINE È UNA CHIARA MINACCIA ALLA REPUBBLICA POPOLARE CINESE ⚠️

🇵🇭 Negli ultimi mesi, il Governo della Repubblica delle Filippine ha continuato a cedere enormi porzioni di sovranità agli imperialisti USA, che hanno istituito quattro nuove Basi Militari in diverse zone dello Stato Insulare:

1️⃣ Base Navale "Camilo Osias" a Santa Ana, nella Provincia di Cagayan 🇵🇭

2️⃣ Campo Base "Melchor Dela Cruz" a Gamu, nella Provincia di Isabella 🇵🇭

3️⃣ Base sull'Isola Balabac, nella Visayas Occidentale 🇵🇭

4️⃣ Base Aerea a Lal-lo, nella Provincia di Cagayan 🇵🇭

🤡 Nonostante il Presidente Marcos Jr. abbia tentato di destreggiarsi tra le due superpotenze, dichiarando a Qin Gang - Ministro degli Affari Esteri della Repubblica Popolare Cinese - che le Filippine rispettano il Principio dell'Unica Cina, il Governo Filippino ha poi inaugurato l'Esercitazione "Balikatan - 2023", la più grande esercitazione militare congiunta USA - Filippine di sempre, chiaramente in funzione anti-Cinese ⚔️

🖼Grazie a China Army, abbiamo la Mappa Termica delle attività militari USA nelle Filippine. Qui la lista degli Aerei USA che hanno preso parte all'esercitazione dall'11/04 al 28/04 🤔

🇨🇳 Inoltre il 28 aprile, una Nave della Guardia Costiera Cinese ha bloccato il passaggio di una nave Filippina in una zona contesa a largo del Ren'ai Reef, nel Mar Cinese Meridionale, e il Governo Cinese ha invitato nuovamente il Governo Filippino a rispettare la Sovranità Territoriale della Cina, nonché i diritti e gli interessi Cinesi nel Mar Cinese Meridionale ❗️

🌸 Iscriviti 👉 @collettivoshaoshan

⚠️ JOINT US-PHILIPPINES EXERCISE IS A CLEAR THREAT TO THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA ⚠️

🇵🇭 In recent months, the Government of the Republic of the Philippines has continued to cede huge portions of sovereignty to the US imperialists, who have established four new military bases in different areas of the island state:

1️⃣ "Camilo Osias" Naval Base in Santa Ana, Cagayan Province 🇵🇭

2️⃣ Base Camp "Melchor Dela Cruz" in Gamu, in the Province of Isabella 🇵🇭

3️⃣ Base on Balabac Island, Western Visayas 🇵🇭

4️⃣ Air Base in Lal-lo, Cagayan Province 🇵🇭

🤡 Although President Marcos Jr. tried to juggle the two superpowers, declaring to Qin Gang - Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China - that the Philippines respects the One China Principle, the Philippine Government then inaugurated the Exercise "Balikatan - 2023", the largest joint US-Philippines military exercise ever, clearly anti-Chinese ⚔️

🖼Thanks to China Army, we have Heat Map of US military activities in the Philippines. Here is the list of US aircraft that took part in the exercise from 11/04 to 28/04 🤔

🇨🇳 Also,on the - April 28, a Chinese Coast Guard Vessel blocked the passage of a Philippine vessel in a disputed area off Ren'ai Reef in the South China Sea, and the Chinese Government re-invited the Philippine Government to respect China's Territorial Sovereignty as well as Chinese rights and interests in the South China Sea ❗️

🌸 Subscribe 👉 @collettivoshaoshan

[timesofocean]

Taiwan condemns Qatar for 'politicising' World Cup amid China spat

New Post has been published on https://www.timesofocean.com/taiwan-condemns-qatar-for-politicizing-world-cup-amid-china-spat/

Taiwan condemns Qatar for 'politicising' World Cup amid China spat

Taipei (The Times Groupe)- Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry criticized the organizers of the World Cup in Qatar on Wednesday for claiming Taiwanese fans may be listed as Chinese, and demanded they not allow “improper political factors” to influence sporting events.

Taiwan is a democratically-governed country that takes issue with China’s claims to sovereignty and, in particular, its attempt to claim Taiwanese people as Chinese.

The Hayya card, which serves as a fan identification card as well as their entry visa to Qatar, is required for all World Cup ticket holders.

Taiwan was not listed as a nationality on the application system Tuesday, and a senior Qatari official said Taiwanese were likely to be listed as Chinese on the card.

On Wednesday, the online system listed “Taiwan, Province of China”, terminology that is equally offensive to Taiwan’s government and its people, though it did display a Taiwanese flag, a symbol anathema to China.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou said it was “unacceptable to belittle our country” and they were asking organizers to “immediately correct their ways”.

“The Foreign Ministry urges the organizers of the World Cup that improper political factors not taint simple sports activities and sporting venues that value fair competition and emphasize the spirit of the athletes,” she said.

Sports organizers should let sports be sports and give fans around the world “a clean World Cup football event”.

World Cup organizers did not immediately respond to the comments. Qatar’s communication office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Taiwan participates in most international sporting events as “Chinese Taipei” to avoid political problems with Beijing.

It has never been to a World Cup finals and lost all eight matches in the second round of the Asian qualifying for the 2022 tournament last year.

Taiwan does not have diplomatic relations with Qatar, which, like most countries, only recognizes China’s government.

China has stepped up its pressure on countries and foreign companies to refer to Taiwan as part of China in official documents and on websites, often using the phrase “Taiwan, Province of China”, or “Taiwan, China”.

Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, responded to questions about Taiwan’s complaints to the Qatar World Cup organizers by affirming that “Taiwan is part of China”.

“The one China principle is a basic norm of international relations, and it is widely acknowledged by the international community,” Wang told reporters at a regular press briefing in Beijing on Wednesday.

[olderthannetfic]

Now I'm wondering how countries like Japan and China teach literacy.

Since kanji / hanzi don't really have that much in the way of phonetic elements, they kinda have to teach them by memorization and I don't think they have many reading comprehension problems over there.

(Although both countries do have supplementary phonetic writing systems in the form of bopomofo and pinyin for China, and the kanas for Japan)

--

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It's a little closer to teaching vocabulary than spelling, but the same kinds of principles apply: You teach the building blocks, like the traditional radicals, which aren't so different from teaching Latin and Greek roots in an English class for English speakers.

And, as a matter of fact, lots of those radicals do predict pronunciation, just not in every single case. They can also be clues to meaning, but again, not absolutely consistently. Many characters have a sound-cueing radical on one side and a meaning-cueing radical on the other. It's just that only some are still useful in the modern day, while others are more like the English word 'plumbing' where knowledge of Roman lead pipes explains why this word comes from the one for lead, but the root probably wouldn't help a kid learn the word in the first place.

One similarity to teaching phonics would be teaching students to tell very complicated and similar characters apart: you want to help a student spot all the little building blocks of the character and then spot the ones that are different, not just glance at the whole character and get a general overall vibe. If you do a whole look-based approach, too many characters are too easy to mistake for one another.

Remembering a bajillion Chinese characters is hard if you're trying to memorize them in a year and not all of elementary school, but I think people who don't read them underestimate how many component parts there are and how approachable they can be if you start by learning fundamentals, not just memorizing a few individual characters as though they have no relation to anything else.

They're actually pretty systematic, just in the way that English spelling is with its overlapping systems and historical artifacts, not in the way that highly regular Spanish spelling is.

Having taken a lot of Japanese classes, I will say that Japanese as a foreign language textbooks often do a piss poor job of this and totally do teach kanji in a sight words-y way... But my Mandarin class started with important foundational concepts that served me well in Japanese later even if I bombed out of Chinese class at the time.

Can you tell how irritated I am by all the foreign language learners who think characters are sooooo hard when, really, it's just their crappy textbook? Haha.

They're moderately hard in the way that learning a full adult spectrum of vocabulary is hard, but people do that for foreign languages all the time. The countries that use characters do tend to make sets that are smaller for certain kinds of applications, same as we have things like simple English wikipedia, but a literate adult will always know lots more, whether it's from their career in engineering or their predilection for historical romance novels.

Uh... anyway, the answer is "Bit by bit in elementary school, just like in any other country".

[hussyknee]

(alt included in all images)

Another thread by Senator Ben Ray Luján here.

A book on the subject (haven't read it myself):

One of the sources in another one of Alisa's furiously impassioned twitter threads have been debunked, so I didn't include that. But she claims that her own family was caught in the fallout zone when her mother was a baby, which eventually led to her and large numbers of her community developing cancer. It's human for that kind of grief to be caught up in inaccuracies. People are already being ghastly and racist to Hispanos and Indigenous people criticizing the hype for the movie. They're not attacking Oppenheimer for being Jewish, they're criticising the erasure of the human cost of these bombs and the continued valorisation of the U.S military's actions in World War II as some kind of moral saviourism.

While Oppenheimer himself believed that the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were morally justified (they had planned to drop them on Germany except they surrendered before they could), he also felt had blood on his hands and regretted his role as the "Father of the Atomic Bomb". He spent the rest of his career vehemently opposing further development of thermonuclear weapons and the hydrogen bomb accurately predicting the concept of mutually assured destruction. This eventually made him a victim of Senator McCarthy's Red Scare and his clearance was revoked. I haven't seen the movie (Christopher Nolan is the kind of casual white racist I avoid on principle) but people who have seen it say that it doesn't glorify nuclear weapons and depicts the man himself with the complex moral nuance that seems to be accurately reflective of his real life.

The backlash to Indigenous and Hispanos people's criticisms and to people pointing out that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were genocides is also frustrating because...both world wars were a clash of genocidal empires. The reason they were world wars is because the countries colonized by Japan, China, the European powers and the US were all dragged into it, whether they wanted to or not. Jews were one of the many colonized peoples that suffered in that time, who were left to die by everyone until they could be used to frame the Allied powers as moral saviours, establishing a revisionist nostalgia for heroism that powers the US military industrial complex to this day.

As early as May 1942, and again in June, the BBC reported the mass murder of Polish Jews by the Nazis. Although both US President, Franklin Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, warned the Germans that they would be held to account after the war, privately they agreed to prioritise and to turn their attention and efforts to winning the war. Therefore, all pleas to the Allies to destroy the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau were ignored. The Allies argued that not only would such an operation shift the focus away from winning the war, but it could provoke even worse treatment of the Jews. In June 1944 the Americans had aerial photographs of the Auschwitz complex. The Allies bombed a nearby factory in August, but the gas chambers, crematoria and train tracks used to transport Jewish civilians to their deaths were not targeted.

(Source)

Uncritical consumption of World War II media is the reinforcement of imperialist propaganda, more so when one group of colonized people is used to silence other colonized peoples. Pitting white Jewry against BIPOC is to do the work of white supremacy for imperialist colonizers, and victimizes Jews of colour twice over.

Edit: friends, there's been some doubt cast on the veracity of Alisa's claims. The human cost to the Hispanos population caught downwind of the nuclear tests is very real, as was land seizure without adequate compensation. However, there's no record I can yet find about Los Alamos killing livestock and Hispanos being forced to work for Los Alamos without PPE. There is a separate issue about human testing in the development of said PPE that's not covered here. I'm turning off reblogs until I can find out more. Meanwhile, here's another more legitimate article you can boost instead:

[mostlysignssomeportents]

At long last, a meaningful step to protect Americans' privacy

This Saturday (19 Aug), I'm appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I'm on a 2:30PM panel called "Return From Retirement," followed by a signing:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks

Privacy raises some thorny, subtle and complex issues. It also raises some stupid-simple ones. The American surveillance industry's shell-game is founded on the deliberate confusion of the two, so that the most modest and sensible actions are posed as reductive, simplistic and unworkable.

Two pillars of the American surveillance industry are credit reporting bureaux and data brokers. Both are unbelievably sleazy, reckless and dangerous, and neither faces any real accountability, let alone regulation.

Remember Equifax, the company that doxed every adult in America and was given a mere wrist-slap, and now continues to assemble nonconsensual dossiers on every one of us, without any material oversight improvements?

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/20/equifax-settles-with-ftc-cfpb-states-and-consumer-class-actions-for-700m/

Equifax's competitors are no better. Experian doxed the nation again, in 2021:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/30/dox-the-world/#experian

It's hard to overstate how fucking scummy the credit reporting world is. Equifax invented the business in 1899, when, as the Retail Credit Company, it used private spies to track queers, political dissidents and "race mixers" so that banks and merchants could discriminate against them:

https://jacobin.com/2017/09/equifax-retail-credit-company-discrimination-loans

As awful as credit reporting is, the data broker industry makes it look like a paragon of virtue. If you want to target an ad to "Rural and Barely Making It" consumers, the brokers have you covered:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#axciom

More than 650,000 of these categories exist, allowing advertisers to target substance abusers, depressed teens, and people on the brink of bankruptcy:

https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/06/08/from-heavy-purchasers-of-pregnancy-tests-to-the-depression-prone-we-found-650000-ways-advertisers-label-you

These companies follow you everywhere, including to abortion clinics, and sell the data to just about anyone:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/07/safegraph-spies-and-lies/#theres-no-i-in-uterus

There are zillions of these data brokers, operating in an unregulated wild west industry. Many of them have been rolled up into tech giants (Oracle owns more than 80 brokers), while others merely do business with ad-tech giants like Google and Meta, who are some of their best customers.

As bad as these two sectors are, they're even worse in combination – the harms data brokers (sloppy, invasive) inflict on us when they supply credit bureaux (consequential, secretive, intransigent) are far worse than the sum of the harms of each.

And now for some good news. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, under the leadership of Rohit Chopra, has declared war on this alliance:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/16/cfpb-looks-to-restrict-the-sleazy-link-between-credit-reporting-agencies-and-data-brokers/

They've proposed new rules limiting the trade between brokers and bureaux, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, putting strict restrictions on the transfer of information between the two:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/15/tech/privacy-rules-data-brokers/index.html

As Karl Bode writes for Techdirt, this is long overdue and meaningful. Remember all the handwringing and chest-thumping about Tiktok stealing Americans' data to the Chinese military? China doesn't need Tiktok to get that data – it can buy it from data-brokers. For peanuts.

The CFPB action is part of a muscular style of governance that is characteristic of the best Biden appointees, who are some of the most principled and competent in living memory. These regulators have scoured the legislation that gives them the power to act on behalf of the American people and discovered an arsenal of action they can take:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

Alas, not all the Biden appointees have the will or the skill to pull this trick off. The corporate Dems' darlings are mired in #LearnedHelplessness, convinced that they can't – or shouldn't – use their prodigious powers to step in to curb corporate power:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

And it's true that privacy regulation faces stiff headwinds. Surveillance is a public-private partnership from hell. Cops and spies love to raid the surveillance industries' dossiers, treating them as an off-the-books, warrantless source of unconstitutional personal data on their targets:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/16/ring-ring-lapd-calling/#ring

These powerful state actors reliably intervene to hamstring attempts at privacy law, defending the massive profits raked in by data brokers and credit bureaux. These profits, meanwhile, can be mobilized as lobbying dollars that work lawmakers and regulators from the private sector side. Caught in the squeeze between powerful government actors (the true "Deep State") and a cartel of filthy rich private spies, lawmakers and regulators are frozen in place.

Or, at least, they were. The CFPB's discovery that it had the power all along to curb commercial surveillance follows on from the FTC's similar realization last summer:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/12/regulatory-uncapture/#conscious-uncoupling

I don't want to pretend that all privacy questions can be resolved with simple, bright-line rules. It's not clear who "owns" many classes of private data – does your mother own the fact that she gave birth to you, or do you? What if you disagree about such a disclosure – say, if you want to identify your mother as an abusive parent and she objects?

But there are so many stupid-simple privacy questions. Credit bureaux and data-brokers don't inhabit any kind of grey area. They simply should not exist. Getting rid of them is a project of years, but it starts with hacking away at their sources of profits, stripping them of defenses so we can finally annihilate them.

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[sgiandubh]

When you do not know a thing about the issue at stake...

...perhaps it's better to remain silent.

Some of you know, others don't - and that's fine - but my main field of expertise is labor law.

I just read this in anger and disbelief:

Look, lady. I don't care who the hell you are, what you do for a living or why you felt entitled to answer those insistent questions on your side of the fandom. I suppose you are North American and have no idea of how things work on this side of the pond. It is fine: I might know what a Congress filibuster is, for example, but I'd be severely unable to judge the finer points of competence sharing between Fed and state level.

The difference between you and me?

I keep my mouth shut and/or do my own research before opening it in public.

Have you no shame to write things like: 'It was discovered clothing factories in Bulgaria and Portugal made it and how workers were exploited, mostly women, because these factories were in special economic zones in these countries exempt from EU employee rights and regulations.'

HOW DARE YOU? What strange form of illiterate entitlement possessed you to utter such things with confidence, comfortably hidden behind a passive voice ('it was discovered')?

Portugal joined the EU in 1986. Bulgaria (and my country) joined the EU in 2007. I have given 5 relentless years of my life to make this collective political project a reality, along with hundreds of other people my age who chose to come back home from the West and put their skills to good use for their country. In doing so, I rejected more than 10 excellent corporate job offers in France and China. To see you come along and write such enormities is like having you spit in my face.

Article 4 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (aka The Treaty of Rome) is formal and clear, as far as competence sharing between the EU and its Member States goes (the UK was still, back then, a full member of the EU - it quit on February 1st 2020):

That means that ALL the EU regulations are being integrated into the national legislation of the Member States. This is not a copy/paste process, however. And because it is a shared competence area, the Member States have a larger margin of appreciation into making the EU rules a part of their own. While exceptions or delays in this process can be and are negotiated, the core principles are NEVER touched.

Read it one hundred times, madam, maybe you'll learn something today:

THERE ARE NO SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION. THE WHOLE FUCKING EUROPEAN UNION IS A SPECIAL ECONOMIC ZONE, THIS IS WHY IT IS CALLED THE SINGLE MARKET.

What the fuck do you think we are, Guangzhou? We'd wish, seeing the growth statistics!

Now, for the textile industry sector and particularly with regard to the Bulgarian market, a case very similar to my own country. Starting around 1965, many big European textile players realized the competitive advantage of using the lower paid, readily available Eastern European workforce. In order to be able to do business with all those dour Communist regimes, the solution was simple and easy to find: toll manufacturing.

It worked (and still does!) like this:

The foreign partner brings its own designs, textiles and know-how into the mix - or more simply put, it outsources all these activities. The locals transform it into the finished product, using their own workforce. The result is then re-exported to the foreign partner, who labels it and sells it. In doing so, he has the legal obligation to include provenance on the label ('made in Romania', 'made in Indonesia', 'made in Bulgaria' - you name it).

The reason you might find less and less of those 'made in ' labels nowadays at Primark and more and more at Barbour, Moncler and the such is the constant raise of the workers' wages in Eastern Europe since 1990 (things happened there, in 1989, maybe you remember?). We are not competitive anymore for midrange prêt-à-porter - China (Shein, anyone?), Cambodia and Mexico do come to mind as better suppliers. To speak about 'exploited female labourers in rickety old factories' is an insult and a lie. They weren't exploited back in the Eighties, as they are not now (workers in those factories were and still are easily paid about 50% more than all the rest) and the factories being modernized and constantly updated was always a mandatory clause in any contract of the sort. Normal people in our countries rarely or ever saw those clothes. You had to either be lucky enough for a semi-confidential store release or bribe someone working there and willing to take the risk, in order to be able to buy the rejected models on the local market.

If I understood correctly, you place this critical episode at the launch of the limited SRH & Barbour collection, for the fall of 2018. How convenient for you, who (I am told by trusted people) were one of the most vocal critics of S during Hawaii 2.0!

And as far as Barbour goes, it never pretended to manufacture everything in the UK only:

This information is absolutely true. You can read the whole statement, signed in October 2017 by one of their Directors, Ian Sime, here: https://www.barbour.com/us/media/wysiwyg/PDF/Ethical_Statement_October_2017.pdf

And a snapshot for you:

Oh, and: SEDEX is a behemoth in its world, with more than 75.000 companies joining as a member (https://www.sedex.com/become-a-member/meet-our-customers/). Big corporations like TESCO, Dupont, Nestle, Sainsbury's or Unilever included.

I am not Bulgarian, but I know all of this way better than you'll probably ever do. The same type of contracts were common all over Eastern Europe: Romania, Poland, the GDR (that's East Berlin and co, for you) and even the Soviet Union. I am also sure your Portuguese readers will be thrilled to see themselves qualified by a patronizing North American as labor exploiters living in a third-world country with rickety factories.

You people have no shame and never did. But you just proved with trooping colors you also have no culture and no integrity. More reasons to not regret my unapologetic fandom choice.

I expect an angry and very, very vulgar answer to this, even if I chose to not include your name/handle. The stench of your irrelevance crossed an ocean.

[zvaigzdelasas]

Probably a pretty good sign about Arévalo that heritage foundation doesn't like him lmao

The results also do not bode well for America, as the current government has been pro-U.S. and a staunch American foreign policy ally, and the election of a leftist government could dramatically change all that.[...]

Arévalo hails from a new political party, Semilla. Local conservatives fear “he will make common cause with global progressives on abortion, gender identity, and a pro-LGBTQ+ platform.” Last year, Semilla unsuccessfully introduced a bill in parliament “for persons who menstruate,” a reference to “transgender” men’s rights [...]

The impact of Guatemala’s election on American national security could be severe. The current conservative government has been a staunch U.S. foreign policy ally, recognizing Taiwan over Communist China, openly backing Ukraine over Russia, and being solidly pro-Israel and pro-U.S. Other Latin American states have joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative of receiving massive loans and infrastructure investments in return for loyalty to Beijing. Recently, current Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei pledged “absolute support” for Taiwan after neighboring Honduras switched sides and recognized Beijing over Taipei.[...]

[Arévalo] has made it clear that he wants to establish closer relations with China since he believes that it is essential for Guatemala’s economic growth. Palmieri said that Guatemala’s conservative values are aligned with conservative American principles: “Guatemala is one of the U.S.’s last partners in the region that still holds conservative values such as support for a free-market economy, recognizing the hemispheric threat Communist China represents, and fidelity to the idea that the family structure is central to our lives.”

[xinyuehui]

Four Treasures of the Study · 文房四宝

蒲一永 Pu Yi Yong · The Brush

Eight Principles of Yong. Traditionally, it was believed that practicing the eight common strokes in regular script, all of which can be found in the character "Yong," could lead to writing all characters well. According to legend, it was created by Wang Xizhi in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, "Yong" is also the first character in his famous work 蘭亭集序 Lantingji Xu (Preface to the Poems Collected from the Orchid Pavilion). The surname "Pu" could potentially be a homage to the famous Chinese writer Pu Songling in the Qing Dynasty. In his most popular work 聊齋誌異 Liaozhai Zhiyi (Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio), the focus of the tales are on the emotional entanglements between humans and supernatural beings in the world.

陳楮英 Chen Chu Ying · The Paper

Chu, which refers to the paper mulberry plant, was historically used in ancient China as the raw material for making mulberry paper and Xuan paper. Additionally, "Chu" was used as a term synonymous with paper in ancient times. In EP4, Chuying mentioned that the "chu" in her name means paper.

曹光硯 Cao Guang Yan · The Inkstone

Yan, also known as Yantai, is the name of the inkstone used in calligraphy. The inkstone is used to grind the ink stick into powder, which is then mixed with water on the inkstone to create ink suitable for calligraphy.

執念 The Obsessions · The Ink

The obsessions are one of the ever-changing elements in the show, the elegiac couplets are uniquely written with whole heart and mind for the different obsessions.

[probablyasocialecologist]

I begin with the question How does Israel get away with it? In terms of colonizing Palestine. Here you have Israel, which conquers, takes over Palestine. It drives out three-fourths of the Palestinian people. In 1967, it imposes an occupation over the rest of Palestine that it hadn’t conquered in 1948. Sets up an apartheid regime. It settles the whole country in violation of international law. And gets away with it. How? And what I say in the book is that international politics is transactional. There’s no value, no ideology today. Trump was the epitome of this. There are no real alliances. There are no principles. Even though Biden talks about human rights and about how we have to live by the rules of international law, there aren’t such things that hold back powerful governments. It’s all transactional. Short term. What is my immediate advantage? How do I lever my power and get what I want? And “deal” (this is the Trump word) with other powerful parties that have what I want? In this kind of global system, Israel plays two major roles. One of them is, it becomes an enforcer of the system for the major political players, especially the G7 but not only those countries. Israel also has relations with Russia and with China. The other one I put in the framework of global capitalism. From the 1970s, the last 50 years, as this neoliberal system has taken over all the world economy—there’s no more socialist countries (China is a state capitalist system)—it’s the only system. It’s saturated all possible markets. It can’t expand. So what it has to do is turn inward. It begins to exploit internally. And then, with no regulation, there is a rise of a super-rich class, the Musks and the Gates and all the billionaires. The capitalist system has always promised you a happier life, especially for the middle class, upward mobility, and a house, and job security, and Ronald McDonald’s shining face. And all of a sudden, it’s becoming repressive. The rest of the world won’t have the standard of living we do. In this system, you need enforcement. Because not only the poor people of the world, but also the middle classes of the Global North, our kids, will not have the standard of living that we do. Now you have the Occupy movement, all kinds of Global South movements. So it has to be more repressive. The big powers aren’t built for repressing populations. The Pentagon builds F-35s, nuclear submarines, thermodynamic missile systems, not the kinds of weapons you need for population control. The Pentagon is geared toward conventional warfare, not population control. And that’s Israel’s niche, because it has perfected all this on the Palestinians over the last century. So it has the technologies of repression—we see it now in Gaza. And it has the strategies of population control that most other Western developed countries don’t have. And the experience of boots on the group for a century. So that’s one level, where Israel becomes the enforcer of global capitalism. In a very real way. Not alone, of course, but it becomes the leading force in population control.

[kneedeepincynade]

They want war? They will have it! China will fend off all imperialist dogs foreign or domestics!

The post is machine translated

The translation is at the bottom

The collective is on telegram

⚠️ VERSO UN'ALLEANZA "TRE PIÙ UNO" GUIDATA DAGLI STATI UNITI IN FUNZIONE ANTI-CINESE ⚠️

🇹🇼|🇨🇦 Nel mentre a Taiwan, il Popolo Cinese vota per il KMT, mostrando di non volere una guerra con la Repubblica Popolare Cinese, il Canada - per soffiare sul fuoco del conflitto - ha annunciato la sua "entrata" nella Strategia Indo-Pacifica di matrice statunitense, dove si parla di un chiaro impegno canadese nei confronti del regime-fantoccio di Taiwan, in funzione anti-CPC.

🇺🇸|🇦🇺|🇯🇵 Inoltre, sembra sempre più probabile la nascita di una Coalizione "Tre più Uno", una sorta di alleanza - guidata dagli Stati Uniti - per sostenere militarmente gli USA qualora scoppiasse una crisi, e poi un conflitto nello Stretto di Taiwan con l'Esercito Popolare di Liberazione.

🇹🇼 Il "più Uno" è, ovviamente, il regime-fantoccio di Taiwan, mentre per quanto riguarda i "Tre", non c'è ancora certezza assoluta, ma dovrebbero essere, oltre agli USA, Australia e Giappone.

🇺🇸|🇯🇵 Gli USA considerano il Giappone come il più importante alleato nella Regione, e l'Australia come l'alleato più fedele, mentre l'India - ad esempio - è vista come un alleato USA, ma non come "alleato USA rispetto alla Cina" 🇮🇳

🇺🇸 Hal Brands, studioso di Politica Estera USA, ha sottolineato che i funzionari giapponesi ed australiani sono "strettamente allineati" con gli USA sulla Questione di Taiwan, e ha affermato di avere la sensazione che una crisi stia per arrivare, "prima, piuttosto che dopo" ⚔️

🇯🇵 Il Giappone, l'alleato degli USA più vicino alla Cina e a Taiwan, ha aumentato a dismisura il budget per la Difesa, distruggendo la promessa di Costituzione Pacifica.

🇦🇺 Per quanto riguarda l'Australia, Hal Brands ha menzionato il Patto AUKUS che include anche il Regno Unito.

🇺🇸|🇦🇺|🇯🇵 Oltre all'AUKUS, si stanno gettando le basi per la formazione di un'alleanza tripartita tra USA, Australia e Giappone in funzione anti-cinese.

🇪🇺 Per quanto riguarda le nazioni europee, Brands ha affermato di ritenere le loro capacità militare nel Pacifico Occidentale come limitate, anche se non assenti, e che quindi potrebbero svolgere un ruolo diverso in un conflitto con la Cina, ricorrendo alle sanzioni (❗️) piuttosto che alle armi.

🇺🇸|⚔️|🇨🇳 L'Amministrazione Statunitense, come volevasi dimostrare, non ha alcuna intenzione di rispettare i "Tre Principi" e la "Politica dei Cinque No" proposti da Xi Jinping, e lavora attivamente per costruire strumenti in grado di contenere la Cina, soprattutto a livello militare.

🔺Joe Biden a Xi Jinping: "Gli USA continueranno a competere contro la Cina"

🔺Gli Stati Uniti continueranno a violare il Principio dell'Unica Cina

🧾 Fonte

🌸 Iscriviti 👉 @collettivoshaoshan

⚠️ TOWARDS A US-LEADED "THREE PLUS ONE" ALLIANCE IN ANTI-CHINESE FUNCTION ⚠️

🇹🇼|🇨🇦 While in Taiwan, the Chinese people vote for the KMT, showing that they do not want a war with the People's Republic of China, Canada - to fan the flames of the conflict - has announced its "entry" into the Indo Strategy - Pacific of US origin, where there is talk of a clear Canadian commitment towards the puppet regime of Taiwan, in an anti-CPC function.

🇺🇸|🇦🇺|🇯🇵 Furthermore, the birth of a "Three plus One" Coalition seems increasingly probable, a sort of alliance - led by the United States - to provide military support to the United States should a crisis break out, and then a conflict in the Taiwan Strait with the People's Liberation Army.

🇹🇼 The "plus One" is, of course, the puppet regime of Taiwan, while as regards the "Three", there is still no absolute certainty, but they should be, in addition to the USA, Australia and Japan.

🇺🇸|🇯🇵 The USA considers Japan as the most important ally in the Region, and Australia as the most loyal ally, while India - for example - is seen as a US ally, but not as a "US ally compared to China" 🇮🇳

🇺🇸 US Foreign Policy scholar Hal Brands has pointed out that Japanese and Australian officials are "closely aligned" with the US on the Taiwan issue, and said he has a feeling a crisis is coming, "sooner, rather what later" ⚔️

🇯🇵 Japan, the closest US ally to China and Taiwan, has dramatically increased its defense budget, destroying the promise of a peaceful constitution.

🇦🇺 Regarding Australia, Hal Brands mentioned the AUKUS Pact which also includes the UK.

🇺🇸|🇦🇺|🇯🇵 In addition to AUKUS, the foundations are being laid for the formation of a tripartite alliance between the USA, Australia and Japan in an anti-Chinese function.

🇪🇺 As for European nations, Brands said he believes their military capabilities in the Western Pacific are limited, though not absent, and therefore could play a different role in a conflict with China, resorting to sanctions (❗️) rather than weapons.

🇺🇸|⚔️|🇨🇳 The US Administration, as they wanted to demonstrate, has no intention of respecting the "Three Principles" and the "Five No's Policy" proposed by Xi Jinping, and is actively working to build tools capable of containing China, especially at the military level.

🔺Joe Biden to Xi Jinping: "The USA will continue to compete against China"

🔺The United States will continue to violate the One China Principle

🧾 Source

🌸 Subscribe 👉 @collettivoshaoshan

[yourtongzhihazel]

I need to confess something. I'm not even pro CCP i think there is a lot that the CCP can do better and i dont think they are a good government. But every time a yangguizi opens their smug little cunt of a mouth to bitch about Tianmen square or winnie the pooh or the lack of gayrights in china, or censorship, or propaganda, i take one step closer to becoming a tankie. The hypocrisy of the west is hoenstly killing me. Even if what they claim about china is true, its still at worst just as bad as what the west does on a daily basis.

There's plenty to criticize about the CPC and the PRC. No doubt about that. As principled communists, it is important to recognize both the good and the bad of former and current socialism. However a large part of this task is to separate imperialist attack from clouding a correct and full analysis. The fact that entire truths have been denounced as lies while lies have been pushed as truth has lead directly to my militant stance on the PRC and especially on Mao. I have a higher stake in the PRC than most others living in the west, given how nearly my entire family lives there. In terms of changes and policies which I've seen the effects of personally, I cannot in good conscience say that they've been bad. There certainly are bad aspects, e.g. laws regulating personal clothing in Xinjiang, their non-interventionist policy, the speed of nationalization/labor law enforcement, or the slow speed of adopting a conprehensive national personal union/family law like in Cuba. At the same time, I've seen a turn away from the worst parts of GGKF and its associated policies and I'm optimistic about a continued turn away from it. Time will tell, however.

In any case, the question for how the PRC is governed is one for PRC citizens. I am merely pointing out material differences between a DOTP and DOTBs, and fighting against imperialist propaganda.

东风压倒西风

[olderthannetfic]

https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/740412128006225920/my-fave-backwards-ass-thing-that-constantly#notes

There's this one joke I see often mentioned, this one is specific to white people, and honestly it was a bit funny the first time. "White people colonised the word to get spices, only to not do anything with them." Like I said, it was a bit funny the first time. But it kinda became more eyebrow raising when I noticed how many people unironically said it, and apparently have genuinely no clue why "white people" suddenly stopped focusing on spices. I mean, we better not look at any part of southern Europe, but moving on.

You know. Why did white people colonised the world for spices, but then people stopped using them? It's almost like there's a reason for it. A very specific reason. A very important HISTORICAL reason. An important reason why spices became less used, especially by the peasantry. A reason that could explain why food would suddenly be less about indulging in flavor, and more about just being able to eat at all. Something like a food scarcity suddenly reaching an all time high and trade becoming a lot more dangerous. A VERY significant thing that happened in WORLD history. Something that became even deadlier with the industrial revolution. Something that made it so that most modes of transportation which previously had been used to get food from one place to the other became a lot less accessible and also a lot more dangerous. Anyone? Got some answers? And honestly, I find that anyone who judges food in such a way to be incredibly obnoxious. Different countries, cultures, and people have different flavor profiles. Some rely on spices, some on herbs, some on fats, some on vegetables, or even just on bringing out each ingredients own flavor, some are even just more focused on survival. Food is dependent on geography and what's available, and some palates prefer certain tastes. The closer you get to the arctic circle the less you will be able to add to the food because the most available food is literary animal protein, with import prices being absolutely insane.

Making a bit of light fun of different foods isn't the issue, it's the stupid maliciousness about it that's obnoxious. Putting your culinary culture above others boorish and just insanely childish in a globalized world. I honestly have a huge dislike for anyone who needs to mock and act all snooty about other cultural foods. Just because you are too afraid to widen your culinary horizons, doesn't mean you have to show everyone what a little baby you are.

Signed -A foodie.

--

Frankly, people are also stupid af about the basic principles of aesthetics and showing off. The pendulum swings between "I can get bling and you can't" and "Everyone can get everything, but no one can buy taste"/"Quality of the materials is what matters, not fanciness of preparation".

On one end, we have Medieval European food and gem-encrusted things, on the other, the French culinary revolution and all beige homes.

Ancient Rome has aesthetics treatises on this. China has experienced this back and forth. Heian Japan was into modern tacky bling, while zen shit is firmly Team Greige.

It's a basic feature of how aesthetic trends work.

[niteshade925]

Just a short post on the topic, since I intend to reserve the long version for my culture sideblog where this kind of post should belong:

Since many people (esp people in the west) tend to misunderstand what “Mandate of Heaven” really is, I’ll just explain it in a concise way.  “Mandate of Heaven”, or 天命, which really should be translated as the “Will of Heaven” or “Heaven’s Will”, actually reflects “the will of the people”.  I’m too lazy right now so I’ll just copy paste what I wrote in an addendum to someone else’s post:

Instead, "heaven" is better understood as "nature", one which can "reflect" the opinion of the people like a weird mirror of sorts.  To understand what Mandate of Heaven means, one absolutely must understand what "Unity of Heaven and Humanity"/天人合一 means.  In this concept, the opinions, thoughts, and actions of humans (not just ruling class people) are echoed by "heaven".  Which means that, yes, this concept is really all about the people.  Ideally, anyway.  This also means that every time a natural disaster happened, it was seen as the people's discontent or the ruler's mistakes/wrongdoings reflected in nature.  Thus, we see that when natural disasters happen in history, the emperor might issue a public confession (called 罪己诏, or "Edict of Self-Blame"), in the hopes that "heaven" (people by extension) might cease its wrath.  Sometimes these "signs from heaven" were also used as justifications for rebellions and uprisings like OP mentioned above, sometimes also usurpations.

And:

Now we come to the part of why I said "ideally".  In ancient China, there was a special social class that held just as much power as the emperor (sometimes even more than the emperor, for example the Three Kingdoms period).  This class was called shi/士 (sometimes translated as "scholar officials" or "literati"), and may be understood as the class of "elites" in ancient China.  Shi elites often exist in the form of clans or families who have a sort of "monopoly" on governmental positions, and they are not simply rich people or landowners or nobles.  Most importantly, they have knowledge, and they can control the dispersal of knowledge.  It was the shi elites who came up with this concept of "Unity of Heaven and Humanity", which meant they have the final say in what the "signs from heaven" actually meant.  In theory, the "humanity" in this concept should encompass all people, but in practice, it really only meant the shi elites.  So in the end, it was a nice idea, but its overwhelming reliance on human interpretation made it so historically the situation often became a tug of war between the ruler and the shi elites, and not the people putting a check on the actions of the ruling class.

To add on to that, here are more concepts associated with 天/Heaven:

天 (Heaven):  Heaven in traditional Chinese thought represents the supreme morals and natural laws of the universe, and is not a god (which means it is also not “the” god).  It’s above all gods.  It does not have a form and unlike many other deities in Chinese religions and culture, is not visually anthropomorphized.  It is also different from 老天爷 (”Old ‘Ye’ Heaven”) in common vernacular.

天道 (Heaven’s Way):  the natural laws by which everything in the world exists, operates, and changes.  Can also mean causality, as in the phrase “天道轮回，报应不爽” (”The Way of Heaven cycles around, and retribution will come sooner or later”; the implication is that if one does bad things, because of this cause and effect it will eventually come back to bite them in the ass).

天行 (Heaven’s Workings):  literally the way Heaven operates, or just the laws of nature.  As in “天行有常，不为尧存，不为桀亡” (”Heaven’s Workings is constant; it shall not exist because of a benevolent ruler like Yao, and shall not disappear because of a tyrannical ruler like Jie”) from 《荀子·天论》.

天理 (Heaven’s Principles):  the natural laws of the world, the supreme morals, and the ultimate truth.  Often used as the ultimate moral basis, as in “天理昭彰” (”Heaven’s Principles are clear and evident”; means that Heaven will uphold justice, punish those who are evil and reward those who are good).

天命 (Heaven’s Will):  the will of nature (which includes all people).  See above.

[eretzyisrael]

by Noah Feldman

To be clear: as a matter of human worth, a child who dies at the hands of a genocidal murderer is no different from one who dies as collateral damage in a lawful attack. The child is equally innocent, and the parents’ sorrow equally profound. As a matter of international law, however, the difference is decisive. During the Hamas attack, terrorists intentionally murdered children and raped women. Its charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. Yet the accusation of genocide is being made against Israel.

These relevant facts matter for putting the genocide charge into the context of potential antisemitism. Neither South Africa nor other states have brought a genocide case against China for its conduct in Tibet or Xinjiang, or against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. There is something specifically noteworthy about leveling the charge at the Jewish state—something intertwined with the new narrative of the Jews as archetypal oppressors rather than archetypal victims. Call it the genocide sleight of hand: if the Jews are depicted as genocidal—if Israel becomes the very archetype of a genocidal state—then Jews are much less likely to be conceived as a historically oppressed people engaged in self-defense.

The new narrative of Jews as oppressors is, in the end, far too close for comfort to the antisemitic tradition of singling out Jews as uniquely deserving of condemnation and punishment, whether in its old religious form or its Nazi iteration. Like those earlier forms of antisemitism, the new kind is not ultimately about the Jews, but about the human impulse to point the finger at someone who can be made to carry the weight of our social ills. Oppression is real. Power can be exercised without justice. Israel should not be immune from criticism when it acts wrongfully. Yet the horrific history and undefeated resilience of antisemitism mean that modes of rhetorical attack on Israel and on Jews should be subject to careful scrutiny.

Just because antisemitism is a cyclical, recurring phenomenon does not mean that it is inevitable nor that it cannot be ameliorated. Like any form of irrational hate, antisemitism can in principle be overcome. The best way to start climbing out of the abyss of antisemitism is to self-examine our impulses, our stories about power and injustice, and our beliefs.

[loneberry]

September 11, 1973: On the 50th Anniversary of the Coup in Chile 

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état in Chile, when a fascist junta led by dictator Augusto Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. For those of us who are on the left, the story should be familiar by now: Allende had charted a ‘Chilean way to socialism' ("La vía chilena al socialismo") quite distinct from the Soviet Union and communist China, a peaceful path to socialism that was fundamentally anti-authoritarian, combining worker power with respect for civil liberties, freedom of the press, and a principled commitment to democratic process. For leftists who had become disillusioned with the Soviet drift into authoritarianism, Chile was a bright spot on an otherwise gloomy Cold War map.

What happened in Chile was one of the darkest chapters in the history of US interventionism. In August 1970, Henry Kissinger, who was then Nixon’s national security adviser, commissioned a study on the consequences of a possible Allende victory in the upcoming Chilean presidential election. Kissinger, Nixon, and the CIA—all under the spell of Cold War derangement syndrome—determined the US should pursue a policy of blocking the ascent of Allende, lest a socialist Chile generate a “domino effect” in the region. 

When Allende won the presidency, the US did everything in their power to destroy his government: they meddled in Chilean elections, leveraged their control of the international financial system to destroy the economy of Chile (which they also did through an economic boycott), and sowed social chaos through sponsoring terrorism and a shutdown of the transportation sector, bringing the country to the brink of civil war. Particularly infuriating to the Americans was Allende’s nationalization of the copper mining industry, which was around 70% of Chile’s economy at the time and was controlled by US mining companies like Anaconda, Kennecott and the Cerro Corporation. When the CIA’s campaign of sabotage failed to destroy the socialist experiment in Chile, they resorted to assisting general Augusto Pinochet's plot to overthrow the democratically elected government. What followed was a gruesome campaign of repression against workers, leftists, poets, activists, students, and ordinary Chileans—stadiums were turned into concentration camps where supporters of Allende’s Popular Unity government were tortured and murdered. During Pinochet’s 17-year reign of terror, 3,200 people were executed and 40,000 people were detained, tortured, or disappeared, 1,469 of whom remain unaccounted for. Chile was then used as a laboratory for neoliberal economic policies, where the Chicago boys and their ilk tested out their terrible ideas on a population forced to live under a military dictatorship.

It shatters my heart, thinking about this history. I feel a personal attachment to Chile, not only because my partner is Chilean (his father left during the dictatorship), but because I’ve always considered Chile to be a world capital of poetry and anti-authoritarian leftism. The filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky asks, “In how many countries does a real poetic atmosphere exist? Without a doubt, ancient China was a land of poetry. But I think, in the 1950s in Chile, we lived poetically like in no other country in the world.” (Poetry left China long ago — oh how I wish I’d been around to witness the poetic flowering of the Tang era!) Chile has one of the greatest literary traditions of the twentieth century, producing such giants as Bolaño and Neruda, and more recently, Cecilia Vicuña and Raúl Zurita, among others. 

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the coup, the Harvard Film Archive has been  screening Patricio Guzmán’s magisterial trilogy, The Battle of Chile, along with a program of Chilean cinema. I watched part I and II the last two nights and will watch part III tonight. It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of Guzmán’s work, and even quoted his beautiful film Nostalgia for the Light in the conclusion of my book Carceral Capitalism, when I wrote about the Chilean political prisoners who studied astronomy while incarcerated in the Atacama Desert. Bless Patricio Guzmán. This man has devoted his life and filmmaking career to the excavation of the Chilean soul. 

Parts I and II utterly destroyed me. I left the theater last night shaken to my core, my face covered in tears. 

The films are all the more remarkable when you consider it was made by a scrappy team of six people using film stock provided by the great documentarian Chris Marker. After the coup, four of the filmmakers were arrested. The footage was smuggled out of Chile and the exiled filmmakers completed the films in Cuba. Sadly, in 1974, the Pinochet regime disappeared cameraman Jorge Müller Silva, who is assumed dead. 

It’s one thing to know the macro-story of what happened in Chile and quite another to see the view from the ground: the footage of the upswell of support for radical transformation, the marches, the street battles, the internal debates on the left about how to stop the fascist creep, the descent into chaos, the face of the military officer as he aims his pistol at the Argentine cameraman Leonard Hendrickson during the failed putsch of June 1973 (an ominous prelude to the September coup), the audio recordings of Allende on the morning of September 11, the bombing of Palacio de La Moneda—the military is closing in. Allende is dead. The crumbling edifice of the presidential palace becomes the rubble of revolutionary dreams—the bombs, a dirge for what was never even given a chance to live.

[mariacallous]

(New York) – The Chinese government is significantly reducing the number of mosques in Ningxia and Gansu provinces under its “mosque consolidation” policy, in violation of the right to freedom of religion, Human Rights Watch said today.

Chinese authorities have decommissioned, closed down, demolished, and converted mosques for secular use as part of the government’s efforts to restrict the practice of Islam. The authorities have removed Islamic architectural features, such as domes and minarets, from many other mosques.

“The Chinese government is not ‘consolidating’ mosques as it claims, but closing many down in violation of religious freedom,” said Maya Wang, acting China director at Human Rights Watch. “The Chinese government’s closure, destruction, and repurposing of mosques is part of a systematic effort to curb the practice of Islam in China.”

Chinese law allows people to practice only in officially approved places of worship of officially approved religions, and authorities retain strict control over houses of worship. Since 2016, when President Xi Jinping called for the “Sinicization” of religions, which aims to ensure that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the arbiter of people’s spiritual life, state control over religion has strengthened.

“Mosque consolidation”[1] is referenced in an April 2018 central CCP document that outlines a multi-pronged national strategy to “Sinicize” Islam, or make it more Chinese.[2] It instructs the CCP and state agencies throughout the country to “strengthen the standardized management of the construction, renovation and expansion of Islamic religious venues.” The document notes that a central principle behind such “management” is that “there should not be newly built Islamic venues,” in order to “compress the overall number [of mosques].” While there can be exceptions, the document states that “there should be more [mosque] demolitions than constructions.”

Ma Ju, a US-based Hui Muslim activist who has been in contact with Hui in China affected by the policy, told Human Rights Watch that it is part of efforts to “transform” (转化) devout Muslims in order to redirect their loyalty toward the CCP: “Government officials first approach those Communist Party members who are also Hui Muslims … then they move onto ‘persuading’ students and governmental workers, who are threatened with school probation and unemployment if they continue with their faith.”

Available government documents suggest that the Chinese government has been “consolidating” mosques in Ningxia and Gansu provinces, which have the highest Muslim populations in China after Xinjiang.[3] Since 2017, Chinese authorities in Xinjiang have damaged or destroyed two-thirds of the region’s mosques, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). About half have been demolished outright.

In Ningxia, Human Rights Watch has verified and analyzed videos and pictures posted online by Hui Muslims and used satellite imagery to corroborate them in order to examine the policy’s implementation in two villages. Of these villages’ seven mosques, four had significant destruction: three main buildings had been razed and the ablution hall of one was damaged inside. The authorities have removed the domes and minarets of all seven mosques.

Human Rights Watch is unable to determine the number of mosques shuttered or repurposed throughout Ningxia and Gansu, as official documents do not give precise details. In a forthcoming research report, two scholars on Hui Muslims, Hannah Theaker and David Stroup, have estimated that one-third of mosques in Ningxia have been closed since 2020.[4] A March 2021 Radio Free Asia report estimated that between 400 and 500 mosques faced closure in Ningxia, which had 4,203 mosques as of 2014.

The Chinese government claims that the mosque consolidation policy aims to “reduce the economic burden” on Muslims, especially those who live in impoverished and rural areas.[5] Actions against mosques often take place as the Chinese government relocates villagers from these areas, consolidating several villages into one.[6] The government also claims that as different Islamic denominations share the same venues, they learn to become more “unified” and “harmonious.”

Some Hui Muslims have publicly opposed the policy, despite government censorship. In January 2021, Ningxia officials indicted five Hui for “creating disturbances” after they led 20 people to oppose the policy at the village Party chief’s office. People have also protested mosque closures and demolitions, as well as the removal of domes and minarets in Ningxia, Gansu and other Hui Muslim regions, such as Qinghai and Yunnan.[7]

Ma Ju told Human Rights Watch that mosque consolidation aims to dissuade people from going to pray at mosques: “After removing the minarets and domes, local governments would start removing things that are essential to religious activities such as ablution halls and preacher’s podiums.”

Ma Ju said the government has sought to discourage religious practice: “When people stop going, they [the authorities] would then use that as an excuse to close the mosques.” He said that the authorities install surveillance systems in the remaining “Sinicized” mosques: “After the mosques are converted, the local governments strictly monitor attendance at the remaining mosques,” he said. “In the beginning, they would check the attendees’ national identification cards. Then they install surveillance cameras … to flag [those prohibited from mosques, including] Communist Party members or children.”

Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that “[e]veryone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.” One has the right to manifest their “religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” The Chinese government should reverse its Sinicization campaign on religions, review and repeal laws and regulations that restrict the right to freedom of religion, and release those detained for peaceful criticism or protest against such restrictive policies.

Foreign governments, particularly member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), should press the Chinese government to cease their mosque consolidation policy and the broader Sinicization campaign.

“The Chinese government’s policies of Sinicization show a blanket disregard for freedom of religion not only of all Muslims in China, but all religious communities in the country,” Wang said. “Governments concerned about religious freedom should raise these issues directly with the Chinese government and at the United Nations and other international forums.”