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It’s time to end China’s ‘United Front’ operations inside the United States
- quotz 6y agoNow even the left are turning against china. Theres hope
- throwawayalways 6y agolmao, is there even a left wing in the US? Mike Gravel probably the best bet.
- freshhawk 6y agoWhich version of "the left" was ever not against China? There aren't that many actual Tankies outside of twitter/reddit.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoUm, would you care to define "Tankies", for those of us not in the know? And the left, such as we have in the US, may not have been pro-China, but who on the left was against China?
- freshhawk 6y agoOh, tankie is a pejorative term for authoritarian "communists". The vast majority of leftists, at this point in time, are very anti-authoritarian. Everyone on the left hates China except the tiny percentage of tankies. And I'm using "left" in the political science meaning, so your Democrats are centrists in that model. How on earth did you get the idea that any leftists weren't against a very authoritarian state-capitalist form of government?
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoIs Bernie still a centrist in your model? I would regard him as rather left, at least in the US context. Is Antifa centrist? And yet I don't hear either Bernie or Antifa railing against China. (Maybe Bernie does - I didn't follow him that closely - but he was getting a fair amount of press, and I didn't notice much on China one way or the other. He was more focused on domestic policy than international. And Antifa also is primarily focused on domestic issues. So maybe it's not surprising. Still, they seem to be ignoring China rather than opposing it.)
- GaryNumanVevo 6y agoJust a clarification, antifa is just anti-fascist, and aren't organized at a national or regional level.
- freshhawk 6y agoThis isn't "my model", it's the standard, and rather flawed, political compass. Bernie was as social democrat basically, so that's left of center, you can look up exactly where people would put him pretty easily. Antifa is anti-fascist, so they are (from the name) at the bottom and (in practice) mostly fairly far left, although there are antifa centrists (bottom middle) too. If you didn't hear anti-authoritarian leftists who are socialists/communists/anarchists and anti-capitalists critiquing China, the state capitalist country claiming to be communist ... you have either been under a rock or in a filter bubble.
- quotz 6y agoIt was the republicans that first that made the CCP problem popular. The left wasn't really focusing on China at all.
- adventured 6y agoFor anyone else that couldn't read it: http://archive.is/zboZv http://archive.is/zboZv
- bigpumpkin 6y agoThe title calls for an end to China's United Front operations; the article doesn't say how it will achieve this other than requiring Confucius institutes to register as foreign agents. I guess one benefit of fighting against a covert operations is that you don't have to be specific. Or is the idea to inoculate Americans against Chinese influence by equating all such influences with the United Front? Might I suggest we look at the lesson of history and issue another execute order like the one made by Truman[1]? [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9835 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9835
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoThe idea is to identify which messages have been paid for by the Chinese government. Most Americans recognize that the CCP is not a reliable source, but they don't always realize that listening to e.g. their campus's Confucius Institute means listening to the CCP.
- knolax 6y agoIt's worrying that it's hard to tell if this comment is even sarcastic or not.
- nitrobeast 6y agoJust an observation, it seems HN is more interested in topics semi-related to China than BLM or policing reform. I wonder if this reflects something about HN readers.
- DailyHN 6y ago> Now even the left are turning against china. Theres hope https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23518782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23518782
- throwawayalways 6y agoYeah, its probably due to how many Capitalist loving racists have built this community. Shameful but what did anyone actually expect?
- rukittenme 6y agoI think HN readers are smart enough to discern the relative difference in threat between redneck cops and a nuclear-armed, fascist state. Also if you think tech isn't concered about "BLM" then you haven't visited a single tech website in the past two weeks. There are banners and calls for change everywhere...
- freshhawk 6y agoI'm certainly concerned about both the out of control nuclear-armed fascist state and about China.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoMany of us live in the SF Bay Area, where the Chinese population is much larger than the black population.
- dang 6y agoThat is a red herring in at least four ways: At most 10% of the HN community is in the Bay Area, last I ran the numbers. People in the Bay Area are extremely aware of BLM, police reform, and related issues. There's no reason to believe that interest in China-related topics is coming more from the Bay Area than elsewhere. Interest in these topics is not about local demographics.
- knolax 6y agohalf a dozen paragraphs and I still can't tell what this "United Front" does. The closest thing to a concrete example is: > oversee United Front work by throwing money at foreign institutions that are willing to toe Beijing’s political line, including U.S. think tanks and even media organizations. So a lobbyist group but with less influence?
- zatel 6y agoIt's a bunch of smaller efforts all working towards a single goal. (think lots of little foundations and lobbyist groups) This report goes into a lot more detail https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/diamond-schell_corrected-april2020finalfile.pdf https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/dia...
- currymj 6y agoWhile it seems reasonable to try to stop the Chinese government from unduly influencing US institutions, I am sincerely worried this is just going to turn into a witch hunt against Chinese nationals in the US on student and work visas.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoIt's a reasonable worry, but even the strongest anti-China voices seem to agree that Chinese nationals are wonderful people who are being oppressed by an evil government. And I'm optimistic that in the worst case support for Taiwan will prevent it from devolving into race-based targeting.
- mariodiana 6y agoUndoubtedly, though, we will find some witches among them.
- throwawayalways 6y agowhat do you suggest to do with these 'witches'? lmao
- themodelplumber 6y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong, but given that we as an American institution have some witch hunts in our past, we ought to be able to carry those lessons forward and integrate them into a framework which minimizes chances of becoming a witch hunt. Additionally, given the parameters listed in the article: The sanctions approach won't touch Chinese students or workers who are in the US on visas. Even the moves against Confucius Institutes don't touch individual students. It seems like a good start if the idea is to avoid individual false-positives and also blunt the Magic Weapons philosophy.
- currymj 6y agoThe policies proposed in this editorial seem pretty tame, but they aren’t all the policies being put forward on this issue. A recent executive order does target individual students who come from universities with military ties, even though many of these schools have mostly civilian students. The recent prosecutions of scientists who failed to disclose Chinese funding on grant applications did uncover some real malfeasance but could easily turn into a witch hunt as well.
- freshhawk 6y agoAs a non-american it's weird/funny/interesting/infuriating/typical to watch Americans get very upset and paranoid about Russians or Chinese actors doing the things that American actors do, and have done for decades now, in my country, and many others, all the time. I know the spin is for an American audience, but it does occur to y'all how funny it sounds outside your country right?
- mc32 6y agoSure, but it doesn’t make it any less true.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoThe reason we're upset is that we think the Russian and Chinese governments are very bad and don't want them to have any influence. Nobody gets worked up about foreign influence operations from, like, France or Japan.
- mlang23 6y agoYou might be surprised that some people consider the US gov pretty bad as well. Just watch the news.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoFrance and Japan don't try to influence in the same way that Russia and China do. The difference in the kind of operations matters.
- freshhawk 6y agoYeah, here either, we're mostly concerned with Russia, China and the US. I never though about how you folks have one less election tampering aggressive state to worry about actually, and it's the one that spends the most too. Must be nice.
- 6y ago
- mariodiana 6y agoBack in 2015, Harper's warned of the insidious influence of the CCP, via the American corporations that do business in China. https://archive.harpers.org/2015/11/pdf/HarpersMagazine-2015-11-0085712.pdf https://archive.harpers.org/2015/11/pdf/HarpersMagazine-2015...
- resfirestar 6y ago>the CCP’s United Front effort is unique because it is more organized, more expansive and more insidious than our government or nation has realized. If it’s so expansive, give us some real examples! Saying something like this while giving nothing but unspecific references to a wide-ranging communist plot (a claim Americans are right to be suspicious of, given the history of such claims about the soviets) and a reference to the Confucius Institutes that anyone reading an article like this will be familiar with just makes the author sound like a political hack with nothing useful to say on the topic of Chinese propaganda. Maybe that’s not true of the author, but it is true of this particular article.
- onyva 6y agoRepublican worries about repression in China. Perfectly ok with repression in Russia and the ties between this administration and Russian political operative? Wow. Mind blown.
- quotz 6y agoWhy is the article flagged? I've seen this happen to a few posts about China lately. Its starting to hurt the discourse on HN, its unhealthy for the forum.
- drocer88 6y agoDo they give a reason for flagging? Seems like there's a bias in play.
- GaryNumanVevo 6y agoA post becomes [flagged] when enough users flag it, moderators can only unflag.
- quotz 6y agoYeah but it seems like a lot of "users" flag everything about china lately.
- jdkee 6y agoIt is flagged as criticism of China is not permitted on the internet.
- Overtonwindow 6y agoI think it is unquestionable that China is the United State's primary competition, and national security adversary. As such, if that is the case, then we must take steps to protect America from influence and infiltration from China. If we as a democracy are willing to engage in foreign influence, I believe firmly a communist government will do it ten times more.
- fmajid 6y agoStart by looking at Elaine Chao and Mitch McConnell.