World

Tighter Online Controls in China Point to Wider Clampdown

Published

10 years ago

February 17, 2015

Chinese people check on their smartphones on a street in Beijing Monday, Feb. 16, 2015. On the Internet, in college classrooms and in corporate offices, the Chinese Communist Party has raised the virtual wall separating the world’s most populous country from the rest of the globe. Experts say it reflects a distrust of outside influences that party thinks could threaten its control on society. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

JACK CHANG, Associated Press

BEIJING (AP) — Working out of a Beijing office full of video game designers from around the world, Chinese-born Pin Wang and his startup Substantial Games should be the face of the innovative, forward-looking China that the country’s leaders say they want to build.

Pin and his team are attracting investors from across China while launching online games full of swords and sorcery that they hope will dazzle global eyeballs. But for several weeks, Pin’s team has struggled with a decidedly down-to-earth problem that’s hit countless companies nationwide: They’re unable to access their email, shared documents and other online services blocked by China’s Internet censors.

“Something that should take 15 seconds takes three or five minutes, and it screws with the way you flow or you work,” Pin said. “We don’t have the resources to move because we’re a startup. But we talk about it all the time.”

Chinese controls on information have tightened and loosened over the years, but Pin and others are feeling what many say is China’s most severe crackdown in decades on how people learn about the world around them, talk to each other and do business.

On the Internet, in college classrooms and in corporate offices, the Chinese Communist Party has raised the virtual wall separating the most populous country from the rest of the globe. Experts say it reflects a distrust of outside influences that the party thinks could threaten its control on society.

Companies that have depended for years on virtual private networks, or VPNs, to get around Chinese online censors and access business tools have seen those channels squeezed or shut down since the start of the year.

Academics who have long helped Chinese authorities distill foreign ideas into public policy have been told to watch what they say, especially about so-called Western ideas that clash with party doctrine. And many foreign companies that were welcomed into China’s booming economy have seen their offices raided by investigators and been forced to pay record fines in antitrust investigations.

Despite Chinese government pledges to create an innovation economy that leads the world, China ranked 22nd out of 50 countries, between Ireland and Spain, in a global innovation index released this month by Bloomberg financial news service.

“To have the best educational system and the best university has nothing to do with how many high-rises you have and how many good dining halls you have,” said Rowena He, a Harvard University lecturer. “The most important thing at the core is the intellectual freedom that makes up life in a university and academia,” she said. “But instead of opening up to reforms, we see the opposite.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying responded to the concerns of foreign businesses by pointing to a U.N. report showing China became the world’s top destination for foreign direct investment in 2014.

Hua also echoed previous government arguments that people online needed to first obey Chinese regulations on “healthy” Internet use.

“As long as foreign companies in China observe the Chinese law and refrain from undermining China’s national security and consumers’ interest, China will protect their legal rights and welcome their business expansion,” Hua said.

The tighter controls reflect instability within the party as President Xi Jinping shakes up the political landscape in a much-publicized anti-corruption campaign that’s netted thousands of government officials, said prominent China scholar Perry Link. The strategy echoes back to the political purges of Mao Zedong, the founding father of the People’s Republic of China, Link said.

“Since Xi Jinping has come in, the clampdown has been stronger and more unidirectional than anything since the Mao era,” Link said.

Professor Xia Yeliang was among the first to feel the consequences when the economics faculty of prestigious Peking University voted to expel him in October 2013. Xia had long been an advocate for democratic reforms in China and helped draft Charter 08, a bold call for sweeping changes to China’s political system.

Xia said more than 20 professors in China have been expelled or otherwise disciplined for their political teachings since Xi came to power. “Through my colleagues, I can sense that the ideological controls are getting much tighter,” said Xia, now a visiting fellow at the libertarian U.S. think tank the Cato Institute.

In that political climate, the government sees the Internet as a top threat and has responded by building a ubiquitous system for censoring what people in China can see online. Xi presides over the powerful Central Internet Security and Information Leading Group, which formed after he took power.

The list of controls grows every month.

Late last year, Chinese censors finally blocked all Google services after the U.S. company refused to cooperate with them in 2010. This month, officials required that all Chinese blog and chat room users register with their real names and promise in writing to avoid challenging the political system. In the coming weeks, new cybersecurity regulations will reportedly require foreign companies to turn over sensitive intellectual property and submit their products to security checks.

The party has paid especially close attention to the microblog Weibo and censored messages that touch on sensitive subjects, said Rogier Creemers, a research officer at Oxford University’s Programme for Comparative Media Law and Policy.

“Weibo has become a venue for chaotic discussion, and part of the effect it had was it essentially meant the party had lost the initiative and couldn’t say what got into the public sphere,” Creemers said.

The latest moves are in line with Beijing’s longtime approach to regulatory change: It eases control on commercial or other activity, sees how it develops and then promotes aspects it wants while suppressing those it doesn’t.

Chinese Internet users, for example, still are avid consumers of social media, e-commerce and video streaming sites, even if the censors are always lurking, said Dali Yang, faculty director of the University of Chicago’s center in Beijing.

“This is a society with a tremendous level of information, people who are very well educated in terms of actual information and they know of history going back centuries,” Yang said.

Still, while Chinese leaders see the Internet as a source of prosperity and jobs, they are willing to give up commercial gains to enforce political controls. When the government clashed with Google, people in the industry warned that driving out the U.S. search giant would hurt China’s development.

Walling off China’s Internet has allowed some local websites such as search engine Baidu and Weibo to prosper in the absence of foreign competition. Other local companies, such as Pin’s startup, chafe at the restrictions.

Foreign entrepreneurs and companies, meanwhile, are trying to figure out whether the costs of doing business in China outweigh the benefits of tapping the world’s second-biggest economy.

Rich Chinese also are looking to leave the country. A survey by the British bank Barclays last year found that 47 percent of more than 2,000 high-worth Chinese are hoping to move within five years. The poll found that their top reasons were greater educational and economic opportunities for their children and overall economic security.

“Beijing is an attractive place to be because of the amazing talent,” said Beijing-based entrepreneur Nils Pihl, who heads the database startup Traintracks. “But it’s getting harder for us to stay, and my social feed is full of other CEOs saying they’re worried they will have to leave.”

AP Business Writer Joe McDonald contributed to this report.

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Black History

Biden acknowledged America’s ‘Original Sin of Slavery,’ Pledged Infrastructure Dollars and Long-Term Financial Aid

“Our people lie at the heart of a deep and profound connection that forever binds Africa and the United States together. We remember the stolen men and women and children who were brought to our shores in chains and subjected to unimaginable cruelty,” Biden said in remarks at the National Museum of Slavery, which is built near the chapel where enslaved individuals were forcibly baptized before being sent to America. The museum was built on the property of Álvaro de Carvalho Matoso, one of the largest slave traders on the African coast.

Published

2 weeks ago

December 8, 2024

Oakland Post

President Biden met today with President João Lourenço to highlight the transformation of the U.S.-Angolan relationship and reaffirm our joint commitment to continue working together to address global challenges.

President Biden met with President João Lourenço to highlight the transformation of the U.S.-Angolan relationship and reaffirm our joint commitment to continue working together to address global challenges.

Will Biden’s aid for an above-the-ground Railroad help ease the pain for the African Americans’ Underground Railroad?

By Post Staff
And news dispatches from the Guardian, CNN and AP

When President Joe Biden went to Angola this week the purpose was ostensibly to advance the Lobito Corridor, an unfinished 800-mile railway project meant to facilitate the transfer of critical minerals from interior countries to western ports for exports.

But in a visit to the country’s slave museum, he acknowledged America’s dark past and its connection to Angola in the presence of three descendants of the first captives who arrived in Virginia from Angola in 1619.

The child of two of those captives — Antony and Isabella — was William Tucker, born around 1623. Three of his descendants were present when Biden spoke at the country’s slave museum and humbly acknowledged how the horrific history of slavery has connected the United States and Angola.

“While history can be hidden, it cannot and should not be erased. It should be faced. It’s our duty to face our history,” he said. “The good, the bad and the ugly. The whole truth. That’s what great nations do,” he said.

“It was the beginning of slavery in the United States. Cruel. Brutal. Dehumanizing. Our nation’s original sin. Original sin. One that’s haunted America and cast a long shadow ever since,” Biden spoke as he honored the Tucker family.

After introducing Wanda Tucker, Vincent Tucker and Carlita Tucker, he delivered a hopeful vision for the future in a major speech from the country that was the point of departure for millions of enslaved Africans.

(Wanda Tucker now serves as the faculty chair of psychology, philosophy and religious studies at Rio Salado College in Arizona.)

The museum was built on the property of Álvaro de Carvalho Matoso, one of the largest slave traders on the African coast.

Biden told the attendees that he’s proud to be the first president to visit Angola and that he’s “deeply optimistic” about the future relationship between the nation and the US.

“The story of Angola and the United States holds a lesson for the world. Two nations with a shared history, an evil of human bondage,” Biden said. “Two nations on the opposite sides of the Cold War, the defining struggle of the late part of the 20th century. And now, two nations standing shoulder to shoulder working together every day. It’s a reminder that no nation need be permanently the adversary of another.”

Biden’s trip aimed to highlight U.S. investments in Angola and the continent in the face of deepening Chinese influence in the region, as Beijing has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into Africa through its Belt and Road Initiative.

Biden took a swipe at China’s moves, without calling out the country by name, and argued the US presents a better alternative.

“The United States understands how we invest in Africa is as important as how much we invest,” Biden said.

“In too many places, 10 years after the so-called investment was made, workers are still coming home on a dirt road and without electricity, a village without a school, a city without a hospital, a country under crushing debt. We seek a better way, transparent, high standard, open access to investment that protects workers and the rule of law and the environment. It can be done and will be done,” the president said.

Biden’s speech comes during what likely could be his last trip abroad as president and as he seeks to deepen relationships with Angola and other African nations at a time when China has made significant inroads in the continent with hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure investments, far outpacing the U.S.

During his remarks, Biden touted U.S. efforts to expand its relationships across Africa, including billions of dollars in investments in Angola.

He also announced over $1 billion in new US humanitarian assistance for Africans who have been displaced by historic droughts across the continent.

“But we know African leaders and citizens are seeking more than just aid. You seek investment.

So, the United States is expanding its relationships all across Africa,” Biden said, adding later: “Moving from patrons to partners.”

Ahead of his remarks, the president also met with Angolan leaders, including young people at the museum.

Biden started his day with a bilateral meeting with Angolan President João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço at the presidential palace in Luanda.

The two men discussed trade and infrastructure, including the US and Europe’s investment in the railroad. They also discussed mutual security interests as Angola has played a key mediating role in the conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In November, Angola announced their Incremental Production Decree of fiscal terms designed to enhance the commercial viability of developing oil and gas fields. The decree enhances the commercial viability of developing fields in mature blocks, underexplored areas and stranded resources, while encouraging exploration near existing infrastructure. The US Railroad infrastructure investments could play a major role in enabling increased recovery from producing fields and extending the lifespan of critical infrastructure, the decree is set to generate billions in offshore investments, create jobs and drive economic growth, solidifying Angola’s position as a leading oil and gas producer.

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Activism

South African Solidarity Committee Hosts 31st Annual Celebration

“We’re all together for each other celebrating 31 years of building international solidarity between the people of the United States and South Africa toward the implementation of the 1955 Freedom Charter and 2030 Sustainable Development Goals,” said COSAS Operations Manager Nicole Richards.Located in Berkeley, COSAS is dedicated to the continuing struggle by the people of South Africa’s need for independence.

Published

2 months ago

November 3, 2024

Oakland Post

Zimbabwean dance and music group performs at COSAS' 31 Year Celebration at the East Bay Church of Religious Science. Photo By Carla Thomas.

By Carla Thomas

The Committee of South African Solidarity (COSAS) celebrated its 31st anniversary on Saturday, Oct. 26 at the East Bay Church of Religious Science in Oakland.

Themed “Ubuntu,” a word in Zulu and Xhosa, which means “I am because we are,” the event brought together supporters and community members.

Located in Berkeley, COSAS is dedicated to the continuing struggle by the people of South Africa’s need for independence.

A soulful meal was prepared by Chef Rene Johnson and Blackberry Soul Catering along with live entertainment and speakers.

COSAS is an all-volunteer, private membership organization, made up of South Africans, Africans, students, professionals, clergy and others committed to building solidarity between the working people of the U.S. and the South African people still struggling for economic and political freedom.

Formed in 1993, the organization promotes the “real nature” of the changes and struggles taking place in South Africa and the African continent, according to Richards.

“COSAS counters ‘disinformation’ and ‘misinformation’ in the U.S. and Western mainstream media that creates division and distrust,” Richards said. “We produce the South African Beacon and organize and transport solidarity shipments of school supplies to South African grade schools requesting assistance,” Richards said.

According to organizers, COSAS is completely run by volunteers, free from the corporate and government agendas that continue to keep South Africa dependent on the West.

“We rely on the support of concerned individuals. Call us today about how you can get involved by sorting and packing supplies, donating office equipment, and supporting special events,” said Richards.

Earlier in the year, COSAS hosted its World Affairs film showing at Downs Memorial United Methodist Church. The screening featured a short film, “Feeding a Crisis: Africa’s Manufactured Hunger Pandemic,” exploring the hunger challenges African countries face and approaches to resolving the issues.

Contact the Committee for South African Solidarity, 1837 Alcatraz Ave., Berkeley, CA, 510-251-0998 for volunteer opportunities and event information.

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Community

How Mobihealth Drives a Telemedicine Revolution in Africa

As a child growing up in northern Nigeria, Dr. Funmi Adewara experienced a severe hand injury that required multiple surgeries and frequent hospital visits. These visits exposed her to the harsh realities of the country’s healthcare system. “I remember sitting in overcrowded waiting rooms, watching doctors stretched thin, unable to meet the needs of so many patients,” Adewara recalls. This formative experience ignited her passion for transforming healthcare in Africa.

Published

2 months ago

October 21, 2024

Oakland Post

Dr Funmi Adewara, founder and CEO of telehealth company Mobihealth. Mobihealth International photo.

By Ifeanyi Abraham

CNN

As a child growing up in northern Nigeria, Dr. Funmi Adewara experienced a severe hand injury that required multiple surgeries and frequent hospital visits.

These visits exposed her to the harsh realities of the country’s healthcare system. “I remember sitting in overcrowded waiting rooms, watching doctors stretched thin, unable to meet the needs of so many patients,” Adewara recalls.

This formative experience ignited her passion for transforming healthcare in Africa.

Growing up with a mother who worked as a nurse, Adewara’s understanding of healthcare challenges deepened through her mother’s stories.

“I knew early on that healthcare wasn’t a privilege — it was a necessity, and I wanted to be part of changing the system,” she explains.

After training as a physician, Adewara worked for 15 years in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service before founding the telemedicine platform Mobihealth in 2017.

Since its launch, Mobihealth has impacted thousands of lives, connecting patients with doctors and healthcare professionals across Nigeria and beyond.

The platform has 20 integrated telehealth clinics that offer remote consultations, diagnostics, and access to specialist care via digital health tools. Located primarily in Nigeria, these clinics are accessible to patients through various subscription plans and are often financed through partnerships with global donor organizations and private donors.

In addition to the clinics, Mobihealth has partnerships with over 200 hospitals, labs, and pharmacies, Adewara says.

The company has earned global recognition, including a $1 million grant from the U.S. Trade and Development Agency in 2022. Adewara was also one of the World Bank’s seven 2020 Sustainable Development Goals & Her award winners, selected from over 2,400 entries worldwide.

Connecting Rural Patients

Across sub-Saharan Africa, millions struggle to access basic healthcare. According to the World Health Organization, the region bears 25% of the global disease burden but has only 3% of the world’s healthcare workers.

“In rural Africa, a trip to the nearest hospital can mean the difference between life and death,” says Adewara.

Mobihealth’s latest initiative offers healthcare for $1 a month for rural and underserved populations. It allows Africans in the diaspora — and global supporters — to sponsor essential services like doctor consultations, diagnostic tests, and access to telemedicine clinics.

The scheme is not solely based on donations; individuals can also subscribe to the service for themselves.

“Healthcare systems across Africa are under immense pressure,” Adewara explains. “Our initiative is a direct response, using technology to connect rural patients with doctors thousands of miles away.”

For Adewara, Mobihealth’s telemedicine platform is not a temporary fix; it represents the future of healthcare in Africa.

“This is about creating a resilient, sustainable and inclusive system, where people, no matter where they are, can access the care they need,” she says.

“Telemedicine brings doctors to people, wherever they may be. By integrating AI and remote monitoring, we are improving the speed and accuracy of care, saving lives in the process,” she adds.

A number of African companies provide telemedicine services, but researchers have pointed out that there are obstacles that could hinder the growth of telemedicine in the continent.

Rural areas can have an unreliable electricity supply and poor internet connectivity, and there is often a lack of government policies and funding around virtual healthcare.

“A Healthcare System for the Future”

Adewara envisions scaling her company’s model to reach millions more across Africa, particularly in countries like Ghana, Kenya, and Ivory Coast.

“Our work is just beginning,” she says. “We are building a healthcare system for the future — one that is resilient, inclusive and capable of meeting Africa’s growing population’s needs.”

However, partnerships are crucial to achieving this vision. “We can’t do this alone. Our collaborations with the African diaspora, hospitals, governments, and international organizations allow us to reach more people and ensure that healthcare is affordable, efficient and accessible,” Adewara adds.