This is maybe a devastating example why centralization and central planning is a bad and dehumanizing act for individuals in a society. There is a good documentary about China’s so-called “Ghost Children”. These are those who were born as younger siblings during China’s One Child policy.

The documentary was made in 2014. It shows how quickly things can change, and how people suffer now and then due to bad politics.

It’s really worth your time.

China’s Ghost Children – (video, 36 min)

Second or third children born illegally during China’s One Child Policy - implemented between 1979 and 2015 to curb the country’s population growth by restricting many families to a single child - are banned from marrying, having children or simply boarding a train. Condemned to a non-life, these ghost children do not officially exist according to the Chinese state. ARTE Reportage goes in search of these ‘Haihaizi’, those children who should not have been born.

[Edit typo.]

deleted by creator

Addition:

TikTok Has Pushed Chinese Propaganda Ads To Millions Across Europe – ( July 2024, updated September 2024)

According to TikTok’s newly public advertising library, ads from China’s largest state media outlets touting everything from China Covid lockdowns to tourism in the troubled Xinjiang region have been broadcast to millions of the platform’s European users.

TikTok Ads Paid for by Chinese Media Target European Users – (August 2023)

Chinese media sponsored over a thousand ads on TikTok targeting European audiences. Additionally, accounts that carefully obscure their connections to China may pose further risks in coordinated information manipulation campaigns.

This are just two examples, there is much more across the web.

This is very good. We need more of this ‘grassroots media’.

It’s real …

Forced organ harvesting and transplant tourism – (May 2024)

China’s new Regulation on Donation and Transplantation of Human Organs takes effect May 1, 2024 […] However, experts suggest the regulatory change will not lead to transparency, bring an end to China’s transplant tourism business, or protect prisoners of conscience and ethnic groups from crimes in organ transplantation, including forced organ harvesting.

I guess this is just an introduction into the story, but I also feel it is a bit too long. A sentence or two would have been sufficient.

Climate Action Tracker for China

• Policies and action: insufficient
• NDC (nationally determined contributions) target against modelled domestic pathways: highly insufficient
• NDC target against against fair share: insufficient
• Overall rating: highly insufficient

[Edit for clarity.]

Read what Al Jazeera has been reporting on and you know the answer to your question.

As an addition:

• In 2015, two years after kicking off its massive Belt and Road initiative, China launched its “Digital Silk Road” project to expand access to digital infrastructure such as submarine cables, satellites, 5G connectivity, etc. In a report published this year, the UK-based human rights group ‘Article 19’ argues that the project is about more than just expanding access to Chinese technology, but rather to export its brand of digital authoritarianism across the word. Here is a brief article about it where you can also download the 80-page report (April 2024): China: The rise of digital repression in the Indo-Pacific – (Archived link)

• There is also an interesting first-hand research about how Chinese people cope with constant surveillance in their country by Canadian researcher Professor Ariane Ollier-Malaterre (March 2024): Digital surveillance is omnipresent in China. Here’s how citizens are coping (in French: La surveillance numérique est omniprésente en Chine. Voici comment les citoyens y font face)

Does China have a tech company which does NOT develop spyware?

I don’t know the reason for the prompt in this particular case, of course, but there is a persistent form of racism in China, namely the prejudice that the Han Chinese are more advanced than other cultures inside and outside of China. Some experts say this view is even promoted by the government’s propaganda.

There is also a good video by a foreigner living in China (19 min): CHINA: RACISM: China’s Ugly, Disturbing yet Open Secret — (archived link).

Last year, Human Rights Watch urged the Chinese government to combat anti-black racism on Chinese social media.

[Edit typo.]

There is a good article by the China Media Project from April 2024 about the Chinese Communist Party’s AI policy:

Tracking Control: Bringing AI to the Party — [Archived link]

China’s release this week of new draft rules governing the generation of AI content, coming just months after the launch of ChatGPT, might give the impression leaders are scrambling to catch up. But for years now, the Chinese Communist Party has planned to power up AI innovations — even as it contains them.

I corrected it, sorry.

Corrected. Sorry, and thanks @[email protected]

ICC’s Karim Khan announces arrest warrant application for Israeli and Hamas leaders

[Regarding Israel, the arrest warrants so far go against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.]

Just stumbled upon this on social media as a message to democratic countries:

https://files.sfba.social/media_attachments/files/113/032/381/098/980/561/original/fa42f20292b00b1d.png

In a video posted on Xitter, a Russian soldier who defected to Ukraine says his unit were using Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet via an IP address in Latvia. They were paying for the subscription over Telegram.

https://x.com/igorsushko/status/1826370717241540922

What happens in Xinjiang is as disgusting and inhuman as is what happens in Gaza, and so is this whataboutism that is still widespread here.

Just one among many examples is this post: https://lemmy.ml/post/18948648 with the title: “English-language Wikipedia editors concluded: Israel committing genocide in Gaza”

At the time of this writing, there are 69 comments to this post, but none of them is mentioning the genocide in China, no whataboutism. Why not here?

And the whole ‘story’ is based on a Wikipedia entry, you know, the same Wikipedia that is criticized in the .ml communities for its bad quality seems to be good enough here. Why?

The article relates to the share of advertising revenue these Maga guys get. Musk and his dozens of shareholders earn Xitter’s bottom line, of course, but this is a different story.

[Edit typo.]

Elon Musk Urges To Free Telegram Chief Pavel Durov After His Arrest In Paris — (Archived link)

The Telegram chief executive, Pavel Durov, was arrested by the French Police in Paris this morning, and the X owner, Elon Musk, has reacted to his arrest. Musk shared a snippet from one of Durov’s interviews where he was talking about X. While sharing this snippet, Musk wrote, “#FreePavel.” […]

According to Russia’s TASS state news agency, the Russian embassy in France is taking “immediate steps” to clarify this situation […]

By operating from the United Arab Emirates, Telegram has managed to avoid the content moderation laws that Western countries are imposing on major platforms to combat illegal content.