I posted this elsewhere already, but it also fits here goven many of the posts in this thread: It is not just about data/privacy concerns (which are underestimated imo, as China pursues an own agenda with collecting your data through Chinese tech) and ‘unfair’ subsidies, but about gross human rights violations.

In short, some parts of the cheap Chinese cars are made in concentration camps where people are forced to work under catastrophic conditions.

What is a good source for information on China?

These are not marketing but training materials offering authoritarian principles in areas such as law enforcement, journalism, legal issues, space technologies, and many other topics, to build and maintain a totalitarian regime as China’s authoritarian capitalism model. It’s for the benefit of a few, while the people’s freedoms are suppressed.

Read the whole report.

Ukraine accuses Russia of intensifying chemical attacks on the battlefield (February 2024)

Ukraine accused Russia […] of using toxic chemicals in more than 200 attacks on the battlefield in January alone, a sharp increase in what it said were recorded instances of their use by Russian forces since they invaded two years ago.

CS gas […] is banned on the battlefield by the international Chemical Weapons Convention which states in Article 1: “Each State Party undertakes not to use riot control agents as a method of warfare.”

[…] The Ukrainian general staff said: “815 cases of the use of ammunition loaded with toxic chemicals by the Russian Federation were recorded. Of these, only in January 2024 – 229 cases.”

No Gaza ceasefire until Israel war aims achieved, Netanyahu says

His [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s] statement comes after US President Joe Biden announced Israel had proposed a three-stage plan to Hamas aimed at reaching a permanent ceasefire.

there’s no way tovtrack where resources, material, items come from, who made them

Independent audits are done -they are very common in many industry for a variety of reasons- and they work if done properly.

We could even track the provenance of each material through a trustless system like a blockchain to guarantuee a high level of credibility and transparency, just to name a relatively new technology. This is done already.

In addition to the other comments, the EU is considering to alter its decision-making process and implementing a majority vote (at the moment every single counrty must agree to a decision). That could significantly reduce the risks brought by countries like Hungary and Slovakia.

What do we understand by genocide?

The Encoclopedia Britannica says:

Genocide, the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race. The term, derived from the Greek genos (“race,” “tribe,” or “nation”) and the Latin cide (“killing”) …

Tibetan children are separated from their families at a very young age and sent to state-run boarding ‘schools’ where they have to complete a “compulsory education” curriculum in the Mandarin Chinese language, with no access to traditional or culturally-relevant learning.

Forced sterilization of Tibetan women.

Individuals advocating for Tibetan language and education are persecuted.

Rounding up hundreds of thousands of innocent Tibetans, Uyghurs, and other minorities in military-style reeducation camps where they are forced to work.

More can be found, for examples, in the report on 100 atrocities of CCP in Tibet (pdf)

There’s is many more across the web.

Forced labour in Chinese prisons isn’t limited to Xinjiang, nor to the car industry. A lot products we use in Europe and North America and elsewhere around the globe are made by Chinese prisoners forced to work under catastrophic conditions.

There is strong evidence for this provided by many independent sources, among them a documentary by Arte (a French-German media outlet). If interested:

Forced Labour - SOS from a Chinese Prisoner – (documentary, 95 min.)

A desperate cry for help written in Chinese was discovered in a pregnancy test sold in France and made in a Chinese factory. It revealed a hidden world of Chinese prison-companies where prisoners are forced to work for 15 hour days manufacturing products for export. This documentary tries to find out who wrote the letter.

(And, yes, prison labour exists also in the U.S., and it is as evil, but this doesn’t make the autocratic Chinese government any better.)

This is maybe a good idea. What would an emoji analysis tell us about a network? 😃

The report cites Latvia’s public broadcaster LSM, but you’ll find a lot of other sources (although at least some of them refer to LSM, too, or other media sources).

Charter97 is a Belarusian rights organization calling for democratic reforms in the country.

French lawmakers officially recognise China’s treatment of Uyghurs as ‘genocide’ — (2022)

France’s parliament on Thursday denounced a “genocide” by China against its Uyghur Muslim population […] The non-binding resolution, adopted with 169 votes in favour and just one against […] reads that the National Assembly “officially recognises the violence perpetrated by the People’s Republic of China against the Uyghurs as constituting crimes against humanity and genocide”.

It also calls on the French government to undertake “the necessary measures within the international community and in its foreign policy towards the People’s Republic of China” to protect the minority group in the Xinjiang region.

As the 7-year old’s father is a construction worker according to the article, this is on topic:

Construction Skills Shortage Threatens Infrastructure Projects

A dire shortage of construction skills and persistent planning delays pose significant threats to infrastructure projects, despite heightened interest from pension funds to invest in the sector.

An example how the Chinese government is using espionage in its own country.

10 ‘spy’ cases China’s Ministry of State Security wants you to know about

In most of the world 15 April goes unnoticed. But in China, 15 April is Chinese National Security Education Day.

To mark the occasion, China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) posted a half-hour video on their official WeChat channel titled “Innovation Leads · Forging the Sword of National Security”. WeChat is China’s dominant social media app. Chinese and foreign media also covered the program’s release.

Here is an alternative link to the video posted in the article: https://invidious.protokolla.fi/watch?v=z8qdFHT9t3k

Microsoft faces bipartisan criticism in the U.S. for alleged censorship on Bing in China

Microsoft is the subject of growing criticism in the US over allegations that its Bing search engine censors results for users in China that relate to sensitive subjects the state wants blocked.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio has added his voice to criticism of the Redmond software giant for reportedly removing search results from Bing on human rights, democracy, climate change, and other sticky issues within China.

The move follows an earlier call from Democrat Senator Mark Warner for Microsoft to consider shutting off access to Bing in China for the same reasons after a report from Bloomberg claimed the platform was excluding information on certain topics to satisfy Beijing.

Rubio said there was “no defending” such actions, and that “every company doing business in China makes concessions to a genocidal, authoritarian regime.”

From Chinese students in Germany, a technology promise to the motherland - (2014)

Illustrating the grip the Communist party and government try to maintain on overseas Chinese students, researchers and business people, an exchange of letters between President Xi Jinping and Chinese students in Germany has produced passionate promises from the students to serve the motherland - and deliver advanced technology backed to China, the state news media reported.

[…]

To at least one Western intelligence official, the exchange was a textbook exercise in ensuring a steady flow of science and technology back to China from educational institutions and companies in the West.

[Edit typo.]

@Sunforged

There are many places. One is Ireland.

Guess a human rights group in China is not possible for a lack of democracy. That aside, it doesn’t matter where the group sits, the issue is clear here. But, wait, …

Data Leak at Anthropic Due to Contractor Error

TL;DR - Anthropic had a data leak due to a contractor’s mistake, but says no sensitive info was exposed. It wasn’t a system breach, and there’s no sign of malicious intent.

The article doesn’t say which classifier algorithm they use in that case in India.

We had a similar incident in the Netherlands last year, for example, with similar problems. There they used Gradient Boosting afaik. But it doesn’t really matter as all these algorithms will yield a high number of false positives. If we use this and blindly trust trust the result in sensitive areas such as social welfare, we cause a lot if harm to iur society.