Tweet
Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/...tivity.html?rf
A Chinese student in Canada had two followers on Twitter. He still didn’t escape Beijing’s threats over online activity
By Joanna ChiuVancouver Bureau
Sat., Sept. 18, 2021timer9 min. read
updateArticle was updated 1 day ago
In “China Unbound: A New World Disorder,” Toronto Star reporter Joanna Chiu examines China’s growing influence around the world, including in western countries, and its surveillance and human rights abuses that increasingly extend beyond its borders.
Dear Joanna Chiu,
I am (Dan). I am from China. I just graduated from (a Quebec university). I hesitated for a whole night before deciding to write this email …
Now I am living in Canada, but I am living with fear from the Chinese government.
Dan, whose name I’ve changed to protect his identity, hails from one of China’s picturesque and relatively laidback southwestern provinces. He studied English diligently and was elated when a top Canadian university accepted his application to study law.
About a month before the start of the September 2017 session, when Dan was still in China, the university issued his student credentials, and with them he received access to a virtual private network (VPN). The tool allowed him — for the first time in his life — to scale the “Great Firewall of China” and access an uncensored internet.
Curious, the 21-year-old thought he might check out some overseas social media sites, connect with future classmates, and read world news; that way, he wouldn’t seem so out of touch once he arrived. He would be joining a cohort of Chinese international students in Canada totalling around 140,000 that year.
He decided to take a few basic precautions, since he hadn’t left China yet. He signed up for Twitter using a fake name and fake location, and even set his gender to female.
To his amazement, the platform was already full of Chinese-language users. A whole network of bloggers, artists, independent journalists and scholars were engaging in a level of dialogue on Chinese politics he had never seen.
Once Dan arrived in Canada and began adjusting to a new city and a new university, he continued to browse Twitter in his dorm room. He was too nervous to actually join in any conversations. He retweeted only three posts: the news that Nobel laureate and Chinese democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo had died, a short satirical video about President Xi Jinping, and a chart on levels of Chinese government corruption.
With only two followers, he wasn’t making a splash — but sharing those posts still gave him a thrill. His undergraduate studies did offer some opportunities to discuss international political systems, and the problem of lower-level government corruption wasn’t a completely taboo topic, but virtually all Chinese people know that publicly supporting high-profile dissidents or satirizing top leaders is strictly forbidden.
Months passed. Life got busy, and Dan didn’t have time to keep up his exploration of social media. He never got involved in any political activities on campus either. Rather, he focused on learning about the Canadian legal system in hopes of staying and working in the country.
Then his father called him out of the blue, clearly disturbed. “Son, did you say something about the Chinese government on the internet? The public security bureau called us twice.”
China’s public security bureaus are police stations that also oversee some migration matters. They sometimes work with the United Front Work Department to monitor Chinese nationals living abroad, though the Ministry of State Security secret police typically handle higher-profile cases.
The year before, in 2016, the CCP had added a new bureau to the United Front Work Department to ensure that certain professionals and returning overseas Chinese students acted in accordance with CCP objectives.
Announcing the new unit — called the New Social Classes Work Bureau — the United Front’s chairwoman, Sun Chunlan, said the initiative would target professionals in private and foreign-owned enterprises; people working in NGOs, including lawyers and accountants; “new media” professionals (those working for online news sources); and returning Chinese overseas students. “The new social classes are highly mobile, scattered, active in thinking and diverse in ideas …[They] are the new focus as well as an innovative aspect of United Front work. They can be a highlight if the work is done well,” she wrote.
The United Front seeks to turn potential threats into allies. As both an overseas student and a future lawyer studying at a Canadian university, Dan was an ideal target to coerce into someone who would support the motherland rather than become a detractor. “Diversity” and “active” thinking are positive attributes in the eyes of Chinese officials only as long as people don’t develop critical views of the Party.
Soon after Dan got the warning from his father, a police officer contacted him on the WeChat social media app...
A Chinese student in Canada had two followers on Twitter. He still didn’t escape Beijing’s threats over online activity
By Joanna ChiuVancouver Bureau
Sat., Sept. 18, 2021timer9 min. read
updateArticle was updated 1 day ago
In “China Unbound: A New World Disorder,” Toronto Star reporter Joanna Chiu examines China’s growing influence around the world, including in western countries, and its surveillance and human rights abuses that increasingly extend beyond its borders.
Dear Joanna Chiu,
I am (Dan). I am from China. I just graduated from (a Quebec university). I hesitated for a whole night before deciding to write this email …
Now I am living in Canada, but I am living with fear from the Chinese government.
Dan, whose name I’ve changed to protect his identity, hails from one of China’s picturesque and relatively laidback southwestern provinces. He studied English diligently and was elated when a top Canadian university accepted his application to study law.
About a month before the start of the September 2017 session, when Dan was still in China, the university issued his student credentials, and with them he received access to a virtual private network (VPN). The tool allowed him — for the first time in his life — to scale the “Great Firewall of China” and access an uncensored internet.
Curious, the 21-year-old thought he might check out some overseas social media sites, connect with future classmates, and read world news; that way, he wouldn’t seem so out of touch once he arrived. He would be joining a cohort of Chinese international students in Canada totalling around 140,000 that year.
He decided to take a few basic precautions, since he hadn’t left China yet. He signed up for Twitter using a fake name and fake location, and even set his gender to female.
To his amazement, the platform was already full of Chinese-language users. A whole network of bloggers, artists, independent journalists and scholars were engaging in a level of dialogue on Chinese politics he had never seen.
Once Dan arrived in Canada and began adjusting to a new city and a new university, he continued to browse Twitter in his dorm room. He was too nervous to actually join in any conversations. He retweeted only three posts: the news that Nobel laureate and Chinese democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo had died, a short satirical video about President Xi Jinping, and a chart on levels of Chinese government corruption.
With only two followers, he wasn’t making a splash — but sharing those posts still gave him a thrill. His undergraduate studies did offer some opportunities to discuss international political systems, and the problem of lower-level government corruption wasn’t a completely taboo topic, but virtually all Chinese people know that publicly supporting high-profile dissidents or satirizing top leaders is strictly forbidden.
Months passed. Life got busy, and Dan didn’t have time to keep up his exploration of social media. He never got involved in any political activities on campus either. Rather, he focused on learning about the Canadian legal system in hopes of staying and working in the country.
Then his father called him out of the blue, clearly disturbed. “Son, did you say something about the Chinese government on the internet? The public security bureau called us twice.”
China’s public security bureaus are police stations that also oversee some migration matters. They sometimes work with the United Front Work Department to monitor Chinese nationals living abroad, though the Ministry of State Security secret police typically handle higher-profile cases.
The year before, in 2016, the CCP had added a new bureau to the United Front Work Department to ensure that certain professionals and returning overseas Chinese students acted in accordance with CCP objectives.
Announcing the new unit — called the New Social Classes Work Bureau — the United Front’s chairwoman, Sun Chunlan, said the initiative would target professionals in private and foreign-owned enterprises; people working in NGOs, including lawyers and accountants; “new media” professionals (those working for online news sources); and returning Chinese overseas students. “The new social classes are highly mobile, scattered, active in thinking and diverse in ideas …[They] are the new focus as well as an innovative aspect of United Front work. They can be a highlight if the work is done well,” she wrote.
The United Front seeks to turn potential threats into allies. As both an overseas student and a future lawyer studying at a Canadian university, Dan was an ideal target to coerce into someone who would support the motherland rather than become a detractor. “Diversity” and “active” thinking are positive attributes in the eyes of Chinese officials only as long as people don’t develop critical views of the Party.
Soon after Dan got the warning from his father, a police officer contacted him on the WeChat social media app...