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[Grim Portent]

This was snail mail (the, uh, loose papers bit mostly precludes email, incidentally), not even addressed to me personally

Targetted demographic is probably retirees, predominantly white ones.

You're from Florida, which is of course a retiree hotspot for the USA, and white people are on average in a higher wealth bracket. As are some retirees, at least in terms of disposable income. So logically, white retirees are more able to afford going on trips abroad than the average person in your area.

The use of white crowds is because a lot of older people are racist uncomfortable around people who don't look like them, at least in the abstract, so using white people in the photos helps reassure them and make them more likely to actually follow through on a holiday.

[hector13]

I want to experience other cultures, as long as everyone there looks and sounds like me. If they don’t, I’ll speak LOUDER and S-L-O-W-E-R just to make sure they understand.

[Frumple]

The use of white crowds is because a lot of older people are racist uncomfortable around people who don't look like them, at least in the abstract, so using white people in the photos helps reassure them and make them more likely to actually follow through on a holiday.

Trust me, I'm 100% aware of why the company's doing it. The decision making involved is pretty well trod if you've been paying much attention any time in the last, uh. Century? Plus? It ain't new, anyway. It's just persistently offputting ever since I started noticing that nonsense. One of the more irritating parts of processing kids books/anything graphical at my job, especially older stuff, tbh. It's hard to miss once you realize what's happening.

Like I said, tell me you have problems (intentionally catering to racist demographics, with all that's likely to entail) without telling me you have problems, heh.

[Grim Portent]

Ah, I thought the problem you were referencing was racism on the part of the people making the ads, not that they were targetting a racist demographic using racist-comfortable imagery.



I've been thinking a bit about a book I read back as a teenager, when I was still reading regularly. Others, by James Herbert. That book was fucking weird, even for a horror story. Grim, somewhat misanthropic, delved into body and sexual horror more than a bit. Generally a very disturbing book, not light reading even for me when I was reading a ton of horror books, a few of which featured elements of sexual violence.

[Frumple]

Ah, I thought the problem you were referencing was racism on the part of the people making the ads, not that they were targetting a racist demographic using racist-comfortable imagery.

I mean, hell, there's no space between those two. It's the same thing, y'know? The WTF was more how persistent it is, most times you'll at least get 1 token black or middle eastern or latine person or something, but this mess was just, "Nope! Our ad for Jerusalem will have no jews on it."

I've been thinking a bit about a book I read back as a teenager, when I was still reading regularly. Others, by James Herbert. That book was fucking weird, even for a horror story. Grim, somewhat misanthropic, delved into body and sexual horror more than a bit. Generally a very disturbing book, not light reading even for me when I was reading a ton of horror books, a few of which featured elements of sexual violence.

I occasionally get that, too (though I've definitely not stopped reading regularly, heh). Anthony's Firefly is the primary one that pops back up from time to time, though I read it as a pre-teen. Was were I learned the word necrophilia! Other messed up shit happened, too. That book probably shouldn't have been accessible to an 8 year old :V

[Putnam]

I remember flying out from San Francisco into Portland into Spokane during various layovers etc. and yeah, the instant I landed in Spokane I noticed that every single poster and advertisement in Spokane featured exclusively white people which... I mean, yeah, they like this guy, not surprising.

[martinuzz]

Jesus Christ, I knew China was bad, but I had no idea that it was such a scary as fuck nasty psycho country.
China should be put on the international list of terrorist organisations.

Read this article by Dutch journalist Marije Vlaskamp, which has been an eye opener for our police and justice system:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

How a Volkskrant-reporter became the target of Chinese intimidation

Threatening messages, false bomb scares: from her days as a correspondent, Volkskrant-reporter Marije Vlaskamp was aware of Chinese tactics to smother critical voices. Now she herself is the target of an intense intimidation campaign. Who is behind this? And why is it so important to go public with it all?

By Marije Vlaskamp

Illustrations Pep Boatella

Translation Leo Reijnen

8 april 2023, 05:00

On 15 October 2022, I’m reading the news about an incident in The Hague. My hands feel clammy. The area around the official residence of Dutch prime-minister Mark Rutte, the Catshuis, has been cordoned off and traffic is diverted to keep cars, city buses and trams away. The police, fire brigade, military police and the bomb disposal unit are on the scene, their attention focused on a suspicious car with foreign licence plates.

When I learn that the vehicle is parked on the Adriaan Goekoop Lane, near the Chinese embassy, my heart skips a beat. The situation neatly fits the scenario I have been threatened with over the past 24 hours: there would be bomb scares at Chinese embassies and I would be arrested as the prime suspect. I can hardly believe it: would they really go this far to silence me?

I take a deep breath, make a pot of jasmine tea and then call my superiors at de Volkskrant. I am aware that my story may initially sound to them like the script of an implausible spy movie, but to me the whole thing is much less unreal. During the almost quarter century that I’ve been working as a China correspondent, I’ve learned enough to know how the Chinese operate if they want someone to shut up.

And yet I am also shocked. As far as I know, Western journalists are rarely treated this heavy-handedly. Also, my assailants make no effort at all to conceal that the threat is of Chinese origin.


A rather unnerving app

The first indication that something bad was afoot came one day earlier, on Friday 14 October, when I received an email from the Chinese language Booking.com site in my inbox at the end of my working day. ‘Thank you for your reservation in the Holiday Inn Express Hotel,’ the mail said, which was addressed to my email address at work. My name was featured in giant letters among the Chinese characters. According to the attached route description the hotel was located near the Binnenhof [the seat of the Dutch parliament and government – ed].

I had not booked any rooms, that much was certain, but apparently someone else had done so in my name without my permission. I figured I’d better cancel that hotel right away and I was just talking to the receptionist when I received a rather unnerving app from Wang Jingyu (21).

Wang and I have known each other since 2021 and early last year I wrote an article about this Chinese activist. In 2019, when Wang was still in secondary school, he got into trouble in China after writing critical tweets about Hong Kong and other politically sensitive subjects. He managed to avoid arrest by fleeing the country together with his girlfriend. In the summer of 2021, the pair sought asylum in the Netherlands. In my article I had shown in detail how Beijing was making the young activist’s life miserable over here as well.

In the weeks prior to the hotel reservation, I had renewed my contact with Wang. I wanted to write a story about how the Dutch authorities deal with Beijing’s long arm and Wang’s situation would serve to illustrate this. I was about to start writing that story when the email with the hotel reservation and Wang’s unnerving app arrived.

It turned out that a room had also been reserved for him that Friday, at the same Holiday Inn Hotel in The Hague, he wrote. Also, he had received a follow-up Telegram message which started ringing all my alarm bells: ‘The hotel has already been booked,’ it said in Chinese in the message Wang forwarded to me. ‘One tip from me and the police will come and arrest you and your journalist friend,’ wrote the anonymous sender.

This simple email from Booking.com is the start of a complicated and at times bizarre intimidation campaign which takes me on a Chinese rollercoaster ride, against my will. My superiors at the newspaper, the Dutch police, and myself have front row seats for this display of how the Chinese operate if they wish to silence people about matters to which the Chinese one-party state does not want to draw attention. We don’t know where this journey will end and neither do we know who is driving. And the person behind the wheel will do everything they can to keep it that way.


A network of influencing and intimidation

I know from my years in China, where I worked as a correspondent from 2001 to 2019, that the Chinese state does not tolerate critics. Understanding how the lives of civilians who oppose the state are frustrated was part of my work there, just as writing about the economy, education, or agricultural policy was. Upon my return to the Netherlands, I kept on writing about stealthy influencing activities by the Chinese state.

Because overseas communities, including those in the Netherlands, of Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Han Chinese are exposed to harassments and threats. The activities of fervent Chinese nationalists intimidating dissidents abroad are well known. The fact that these people do not always operate on their own initiative but rather under the umbrella of Chinese organisations known as the United Front, is a topic for specialised researchers and scientists. They have been warning for some time that the Chinese state is building up a network of influencing, subversion and intimidation abroad, right under our noses.

Wang, who can be regularly found in front of the Chinese embassy with a banner since he arrived in the Netherlands, is also harassed by nationalists who sent him loads of death threats online. They do so to help the Chinese authorities, who do everything they can to make Wang return to China. To this end, the police had already arrested his parents in his former home town of Chongqing. Then, after Wang had been officially charged, his bank accounts were blocked and his friends and family were pressed to make sure that Wang returned to Chongqing to appear in court.

When Wang continued twittering and protesting in spite of all this, the false insinuations began. Whether he rented an apartment or a hotel room, as soon as he stayed somewhere his opponents set the police on him with anonymous tips. ‘The police would come by because of anonymous phone calls about domestic violence. They would only leave after having made sure that my girlfriend was unharmed,’ says Wang. This happened in the first month that he was in the Netherlands, and later his enemies took more extreme measures. At one point a man with a knife appeared at his door; he disappeared before the police arrived. Also, a Dutch police arrest squad raided his home following a tip about explosives. Each time Wang succeeded in persuading the police that he had done nothing wrong, but otherwise nothing changed in his situation.



On the contrary: the false tips kept on coming and so did the police. It drove Wang to despair. ‘Are they trying to drive me crazy enough to surrender and return to China?’

Exhausting an opponent mentally through prolonged psychological warfare is a typical method of the United Front. Although Beijing prefers to pretend there’s no such thing as a United Front, state organisations are in charge of it. As a matter of fact, the department in charge of United Front activities, the so-called tongzhanbu, has been expanded under the leadership of Xi Jinping some five years ago, say Sinologists specialised in Chinese politics, such as Anne-Marie Brady, Gerry Groot and Alex Joske. They work in New Zealand and Australia, two countries that are geographically close to China and home to large Chinese communities. There, influencing and infiltration by the Chinese are much more evident than in the Netherlands. Their research shows that party members become active in a variety of agencies abroad, such as Chambers of Commerce and cultural clubs and expand their influence there in an inconspicuous manner.

Once enough members of such an organisation are ‘trapped’ in a net of collaboration and complicity, they are then employed to safeguard the interests of the Chinese state. Sometimes this becomes visible, for instance when there are political frictions between China and this second homeland. When the Dutch parliament labelled the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs as genocide, all kinds of Chinese organisations in the Netherlands sent letters of protest that literally reflected the party line.

Such actions do not necessarily occur on direct orders from Beijing: most people in the diaspora act on their own initiative as loyal Chinese. Still, the overall political lines are laid out by Beijing and then passed on to the diaspora via organisations linked to the United Front that are in regular contact with leading figures of Chinese organisations abroad. Family ties and business interests in China make many Chinese susceptible to pressure: they cooperate because they don’t want any problems. Besides, there are enough patriotic Chinese who find it honourable to serve their country by doing the odd job for the United Front.

Most of the activities of the United Front tend to be elusive, especially for outsiders. Wang has frequently asked for help from the Dutch police but they could do little more than file a report of intimidation. And although the police quickly agreed – as evidenced by an audio recording Wang made – that there was indeed a foreign agency involved, there seemed to be little they could do about it. One police officer can be heard making the awkward remark that there was only one safe place: prison. ‘Because they can’t get in there.’


A determined fight against elusive assailants

Like I said, I had advanced plans to write about this impotence of the Dutch government, when in early October 2022 Wang’s situation escalated with a series of bomb threats at luxury hotels in Brussels, Rotterdam, and other European cities, all on the same day. Hotel rooms were reserved in Wang’s name and then someone pretending to be Wang threatened to blow up the hotel unless a substantial sum was transferred to Wang’s bank account.

The method was familiar. Wrong-footing the police with false tips, creating unrest about terrorists: the pressure that is also systematically applied to the Uyghurs, an Islamic minority in the far west of China. Uyghurs outside China are being regularly hauled out of bed following anonymous tips of being involved in terrorist organisations. For example, the prominent Uyghur activist Dolkun Isa was even unjustly placed on a list of internationally wanted terrorists at the instigation of the Chinese.

It seems like Wang is being treated likewise, but unlike most Uyghur victims he posts everything on Twitter in both English and Chinese. Telephone calls with police agencies, screenshots of hotel reservations, threats in word, image and sound, the reports he files with the police and his accusations, rightful or otherwise, against people he regards as tools of the Chinese state. With each incident, the number of his followers on Twitter grows. I’ve never seen someone putting up such a determined fight against elusive assailants.

When on that Friday evening in October I receive the Booking.com reservation for the hotel in The Hague, I immediately wonder whether the United Front now also has it in for me. I can imagine how some in the Chinese community feel that Wang is trampling on their patriotic hearts. They probably don’t like to see him getting attention in the media. But my new story on Wang and Beijing’s long arm has not even been written yet. Besides, would they just go after a Dutch journalist by themselves? It doesn’t seem likely, unless it was discussed at a higher level in China. But what does the Chinese state have to gain by dragging me into an action directed against Wang?

Although at the moment I mainly have a lot of questions, the hotel reservation is my cue to take action. It is not a serious crime to book a hotel in someone else’s name, but this type of identity fraud is hardly legal either. My superiors therefore contact the police and the Justice Department on my behalf. Wang too tries to file a report, but that Friday night he doesn’t come any further than the reception desk of the police station, he informs me. ‘They said I should call 112 if my life was in danger.’

De Volkskrant does manage to contact higher ranks within the police: quite swiftly I am assigned contacts with the Justice Department and the police.


Threatening messages

A restless Friday night is followed by a chaotic Saturday morning. Wang is continually receiving Telegram messages in a threatening tone, which he forwards to me as screenshots. The anonymous sender claims to be at the Zeedijk, Amsterdam’s Chinatown, and demands that Wang, his girlfriend, and ‘the journalist friend’ come to Amsterdam before noon. ‘This is your final deadline! Do not report this to the police, because we will know,’ are the instructions.

As it happens, I have a lunch date with a friend that afternoon at that same location. I cancel it as it seems wiser to stay at home today. In the few minutes I take to make a sandwich, Wang’s messages keep pouring in. It is still not clear what the sender wants from me, apart from the meeting in Amsterdam.

Meanwhile, all kinds of details about the ‘journalist friend’ pop up in the chats between Wang and the person menacing him, which Wang all forwards to me. My age. The year I started working in China. My cell phone number. Seeing this personal information in these messages, there’s no denying it: this is about me. I suddenly feel very cold, as if I’m standing in a refrigeration cell. The feeling only becomes stronger when I translate the next threat that Wang sends me.

‘You will be listed as terrorists on the international wanted lists of all European police agencies,’ says the unknown person, hiding behind a Telegram account in the name of ‘Alice’.

‘Alice’. Now that name does immediately ring a bell. A few weeks earlier someone giving the same name had tried to contact me on Telegram. ‘Alice’ introduced herself as a Chinese Ph D student at Groningen University. She claimed that she had been raped by a Chinese guest teacher there. ‘Alice’, who indicated that she had serious mental problems, wanted to tell her story to de Volkskrant.

I was suspicious, also because of the timing of the request by ‘Alice’. At the time, it was the run-up to the twentieth Party Congress in Beijing and China was even more the focus of international attention than normally. Chinese citizens with grievances against the state often seize such moments to approach foreign media, but the eagerness of journalists at such political moments is also abused to spread fake news. So I stalled ‘Alice’ for the time being.

Then she turned to Wang, telling him about the problems she had gotten into with the Chinese authorities after having reported the academic who supposedly sexually abused her. This sounded authentic: Chinese #Metoo activists often meet with resistance because the men they complain about use their political connections to silence their victims.



One day before the hotel reservations in The Hague, ‘Alice’ – using a different number – invited Wang to meet her at the Drielandenpunt. [A tripoint where the boundaries of Netherlands, Belgium and Germany meet – ed.] It was a nice place, she said, where they could speak safely. Wang didn’t trust this and refused to go to the south of Limburg. Then her tone changed so radically that it was almost as if suddenly someone else was talking.

‘Keep your foul mouth shut, you filthy traitor. If you go on forcing yourself upon anti-Chinese media, the police will come to arrest you. Your parents will suffer even worse and one day you will be punished yourself. And things won’t end well for the anti-Chinese journalists either.’

And now someone using the name ‘Alice’ demands that I go to Amsterdam, together with Wang. I will not do so. What if something has been set up in Amsterdam to enforce the threat to have me arrested as a terrorist? Wang also thinks it is not safe to meet ‘Alice’.

The next move comes right away. ‘Alice’ sends Wang a screenshot of a conversation in the chat box of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing. This is a service intended for Chinese citizens who have questions about, for example, the opening hours of consulates and embassies. In the screenshot an anonymous informer states that ‘something will explode very soon’, and provides two telephone numbers of those ‘involved’: Wang’s number and mine.

A few seconds later, ‘Alice’ sends Wang a message explaining what the consequences of that tip will be: ‘The Chinese embassy will call the police. Before the day is done, you will get a taste of what it’s like to be arrested.’ We should have known better and come to Amsterdam to discuss ‘our issues’.

Nerve-racking hours follow. I pace up and down my living room, agonising over who or what is behind ‘Alice’. Is the Alice who wanted me to interview her about her sexual assault case the same person who is now threatening Wang and myself with false bomb scares? Why does she keep switching Telegram accounts and telephone numbers? Is someone forcing her to contact Wang and me or is she doing this of her own initiative?

My superiors have the same questions. Perhaps the police will find out more. In any case, it is a comforting thought at least that the Dutch authorities are aware of what’s going on if indeed a bomb threat is made in my name. Then Wang calls me.

He is at a police station in The Hague, he says, to warn the police that there may be other bomb scares in his name, this time at the Chinese embassy in The Hague. When on the phone with them, the police tell me that it’s wise of Wang to report himself so swiftly and of me to stay at home, as at that very moment the police and the bomb disposal unit are already in full swing at the Adriaan Goekoop Lane.



Wang can’t believe what he’s hearing. ‘Just look online later,’ says the officer. ‘There is a lot of media attention.’ I hang up, open news sites about The Hague and read that indeed the surroundings of the Chinese embassy have been cordoned off. I keep frantically looking for new details about the bomb scare, even after the police have concluded that it was a false alarm.

‘Alice’ has actually lived up to her threat. So those were the ‘issues’ she referred to. Issues caused by an unknown person who, with a few simple digital actions – hotel reservations and anonymous tips – triggered a chain of reactions. I’m in a cold sweat because what happened in The Hague today can be repeated in any other city at any time – and then the local police may arrest me as a suspect, whether the national authorities are aware of the situation or not.

Wang spends the rest of Saturday afternoon at the police station to report the threats. Later he calls me. ‘It sounds crazy, but the Chinese embassy has actually called the police about a bomb and mentioned our names.’ The fact that the threat has been carried out appears so bizarre that I burst into laughter. In my days as correspondent, I maintained good professional relations with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was responsible for my press accreditation. Do the same diplomats now really think that I wanted to blow up their embassy?



The police, serious about the inquiry, do not think that Wang or I are responsible for the bomb scare, but because the differences in language and culture between Wang and the police officers may lead to misunderstandings, I receive frequent calls from the police station to provide background information. Meanwhile I keep my superiors at de Volkskrant up to date.

I try to relax for a moment on a sunny sidewalk café, with my cell phone in my bag set to silent mode. But the sounds of other people’s cell phones make me feel restless and I no longer enjoy my coffee. All kinds of scenarios are racing through my mind. What if by pure coincidence I had been in the neighbourhood of the Chinese embassy, that Saturday afternoon? Can I still travel abroad or will my name end up on international wanted lists as a terrorism suspect? And what if ‘Alice’ – or whoever is hiding behind that name – comes up with more surprises to discredit me?

Because it doesn’t stop. On Sunday, Wang and I, with our full names and telephone numbers, are mentioned in connection with a second bomb scare, this time at the Chinese embassy in Oslo. Staff from that embassy call Wang, who just happens to be at the police station to report new threats. ‘Are you Wang Jingyu?’ the embassy official asks. ‘Our headquarters say that you have a bomb.’ The Dutch police listens in, flabbergasted.


A list of demands

I’m convinced that all this has to do with the Party Congress, which begins that same Sunday 16 October. This gathering of the top of the Communist Party takes place every five years and is always important, but this time it is a highlight in Chinese history, as president Xi will secure absolute power for the long run. In the run-up to such a Congress, all party members are expected to demonstrate loyalty, in both words and action.

Although this is the first time in almost twenty years that I will not be reporting on this political ritual as a correspondent in Beijing, still my Sunday is dominated by Chinese politics. In his speech, Xi mentions the word ‘security’ 73 times and calls for a fight against China’s enemies, at home as well as abroad. This grim message resonates within the diaspora all over the world. ‘Alice’ is also getting impatient and sends Wang a new message: ‘How much longer do you need to think about this? Our superiors place much importance on this matter.’




Then Wang is presented with a list of demands via Telegram and for the first time it becomes clear what ‘Alice’ is expecting of us: Wang needs to stop giving interviews, and close down his Twitter account. I have to make sure that my first article about Wang will never be published again and I’m expected to delete all chat messages and Telegram accounts involved in the threats.

‘The state is more powerful than you tiny pawns,’ says our ‘stalker’. I’ve heard that so many times in China. The Communist Party likes to present itself as an unassailable monolith of power that has everyone within and outside of China on a string and can make them dance at will.

In reality, state power operates much sloppier and more chaotic. In the vast state bureaucracy there are so many opposite interests and forces at work that quite often the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, or why. Or they actually work against each other. So, is the state behind this, as ‘Alice’ wants us to believe? I’m not sure. It’s possible that it was decided at the highest level in Beijing to involve me in this situation, but it may just as well be a few police officers from Wang’s home town Chongqing who have asked their personal contacts in Europe to silence Wang no matter what.

In any case, there are fervent attempts to use my phone number to create various new accounts on Telegram and WhatsApp, I can tell from the messages on my cell phone. My voicemail has messages in Chinese – sent from British telephone numbers – asking me to confirm passwords for accounts I never created. At night there are calls from American numbers that I recognise from the list of phone numbers that are being used to threaten Wang. The next morning someone in China’s time zone forwards false reports about imminent bombings in which I supposedly am involved to the Chinese authorities. After that, Chinese diplomatic delegations in Europe raise the alarm. These actions continue in a coordinated manner for days on end in different time zones.



This strengthens my suspicion that ‘Alice’ isn’t lying when she says that the Chinese state is involved. Because if this is done by a few nationalist hotheads, they sure work in a highly professional way. Therefore, these methods are more reminiscent of the Chinese state security agency – or guobao. If Chinese people dare to discuss this at all they use the word ‘panda’, because the Chinese word for state security agency sounds the same as China’s national treasure, the nickname for the rare black-and-white bear.

My experience with pandas in China was mostly indirect. Among the various persons in authority who came to check on my journalistic activities there was often some individual who refused to identify himself and just watched how others disciplined a foreign reporter. The state security agency has enough government and party organisations at its disposal to keep an eye on journalists, their Chinese assistants, and their sources, and intimidate them. Pandas don’t need to step into the limelight for this and most of the time they don’t want to: elusiveness is their weapon.

In my days as a correspondent, as soon as I suspected that my work was drawing the attention of pandas, I would make myself scarce so as not to cause any problems for the Chinese people featuring in my stories. Sometimes men in civilian clothes would follow me. This could last for hours or days, but they never made themselves known. The nervous reactions of civilians spoke volumes: one hotel manager once begged me to check out, in order to get rid of those men sitting in the lobby.

At home in Beijing the game would be played by proxy. For example, through the Chinese man to whom I was married for a few years and who would work for me as cameraman now and then. He would frequently go out with his old army buddies. Drinking and chatting with those friends was a sort of preventive measure against pandas, he explained. ‘If they can obtain some insignificant information via third parties, they won’t come to our home.’

After our divorce, when my husband was no longer a buffer between me and the pandas, I was once approached directly and openly. In early 2016, the state security agency in Beijing asked to meet me. Politely rejecting the invitation was pointless as they kept pressing. I met a man and a woman in the lobby of a fancy hotel. They showed me their enamel badges with the characters for state security. ‘Don’t worry. We are from the nice department,’ they said.

The interview appeared to be an attempt to recruit me. They said they were ‘interested in my suggestions on how to make the Chinese state security agency operate in line with international standards’. I would be expected to ask other correspondents about their experiences and then discuss this with these agents on a regular basis. We would ‘become friends’. I took a sip from the expensive red tea they had treated me to and turned down their proposal.

Although that was the end of it, I was nevertheless relieved that by returning to the Netherlands I had created more distance between myself and the Chinese state. But now something comes bursting into my Dutch life that threatens me, demands things of me and portrays me as a potential terrorist. And now ‘Alice’ says I should be quiet about this. The warning not to report this to the police, the demand to erase all traces: I was only too familiar with that kind of secrecy in China.


Speak or don’t speak?

The police advise me to put my contact with Wang on the backburner to see if that changes anything. Now that the Dutch investigative agencies and me are exchanging this much information, I don’t have to worry about an anti-terrorism unit arriving at my doorstep because of a bomb scare. And in the unlikely event of this nonetheless happening, I can explain to them that there is a Chinese campaign going on. To make things easier, I have already translated all the screenshots and I certainly do not intend to delete them, as ‘Alice’ demands.

I let the police get on with their work but have no illusions that any suspects will be arrested. The problem is that Chinese state interference abroad can hardly ever be proven. The methods — creating confusion, leading the police astray, manipulating and pressuring people and playing them off against one another — are known, but the smoking gun is missing, is what intelligence specialists say.

For the Dutch police and Justice Department the opportunity to observe how the intimidation is organised is an eye-opener. Intimidation by ‘presumably Chinese state actors’, as it is called, is rather new territory also because most victims choose to not or hardly speak openly about it. I wonder myself, by the way, whether or not it would be better not to speak publicly about what’s happening to me. How do I wisely weigh my personal safety against my journalistic urge to tell a story that is relevant for our democratic society?

In China I used to keep my confrontations with the state mostly to myself, as they would only distract from the stories Chinese people were telling me. For instance, people who were unjustly given the death penalty and showed me the marks of torture on their bodies, or destitute farmers who were robbed of everything they owned by corrupt officials. I would rather write about them than about me again having to spend half a day at some police station, or how in sensitive regions in every hotel where I slept the same three men were given rooms opposite mine. I reported such incidents only to my superior in the Netherlands. This is how we safeguarded the very thin line between discretion and self-censorship.

A brilliant insight on this comes from the American authority on China, Perry Link, who compares the authority of the Chinese state with ‘an anaconda in a chandelier’. Everyone knows that the snake is hanging there and that it may drop down any moment to strangle its victim. ‘Normally, the big snake doesn’t move. It doesn’t need to. It also doesn’t need to be clear about exactly what it forbids. Its continuous silent message is: “You make your own decisions”, and then everyone living in its shadow makes large or small adjustments,’ says Link.

That process of adjusting takes place ‘naturally’, that is, without much ado. Acting carefully, thinking wisely, meticulously considering the political undertone of every word that I write: in the People’s Republic this was second nature to me. But this time, if I pretend everything is all right and don’t write about Wang, this may be construed as silent collaboration. Perhaps the intimidation will then stop. Or, conversely, it may get worse: if my assailant thinks that this method is effective, I can expect the same treatment in case of any future contacts with someone who has fallen out of grace with the Chinese state.

One thing is very clear to me: outside China I refuse to be treated in a Chinese manner, including the unwritten rules of secrecy. I am now living in a democratic country with rule of law, where press freedom is guaranteed. If there’s anyone who can clearly testify about such a Chinese attack and will also be heard, it is me. So, I decide to do what I have been doing for decades: I report what’s being done in the name of the Chinese state and the Communist Party, while honestly admitting that there is a lot that I do not know. Who is in charge of this psychological warfare? Is ‘Alice’ who she says she is? How long will this go on?



The same questions also remain unanswered in the police inquiry, which is still ongoing at the moment this story is published. The methods of the assailants are so clever that we can’t determine who is committing criminal offences, let alone who is pulling the strings. This is no coincidence or bad policing but rather a permanent aspect of Chinese strategy. In the end the police work results in mostly digital traces that lead to IP addresses in Hong Kong and China. The odd Chinese persons the police interview in their inquiry claim to be victims of persecution in China themselves. In the police inquiry into the threats exclusively aimed at Wang other Chinese people feature. They claim that, being patriotic Chinese citizens, they only wish to contact Wang to debate with him: they want to tell them what a great country China is. In short: the very tiny bit that is revealed mainly shows how staggeringly much we do not know.

This is also apparent from the wave of publicity washing over the world shortly after the Party Congress in Beijing, about alleged Chinese police stations abroad. To any journalist who is willing to listen, Wang presents himself as the victim of intimidation by Chinese police branches in the Netherlands. And this type of informal Chinese police station is most likely not confined to the Netherlands: according to a report by the activist NGO Safeguard Defenders, many hundreds of branches of the Chinese police have been established in at least 53 countries.

Triggered by this story, journalists everywhere start ringing the doorbell at private residences, Chinese restaurants and empty offices of Chinese clubs listed by the NGO as possible addresses for police stations. If the door is answered by a Chinese person at all, they feign complete ignorance. The Chinese government too denies the existence of police stations: there are only ‘innocent service centres’ where volunteers help compatriots living abroad in dealing with bureaucratic matters that in China one would handle with the police, such as renewing one’s driver’s licence.

Nevertheless, there is a huge political uproar. In the Netherlands, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wopke Hoekstra, summons the Chinese ambassador and demands the immediate closure of the Chinese police branches in Rotterdam and Amsterdam. At least twelve other governments announce an investigation. Never before was Chinese state interference abroad this heavily in the spotlight in so many countries at the same time.

Does this mean that Western governments have now tackled the most important form of secret Chinese influence abroad? I’m afraid not, but then again, there is little knowledge in democratic countries about the Communist Party and how it operates. By the time that investigators, intelligence services and governments have figured out what these ‘police stations’ actually represent, any trace of possibly illegal activities – such as alleged intimidation of dissidents like Wang – will already have been erased.

Around me things are quiet for the moment since on the advice of the police I no longer get in touch with Wang, but the question is for how long. After all, in my work I will continue to let people who are critical of China have their say. And if that suffices to be harassed in this manner as an ‘anti-China force’, I might as well get used to going public with that. The pressure to silence me can be turned on and off at will. Things may be calm for a long time, but on the other hand, it might be necessary to write a follow-up to this story in the future. After all, this type of intimidation does not come with instructions how to make it stop. This creates a sense of uncertainty, which is precisely what this strategy intends to achieve.

[nenjin]

Maybe spoiler that?

[Frumple]

Maybe truncate/summarize it, too. Iirc there's actually legal issues with just pasting a whole news article elsewhere, though I don't quite remember the details -- couple of other places I loiter have a 200 word limit or thereabouts, if it helps any. Probably safer to not unless the org that's putting it out explicitly allows it.

[EuchreJack]

Poor Wang, the Chinese got the journalist to stop talking to him.
Stupid people.

[martinuzz]

Maybe truncate/summarize it, too. Iirc there's actually legal issues with just pasting a whole news article elsewhere, though I don't quite remember the details -- couple of other places I loiter have a 200 word limit or thereabouts, if it helps any. Probably safer to not unless the org that's putting it out explicitly allows it.

I think the importance of freedom of press, and hence sharing this news, supercedes any copyright issues there might be in this particular case.
The article is also free to read if you haven't read your free 7 articles of the newspaper yet, so it is kindof public domain


I did put a spoiler for reading comfort

[Frumple]

Hey, I think a lot of things supersede copyright issues, too, so I'm with you on that one... but unfortunately news org lawyers don't tend to agree. One of the myriad problems with for-profit journalism, probably.

Anyway, it doesn't look like there's a specific rule for it here, so maybe boss Toad ain't worried about it, but it (not posting entire news articles) is not a bad habit to get and stay in, just to save admins trouble.

[jipehog]

I don't think it supersedes copyright issues.

Regardless, the site https://archive.is/ helps to avoid walls of text, allows to post articles with roughly their original formatting, and bypass most soft paywalls.

[martinuzz]

Meanwhile, in response to the article, the Dutch government has summoned the Chinese ambassador to demand clarification and an end to this behaviour.

[EuchreJack]

Meanwhile, in response to the article, the Dutch government has summoned the Chinese ambassador to demand clarification and an end to this behaviour.

I'm sure the ambassador from People's Republic of China will demand that the Dutch Press stop harassing their nationals and disparaging their country with blatant lies. With a straight face.

The ambassador from Taiwan will however suggest honoring the Dutch journalist.