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Tag: China

Navigating Risks From Chinese Apps

Written by Zack Chiang on . Posted in News and Trends.

An investigation published last month by Taiwanese independent outlet The Reporter (報導者) found that the Chinese navigation app Amap, also known as Gaode Map (高德地圖), transmits users’ data to servers inside China, according to the outlet’s analysis of the app’s network traffic. The investigation found that the app transmits location data, along with a tracking code capable of identifying users across other apps.

The outlet’s reporting substantiates the risks facing Taiwanese and international users of Chinese-developed map services more broadly, showing that even routine consumer apps from China can double as channels for state data collection — supported by Chinese laws that oblige companies to share user data with security and intelligence agencies on request.

By testing how Amap could pose a threat to users’ personal data security, The Reporter analyzed transmitted data packets, including their content and the frequency with which they were sent to the server, and compared them with those generated by other map services, including NaviKing, owned by the Taiwanese company KingwayTek Technology, and Google Maps.

Screenshot from the Amap website, picture above.

The result, conducted through tests using the same phone, routes and internet, revealed that Amap uploaded the data roughly every three seconds, while Google Maps and NaviKing did so around every 30 seconds and 22 minutes respectively. Apart from uploading location data, The Reporter also found that sensor information, such as phone brightness and altitude, was transmitted.

“CAID,” a deceiving code used to track users’ data by the China Advertising Association (中国广告协会) and the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (中国信通院), or CAICT, was identified when running the packet analysis, even after deleting and reinstalling the app. The code is embedded once the app is downloaded, without asking users’ permission.

Amap generated public discussion in April this year, when it released a new function — a detailed prediction of traffic light countdowns in Taipei and Kaohsiung, two major cities in Taiwan. The same month, Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA) announced a ban on the use of the app in government agencies, in accordance with the Cyber Security Management Act.

Amap, owned by the Alibaba Group, was found by MODA to exhibit 11 cybersecurity risk behaviors. Amap’s overseas privacy policy states that personal data is stored on servers located in Singapore or China, and could be shared with partners and service providers in China.

Chinese enterprises have played a leading role in the Digital Silk Road, a Chinese-led project to share its technology with the world under the Belt and Road Initiative, according to Article 19, an international human rights organization. The BeiDou satellite navigation system, a Chinese-made technology used by Amap, has reached agreements within the Indo-Pacific region, including in Thailand and Cambodia. Cambodian human rights organizations have also raised concerns about the risk to transparency, according to Article 19.

Chinese law provides a basis for the state to obtain personal data from private organizations. For example, Article 35 of the Data Security Law of the People’s Republic of China (中华人民共和国数据安全法) states organizations’ obligation to provide information for national security purposes.

Turtles for the Traitors

Written by Dalia Parete on . Posted in News and Trends.

 Last month, an analysis by China Digital Times (CDT), an outlet that tracks Chinese media and censorship, found that the definition of the activities of “external hostile forces” (境外势力) applied by China’s Ministry of State Security has widened to include the most routine activities of daily life. The study of the expanding scope of this decades-old phrase, which has long cast perceived threats to its rule as the work of foreign infiltration, points to a regime obsessed with potential dissent and espionage.

The review, published on June 23 by CDT, examined three years of posts from the official WeChat account of China’s Ministry of State Security (国家安全部), or MSS, the country’s intelligence and domestic security agency. The MSS opened its official WeChat account just over three years ago, in April 2023.

CDT’s review counted more than 30 everyday scenarios the ministry has cast as channels for infiltration. They included intelligence gathering through dating apps, Bluetooth earbuds, paid photography jobs at military and technology expos, employment ads, and study abroad opportunities. Bizarrely, the list even mentioned the possible use of sea turtles fitted with tracking sensors, which were suspected of relaying ocean data to foreign intelligence agents.

The clearest example of the application of this overstretched definition came on April 28, 2026, when the ministry accused two foreign-funded groups of stoking the trend of “lying flat” (躺平), a term referring to the choice by exhausted young Chinese to opt out of the country’s competitive work culture and instead live a laid-back lifestyle. One group, the MSS said, had funded media and think tanks pushing the narrative that “striving equals being exploited” (奋斗=被剥削), while another had bankrolled “lying-flat influencers” who produced videos with slogans like “lying flat is justice” (躺平即正义).

According to CDT, the MSS post marked the first time the ministry had treated a social mood, not concrete acts of espionage, as a security threat.

The phrase “hostile forces” dates to 1948, when the People’s Daily first used a version of it, “class hostile forces” (阶级敌对势力), translating a Soviet-era text. Mao Zedong revived it as “hostile class” (敌对阶级) during the 1957 Anti-Rightist Movement, and it resurfaced at sensitive moments in the decades that followed, including after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown and the 1999 banning of the Falun Gong spiritual movement. Over the past decade, the phrase has been used to cast Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests as the outcome of foreign meddling.

Student Magazine Folds After 74 Years

Written by Zack Chiang on . Posted in News and Trends.

“The times always call to us — the media belonging to the new era may yet arrive in ways we do not yet know.” Whether a message of hope or of resignation, these words marked the end last week of Undergrad (學苑), a student magazine that had published for 74 years at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), the territory’s top-ranking tertiary institution. The editors said they were ceasing operations immediately after twice failing to recruit new members. It was the latest sign of shrinking space for independent political expression at Hong Kong’s universities.

Founded in 1952 as an English-language student newsletter, Undergrad adopted its Chinese name and switched to Chinese-language publication in 1959. Over the decades, it became a fixture of Hong Kong student activism. Its situation became more precarious in 2015, in the wake of the Occupy Central pro-democracy protests, when then-Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying (梁振英) took the unusual step of naming Undergrad directly in his annual Policy Address, criticizing a magazine feature and companion book on Hong Kong self-determination as “mistaken propositions.” Undergrad‘s editors accused Leung of suppressing free expression. 

In 2021, the magazine’s operations narrowed sharply after HKU withdrew recognition of the Hong Kong University Students’ Union (香港大學學生會), the student union under which it was published. This followed an expression of sympathy by student leaders for a man who fatally stabbed a police officer and then killed himself. Cut off from campus facilities and funding, the union, and Undergrad with it, has struggled to function over the past five years.

Cover of the  February issue of Undergrad’s magazine, captioned “Hong Kong people deciding their own fate,” pictured above. 

Over its 74 years, Undergrad counted alumni across Hong Kong’s political spectrum, including the late former Chief Secretary Rafael Hui (許仕仁), veteran journalist Ching Cheong (程翔), who was imprisoned in China for nearly three years on espionage charges for his journalistic work, and lyricist James Wong (黃霑), a foundational figure in Cantonese pop music sometimes called one of Hong Kong’s “Four Great Talents.”

Responding to the news, Tou Yiu-ming (杜耀明), a former Undergrad editor and retired journalism professor, told France’s RFI that HKU had lost an essential platform for training young minds, warning the university now risked becoming what he called “an education factory.” The story was reported by Mak Yin-ting (麥燕庭), herself a former head of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, who was detained by police in 2023 while covering a banned vigil for the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

In its closing statement, Undergrad‘s outgoing editorial committee seemed to preempt any suggestion that the closure was a forced measure. The statement’s only oblique nod to politics was its use of the phrase “new era” (新時代), a term closely associated with Chinese leader Xi Jinping (習近平), which may have been a wry aside. They chose instead to describe the closure in almost lyrical terms. “This is not something to lament with sorrow,” they wrote, “but simply the natural ebb and flow of history.”

Hunter Bookstore in the Crosshairs

Written by Dalia Parete on . Posted in News and Trends.

On June 24, Hong Kong’s national security police raided an independent bookshop in the working-class Sham Shui Po district. Officers arrested its founder, Leticia Wong Man-huen (黃文萱), 33, and an unnamed 32-year-old man who worked with her. Both were held on suspicion of “committing acts with seditious intent” under Article 24 of the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, a 2024 law often used to target government critics. Wong was also accused of laundering money allegedly received as remittances from a foreign political organization.

Wong’s arrest is the latest in what appears to be an extended national security push against the activities of independent booksellers in the city. In March, national security police raided Book Punch (一拳書館), whose founder faced similar sedition allegations.

The Collective (集誌社), an investigative Hong Kong outlet, reported that officers tore down a sticker outside the shop and lowered its shutters. Last July, Wen Wei Po (文匯報), a newspaper run by the Chinese government’s Central Liaison Office in Hong Kong, accused Wong of “soft resistance” (軟對抗) through events at the bookstore, including talks, film screenings, and an independent publishing fair held with unnamed government critics. The shop had also sold a biography of Jimmy Lai, the jailed founder of Apple Daily, who was sentenced in February to 20 years in prison for “colluding with foreign forces.”

The raid follows years of pressure on Hong Kong’s shrinking independent bookselling community, a trend that has accelerated since China imposed a national security law on the city in 2020. Wong is a former district councilor, an elected local government post, who resigned in June 2021 and was previously affiliated with the now-disbanded pro-democracy Civic Party.

A Corruption Story Goes Silent

Written by Zack Chiang on . Posted in News and Trends.

When a 27-year-old township official drowned during a fishing outing in rural Hunan one year ago, local investigators concluded his death was an accident. It was only months later, after unlocking his phone, that his family discovered a much darker tale of pressure and corruption within the local government. That story, revealed earlier this month in a lengthy exposé by Guangdong’s Southern Weekly (南方周末), historically one of China’s most outspoken news outlets, was deleted shortly after publication.

While the case underscores the strict limits facing anti-corruption reporting in China, it is also a reminder that Chinese media continue to pull against the reins, pursuing tougher stories even when they run the constant risk of censorship.

Southern Weekly’s June 15 deep dive into the fate of Wang Linming (王林明) was a classic example of what in China’s official press has since the late 1980s called “supervision by public opinion” (舆论监督) — referring to the role of the news media in uncovering issues of official corruption and abuse of power, particularly at lower levels of the bureaucracy. Reporting of this kind soared in China in the early 2000s, during the heyday of the commercial press, when Southern Weekly was the most outstanding example of an emerging professional journalism movement unfolding even under strict political limitations. It has become much rarer under the leadership of Xi Jinping, who has emphasized the need to reassert the Chinese Communist Party’s control over the press. 

The June 15 report on Wang Linming was a rare return to form for a publication that had long staked out a reputation for accountability reporting. Wang, a civil servant in a rural township in the southern Hunan province, drowned on June 30, 2025, while fishing with a top local official. An investigation at the county level dragged on quietly for months, before finding in May 2026 that his death had been accidental. Southern Weekly’s report this month, drawing on family interviews and phone records, told a far more complicated story.

Wang’s WeChat messages, expense logs, and transfer histories documented systematic misconduct by township leaders. Officials had engaged in illegal banqueting and drinking, run gambling sessions inside the local police station, and pressured Wang to file false expense reimbursements to cover the costs. Official dining expenses at four local restaurants had surged from 70,000 yuan in 2022 to nearly 200,000 yuan (approximately 28,000 dollars) in 2023, the report found. Gambling transfers from a single overnight session in January 2024 exceeded 70,000 yuan (roughly 10,000 dollars).

While the case underscores the strict limits facing anti-corruption reporting in China, it is also a reminder that Chinese media continue to pull against the reins, pursuing tougher stories even when they run the constant risk of censorship.

The misconduct had already been flagged, according to Southern Weekly. A county inspection team cited Hengtang Town (横塘镇) in 2023 for illegal drinking at work meals, after which all township officials signed pledges not to drink. 

Article 303 of China’s Criminal Law explicitly prohibits gambling gatherings, and last year the Chinese government tightened guidelines restricting alcohol consumption and lavish banquets among officials. Noting the deletion, a report by Hong Kong’s Ming Pao (明報) on June 18 captured public reaction inside China, with some commenters online alleging that Wang Linming had been killed not by the river, but by the country’s “small circle culture” (小圈子文化) of grassroots officialdom.

Since coming to power in late 2012, Xi Jinping has made anti-corruption a defining feature of his leadership, disciplining more than two million officials. That campaign, however, has unfolded alongside a dramatic consolidation of CCP control over the press. Paradoxically, these controls have put the power of exposure squarely back in the hands of local officials, making it far harder to expose the kind of local misconduct Xi has pledged to root out.

Based in Guangzhou, Southern Weekly has long been considered one of China’s most outspoken professional news outlets — a reputation that has made it a persistent target of official pressure. In a notorious 2013 incident, the Central Propaganda Department forced revisions to the paper’s New Year’s editorial. Since then, the paper has faced relentless pressure and has been far less vocal than it was in the 2000s and early 2010s. Nevertheless, the deletion of this month’s report is a reminder that the paper continues to pursue harder-hitting stories.

Taiwan Launches Intelligence Portal Directed at Chinese

Written by Dalia Parete on . Posted in News and Trends.

Taiwan’s National Security Bureau (國家安全局) announced the launch earlier this month of an online portal that allows Chinese citizens to submit intelligence to the agency. The Bureau cites as the foundation for this new mechanism the National Intelligence Work Act (國家情報工作法), the legal framework outlining its power to gather foreign intelligence and enlist sources from abroad. The Bureau notes a rise in outreach from Chinese citizens in recent years, attributing it to economic stagnation and to what it described as “high-pressure” (高壓) political rule under the Party.

The platform guides potential users in China through six operational steps in order to remain secure. First, they must use a foreign-brand phone or tablet. Second, they must first restore the device to factory settings. Third, they must use a Wi-Fi connection that does not require real-name registration. Fourth, they must use a VPN to hide their browsing activity. Fifth, they must use a non-Chinese browser. Finally, they must enable private or incognito browsing mode.

The Bureau also produced a one-minute promotional video, “Change” (改變), generated using AI. It depicts a civil servant watching colleagues disappear one by one under investigation, before deciding to reach out to the Taiwanese Bureau. The video ends with the line: “Now is the time to make a change.” 

Censoring the Metaverse

Written by Dalia Parete on . Posted in News and Trends.

A post by the Hong Kong independent media outlet Boom News (爆炸頭) commemorating the 14th anniversary this past week of the death of Tiananmen activist Li Wangyang (李旺阳) was removed from social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, both owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.

The posts commemorated Li, a labor organizer and pioneering advocate for independent trade unionism in China who played a leading role in the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement. After 22 years in Chinese prisons, Li was released in 2012 in such poor health that he required immediate hospitalization. He was found dead in his hospital room on June 6 of that year. Authorities ruled his death a suicide and cremated his body without his family’s consent.

Meta offered no public explanation for the takedowns and also permanently terminated the outlet’s monetization on both platforms. The removal coincides with growing restrictions on commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, not only in China, where any reference to June 4 is prohibited and removed from the internet, but also in Hong Kong, where authorities have arrested people for posting about the anniversary on social media and a once-massive annual candlelight vigil is no longer allowed.

Boom News is a YouTube-based platform focusing on Hong Kong stories, with close to 50,000 subscribers on the platform.

Swipe Right for the Motherland

Written by Dalia Parete on . Posted in News and Trends.

In recent years, as China’s demographic crisis has moved toward the center of government concerns about the country’s social and economic future, state media have played a critical role in pushing the appeal of marriage and childbirth to millions of young women who are less than enthused by the idea. But now the CCP’s flagship People’s Daily (人民日报) is going a step further — organizing its own singles events to do its part for the nation.

On May 30, 600 single young people from over 40 military units and government agenciesgathered in Beijing for a state-organized mixer themed “Youth in Full Bloom, Military and Civilian Hearts United.” Organizers included the PLA, the Beijing Women’s Federation, and People’s Daily Online (人民网), which provided the infrastructure through its proprietary dating app, “Hello, Good Times” (你好友趣), launched in October 2024. The dating app is a technical response to the Party’s 2021 directive to “build a new type of marriage and childbearing culture.” That policy charged propaganda organs with changing the way young Chinese thought about marriage and family. 

In 2025, China recorded a new historic low birth rate, with the population declining for a fourth consecutive year, down by 3.39 million over 2024. Marriages also declined sharply in 2024. In recent years, the leadership has rolled out various initiatives to reverse the trend, from cash bonuses to longer parental leave, but ultimately to little effect. But while China is trending low on new births, its official media are clearly not running low on fresh ideas.

Trapped in China

Written by Dalia Parete on . Posted in News and Trends.

Fu Cha (富察), editor-in-chief of Taiwanese publishing house Gusa Press (八旗文化), was released from a Shanghai prison in May after serving three years for “inciting national secession,” a charge Chinese authorities use against speech, writing, or advocacy seen to contest China’s territorial claims. Fu remains unable to return to Taiwan, however, according to a June 8 report in the Liberty Times (自由時報), because his February 2025 verdict included a one-year supplementary sentence stripping him of political rights, which begins running only after his prison term ends.

Fu Cha, who holds Taiwanese citizenship and is of Manchu descent, was detained in China in March 2023 after traveling there to cancel his household registration. His detention was connected to his work at Gusa Press, which has long published titles challenging the CCP’s official narratives on Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia. The CCP internally flagged over a hundred of the press’s titles as problematic, but used only five as the basis for sentencing, according to a May 11 analysis by Storm Media (風傳媒). His three-year prison term was calculated from the date of his 2023 detention, not his February 2025 sentencing, which is why he was released as early as May this year.

China’s top judicial authorities publicly named Fu Cha in their March 2026 annual reports as an example of punishment for what they called “stubborn Taiwan independence elements” (嚴懲台獨頑固分子), according to Storm Media — a move the publication describes as a cautionary signal to Taiwan’s publishing industry. Under Chinese law, the supplementary sentence allows security authorities to impose exit bans, mandatory check-ins, and communication restrictions for its duration, meaning Fu Cha cannot leave China until at least May 2027.