HRIC Weekly Brief
January 28, 2025
Top News 头条
Despite international condemnation, Chinese political prisoners face ongoing ill-treatment. Citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, who was re-detained several months ago for assisting a young democracy activist, is on hunger strike once again and has been force-fed by the detention center. Meanwhile, Australian Yang Hengjun has been deprived of food, warm weather clothes, and medical care. As one young person testified, hospitalization is also used as a way of detaining dissenters without involving the courts: they are often given anti-psychotic drugs, and in some cases electroconvulsive therapy, without their consent. Experts say the Chinese government's consistent failure to deny people in detention adequate care and protect them from ill-treatment and torture is due to a consistent lack of accountability.
ICYMI: DeepSeek, China’s leading Artificial General Intelligence (AGI, or gen-AI) platform, took the world by storm this week. DeepSeek V3, released December 26th, is a cost-efficient alternative to chatbots like ChatGPT, while DeepSeek R1 (a “reasoning” model), released January 20, is pitched as a direct competitor to OpenAI’s o1. As of Monday, DeepSeek is the most downloaded free app on Apple’s App store. However, topics sensitive to the CCP—such as the Tiananmen Square massacre, the occupation of Tibet, the oppression of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, the degradation of Hong Kong’s civil liberties, and innumerable violations of human dignity against China’s prisoners of conscience—are restricted on platforms like DeepSeek, which are required by law to adhere to propaganda and censorship rules imposed by the CCP. There are also concerns over how the underlying technology was developed, and that voluminous amounts of US user data are being sent to China directly, although some users have found possible workarounds.
Law & Policy 法律与政策
Outline of SPC Civil Code family law Interpretation: A detailed graphic by China Law Translate explains the process of divorce and family asset division in China.
Behind the Exodus of U.S. Law Firms from China: Experts discuss what closings and departures mean for foreign law firms and their clients in China, and if the exodus is welcome news for a party-state increasingly focused on centralized control.
Cyber Security & Digital Rights 网络安全与数字权利
TikTok, five other Chinese firms hit by EU privacy complaints: Five Chinese companies, including TikTok, Shein, and Xiaomi, were named in a privacy complaint filed by Austrian advocacy group NOYB (None of Your Business), which alleged the firms were unlawfully sending European Union user data to China.
China's Fastest Growing App: Hongguo, which has only been online for about a year and a half, is a streaming service that is dominating the market for micro-dramas. It recorded the highest growth rate of any Chinese app with over 1 million users in 2024. However, it has come under pressure from the central government for allowing content that does not adhere closely enough to the government’s preferred messaging.
Diaspora Community & Transnational Repression 海外社群和跨国镇压
Man convicted of stalking Chinese ex-official by leaving him a dire note gets prison in US: Zheng Congying had knocked on the ex-official’s door, circled the home to peer inside and left a note that read: “If you are willing to go back to the mainland and spend 10 years in prison, your wife and children will be all right. That’s the end of this matter!”
Learning the Wrong Lessons at Harvard: The author, a first-hand witness to the recent student protests at Harvard during a speech by Chinese Ambassador Xie Feng, describes the protest and criticizes the response on all sides. Under new rules that remove the Q&A requirement, “students can promise an invitation to Harvard without the risk of public scrutiny.”
Human Rights Defenders & Civil Society 人权捍卫者与公民社会
INTERSECTIONS / January 24, 2025: This newsletter on gender in China discusses, amongst other issues, warnings from the Chinese government not to discuss “gender rivalry” over the Spring Festival holiday.
36-year-old Hong Kong man charged under Article 23 security law over ‘seditious’ online posts: Li Chun-kit had been accused of “publishing statements, photos, and/or pictures on Facebook with an intent to bring people into hatred, contempt or disaffection against” Hong Kong.
Twitter/X: Lee Cheuk-yan, Hong Kong pro-democracy politician and activist who is imprisoned for organizing protests in 2019, had been seen restrained in chains like a felon and boxed in by at least six correctional officers in Queen Mary Hospital.
鄒幸彤獄中信 [Chow Hang-tung's Letter From Prison]: Human rights lawyer and Hong Kong activist Chow Hang-tung wrote a letter to her friends and allies from prison for her birthday, the fourth spent behind bars. She quoted a song by Kiri T: 「投降容易老 認命沒有種」 (“surrendering gets old, there’s no such thing as accepting one’s fate”).
Hong Kong pollster taken in by national security police for 2nd time to assist investigation: Robert Chung, suspected of assisting a wanted person who escaped overseas, was taken in for questioning by national security police for the second time in two weeks.
Related: Wanted ex-pollster Chung Kim-wah’s siblings questioned by national security police.
Harassment of journalists revived after student reporters’ investigation into gov’t ‘care teams,’ press group says: A seemingly coordinated harassment campaign began targeting journalists after CUHK student publication U-Beat published an investigation into the government’s “care teams.” There are marked similarities between the harassment this year and last summer’s harassment of journalists, which included intimidating letters sent to family members, landlords, home addresses, and workplaces.
China’s Reach & Internal Control 中国: 内控与外扩
In China, Government Data on Drugs Blocked From Public After Backlash: Last week, a group of high-profile doctors raised questions regarding the quality of medications the government buys for its public healthcare system, igniting a public outcry. Now, the data and several posts from the doctors involved have been taken down.
Central and Local Media Join Forces in Thailand: A summit in Bangkok celebrating the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation serves as a notable example of Chinese provincial and central propaganda agencies cooperating to manage perceptions of regional relationships.
International Responses 国际反应
US lawmakers seek rights sanctions over Hong Kong, text shows: Republican and Democratic U.S. lawmakers are to set to introduce a new bill requiring the Trump administration to review whether Hong Kong officials should be sanctioned for human rights violations.
Current Events 热点新闻
Blast in Chinese city 3 days after Xi visit: Chinese state media has had very limited coverage on the incident, and Chinese search engine Baidu also yielded no results, indicating information on the blast has probably been censored by Chinese authorities.