Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Beijing Playing Prison Warden on the World Stage

"You may have a very small chance of being the one they decide to detain, but it's years of your life."
"I have lots and lots of friends and relatives in China, as well as a business. But I feel like it's just not worth the risk."
"[The company has however compartmentalized information to protect the organization on the ground], because you never know what can be construed in the wrong way."
"We’ve become very careful about that sort of thing [unintentionally arousing Beijing's ire, and facing arbitrary detention in China]. And we didn’t used to be."
Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder J Capital Research, Northeast U.S.

"Beijing's record of detaining individuals in retaliation for the perceived transgression of their home government should be a geopolitical risk on the radar of every C-suite executive."
Hugo Brennan, Asia analyst, risk consultancy firm Verisk Maplecroft

"We have received calls from member companies about the possibility of arbitrary detention."
"Our view is that the risk is small, but it's not zero."
Ker Gibbs, president, American Chamber of Commerce, Shanghai
 
"It works because, while it is shocking, deeply harmful for the detainee and places enormous political pressure on the foreign government, it is also judged by foreigners as sufficiently rare as to be a manageable risk, something that doesn’t really disrupt profitable business for China."
David Mulroney, former Canadian ambassador to China
A passenger walks through the near empty departure hall at the Wuhan Tianhe International Airport in Wuhan, China, on Saturday, May 2, 2020. The big three state-run Chinese airlines reported a slump in earnings in the first quarter as the coronavirus upended travel demand, but there are signs the worst of the crisis is over for them. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

The Panopticon Is Already Heren  The Atlantic

Xi Jinping is using artificial intelligence to enhance his government’s totalitarian control—and he’s exporting this technology to regimes around the globe.

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