Popular Articles
Today Week Month Year


American companies called out for selling technology to “anti-Christian” Beijing
By Michael Alexander // Aug 03, 2020

American companies should stop supplying technology to Beijing, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said, noting the Chinese government’s hardline stance on religious and cultural expression.

Brighteon.TV

“Tech companies need to remember that they are American tech companies. And they should be sensitive to the values that we stand for,” USCIRF Commissioner Gary Bauer said in an interview with The Epoch Times, adding that cooperation between these companies and communist authorities is unacceptable.

According to experts, this is because China — which is home to 18 of the world’s 20 most monitored cities, according to a study by British technology website Comparitech — is currently using an armada of advanced American surveillance technology to spy on and suppress religious communities. This includes high-tech cameras, facial recognition software, smartphone applications, advanced GPS location tracking and even DNA and biometrics data collection.

“No authoritarian state has leveraged digital technologies more successfully than modern China,” Chris Meserole of Washington-based think tank Brookings Institution, said during the hearing.

U.S. companies, complicit in Beijing’s religious crackdown

According to Messerole, the results of such punitive measures from the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) crackdown on religion, culture and free speech, have always been devastating and tragic — and several US companies are complicit.

Tech giant Apple, for instance, kowtowed to pressure from the Chinese government and removed or rejected thousands of apps from the Chinese version of its App Store.

According to Lobsang Sither, a Tibetan-in-exile who heads the digital security program at a human rights advocacy group called the Tibet Action Institute, Apple’s decision to censor its own digital marketplace betrayed its recent call for a “more just world for everyone.”

Aside from Apple, other tech giants such as Intel and Nvidia have sold technologies such as artificial-intelligence chips to Chinese manufacturers, including surveillance equipment maker Hikvision, which is one of nearly 50 Chinese companies on a U.S. sanctions list for their involvement in human rights violations. (Related: Popular “woke” and “socially conscious” brands benefiting from Uyghur slave labor – report.)

Hikvision, according to a November 2019 report by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, is involved in the mass detention and trafficking of ethnic Uyghur Muslims from China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang.

The report detailed that an estimated 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities currently reside in concentration camps built by the CCP purportedly to weed out dissidents and prevent the  spread of “religious extremism.” The Uyghurs, according to the Commission, are then shipped off to work in several factories — some of which have been tapped by several global brands.

This was corroborated by a study released by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which noted that massive global companies and brands such as Amazon, GAP, H&M, Nike, Apple, Samsung, Sony and Victoria’s Secret and others, are actually part of an extensive supply chain that uses Uyghur Muslims as “forced labor.”

American pension funds are also complicit

Aside from tech firms, two major American pension funds — the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System — have been revealed to have had personal financial stakes in Hikvision.

As a response to these findings, the U.S. administration has since blocked further investment by U.S. federal retirement funds into Chinese firms, citing “present significant national security and humanitarian concerns.”

In a speech earlier this month, Attorney General William Barr called out corporate America for allegedly becoming too subservient to Beijing. He noted that because Hollywood and U.S. tech firms have been "too eager" to access the Chinese market, they essentially “allowed themselves to become pawns of Chinese influence.”

“For the sake of short-term profits, American companies have succumbed to [Chinese] influence, even at the expense of freedom and openness in the United States,” Barr said.

Bauer noted that corporations — especially the multinational ones — may need to step back and reassess their stakes in China.

“If they’re concerned about their brand, they need to understand that if it becomes obvious that they’re cooperating with the Chinese communists to oppress, discriminate against people, that that is going to hurt their brand and their profits a lot more than if they irritate the Chinese Communist government,” Bauer stated.

China intensifying surveillance on religious communities

Much of the suppression levied on religious minorities in China, according to Washington-based ecumenical organization International Christian Concern, stems from the CCP’s systematic campaign of Sinicization — a term first coined by the Party in 2015 — which aims to make religious groups submit to socialism and assimilate them into “a unified identity with Chinese characteristics.” This campaign has since led to the creation of several government-approved churches and religious groups.

Churches that are not in any way affiliated with the government are branded “heterodox” organizations, which are then subjected to intensified surveillance — both offline and online — with authorities often cracking down on them for practices that are deemed to be not aligned with “normal religious activities.”

Gina Goh, ICC’s regional manager for Southeast Asia and the author of the report, noted that such crackdowns often happen mainly because China’s vaguely worded constitution allows authorities to arbitrarily define what falls within the realm of “normal religious activities.”

According to Goh, this gives the government the power to disband churches and other religious organizations.

Sources include:

TheEpochTimes.com

SCMP.com

Reuters.com

Apple.com

Asia.Nikkei.com

TheGuardian.com

ASPI.org.au

BBC.com

CNBC.com

BaptistStandard.com

Persecution.org



Take Action:
Support NewsTarget by linking to this article from your website.
Permalink to this article:
Copy
Embed article link:
Copy
Reprinting this article:
Non-commercial use is permitted with credit to NewsTarget.com (including a clickable link).
Please contact us for more information.
Free Email Alerts
Get independent news alerts on natural cures, food lab tests, cannabis medicine, science, robotics, drones, privacy and more.

NewsTarget.com © 2022 All Rights Reserved. All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. NewsTarget.com is not responsible for content written by contributing authors. The information on this site is provided for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional advice of any kind. NewsTarget.com assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. Your use of this website indicates your agreement to these terms and those published on this site. All trademarks, registered trademarks and servicemarks mentioned on this site are the property of their respective owners.

This site uses cookies
News Target uses cookies to improve your experience on our site. By using this site, you agree to our privacy policy.
Learn More
Close
Get 100% real, uncensored news delivered straight to your inbox
You can unsubscribe at any time. Your email privacy is completely protected.