America's Future Update on China

Update on China's Crackdowns

Choose your words carefully in China - the censors are watching. Communist authorities have banned words such as democracy, freedom, and human rights. If you use them on your computer, the message will come up - "Prohibited language in text, please delete." A search on Google for such topics as Taiwan, Tibetan independence, the banned group Falun Gong, the Dalai Lama, or the China Democracy Party leads to the message "Site cannot be found." Government-installed filtering tools, registration requirements and other surveillance are in place to ensure that the rules are enforced.

The consequences of defying government censorship can be severe: at least 54 people have been jailed for posting online text deemed subversive. As the price of doing business in China, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have all caved in to the regulations. Associated Press, 6-14-05

Update on U.S. National Security

"China is the biggest espionage threat to the U.S. today," says David Szady, the FBI's top counterintelligence official. The FBI and Justice Department have assigned hundreds of new counterintelligence agents a specific focus on China because the danger is mounting from China's increasing economic and military might. FBI efforts are handicapped by worries about racial profiling, ambivalence from some business groups, and vague laws on technology exports.

Thousands of Chinese nationals regularly come to the U.S. as students and businessmen, some working for major U.S. defense contractors, some welcomed with open arms by universities. They can then be recruited by the more than 3,000 Chinese "front companies" set up in the U.S. specifically to acquire military or industrial technologies illegally. Wall Street Journal, 8-10-05

Update on China's Pig Disease and Child Labor

A deadly pig-borne disease has already killed 36 people in China and infected 198. Relatively common in swine, this disease only rarely spreads to humans. This outbreak has taken the World Health Organization by surprise. The government has distributed 2 million notices not to slaughter or eat pigs. Chinese authorities have banned local reporters from visiting areas where there is an outbreak of the pig disease, ordering newspapers to use only dispatches from the state news agency. Associated Press, 7-31-05

The death of five girls made public by New York-based Human Rights in China highlighted China's hidden problem of child labor. Some estimate that as many as 10 million school-age children are part of making China a low-cost manufacturing powerhouse. The five girls finished their 12-hour shift at midnight and went to bed in a freezing cold dorm. None of them woke up. Parents believe that the owner of the canvas-making factory was so eager to cover up the fact that three of the girls were underage that he rushed them into caskets while still alive. Los Angeles Times, 7-31-05