And since I've continued to be asked questions about article 7 of the Intelligence Law, let me do a quick thread 🧵:
1. I don't think it says what you think it does.
2. It doesn't matter anyway. Article 7 of the Intelligence Law, effective June 2017, provides that all citizens and organizations must support, assist, and cooperate in national intelligence work.
chinalawtranslate.com/en/national-in…

Recently I've had occasion to look at the National Intelligence Law more carefully, and have found that a lot of people writing about it cite what seems to be a Machine Translation from a Brown University Computer Science Syllabus.
cs.brown.edu/courses/csci18… Because this PDF looks like a screenshot of the National People's Congress website (cached) a lot of people thought that the English is an NPC translation.
It has been cited in a great number of places including various government hearings.

To the person who suggested I was just being pedantic and overly critical of a report on overseas policing, you are probably right, but consider these examples of frustratingly selective translation:

If you can't read Chinese, you'd entirely miss that what is being discussed is setting up video conferencing equipment abroad.

Really interesting that while I still see lots of interest in Social Credit, it seems to have reached a turning point with less focus on 'universal citizen scoring' and more and more "myth-busting" or "corrective" stories.
Here's one I saw today:
I don't agree with everything I see in any video, but consider what a difference it is from the emblematic 2018 ABC report "Leave no dark corner" "Exposing China's Digital Dystopian Dictatorship"

It's coming on 10 years that I've been writing about the Social Credit System in China, and people still talk as if China really has some sort of generalized morality score that impacts people's lives.

https://twitter.com/unherd/status/1610659959389184000

Of course, it's a mythology readily debunked by talking to almost anyone in China.

https://twitter.com/manyapan/status/1327208138660077569

Alright, we have a functional initial translation of the draft social credit law up.
It is not the law I expected, but folks still in a 'black mirror' narrative are going to be bored out of their skulls.
chinalawtranslate.com/en/social-cred… Rather than focus solely on "credit regulation" 信用监管as the provincial regulations largely did, the law attempts to cover all topics under the social credit umbrella - creditworthiness/integrity (诚信）and financial credit reporting (征信）.

Enough people have written me regarding the September report on overseas policing that I am going to try and write a quick thread before traveling today.

I have already shared my notes with the report's authors, and you can find the report here: safeguarddefenders.com/sites/default/… First, the report raises two important and related areas that should be of concern:
1.Activities of Chinese law enforcement and their proxies outside of China.
2.Harsh actions taken by Chinese authorities domestically to encourage the return of Chinese criminal suspects abroad.

The latest in China's internet regulation addresses content producers, platforms, and talent management... again.
Implementing a few new systems, and comprehensive content regulation. 🧵
chinalawtranslate.com/en/online-pres… This builds on two main themes of recent online censorship:
1. Holding social media content producers to standards once reserved for more formal production operations.
2. expanding the focus of content prohibitions from the illegal to the merely undesirable 'negative' content

This is the best story I've seen today:

Christopher Balding warns that China (well, a Chinese company) is collecting data on Chinese customers' drinking preferences, product use, and payment information; and might be coming for yours too. washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jun/… It's no secret that IoT devices are all spies- from your car to your smart speaker, and here Balding tackles an internet-connected coffee machine.
Full report: static1.squarespace.com/static/6201e2c…

This is directly on point to our discussion, so I want to respond. 🧵
The mythos of social credit is so pervasive, that when we explain the real system, a common reaction is: “they are social credit deniers" rather than "I have been using the term social credit incorrectly"

https://twitter.com/JimMillward/status/1536607418544803840

In my standard PowerPoint set that I've used for over half a decade now, this is actually where I begin; see the second bullet point.

China has a vast surveillance system. Some tech based, some manpower based. Some legal under both domestic and international law, some not.

Didn't want to bury it in the previous thread, but For those interested in looking at the key legal authority, I'll make a brief thread here: Ciminal law amendment 9, adding several criminal charges that now appear in the Criminal Law at article 120 et seq. , as we summarized here: chinalawtranslate.com/its-a-crime-i-…

I'm quoted briefly in this article, but I wanted to add a few comments based on the data set the authors shared. apnews.com/article/religi… First, assuming the data is accurate, it is extraordinary in every aspect: charges, sentences, and the sheer volume of cases.

Interesting that this article suggests the draft law's provision on 'schools' running background checks on teachers would apply to colleges. Article 26 refers to '学校’ which doesn't always include colleges.

https://twitter.com/SCMPNews/status/1520935234249834496

The system actually builds on currently effective authority, including the law on the Protection of Minors, as noted in my comparison of the 1st and 2nd drafts of the women's protection law. chinalawtranslate.com/whats-new-in-d…

This draft really is fascinating.
It contains many provisions clearly aimed at protecting women from discrimination but its assumptions about the inherent traits of women as a group are really hard to handle from a US cultural perspective.
chinalawtranslate.com/en/womens-prot… The law defines the rights of women in terms of the rights of men.
Putting aside the validity of binary divisions, this makes men the 'default' and women 'the other'.
This 'otherness' is portrayed in the law as 'specialness' deserving of special considerations and protections.