Better in their words…

We need an administration willing to take a much tougher approach to China.
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WSJ – 11/9/2015
Some Ameri can radio listeners might have been surp rised last year to hear a news account explaining how pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong “failed without the support of the people of Hong Kong.” In fact, a large percentage of local residents joined the demonstrations until they were forcibly suppressed under orders from Beijing.

Listeners would have been less surprised if the stations had disclosed that the communist government in Beijing controls their content. More than a dozen stations across the U.S. are among a total of 33 globally that operate covertly, with Beijing hiding behind front men.

Last week it came to light that Beijing’s state-run China Radio International secretly owns 60% of a U.S. company, G& E Studio, which leases stations and airtime in Washington, Philadelphia, Boston and San Francisco, among other cities. Beijing uses similar subterfuges in Europe and Australia.

China went to great lengths to hide its role. Reuters broke the story after deploying 39 reporters to investigate in 26 countries, including the review of “scores of regulatory, zoning, property, tax, immigration and corporate records, including radio station purchase contracts and lease agreements.”

Beijing’s involvement was discovered via a footnote in a Federal Communications Commission filing on behalf of a separate company also affiliated with James Su, a Shanghai- born naturalized U.S. citizen, whom Reuters exposed as Beijing’s minority partner in its American radio operations.

The U.S. government apparently didn’t suspect a thing, but the FCC and Justice Department have both now opened investigations. Federal law bars foreign governments from holding radio licenses or owning stations and requires agents for foreign countries to disclose their roles.

These stations routinely air pro-Beijing propaganda. A report on Beijing-controlled WCRW in Washington last month on the cyber hack of the personnel records of more than 20 million federal employees failed to mention that U.S. officials blame Beijing. Another report, on talks between U.S. and Chinese naval officers about artificial islands Beijing built in the South China Sea to narrow international sea lanes, blamed “the tension the U.S. created this week.”

Beijing’s ability to operate secretly in the highly regulated broadcasting industry may be surprising, but its officials are open about their ambition to spread propaganda. President Xi Jinping last year urged: “We should increase China’s soft power, give a good Chinese narrative and better communicate China’s message to the world.” The head of China Radio International boasts of a “borrowed boat” strategy of using existing media outlets in foreign countries to spread Beijing’s party line.

Laws prohibiting foreign control apply only to traditional broadcasting. Foreignowned cable and satellite channels—China’s CCTV, Russia’s RT and Qatar’s Al Jazeera—are perfectly legal. The U.S. should mandate transparency by requiring these channels to make announcements every 15 minutes disclosing, “This programming is controlled by the government of China/Russia/ Qatar.”

Americans would at least be on notice that they’re getting foreign propaganda billed as news.

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In other China-related news, the chief executive of the .xyz domain wants to “clarify” the company’s policy relating to Web addresses that Beijing can ban from the global Internet, discussed in last week’s column. Daniel Negari says the .xyz application to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers was unclear.

He acknowledges that if a resident of China registers a .xyz address that Beijing demands be suspended—such as if it includes a banned word such as “freedom,” “democracy” or any reference to Tiananmen Square—then the address would indeed be banned globally. But he says this is simply compliance with China’s “applicable law.” He draws an analogy to complying with the an FBI order seizing a website convicted of piracy of intellectual property. Mr. Negari assured in a Web post that his company “will not censor your domains”—a quibble, since China will be censoring.

But Mr. Negari says if a Web address registered outside China uses a word banned by Beijing, the site won’t be blocked. That’s good news, though it seems to violate the Icann policy that addresses be treated the same globally.

However Icann interprets the .xyz application, Congress should ask the U.S. Commerce Department to explain why it would allow Icann—which it oversees for now via a contract intended to protect the open Internet—to become the global enforcer of the Chinese regime’s censorship against Chinese citizens.

China’s plan to censor Web addresses highlights the folly of the Obama administration’s plan to end U.S. protection for the Internet. This would make it easier for authoritarian regimes to censor websites around the world, no longer just in their own countries.