Once little more than a glorified porn filter, China’s ‘Great Firewall’ has evolved into the most sophisticated system of online censorship in the world. As the Chinese internet grows and online businesses thrive, speech is controlled, dissent quashed, and attempts to organise outside the official Communist Party are quickly stamped out. But the effects of the Great Firewall are not confined to China itself.

Through years of investigation James Griffiths gained unprecedented access to the Great Firewall and the politicians, tech leaders, dissidents and hackers whose lives revolve around it. As distortion, post-truth and fake news become old news James Griffiths shows just how far the Great Firewall has spread. Now is the time for a radical new vision of online liberty.

James Griffiths talks about his book with bestselling author Paul French – who is no stranger to Chinese censorship himself – and Anna Bacciarelli, who spearheaded Amnesty UK’s successful (for now) Google Drop Dragonfly campaign. They discuss how the Firewall is affecting human rights and journalistic freedoms in China, as well as all over the world as the model is actively exported to countries from Russia to in the Africa continent.

Chair

Born in London and educated there and in Glasgow, Paul French has lived and worked in Shanghai for many years. As a leading expert on North Korea he is a widely published analyst and commentator on Asia and has written a number of books dealing with China’s pre-1949 history, Asian politics and current affairs. His previous books include a history of North Korea, a biography of Shanghai adman and adventurer Carl Crow, and a history of foreign correspondents in China.Paul was awarded the 2013 Edgar for best fact crime for his international best-seller Midnight in Peking.

Speakers

James Griffiths is a reporter and producer for CNN International, currently based in Hong Kong. He has reported from Hong Kong, China, South Korea and Australia for outlets including the Atlantic, Vice and the Daily Beast. He was previously a reporter and assistant editor at the South China Morning Post, where he played a key role in the paper’s award winning coverage of the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests in Hong Kong.

Anna Bacciarelli is a Technology and Human Rights Researcher and Advisor at Amnesty International, where she investigates the impact of developments in artificial intelligence, big data and automated decision-making on human rights. She advocates for human rights protections in the creation and use of technology around the world, and jointly led Amnesty’s campaign calling on Google to Drop Project Dragonfly, after it was revealed that the company planned to u-turn and comply with the Chinese government’s strict censorship and surveillance laws last year.

  Watch the video stream of The Great Firewall of China

China has 55 recognised minority groups. Although Beijing demands state control over all faiths – including Christianity, Tibetan Buddhism and even ‘Chinese’ religions such as Taoism – it is the country’s 20 million Muslims that are facing the hardest clampdown on religious, cultural, linguistic and even culinary activities. Styled as ‘re-education’ centres by central government, over one million Uighurs are incarcerated in mass internments camps in Xinjiang. As accounts from inside trickle through China and across the world, other groups are now looking over their shoulders, fearing what could be to come.

Join a panel of experts and reporters to discuss what’s happening to the edifice of minority culture in China and whether – in the face of intensifying Han nationalism – the ‘flowers in the backyard’ can ever blossom.

Chair:

Isabel Hilton is a London-based international journalist and broadcaster. She studied at the Beijing Foreign Language and Culture University and at Fudan University in Shanghai before taking up a career in written and broadcast journalism, working for The Sunday Times, The Independent, The Guardian, and the New Yorker. In 1992 she became a presenter of the BBC’s flagship news program, “The World Tonight” then BBC Radio Three’s cultural program “Night Waves.” She is a columnist for The Guardian and her work has appeared in the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Granta, the New Statesman, El Pais, Index on Censorship, and many other publications. She is the author and co-author of several books and is founder and editor of chinadialogue.net, a non-profit, fully bilingual online publication based in London, Beijing, and Delhi that focuses on the environment and climate change. Hilton holds two honorary doctorates and was awarded the OBE for her work in raising environmental awareness in China.

Speakers:

James Palmer is a senior editor at Foreign Policy. Palmer is the author of The Bloody White Baron: The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia and The Death of Mao: The Tangshan Earthquake and the Birth of the New China. He won the Shiva Naipaul prize for travel writing in 2003.

Emily Feng is NPR’s incoming international correspondent in Beijing. For the last two years, she was a China correspondent at the Financial Times, covering everything from technology to human rights. Her reportage on the ongoing detention campaign in the Xinjiang region was shortlisted for best international reporting and best young journalist by the Press Awards, the UK’s equivalent to the Pulitzer, as well the Anthony Lewis Prize. She graduated from Duke University with a degree in Public Policy.

  Watch the video stream of China’s Inner Turmoil

Grace Gao

Grace Gao is daughter to Gao Zhisheng – a prominent Chinese human rights lawyer who is best known for his work defending Christians, Falun Gong adherents, and other vulnerable social groups. As a result of his work on ‘sensitive’ cases and his open letters to Chinese political leaders, he was subject to numerous incidences of enforced disappearance and torture before being convicted of ‘inciting to subvert state power’. After three years in prison, he was released on 7 August 2014 with serious health problems, and has been under effective house arrest. Since mid August 2017, he has been missing again. Gao has authored a comprehensive report detailing human rights abuses and related social issues in China in the year 2016. This is the first comprehensive human rights commentary written by a human rights lawyer still living in China and his commentary covers a wide range of human rights abuses, including violations of the right to freedom of religion or belief, abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang and the situation of lawyers and human rights defenders. Grace has worked tirelessly, raising awareness of her father’s situation and wider human rights issues in China.

Angela Gui

Angela Gui is the daughter of the Hong Kong bookseller Gui Minhai who is believed to have been abducted by Chinese agents in Thailand in late 2015. Gui was one of the five men who vanished in a spate of incidents known as the Causeway Bay Bookstore Disappearances.  It is believed he was targeted due to his work as a publisher specialising in books critical of the Chinese Communist Party.  Gui resurfaced months later in a detention centre in China, and was made to publicly confess to crimes on Chinese state television.  There has been no presentation of charges or conclusive evidence for his alleged crimes.  Angela is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, and has been campaigning for her father’s release since he went missing. You can read her article in The Guardian here.

Isabel Hilton (Chair)

Isabel Hilton is a London-based international journalist and broadcaster. She studied at the Beijing Foreign Language and Culture University and at Fudan University in Shanghai before taking up a career in written and broadcast journalism, working for The Sunday Times, The Independent, The Guardian, and the New Yorker. In 1992 she became a presenter of the BBC’s flagship news program, “The World Tonight,” then BBC Radio Three’s cultural program “Night Waves.” She is a columnist for The Guardian and her work has appeared in the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Granta, the New Statesman, El Pais, Index on Censorship, and many other publications. She is the author and co-auothor of several books and is founder and editor of chinadialogue.net, a non-profit, fully bilingual online publication based in London, Beijing, and Delhi that focuses on the environment and climate change.

Ben Bland

Ben Bland is the South China correspondent for the Financial Times, currently working out of Hong Kong. Bland is the author of the recently published Generation HK – an exploration into the youth in Hong Kong, from activists, artists, writers and journalists, and the encroaching threat on their freedom of speech from the mainland. Bland has been a correspondent in Asia for almost a decade. Before Hong Kong he was based in both Indonesia and Vietnam.

Featured photo: A protestor is wrapped up with rope during a march calling for the release of missing booksellers in Hong Kong’s Mighty Current Publishing house, January 10, 2016.

In 2016, Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) embarked on a yearlong undercover investigation into the murky world of ivory trafficking in Mozambique in Africa. These investigations revealed a Chinese-led criminal syndicate which for over two decades has been trafficking ivory from Africa to Shuidong, their hometown in southern China. The traffickers claimed that up to 80 per cent of all African elephant tusks were destined for Shuidong town.

This panel discussion and Q&A will focus on the connections between corruption, criminality and the illegal ivory trade, the impacts of EIA’s investigations in China and Africa, and the responses so far from the Chinese government. Voices from the frontline will give a unique insight into how EIA uncovered this ivory trafficking syndicate and the risks this entailed.

You can read the report online here.

Chair

Dr Sam Geall

Dr Sam Geall is executive editor of chinadialogue.net and an associate fellow at Chatham House. His research focuses on low-carbon innovation, environmental governance, media and civil society in China. He edited China and the Environment: The Green Revolution (Zed Books, 2013). Sam’s writing has appeared in many leading publications, including BBC Chinese, the Guardian, Foreign Policy, Index on Censorship and Nikkei Asian Review. Sam was formerly departmental lecturer in Human Geography of China at the University of Oxford.

Speakers

Julian Newman

Julian joined EIA in July 1997 as an investigator after working as a journalist for six years. He has carried out field investigations into illegal logging in Indonesia, China, Malaysia, Vietnam and Laos, and wildlife crime investigations in Tanzania, Zambia, Singapore and China. He has also been involved in training local NGOs in Indonesia and Tanzania. Since 2008 he has been Campaigns Director.

Mary Rice

Mary has been with EIA since 1996, joining as a volunteer before holding positions including Head of Communications & Projects, Head of Development and Head of Campaigns. She has been Executive Director since 2008 and is responsible for directing the long-term strategic management of EIA as well as working on specific projects and leading the Elephant Campaign.

Deborah Davies

Deborah Davies is part of the award winning Al Jazeera Investigative Unit.  Their 2016 film, The Poacher’s Pipeline, used undercover filming to infiltrate the illegal supply chain of rhino horn from South Africa to China.  The film caused a massive political storm when one of the Chinese criminals showed photographs of “his good friend”, South Africa’s Minister of State Security, David Mahlobo. As an investigative reporter, Deborah has a long track record of breaking exclusives including the first ever film about Osama bin Laden, exposing Iraqi death squads and the 1997 film naming top level football coaches who had sexually abused young players, a story which exploded back into the headlines last year.

The film introduces us to two defectors  – 26 year old Eunhee Park and 25-year old Suuyeoung Lee, who is about to make her first appearance on the show. Both escaped with the help of smugglers who charged about 7,000 US dollars to take the women on a terrifying journey across the border into China and eventually to Thailand, from where they could reach South Korea.  The Chinese authorities arrest defectors and send them back, where they can face execution.

These women’s intimate stories paint a picture of a country where communism is being supplemented by a North Korean version of capitalism, with entrepreneurs making money by selling goods from China on the black market.  As many men work for the government, black market enterprises are run by women – which perhaps explains why over 70 per cent of those with the money and contacts needed to escape from the North are women.

Reporter: Seyi Rhodes

Producer/Director: Kate Hardie-Buckley

Series Editors: Monica Garnsey & Hugo Ward

A Quicksilver Media production

Speakers:

Chaired by series producer Hugo Ward

Kate Hardie-Buckley is a freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker.

Paul French is an author and widely published analyst and commentator on Asia, Asian politics and current affairs. He is author of North Korea: State of Paranoia and the international and bestseller Midnight in Peking.

John Everard is former British Ambassador to North Korea and author of Only Beautiful, Please: A British Diplomat in North Korea

We will be discussing how the one child policy has come to shape the fabric of modern China, as well as the repercussions it has had. From the significant gender imbalance to the dramatically raging population, what can we learn from this social experiment and what does it mean for China’s future?

Chaired by Paul French, an author and widely published analyst and commentator on Asia, Asian politics and current affairs. He is author of North Korea: State of Paranoia and the international bestseller Midnight in Peking.

The panel:

Jeffrey Wasserstrom is chancellor’s professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and editor of the Journal of Asian Studies. He has edited a number of books on China and is the author of four including China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know.

Mei Fong is a journalist with more than a decade of reporting in Asia, most recently as China correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. She is the author of One Child: The Past and Future of China’s Most Radical Experiment.

Isabel Hilton is a journalist, broadcaster and writer. She is the founder and editor of chinadialogue and has authored and co-authored several books and holds honorary doctorates from Bradford and Stirling Universities. She was appointed OBE in 2010 for her contribution to raising environmental awareness in China.

On Friday 20 November, the Frontline Club hosted a premiere screening of the documentary I Am Sun Mu, a remarkable insight into the life and work of North Korean defector and political pop artist Sun Mu. The film follows Sun Mu as he prepares for his first solo exhibition in Beijing in 2014 while trying to remain hidden from the Chinese authorities – a feat that proves more challenging than he, or the filmmaker, had anticipated. The screening was followed by a Q&A session with director Adam Sjöberg.
The documentary is peppered with Sun Mu’s work, from rosy-cheeked North and South Korean children running through a pastel-lit field to a grotesque portrait of Kim Jong Il posing in a bubblegum pink tracksuit. The artist recalls life under the regime, and the subsequent paranoia of living in hiding, over bold animation sequences that become an essential part of the storytelling process.

#I AM SUN MU by #AdamSjöberg screened @frontlineclub! Powerful Documentary abt North Korean defector turned artist. pic.twitter.com/546OhzIxmf

— Mica Shibata (@Micabubby) November 21, 2015

Sjöberg began the discussion by answering a question on how he originally approached Sun Mu, particularly given the artist’s objection to revealing his true identity in fear that it would endanger the family that he left behind in North Korea over a decade ago.

Sjöberg explained that he met Sun Mu through the organisation Liberty in North Korea. “Over a relatively short amount of time, he grew to trust me… That was in 2013, and it was about a year later that I found the hook to pin the story to, which was the exhibit in Beijing.”

“As far as I know, no other North Korean has had a solo exhibit in Beijing that was not sanctioned by the North Korean government. So going into this exhibit, we already knew that it was going to be a relatively historic moment for North Koreans.”

Sjöberg later commented on the Korean conflict, saying that working with Sun Mu “helped solidify for me that change is going to happen on the peninsula… There’s a lot to overcome, but change is going to happen by people thinking differently about this issue and not toeing the party line because clearly that hasn’t been working for 60 years.”He said: “I was really interested in Sun Mu as a person because he talks about his divided heart. He creates images that are offensive to South Koreans as well. He’s creating images both of hope, but also images that are supposed to make you feel conflicted.”

When asked about how the animated sequences in the film were incorporated into the film, Sjöberg said: “Very early on, I had the idea of using animation to bring his paintings to life. My animator actually flew to Seoul and worked with Sun Mu to create the plates. The sketches were all inspired by actual sketches that we had him recreate for us, frame by frame.”

One audience member asked Sjöberg if he had been worried about footage from the exhibition being confiscated by Chinese authorities.

He responded saying that the curator from Yuan Art Museum, where the exhibition was being held, had actually expected it to be shut down by the authorities within 48 hours. “It was always known that this was not going to be an exhibit that lasted very long.”

Sjöberg also added that, “when the police started showing up, it became clear that things were a lot more serious than we thought. We had to scramble to make do, and be as safe as we could.”

Within hours of the exhibit being shut down by Chinese authorities, Sun Mu left the country. However, his work is yet to be returned to his studio in South Korea.

Sjöberg explained: “The concern is, will they make it out of China. That was his livelihood for the next year and a half. Luckily Liberty in North Korea has been great in supporting him, but that was an enormous body of work that is stuck in limbo.”

Information about I Am Sun Mu and upcoming screenings can be found on the film’s website and Twitter page.

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Adam Sjöberg.

I Am Sun Mu documents the life and work of North Korean defector and pop artist ‘Sun Mu.’ In North Korea, Sun Mu was a prolific propaganda artist for Kim Jong-un’s regime. After swimming to safety and beginning a new life in South Korea, Sun Mu turned his skills against the North Korean regime, satirising those who he once worshipped.

Sun Mu means ‘no lines’ or ‘no boundaries’ in Korean and became the political pop artist’s pseudonym as he rose to visibility. With the Chinese government keeping a close eye on him and the threat of execution looming over his head, Sun Mu is forced to conceal his face and name out of fear for the safety of those he left behind.

His artwork is brightly coloured and bold, but the price for creating political paintings could be fatal. During an exhibition in Beijing, Sun Mu’s friends and family find themselves in danger. Meanwhile, Chinese and North Korean authorities surround the exhibition, banning anybody from entering the space. Artists are interrogated and Sun Mu is forced to once again flee for safety in South Korea.

Gaining remarkable access to a notorious figure who must carefully guard his identity, director Adam Sjöberg brings us into a private world, revealing the stakes involved in countering the North Korean regime.

I Am Sun Mu had its UK Premiere at the 2015 Raindance Film Festival.

Directed by: Adam Sjöberg
Runtime: 86’
Country: South Korea/United States/China

The “Exotic Flavour Talent Agency” can turn a rural Chinese ghost town into a booming world-class city for the afternoon. Company CEO Suky and his assistant Yana organise attention-grabbing performances and talent shows in cooperation with property developers and local government officials to make real estate more appealing to potential buyers. At estate openings they stage dazzling spectacles where foreigners (seldom seen in these areas of the country) are presented as famous entertainers, important businessmen, top-20 models, diplomats, architects and more. The performances are timed right for when prospective buyers from cities arrive and are intended to give properties a “modern appeal.”

In Chinese Dreamland, the success of Suky and Yana’s foreigner-focused talent agency is tied to questions concerning racial diversity and globalisation, as well as the sustainability of China’s rapid urban development. During the height of the housing boom, the pair continuously travel to remote development projects and stage spectacles that turn them into “cities of the future” – as defined by the surreal imaginations of provincial Chinese politicians and developers.

But soon the demand for foreign talent becomes a deflating housing bubble. Facing increasing financial pressure, both Suky and Yana are thrown into desperation and must fight to save their business and aspirations. Ultimately, they come to have second thoughts on their industry — and the “Chinese dream” in general.

Chinese Dreamland will be featured on Al Jazeera English on 16 September.

Director: David Borenstein
Producer: Jesper Jack
Runtime: 60′
http://houseofreal.dk/

On Thursday 2 July, Hyeonseo Lee joined an audience at the Frontline Club for a discussion on her experiences as a North Korean defector. Lee, an international campaigner for North Korean human rights and refugee issues, was joined in conversation by author Paul French.

One day after dinner, seventeen-year-old Lee told her parents that she was going to visit a neighbour. “Make sure you’re home before dark,” her mother said at the door. She promised not to be back late and turned to leave her house forever.

The young Lee headed for the neon lights of China that had long beckoned her from across the border. Here she discovered the inevitable loneliness of life as a fugitive, constantly terrified of being uncovered and drifting from her sense of self with every false name she adopted.

“I had to change my name constantly to protect my identity, so I became the girl with seven names,” she said at the start of the talk.

French, an analyst and commentator on Asia, invited Lee to elaborate on points she had mentioned in her memoir The Girl with Seven Names.

He asked about the recurrent theme of superstition, which punctuates much of the book: “Your mother takes you several times to see a fortune teller to try and work out everything from whether or not this boy will be a good marriage or bad marriage, to if you’re going to leave the country what day should you go on.”

French said he was interested in understanding the role of superstition in an atheistic, communist regime.

Lee responded: “People have nothing to rely on so they really, severely rely on the fortune teller,” she laughed. “I even went to see a fortune teller a few months ago.”

As a young girl, a fortune teller predicted that Lee would escape from North Korea, stating, “you will eat the foreign country rice.” Yet even then she only imagined that she would live in a different area of the country – never abroad. She said that the reason North Korea is a “collapsed country” is because Kim Jong-Il believed his own fortune teller too much.

The conversation moved onto the perceived supremacy of the Kim dynasty. Lee admitted that she always believed the leaders to be Gods: “We didn’t consider them as normal human beings” she said. “Until I was fourteen, I thought Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il don’t go to the bathroom and that they killed the enemies when they were five or six years old.”

She expressed amazement at her previous naivety, but defended her beliefs and those still held by her compatriots: “From the moment you are born you are brainwashed severely, even though it’s all a lie, if you hear it every day, every minute, it becomes the truth.”

When Kim Jong-il died, everyone knew that they had to cry or risk dangerous consequences, and “many people really cried with their hearts.” Yet some citizens were sent to prison camps for crying too little, and others for crying too much and appearing insincere.

As well as growing up to a drumbeat of propaganda asserting the Kim family’s godly status, Lee also learned from an early age not to trust anyone. Her mother used to tell her that ‘the walls have ears and the fields have eyes,’ and politics was very rarely spoken about at home.

“Even husband and wife can’t trust each other,” she said.

Her mother was spied on for six years by someone she considered to be her best friend. One day, sick with guilt, the woman spy admitted that she had been reporting to the government on all her actions. Lee said that this kind of betrayal was “everyone’s experience in North Korea.”

Spying and duplicity extended beyond the borders of her country and into China, where new ‘friends’ reported her to the police as a North Korean defector. Lee was forced to lie to her roommate in Shanghai, who years later texted her saying, “I didn’t know you were a defector – I just saw your Ted Talk!”

Lee now lives in Seoul with her mother and brother, whom she helped escape North Korea thirteen years after her own flight. She is married to an American man called Brian.

“My mum was the most brainwashed woman. When I introduced my boyfriend to her she really treated him as an ‘American bastard’. In North Korea, we didn’t learn that Americans were human beings, we just had one word: American-bastards.”

Growing up in North Korea, she was taught that all men from the US had long noses and dressed in military clothes, while the British were always portrayed as gentlemen in tall black hats and capes. Relieved, she said that her mother now accepts the “American-bastard” as a son.

Click here for more information on The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story.