Editor’s note for Friday, June 11, 2021
A note from the editor of today's The China Project Access newsletter.
My thoughts today:
When the Chinese government wants something, it can dedicate all kinds of resources to it. The Chinese government really wants a thriving made-in-China chip industry and it has countless ways to encourage domestic chip design and manufacture.
Yicai reports (in Chinese) on a new program to promote โcar chip insuranceโ for auto makers so that they will be happy to take risks on untested chips and depend on China-made semiconductors. Explaining why the auto chip sector needs to be financialized, one official said:
The downstream is worried that domestic chip products have not undergone large-scale quality control. What should we do if there is a problem? We use financial insurance and market-oriented methods to alleviate the anxiety of the upstream and downstream.
But one thing the Chinese government canโt fix, no matter what resources it throws at the problem, is international opprobrium at human rights abuses in Xinjiang. BuzzFeed News journalists Megha Rajagopalan, Alison Killing, and Christo Buschek won a Pulitzer Prize today for a series of articles โthat used satellite images, 3D architectural models, and daring in-person interviews to expose Chinaโs vast infrastructure for detaining hundreds of thousands of Muslims in its Xinjiang region.โ
Megha Rajagopalanโs 2017 report for BuzzFeed, This is what a 21st-century police state really looks like, was one the the first major investigations of the surveillance and internment program in Xinjiang and played a major role in raising global awareness of Chinaโs treatment of the Uyghurs. Now the story is in the headlines every day. Two of todayโs articles:
- China sill buys American DNA equipment for Xinjiang despite blocks / NYT (paywall)
- New report details firsthand accounts of torture from Uyghur Muslims in China / NPR
Our word of the day is Film Censorship Guidelines (้ปๅฝฑๆชขๆฅๆขไพ diร nyวng jiวnchรก tiรกolรฌ), Hong Kongโs newly amended rulebook for the public exhibition of audiovisual materials.
โJeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief
