Capitalists put you in jail for marijuana. They used to put you in jail for alcohol. Hell, child labor is used in capitalist countries. China honestly is an authoritarian mixed economy. But perhaps, even in the USA, authoritarism is preferred.
The difference between democracy and fascism is that the laws are quickly changing due to public opinion in America, but that does not happen in China.
People have been smoking Marijuana since the 60’s and it’s still a federally illegal drug at the level of heroine. Laws don’t change quickly in the US at all.
Marijuana use only recently became publicly accepted by the majority of people. As a result, it is now completely legal in many states and will likely soon be legal federally.
Third party scraped reports citing a crypto shill site’s reporting on a blurry and redacted document from China’s equivalent of Facebook is how I get all my accurate and true news about things that really happened.
The first link is just quoting the social media post verbatim. Treat it with the same degree of reliability as “this guy said on Facebook/Twitter…”
Second article actually goes out of its way to say how uncommon it is to be punished for circumventing the firewall:
“Climbing the firewall results in punishment” is not the norm A common misunderstanding among the public about circumvention is that anyone who circumvents the wall will be punished. This is unrealistic for two reasons: first, the public security organs do not have that many law enforcement police; second, the public security organs are not as busy as you think. Most of the time, the punishment for circumventing the wall is to pull out the radish and bring out the mud. There are typical cases where the public security organs take the initiative to go to the external network to arrest people, but the number is very small.
Judging from the 50 cases, only one case adopted the first-level “extreme law enforcement model”, that is, the “use of circumvention software is punishable” model. The description of the case was “A certain person used his own mobile phone to use a VPN on the Internet to circumvent the firewall.” Wall software, its behavior constitutes the unauthorized use of non-legal channels for international networking." Even so, the actual situation of enforcement may be different from the description of the administrative penalty decision.
It’s good to show genuine scepticism to what you read, but I can’t help but think yours is not particularly honest.
It is extremely clear via auditing the trail of this report that the ‘crypto shill site’ is negligible to the story. You would have had to go back one step in the chain, stick your fingers in your ears, then ignore everything else from that point onwards to think Coin Telegraph was actually relevant to the reporting of this story.
True or not, here you can find a clear summary, along with screenshots stamped with the seal of the Chengde PD. These screenshots, contrary to your claim, are not at all blurry, and have minimal redaction (to protect the person’s privacy).
Given fairly credible and detailed screenshots of a police report, numerous reporting across a number of different websites in both Chinese and English, even a reported GitHub profile of the person in question, I think there’s sufficient evidence to believe this is likely a true story.
First of all, if there is a better source then OP should post the better source to begin with. Everyone should be skeptical when presented with a second hand summary of something going through two weak sources.
Hmm… To debate with a conspiracy theorist or not… Such a difficult choice.
You know what, let me try something different…
You win this debate! I concede! Although I am not an American and don’t live in America, I am a stooge of the American imperialists! And yes, like the other 8.1 billion people on the planet (sans you, of course), I live on stolen land! Have mercy!
You know you can’t take in information wholesale, right? News corporations have their biases. So do individuals. When talking about countries regarded as foreign adversaries, most of these reports about an unnamed individual tend to be bullshit.
Did you even read the comment chain you’re responding to? You know, the one where I said it is ‘good to show genuine scepticism’? Or the one after that, where I linked the ‘unnamed’ individual’s alleged GitHub?
I am not the one being overly trusting here. I think it is ‘likely’ that this story is true. I researched it, looked at the significant amount of evidence, and I am still not 100% convinced. That is far more than what I can say for you people replying to me en masse who all assume the story must be an American plot with absolutely no evidence to back up this claim.
Ugh, I need to figure out a way to unsubscribe from replies to a post. You people are bonkers.
Please keep responding to my comments everyone. I’ve decided to take this as an opportunity to block as many of you annoying mosquitoes as possible so I don’t have to deal with you in the future.
So let’s get this straight, the unnamed individual has a name. The dude who got busted for overseas contract work using a VPN is still committing his work on GitHub… which requires a VPN. Either we’re not getting the full story, or we’re just being lied to for internet clout.
If you’re not 100% convinced, why are you trying to defend this article as if it were fact?
The NED is directly and openly an arm of the CIA, an organization which has contributed to and participated in the politically driven murders of human being numbering in 7 digits.
If you can’t find a source that doesn’t link back to them, the story is bullshit and you’re falling for American state-sponsored disinfo.
Inventing conspiracy theorists was the most intelligent thing the US state department ever did.
Pointing out the CIA does active psychological operations on it’s own population is seen as crazy and unbelievable by the average person in the West.
For the credulous, I ask this. How many times has Kim Jong Un been reported dead now in the media? Do you really think that was just an accident every single time, or do you think someone might have an agenda?
Good luck being a developer or do technical support without GitHub, Google, Reddit (Lemmy?) or stackexchange
Or market your product without the possibility of accessing any western social network
If you ever notice, all apps developed in china are similar. Ads at start, invasive tracking using dummy images dropped in /pictures, unnecessary permissions like phone and IMEI, and so on. They literally don’t have a way to compare to something else. There’s the Baidu SDK, Tencent SDK, aliyun SDK and they are using bad coding practices because they’re doing that in isolation
If you ever notice, all apps developed in china are similar. Ads at start, invasive tracking using dummy images dropped in /pictures, unnecessary permissions like phone and IMEI, and so on. They literally don’t have a way to compare to something else. There’s the Baidu SDK, Tencent SDK, aliyun SDK and they are using bad coding practices because they’re doing that in isolation
What kind of shitty apps are you installing? Some of the most popular mobile games in the world are Chinese (Genshin, Honkai, Azurlane, Ark Knights, etc) and none of them do any of this shit.
I went to China recently with a buddy and I loaded a ton of China specific apps onto our phones. Mine was a Samsung and his was an iPhone. Between WeChat, Alipay, Taobao, Amap, DiDi, Dianping, the China Customs Service app and a bunch of other store and region specific apps, literally none of them did anything you described. I also bought a Xiaomi phone in China and migrated all my data over, so I can confirm that these apps don’t do anything like that even on a Chinese phone (which, btw, is way more strict with permissions than my Samsung, down to telling me each and every time google maps requested my location).
In addition to that, I have a bunch of apps for stuff from Chinese companies on my phone like Mijia, Fiio, Huawei, Moondrop, etc and none of them do this shit either.
WeChat, taobao, alipay, amap they all do this. Go to watch /pictures on your android with a file manager. You will notice some folders called .gs0 .gs3 and so on.
Inside there are dummy images with tracking data. They do like this because apps on Android don’t need an extra permission to drop “images” on /pictures
Those folders are not shown by default because normal file managers on Android hide any file with the name that starts with a dot.
And those dummy images aren’t shown in photo galleries also because of another file that’s dropped in those folders, .nomedia
You also never saw the ads on the taobao splash screen??? Did you ever opened that app? Not to mention that phone permission is mandatory to use that app for some reason. (And can’t do any search until you register your phone number with SMS verification)
Other Chinese apps with ads on the splash screen is Huawei store, mijia, amap
And the Chinese customs app also requires an insane amount of permissions, never gave my European phone number, but a week after entering the country I got a phone call from +8621962110 - who gave them the number? (Don’t know what that call was about because answering a phone call in roaming is 2 euro per minute, but from some search on Baidu it looks like it’s some robocall from the Chinese police)
I just tried this with both my Xiaomi and my Samsung using both first party and third party file managers. Xiaomi showed 3 .gsX folders despite it being absolutely full of Chinese apps that I loaded on. Samsung with the same method had zero.
and the situation drastically improved since android 10, before they created dozens of directories because they pretended full memory access
those .gsx directories contains “images” that are just tracking data. For example taobao drops a “picture” in /pictures/.gs9/ccdcwdc that contains your unique tracking id. Alipay then using the same aliyun sdk accesses that “picture” and can match the user activity between the two apps.
Just because now is “just three folders” does not make it better. They’re still exploiting android sandboxing with the intent of tracking the user activity without consent
All three gsX folders were empty by the way, and that doesn’t explain why the samsung was squeaky clean. By your own admission this is no longer the case on newer versions of the apps and android, so you should at the very least go back and edit your post to put it into past tense.
Also, your assertion was that all Chinese apps are similar, so 3 out of dozens makes your statement demonstrably false.
did you use the apps or just install them? Of course they’re empty if you just installed them.
i repeat the statement, all chinese apps are similar, look for example mijia and meidi smart home, they’re basically identical, like “there’s only one way to make a smart home app”
I use dozens of chinese apps and i can totally distinguish immediately when the dev is chinese.
I didn’t say it’s no longer the case in the newer version of the apps. It’s mitigated on newer versions of android, because they’re exploiting the OS in order to trace users, which should not happen.
I used all of them because I got my new phone a few days into the trip and used it for the remaining week or so I was there. I’m still using Chinese apps on a daily basis now, so why are they all empty?
Let’s talk about your other claims as well. Irrelevant permissions? Zero. Ads on boot? Hardly everything since most of the utility apps don’t have ads at all.
i repeat the statement, all chinese apps are similar, look for example mijia and meidi smart home, they’re basically identical, like “there’s only one way to make a smart home app”
All American apps are similar. Look for example Twitter and Threads, they’re basically identical, like “there’s only one way to make a social media platform”
I use dozens of chinese apps and i can totally distinguish immediately when the dev is chinese.
Well I’m sorry my digital caliper sense isn’t as developed as yours. I’ll strive to be better.
Maybe the folders are empty because your Xiaomi has the “cleaner” app. Did you ever wonder why only Chinese phones have “cleaner” apps? Because the situation in the country is widely abused.
You repeat that taobao or Huawei app store don’t have ads on the splash screen. This means you never actually used those apps.
The way you’re defending those coding practices is really weird. I notice now your username. Now I understand. It’s not that because the ruling party has a nostalgic symbol in their logo (but it’s as capitalist as the usa, without health insurance you’re fucked), the apps made in that country are automatically good and perfect.
Maybe the folders are empty because your Xiaomi has the “cleaner” app. Did you ever wonder why only Chinese phones have “cleaner” apps? Because the situation in the country is widely abused.
Again. Explain the Samsung not having a single hidden folder under the same circumstances. Is it because Samsung had a “cleaner” function too? Is the situation in South Korea widely abused top? Most Android phones have cleaning and self maintenance functions. Google’s Files app has a similar cleaning function. Has the problem spread to the US?!
You repeat that taobao or Huawei app store don’t have ads on the splash screen. This means you never actually used those apps.
No, those store apps are store apps. Of course they’re going to try to sell you shit. When I open my Amazon app the first thing it does is show me shit I might want to buy. Is Besos Chinese now too? When did this happen?
Your ridiculous claim is that all Chinese apps are similar. Therefore they all show ads on boot. My onus of proof is discharged when I show even one single Chinese app with no ads on boot, which is a lot of them.
The way you’re defending those coding practices is really weird. I notice now your username. Now I understand. It’s not that because the ruling party has a nostalgic symbol in their logo (but it’s as capitalist as the usa, without health insurance you’re fucked), the apps made in that country are automatically good and perfect.
Oh that’s weird, tell me about how Chinese people are fucked without health insurance when there’s universal health insurance?
I’m not defending any coding practices because there’s no such thing as a “Chinese coding practice” to defend. You started off saying that there were at least 3 verifiable things that all Chinese apps do, and now you’re down to “look, there’s a general vibe from apps from China”.
The cleaner feature in Google files is nowhere as sophisticated, it just cleans the cache, while the Chinese cleaners download a definition file to know which files are to be removed and which not.
As for Samsung, I don’t know, remember that the apps are dropping that fake images as a security exploit without having explicit permission to do that. Maybe Samsung is blocking that exploit.
Regarding health coverage, it definitely depends on the employer, if you are unemployed and didn’t pay the optional premium, you won’t be cured as well. In other capitalist European countries you would be cured the same way for free no matter if you are homeless, unemployed or a billionaire. I lived several months in Beijing and I never saw an ambulance on the streets. Asked around, I always got the same response “ambulance too expensive, we go hospital by taxi”. Seems weird that a “communist” country doesn’t share resources with the comrades.
Or it’s actually just some benign thing because you haven’t posted any evidence which says that the .gsX files are even malicious or caused by Chinese apps. I’ve been googling for it and haven’t found any serious documentation about it. A reddit post linking it with Hotels.com (American company, lmao) and an LTT thread linking it to Ladaza (a Filipino app). In the absence of more and better proof, I’m not even convinced that it’s an exploit.
And again. You claimed that ALL Chinese apps ask for IMEI permissions. No proof of that either. It’s all just made up horse shit to justify your vibes based racism about how Chinese people can’t code.
Regarding health coverage, it definitely depends on the employer, if you are unemployed and didn’t pay the optional premium, you won’t be cured as well. In other capitalist European countries you would be cured the same way for free no matter if you are homeless, unemployed or a billionaire. I lived several months in Beijing and I never saw an ambulance on the streets. Asked around, I always got the same response “ambulance too expensive, we go hospital by taxi”. Seems weird that a “communist” country doesn’t share resources with the comrades.
None of this is consistent with the link I provided so it’s your word and anecdote against the professionally prepared page and its supporting citations.
It’s not that they can’t code, it’s that they’re coding in isolation. They don’t have experience in using Android apps designed for foreign countries because they’re literally blocked to do so. They see all apps are spyware in disguise and think it’s totally ok to do so.
It’s not a coincidence that Google play banned pinduoduo because it used forbidden ways to track users. Or the DJI app, banned from Google play too.
This policy only hurt themselves and it’s undeniable. Like that time Tencent accidentally included literal malware in an iOS app because a dev downloaded an infected version of xcode from a random Chinese website instead of apple.com (accessing any website hosted outside the country is super slow)
A meter to calculate how much you need to pay for a life saving vehicle is something you would expect in the USA, not in a “communist” country. Where is the standard of equality between all the citizens if only the rich can afford to get to the hospital? Isn’t this capitalism? For reference, the article mentions 3600 yuan the shandong woman had to pay to transport her father to the hospital equals to 2 months of salary.
I’m glad someone else sees this problem. Thanks for writing it out.
It is true that there are some pretty impressive apps made in China. Genshin impact is honestly some kind of black magic, how they made it so well optimized for mobile. That tends to be the exception though, not the rule.
It is incredible how overbloated their app are. I have no idea why every app need to integrate a social media feed, and be able book a taxi/takeout or whatever.
They seriously need to have a look at KISS principles.
I think that we in the west sometimes fall into the trap of believing that our core values of freedom and democracy are supreme and are what all people across the world want to achieve and should aspire to.
Maybe a lot of people in China think that a strong centralised government guiding the economy and most aspects of people’s lives is the sign of a healthy society and they are happy with it. Maybe they think it’s we who are sick because we don’t like the state being too involved in our lives. To them, perhaps it’s complete insanity.
Idk, I might be talking complete bs. I just think that different people have different values and there’s no right answer to how society is set up.
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