Airbnb To Share Information With Authorities On Guests In China (gizmodo.co.uk) 45
Airbnb has notified users in China that, as required by law, their information will soon be automatically logged with the government. Bloomberg reports: This week, it sent an email to hosts declaring it may disclose their information at any time -- those with concerns were given a link to deactivate their listing. Airbnb -- which had previously resisted comparisons to what it calls the hotel cartel -- is abiding by Chinese regulations governing the lodging industry. Hotels there keep tabs on guests and are obliged to report their information to the authorities -- which in turn becomes a useful tool for surveillance. Airbnb's approach automates the process, so travelers' data is directly transmitted to the government.
"Like all businesses operating in China, Airbnb China must comply with local laws and regulations," said Airbnb spokesman Jake Wilczynski. "The information we collect is similar to information hotels in China have collected for decades." Previously, the onus was mostly on Airbnb hosts to submit passport and other required traveler information. The company said in its email to hosts that it will comply with requests from authorities for information when asked.
"Like all businesses operating in China, Airbnb China must comply with local laws and regulations," said Airbnb spokesman Jake Wilczynski. "The information we collect is similar to information hotels in China have collected for decades." Previously, the onus was mostly on Airbnb hosts to submit passport and other required traveler information. The company said in its email to hosts that it will comply with requests from authorities for information when asked.
Why is the Chinese government so paranoid anyway? (Score:3)
Let's assume they decided NOT to be paranoid, and to NOT collect all this information, require Apple to host Chinese iCloud in China, and so on.
Is there a real chance their government would be overthrown? Is their paranoia based on actual threats to their government or is it just paranoia for paranoia sake?
I'd love to hear input from actual Chinese citizens on this because I'm very curious.
Re:From what I gather (Score:1)
Re:From what I gather (Score:4, Interesting)
The Chinese economy is currently growing at 7% per year. As long as that continues, there is no chance of an uprising. But if there is a hard crash, that could change quickly.
There is an undercurrent of discontent in China, where your social class is printed directly on your ID card [wikipedia.org], and the 80% in the "wrong" class are often deprived of access to medical care, public schools, housing, and even (during the Great Leap Forward) food. During the GLF, 99% of the 30 million deaths were peasants with "rural" hukous.
The big question is the loyalty of the PLA. During the 1989 protests, the army refused to move against the protesters, and replacement troops from the countryside had to be brought in. These farm boys had less empathy with the protesters who they saw as the spoiled children of the urban elite. There was some justification for this, since the protestors called for "democracy" but never once called for abolishing the hukou system ... since it worked for their benefit.
Since 1989, the PLA has dramatically changed. The 1991 American victory in Desert Storm was a shock to the Chinese military, forcing them to realize that massive numbers of soldiers were no match for modern technology. The PLA is much smaller today, much more professional, and the average soldier is more educated. So if protests got out of hand, events would be very different than in 1989.
Disclaimer: I am not Chinese, but I lived in Shanghai for several years, and my spouse is Chinese.
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Every Chinese government was overthrown by their own citizens.
Not all. The Song and Ming dynasties were overthrown by foreign invaders (the Mongols and Manchus respectively).
The Chinese responded to these invaders by demographically swamping and absorbing them. Today, 85% of Mongols and 99% of Manchus consider themselves Chinese.
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It's not about overthrowing the government. It's about catching government officials who haven't submitted the proper bribes and kowtows to their superiors. When Officer X, behind on his payments, is on a "business trip" without leaving his home town, his AbnB can be raided and caught with one or more of his mistresses/boyfriends/whatever and hung out to dry as an example to others.
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Does the government of China believe in God
Governments don't have "beliefs", but China is mostly tolerant of religion. There are 50 million Chinese muslims, and there are mosques in every major city. There are roughly 30 million Chinese Christians. Religious organizations are only suppressed if they are seen as subversive.
ethics, morality
In my experience, Chinese people are mostly honest and ethical. There are cultural differences. In China "loyalty" is relatively more important than "honestly" compared to America. So, for example, they are more likely to lie
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Does a friend really put you in a position where you feel you need to lie for them?
In China? Yes. Why should impersonal objective truth be more important than loyalty to a friend? You only think it is because of your culture.
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Beliefs are empty shields against reality that the ill informed hide behind. You should never use God as a catch all, your God is not other people's God or Gods, my God is the totality of existence (make of that what you will), not some backward goat herder wish machine, that supports the lie of monarchy. Does the government of china understand the benefits of "ethics, morality, freedom, human rights, self-expression", probably does but it is also aware of it's population of 1.5 billion people and also awar
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"Communists also do not believe in God"
And neither do a good proportion of intelligent, educated people in all other economic systems.
The only difference is politicians who seem to always acknowledge existence of a deity to ingratiate themselves to masses. It's incredible how for we've be able to progress with the acknowledgment and acceptance of such prevalent ignorance.
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This is completely absurd. Nobody wants to die, or lose loved ones, so 99% of us can agree that murder is wrong. We don't need to have a deity tell us this for us to know it.
In fact, if you look at the ten commandments as an example, the ones not having directly to do with god are mostly common sense things that, if we do them, we will hurt or greatly upset other people. So anybody with empathy is going to want to follow these rules anyway.
Stop the false equivalence of religion with morality. It has resulte
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Except that many moral values and philosophical concepts that underpin modern Democracies in the 21st Century DO come from religion originally.
Can you provide any citation for morality originating in religion? Most religions incorporate morality, but that does not imply that they created it.
Troops of monkeys have socially enforced rules that could be considered "morality". As far as we know, monkeys have no religion.
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I's not paranoia; its total control.
This is same reason that the American State Dept. wants to know everything about the online life of those wishing American visas.
My immediate response is that Airbnb should not do business in China, but it's only a matter of time before this requirement is internationally standard.
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The chance of China being overthrown is 0%.
It depends what you mean by "overthrow". The KMT government was overthrown in 1949 by Mao. The Maoist government was "overthrown" in 1976 by Deng Xiaoping, and replaced with a reformist government with checks meant to ensure that a one-man personality cult driven dictatorship would not arise again. That system was "overthrown" in 2018 by Xi Jinping, who has succeeded in establishing a one-man dictatorship, and is in the processes of re-establishing a Mao-like personality cult.
In 1989, the protestors fail
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In the past it was in Macau to entrap gamblers from China and then make them spy on China.
The flood of people to China is cover for the CIA and MI6 to try to spy deeper into China.
To support human spies deep in China. To find people who want to protest against the Communist government and support such protests.
The West is using travel as cover for a lot of its spies in China.
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Paranoids are irrational. They always must have the maximum of control and surveillance they can get. It is a mental disease. Just look at all the people Stalin had killed because he felt threatened by them. Completely bonkers.
Same as hotels (Score:2)
"The information we collect is similar to information hotels in China have collected for decades."
This seems like a non-story. Or am I missing something I should be outraged about?
Effective Chinese Government (Score:2)
In the US, Uber and AirBnB ignore the laws of cities they deal with, then bitch and moan about how cities want to enforce laws and how they may put their drivers/renters out of work. And people on Slashdot say "how can you stand in the way of progress?"
Meanwhile, in China, the laws just get enforced because the government can stand up to corporations.
Now, China has worse laws. But it's nice to see at least some countries can wield governmental power.
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No, it's because trials in China are NOT decided by a jury of your peers, but three Government-appointed judges. China has a massive taxation issue - it doesn't know how to collect income taxes, etc. very well at all, and even the VAT tax system between businesses is easy to game. China - being a fascist oligarchy which has 100% control over the Court system - simply arrests you and the presumption is guilt. And the number of people getting out of arrests without some form of punishment is essentially ze
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trials in China are NOT decided by a jury of your peers, but three Government-appointed judges.
Indeed. The judicial system is very different from what most Westerners are familiar with. The Chinese system is not adversarial, with a prosecutor and a defense attorney competing to convince a jury while a neutral judge enforces the rules. In China, the judges are actively involved in the investigation, they will visit the crime scene, directly question witnesses, etc.
And the number of people getting out of arrests without some form of punishment is essentially zero.
Plenty of people are released after arrest. It is only after they go to trial that few are acquitted. But that is not really a fair co
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"trials" in America are only if you didn't accept the plea bargain. Most people just say they were guilty of some lesser crime because they know it's way too risky to go to an actual trial in America.