China Uses Anti-fraud App To Track Access To Overseas Financial News Sites (ft.com) 25
Chinese police are using a new anti-fraud app installed on more than 200m mobile phones to identify and question people who have viewed overseas financial news sites, according to individuals summoned by the authorities. From a report: The app was launched in March by the public security ministry's National Anti-Fraud Center and blocks suspicious phone calls and reports malware. Police said it was needed to combat a surge in fraud, often perpetrated by overseas operations managed by Chinese and Taiwanese nationals. The ministry recommended that the app was downloaded but numerous local government agencies made it mandatory for their employees and individuals with whom they work, such as students and tenants. One Shanghai-based user told the Financial Times he was contacted by police after accessing a US financial news service. He was also asked whether he had contacts abroad and regularly visited overseas websites. The user, who asked not to be identified, said police seemed genuinely concerned about foreign scams. "But the questions they raised about whether I have contacted foreigners made me feel like they don't want me accessing foreign websites," he added. "I deleted the app after the meeting."
Next up any bitcoin trades out side of china! (Score:2)
Next up any bitcoin trades out side of china!
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I thought they already banned that.
It is banned, but black-market trading (and mining) is big business.
Many Chinese see crypto as a way to move assets out of the reach of the state.
China's problem is that the harder they squeeze, the more people are motivated to move assets to either crypto or overseas. The current attack on big-tech has shown that the CCP can and will arbitrarily seize assets.
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They'll probably launch Xicoin as a replacement.
Capital flight (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps they are really looking for the ecosystem of people interested in foreign financial news so they can winnow down the list of people to look more seriously at for illegally squirreling away money out of the country. It doesn't take a genius to see that the Chinese political elite (and by extension, friends and family with businesses enabled by them) have been on a foreign asset buying binge for quite a long time. Perhaps the "CEO" of China is trying to figure out which insiders are per-emptively voting with their financial feet.
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If you couple this with the clamp-down on China-based payment systems by the Government, perhaps they are concerned that more wealthy citizens are not only a flight risk, but also potentially could take significant funds out of the country, too?
In the old days we called this spying. (Score:2)
Don't tell me why they are doing it.
Don't tell me if you are not looking, nothing to worry about.
Their housing bubble is bursting.... (Score:3)
...and they're trying to prevent a panic. It won't work.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/14... [cnn.com]
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A panic is easier to prevent than a domino chain of defaults.
Re:Their housing bubble is bursting.... (Score:5, Interesting)
You've touched upon the bigger reason: China is deathly afraid of a populace that can see through the Communist party's State lies, and foreign news sources are a great way to get an outside perspective. Anyone who has accessed them, especially the financial sector, is ripe for the re-education/re-indoctrination camps.
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Millions of Chinese travel outside China every year as tourists*, and they are well aware what the outside world is like.
You are thinking like an American, and Chinese people don't think like you do.
* pre-covid anyway.
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apparently, chinese businessmen (Score:2)
That's fine by me. All the better for the companies in my own country to have a competitive edge. If you insist on fighting with one hand tied behind your back, that's fine, but don't expect ANYONE to go easy on you.
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Agree, China is starting to get so control-freakish that it's damaging it's own economy.
So has anyone read "The Big Nine"? (Score:3)
Just got a copy of the recent book. Three of the nine are Chinese (and I was surprised TikTok didn't make the cut), but I can't yet say how it relates to this story (besides via the money part of the non-Chinese six, of course). (It's in my high-priority stack, so I hope to finish it within the week... (But the stack is bloated just now.))
200 million! (Score:2)
China: Is the fraud app installed?
Servant: Yes, on over 200 million phones.
China: What does it tell us?
Servant: It keeps saying our government is one giant fraud.