United Kingdom

Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17668556

The People's Republic of China has a "magic weapon", according to its founding leader Mao Zedong and its current president Xi Jinping. It is called the United Front Work Department (UFWD) - and it is raising as much alarm in the West as Beijing's growing military arsenal.

Yang Tengbo, a prominent businessman who has been linked to Prince Andrew, is the latest overseas Chinese citizen to be scrutinised - and sanctioned - for his links to the UFWD.

The existence of the department is far from a secret. A decades-old and well-documented arm of the Chinese Communist Party, it has been mired in controversy before. Investigators from the US to Australia have cited the UFWD in multiple espionage cases, often accusing Beijing of using it for foreign interference.

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The United Front - originally referring to a broad communist alliance - was once hailed by Mao as the key to the Communist Party's triumph in the decades-long Chinese Civil War.

After the war ended in 1949 and the party began ruling China, United Front activities took a backseat to other priorities. But in the last decade under Xi, the United Front has seen a renaissance of sorts.

Xi's version of the United Front is broadly consistent with earlier incarnations: to "build the broadest possible coalition with all social forces that are relevant", according to Mareike Ohlberg, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund.

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Today, the UFWD seeks to influence public discussions about sensitive issues ranging from Taiwan - which China claims as its territory - to the suppression of ethnic minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang.

It also tries to shape narratives about China in foreign media, target Chinese government critics abroad and co-opt influential overseas Chinese figures.

"United Front work can include espionage but [it] is broader than espionage," Audrye Wong, assistant professor of politics at the University of Southern California, tells the BBC.

"Beyond the act of acquiring covert information from a foreign government, United Front activities centre on the broader mobilisation of overseas Chinese," she said, adding that China is "unique in the scale and scope" of such influence activities.

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Some experts say that the long arm of China's United Front is indeed concerning. "Western governments now need to be less naive about China's United Front work and take it as a serious threat not only to national security but also to the safety and freedom of many ethnic Chinese citizens," [politics professor at Johns Hopkins University Dr Ho-fung] Hung said.

[But he and Audrye Wong, assistant professor of politics at the University of Southern California, say that] it's important to remember that not everyone who is ethnically Chinese is a supporter of the Chinese Communist Party.

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Twenty firearms have been seized from a suspected gun factory and a man has been charged.

Officers from the National Crime Agency (NCA) recovered four Glock pistols, nine shotguns, six long-barrelled firearms and a deactivated Bren machine gun during a house raid in Kingsclere in Hampshire on Tuesday.

Philip Maylen, 57, of Penny's Hatch, Kingsclere, was charged with possession of a prohibited weapon and was due to appear at Reading Magistrates' Court on Thursday.

NCA branch commander Chris Hill said it was "a very significant haul".

Officers also recovered 11 imitation firearms - an AK-47, an MP40 sub-machine gun and nine revolvers, along with a range of gun component parts.

The agency said tests were ongoing to verify if one of the Glocks and one of the shotguns were viable.

Mr Hill said the weapons "had the potential to cause devastation" within the community.

"This is a very significant haul," he continued.

"We've identified and prevented a large number of lethal weapons reaching the streets of the UK.

"Protecting the public from the threat of the criminal use of firearms remains a key priority and we work with partners at home, and abroad, to combat their importation into the UK."

A “creepy” undercover police officer in his 30s formed a sexual relationship with a teenage activist without disclosing his true identity to her, a public inquiry has been told.

The activist, known as Jessica, said the deception by Andy Coles, the undercover officer, was “disgusting and gross”.

She said she was a “quite young and naive 19” when she started a relationship with Coles, who was 31 at the time. It was her first relationship.

She told the undercover policing inquiry that he was a “creepy lech”. She discovered that he was an undercover officer only when he was exposed in 2017 after a throwaway remark by his brother, the broadcaster and former pop star Richard Coles.

Richard Coles had made a brief reference in his autobiography to his brother’s past work as an undercover police officer. This enabled activists to piece together Andy Coles’s deployment infiltrating animal rights groups in the 1990s. He went on to become a Conservative councillor after he left the police.

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Andy Coles, who is due to be questioned by the inquiry this week, denies that he had a relationship with Jessica. However, the Metropolitan police, his former employer, has told the inquiry that Coles had an intimate relationship with her in 1992 and 1993 and does not accept his denial. The Met has previously said Coles would have faced a disciplinary hearing on a charge of gross misconduct if he had not already retired from the police in 2013.

Ministers failed to act on advice to tighten security laws that could have prevented an alleged Chinese spy from targeting Prince Andrew, a ­former attorney general has said.

Dominic Grieve, a former Tory MP who chaired the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) until 2019, said ministers were advised five years ago to introduce laws to criminalise foreign agents, but failed to do so. Similar laws already exist in the US and Australia.

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In 2019, the ISC recommended ministers make it a criminal offence to act as an agent of a foreign power without disclosing that fact. If parliament had adopted the new law, foreign agents could be arrested.

"If you are operating in the US and masquerading as a businessman but in fact you are on the payroll of the Chinese state and you don’t divulge that, then you can prosecute that person for being an undisclosed agent of a foreign power,” Grieve told the Observer.

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The Duke of York’s tangle with an alleged Chinese spy comes a month after Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said the UK needs a “strong UK-China relationship” after meeting Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, at the G20 summit.

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is due to visit Beijing in January for trade discussions, shortly before Donald Trump becomes US president for a second time and is likely to impose stringent tariffs on Chinese imports.

Prince Andrew, 64, has faced accusations that he used his position and his publicly funded official trips abroad as a cover to make money from private business deals and to promote his Dragons’ Den-style Pitch@Palace project connecting fledgling ­businesses with investors.

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Main ones I can think of:

1. Be attractive. If unattractive, at least be disabled in some way.
2. Dress as skimpily as possible. Show legs at all time if female.
3. Forget dancing, just throw your partner around. Get your face to her crotch at any opportune moment.
4. Make really inappropriate comments to each other during the talking phase. Really sell the idea you're having an affair on live camera.
5. Choose the shittiest pop songs you can find. Make sure it's not the original, but some shitty mock-soul cover.
6. If a presenter, give off the impression of fighting a sickly illness. Anorexia is desired if possible.

Any other rules I'm missing?

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17547361

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Britain's financial regulator is taking longer than usual to approve fast-fashion retailer Shein's IPO [Initial Public Offering] because it is checking its supply chain oversight and assessing legal risks after an advocacy group for China's Uyghur population challenged the listing, according to two sources close to the matter.

Britain's Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, a monitoring body of the interior ministry, has also raised concerns within government over a Shein IPO because of allegations about labour practices at its suppliers.

Singapore-headquartered Shein, which sells $5 tops and $10 dresses mostly made in China in 150 markets worldwide, filed confidentially with the Financial Conduct Authority in early June for a London listing.

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The FCA (Financial Conduct Authority in the UK] is under no obligation to assess evidence presented by civil society groups, and will generally let investors take their own position, said Lorna Emson, partner at law firm Macfarlanes. If it did find compliance concerns, it would tend to address these confidentially with the company itself.

But NGO pressure is unlikely to fade.

"Regulators are being given more to think about – and are required to do so under the watchful scrutiny of the increasingly well-funded and litigious NGO and activist community," said Lucy Blake, partner at law firm Jenner & Block. NGOs are not alone in raising concern over Shein's IPO.

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The Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner wrote to the Home Office and Department for Business in June about the IPO, according to previously unreported letters obtained by Reuters through a Freedom of Information request.

"Encouraging a company like Shein to float on the UK market inadvertently implies endorsement of poor labour practices and the prioritisation of attracting business to the UK over human rights abuses," Commissioner Eleanor Lyons wrote. The Home Office and Department for Business jointly replied that the FCA decides independently on listings and the UK has rules to guard against modern slavery.

Like other retailers, Shein must comply with incoming European Union regulations on forced labour and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in the U.S., both of which are considered stronger than Britain's Modern Slavery Act.

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Worker exploitation has been rife in supply chains of retailers and brands around the world, not just in low-cost fashion but also in luxury.

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A Chinese businessman described as a "close confidant" of the Duke of York has lost an appeal against a decision to bar him from the UK on national security grounds.

The man, known only as H6, brought the case after being banned from entering the country in March 2023.

Judges heard the businessman had formed a close working relationship with Prince Andrew, receiving an invite to his birthday party in 2020 and being told he could act on his behalf when dealing with potential investors in China.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment, saying only that they do not act for the prince, who is not a working royal.

An undercover police officer has denied that he set fire to a high street department store while masquerading as an animal rights campaigner, a public inquiry has heard.

Six witnesses have told the undercover policing inquiry that Bob Lambert, a police spy, was involved in an arson attack on a Debenhams that caused damage costing £340,000.

Testifying under oath, Lambert repeatedly maintained that all six were wrong. He also denied claims that he had submitted distorted intelligence reports to his supervisors to conceal his own role in the arson plot.

Lambert is the most controversial police spy to have been questioned so far by the inquiry, which is examining how undercover officers spied on more than 1,000 political groups over more than four decades.

As well as his alleged role in the arson attacks on Debenhams, Lambert deceived four women into sexual relationships while he spent five years undercover infiltrating animal rights activists and anarchists in the 1980s.

He fathered a son with one of the women, known as Jacqui, and then vanished from their lives. She has told the inquiry that her life was “absolutely ruined” after discovering the truth by chance more than two decades after their child was born.

I'll probably stick to asking for oat milk instead of "porridge water" or whatever the new mandated name will be. To be honest I do think calling it "milk" lets them inflate the price when it is essentially porridge water.