I posted this elsewhere already, but it also fits here goven many of the posts in this thread: It is not just about data/privacy concerns (which are underestimated imo, as China pursues an own agenda with collecting your data through Chinese tech) and ‘unfair’ subsidies, but about gross human rights violations.

In short, some parts of the cheap Chinese cars are made in concentration camps where people are forced to work under catastrophic conditions.

Chinese orgs love signing MOUs

The CCP - or, better, the China Scholarship Council (CSC) under the rule of the CCP - forces Chinese students and researchers to sign ‘loyalty pleadges’ before giong abroad saying they “shall consciously safeguard the honor of the motherland, (and) obey the guidance and management of embassies (consulates) abroad.” The restrictive scholarship contract requires them to report back to the Chinese embassy on a regular basis, and anyone who violates these conditions is subject to disciplinary action.

In one investigation,

Mareike Ohlberg, a senior fellow working on China at the German Marshall Fund, sees the CSC contract as a demonstration of the Chinese Communist Party’s “mania for control.”

“People are actively encouraged to intervene if anything happens that might not be in the country’s interest,” Ohlberg said.

Harming China’s interests is in fact considered the worst possible breach of the contract.

“It’s even listed ahead of possible involvement in crimes, so effectively even ahead of murder,” she noted. “China is making its priorities very clear here.”

[…] Kai Gehring, the chair of German parliament’s Committee for Education and Research, says the CSC contracts are “not compatible” with Germany’s Basic Law, which guarantees academic freedom.

In Sweden, for example, universities have already cancelled the collaboration with the CSC over this practice.

There is ample evidence that China uses scientific collaboration with private companies as well as universities and research organizations for spying. You’ll find many independent reports on that as well as of the CCP’s intimidation practices of Chinese students who don’t comply with the party line, e.g., in Australia and elsewhere. It’s easy to find reliable sources on the (Western) web.

It’s very unlikely that Chinese cars are sold at a loss.

Even if we ignore for a moment that Chinese cars are produced at such low costs not in the least because of the use of forced labour and thus by ignoring even the most fundamental human rights, China will subsidize its EV industry at all costs, also offering dumping prices. China’s ‘industrial policy’ isn’t focused on financial health but on scale to destroy foreign competition to control the market for economic and political gains.

Yeah, it would be interesting to know why the Guardian did it.

“People are ultimately breaking into our country” isn’t used in the article.

The Guardian must have changed that. I copied and pasted the phrase from the article. (They also say now that Downing Street ‘denied this’ instead of ‘categorically denied this’, a minor edit).

I changed the title now.

As the 7-year old’s father is a construction worker according to the article, this is on topic:

Construction Skills Shortage Threatens Infrastructure Projects

A dire shortage of construction skills and persistent planning delays pose significant threats to infrastructure projects, despite heightened interest from pension funds to invest in the sector.

Sunak’s disability benefit plans are familiar culture war fodder

Rishi Sunak’s big speech on reforming disability benefits was intended to show that the government had a grip on the economic and health challenges of the UK’s rising levels of long-term sickness. Instead, it came over as an administration running out of ideas, high on strident rhetoric, and desperate to cut welfare bills at all costs.

Yes, we have seen similar ‘strategies’ by China regarding its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), for example. In the end Beijing tries to influence not only a foreign country’s economy but also its public administration. (For example, the port of Sri Lanka, one of China’s BRI ‘partners’, now belongs to China, meaning that the small island has lost control of its allegedly most important asset.)

From Chinese students in Germany, a technology promise to the motherland - (2014)

Illustrating the grip the Communist party and government try to maintain on overseas Chinese students, researchers and business people, an exchange of letters between President Xi Jinping and Chinese students in Germany has produced passionate promises from the students to serve the motherland - and deliver advanced technology backed to China, the state news media reported.

[…]

To at least one Western intelligence official, the exchange was a textbook exercise in ensuring a steady flow of science and technology back to China from educational institutions and companies in the West.

[Edit typo.]

There is a video on the issue (4 min)

https://mastodon.social/@newstephie/112026853186095453

There is a good article offering additional insights into the matter:

Chinese Hacking Contractor iSoon Leaks Internal Documents

An apparent leak of internal documents from a Chinese hacking contractor paints a picture of a disaffected, poorly paid workforce that nonetheless penetrated multiple regional governments and possibly NATO.

From starving students to emaciated pets: why are hunger and poverty the UK’s new normal? — (Opinion)

The Conservatives have taken pragmatic, everyday charity and kindness and used it to shore up the cruel state they have created

Tables without food, bedrooms without beds. Grinding child poverty in Britain calls for anger – and a plan (Opinion by Gordon Brown)

Even if the government issued newspaper editors with D-notices banning any public mention of the word “poverty”, it could hardly do more to create a wall of silence around Britain’s biggest social crisis. By eliminating any ministerial admission of our deepening poverty epidemic from public discourse, it has left Britain with a hidden emergency whose forgotten and voiceless victims are the hundreds of thousands of children behind closed doors, in bedrooms without beds, homes without heating and kitchen tables without food, and whose suffering is worsening by the day.

Boris Johnson asked if £37bn NHS Test and Trace was ‘achieving anything’

The former prime minister made the comment in handwritten notes on a report from the Cabinet Office’s Covid taskforce on 28 October 2020, which were today shown to the Covid inquiry.

Witness Edward Udny-Lister also claimed Johnson did make the infamous comment that he’d rather “let the bodies pile high” than enforce another lockdown. Dominic Cummings first alleged the then-PM had said this in 2021, but Johnson denied it.

That’s not the point. I think that it is generally a bad idea if any government collaborates with such companies. So I agree that it’s a detail and there are issues of higher importance, but a government shouldn’t act this way.

@LemmyIsFantastic

I respectfully disagree. Rather than changing politics after decades of austerity, the government provides advice for energy savings through a device by Amazon, a company that spies on people and pays practically no taxes.

MPs in the UK received £10m for second jobs and freelance in 2022..

The additional income must be declared and is then published at the register of members’ financial interest on the parliament’s website. Here’s a version from 2022 (pdf).

I personally don’t think that the additional income during their membership alone is relevant but also the ‘revolving door’ policy between industry/lobbying groups and politics, and not to forget the funding and support of campaigns a.d the like (meaning that interest groups support the party, not the individual politician).

But that’s just my opinion, and it’s not a problem only in the UK imo.

Let’s hope they can do both.

The government quietly ditched its plans to help refugees learn English

Suella Braverman’s attack on immigrants and refugees “not learning the language” came after the government quietly broke its promise to help people learn English, openDemocracy can reveal.

This week both the home secretary and the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, Lee Anderson, publicly condemned people for not speaking English after arriving in the UK.

But openDemocracy has discovered that the government ditched its 2018 pledge to publish a strategy to “improve our strategic approach to English language provision”.