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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28507 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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There are no US/China dual citizens. China (like Japan, India, Singapore) doesn't recognize dual citizenship.

Also, is it just me, or do a lot of the individual items under Summary of Criminal Conduct in the indictment (items 9 to 15) come across as nothingburgers? Blocking a meeting? Getting the governor to post a thank you tweet for donated respirators? These are things a politician's chief of staff does, & it's not like she did it in secret and gave no reasons why it's not in the interest of the governor to e.g. have those meetings. And the "visa fraud" is ... so they can get a letter of invitation so some Chinese government officials can visit NY to talk business?

Also:

In a 65-page indictment, prosecutors laid out a yearslong scheme in which Ms. Sun blocked Taiwanese officials from having access to the governor’s office, eliminated references to Taiwan and Uyghurs from state communications and quashed meetings with Taiwanese officials, all in an effort to bolster Chinese government positions.

Are "blocked Taiwanese officials from having access to the governor’s office" and "quashed meetings with Taiwanese officials" not the same thing in different words? Why list the same item twice?

In return, Ms. Sun, 40, and her husband, Chris Hu, 41, received payoffs that included millions of dollars in transactions with China-based businesses tied to Mr. Hu, prosecutors said. They also included travel benefits, tickets to events, a series of Nanjing-style salted ducks prepared by a Chinese consulate official’s private chef and employment for Ms. Sun’s cousin in China, officials said.

What does "millions of dollars in transactions" mean? Is it a million dollar bribe? Or is it that the China based business did million dollar worth of business transactions with customers?

Are "travel benefits" and "tickets to events" not perfectly normal things to for one government to give another government's representatives in the normal course of business?

Are "blocked Taiwanese officials from having access to the governor’s office" and "quashed meetings with Taiwanese officials" not the same thing in different words? Why list the same item twice?

I think the first one might be "literally didn't let them into the building" and the second might be "deleted appointments from the governor's schedule".

There are no US/China dual citizens.

I wouldn't say exactly zero.

Although she was born and raised in San Francisco, Gu competes for her mother's native China. To do so, the International Olympic Committee requires that she hold Chinese citizenship. But in spite of China's ban on dual citizenship there is no government record of her renouncing her American citizenship.

Eileen Gu pulled it off. And if I understand correctly the Chinese government determined she was a Chinese citizen in record time. Right quick to get her qualified for the Olympics. She got a fresh Chinese passport and everything.

And some writer I never heard of before says they accidentally got dual US/China citizenship and discovered that fact as an adult. https://time.com/charter/6148188/eileen-gus-identity/ Whoopsie-daisey. I bet if they didn't renounce their Chinese citizenship they could have kept it on the down low.

On somewhat of a side note, but unlike the US department of state, which takes upwards of two months to issue passports, and sometimes multiple years to approve visa petitions, Chinese bureaucracy is considerably faster... I've gotten papers processed by the NYC consulate before in under a week.

Yeah my visa applications for China took a few days. I got a 60 day visa in around a week and years later a 90 day visa also around one week turnaround.

If you read the entire indictment, it looks like there was a sort of quid pro quo going on. Sun's husband met with Chinese government officials who facilitated his business exporting seafood from the United States to China. They earned millions of dollars from this business, which they didn't report on tax forms and laundered into the United States through purchases of real estate and luxury cars. There were also a series of lower-level gifts like covering travel to China and giving them event tickets. In return, she was basically doing the Chinese government's bidding to the extent that her position allowed. She was regularly meeting with Chinese officials and keeping them abreast of her actions.

These are things a politician's chief of staff does, & it's not like she did it in secret and gave no reasons why it's not in the interest of the governor to e.g. have those meetings.

That's certainly a defense. But, "My actions were totally in the interest of New York State and had nothing to do with the millions of dollars my husband's business earned after meeting with Chinese government officials or the thousands of dollars of gifts and travel compensation I got and didn't include on my ethics report" may not play particularly well with a jury.

The nature of the business environment in China makes it very likely you'll be mixing it up with government officials on a regular basis.

But yeah if those translations are faithful it's pretty clear she was working for the interests of her PRC contacts.

That's certainly a defense. But, "My actions were totally in the interest of New York State and had nothing to do with the millions of dollars my husband's business earned after meeting with Chinese government officials or the thousands of dollars of gifts and travel compensation I got and didn't include on my ethics report" may not play particularly well with a jury.

I agree that if there really exists an financial arrangement whereby money is exchanged for political favor, then that completely changes the nature of her actions. However, the way it's presented in media and in the indictment is as if those actions on her part (such as blocking the meeting) constitute illegal activities in and of themselves, as if she can be convicted for simply being politically chummy with the Chinese, with or without the alleged kickbacks.

The listing of "travel benefits", "tickets to events" and "salted ducks" as instances of kickback is particularly odd. It makes you wonder why they felt the need to appeal to such ambiguious evidence if they had actually solid evidence proving the financial quid pro quo.

That's how indictments (and civil complaints) work. They list a bunch of facts and then allege that the fact pattern means that the person broke the law (or committed a civil wrong). They don't have to include every detail or spell out every implication. They aren't the last word in the evidence that's going to be presented at trial, either. All that's necessary is that they state enough facts that a jury can make a reasonable inference that the alleged acts were violated, and they've done that.

The listing of "travel benefits", "events to tickets" and "salted ducks" as instances of kickback is particularly odd.

Lol, you're obviously younger than me. Before they cracked down on that sort of thing, event tickets was one of the biggest kickback schemes around. Why do you think corporate luxury boxes became so popular? When I was a kid if there was anything I wanted to go to there was always a chance my uncle (who was a facilities manager for a downtown skyscraper) could get them from a vendor. When I was in high school my friend's dad was in sales and he bought like a dozen tickets to every show at a local concert venue to give to customers. There were always a few shows a year no one wanted tickets to so a whole bunch of us would go. The ethics people started cracking down on that so the new thing became trips. If a vendor wanted to make sales he'd invite his customers to, say, an all-expenses paid hunting trip at a ranch in Wyoming. Ostensibly to talk business. This was soon cracked-down on and most companies started limiting their purchasing agents to gifts under $100, which has been steadily revised downward to the point where anything more than a fruit basket is prohibited. For a while, there was still and old school of purchasing agents who pretty much wouldn't do business with anyone who didn't give kickbacks, and were kind of flummoxed when the new generation of vendors didn't have anything to offer because 90% of their customer base wasn't allowed to accept anything, and the new generation of purchasing agents never knew of a world where that was even conceivable. This wasn't really that long ago (within the past 20 years), so it's understandable that stuff like this is still considered a red flag.

Kind of a shame really, because it's not as though genuine corruption dries up and goes away forever. You can't bribe politicians, but you can hire their children, or donate to their foundations. Maybe someone can make a case that cracking down on gifts is good -- cracking down on explicit bribes is good. But any culture that facilitates gift-giving is personal and human and doing something more than just facilitating efficient market transactions.

There are no US/China dual citizens.

What of someone born in the US of a US father and a Chinese mother the latter of which did not get permanent citizenship in the US?

That child would, by virtue of automatically acquiring US citizenship via being born on American soil, fall under the 5th clause of China s nationality law (specifically the part following the semicolon in the 5th clause) and so would not automatically acquire Chinese citizenship.

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/中華人民共和國國籍法

I mean, if one wants to be philosophical, one could worry that there might exist some sort of problematic race condition situations where it all depends on how "fast" the two countries' laws respectively kick in (metaphysically speaking). It also depends on your conception of personhood. If e.g. US law recognizes an infant as a person even as she's sliding down the vaginal canal but hasn't emerged yet, but Chinese law only recognizes after the baby has emerged (this is just a silly example for illustrative purposes), then the US law will always kicks in earlier and therefore (per the exception created by the 5th clause of China's nationality law) preempt the China law from giving her automatic Chinese citizenship.

I can't read Chinese so that article may have better or more up to date information on their own laws, but the English Wikipedia for the same topic says:

While Chinese nationality law does not recognize multiple nationalities, the current legal framework and its practical implementation allow for certain situations where de facto dual nationality occurs: While children born to Chinese parents abroad in general would not acquire Chinese nationality if they acquired foreign nationality by birth, those children who are born to Chinese parents living abroad only temporarily, such as diplomatic staff, humanitarian workers or overseas students, will still be regarded as Chinese nationals and hence be de facto nationals of both the Chinese and the foreign state.

Citing this paper.

All the references I can find on this in languages I read seem to cite voluntary naturalization and permanent residence or citizenship abroad of the Chinese parent (or both) as the suspensive mechanisms. Neither of which applies in this example.

Can you translate the 5th clause?

Well, it goes like this (I've added numbers to label the 3 conjuncts)

If one or both of the parents are Chinese citizens and the individual is born in a foreign country, he or she shall have Chinese nationality; however, if (1) one or both of the parents are Chinese citizens and (2) resides in a foreign country and (3) the individual has foreign nationality at birth, he or she shall not have Chinese nationality.

There's no reference to "permanent residence", as I suppose that's a concept that's only meaningful in some countries, like the US. In your scenario, I would imagine that her being a resident alien is enough to satisfy (2), so it shouldn't create a conflict situation.

It's also worth noting that clause 3 explicitly rules out dual nationality ("The PRC does not recognize dual nationality for Chinese citizens.").

I see this ongoing discussion throughout this thread. And I understand that rules as written dual citizenship is illegal in China. No one is wrong here.

But, the Chinese government doesn't follow their own laws. For example Eileen Gu is a natural born US citizen. There's no record of her ever renouncing her US citizenship. But she wants to compete for China in the Olympics, so now suddenly she is also a Chinese citizen with a Chinese passport. Good to go for the Olympics.

Although she was born and raised in San Francisco, Gu competes for her mother's native China. To do so, the International Olympic Committee requires that she hold Chinese citizenship. But in spite of China's ban on dual citizenship there is no government record of her renouncing her American citizenship.

Rules apply until they don't. A piece of paper with Chinese writing on it somewhere says this is impossible. That's no impediment.

There's no reference to "permanent residence"

I believe you're mistaken. It uses the phrase "resides in a foreign country" in the conjunction. If you have translated this faithfully, and if the legal interpretation doesn't invalidate this meaning, residence in a legal sense is what is meant here. It is not the mere fact of living in a place. It is being settled there.

Whether or not being a student or a diplomat means that you "reside" in the foreign country is a question I'll leave to lawyers, but the paper I linked seems to be of the negative opinion.

The PRC does not recognize dual nationality for Chinese citizens

Not recognizing something just means that it's legally inconsequential, not that it is forbidden or incompatible with other things. In China, much as in a lot of other States, Chinese nationals can't claim they are something else. Even if they have another passport.

There is an explicit clause (the 3rd clause) that says they don't recognize dual citizenship involving China and a different country.

Also, the second sentence of the 5th clause basically creates an exception for cases where a child (i) is born abroad to a Chinese parent and (ii) acquires citizenship of that country in the process. It rules that in such cases the child does not have Chinese citizenship.

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/中華人民共和國國籍法

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