US to 'aggressively' revoke visas of Chinese university students, state secretary says
The United States has declared it will start "aggressively" revoking the visas of Chinese university students, prompting criticism from the Chinese foreign ministry. In a statement on Thursday (AEST), secretary of state Marco Rubio said the State Department would work with the Department of Homeland Security to "aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students". Rubio said the US would also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from China and Hong Kong. Criticising the US for "unreasonably" cancelling Chinese students' visas, foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said China had lodged its opposition with the US government.
China's foreign ministry previously vowed to "firmly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests" of its students overseas, following the Trump administration's move to revoke Harvard University's ability to enrol foreign students. That move was temporarily blocked by a US judge.
Chinese students have long been crucial to US universities, which rely on international students paying full tuition. China sent 277,398 students in the 2023-24 academic year, according to a State Department-backed report of the Institute of International Education. International students — India and China together accounting for 54 per cent of them in the US — contributed more than US$50 billion ($77 billion) to the US economy in 2023, according to the country's commerce department. Rubio's statement did not offer details on how extensively the visa revocations would be applied, but the State Department has broad authority to issue and revoke visas.
The Trump administration has expanded social media vetting of foreign students and is seeking to ramp up deportations and revoke student visas as part of wide-ranging efforts to fulfil its hardline immigration agenda. Rubio has already trumpeted the revocation of thousands of visas, largely to international students who were involved in activism critical of Israel. A cable signed by Rubio earlier this week ordered US embassies and consulates not to allow "any additional student or exchange visa ... appointment capacity until further guidance is issued" on ramping up screening of applicants' social media accounts.
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ABC News
43 minutes ago
- ABC News
Leaked files reveal how China is using AI to erase the history of Tiananmen Square massacre
Hundreds of pages of classified documents leaked to the ABC have offered an unprecedented glimpse into China's infamous censorship regime. It has grown faster, smarter and increasingly invisible, quietly erasing memory of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre from public view. Thirty-six years on, Beijing still has not disclosed the official death toll of the bloody crackdown on a pro-democracy gathering on June 4, when more than 1 million protesters were in the square. Historians estimate that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) killed anywhere from 200 to several thousand people that day. More than 230 pages of censorship instructions prepared by Chinese social media platforms were shared by industry insiders with the ABC. They were intended to be circulated among multi-channel networks or MCNs — companies that manage the accounts of content creators across multiple social and video platforms like Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. The files reveal deep anxiety among Chinese authorities about the spread of any reference to the most violently suppressed pro-democracy movement in the country's history. The documents instruct MCNs to remove any content that depicts state violence and include compilations of text, images and video content for reference. The reference material includes graphic scenes of the People's Liberation Army opening fire on civilians, while others say students attacked the soldiers. The ABC understands that the material is being used by frontline content censors to train artificial intelligence tools to moderate vast amounts of content, under the direction of the Cyberspace Administration of China — the country's top internet regulator. China's vast censorship regime relies on hundreds of thousands of human moderators to keep social media platforms compliant. There is also a structured process for censoring posts. Every post is first scanned by AI systems — known as a machine review — which are particularly sensitive to any references to the Tiananmen anniversary. When the ABC asked the Chinese-made AI chatbot DeepSeek to tell us about the massacre, it answered: "That topic is beyond my current scope. Let's talk about something else." One of the documents, a 2022 training manual for censors working for Douyin directly referenced the world-famous Tank Man image, labelling it a "subversive picture". The document also said that any visual metaphor resembling the sequence of one man facing four tanks — even "one banana and four apples in a line" — could be instantly flagged by an algorithm designed to pick up references to the massacre, especially during the first week of June. And when an uploaded video gains traction or matches sensitive patterns, it enters a "traffic pool" and may be escalated through four levels of human checks. Lennon Chang, a cyber risk expert from Deakin University, told the ABC that AI had made the censorship of visual and symbolic references far more feasible in real time. "Even if you replace the tank man image with bananas and apples, the algorithm has learned the pattern," Dr Chang said. "They use computer vision, natural language processing and real-time filtering. It doesn't change the nature of censorship, but it makes it more powerful." The guidelines also prohibit seemingly innocuous symbols such as candles and flowers that could be interpreted as commemorative. Dr Chang explains that this shift toward algorithmic filtering has deepened the risk of historical amnesia. "If censorship keeps going and is increasingly powered by AI, our future generations might not be able to know what happened," he said. "The data they see will already be filtered and sanitised. It creates a fake world — a fake history." The leaked documents also shed light on the lives of censors, who work under close oversight from the Cyberspace Administration. All censors are required to pass multiple exams to ensure they are vigilant and can respond swiftly to remove potentially risky content — a crucial safeguard to prevent platforms from being suspended or shut down by authorities. Everything visible online needs to be checked: videos, images, captions, live streams, comments and text. Algorithms are trained to detect visual cues, while human censors are on alert for coded language, disguised symbols and unusual emoji combinations that may signal dissent. Documents also show censors must meet strict productivity targets — some are expected to review hundreds of posts per hour. Their behaviour, accuracy and speed are tracked by internal monitoring software. Mistakes can result in formal warnings or termination. One former and three current workers at ByteDance, the owner of TikTok and Douyin, also spoke to the ABC about their jobs. The employees requested anonymity as they feared repercussions. They said their colleagues suffered from burnout, depression and anxiety due to constant exposure to disturbing, violent or politically sensitive content. One said working as a censor was like "reliving the darkest pages of history every day, while being watched by software that records every keystroke". They are normally paid with a modest salary — often less than $1,500 a month — though the psychological toll is severe. Even though TikTok and Douyin are both owned by Bytedance, they operate as separate platforms. TikTok serves a global audience and is governed by international laws and moderation standards, while Douyin is available only in mainland China and operates under domestic regulations, subject to heavy censorship and direct government oversight. In some cases, platforms in China allow low-risk content to remain online — but under a shadow ban. This means the content is visible to the user who posted it and a limited pool of users. The ABC has reached out to ByteDance for comment. For decades, the first week of June has coincided with routine "system maintenance" — often a euphemism for intensified censorship around the Tiananmen anniversary. Social media platforms like Weibo and WeChat also enforce heavy censorship, especially after a politically sensitive event. A 2022 manual for censors working on the Weibo platform said the Tiananmen massacre was a "sensitive incident" that must "never be shown". It grouped it with a wider ban on content critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or the party chief, President Xi Jinping. Liu Lipeng, a former content moderator for Weibo, says the lead-up to the anniversary is widely known in the industry as a "censorship season", where all staff are on duty and no mistakes are tolerated. "It's the most important event in the whole censorship system. Nothing is as significant," he told the ABC. "Censors must flag any objects arranged in parallel like the tanks, before there was AI. "If a censor can't understand something, they'll send it to a group chat for team discussions." Another document outlines that there is no permanent rule book for censors, as instructions from the government can change daily, with new keywords and forbidden terms added to content filters at any time. Censors are trained to err on the side of caution. One internal memo summarised the approach bluntly: Dr Chang warns that the implications of AI censorship extend beyond China. "If misleading data continues to flow outward, it could influence the AI models the rest of the world relies on," he said. "We need to think hard about how to maintain databases that are neutral, uncensored and accurate — because if the data is fake, the future will be fake too." Despite China's increasing use of AI to automate censorship, Mr Liu believes Chinese people's intelligence will continue to outsmart the technology. While he worries future generations may struggle to access truthful information, he believes people will find new ways to express dissent — even under an airtight system. "After working as a censor for years, I found human creativity can still crush AI censors many times over," he said. The ABC contacted DeepSeek and Weibo for comment.
News.com.au
12 hours ago
- News.com.au
‘Thanks Trump': Aussie beef exports explode amid trade war
Australian beef has been replacing US products on the shelves in Chinese supermarkets as the two economic superpowers continue their trade war. Beijing and Washington in recent days accused each other of violating a truce in the tit-for-tat tariff regime sparked by Donald Trump's 'Liberation Day' announcement in April. Now a video posted to X has shown how trade tensions have changed things on the ground in China, where American beef stocks have virtually disappeared. In the video, a local speaking in English shows a shelf stocked full of Australian beef where US products used to be found. 'I guess I'm having Australian beef for dinner tonight,' she said. 'Instead of American beef. 'And honestly because of the food quality, I probably trust Australian beef better. 'And this box of beef right here is 50 RMB which is about $7 USD (AU$10.82). 'So to answer the question, China ain't hurting. And if anything I think we're probably doing even better because now that we have better beef that tastes better and at a better price. 'So thank you Trump for that.' Data from Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) has tracked a significant increase in grain-fed beef exports into China so far this year. There were 21,885 tonnes shipped in February and March — up nearly 40 per cent on the same period last year – and in April China bought a third of the record 37,000 tonnes exported in a single month. MLA's global supply analyst Tim Jackson has said Australia's export volumes were high because of record supply levels. He was more hesitant, however, to attribute the huge intake from China to the ongoing trade war. 'It's difficult to say at the moment, these are fairly early figures and we'd need to wait for more information to come out and get a better understanding of that trade dynamic,' he told the ABC. But there have been reports that the US$1.6 billion trade (AU$2.5 billion) of American beef to China has been effectively halted by the reciprocal tariffs, which until last month sat at 145 per cent and 125 per cent respectively. The US Meat Federation said in April that 'the majority of US beef production is now ineligible for China' due to trade restrictions. 'This impasse definitely hit our March beef shipments harder and the severe impact will continue until China lives up to its commitments under the Phase One Economic and Trade Agreement.' At the time, global meat analyst Brett Stuart told the ABC that Australia was 'now the lone supplier of high-quality white fat marbled beef into China'. '(US beef) sales to China have fallen to zero … and not only is the market now closed based on the March 16 production date, but the combined retaliation tariffs by China now take the tariff on US beef to 116 per cent, a level that will quickly halt trade.' The US remains a huge market for Australian beef and imported more of the product (37,213 tonnes) than China (21,572 tonnes) in the month of April. A 90-day trade war truce was struck between the US and China on May 12, with tariffs reduced to 30 per cent and 10 per cent respectively. However, both nations have recently accused the other of undermining the agreement. US President Mr Trump on Friday claimed Beijing had 'totally violated its agreement with us', before China hit back this week, saying Washington had 'seriously undermined' the deal. Trump, Xi will 'likely' talk this week Mr Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will likely hold a long-awaited call later this week, the White House said on Monday, as trade tensions between the world's two largest economies escalate. Trump reignited strains with China last week when he accused the world's second-largest economy of violating a deal that had led both countries to reduce massive tit-for-tat tariffs temporarily. 'The two leaders will likely talk this week,' Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters outside the West Wing when asked whether Mr Trump and Mr Xi would speak. Mr Trump and Xi have yet to have any confirmed contact more than five months since the Republican returned to power, despite frequent claims by the US president that a call is imminent. Trump even said in a Time Magazine interview in April that Xi had called him - but Beijing insisted that there had been no call recently. Stock markets around the world mostly declined on Monday as tensions between the US and China resurfaced.
News.com.au
a day ago
- News.com.au
‘Torture': Australian journalist Cheng Lei's three years of hell in Chinese detention on bogus espionage charges
When a Chinese court handed Cheng Lei a prison sentence for trumped-up espionage charges, she quietly calculated how old her two young children would be when she saw them again. Teenagers, she realised, in a harrowing moment that almost broke the Australian's will. 'My kids were very painful to think about,' Cheng recalled. 'I didn't know if I'd ever see them again. But ultimately, I knew I had to be strong and sane to be able to look after them if I got out.' Cheng, now 49, spent more than three years cut off from the outside world in detention in Beijing, subjected to horrific mental torture after falling foul of the Communist Party. Her crime? Discussing a government press release with a fellow journalist several minutes ahead of a supposed embargo. Why China went after the respected broadcaster, who was the face of the country's CGTN news channel and anchor of its most popular program, is still a mystery. But her arrest and imprisonment coincided with a deep erosion of diplomatic and trade relations between Beijing and Canberra, leading many to conclude she was a pawn in a merciless political game. Almost five years on, she still bears the deep scars of her barbaric treatment. In August 2020, Cheng was greeted at work by some 20 officials from the secretive Ministry of State Security. 'I am informing you on behalf of the Beijing State Security Bureau that you are being investigated for supplying state secrets to foreign organisations,' one told her. A few months earlier, Cheng had received a press release about the Premier's Work Report, the main document to come out of the Communist Party's largest political gathering of the year. She was sitting in a make-up chair, getting ready to go on air, and texted a colleague a brief summary of the highlights – eight million jobs target, no GDP growth target – to help them get a headstart on a story. 'And that was my crime, that I eroded the Chinese state authority, even though there wasn't an embargo [on the report],' Cheng recalled. Much later, in court, another colleague who she barely knew testified against her – likely under coercion – and claimed she'd told Cheng there was in fact a strict embargo. 'That is bogus,' she said. 'If I had known it was a classified document embargoed before 7.30, why would I send it to my friend, and then keep the document, keep the texts?' Cheng was taken from her office to her apartment and watched on as spies ransacked it, looking for evidence that didn't exist. Then she was blindfolded, bundled into a blacked-out SUV and whisked to an RSDL facility, or Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location. There, in a small room that was brightly lit around the clock, she was forced to sit perfectly still for 13 hours a day, every single day, for several months. On either side of her were two heavily armed guards and she couldn't so much as scratch her cheek or adjust her posture. 'I wouldn't send my worst enemy there,' Cheng said. 'Sure, I wasn't cold, I wasn't starving, but it's mental torture. And that is something that is very Chinese, trying to break your mind … that constant pressure, dehumanising you. 'You are nothing, you cannot say a thing, you cannot make a move without their permission. And you see no one, you see nothing. It makes your brain go dead. And that is what they want. They want you desperate.' For months, she was interrogated relentlessly as the Ministry of State Security tried to justify its trumped-up charges. Had she been secretly helping Uyghurs, a persecuted minority in China? Was she trying to infiltrate the Foreign Ministry? Was she receiving suspicious sums of money? Every bogus avenue the government explored was a dead-end. The pain of the unknown She was totally isolated from the outside world and only permitted a brief 30-minute video conversation with Australian diplomatic officials once per month. Five Chinese guards would crowd closely around her during those meetings to make sure Cheng didn't say anything problematic about her treatment. 'Even when the embassy officials asked how many interrogations I'd had, when I tried to reply, they would say, no, cut. And their rule is, if you say anything that you're not allowed to say, then the visit gets cancelled, and you might lose visits altogether.' Outside of those 13 hours of forced sitting, Cheng was monitored every other moment of the day, including when using the toilet and while sleeping. She tried to picture the happy times with her family. She imagined them playing on a beach or eating dinner together, clinging to hope that they would one day be reunited. A doctor would visit each day to take her blood pressure, and during one check-up, Cheng noticed he was wearing new sneakers. 'It was the first beautiful thing I'd seen in weeks. And I said, I like your shoes, even though I'm not supposed to make small talk. And he said, thank you. 'And even an exchange like that, I would just keep replaying it and remind myself of it.' After six months, she was pressured to confess to the manufactured charges or face a more severe punishment at the end of a trial. Reluctantly, she did, knowing her fate was inevitable. No-one is found innocent in China's justice system. 'I worked out what ages my kids would be by the time I got out,' she recalled. 'It was horrible. But had I not pleaded guilty, my sentence would have been a lot longer and my treatment would have been a lot worse. 'What is the point of a defence lawyer? There's only the state. The state is the only thing that matters. 'And at least in jail, I could see a bit of the sky.' A star sacrificed Cheng was working as an accountant in China 'right on the cusp of its globalisation' when demand boomed for English reporting on the country's expanding economy. Having felt like a corporate zombie and wanting a change, she made the leap to television journalism. 'I knew nothing about TV or even much about journalism, except that I liked it, and it was a steep but pleasurable learning curve,' she recalled. 'And I was super happy when I got the call from CNBC, a year-and-a-half after I got into the business, that they wanted me to be their China correspondent.' For nine years, Cheng brought viewers the latest news about China's roaring economy and increasing global dominance. When she left CNBC, she became the face of CGTN in China, anchoring its major news program and rising to become a star of the industry. She loved her job, but it came with its challenges in a country where information is tightly controlled by an army of censors and propaganda-pushers. 'Once, we interviewed the head of China's top brokerage and I asked a question that he didn't like, that he deemed derogatory to the Communist Party. He ordered his people to not let us go and seized our camera and said we had to delete the footage. 'There were some frantic negotiations and eventually we got out, but they wouldn't let us play the interview with that question in there.' Those handful of run-ins aside, Cheng felt relatively self. After all, she was reporting on business and finance – not politics or international affairs. But as Beijing's thirst for power grew, the line between the corporate world and the Communist Party became worryingly blurred. In the early part of the Covid outbreak, Cheng's pursuit of a new show format saw the two become intertwined. 'The Covid eruption meant that my kids couldn't come back from their holiday in Australia. I was at a loss because I'd been a working mum all this time, and I was adept at juggling work and motherhood, and I really loved bringing up little people. 'So, I tried to channel my extra energy into other things, like an idea for another show. It was about dining and cooking with ambassadors. I thought it'd be a nice way to bring international flavours to viewers. 'It meant going to a lot of embassies, speaking to a lot of ambassadors. Now that I know the Chinese mindset – I mean, recently at a trial, a court declared all diplomats in the Japanese embassies are spies, fair dinkum – now that I know the way they think, my activities must've been extremely suspicious to them.' But Cheng felt like her career was at its peak. She was successful, popular and extremely well-regarded in the corporate world. Even as colleagues began quietly talking about their experiences of being surveilled or questioned by officers from the Ministry of State Security, there didn't seem to be cause for alarm. When she was detained, the accusation was so crazy that Cheng was sure it would all be sorted out swiftly. 'The idiot that I was, I thought I'd be back in a few days. I was thinking, this is just a big mix-up. I can explain it. I've done nothing wrong.' Freedom, finally In all, Cheng spent three years in detention before eventually being freed in October 2023 after a long-running public campaign tirelessly fought by her peers and friends, and the diplomatic efforts of the Australian Government. Had that fight failed, she would still be behind bars until November. When she left the detention centre, she was taken to a halfway house and for the first time years, she was able to enjoy what she describes as being a host of 'luxuries' like a mirror, a sit-down toilet, and a string to hang her washing on. The moment her plane home to Australia left the ground, a sense of total relief washed over Cheng. 'For once I could say anything. The embassy had given me a phone, but I just looked at it and I thought, I'm surrounded by people, I want to see and touch and talk to every one of them. What am I going to do with a phone? 'For years, I could only talk to a few people. Now I'm free to express again. To be able to speak English, to use my name, because all that time I was just known by my number, 21003.' Back on Australian soil, the experience of seeing her kids again after so long was 'euphoric' but also bittersweet. They had grown up so much in her absence. 'I think both were trying to impress me. My son wore his favourite Barcelona jersey, and my daughter wore her school uniform because she loves her school. 'But they weren't little kids anymore. I'd missed all that. They had to go without mum for all that time, not sure when I'd be back.' Cheng is now sharing her story via a Sky News documentary Cheng Lei: My Story and in a powerful new book Cheng Lei: A Memoir of Freedom. Working on both has been a deeply cathartic experience, as has returning to screens as an anchor on Sky News. 'I'm trying to use the miserable time that I've had to endure to make something meaningful out of it, like writing this book, like being part of this documentary, so people know what China does behind closed doors.' But returning to normal life is a long process and Cheng is still dealing with the trauma of her false imprisonment. Some things will never be normal, though, like the high likelihood Chinese spies based here in Australia are monitoring her. 'I assume there is some monitoring, but I have a very fearless attitude. I was there, they could do [those things] to me, they can't do that to me here. 'And I think if we live in fear and self-censor and always check ourselves, just in case China gets the s***s again, then what's the point of freedom? We may as well be living in China.'
