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China has on Feb 13 sought to reject a Swiss government report suggesting that it has been cracking down on Tibetans and Uyghurs living in Switzerland under the globally condemned campaign of transnational repression. It has sought to castigate the report’s findings as “false information”.

China routinely rejects offhandedly any report criticizing its human rights record, especially when it concerns Tibetans and Uyghurs, claiming it inherently amounts to interfering in its internal affairs.

The Swiss government report published on Feb 12 expressed “suspicion” that China was inciting Tibetans and Uyghurs living in Switzerland to spy on and exert pressure on members of their own communities, while also engaging in other forms of “transnational repression”, such as cyber-attacks and surveillance.

The report was based on the results of a University of Basel study commissioned by the Federal Office of Justice and the State Secretariat for Migration. The investigation was carried out In response to a parliamentary postulate.

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In its report, the Swiss government recommended examining a series of measures concerning prevention, coordination and awareness-raising. It also wanted to raise awareness among all federal, cantonal and communal services likely to be involved in transnational repression.

China is accused of carrying out a campaign of genocide in East Turkestan (Xinjiang), the homeland of the Uyghur, in the name of combatting religious extremism, and the obliteration of Tibetan culture and identity in the name of Sinicization in Tibet. It is also routinely criticized at the UN Human Rights Council both for its systemic violations and poor response to calls for accountability by its expert investigators.

Here is the study (available in English and German).

Increased defense spending could significantly boost Europe’s economic growth and industrial base if outlays are targeted at high-tech, regionally made armaments. A new Kiel Report by the Kiel Institute shows that gross domestic product (GDP) could increase by 0.9 percent to 1.5 percent per year if governments raised annual defense spending from the NATO target of 2 percent to 3.5 percent of GDP and shifted from buying weapons designed and mainly made in the USA to home-grown innovations.

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The debate about Europe's ability to defend itself took on new urgency after Russia launched its full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022. Many countries increased military budgets, with EU spending falling just short of NATO's target of 2 percent of GDP in 2024. But NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has noted that Europe spent ”well over 3 percent” during the Cold War—and US President Donald Trump has even proposed a new target of 5 percent.

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Most importantly, European governments should ensure that more defense spending ultimately stays within the region. Around 80 percent of defense procurement currently comes from suppliers outside the European Union. But only domestic production can generate the so-called technological spillovers to other industries and productivity gains that make defense spending generate significant economic activity with each euro spent.

”If Europe could develop the next generation of defense tech and other weapons at home instead of buying them from the US, the economic effects of additional defense spending could go far beyond short-term fiscal multiplier effects and boost growth in the medium term,” says Moritz Schularick, President of the Kiel Institute. ”An increase in European defense spending from just under 2 percent of GDP to 3.5 percent would currently cost around 300 euros billion per year—but the study suggests this sum could also generate a similar amount of additional economic activity, if properly spent on developing European capabilities.”

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Tens of thousands of students marched into the central Serbian city of Kragujevac on Saturday, demanding justice after a deadly railway disaster, in one of the biggest shows of anger against the government.

In the three months since 15 people were killed when a roof collapsed at a newly-renovated train station in Serbia's second-biggest city of Novi Sad, mass demonstrations have grown into the biggest threat yet to President Aleksandar Vucic's decade-long grip on power.

Joined by teachers, farmers and other workers, the students have drawn support from the wider public as many Serbians have blamed the tragedy on corruption within the government.

On Saturday, students braved near-freezing temperatures to travel to Kragujevac from across Serbia, by bus and even on foot from the capital Belgrade, some 140 kilometres (87 miles) away, beating drums, blowing whistles and waving the country's flag. Locals greeted them with cheers.

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Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, has called Donald Trump’s decision to hold direct talks with Vladimir Putin a “mistake”. He also warned him that failing to ensure a fair peace for Ukraine would undermine US credibility and embolden China in its ambitions to take Taiwan.

Sikorski was speaking today on a public panel at the Munich Security Conference alongside his German, French and British counterparts.

“I think the call was a mistake,” he said, regarding Trump’s conversation with Putin on Wednesday this week.

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Asked what he would like to tell Trump, Sikorski listed three things. First, that his predecessor, Joe Biden, had “planted the US flag in downtown Kyiv and declared on behalf of the United States that the US will be with Ukraine for as long as it takes until Ukraine secures its independence.”

“Therefore, the credibility of the United States depends on how this war ends – not just the Trump administration, but the United States.”

Secondly, said Sikorski, “I would tell him that if you allow Putin to vassalise Ukraine, that will send a message to China that you can recover what you regard as a renegade province, and that would have direct consequences for US grand strategy, for the US system of alliances, and possibly for the future of Taiwan”.

Finally, Sikorski said, jokingly to laughs from the audience, “I would tell him that we Europeans control the Nobel Peace Prize [so] if you want to earn it the peace has to be fair”. Last month, an unnamed Trump advisor told CBS News that the US president had “a hyper fixation” on winning the Nobel prize.

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Earlier this week, Sikorski also criticised Poland’s domestic opposition, the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, for “fawning and sucking up” to the new Trump administration. This “humiliates me as a Pole”, said Sikorski, who suggested that PiS politicians should “get up off their knees”.

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Archived

The fall after the Kremlin launched its full-scale war against Ukraine, schools across Russia introduced a new state-designed “patriotic” lesson series called “Important Conversations.” Now, the program is expanding to some of the youngest members of society — kindergartners. Officials in the Vologda region are piloting the new initiative. At some of the first lessons, teachers dressed children in uniforms, gave them toy guns, pretended to bandage their arms, led a moment of silence, and played patriotic music.

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In October 2024, President Vladimir Putin met with Russian educators, including Nadezhda Vorontsova, a kindergarten teacher from Vologda and a finalist in the “Teacher of the Year” competition. It was Vorontsova who suggested expanding “Important Conversations” to kindergarten. Putin supported the idea.

Vorontsova has now been appointed to lead the project in Vologda. At the kindergarten where she works, the first session, called “What Do I Know About the War?” took place on January 20. According to the kindergarten’s social media page, the goal was to “instill a sense of moral appreciation for our country’s heroic past by exploring how older preschoolers understand the Great Patriotic War [World War II].”

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For now, the program is set to run until May 19. Lessons will take the form of “discussions, role-playing games, quizzes, interviews, and rapid-fire Q&A sessions.” Children will learn about World War II heroes, military professions, hero cities, war memorials, and medals. Kindergartens will also set up patriotic displays.

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Officially, Russia’s Education Ministry is still considering whether to expand its patriotism program to kindergartens, with final recommendations set to be presented to Putin on March 1. But in many regions, local officials aren’t waiting — kindergartens have already begun holding their own “Important Conversations” sessions on the initiative of regional administrations.

“[...] We’ve seen a huge number of similar lessons in other regions — Murmansk, Rostov, Kaliningrad. They’ve really ramped up since the start of 2025, and the format closely mirrors what’s happening in schools, with the same level of militarization. Soldiers who fought in Ukraine come in to talk about the war. Right now, the main topic is the Siege of Leningrad. The materials are taken straight from school curricula, with little to no adaptation for kindergarteners,” says Dmitry Tsibirev, founder NeNorma, a project dedicated to fighting propaganda in schools.

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The “Important Conversations” program was introduced in Russian schools on September 1, 2022. Two and a half years later, a survey by the state-run polling agency VTsIOM found that parents ranked it among the most useless subjects in school.

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France's privacy watchdog said on Thursday it will question DeepSeek to gain a better idea of how the Chinese startup's AI system works and any possible privacy risks for users.

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"The CNIL's AI department is currently analysing this tool," a spokesperson for the French watchdog said.

"In order to better understand how this AI system works and the risks in terms of data protection, the CNIL will question the company that offers the DeepSeek chatbot," they added.

The French watchdog is one of the most active in Europe and has fined Google and Meta Platforms, among others.

Italy's data protection authority said earlier this week it was seeking answers from DeepSeek on its use of personal data, while Ireland's Data Protection Commission said it has requested information from the Chinese company about data processing conducted in relation to Irish users.

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As an addition, the South Korea privacy watchdog to ask DeepSeek about personal information use.

Euro zone manufacturers are more worried about cheap imports from China than tariffs from the United States, a European Central Bank (ECB) survey showed on Friday.

Only half of the manufacturers contacted by the ECB in a regular poll thought their business in the euro area would be affected by U.S. tariffs.

Many pointed out they were already producing "local for local" and some were only exporting highly sophisticated, hard to substitute products to the United States.

The "overriding concern", however, was about the indirect impact, with more imports coming to the European Union from China if trade with the United States is curtailed.

"In the absence of protective EU measures, this led more contacts to expect a negative effect on prices in their sector in the euro area than a positive one," the ECB said.

"In the event of protective measures and retaliation leading to a more generalised tariff war, it was much more likely that costs and prices would rise."

The quarterly telephone survey also showed manufacturers were laying off staff or hiring fewer as they tried to cut costs. It pointed to stable prices in manufacturing and at most moderate increases in services.

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European law enforcement conducted raids at 14 properties across Barcelona (4), Madrid (9), and Toledo (1) in Spain, and one property in Zagreb in Croatia. These operations resulted in 30 arrests, among which were the leaders of the criminal network. In addition, EUR 180 000 in cash was also seized, alongside weapons, 70 passports, equipment to falsify passports and visas, narcotic substances, 10 high-end vehicles and 33 mobile phones. A total of 33 victims – Chinese and Vietnamese nationals – were also safeguarded.

This investigation builds on the dismantling of Europe’s largest Chinese prostitution ring in February 2023. Digital evidence seized during that operation has since then been meticulously analysed, including at a forensic sprint held at Europol’s headquarters in March 2023. During this sprint, experts from nine countries extracted tens of terabytes of data from hundreds of confiscated mobile phones.

The new intelligence provided unprecedented insights into the methods used by Chinese criminal networks in Europe, revealing a sophisticated division of labour and reliance on crime-as-a-service actors.

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Archived

Germany is under attack from China, a senior German opposition MP has warned, as Berlin grapples with a fresh wave of cyber attacks and espionage plots.

Roderich Kiesewetter, the crisis prevention spokesman for the centre-Right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said Germans needed to stop thinking of China as a “partner”.

“Many in Germany are turning a blind eye … China is no longer a partner, but a systemic rival that is attacking us,” Mr Kiesewetter, a former colonel in the Bundeswehr, told The Telegraph.

“Germany is at the centre of Chinese hybrid influence operations in Europe – it uses all the tools in its toolbox; espionage, sabotage, lawfare, repression and disinformation,” added Mr Kiesewetter, who is also the deputy chairman of the German parliament’s intelligence committee.

His comments are a major intervention in Germany, where China wields immense influence over the economy despite rising tensions over Beijing’s tacit support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and apparent plans to invade Taiwan.

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Archived

The sanctions reportedly entail a complete ban on broadcasting, distributing, and promoting the content of these outlets. E.U. Internet providers will be required to block access to these resources.

• RT and Sputnik are already under sanctions in Europe. Several other pro-Kremlin media outlets are banned in specific E.U. countries, mainly in the Baltic states.

• A day earlier, on January 28, Bloomberg reported that the next E.U. sanctions package could cut more Russian banks off from the SWIFT banking system and impose new restrictions on more than 70 “shadow fleet” tankers involved in shipping Russian oil.

Here is the link to the report: https://graphika.com/reports/chinese-state-influence

A Chinese social media operation that aims to whip up political anger in the West has called for the overthrow of a foreign government when impersonating protesters criticising flood relief efforts in Spain, online analysis outfit Graphika said.

Graphika said an operation dubbed Spamouflage, which it believed was linked to the Chinese state, posed this month as human rights group Safeguard Defenders to spread online calls for the government to be toppled in response to the catastrophic floods in October that killed 224 people.

"This is the first time we have seen Spamouflage directly calling to overthrow a foreign government," Graphika said in its latest report.

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The report also finds:

• Chinese covert influence operations have impersonated human rights organizations critical of Beijing, almost certainly in an effort to discredit their activities and disrupt domestic political conversations in Western countries. The state-linked Spamouflage operation, for instance, has repeatedly targeted the Spain-based non-profit Safeguard Defenders and in January posed as the organization to spread online calls for the Spanish government to be overthrown in response to deadly floods in Valencia. This is the first time we have seen Spamouflage directly calling for the overthrow of a foreign government.
• Chinese state influence actors and pro-China communities continue to leverage international trade issues in their efforts to advance Beijing’s strategic interests. In recent weeks, this has included attempts to orchestrate a boycott of Japanese retail brand Uniqlo due to the company’s reported refusal to use cotton from China’s Xinjiang region, and efforts to exacerbate tensions between the U.S. and Japan over a blocked steel company merger.
• Chinese officials and state media have used social media and other online platforms to dismiss and deflect allegations of Chinese state hacking activity. After Japan accused China in January of orchestrating a years-long hacking campaign against Japanese government agencies and companies, for example, Chinese state actors spread statements dismissing the allegations as groundless and disseminated cartoons casting Tokyo as an agent of U.S. “disinformation.”
• Overt and covert Chinese state influence actors have engaged in a sustained effort to advance narratives that reinforce Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and attempt to legitimize its activities in the region. In November, these actors amplified comments by an international law scholar that appeared to support China’s position.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/1834743

The Italian regulator, known as the Garante, said on Tuesday it wanted to know what personal data is collected, from which sources, for what purposes, on what legal basis and whether it is stored in China. It gave DeepSeek and its affiliated companies 20 days to respond.