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Millions of Chinese officials were investigated in the past 10 years amid Beijing's anti-corruption campaign

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Chinese researchers recently developed artificial intelligence technology that can gauge Chinese officials loyalty to the ruling Communist Party. The technology could be a tool for Beijings anti-corruption campaign to monitor further and purge corrupt Party members, indicating the regimes growing fear oflosing its legitimacy and power.

More than 4.7 million officials at all levels were investigated, subjected to various forms of disciplinary punishment, or prosecuted in the past 10 years, according to data released by Chinas top watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), on June 20.

Beijings anti-corruption campaign was initialed in November 2012, when Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping first came to power.

Political corruption is the biggest corruption. Some corrupt elements have formed interest groups in the hope of stealing power from the party and the state, according to state-run mediaXinhua.

TheInstitute of Artificial Intelligence at Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center in eastern Chinas Anhui Province published a post, claiming that it developed technology that could directly support the CCP. A wonderfulconnection between AI and construction of the CCP, it touted onits official WeChat account on July 1, the 101st anniversary of the founding of the CCP.

The post included a video showinga man walking into an equipment room labeled Smart Political Thinking Bar, then sitting in front of a computer with a touch screen to take a test. After completing the test, his test score and analysis chart appeared on the screen.

The test, catered to Communist Party members, covers content taught in Party schools, including political indoctrination such as Xi Jinping Thought, communism, socialism, CCP history, and current policies and regulations.

The video introduced a device that could use AI technology to extract the biometric features of CCP members, including facial expressions, electroencephalography, and dermatological features, among others.

After integrating and analyzing personal data, it would evaluate how a person was able to understand the content he/she studied, such as gauging the level of concentration, recognition, and mastery of the various subjects.

The device can successfully integrate AI technology into the organizational life of CCP members, said the researchers in the short film. The organizational life refers tobehaviors the CCP imposes on its members, such as proving ones loyalty to the Party.

The research team said it designed the AI device for building up the CCPahead of the 20th Communist Party Congress. The Partys most important political meeting is expected to be held at the end of this year, which will determine whether Xi can secure a third term.

At the time of writing, the WeChat post was taken down.

However, it had been widely shared on social media before it was removed, triggering public criticism of the use of AI to monitor ideological indoctrination, with some denouncing it as technological brainwashing and digital authoritarianism.

U.S.-based media China Digital Timesobtainedsome of the posts content and video and published a report earlier this month.

According to public information, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Anhui provincial government established the Hefei tech institute. The institute is managed by the University of Science and Technology of China.

Speaking at a press briefing held by the CCPs propaganda department on June 30, Wang Jianxin, director of the CCDIs publicity department, said that in 10 years, from the Partys 18thCongress to the end of April this year, around 4.3 million corruption probes were carried out and over 4.7 million officials received punishment.

Those CCP members were accused of various charges such as corruption, ties with criminal groups, abuse of power, and immoral lifestyle. An official report on the CCPs image crisis, released in 2012 by Tang Jun, director of the Crisis Management Research Center of Renmin University of China, said thatas many as 95 percent of corrupt officials investigated had a mistress, and more than 60 percent of corrupt cadres had a second wife.

Zhang Lei, a law professor at Beijing Normal University, toldXinhua on June 30 that there are four major problems among the CCP cadres: formalism, bureaucracy, hedonism, and extravagance.

Gao Wenqian, a scholar of CCP history, told VOA on Oct. 28, 2016, that the CCPs institutional approach can only treat the symptoms of corruption but not the root cause, citing that one partys monopoly of power is the root cause of corruption in the CCP officialdom.

If you [the CCP] dont fight corruption from the system, its like fighting flies around a manure pit. Youll never get to the end; the more you fight, the more you get stuck. The result would be flies are as big as tigers and tigers are as many as flies, Gao said.

The CCPs so-called anti-corruption campaign is the equivalent of a restaurantproudly announcing that in the past year it has managed to find 100,000 flies in its dishes, 10,000 rats in its soup, and 50,000 worms in its rice, wrote anetizen in the comment section of the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times.

I wonder if the customers still think this restaurant is clean. Corruption is an Achilles heel that the autocratic regime cannot solve itselfthat is, the same interest groups cannot govern themselves from inside.

The AI surveillance tech and anti-corruption campaign indicate that the CCP, fearing its downfall, will impose stricter controls on its members, especially high-level officials.

Official media Qiushi Magazine recentlypublisheda speech that Xi delivered at a seminar for provincial and ministerial-level officials on Jan. 11. Xi stressed the Party shouldstrive to resolve the impurity of ideological thoughts, lifestyles, and organizations within the Partyanythingthat could undermine the CCPs authority.

Last year, Xi warned CCP members about the consequences of stepping out of line. In a speech, he pointed out that some officials have morphed into the spokesmen for various interest groups, power units, and privileged classes. Xi stressed that no matter who has the problem, they should be investigated and punished decisively and without mercy.

Moreover, at a June 17 meeting of the CCPs Politburo, Xi said that anti-corruption is a major political campaign that cannot afford to fail.

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Chinese Researchers Develop New AI Tech to Screen 'Loyalty' of Communist Party Members - The Epoch Times

A teenage girl wearing a face mask, head scarf and long black robe listens to a math teacher at a tutoring center in Kabul. The center was established by a women's rights activist to circumvent a Taliban ban on girls attending secondary school. The activist said she has informal permission by Taliban authorities to run the center as long as teenage girls abide by a strict dress code. Diaa Hadid/NPR hide caption

A teenage girl wearing a face mask, head scarf and long black robe listens to a math teacher at a tutoring center in Kabul. The center was established by a women's rights activist to circumvent a Taliban ban on girls attending secondary school. The activist said she has informal permission by Taliban authorities to run the center as long as teenage girls abide by a strict dress code.

KABUL, Afghanistan Inside a small room in a house on Kabul's outskirts, about ten teenage girls are defying their Taliban rulers who have banned them from attending secondary school. "Let's learn," one student slowly reads to another as they review English lessons from a textbook. "Learn the words: Yellow, blue, red, green."

The girls attend a secret school run by a young woman barely older than her students, 21-year-old Nazanin, whose lavender headscarf matched her nail polish on the day we visited.

"When the Taliban said girls can't go to secondary school anymore, I thought to myself, 'what can I do?'," she tells NPR. "How can I raise the morale of the girls around me?" She and the young students requested they only be referred to by their first names, to avoid being identified by Taliban officials.

It's been nearly a year since the Taliban seized power and stopped some 850,000 Afghan girls from attending secondary school, according to UNICEF figures. The regime had promised to allow girls to return on March 23. But it appears a minority of senior hardliners had a change of heart. Teenage girls arrived to their old classrooms only to be sent home again, many in tears.

The Taliban have been pressured to reverse their decision by the international community, Afghan women, girls even prominent Afghan clerics known for their loyalty to the Taliban. An Education Ministry spokesman tells NPR they're ready to open those schools whenever their leadership says they can. But hopes are slim. At a nationwide conference of Taliban loyalist clerics and traders that took place from June 30 to July 2, local media reported that girls education was only mentioned by two of the 3,000 male attendees. The communique issued at the gathering's end called on the international community to recognize the Taliban administration but contained only a vague reference to education.

A teenage girl revises the words for different colors in an English class held in a small secret school on the outskirts of Kabul. The school was established inside a home in a working class area of Kabul after the Taliban reneged on a promise in late March to allow girls to attend secondary school. Diaa Hadid/NPR hide caption

A teenage girl revises the words for different colors in an English class held in a small secret school on the outskirts of Kabul. The school was established inside a home in a working class area of Kabul after the Taliban reneged on a promise in late March to allow girls to attend secondary school.

Many Afghan girls aren't waiting for the Taliban government to change their minds. Nor are their teachers.

In Kabul, the rural province of Parwan and the western city of Herat alike, women are running secret schools like Nazanin's. They're also finding loopholes around the Taliban's ban on girls attending secondary education, by operating girls madrassas religious schools or tutoring centers that essentially replicate high school courses.

"The fact that people have found all of these different ways to try to work around the Taliban ban is an indication of how desperately people want education for themselves, for their daughters, for the for the girls in their families," says Heather Barr, who for Human Rights Watch closely tracks violations against women and girls in Afghanistan.

While some governments may let poor girls fall through the cracks of the school system or have educational or general policies that discriminate against girls, only Afghanistan has banned girls' secondary education outright, she says. "The Taliban should be deeply ashamed that they've made Afghanistan the only country in the world that's denying girls access to education based on their gender."

After the Taliban reneged on their promise to let girls return to secondary school in late March, Nazanin decided to open her small school. Those close to her pitched in. She described her thinking at the time: "If we follow the Taliban, we'd just stay home. No. We have to do something."

Her family helped transform a spare room in their house and painted it a warm yellow. Her grandmother donated a rug. Friends handed over books. Nazanin teaches grades seven and eight as well as art. Her cousin teaches the older grades. A friend handles the English class.

A volunteer teacher holds a notebook in a small secret school on the outskirts of Kabul. Diaa Hadid/NPR hide caption

A volunteer teacher holds a notebook in a small secret school on the outskirts of Kabul.

Word of mouth has filtered across the alleyways in Nazanin's hardscrabble, working-class area. Her class is filled with students like 14-year-old Leila.

Leila pulls out a black pen from her Barbie-themed pencil case, opens her notebook and hunches over the low table she shares with the other girls. She copies English sentences off the whiteboard. "She is pretty," she whispers as she writes. "Our classroom is hot."

The Taliban's ban is just the latest barrier to Leila's education. During the pandemic, Leila missed a year of schooling. Last year, after she returned, tragedy struck: militants targeted teenage girls at her school, Sayed al-Shuhada, as they were streaming out of the gate, detonating a vehicle rigged with explosives that killed more than 80.

Leila was still inside her school when the attack occurred, but she lost many of her friends. And yet she returned three days later, expecting to resume studies. The school hadn't even reopened. Weeks later, her parents pulled her out, fearing another attack. Then, the Taliban swept to power.

Now, Leila walks to her secret school from her house nearby.

To avoid suspicion, she tucks her notebooks behind whatever novel she's borrowed from Nazanin's modest book collection. This week, it's a book of Persian poetry. The girls think if they're seen reading, that's okay. But studying that could get them into trouble.

Teenage girls take notes in an English class in a small secret school on the outskirts of Kabul. Diaa Hadid/NPR hide caption

Teenage girls take notes in an English class in a small secret school on the outskirts of Kabul.

The Taliban, as a group, don't all agree on banning girls' secondary education. One senior Taliban bureaucrat requested anonymity to explain the ban to NPR because of the subject's sensitivity. He says the Taliban's hardcore loyalists demanded the ban in accordance with the conservative tradition that girls should stay home.

There are exceptions: The ban isn't applied in a handful of provinces where community leaders, typically men, voice support for girls' education.

The ban, paradoxically enough, does not apply to colleges either.

That has led to a surreal situation in Afghanistan where teenage girls must stay home, but a young woman lucky enough to have been in college when the Taliban seized power can still legally pursue her degree. A lack of professors to teach the women alongside strict dress codes appears to have kept many college-age women home, however.

The Taliban official says that in places where the ban is in effect, girls and their families can pay to attend privately run tutoring centers, where students typically go to improve their grades.

It's not clear how many Afghan girls are in secret schools or otherwise finding ways to educate themselves, but it almost certain that it is only a fraction of the some 850,000 girls who live in parts of Afghanistan where secondary schools have closed. According to UNICEF figures from 2019, which was the last time a school census was conducted, there were 1.1 million girls in secondary school. Some 250,000 of those girls live in provinces where secondary schools are still operational.

In Kabul, some of the luckiest girls end up in a basement on a quiet Kabul street, where 34-year-old Zainab set up a tutoring center in April to keep girls learning. She conducts online language lessons for Afghans abroad to raise money and is seeking external sponsors as well. "We cover secondary school subjects. We even hired teachers who lost their jobs. It's all free. I don't [want] the girls to miss out on an education."

Zainab says Taliban authorities have informally allowed her to run the center, provided the girls obey strict dress codes. And they do: The teenagers filter in wearing black robes, headscarves and face masks.

The center offers classes for English and Quran memorization. The most popular course prepares girls for the college admissions test. It's unclear, however, if the Taliban will allow new female college entrants.

One top achieving student at Zainab's center, 17-year-old Sahar, says her current situation is not like school.

She's meant to be in grade 11. She goes to three different tutoring centers to round out her education. She leaves home at 6 a.m. each morning and races between classes. She worries her bag, filled with books, might attract hostility. "I get really scared when the Taliban guys see me. I change my routes," she says.

Some days, Sahar says, her morale collapses. "I've always wanted to be a doctor and until the Taliban took over, I was getting top marks. Now I've got no chance. She and her mother cry together sometimes, Sahar says, "because our future is so dark."

It's a deep sadness she says her mother shares. Because when the Taliban were last in power, her mother was a teenager. And she couldn't attend school either.

Additional reporting by Khwaga Ghani from California.

Let us know what you think of this story. Email goatsandsoda@npr.org with your feedback, with the subject line "Secret Schools."

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According to local Taliban officials in the southeastern province of Ghazni, a traffic accident caused by a collision between a vehicle and a motorcycle killed a mother and her son and injured two others.

According to the authorities, a car and a motorcycle collided in the Tasang area ofthe Deh Yak district yesterday, Sunday, July 17th.

Ghazni provinces traffic department director stated that the traffic accident killed a mother and a son while wounding a girl and the driver.

In a traffic accident earlier this week, a 580-type passenger bus and a tractor-trailer collided in Pol-e-Khomri city, Baghlan provinces capital, leaving eight people dead and 11 injured.

The condition of the wounded, who were taken to the nearest hospital was told to be critical, according to the health officials.

The frequency of traffic incidents involving passenger fatalities has increased in recent months, despite the fact that neither the appropriate institution nor a thorough investigation has established the cause.

However, traffic rule violations, dangerous routes, negligence, and a lack of traffic signs are the leading causes of road accidents in Afghanistan, where people are killed every day.

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Mother and Son Die in a Traffic Accident in Southeastern Afghanistan - The Khaama Press News Agency - The Khaama Press News Agency

Thousands of families from the Hazara ethnic group in Afghanistan, forced to flee their homes after a Taliban military campaign in the countrys Balkhab district last month, are now in a dire humanitarian crisis without access to basic necessities like water, food and shelter.

As [the Taliban] entered the region, they sought retaliation on people, Jafar, a Balkhab resident whose name has been changed here due to safety concerns, told HuffPost in a WhatsApp voice message. They killed and mistreated innocent people, looted and torched shops.

Jafar and his family fled the area, seeking safety in a neighboring province.

Hazaras account for about 20% of Afghanistans 38 million people, making them the third largest ethnic group there. In a Sunni-majority country, Shiite Hazaras are a religious minority that have historically endured widespread persecution.

Before the Taliban took control of Kabul last August, Hazaras already faced an increasing campaign of violence by the Taliban and Islamic State Khorasan, an affiliate of the Islamic State militant group. Hazaras also had to contend with systemic discrimination from the government in Kabul. Since the Taliban came to power, Hazaras have remained the principal victims of IS-K attacks and Taliban atrocities and forced evictions.

Afghanistans Etilaatroz newspaper reported that the Taliban had killed at least 50 civilians in Balkhab by late June. The number has since gone up, the paper reported, citing sources in the region.

A Hazara woman told Hasht-e Subh Daily, an Afghan newspaper, that the Taliban intended to capture and abuse young women in Balkhab. Hasht-e Subh also published a video that appeared to show a Balkhabi woman saying she left the area to avoid being abused by the Taliban.

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission said in a statement last month that there was evidence the Taliban had fired some of defenseless civilians accommodation places, murdered many of the captives and the surrendered, bombarded on civilian venues, caused many families to get displaced and move out towards impassable mountainous areas, disconnected phone and internet lines, [and] blocked connective routes towards this district.

As a result, its been challenging for the media to verify information or get a full view of what is happening in the region.

Reports of executions of some civilians in Balkhab are extremely worrying, as they seem to be part of a pattern of the Taliban failing to distinguish between civilians and combatants or imposing collective punishments in areas where there has been armed resistance, said Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

Since the hard-line Islamist insurgents assumed power last summer, not a single country has formally recognized the Taliban government or actively engaged with it on a diplomatic level, largely because of serious human rights violations against women and minorities.

Working with our allies and partners, we have consistently made clear that we want to see the rights of Afghanistans women, its girls, its minorities, including its religious minorities, protected, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said earlier this month. And of course we have seen very little from the Taliban to indicate that they are prepared to make good to that public commitment, to make good to what they have conveyed in private as well.

But Ali, a local journalist whose name has been changed for this story, told HuffPost that the Talibans massacre of Hazaras, and the dire humanitarian needs of the thousands of displaced people, have received no attention from the international community.

Rahmat Gul via Associated Press

The Balkhab conflict

The Talibans campaign on Balkhab was focused on capturing Maulawi Mehdi, a Hazara commander whod recently spoken out against the Taliban. Mehdi was the intelligence chief in Bamyan, a Hazara-majority province in central Afghanistan, until he was dismissed in early June for unspecified reasons. He was the Talibans only Hazara military figure in the ethnic Pashtun-dominated Taliban government after the group came to power.

After several days of fighting between the Taliban and locals loyal to Mehdi, the Taliban were able to break through and enter the area.

We only had legitimate demands for the Taliban, a Mehdi associate told HuffPost, speaking on condition of anonymity due to security concerns. Hazaras are a reality in Afghanistan, and should be given equal opportunities to participate in government and society.

He said the Taliban waged an unjustified and unbalanced war on the Hazara people in Balkhab.

Foreign Policy noted that a cash-strapped Taliban also hopes to seize control of the coal mines in the Balkhab region. Recently increased coal exports to Pakistan could be a promising revenue stream for the group, which has been in need of money due to international sanctions. Balkhab is home to five operational coal mines.

The Taliban is on an intense campaign to consolidate resources. As part of it, they removed taxation by local Taliban actors to centralize it. Thats where the issues with Mehdi began, Ibraheem Bahiss, an Afghanistan analyst at the International Crisis Group, told Foreign Policy. He wanted to continue operating under the insurgency model of taxing local resources.

QAIS USYAN/AFP via Getty Images

Some children starved to death

With the Talibans takeover of the Balkhab district, thousands of families have been displaced. Some have made it to the neighboring Bamiyan and Balkh provinces, but many are in the barren mountains with no access to food, water or shelter.

Many people in Balkhab were caught off guard by the fighting, and had to flee the area without any supplies. The Taliban had closed roads to neighboring safe provinces, so people had to travel for days on foot or by donkey without knowing their destination they simply wanted to end up anywhere the Taliban could not follow them.

I met a Balkhabi woman who had escorted 31 members of her family to safety in the mountains, most of them being children, recalled Ali, the local journalist. Her husband was killed by the Taliban because he refused to leave Balkhab with the rest of the family, as he was sure the Taliban wouldnt harm an old and feeble man.

On the way, some children starved to death, and some aged and sick people could not survive the cold of the mountains, Ali said. Families had to feed their kids dirt to keep them alive.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs believes the number of displaced individuals to be around 27,000, but Ali estimates the actual number is much higher.

Aid workers are struggling to reach the mountainous area through which people are now scattered, and the Taliban has blocked supplies from reaching displaced families, according to local media reports.

The displaced families have immediate needs, Ali said: Without assistance, they will likely soon die of starvation or thirst. Without a roof over their heads, they must spend hours each day gathering wood and bushes for a fire to keep them warm.

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Local sources in the northern Afghan province of Samangan say that Taliban forces are still searching homes door to door in Aybak, the provinces capital. Additionally, 25 young people are said to have been arrested as a result of these searches, according to some domestic news sources.

On Sunday, July 17, the Taliban reportedly began house-to-house searches in various areas of Aybak city and carried them out until late at night, with 25 young individuals reportedly detained during these searches.

According to sources, a door-to-door search was resumed this morning in the Karte Sulha neighborhood, which is near the city of Aybak.

This is despite the fact that the Taliban had already searched peoples houses in Kabul calling it a search and clear operation, in the capital of Afghanistan.

Regarding the search of peoples houses in Samangan, the local Taliban authorities have not yet made any comment.

Afghans have been terrified by the house searches, which have brought up terrifying memories of previous house searches by previous governments.

The Afghan people have been forthright in posting images and videos of the chaos the Taliban forces have wrought on social media, criticizing what they call violations of privacy, intrusive behavior, and suppressing dissent.

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House-to-House Search and Alleged 25 Arrests in Northern Afghanistan - The Khaama Press News Agency - The Khaama Press News Agency