The U.S. Department of Justice announced on December 18 that a Chinese executive of the telematics company Zoom is wanted for allegedly interfering with and disrupting a video conference held on Zoom’s platform to commemorate June 4. According to DOJ documents, details of how the disruption of the June 4 video conference between this Chinese and U.S. executives at Zoom came to light, reflecting the influence and coercion of Chinese Communist forces over U.S. companies in clamping down on free speech, which is very disturbing to the civilized world.
Zoom, which is based in the United States and owned by a Chinese man, has a lucrative Chinese market and a large Chinese workforce.
One of Zoom’s executives in China, indicted and wanted by the U.S. Department of Justice, is 39-year-old Xinjiang Jin (also known as Julien Jin). According to the DOJ indictment, Jin was the primary liaison between Zoom and the Chinese Communist Party’s public security and intelligence agencies, and his role was to provide the Chinese government with information about users and meetings on the Zoom platform, including those outside of China, and to monitor meetings on the Zoom platform that the Chinese Communist Party deemed to be discussing “illegal” topics. In May and June of this year, Jin Jin provided the Chinese government with information about users and meetings on the Zoom platform, including users and meetings outside of China, and monitored meetings on the Zoom platform that the CCP deemed “illegal” to discuss.
In May and June, Jin Xinjiang and others at Zoom followed the CCP’s instructions to cut off at least four video conferences held on the Zoom platform to commemorate the 31st anniversary of June 4, most of which were organized and attended by June 4 survivors and anti-communists living in the United States.
The DOJ indictment released a June 4, 2020 conversation between Jin Xinjiang and a Zoom executive in the United States, referred to as “Employee 1. The conversation was translated as follows.
Kim: Recently, the MSS (Ministry of State Security), cyber security department and cyber police department have been coming to our company frequently, and we are handling these things carefully; the MSS asked us to sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement), and we cannot disclose their requests. One of them is related to U.S. data and we are asking for a guidance plan from the U.S. We need to discuss and define a standard.
Employee 1: Okay. Has Shanghai stepped up to the plate?
Kim: The MSS request is primarily politically relevant, so they are asking us not to disclose it or it will greatly affect our country’s reputation.
Kim: It was the Shanghai Security Bureau that sent these people.
Employee 1: Understood.
Kim: China has implemented real-name registration/verification, so not too many people are doing bad things now. All [those doing bad things] are from the U.S. If we don’t handle it well, the cyber security department will ban all [Zoom’s] overseas servers, so please take it seriously.
Employee 1: We will ban all free accounts from US04 (meaning one of Zoom’s servers) as soon as possible.
Employee 1: In any case, our reputation is already very bad. (smiley face)
Kim: We found out today that until now, [Zoom’s U.S. Internet domain name] still allows Chinese people to register for free ……
Employee 1: A network package will be released tomorrow to fix it.
Kim: From the cybersecurity department’s perspective, as long as it’s a Chinese user, no matter where it is, we need to deal with it, and if not, they will activate the gfw (meaning Chinese Communist firewall) or other methods to ban it.
In response to a U.S. resident’s June 4 video conference on Zoom to commemorate the 31st anniversary of June 4, Jin Xinjiang alerted Zoom’s U.S. employees to what he called “another serious June 4 conference” and “illegal political activity,” asking. “Is there anything we can do to prevent it from having a huge impact on us? For example, terminate or suspend that account for 24 hours until June 5, for violating the terms of service?”
Later, King went on to suggest, “Putting them into quarantine is another way, just like [Zoom] is experiencing server problems …… about 24 hours later, you can restore ……. “
Soon, Jin Xinjiang had a new idea and suggested again, “This is a public meeting, so we can join and report to [Zoom] that there is an abuse meeting (abuse meeting), then you have evidence on the US side to suspend the meeting.”
According to the metadata, one of Jin Xinjiang’s Zoom colleagues in China joined this June 4 videoconference ……. After that, “Employee 1” then terminated the Zoom platform account that held this June 4 meeting and the Zoom account of the meeting organizer after receiving a request from Jin Xinjiang, before the official memorial ceremony commemorating the Tiananmen Massacre at this June 4 meeting had even begun.
After the conference was terminated and the accounts were cancelled, the organizers of the June 4 conference upgraded a free Zoom account to a paid account and then used the paid account to start a new June 4 conference in another room on the Zoom platform.
Shortly after this second June 4 meeting began, Jin Xinjiang received an email reporting that the video conference contained images of “naked girls” and the “Islamic State flag” and was suspected of “terrorism and violence” and “pornography,” and gave screenshots as evidence.
Jin Xinjiang forwarded the email to Employee 1 in the U.S., and Employee 1 again terminated the second June 4 video conference.
The U.S. Department of Justice indictment alleges that Jin Xinjiang and other co-conspirators falsified evidence of violations of the service agreement and used it as a reason to discontinue the videoconference or close the accounts of some participants, including that Jin’s co-conspirators created fake email accounts and Zoom accounts in the names of Chinese dissidents and, in doing so, faked that the June 4 videoconference organizers and participants supported terrorist organizations, incited violence, or spread child pornography, and that Jin then used the co-conspirators’ complaints to convince Zoom USA executives to terminate the June 4 memorial videoconference and close the organizers’ accounts.
June 4 student leaders Zhou Fenglock and Wang Dan, who both organized several memorial June 4 meetings on the Zoom video platform between late May and early June, both reported that the meetings were interrupted and their accounts were shut down.
According to an FBI warrant, a U.S. federal court actually issued an arrest warrant for Jin Xinjiang on Nov. 19. Since Jin Xinjiang is in China and currently unavailable, he could face up to 10 years in prison if he is arrested and convicted someday.
In a subsequent statement from Zoom, the company said it had terminated Jin’s employment and placed the other employees involved on “administrative leave.
Seth DuCharme, acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a subsequent statement that Zoom had terminated Jin’s employment and placed other employees on “administrative leave. Seth DuCharme, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said the case reveals the devious deals the Communist government is asking U.S. technology companies in China to make, and the risks those U.S. companies face internally.
John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security at the U.S. Department of Justice, said the case reveals the Chinese government’s demands that U.S. technology companies in China make devious deals and the internal risks to those companies. No company with significant business interests in China is immune from coercion by China’s Communist government,” said John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security. The Chinese Communist Party will use those companies it can reach to clamp down on freedom and suppress free speech in China, the United States and elsewhere about the Communist Party’s oppression of the Chinese people.”
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