cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/55582711

The scientific publication: A Sovereign, Open-Source Foundation Model for German and English

Soofi S 30B-A3B is a sovereign, open-source Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) hybrid Mamba–Transformer foundation model for German and English. Its hybrid design activates only 3B of 30B parameters per token and keeps the inference cache near-constant as context grows, giving it a decisive throughput advantage over dense models for long-context, high-concurrency deployment.

Pretrained on roughly 27 trillion tokens with deliberately up-weighted German, Soofi S matches dense 14–27B models on aggregate English and German benchmarks, achieves the best code aggregates in both languages among 17 open base models, and outperforms every European sovereign baseline in our comparison — including ones far larger in active parameters. Among fully open models, it obtains the highest English and German evaluation scores, ahead of Olmo 3 32B and Apertus 70B. Soofi S was built end-to-end on the German Industrial AI Cloud, a sovereign HPC-scale AI infrastructure operated by Deutsche Telekom in Munich.

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cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/53751698

The report was adopted on Tuesday by 434 votes in favour, 128 against and 104 abstentions, the parliamentary press service announced.

Transnational repression was described in the text as deliberate acts or threats by states and authoritarian regimes — or state-linked entities and proxies — to threaten, silence, coerce or harm people living abroad, as well as their support networks and family members.

MEPs said these actions pose a threat to democracy and the protection of human rights, and amount to foreign interference.

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Targets can include dissidents, journalists, activists, academics and members of diaspora communities, as well as their families, according to the European Parliament.

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They also called for measures to share best practice between member states and floated the appointment of an EU coordinator to help develop a wider strategy, including action against digital threats, abusive Interpol “red notices” — requests to locate and provisionally arrest people pending extradition — and “consular coercion”, which the report described as pressure from embassies and consulates.

“For many people living in exile in Europe, distance doesn’t guarantee safety. Authoritarian regimes actively seek to silence critics beyond their own borders,” the report’s rapporteur, Hannah Neumann, said in the statement published by the European Parliament.

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cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/51928451

The meeting will be a stark display of Trump and Xi’s shared anti-human rights vision of transactional geopolitics. Accountability will have to come from elsewhere.

Op-ed by Carolyn Nash, Amnesty International USA’s director of advocacy for Asia.

At their summit in Beijing this week, U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will discuss trade, the war in Iran, and other pressing topics, but one vital issue will undoubtedly be off the agenda: human rights.

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Both men, in their own ways, have tried to co-opt the concept of human rights to promote their narrow economic and security interests, eliminate dissent domestically, and ignore human rights crises around the world – many of which their governments’ policies and practices have fueled.

We are thus about to see two perpetrators of grave violations meet, each one comfortable in the knowledge that the other won’t hold them accountable for their actions. If Trump’s pre-departure press conference is any indication, the gravity of human rights issues that should be on the table may be beyond the grasp of these leaders. When asked about political prisoner Jimmy Lai, Trump incomprehensively compared Lai to former FBI director James Comey, implicitly suggesting that it is excusable for leaders to imprison their critics.

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The Trump administration is overseeing a mass deportation machine that rips families apart while empowering ICE agents who have targeted and killed activists. The U.S. military under Trump has kidnapped and killed foreign heads of state, rolled back years of work to minimize civilian harm during war, committed mass murder on the high seas under the false guise of a drug war, and continued to send weapons to Israel as its government commits genocide.

Meanwhile, the Xi administration entirely stifles free expression, freedom of protest, and freedom of religion, while committing crimes against humanity against minority groups. Xi’s government has interned or disappeared over a million Uyghurs in Xinjiang and has implemented draconian laws, not least the Hong Kong National Security Law, subjecting people to indefensible state control.

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Other countries must band together and insist that Xi and Trump stop undermining ongoing efforts to implement and improve the international human rights systems, which save lives, protect millions from persecution, advance the dignity of people around the world and increase global prosperity and security. The United States and China are not above these systems, nor can their people thrive without them.

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cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/51733617

On May 7, in a historic verdict, Peter Wai and Bill Yuen were found guilty of assisting a foreign intelligence service under the U.K. National Security Act. Their convictions send an unambiguous message: transnational repression by the Chinese Communist Party has no place on British soil. Remarkably, on the same day, the United States and Norway delivered that message too. That three liberal democracies acted against Beijing’s long arm on a single day was not coordinated – but perhaps it should have been.

Peter Wai, office manager of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO) in London, and Bill Yuen, a U.K. immigration official, were convicted for their roles in a “shadow policing operation.” Wai’s position at the HKETO lent weight to longstanding concerns from civil society groups that HKETOs, which are nominally trade missions, function as additional diplomatic outposts through which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) extends its surveillance reach and advances its anti-democratic agenda abroad. Yuen, meanwhile, was found to have exploited his access to British government databases to extract sensitive immigration data on Hong Kong dissidents living in the United Kingdom, turning the machinery of the state against the very people it was meant to protect.

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The human cost of this operation had a face. Monica Kwong, a Hong Kong woman living in the U.K. on the British National (Overseas) visa scheme, became a target. Operatives slid a camera beneath her front door to observe her movements and poured water under it to lure her outside. A woman who left everything behind to seek safety in Britain was being hunted through her letterbox – that is the lived reality of transnational repression. Luckily, the counterterrorism police had been monitoring the suspects. When the men attempted to lure Kwong from her flat, police, who were already waiting inside, moved in and made the arrests.

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The convictions … demonstrate that British law is fit for purpose, and they set a precedent: stalking, intimidation, and repression on U.K. soil now carry real and serious legal consequences. The Foreign Office’s decision to summon the Chinese ambassador in the wake of the verdict underlines that the British government views this not merely as a criminal matter, but as a direct affront to national sovereignty that demands a diplomatic response.

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The very same day brought parallel developments in New York, with the continuing trial of Liu Jianwang. Liu is charged with operating a secret Chinese police station in Manhattan’s Chinatown. This is just one of over 50 such stations identified by the NGO Safeguard Defenders in cities across Europe, North America, and beyond. Prosecutors allege Liu received direct orders from Beijing to monitor, intimidate, and ultimately silence pro-democracy activists living in the United States.

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In recent years, U.S. federal prosecutors have charged multiple individuals with acting as unregistered foreign agents on Beijing’s behalf, targeting Hong Kongers, Uyghurs, and Tibetans on American soil.

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Norway’s contribution was quieter but no less pointed. On May 7, authorities arrested a Chinese national accused of collecting sensitive data near Andøya Spaceport, a facility central to Europe’s expanding space and satellite infrastructure. The alleged operation fits a well-documented pattern of Chinese intelligence activity targeting dual-use technology. In an era when satellite communications underpin everything from financial systems to battlefield coordination, Andøya is not a peripheral concern. It is exactly the kind of target Beijing’s intelligence services have shown sustained interest in.

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Three cases involving Chinese transnational operations in three different countries saw major developments on one day. The coincidence is striking, but the underlying story is not coincidental at all. It reflects the sheer scale and geographic reach of Beijing’s transnational repression campaign to monitor, harass, and silence those who have dared to speak against it. It is a campaign that does not respect borders, residency status, or the protections that democratic citizenship is supposed to confer.

The response so far is necessary but not sufficient. …

At present, democracies are largely fighting this battle alone, each developing its own legal tools, its own enforcement capacity, and its own political will at different speeds …, Beijing’s networks operate transnationally by design, exploiting the seams between jurisdictions, sharing intelligence across embassies and proxies, and adapting when one avenue is closed.

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In Britain, one concrete and overdue step would be to include China in the enhanced tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme.

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The answer beyond that is coordination. The Five Eyes intelligence alliance, NATO, and the Summit for Democracy all provide frameworks through which like-minded states can share information and align responses. What is needed is the political decision to use them explicitly for this purpose: to treat transnational repression not as a domestic law enforcement issue in each country, but as a collective security threat requiring a collective answer.

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For Hong Kongers, Uyghurs, Tibetans, and all those who sought safety in democratic countries, this week offers a measure of reassurance. The countries that took them in are beginning to defend them in earnest. The task now is to make that defense systematic, shared, and permanent.

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cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/51622296

*This is a Q&A with Christian Göbel, professor of Chinese studies with emphasis on social studies at the Department of East Asian Studies, Sinology division, at the University of Vienna, austria. His research focuses on state-society relations, local governance and protests in the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan. *

Question: The recently published Democracy Report 2026 paints a rather gloomy picture. The global share of democracies has fallen back to the level of 1978, while autocracies are gaining ground. From your perspective, what are the reasons for this dramatic advance of autocracies around the globe?

Göbel: The reasons for this are complex and mutually reinforce each other. Many people feel economically left behind, social media are spreading anti-democratic discourses, and party systems are not keeping up with increasing social complexity, which makes simplistic autocratic discourses seem more attractive.

And, of course, we also see the effects of political leaders deliberately undermining democratic institutions. It is also related to a weakening of the media, as we have seen in Hungary and to some extent also in the USA, to name two examples.

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When I hear somebody saying this, I vehemently clarify that we are very much living in a democracy – and are, to name just one example, able to discuss politics without being afraid that someone will charge into the room and arrest us for doing so.

Appreciation of democracy is often equated with material prosperity. A decline in prosperity conversely leads to people being dissatisfied with democracy.

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Security is a high priority in China. And the most important aspect of security is regime security, which in turn means the continued existence of the one-party autocratic system. China’s greatest fear is that the Communist Party will no longer rule.

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There are three pillars that serve to maintain power. The first and probably most important pillar is performance. This means that the majority of the population does not realise (or should not realise) that they are living in an autocratic regime. “If I do not speak out against the government and follow the rules, I can lead a good life in China.” This is how many Chinese people see it, and in fact, they have no alternative.

The second pillar is propaganda, which is used to indoctrinate the population and portray China as the best and most successful political and economic system. And the third pillar – which is being used surgically – is repression. Persons who try to initiate even a kind of democratic movement, put themselves in danger. They usually disappear without a trace or, at best, reappear in court.

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Taiwan’s history has largely been different to that of the People’s Republic (PRC). The Japanese occupation brought not only suffering but also economic development and prosperity, creating a strong middle class that favoured democracy.

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In social media, democracy is being undermined not only by individuals but also by bots and controlled discourse. As a result, its image is no longer viewed positively. Instead, it is often associated with oligarchy, chaos and forms of social diversification that many find unsettling.

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Platforms [in China’s internet] are … customised for the Chinese market … and these platforms are subject to tight control. Every social medium is responsible for its own censorship. Influencer accounts are monitored more closely than small accounts with few followers. There have also been several waves in which influencer accounts were shut down because they were too critical [of the Chinese Communist Party].

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Another important point is that the Chinese state media and actors have a strong media presence … This actually makes them the strongest and most important actors online, resulting in a de facto colonisation of social media by state accounts and content.

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The [autocratic] system is currently relatively successful in China, even if economic tensions are increasing. If we compare this with the USA, for example, we see that the undermining of democratic institutions does not work very well there. In terms of prosperity, we still have a higher increase in prosperity in democracies. Personally, I do not buy the argument that autocracies are more efficient.

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If we are lucky, the current events in the USA and in other countries will delegitimise autocratic practices. When populist or illiberal forces come to power, this often not only restricts citizens’ rights and heterogeneity, but also often leads to increasing government debt. It is my impression that illiberal governments will cost us dearly.

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[To increase the appreciation of democracy], politics can also create opportunities for participation beyond elections. Citizens’ councils are a good example of this. Third, we need an honest communication of what democracy is and what it is not. Democracy cannot guarantee that everything will go well, but it guarantees that we have the possibility to contribute to improving the system. I believe it is essential to increase this awareness, also through education.

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