>2) Looking at the circumstances, it seems far more likely that this was an action by ex-exployees with commercial motives, rather than government-sponsored spying.
Which doesn't surprise me, as that's practically ingrained in the Chinese culture, and is another factor to take into account when hiring Chinese people.
Yeah, when I voted for the conservatives here I thought they would roll back abortion rights but they didn't, I thought they would fix the immigration madness but they didn't, and that's why I and many other people are voting far right next election: the conservative party has simply failed to be conservative, they just became centrists to attract more votes, and I sure hope it will backfire.
And that's why these laws are popping up all over Europe: they want to maintain control, they are scared of new parties.
But do the ÖVP actually do that? I'm Spanish and I voted for a "conservative" government this last election, where they promised to do, well, stuff I expected from a conservative party, and they didn't do shit. That's why I call them "centrist". They say they are conservatives, but they don't conserve anything.
I think the wrong words were chosen by the parent. For many decades politics in Europe were dominated by traditional globalist governments, which I would describe as "centrist". For many people those governments are failing and voters are moving to the left and the right, depending on the country of course.
Centrist governments are trying to use "hate speech" laws as a way of curbing their loss of control of the media; before they could control the newspapers and the telly and therefore they could control dialogue, now with social networks that's not that easy. We are seeing that with some stories, such as rapes in Sweden and all of that. They could simply tell their friends in TV networks not to talk about it. Problem solved. That doesn't work anymore. So they need the law.
In Germany and Austria for example you need to put your real name and address in a visible part of your website known as the Impressum. What's a better way to make sure you keep your opinions under control and your head low?