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China Tag

Posted by Leslie Eastman on October 05, 2015 6 Comments
As our East Coast deals with the effects of Hurricane Joaquin and tens of thousands are evacuated in Southern China from the path of typhoon Mujigae, it appears that the relationship between the two nations is headed for equally turbulent weather. While Obama was meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping to complain about his nation's hacking of our cyber systems and carping about Russian escalation in Syria, reports indicate that China was preparing to increase its presence in the Middle East conflict:
Earlier this week, Chinese naval vessels have allegedly traveled through Egypt’s Suez Canal and entered the Mediterranean Sea. According to a senior officer in the Syrian Arab Army, and confirmed by a Russian Senator (in the propaganda outlet Pravda), the naval vessels are headed for Syria’s Port of Tartus, and that “China has joined [Russia’s] military operation in Syria.” The reports indicate that the Chinese vessels will reach Tartus within six weeks. No explanation is given in these reports for the long time frame.

Posted by Amy Miller on September 28, 2015 14 Comments
Today before the United Nations General Assembly, Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin sparred publicly over how their respective nations have approached a solution to crises in Ukraine and Syria. For both leaders, these speeches were an opportunity to regain control of a spiraling military, security, and human rights narrative that is now being influenced not only by the spread of Islamic terrorism, but the effects of mass migration out of the Middle East and Africa and into Europe. President Obama lashed out at Putin over Russia's aggression toward Ukraine and criticized Putin's leadership (or, lack thereof) on the Syrian crisis. Oddly enough, though, Obama somehow managed leave himself space to justify a partnership with Russia as a way of addressing conflict in Syria. From the New York Times:
Mr. Obama made a forceful defense of diplomacy but also castigated Russia by name multiple times in his speech for its defense of the Syrian government, its takeover of Crimea and its actions supporting Ukrainian rebels. “Dangerous currents risk pulling us back into a darker, more disordered world,” Mr. Obama said. Those currents include major powers that want to ignore international rules and impose order through force of military power, he said.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on September 25, 2015 2 Comments
As more details of the massive Office of Personnel Management (OPM) hack are made public, China's likely roll in the unprecedented hack is increasingly difficult to ignore. In July, Amy explored why China is at least for official purposes, off the the hook for the OPM hack.
Citing concerns over national security, the Obama Administration has decided that they will not publicly blame China for the hack, even though conventional wisdom (and a fair amount of now-public evidence) suggests that they were responsible. Officials fear that coming out in an official capacity against Beijing will compromise what evidence investigators have been able to assemble. More from WaPo:

Posted by Amy Miller on September 23, 2015 13 Comments
Back in July, the federal government let it slip that they had evidence that China was responsible for compromising the records of nearly 22 million federal employees. It was one of the largest thefts of government data ever recorded, and exposed gaping holes in the security protocols protecting sensitive information. The wake of the breach was plagued by resignations and recriminations, and new protocols were pitched, but these "solutions" left those affected feeling completely out in the cold. Unfortunately for those people, things just got a lot worse. OPM revealed today that they believe hackers stole the fingerprints of 5.6 million federal employees and applicants---a far cry from the 1.1 million that OPM originally reported. Of note: this news was released just as the Pope arrived at the White House, which was a terribly convenient happenstance. More from the NY Times:
Before Wednesday, the agency had said that it lost only 1.1 million sets of fingerprints among the more than 22 million individuals whose records were compromised.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on August 15, 2015 21 Comments
While the EPA is dealing with the fallout from the Animas River spill that it created, China is responding to a chemical catastrophe of its own:
Fires shot plumes of black smoke into the sky Saturday at the site of a chemical warehouse in Tianjin, China, where explosions earlier this week killed at least 105 people. But officials denied news reports that an evacuation order had been issued for everyone within 1.8 miles (3 kilometers), with Tianjin government spokesman Gong Jiansheng calling the reports "false information." The Beijing News, citing Armed Police, had reported the evacuation order. CNN has reported that at least one disaster recovery shelter is located within the reported evacuation zone. However, photographs made it appear that vehicles in a parking lot had caught fire rather than new explosions having taken place at the warehouse, as the Xinhua news agency had reported.
The Chinese have ordered an evacuation radius of nearly 2 miles due to the presence of numerous toxic chemicals and irritating vapors. Drone footage of the port area where the detonation took place is now available, and the extent of the damage is breathtaking.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 10, 2015 20 Comments
For the past five years, Chinese cyber spies have been reading the private emails of an undisclosed but presumably large number of top Obama administration officials. A report released Monday from NBC news sites an anonymous U.S. senior intelligence official and a secret document. Evidently, U.S. officials have been aware of the email security breech since April of 2010.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on August 03, 2015 7 Comments
As President Obama is busy waging “quixotic” war on Greenhouse Gases, China is making real geostrategic and territorial gains in Indian Ocean and South China Sea. China is not only reclaiming Islands in its backyard -- furnished with airstrips and Naval bases in the South China Sea, but also building a corridor connecting the western Chinese city of Kashgar to the Arabian Sea. China’s plans are so aggressive and ambitious that it would make even a seasoned foreign policy expert’s head spin -- don't expect that from anyone in the current U.S. administration. While Obama administration spends big on climate change and works to shrink U.S.'s carbon-footprint, the administration is equally committed to shrinking U.S.'s geostrategic footprint in the world. Sensing U.S's disengagement from the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean, China is pasturing aggressively in the Indian Ocean to encircle its Asian rival, India. China and India share historic rivalries. After invading Tibet, China attacked India in 1962 -- successfully pushing back Indian defences and occupying roughly 40,000 km of Indian territory. Since 1960s, China has made further territorial claims in India. In September 2014, China docked a nuclear submarine at Sri Lanka's Colombo port [near India’s southern-most coastline], followed by an attack submarine just few weeks later. 

Posted by Amy Miller on July 22, 2015 7 Comments
The federal government has finally decided how to publicly handle an OPM data breach that compromised over 20 million federal employee records this past June. Rather, they've decided what they aren't going to do about it. Citing concerns over national security, the Obama Administration has decided that they will not publicly blame China for the hack, even though conventional wisdom (and a fair amount of now-public evidence) suggests that they were responsible. Officials fear that coming out in an official capacity against Beijing will compromise what evidence investigators have been able to assemble. More from WaPo:
“We have chosen not to make any official assertions about attribution at this point,” said a senior administration official, despite the widely held conviction that Beijing was responsible. The official cited factors including concern that making a public case against China could require exposing details of the United States’ own espionage and cyberspace capabilities. The official was among several who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

Posted by Jay Caruso on July 07, 2015 6 Comments
Things are bad in both of China's big exchanges; both the Shanghai and Shenzen are seeing companies halting their trading on both:
Over 700 Chinese companies have halted trading to "self preserve," according to the state media. That means about a quarter of the companies listed on China's two big exchanges -- the Shanghai and Shenzhen -- are no longer trading. China's stock markets are in trouble. The Shanghai Composite Index has fallen over 25% since mid-June. The Shenzhen, which has more tech companies and is often compared to America's Nasdaq Index, is down even more.
Government intervention has not helped:
Chinese stocks fell on Tuesday, taking little comfort from a slew of support measures unleashed by Beijing in recent days, and unnerved by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's failure to mention the market chaos in a statement on the economy. Before the market opened, Li said in comments posted on a government website that China had the confidence and ability to deal with challenges faced by its economy, but had nothing to say on the three-week plunge that has knocked around 30 percent off Chinese shares since mid-June.
Morgan Stanley Asia Chairman Stephen Roach said some of China's problems can be traced back to issues related to the debt-to-GDP ratio:

Posted by Amy Miller on June 04, 2015 14 Comments
US officials suspect hackers in China are responsible for a cyber attack on the Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) computer systems that left the personal information of almost four million current and former federal government employees exposed. The breach, which was detected back in April, is now being described as one of the largest thefts of government data ever seen. DHS concluded back in May that the information had indeed been compromised and stolen, but so far neither OPM of the FBI have indicated exactly whose records have been exposed. More from WaPo:
“Certainly, OPM is a high value target,” said OPM Chief Information Officer Donna Seymour, in an interview. “We have a lot of information about people, and that is something that our adversaries want.” With that understanding, she said, within the last year “OPM has undertaken an aggressive effort to update our cybersecurity posture, adding numerous tools and capabilities to our networks. As a result of adding these tools, we were able to detect this intrusion into our networks.” “Protecting our federal employee data from malicious cyber incidents is of the highest priority at OPM,” said the agency’s director, Katherine Archuleta, in a statement.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 16, 2015 12 Comments
This would be funny were it not for the fact that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is such a sad sack of haters. Activists from Ithaca Jewish Voice for Peace were behind the recent failed effort to get GreenStar Food Coop in Ithaca, NY (home of Cornell University) to boycott Israel. Those activists formed a group called Central NY Committee for Justice in Palestine, later reconfigured as Ithaca Food Justice for Palestine. But two JVP activists, Ariel Gold and Beth Harris -- who (in)famously got themselves arrested at the AIPAC annual conference -- were behind it all. Details on that GreenStar boycott effort, including the hateful messages used as part of the campaign (See Featured Image for one example), are in my post, Huge BDS loss – GreenStar Food Coop rejects Israel boycott. Attempts were made to take the GreenStar boycott movement national, involving such "stars" as Angela Davis and Medea Benjamin, but that didn't help them much: Greenstar Boycott Angela Davis Medea Benjamin One aspect of the failed boycott effort involved China. China?

Posted by Amy Miller on November 14, 2014 14 Comments
This week, the United States and China shocked the world with a joint announcement pledging to address greenhouse gas emissions. The plan has been touted as "historic" by Administration leaders, but critics say that the end game of this plan is less about controlling climate change, and more about creating a favorable political environment. From CBS News:
Mr. Obama announced that the U.S. would move much faster in cutting pollution, with a goal to reduce emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025, compared with 2005 levels. Earlier in his presidency, he set a goal to cut emissions by 17 percent by 2020. Xi, whose country's emissions are still growing as it builds new coal plants, didn't commit to cut emissions by a specific amount. Rather, he set a target for China's emissions to peak by 2030, or earlier if possible. He also pledged to increase the share of energy that China will derive from sources other than fossil fuels. Together, the U.S. and China create more than one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
Anyone who has paid attention to China's economic model over the past decade (and beyond,) or the political climate in the U.S. going into the lame duck session, knows that a plan that has the potential to impact economic growth is beyond unrealistic. Republican leadership in the Senate is not impressed:

Posted by Leslie Eastman on September 28, 2014 6 Comments
My stepdaughter, a graduate of UCLA with a degree in Chinese, works in Beijing. Today, she has been regularly protesting updates via Facebook on the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, and confirms that tear gas is being used to disperse the massive crowds.
Tens of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators are surging through the streets of Hong Kong to protest against Beijing’s influence over how the semi-autonomous territory elects its top officials. Police used several rounds of tear gas to scatter the mostly peaceful crowds that had blocked one of Hong Kong’s main thoroughfares in the early evening. But protestors did not disperse entirely. Earlier today, pro-democracy group Occupy Central announced the beginning of a civil disobedience campaign intended to disrupt Asia’s largest financial center until its demands for free elections are met. The campaign, originally planned for October, is riding a wave of momentum following a sit-in over the weekend where televised clashes between police and students, some of whom were pepper sprayed, prompted city residents to rally in support of the students. Organizers say that around 60,000 demonstrators were on the streets today, media reports put that number at 30,000, and police have not given an estimate.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 06, 2014 0 Comments
I guess it is not really surprising that Israel is doing well in Chinese social media. Israel and China have signed a series of new trade agreements in recent months, including academic cooperation, as we detailed in Israel-China tech deal another blow to BDS. Those expanding trade connections, based in large part on Chinese desire for Israeli technology and know-how, have continued uninterrupted during the Gaza hostilities:
China is now Israel's second- largest trading partner, with exports of US$2.88 billion and imports of US$7.99 billion last year. Chinese companies are eyeing several high-profile investment deals in Israel. These include tendering for construction of a railway linking Eilat on the Red Sea and Ashdod on the Mediterranean, and purchasing a more than US$1 billion controlling stake in Tnuva, Israel's dairy giant.
Peter Cai at the China Spectator writes on September 2, How Israel is winning the social media war in China:

Posted by Bruce Carroll on July 13, 2014 3 Comments
In May, the Obama Administration announced a crackdown of Chinese cyber espionage. The grand jury indictments charged five Chinese People’s Liberation Army members with hacking the computers of a number of U.S. businesses and organizations. Now the U.S. government alleges that Boeing was the target in a new round of Chinese cyber spying.
Su Bin, the owner of a Chinese aviation-technology company with an office in Canada, conspired with two unidentified individuals in China to break into the computer networks of U.S. companies to get information related to military projects, according to charges unsealed yesterday in federal court in Los Angeles. Su advised the two others in China on what data to target, according to the charges. Su’s alleged co-conspirators claimed to have stolen 65 gigabytes of data from Boeing related to the C-17 military cargo plane, according to the criminal complaint. They also allegedly sought data related to other aircraft, including Lockheed Martin’s F-22 and F-35 fighter jets.
As was the case with the indictments in May, there appears to be direct evidence linking Su Bin and the Chinese government.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on June 17, 2014 16 Comments
It looks likes one of the global flashpoints I mentioned earlier this year is heating up. While Iraq descends rapidly into chaos, tensions may be building in another section of the Asian continent. India is poised to double its forces along the border with China.
The new BJP government is keen to send out a strong signal to Beijing regarding border disputes by nearly doubling the deployment of Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnel on the India-China frontier. Top government sources said the ITBP will very soon have more boots on the ground to effectively guard the border that has witnessed several Chinese incursions in the past few years. The previous UPA government was often criticised for being "soft" on the issue of Chinese incursions. The Home Ministry has approved the construction of 54 new border outposts along the disputed frontier with China. A proposal in this regard was made by the ITBP before the polls but the previous government did not go ahead on it. With the new outposts, the number of troops on the ground too will increase. Currently, there are close to 40 outposts and nearly 15,000 troops guard the sensitive zones. Sources said the number could now go up to 30,000. "There were critical gaps regarding security on the China border that need to be filled up," said a senior Home Ministry official. "The increase in deployment should not be construed as an aggressive approach on our part. We are only securing out territory," a top government official said.
What is most interesting is the new prime minister's inauguration is also sending another message to China -- one I suspect it will not much like:

Posted by David Gerstman on May 28, 2014 11 Comments
For years many the feeling was that Europe had unquestioned leverage with Israel and therefore could take sides without losing its clout. But trade and tech have taken their toll on this assumption. Israel is building alliances in Asia, and European leverage is sure to suffer. Former Israeli foreign and defense minister, Moshe Arens, explains in Ha'aretz Why Israel is shifting eastward.
On reflection this is not totally unexpected. For many years the economic development of the countries in East Asia has been outpacing the economic development of Europe. Japan made giant strides in the years after World War II. South Korea followed suit. China has become the economic wonder of the twenty-first century. There are, as well, indications of accelerated economic development in India, the world’s largest democracy. It is natural that Israel’s economic relationship with these countries would begin to rival its relationships with the countries of Europe, a Europe which seems to be in permanent economic crisis and lagging behind the Asian tigers. ... Despite the centuries of anti-Semitism that marked most European nations and the guilt borne by them for their actions during the Holocaust, Europe, in recent years through the machinery of the European Union, has waged a constant campaign of criticism and condemnation of the policies pursued by Israeli governments, going so far as to impose economic sanction against Israel.
The second point was made in an op-ed in late February by Clemens Wergin in the New York Times, Why Israel no longer trusts Europe.
To Europe, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the root of all problems facing the region — a view in no way altered by the Arab Human Development Reports published by the United Nations since 2002, which showed that Arab autocracies and cultural backwardness were the root of the region’s woes.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 21, 2014 5 Comments
Two days ago we asked, Did Indian election eviscerate BDS?, noting that election of a pro-Israel party and leader made likely vastly expanded business for Israel in India.  We noted also a massive joint academic research deal signed with China. It has just been announced that Israel had signed massive trade deals with various Chinese provinces, and 350 Chinese entrepreneurs attended a tech conference in Israel, as reported by The Jerusalem Post, Israel inks tech pacts with China’s Silicon Valley
Israel signed a bilateral industrial R&D cooperation agreement on Tuesday with China’s Zhejiang Province, known as the Silicon Valley of China, as 350 delegates from the Asian giant attended MIXiii, the Israel Innovation Conference. It also inked agreements with Jiangsu Province’s Science and Technology Department to promote Israeli companies’ participation in Chinese innovation parks and a first-of-its kind pilot program to encourage Israeli companies participation in the Changzhou Innovation Park in Jiangsu (population 79 million). “The science and technology of Israel need market potential and also market rules, and Zhejiang is a great partner,” Zhou Guohni, director- general of Zhejiang Province (population 55 million), told The Jerusalem Post at the signing in Tel Aviv. “We are facing a transformation and upgrade of the industry, and we need Israel’s technology to help transform and upgrade it.” The Economy Ministry’s Chief Scientist Avi Hasson said the agreement “will help many Israeli companies expand into the Chinese market and marks the next stage in the economic and technological relationship between our two countries.”
Read on, the expansion of ties is even wider than described above. Meanwhile, on campuses like UCLA, U. Michigan, Wesleyan and a dozen or two more, naive students are trying to get their student governments to call for divestment from selected companies doing business in Israel. The student governments have no power to effect divestment of university endowments, it's all symbolic. Sure, we're going to fight BDS vigorously, to the end, because it's malicious. Witness what happened at Vassar, where SJP actually posted a Nazi cartoon and cited white supremacists for their anti-Zionist theories.
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