June 2011 Archives

By Edward Wong | The New York Times

June 26, 2011

Wang Hongbin, a 60-year-old man with deep creases lining his face, took a break from his duties as village chief this month to show me around Nanjiecun, in the wheat-heavy center of the country. It was unlike any place I'd seen in my years in China. No commercial advertisements cluttered the streets, just billboards screaming proletariat platitudes and memorializing Communist icons. "Long Live the Invincible Mao Zedong Thought," read the inscription on an archway near the main government building. In the town's three convenience stores, female clerks wore olive uniforms meant to evoke the People's Liberation Army. And in the village square, surrounding the gigantic statue of Mao, stood four 30-foot portraits -- one of Marx, one of Lenin, one of Engels and one of Stalin.

I asked Wang what he thought of Stalin. "Nobody is perfect," he replied. "Even saints make mistakes."

For 34 years, Wang has been secretary of the local branch of the Communist Party, and under his leadership, Nanjiecun has held fast to a retro red vision of China at the same time that much of the rest of the country has flirted with, or outright embraced, a free-market economy. Villagers wake up every morning to loudspeakers blaring the classic anthem "The East Is Red," take a lunch break when they hear "Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman," a paean to Mao, and leave work to "Socialism Is Good." It is one of the few remaining self-styled Maoist collectives in the country.

Which is not to say that the construction of skyscrapers and shopping malls has wiped China clean of Mao's influence. The nation finds itself gripped by something of a red revival these days. Conservative factions within the Communist Party have been defending Mao's legacy with greater vehemence than usual, and top officials are pushing a campaign to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the party's founding on July 1. Workplaces have been told to organize employee choirs to belt out "red songs."

Wang is delighted by this, of course. "When we restarted collectivization" in 1986, to combat falling incomes, "we asked ourselves what kind of thought can guide our practices," Wang said. "We concluded that it was Mao Zedong thought. It's a scientific theory. It's a 'serve the people' theory."

In Wang's office, communist texts cram the bookshelves, and busts of Mao are scattered about. He told me that the villagers don't call him "party secretary," because he prefers to go by the title ban zhang, which means "squad leader" or "class monitor." He adopted the title, he said, because it's the lowest level of official, and it's in keeping with the egalitarian spirit of the village. No one can be seen as first among equals in a town where the government owns all property and enterprises; where housing, education and health care are doled out free to about 3,400 permanent residents; and where most families live in uniformly drab apartment blocks on the west side of town.

"We've realized the goal of getting rich together," Wang said.

The contrast between Nanjiecun and its neighboring villages becomes obvious as soon as you cross the city limits. On the other side, there are private shops and street markets and billboards with advertisements. One evening, I saw some residents of Nanjiecun stop outside the north gate of town to browse at a bustling open-air market. They picked at clothing, plastic toys and grilled kebabs.

Nanjiecun isn't as rigidly socialistic as it seems. Walking down a street one afternoon, I ran into a group of blue-uniformed workers. One man, Zhang Baoshou, told me he commuted from a nearby town to work in a beer factory here. His salary was somewhat higher than that of villagers who do factory work -- $155 is their average monthly haul -- but he received no benefits other than free meals and housing in a factory dormitory, which he said he didn't need. "They have a good system, but we're not part of it," he said.

Three years ago, Southern Metropolis, one of China's most respected newspapers, picked up on this point. It said that Nanjiecun had a failed economic model that was being sustained only through bank loans approved by higher party officials and through cheap migrant labor (even village officials admit that the migrant population is twice as big as the permanent one). The article estimated the village's debt at $250 million. Wang waved that number off, saying that the village had negotiated with state banks to write off most of the debt, whittling it down to about $15 million.

On my way out of Wang's office, I asked him whether he lived with his wife and parents in one of the apartment blocks on the west side of town. "I have a house," he said.

"How many villagers live in an actual home," I asked.

"Just me," he said, and smiled.

>> Original Source

By Radio Free Asia
June 17, 2011

As EU and Chinese officials met in Beijing for a dialogue on human rights, authorities in Guangxi detained rights lawyer Yang Zaixin, while further details emerged about the plight of blind Shandong activist Chen Guangcheng.

EU officials pressed China Thursday on the disappearance of monks from a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, as well as on the rights of Uyghurs, Mongols and other minorities.

'The EU side expressed its concerns about the use of forced disappearances and extra-legal detentions,' an EU statement said, amid criticism from human rights groups that the dialogues were a means for Beijing to limit any real debate.

As the diplomats sat down, Yang, a public interest lawyer who has fallen foul of the authorities in the past for defending practitioners of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, was being taken away by police, his wife said.

"I asked [the police] the reason for his detention," said Yang's wife Huang Zhongyan, who came home on Tuesday to find the house empty and much of the couple's belongings confiscated.

"I asked him why we haven't had an official notice [of arrest] yet, and he got angry with me, and said, 'Are you mad? It doesn't happen so quickly.'"

"Then he hung up the phone," Huang said.

However, Huang found out that Yang was detained on suspicion of "tampering with witnesses," and is being held at the Beihai No. 1 Detention Center.

Yang, who works at Guangxi's Baijuming Law Firm, began rights defense work in 2003, after he was framed for prostitution and was taken into custody for "education."

Over the years, he has taken many sensitive cases, including those involving Falun Gong practitioners, land requisition, environmental pollution, and migrant workers who were owed wages, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said in an emailed bulletin.

"Because of his rights defense work, he was fired from his former employer, not able to pass the annual inspection of his lawyer's license, monitored, and beaten," the group said.

Continued house arrest

Yang was also unlawfully detained and beaten for trying to attend blind Shandong activist Chen Guangcheng's court hearing in 2006.

Chen has been held under house arrest along with his wife Yuan Weijing and the couple's two-year-old daughter at their home in Yinan county since he was released from a four-year jail term last September.

However, according to a note written by Yuan and smuggled out to Beijing-based academic Guo Yushan, the couple had suffered considerable injuries from beatings in March, which came after they released a video about their continued unofficial detention.

The note said Chen's mother had been prevented since then from leaving the apartment to buy food, which made life even harder for the family. Their two-year-old child had been prevented from going outside.

According to the note, Yuan and Chen were held down and kicked by government-hired security guards, dozens of whom patrol their hometown day and night, preventing well-wishers and journalists from getting near them.

Guo Yushan declined to comment on Thursday.

"I really can't give interviews, but I can confirm that all this is correct," he said. "I have promised the authorities I won't have contact with the outside world."

Supporter threatened

Chen supporter and online activist He Peirong, known online by her nickname @pearlher, said her family had been threatened by the authorities since she visited Chen's village last month.

"I went to Yinan county four times between May 30 and June 8," He said. "I was kicked out by local officials and went back again and again."

She said Chen's entire extended family was living under threat from local officials. "It's awful," He said. "All their relatives are being threatened."

"The controls around [Chen's home] have been extended," she added. "Before, it was just outside their door, but now it's all the way to the village main street."

Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said the EU talks were unlikely to produce much progress on cases like Yang's and Chen's.

"From the Chinese government's perspective, these human rights dialogues are a means to limit and isolate any discussion about its dismal human rights record at relatively low diplomatic levels," Richardson said in a statement on Thursday.

'The EU has gone along with the script, largely treating the dialogues as business-as-usual talk shops, despite China's escalating crackdowns, detentions, and disappearances of activists,' Richardson said.

Reported by Hai Nan and Grace Kei Lai-see for RFA's Cantonese service, and by Xin Yu, Ding Xiao and Fang Yuan for the Mandarin service.
Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

>> Original Source

By Sharon LaFraniere | The New York Times
June 15, 2011

MENGXI VILLAGE, China -- On a chilly evening early last month, a mob of more than 200 people gathered in this tiny eastern China village at the entrance to the Zhejiang Haijiu Battery Factory, a maker of lead-acid batteries for motorcycles and electric bikes. They shouldered through an outer brick wall, swept into the factory office and, in an outpouring of pure fury, smashed the cabinets, desks and computers inside.

News had spread that workers and villagers had been poisoned by lead emissions from the factory, which had operated for six years despite flagrant environmental violations. But the truth was even worse: 233 adults and 99 children were ultimately found to have concentrations of lead in their blood, up to seven times the level deemed safe by the Chinese government.

One of them was 3-year-old Han Tiantian, who lived just across the road from the plant. Her father, Han Zongyuan, a factory worker, said he learned in March that she had absorbed enough lead to irreversibly diminish her intellectual capacity and harm her nervous system.

"At the moment I heard the doctor say that, my heart was shattered," Mr. Han said in an interview last week. "We wanted this child to have everything. That's why we worked this hard. That's why we poisoned ourselves at this factory. Now it turns out the child is poisoned too. I have no words to describe how I feel."

Such scenes of heartbreak and anger have been repeated across China in recent months with the discovery of case after case of mass lead poisoning -- together with instances in which local governments tried to cover them up.

In the past two and a half years, thousands of workers, villagers and children in at least 9 of mainland China's 31 province-level regions have been found to be suffering from toxic levels of lead exposure, mostly caused by pollution from battery factories and metal smelters. The cases underscore a pattern of government neglect seen in industry after industry as China strives for headlong growth with only embryonic safeguards.

Chasing the political dividends of economic development, local officials regularly overlook environmental contamination, worker safety and dangers to public health until forced to confront them by episodes like the Haijiu factory riot.

A report by Human Rights Watch released Wednesday states that some local officials have reacted to mass poisonings by arbitrarily limiting lead testing, withholding and possibly manipulating test results, denying proper treatment to children and adults and trying to silence parents and activists.

"What we are trying to underscore is how little has been done to address the massive impact of lead pollution in China," Joe Amon, the organization's health and human rights director, said in an interview. "It really has affected a whole generation of kids."

In more developed nations, where lead pollution has been tightly regulated for decades, a pattern of lead poisoning like China's would most likely be deemed a public-health emergency.

High levels can damage the brain, kidney, liver, nerves and stomach and, in extreme cases, cause death. Children are particularly susceptible because they absorb lead more easily than adults.

"No blood lead level has been found to be safe for a child," Dr. Mary Jean Brown, chief of the lead poisoning prevention branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview last week.

Here, Chinese leaders have acknowledged that lead contamination is a grave issue and have raised the priority of reducing heavy-metal pollution in the government's latest five-year plan, presented in March. But despite efforts to step up enforcement, including suspending production last month at a number of battery factories, the government's response remains faltering.

At a meeting last month of China's State Council, after yet another disclosure of mass poisoning, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao scolded Environmental Minister Zhou Shengxian for the lack of progress, according to an individual with high-level government ties who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The government has not ordered a nationwide survey of children's blood lead levels, so the number of children who are at risk is purely a matter of guesswork. Mass poisonings like that at the Haijiu factory typically come to light only after suspicious parents seek hospital tests, then alert neighbors or co-workers to the alarming results.

The few published studies point to a huge problem. One 2001 research paper called lead poisoning one of the most common pediatric health problems in China. A 2006 review of existing data suggested that one-third of Chinese children suffer from elevated blood lead levels.

The state Health Ministry said in 2006 that a nationwide test for children was unnecessary because their blood lead levels had been falling. But since then, a new source of lead pollution -- factories that produce lead-acid batteries for electric bikes, motorcycles and cars -- has emerged with a vengeance.

The industry has grown by 20 percent a year for the past five or six years, and is expected to expand further, according to Wang Jingzhong, vice director of the China Battery Industry Association. China now has some 2,000 factories and 1,000 battery-recycling plants. For regulators, Mr. Wang said, "It is a chaotic situation."

Enforcement is spotty at best. Shen Yulin, the environmental protection director for Deqing County, where the Haijiu factory is located, said 65 inspectors were responsible for a region of nearly 400 square miles, with more than 2,000 factories.

Haijiu breezed through six years of inspections, even though many workers say they were repeatedly hospitalized for lead poisoning. Only after last month's protest did authorities criticize the plant for a host of violations and order the plant closed and production lines razed.

At a press conference this month, Li Ganjie, the vice minister for environmental protection, said that every suspected case of lead poisoning is fully investigated and that "the people involved, whether they are children or adults, are well-tested and treated."

Interviews over the past month with 20 families in Henan and Zhejiang Provinces indicate otherwise. Near Jiyuan City, in Henan Province, nearly 1,000 children from 10 villages were found to have elevated blood lead levels in 2009. Government officials ordered the children treated, families relocated and the smelters cleaned up.

But a recent visitor found children still playing in the streets of one village literally in the shadow of a privately-owned lead smelter that nightly belches plumes of dark smoke. In interviews, their parents and grandparents said that local hospitals now refuse to administer new blood lead level tests, even if the families pay out of their own pockets.

"The children are not healthy. We don't know how sick they are, and we can't find out," said one 66-year-old villager whose two grandsons were found to have blood lead levels two and three times above the norm when tested in 2009.

Local officials appeared determined to suppress such complaints. Within a few hours of a visitor's arrival this month, Jiyuan City's propaganda chief appeared with three carloads of plainclothes officers, bringing all reporting and interviewing to a screeching halt.

That would not surprise Ye Cai'e, who lives near the Suji battery factory in Zhejiang Province, 200 miles southeast of Mengxi. After tests showed 53 children and 120 adults suffered from excessive lead levels, Ms. Ye said that local officials said: "Whoever makes noise will not receive compensation or medical treatment."

Migrant workers and their families were also left out of the program, villagers said. Yang Fufen, 40, said her 2-year-old son tested at more than three times the allowable blood lead level in March, but has received no medical attention, apparently because her legal residence is elsewhere.

At the Haijiu Battery Factory, which exports to the United States, regulation of lead emissions was not so much lax as nonexistent.

The factory's opening in 2005 brought more than 1,000 jobs. Local authorities allowed the plant to expand to within a rice paddy of the village. They also ignored the breakdown of ventilation equipment and the building of a hostel for workers and their spouses and children on factory grounds.

Workers say managers simply slowed down production lines when inspectors came. One worker said he had watched a supervisor cover a device that tests for lead emissions in the air with his cap, then whisk the inspectors away for tea.

>> Read Complete Report Here

By Randy Kennedy | The New York Times
June 14, 2011

The Britain-based sculptor Anish Kapoor has decided to cancel plans to show his work at the National Museum of China in Beijing, a protest against the Chinese government's detention of Ai Weiwei, the artist, architect and social critic who has been in custody in an undisclosed site for two months.

The Art Newspaper reported that Mr. Kapoor, who is known for monumental, perception-bending works made of mirrored stainless steel and powdered pigments, had been asked by the British Council, a group that works on international cultural and educational relations, to consider an exhibition with a major new work at the National Museum in Tiananmen Square as part of the "UK Now" festival late next year. But a spokeswoman for Mr. Kapoor, who was scheduled to travel to Beijing to begin making plans for the show, told the newspaper that the plans had been canceled.

Mr. Kapoor has spoken out frequently against Mr. Ai's detention and dedicated a recent public work in Paris to him. Chinese officials have said that they are holding Mr. Ai while investigating the possibility that a company controlled by him evaded taxes.

>> Original Source

By James Pomfret | REUTERS | The West Australian | via YAHOO
June 13, 2011

Riot police poured into a southern Chinese factory town crowded with migrant workers on Monday, a day after militia fired tear gas to quell rioting over the abuse of a pregnant street hawker who became a symbol of simmering grassroots discontent.

Hong Kong television showed crowds of workers and stall holders, many from the rural southwestern province of Sichuan running through the streets of Zengcheng in Guangdong province over the weekend.

The rioters smashed windows, set fire to government buildings and overturned police vehicles, bringing to a climax anger over security guards who had set upon the hawker, Wang Lianmei, on Friday. Footage showed riot police firing tear gas and deploying armored vehicles to disperse the crowds, and handcuffing protesters.

By Monday evening the unrest had subsided. But hundreds of riot police guarded the streets, and continued arriving by the busload, while wary workers watched on street corners.

Though protests have become relatively common over anything from corruption to abuse of power, the ruling Communist Party is sensitive to any possible threat to its hold on power in the wake of the protests that have swept the Arab world.

Guangdong is also a pillar of China's export industries, and persistent unrest there could unnerve buyers and investors.

Witnesses said more than 1,000 protesters had besieged at least one government office in Zengcheng.

"People were running around like crazy," a shop owner in the area told the South China Morning Post. "I had to shut the shop by 7 p.m. and dared not come out."

News reports said the incident was sparked on Friday night when security personnel in nearby Dadun village pushed pregnant hawker Wang, 20, to the ground while trying to clear her from the streets.

"The case was just an ordinary clash between street vendors and local public security people, but was used by a handful of people who wanted to cause trouble," Zengcheng Mayor Ye Niuping was quoted as saying by the China Daily newspaper.

Other clashes have erupted in southern China in recent weeks, including in Chaozhou, where hundreds of migrant workers demanding payment of their wages at a ceramics factory attacked government buildings and set vehicles ablaze.

Last week, protests erupted in central China at the death under interrogation of an official.

Over the weekend, state media said that two people were slightly injured in an explosion in Beijing's neighboring city Tianjin, set off by a man bent on "revenge against society."

Despite pervasive censorship and government controls, word of protests, along with often dramatic pictures, spreads fast in China on mobile telephones and the Internet, especially on popular microblogging sites.

In 2007, China had over 80,000 "mass incidents," up from over 60,000 in 2006, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Many involved no more than dozens protesting against local officials over complaints about corruption, abuse of power, pollution or poor wages.

No authoritative estimates of the number of protests, riots and mass petitions since then have been released.

Guangdong's Communist Party boss, Wang Yang, is one of the ambitious provincial leaders who may win a place in China's next central leadership, after President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao retire from power from late next year.

In past months, Wang has sought to cast himself as a moderate leader willing to heed ordinary citizens' gripes, and has said his priority is improving the public sense of wellbeing -- a gentler message than the hardline one that domestic security officials have pushed.

"Use rule of law to protect and realize people's democratic rights," Wang told a meeting in April, according to the official Xinhua news agency. "People don't fear poverty; what they fear is not having the market conditions for fair competition so that they can achieve prosperity."

Also in April, the Communist Party committee of Guangdong heard a lecture from Sun Liping, a sociologist from Tsinghua University in Beijing who has bluntly warned that corruption, inequality and divisions threaten to "rupture" Chinese society.

(Additional reporting by Xavier Ng, and Chris Buckley in Beijing; Editing by Ben Blanchard and Daniel Magnowski)

>> Original Source

The Malaysian Insider | Source: REUTERS
June 08, 2011

China stepped up criticism of the Philippines in a fresh exchange of invective over disputed waters, calling on Manila to stop infringing its sovereignty with irresponsible claims over the South China Sea.

"China demands that the Philippines stop unilateral actions that damage China's sovereignty and interests at sea and could lead to the expansion and complication of the South China Sea dispute, and stop issuing irresponsible comments that are inconsistent with facts," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said.

The comments, posted on the ministry's website late yesterday, were China's most vitriolic in weeks of tension as the Philippines has denounced what it says is the increasing assertiveness of Chinese ships in the region.

Yesterday, it cited the United States' stake in the stability and security of the world's second-busiest sea lane.

Hong said China had stood by its position for centuries. Conducting missions and patrols by Chinese vessels in waters under Chinese jurisdiction was "completely reasonable".

Manila defended its position, insisting the Philippines has sovereignty over parts of the disputed Spratly islands.

"We are very careful in crafting these statements and we see to it that we back up our statements and base it on facts," Abigail Valte, a spokeswoman for Philippine President Benigno Aquino, told reporters.

"We stand by what we believe in and what is ours. That is what we are trying to remind them."

She said the Philippines viewed the incursions into its territories as a "very sensitive issue," adding the government was preparing reports on the incidents before presenting the documents to an "appropriate body."

China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan all claim territories in the sea, which covers an important shipping route and is thought to hold untapped oil and gas reserves.

China's claim is to most of the sea's 1.7 million sq km, including the Spratly and Paracel archipelagos.

Manila has accused China of intrusions into its territory, citing six instances, including one in March when two Chinese patrol boats tried to ram a survey ship.

Vietnamese officials have also complained about Chinese activity in the contested waters, accusing Chinese patrol boats of harassing an oil-exploration ship conducting a seismic survey 120km off Vietnam's south-central coast.

One incident this month, in which Chinese vessels placed a buoy and posts in a part of the sea it claims, spurred protests in the cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

China could launch its first aircraft carrier this year, according to Chinese military and political sources, a year earlier than US military analysts had expected.

Despite that growing naval might, China says it poses no threat to its neighbours and that its long-term double-digit increases in military spending are in line with overall growth.

Hong said China was willing to negotiate directly with the Philippines to "seek an appropriate resolution to the relevant dispute".

>> Original Source

By Ben Blanchard - REUTERS | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
Jun 04, 2011

The United States and Taiwan pressed China to release dissidents and fully address the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations around Tiananmen Square 22 years ago, as China tightens the noose on rights activists.

The 1989 protests that clogged Beijing's Tiananmen Square and spread to other cities remain a taboo topic for the ruling Communist Party, all the more so this year following online calls for an Arab-style "jasmine revolution" in China.

The events of more than two decades ago continue to affect international perceptions of China, now the world's number two economy and increasingly active on the international stage.

The State Department said China must release all those still jailed for their participation in the 1989 protests.

"We ask the Chinese government to provide the fullest possible public accounting of those killed, detained or missing," deputy spokesman Mark Toner said.

At least five people remain in jail for joining the protests.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei, in a statement carried by the official Xinhua news agency, said the U.S. comments "ignored facts and groundlessly accused the Chinese government, (which) is a rude interference in China's internal affairs and its judicial sovereignty."

"We urge the U.S. side to abandon its political bias and rectify wrong practices to avoid disturbing China-U.S. relations."

The president of democratic Taiwan, the island China claims as its own and has never renounced the use of force to recover, said Beijing should follow Taipei's example and reform politically.

"As we look back upon the June 4th incident, we urgently hope the mainland Chinese authorities will have the courage to undertake political reforms and promote the development of freedom, democracy, human rights, and rule of law," President Ma Ying-jeou said in a statement.

On Saturday, Tiananmen Square was packed with tourists as normal, with no obvious signs that already tight security had been stepped up significantly.

Some roads in central Beijing did have greater numbers of police on them. Police checked some cars on at least one section of the city's main interior ring road.

"I didn't agree with the method of the protest, making a disturbance on the square," said a 60-year-old Beijing resident who gave her family name as Chen. "But I think there should be a way for people to express what's on their mind."

FASTING FOR THE DAY

Dissidents said controls over them had been strengthened.

"I can't come out today. I've been kept at home. But I'll be fasting for the day, like I do every June 4 anniversary," said Zhou Duo.

Zhou was one of the four activists in 1989 who negotiated with troops to evacuate Tiananmen Square of student-protesters, avoiding bloodshed on the square itself on June 4. He was later jailed for his role in the protests.

"Of course, sooner or late June 4 will be reassessed and rehabilitated. That's inevitable. History can never be completely erased."

Zhang Xianling, who lost her son in the Tiananmen protests, said she had been allowed out to visit her son's grave, but was being followed and was not allowed to go as a group with other bereaved parents, as she has done in the past.

"It shows that even after all these years, China is still limiting human rights," Zhang said.

Later in the day, tens of thousands are expected to flock to a downtown park in Hong Kong to hold a candlelight vigil that drew about 150 thousand people last year.

Hong Kong, a former British colony that reverted to Chinese rule in 1997 with a promise of a high degree of autonomy, has remained a beacon for the overseas Chinese pro-democracy movement.

After the crackdown, the government called the movement a "counter revolutionary" plot, but has more recently referred to it as a "political disturbance."

Recent unrest in Inner Mongolia and explosions in two provinces sparked by social grievances have also ruffled authorities as the leadership prepares to hand over power to a new generation at a Party Congress next year.

"Traditionally in the one to two years before any Party congress, the leadership is very stubborn about maintaining law and order," said Willy Lam, a Hong Kong-based China watcher.

(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley, Ken Wills and K.J. Kwon in Beijing, Paul Eckert in Washington, James Pomfret and Xavier Ng in Hong Kong, and Jonathan Standing in Taipei; Editing by Robert Birsel)

>> Original Source

By Dan Martin - AFP Agence France Presse | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
June 02, 2011

China said Thursday it was "unacceptable" to blame it for a cyberspying campaign which Google said had targeted the Gmail accounts of senior US officials, journalists and Chinese activists.

The comments marked the latest salvo in a battle between the Chinese government and Google dating back to last year when the US Internet giant revealed it had been the victim of a separate China-based cyberattack.

"To put all of the blame on China is unacceptable," foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters.

"The so-called statement that the Chinese government supports hacking attacks is a total fabrication... It has ulterior motives."

Google said Wednesday it was hit by a cyberspying campaign that appeared to have originated in Jinan, capital of the eastern Chinese province of Shandong.

The company did not specifically point the finger of blame at Chinese authorities.

"We recently uncovered a campaign to collect user passwords, likely through phishing," Google security team engineering director Eric Grosse said in a blog post.

"The goal of this effort seems to have been to monitor the contents of these users' emails, with the perpetrators apparently using stolen passwords to change peoples' forwarding and delegation settings," he said.

Those affected included senior US government officials, Chinese political activists, military personnel, journalists and officials in several Asian countries, mainly South Korea, Grosse said.

"Google detected and has disrupted this campaign to take users' passwords and monitor their emails," he said.

"We have notified victims and secured their accounts," he added. "In addition, we have notified relevant government authorities."

The "phishing" ruse used to trick Gmail users into revealing account names and passwords reportedly involved sending booby-trapped messages that appeared to come from legitimate associates, friends or organisations.

The White House is investigating the situation but has no reason to believe that Gmail accounts of senior government officials were hacked, an official told AFP.

Briefing reporters on a new White House strategy statement about cyber-security, the Pentagon Tuesday did not rule out a military response if the United States was hit by an online attack.

"A response to a cyber-incident or attack on the US would not necessarily be a cyber response," Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan said.

Google said the California-based firm's systems and servers were not attacked.

There was no indication whether the Gmail spying campaign was related to the China-based cyberattack on Google that prompted the company early last year to stop bowing to Internet censors and reduce its presence in the country.

Google, whose motto is "Don't Be Evil", had initially threatened to close its Chinese operations altogether because of censorship and cyberattacks it said originated from China.

At that time, Beijing virulently denied any state involvement in the cyberattacks that Google said targeted email accounts of Chinese human rights activists, saying such claims were "groundless".

Beijing tightly controls online content in a vast system dubbed the "Great Firewall of China", removing information it deems harmful such as pornography and violent content, but also politically sensitive material.

Noting that China too had been a victim of cyberattacks, Hong said: "The Chinese government always disapproves of criminal activities including hacker activities and other activities that impair the Internet."

The spokesman added: "We punish these activities in accordance with law."

>> Original Source

By BBC Word News
May 31, 2011

China's Foreign Ministry has claimed that foreigners are stirring up trouble in the province of Inner Mongolia.

Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said attempts cause trouble would not succeed, but she did not specify which foreigners she was talking about.

Last week, hundreds protested after two ethnic Mongolians were killed - allegedly by Han Chinese assailants.

Protest groups say the deaths have highlighted wider concerns about the economic development of the region.

Many ethnic Mongolians say their traditional nomadic way of life is being overridden, particularly by mining projects.

'Ulterior motives'

The Chinese authorities have tightened security across the region, and there have been no reports of demonstrations this week.

The government has largely removed references to the protests from the internet.

Ms Jiang told a regular news conference that the authorities would try to tackle the grievances of the people in Inner Mongolia.

"As for the reasonable claims by the people, the local authorities will respond positively to them," she said.

But she added that people overseas were trying to use the incident to cause trouble.

"As for those overseas trying to play up this incident for ulterior motives, we feel that it would be impossible for them to succeed," she said.

The unrest erupted last week after two ethnic Mongolians were killed in separate incidents.

A farmer was run over and killed on 10 May while trying to protect his land.

Five days later, another ethnic Mongolian was killed during a protest at a mine.

Less than 20% of Inner Mongolia's estimated 25 million residents are ethnic Mongolians. About 80% are Han Chinese.

>> Original Source