In addition to initiating an internal security review, Bolden said he’s also contemplating asking an independent panel to undertake an investigation. In addition, he ordered a moratorium on granting any new access to NASA facilities to people from countries considered to be espionage threats, including China, Burma, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan. Existing NASA workers from those countries have also had their ability to access NASA facilities via remote computers temporarily suspended.

The issue is particularly sensitive because NASA has been forbidden by Congress from cooperating with China in space. Wolf himself was the author of a clause included in a U.S. spending bill passed in April 2011 that banned NASA from working with China or Chinese-owned companies on any bilateral projects.

“I don’t deal with China by direction of this Congress,” Bolden said during a separate House hearing with the Science, Space and Technology Committee held yesterday (March 19). He called the prohibition “the elephant in the room” and said, “We’re the only agency of the federal government that does not have bilateral relations with China.”

Friends of Jiang claim that he is simply “an unfortunate political scapegoat”. From Amy Li at the South China Morning Post:

Xing explained that Jiang was not ‘fleeing’ US as reported by some media. Jiang was leaving the US on a one-way ticket after he had learned his contract with Nasa would not be renewed. Jiang was headed back to China to spend time with his family, before reporting to a new job in Europe.

According to an FBI affidavit, when agents asked Jiang what electronic media he had with him during the investigation, Jiang told them he had a mobile phone, a memory stick, an external hard drive and a new computer. But agents later found an extra laptop, an old hard drive and a Sim card.

“From the way FBI agents asked these questions, Jiang could easily have been misled into thinking to mention only the objects in his carry-on, but not his checked-in luggage,” Xing wrote in Jiang’s defence.

“His spoken English isn’t so good, and I wonder if he had explained himself clearly, especially when he could have been really nervous,” Xing added.

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Post tags: congress, congressional hearing, espionage, NASA, space technology, spy
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In one case that has unfolded over the past two years, however, a trail of reused email addresses and aliases led to the business website and personal QQ and Kaixin accounts of a teacher at the P.L.A.’s Information Engineering University. At Bloomberg Businessweek, Dune Lawrence and Michael Riley describe and build researchers Joe Stewart’s and Cyb3rsleuth’s investigations of suspected hacker Zhang Changhe.

Computer attacks from China occasionally cause a flurry of headlines, as did last month’s hack on the New York Times (NYT). An earlier wave of media attention crested in 2010, when Google (GOOG) and Intel (INTC) announced they’d been hacked. But these reports don’t convey the unrelenting nature of the attacks. It’s not a matter of isolated incidents; it’s a continuous invasion.

[…] Investigators at dozens of commercial security companies suspect many if not most of those hackers either are military or take their orders from some of China’s many intelligence or surveillance organizations. In general, they say the attacks are too organized and the scope too vast to be the work of freelancers. Secret diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks connected the well-publicized hack of Google to Politburo officials, and the U.S. government has long had classified intelligence tracing some of the attacks to hackers linked to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), according to former intelligence officials. None of that evidence is public, however, and China’s authorities have for years denied any involvement.

Up to now, private-sector researchers such as Stewart have had scant success putting faces to the hacks. There have been faint clues left behind—aliases used in domain registrations, old online profiles, or posts on discussion boards that give the odd glimpse of hackers at work—but rarely an identity. Occasionally, though, hackers mess up. Recently, one hacker’s mistakes led a reporter right to his door.

[…] Outing one person involved in the hacking teams won’t stop computer intrusions from China. Zhang’s a cog in a much larger machine and, given how large China’s operations have become, finding more Zhangs may get easier. Show enough of this evidence, Stewart figures, and eventually the Chinese government can’t deny its role. “It might take several more years of piling on reports like that to make that weight of evidence so strong that it’s laughable, and they say, ‘Oh, it was us,’ ” says Stewart. “I don’t know that they’ll stop, but I would like to make it a lot harder for them to get away with it.”

Meek confessions from China do seem a long way off for now, as Adam Segal of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote shortly after the Times hacking was revealed:

Several commentaries and an article in the People’s Daily all suggest that Beijing is not reacting to the public announcements with anything approaching shame. In fact, they all portray the claims as part of an effort to discredit China and distract from the offensive actions the United States is taking in cyberspace. The People’s Daily notes that while the United States is portraying itself as the “patron saint of the free Internet” it has plans to expand U.S. Cyber Command fivefold. He Hui, deputy director at the Communication University of China, argues that the claims about Chinese hacking are getting tiresome and in fact serve three alternate purposes: they raise suspicion about China’s rise in the United States and the rest of the world; help raise defense budgets, especially for cyber weapons; and justify protectionist trade measures against Chinese firms that are beginning to challenge the big American companies.

Other recent news may do little to dispel these views. The New York Times reported early this month, for example, that a secret legal review had authorized pre-emptive strikes in response to “credible evidence of a major digital attack looming from abroad”. From David E. Sanger and Thom Shanker:

One senior American official said that officials quickly determined that the cyberweapons were so powerful that — like nuclear weapons — they should be unleashed only on the direct orders of the commander in chief.

[…] “While this is all described in neutral terms — what are we going to do about cyberattacks — the underlying question is, ‘What are we going to do about China?’ ” said Richard Falkenrath, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “There’s a lot of signaling going on between the two countries on this subject.”

China is not alone in its wariness of U.S. policy. At The New Republic, Thomas Rid argued that the Obama administration’s “lousy” record on cyber security includes neglecting defensive in favor of offensive capabilities.

Indeed, the Obama administration has been so intent on responding to the cyber threat with martial aggression that it hasn’t paused to consider the true nature of the threat. And that has lead to two crucial mistakes: first, failing to realize (or choosing to ignore) that offensive capabilities in cyber security don’t translate easily into defensive capabilities. And second, failing to realize (or choosing to ignore) that it is far more urgent for the United States to concentrate on developing the latter, rather than the former.

[…] So amid all the activity, little has been done to address the country’s major vulnerabilities. The software that controls America’s most critical infrastructure—from pipeline valves to elevators to sluices, trains, and the electricity grid—is often highly insecure by design, as the work of groups like Digital Bond illustrates. Worse, these systems are often connected to the internet for maintenance reasons, which means they are always vulnerable to attack. Shodan, a search engine dubbed the Google for hackers, has already made these networked devices searchable. Recently a group of computer scientists at the Freie Universität in Berlin began to develop their own crawlers to geo-locate these vulnerable devices and display them on a map. Although the data are still incomplete and anonymized, parts of America’s most vulnerable infrastructure are now visible for anyone to see.

Defending these areas ought to be the government’s top priority, not the creation of a larger Cyber Command capable of going on the offense. Yet the White House has hardly complained that the piece of legislation that would have made some progress towards that goal, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, has stalled indefinitely in the Senate.

On Tuesday, however, the Associated Press reported that fear of “America […] losing cyber war to China” might help drive legislation through an otherwise gridlocked Congress:

Declaring that America is losing an aggressive cyber-espionage campaign waged from China, administration officials and lawmakers on Wednesday agreed to push legislation that would make it easier for the government and industry to share information about who is getting hacked and what to do about it.

They say this new partnership, codified by law and buoyed by President Barack Obama’s new executive order, is critical to keeping countries like China, Russia and even Iran from rummaging in American computer networks and targeting proprietary data they can use to wreak havoc or compete against U.S. businesses.

[…] “Until Congress acts, President Obama will be fighting to defend this country with one hand tied behind his back,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who promised Wednesday to advance a bipartisan proposal “as soon as possible.”

The threat from China has already proven lucrative for some in the private sector. Previously at Businessweek, Brad Stone and Michael Riley profiled security firm Mandiant, enlisted by both The New York Times and The Washington Post to exorcise suspected Chinese intrusions. The company’s $100 million business has been built in large part on the threat of attacks from China.

In one large central control room, dubbed the Bridge, a dozen security analysts peer quietly at their computer monitors, looking for anomalous activity on the computer networks of Mandiant’s hundreds of corporate clients around the world. A large computer display on the wall shows an image of the earth, seen from space, that highlights inbound and outbound network activity in each country. Mandiant monitors the entire planet, yet a printout taped to the desk of one analyst suggests that these days, the company has a more specific focus. “To accuse the Chinese military of launching cyberattacks without solid proof is unprofessional and baseless,” reads an excerpt from a recent Chinese government statement. Jennifer Ayers, who manages the Redwood City facility, removes the printout and folds it in half. “We’re not supposed to editorialize,” she says.

[…] For the first few years, [Mandia's] company remained small and relatively unknown outside computer security circles. But it was in the right place at the right time. In 2011, as anxieties about attacks by China spread, the company raised $70 million from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and the investment arm of JPMorgan Chase (JPM). […]

See also a ChinaFile conversation on recent hackings between CDT founder Xiao Qiang, Orville Schell, James Fallows, Bill Bishop and others, and more on hacking and cyber security via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Barack Obama, congress, cyberattacks, cyberespionage, cybersecurity, cyberwar, Eric Schmidt, hackers, hacking, PLA, Rupert Murdoch
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The discovery raises questions about procurement practices by U.S. departments responsible for national security. The U.S. government and Congress have raised concerns about Huawei and its alleged ties to the Chinese military and government. The company, the world’s second-largest telecommunications equipment maker, denies its products pose any security risk or that the Chinese military influences its business.

[…] William Plummer, Huawei’s vice president of external affairs in Washington, said in an email to Reuters: “There has never been a shred of substantive proof that Huawei gear is any less secure than that of our competitors, all of which rely on common global standards, supply chains, coding and manufacturing.

“Blackballing legitimate multinationals based on country of origin is reckless, both in terms of fostering a dangerously false sense of cyber-security and in threatening the free and fair global trading system that the U.S. has championed for the last 60-plus years.”

The Economist (via CDT) addressed the Huawei investigation in a pair of articles last August.

In another sign of American wariness, China was specifically excluded last week from the relaxation of export restrictions on communications satellites. From William J. Broad at The New York Times:

The strict export controls arose from a political fight over satellite launchings by China, which in the 1980s began offering cheap rides into orbit on low-cost rockets. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, both Republicans, approved transfers of American spacecraft to Chinese rockets, as did President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.

Starting in early 1998, a series of upsets brought the expanding trade to a halt. Two American satellite makers involved in the Chinese launchings, Hughes and Loral, were accused of giving China advice about making not only commercial rockets, but also military missiles.

Republicans, who controlled Congress at the time, argued that satellite exports could lead to a hemorrhage of secret materials and information, and said that China might already have stolen encryption secrets.

China responded to its continued exclusion with “grave concern”. From Yang Jingjie at Global Times:

[… T]he relaxation of export controls shut China out by stipulating that no satellites or related items may be exported, re-exported or transferred to China, North Korea or any country that is a state sponsor of terrorism. It prohibits satellites or related items from being launched in those countries, and prohibits those countries from using these items in their launch vehicles. Only the president could waive the prohibition on a case-by-case basis.

In response, China expressed grave concern.

[…] “The Obama administration has made repeated promises to relax high-tech export controls. But it turns out that it has been the strictest,” Zhou Shijian, a senior researcher with the Center for US-China Relations at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times.

The new rules proposed by some right-wing legislators have in fact labeled China as “an enemy” of the US, Zhou said, noting that even during the Cold War era, the US didn’t stop space cooperation with the former Soviet Union.

China’s satellite programmes, including its Beidou navigation system, do have significant military applications. But congress’ determination to block any cooperation with China in space also has critics in the U.S.: NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao urged a new Sino-American space partnership in 2011; Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell and Joan Johnson-Freese of the Naval War College discussed the loss of “major opportunities” on NPR’s Talk of the Nation last June; and the Council on Foreign Relations’ Frank Klotz suggested in July that cooperation based on the U.S.-Russian model might better “serve long-term American interests”.

Currently, the absence of any established framework for cooperation is complicating Washington’s response to an anticipated Chinese anti-satellite weapon test, rumoured to be scheduled for January 11th. From Gregory Kulacki at the Union of Concerned Scientists:

High-level intervention in both countries is needed to stop the test and start discussions. Remarkably, there are no regular channels of communication on space issues between China and the United States. Congressional opposition to scientific and commercial cooperation with China in space shut down potential talks on human space flight that could have led to a bilateral dialog on space security.

[…] China’s space program is still in the formative stages of its development. Both the United States and the former Soviet Union conducted equally high profile ASAT testing during comparable stages in the development of their space programs, and both eventually decided to stop destructive ASAT testing. Hopefully, China will eventually come to a similar conclusion. Beginning a meaningful bilateral dialog on space security between the United States and China could hasten the day.

A Global Times editorial defended the development of anti-satellite weaponry as necessary “to deter the US from taking risky action against China in this period of great transition”, given its rejection of past olive branches.

China’s public policy is peaceful use of space, which is also China’s real desire. China has no interest in launching a large-scale space race with the US. China and Russia jointly initiated a program to avoid an arm race in outer space in 2008, but this proposal was refused by the US.

Against this background, it is necessary for China to have the ability to strike US satellites. This deterrent can provide strategic protection to Chinese satellites and the whole country’s national security.

[…] In the foreseeable future, gap between China and the US cannot be eliminated by China’s development of space weapons. The US advantage is overwhelming. Before strategic uncertainties between China and the US can disappear, China urgently needs to have an outer space trump card.

[…] Therefore, hopefully, the speculation about China’s anti-satellite tests is true.

American arms sales to China’s neighbours, meanwhile, are “set to boom”, according Reuters’ Jim Wolf, reporting on a forecast by the Aerospace Industries Association.

Fears resulting from China’s growing military spending should lead to enough U.S. sales in South and East Asia to more than offset a slowdown in European arms-buying, according to the forecast.

[…] Overall, the United States reached arms transfer agreements in 2011 totaling $66.3 billion, or nearly 78 percent of all such worldwide pacts, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. The 2011 total was swollen by a record $33.4 billion deal with Saudi Arabia. India ranked second with $6.9 billion in such agreements.

Rupert Hammond-Chambers, who consults for U.S. arms makers through BowerGroupAsia, an advisory with 10 offices in the region, predicted Southeast Asian defense budgets would expand steadily as a hedge against Chinese assertiveness in disputes in the South China and East China seas.

[…] The Obama administration says arms sales are an increasingly critical and cost-efficient arrow in its quiver to defend U.S. worldwide interests.

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Post tags: anti-satellite test, arms embargo, arms trade, congress, exports, huawei, satellites, security, space exploration, space program, space technology, United States, weapons, weapons exports
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“Currently the human rights situation is deteriorating. Great cruelty has resulted from efforts to maintain social stability, resulting in a situation in which there is no ethics, rule of law or justice,” he said. “This has led to [an] increasing number of people whose rights have been violated, and these people have and will rise up in protest.”

[…] “While our economic relationship with China is important, the United States has an obligation to engage China and press for democratic reforms and improvement in its human rights practices,” Boehner said later. “We cannot remain silent when fundamental human rights are being violated. We cannot remain silent when religious liberty is under attack. We cannot remain silent regarding China’s reprehensible ‘One Child’ policy.”

Pelosi, a longtime critic of Chinese policy, noted that members of both parties have long been concerned with the fate of Chinese rights activists. Boehner and others in the room laughed when she said: “I don’t often say this, Mr. Speaker, but I do wish to associate myself with your remarks, because I think that you said very well all that our country stands for.”

Chen initially expressed confidence in Beijing’s good faith after arriving in New York in May, but his patience has since frayed. On Wednesday, he accused Beijing of failing to fulfil promises to investigate his illegal house arrest, and expressed concern about his family and particularly his nephew. Chen Kegui was charged with “intentional homicide” after attacking officials who broke into his house in the middle of the night to investigate Chen Guangcheng’s disappearance. From the AFP:

“The Chinese central government explicitly promised me that it would thoroughly investigate the extended oppression and abuse that I endured in Shandong province,” Chen, flanked by lawmakers, told reporters in the Capitol.

“The government further promised to provide for the security of my family. However, it has been more than three months and I have not received any news on the progress of this investigation or even whether it has commenced,” he said.

Chen complained that no Chinese official has contacted him since he arrived in the United States. China had said that it was allowing Chen to go abroad with his family to study, but some experts presumed that China’s main motivation was to get rid of Chen and doubted he would be able to return.

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Reuters reported last week that, faced with intransigent officials and empty guarantees of safe passage in Linyi, some of Chen’s would-be visitors have taken their complaints to Beijing:

Some of the supporters were beaten by dozens of men in plain clothes while trying to visit Chen on Sunday, and their complaints were later ignored by the local police, said Mao Hengfeng, a petitioner from Shanghai.

She said the petitioners then went to Beijing’s Ministry of Public Security, but it was not clear whether officials accepted their petition expressing concerns about Chen’s treatment.

“We were roughed up and pushed around, and some of us were hurt, but the police didn’t lift a finger and ignored our complaints,” Mao told Reuters about the weekend incident in Linyi.

“Now we want the Ministry of Public Security to do something about Linyi — it’s a place without any law or rights.”

But Jerome Cohen, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed based on his Nov. 1 testimony to the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, wrote that the image of the Linyi government as a rogue, independent actor is a misconception. While limited aspects of the story may indeed be cases of local-vs-national government, he argues, the situation as a whole is part of a broader program in which Beijing is entirely complicit.

There are three myths about Mr. Chen’s plight that must be dispelled. One is that such cases of persecution and abuse of lawyers and legal activists are rare in China, and only occur when a few heroic dissidents openly invoke the law to confront injustice rather than rely less confrontational methods ….

A second myth is that Mr. Chen’s recent suffering is merely another example of local government run amok, neither approved nor condoned by the central government. Many attacks on lawyers are indeed local in origin, and Mr. Chen’s case started out that way in 2005 when local authorities first sent thugs to illegally confine him and his family at home. However, the case soon came to the attention of national leaders. After representatives of the Ministry of Public Security reportedly met with local officials to discuss the situation, the authorities launched a criminal prosecution against Mr. Chen, a more conventional type of repression.

A third myth is that there must be some purported legal justification for the suffering that the Chen household has endured since his release from prison last year. Governments, even the Chinese government, normally like to maintain some veneer of plausible legitimacy for their misconduct, however thin it might be. Yet no such justification has come to my knowledge in this case, which seems to have exceeded the bounds of police ingenuity.

See also Andy Yee’s post on Chen’s house arrest as a facet of China’s stability maintenance machinery at Global Voices Online, a slightly different adaptation of Cohen’s testimony at The New York Review of Books, and Human Rights in China Executive Director Sharon Hom’s testimony to the same Congressional-Executive Commission:

It is important to note that Chen Guangcheng’s situation reflects the fate of countless other human rights defenders in China subject to extra-legal measures, including being restrained under constant surveillance within closed premises – in their homes, temporary residences such as boarding houses or hotels (also known as “black jails”), or other undisclosed locations – where they are not permitted to leave. As distinguished from formal sentences of imprisonment, in which authorities officially charge and detain individuals pursuant to cited criminal laws and procedures, Chinese government officials have articulated no specific legal basis for these detentions. As a result, extra-judicially detained rights defenders are left entirely outside the protection of the law, without any recourse to procedures to challenge their detention, under circumstances that could permit serious rights violations – including the use of torture or other ill-treatment.

The commission’s chairman, Representative Chris Smith, announced his intention to visit Chen if possible, and to pursue other avenues if not. From the AFP:

“Enough is enough. The cruelty and extreme violence against Chen and his family brings dishonor to the government of China and must end,” said Representative Chris Smith, chairman of the Congressional Executive Commission on China.

Smith, a Republican from New Jersey who is active on human rights issues, said he would shortly ask China to allow a US congressional delegation to travel to Chen’s village of Dongshigu in eastern Shandong province.

“I am trying to put together a trip to go there and go to his house. We’re already checking flights,” Smith told AFP after the hearing, saying that the lawmakers “desperately hope” that Chen is still alive.

Even if China does not allow the trip, Smith said that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or the US ambassador to China, Gary Locke, should raise the case at the highest levels.

Locke told GlobalPost last Friday that he had actually already expressed his concerns:

“We are very concerned about his treatment and, for instance, the reports his daughter was not allowed to go to school. Although he’s been freed, he is still under severe restrictions on his movements,” Locke told GlobalPost in a private interview Friday. He said the Chinese government has not yet responded to the letter he sent in September ….

Since Locke sent the letter, Chen’s 6-year-old daughter has been allowed to leave her home to attend school, under guard.

The ambassador, who arrived in Beijing in August, added his voice to the chorus calling for China to ease its extreme treatment of the self-taught lawyer, who is known for exposing forced abortions in his hometown in Shandong province.

A new report from the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers, ‘Legal Advocacy and the 2011 Crackdown in China: Adversity, Repression, and Resilience‘ (PDF) describes earlier interference with efforts to help Chen (pp. 9-10):

On February 16, 2011, a group of activists and lawyers gathered over lunch to strategize about how to come to the aid of Chen Guangcheng, a blind, self-taught legal activist facing an extraordinary level of government abuse. A week earlier, on February 9, Chen and his wife Yuan Weijing publicly released a series of videos describing the 24-hour surveillance and house imprisonment he and his family had been subjected to since his release from prison on September 9, 2010. There was absolutely no legal basis for these measures or the ongoing deprivation of liberty of Chen and his family. The following day, Chen and his wife were beaten in their home in retribution for releasing the videos online. (For more details on Chen’s case, see Box B. [p. 23])

Authorities barred seven individuals from leaving their homes to attend the February 16 meeting, including Li Xiongbing, Li Heping, and Xu Zhiyong, three lawyers whom authorities would proceed to illegally detain at various times in the following months. Another person prevented from attending the meeting, Internet activist and rights defender Wang Lihong, was detained sometime before March 26 and has since been convicted for “assembling a crowd to disturb social order” and sentenced to nine months imprisonment. The February 16 meeting mirrored other gatherings held during the period of Chen’s pre-trial detention in 2006, making Chen’s case notable because it inspired lawyers, human rights defenders, and activists to coalesce as a community in his support.

Enforced disappearance is defined under international law as the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty of a person either by state agents or with official support, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the detention or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person. Chinese authorities proceeded to employ this illegal measure against many of the lawyers who managed to attend the meeting. Police seized lawyers Jiang Tianyong and Tang Jitian that afternoon. Tang was disappeared for three weeks, while Jiang was interrogated and beaten before being released in the evening, only to be disappeared for 2 months from February 19 to April 19. Beijing-based rights lawyer and university lecturer Teng Biao was disappeared for 69 days between February 19 and April 29.

The Economist cited Chen’s would-be visitors as a key demonstration of the Internet’s potential for coordinating activism in China:

The use of the internet to mobilise people to visit Mr Chen has rattled officials far beyond Shandong province. It is the first time in China that activists have made such a persistent effort to show up in solidarity with someone under house arrest. It also coincides with attempts to use weibo, or microblogs, to gain support for independent candidates in elections to low-level “people’s congresses” that have been taking place around the country. Though the congresses have little power, and it is very difficult for truly independent candidates to stand, the polls still make the Communist Party nervous.

Activists know they have little chance of meeting Mr Chen, whose house is floodlit at night and cut off from mobile-phone networks. But there have been numerous quixotic forays. On October 14th a number of disabled men and women from neighbouring Anhui province were turned away. On October 30th, says Human Rights in China, an NGO based in New York, a group of 37 people who made the attempt to get through was attacked by around 100 thugs.

The Globe and Mail’s Mark MacKinnon sees Chen’s predicament as akin to the death of Yueyue and the authorities’ pursuit of Ai Weiwei in reflecting an underbelly sometimes concealed by the bright plumage of China’s economic hi-scores and scientific leaps.

His neighbours stand aside and let it happen. “These people must have known Chen Guangcheng. They might have even been his student, friends, or relatives. But in this place, at this time, no one cared about what was happening to him. These villagers treated him as if he were a stranger, or an enemy. All these villagers had gotten together to gang up against one blind man,” writer Murong Xuecun wondered after he and four friends were roughed up and prevented from seeing Mr. Chen ….

The Communist Party’s supporters will say that dissidents like Mr. Ai and Mr. Chen don’t matter in the big scheme of things. The argument goes that the persecution of these few is a small price to pay for ensuring the stability that allows the People’s Republic to get wealthier, to build a space program, and to experiment – a little – with civil society.

Reading that half of the headlines, it’s hard to argue that progress isn’t being made. But as little Yueyue’s case illustrated so vividly, the costs of that stability – the institutionalized injustice and indifference – are still being tallied.

Italy’s Post Internazionale has interviewed “Crazy Crab”, the cartoonist behind ‘Hexie Farm‘ (which was included in CDT’s recent list of search terms blocked on Sina Weibo) and the ‘Dark Glasses. Portrait‘ project in support of Chen Guangcheng:

The CCP has a long history of using art as a powerful propaganda tool. However, artists can also use art to protest against the one party dictatorship and censorship. If an art work shocks the audience, give them a new perspective and let them think in a different way, then it can help to change the system gradually …. One month ago, I started ‘Dark glasses. Portrait’ campaign to support a blind lawyer, Mr. Chen Guangcheng, who is under house arrest in a village. I received hundreds of photos from unknown people already. Reading their emails I can feel their fear, even from people who are thousands kilometers away from China (in Europe or the US ). But the more I read from participants’ words is still courage and strength.

See more on the Crazy Crab interview via CDT.

Meanwhile, in the Relativity Media Linyi film shoot subplot, Relativity CEO Ryan Kavanaugh was due to appear at the Asia Society’s US-China Film Summit in Los Angeles last Tuesday. He cancelled at the last minute, however, possibly calculating that continued celebration of his firm’s valuable business relationships in China might be derailed by awkward questions about his partners’ other activities. The Washington Post, though, talked to a Linyi official whose enthusiasm for the city’s cinematic prospects remained undented:

In a telephone interview, Su Guiyou, director of the Linyi Propaganda Department’s Culture Industry Office, said that the district hoped to become a center for movie-making and that the American comedy “will be a good chance to publicize Linyi and will help make Linyi famous not only in China, but also the world.” The Hollywood team, he said, filmed for four days last week and shot a “dream scene” in a local quarry.

Asked about Chen and complaints about his treatment, Su said he had never heard of the activist and hung up.

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Post tags: Ai Weiwei, black jails, cartoonists, Chen Guangcheng, Christopher Smith, congress, congressional hearing, detention, Gary Locke, Hillary Clinton, house arrest, human rights in china, illegal detentions, Jerome cohen, lawyers, Li Heping, Li Xiongbing, linyi, local government, Mao Hengfeng, Murong Xuecun, petitioners, Shandong, Tang Jitian, Teng Biao, United States, Wang Lihong, Xu Zhiyong
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A Lockheed Martin official last week emailed an unsigned memo to lawmakers on Capitol Hill titled “Taiwan — The Benefit of New F-16 C/Ds,” two congressional staff members said ….

The Lockheed memo included “rebuttal points” to what Lockheed called the expected conclusion of a Pentagon report that the administration could use to try to defuse criticism of its decision not to release new F-16s to Taiwan.

Lockheed Martin neither confirmed nor denied having circulated the memo, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters. It said a sale of F-16s would benefit not only the company but generate more than 16,000 jobs in the United states over five to six years, citing a study it had commissioned.

The existing agreement, worth over $5 billion, has already prompted a characteristically unenthusiastic response from Beijing.

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Yesterday I met a senior diplomat from a very large and important country. (Hint: I write about it a lot, and used to live there. Also, it has pandas.) A very senior delegation from that country is scheduled to meet this coming week with a very senior U.S. official. (Hint: her husband used to be president.) This meeting has been in the works for months, and involves areas of cooperation, as in energy research or policy toward Iran and North Korea, and of disagreement as well. These are talks that should be held and business that needs to be done.

But if the U.S. government is shut down, the meeting can’t happen, because the State Department will be officially “closed” except for emergency functions. The delegation is set to leave from this other country’s capital at just about the same time as the shutdown deadline. If they don’t take off — and the shutdown’s averted, they’ll miss their meetings. If they do take off and the shutdown occurs, the trip will be an (embarrassing) waste. The diplomat was sweating bullets: would he have to call them on the runway and say: Sorry, this government has been up and running since 1787, but it’s out of business now?

Nicholas Kristof is more direct:

In my travels lately, I’ve been trying to explain to Libyans, Egyptians, Bahrainis, Chinese and others the benefits of a democratic system. But if Congressional Republicans actually shut down the government this weekend, they will be making a powerful argument for autocracy. Chinese television will be all over the story.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: congress, democracy, diplomacy, news media, United States
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One of the most aggressive human rights activists in Congress has found a new cause: stamping out Internet censorship in China. Representative Christopher H. Smith, a New Jersey Republican and chairman of a House subcommittee on human rights, plans to hold hearings next month on reports that US Internet companies, including Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., aid efforts by the government of China to suppress free speech.

The issue has simmered for years as American companies have raced to enter the Chinese Internet market, already the second-largest on earth and rapidly growing.US businesses and politicians have long said the growth of Internet use in China would lead to greater freedom of expression; in turn, this would encourage the world’s most populous nation to begin a gradual transition toward democracy.

Instead, the government has repeatedly censored political speech on the Internet in China.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Christopher Smith, congress, corporate responsibility
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The Chinese government on Monday sharply criticized the United States for threatening to erect barriers aimed at preventing the attempted takeover of the American oil company Unocal Corp. by one of China’s three largest energy firms, CNOOC Ltd.

Four days after the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a resolution urging the Bush administration to block the proposed transaction as a threat to national security, China’s Foreign Ministry excoriated Congress for injecting politics into what it characterized as a standard business matter.

This topic in the blogosphere, via Technorati.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2005. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: congress, U.S. Congress, Unocal
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