The tactics behind China's new airspace rules - Wendell Minnick

Wendell Minnick

China's announcement to set up a defense identification zone over disputed waters in the East China Sea caught the US off guard, both was sino-US military relations had improved greatly, and it was the weekend before Thanksgiving. A known tactic, tells defense analyst Wendell Minnick in the VOA. 

The VOA:

Both China and Japan’s air defense zones include the disputed Senkaku or Diaoyu islands as they are known in China. Japan annexed the islets in the late 19th century. China claimed sovereignty over the archipelago in 1971, saying ancient maps show it has been Chinese territory for centuries. 

Wendell Minnick, Asia editor for Defense News said Beijing’s move is a response to Japan’s actions three years ago to expand its zone. 

Coming on a weekend before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, Minnick said the move by Beijing was clearly calculated to catch Washington off guard. “China’s announcement appears to be an attempt to salami slice as they call it. China has a tendency to take territory or enforce new rules at a time when the U.S. is very friendly to them. The U.S. has been working very hard to improve military to military relations with China,” he stated. 

Minnick said the overlap of the two air defense zones raises some challenges for both Tokyo and Washington. However, he said it remains to be seen just how much China engages with Japanese and American jets in the area.

More in the VOA.

Wendell Minnick is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

China Weekly Hangout

The +China Weekly Hangout will have open office hours coming Thursday, where you can drop in to discuss any issue, but where we want to focus on technical problems you have or we have had with hangouts. The development of this Google tool is going pretty fast, offering every week more new bells and whistles, but also with regularly new challenges.
You can join us on Thursday 28 November 10pm Beijing time, 3pm CET (Europe) or 9am EST (US/Canada). You can read our announcement here, or join the event by watching, commenting or actively joining at our event page.

On April 18, the +China Weekly Hangout organized a debate about the bird flu, which we cannot call the bird flu, in China with flu expert +Harm Kiezebrink from Beijing, HKU-lecturer +Paul Fox from Hong Kong and CEIBS adjunct professor +Richard Brubaker from Shanghai. We try to figure out what is happening with N7H9, and what possible scenario's can develop. And we discuss what the Chinese government has learn from SARS, now ten years ago. Moderation by +Fons Tuinstra of the China Speakers Bureau. 

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China's North Korea dilemma - Michael Justin Lee

Michael Justin Lee

North-Korea is raising its stakes at the Korean peninsula, putting pressure on its supposed ally China. But China's dilemma in dealing with its unruly neighbor might offer also opportunities, writes China expert Michael Lee Justin in ChinaUSFocus. It might be a unique chance for China and the US do draw closer.

Michael Justin Lee:

[I]f we play our cards right, this unfortunate situation may well provide the United States with a rare opportunity to draw closer to China on military matters. 

Some observers believe that China and North Korea remain comrades-in-arms. This conclusion is at least thirty years out of date. 

In actuality however, there is absolutely no love between the two communist neighbors. Any slight comity between the two countries ended when former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and North Korean founder Kim Il-Sung died. Both were experienced war fighters and absolutely instrumental, for better or worse, in the creation of their countries. So they bonded. But the dauphins in charge of North Korea since the elder Kim’s death have merely been using up their supply of rapidly diminishing Chinese goodwill. 

North Korea is not some annoying pain-in-the-butt little brother to China as some think. Actually, North Korea is one of the world’s two or three greatest threats to international security and China knows it. This is not the kind of kid brother anyone cops to. ... 

But it is only a matter of time before the Supreme Leader, who is known unaffectionately in China as Fatso Kim the Third (Dad and grandpa were Fatso Kim the Second and Fatso Kim the First, respectively. We are a plain speaking people.), goes “too far.” We don’t know exactly where that point is. But it would be best if the lines of communication between the Presidents of the United States and the China remained free. 

It would be an irony of truly historic proportions if two of the enemy combatants of the Korean War were to ally on the Korean peninsula. But let us hope it comes to that.

More in ChinaUSFocus.

Michael Justin Lee is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch of fill in our speakers' request form.

China Weekly Hangout

How successful can president Xi Jinping be in rooting out corruption, the +China Weekly Hangout is going to ask on Thursday 31 October. How committed is the Xi/Li team to real change? You can read our announcement here, or register for the event here. 

Last month, at the +China Weekly Hangout , +Steve Barru, +李洛傑 and +Fons Tuinstra wrapped up the news on Shanghai's Free Trade Zone, and end in a not-so positive mood about what this new zone is actually going to do.

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Why China will try to ignored the RSA-scandal - Jeremy Goldkorn

Jeremy Goldkorn

President Xi Jinping did not try to score points on the US cyber scandal around the NSA at the California summit. And the central government might try to ignored whistle-blower Edward Snowden in Hong Kong as much as possible, China watcher Jeremy Goldkorn explains in the LA Times.

The LA Times:

Beijing, however, has chosen not to capitalize on the U.S. government’s embarrassment. The tightly controlled state press on the mainland has barely mentioned the U.S. surveillance program and was silent Monday on Snowden’s flight to Hong Kong. 

"The reason is that Beijing is doing all sorts of dodgy things ranging from surveillance to hacking. I don’t think they want to draw attention by being excessively critical of the United States,’" said +Jeremy Goldkorn, a Beijing media analyst. 

The wording of the extradition treaty between the United States and Hong Kong gives Beijing veto right if "surrender of a fugitive would harm defense, foreign affairs or essential public interest or policy."

More in the LA Times.

Jeremy Goldkorn is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.  

The +China Weekly Hangout 

Who is hacking who, the China Weekly Hangout asked on February 28. A discussion with security consultant +Mathew Hoover and reporter +Charlie Custer of +TechinAsia about the hacking issues, the Sino-US relations, including some useful information on what to worry about and what not. Moderation: +Fons Tuinstra of the China Speakers Bureau.

Chinese labor in Africa is the subject of the China Weekly Hangout on Thursday 13 June, following the story of over 124 Chinese gold miners, who got arrested in Ghana last week. Our expert panelist will be +Eric Olander of the China Africa Project, and you can read our announcement here. You can register for participation at our event page.

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Why Shuanghui's Smithfield purchase is a win-win deal - Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein

Despite legitimate concerns, like quality control and food inflation, the purchase of America's largest meat producer Smithfield by China's Shuanghui is a deal that can only deliver winners, says Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein in the New York Times.

+Shaun Rein:

There is, however, a difference between legitimate concerns and overreacting to every investment in The United States by Chinese companies. Most acquisitions are a net positive for America, both for preserving jobs and creating opportunities to sell American-made products into the still-growing Chinese market. 

More Chinese companies are looking to expand overseas through acquisitions. According to a survey by Capital A, Chinese firms invested $37.8 billion overseas in 2012. My firm, The China Market Research Group, expects investments to grow by 20 percent annually over the next five years 

Unlike many Japanese firms in the 1980s that gutted workforces and imposed glass ceilings for U.S. employees, Chinese companies mostly keep management teams intact as Wanda has done with AMC Theaters and Lenovo did with the IBM ThinkPad division. They are looking to gain know-how to bring their practices to international standards. There is a public confidence crisis in China in the safety of Chinese brands, and as a result Chinese brands are desperate to learn from American ones.

More in The New York Times.

Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

The China Weekly Hangout

The Shuanghui/Smitfield deal is expected to get easier clearance from US authorities, because Shuanghui is a private company, not state-owned. But it would not be the first private Chinese company to run into trouble with US authorities. The China Weekly Hangout discussed the case of Huawei in October 2012 with +David Wolf, author of Making the Connection, a book about China's telecom giant Huawei, and +Andrew Hupert of +China Solved , specialist in international conflict resolution. Both discuss the future of Huwei, moderated by +Fons Tuinstra, president of the China Speakers Bureau.the case of Huawei, after the company ran into trouble in the US.

 

On Thursday 6 June the +China Weekly Hangout  discusses the art of making trade agreements with China. Your can read our announcement here, and register here for participation. 

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Hacking: who is holding the smoking gun? (part 2) China Weekly Hangout

Hackers (Photo credit: José Goulão)

Much has been written and talked about the Mandian report, pinpointing at a PLA-unit in Shanghai as the culprit for hacking in the US, since we announced our China Weekly Hangout last week. (You can read the original announcement here, you can register here). On top of that, we got an unprecedented number of people (30 at the time of writing this post) who already registered for participation this week. So, time for a wrap up.

Who is holding the smoking gun, is the title of this week's hangout. But after reading all the additional articles, we can better ask who is not holding a gun, smoking or not? If we can believe the information in different articles, the APT1 or P.L.A. Unit 61398 in Shanghai is only one out of twenty China-based hacker groups.
And apart from China, similar hacker groups are believed to operate (condoned or not by their governments) in Russia, the US itself, France, Israel, Iran and possibly a few other countries.
That raises new questions. Why has this report developed into an exclusively China-US argument, leaving out other countries and other China-based hacker groups? Was the PLA unit so poorly organized, their IP addresses could be discovered?
Also the motives of Mandian came under scrutiny. Were they heading for an IPO and needed so media attention? Or are the media to blame, who just need a simple "bad guy/good guy" story and have used the Shanghai-based PLA unit for a too simplistic take on what hacking actually means for global security?
And indeed: when everybody is shooting at everybody, how can you protect yourself, as an individual, but also as a company, organization or government agency?

On Thursday we try to dive into a few of these questions with +Charlie Custer of Tech in Asia; while moderation will be in the hands of +Fons Tuinstra, president of the China Speakers Bureau. We can only allow a few people into the official hangout, and  if you give us a short bio and your take on this issue, you have a larger chance of getting into the hangout.
Everybody else can watch the hangout here in this space, or at our event page. Questions and remarks you can also send during the hangout over twitter and Google+, but make sure you add our hash tag #CWHCWH. 
You can view all previous hangouts here. 

Until then, you can also leave your remarks here in the comments.
Some additional useful articles:
Mandiant goes viral after China hacking report -Reuters

Analysis: The near impossible battle against hackers everywhere - Reuters

Hackers Embed Virus in Mandiant Report - CDT
Everyone Hacks Everyone: Stop Assuming All Hackers Come From China - TIA

Next week we plan to have a China Weekly Hangout on China's relations with Africa, especially the position of China's media in the continent. Participating will be +Eric Olander of the China Africa Project. The announcement for the hangout will follow later, but if you are interested, drop me a line. 

The US-China relations were discussed in the autumn of 2012 at the China Weekly Hangout with political scientist +G. E. Anderson  , China veteran +Janet Carmosky and +Fons Tuinstra 

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PLA hackers case revisited - who calls the shots in China?

The PLA building in Shanghai

Outside observers look at China too often as a one-party state with a top-down government. When you are living in China or have been there a while, things look a tidbit more complicated, as internal divisions, infighting, if not outright factional wars cause heavy divisions. If you have no eye for those internal differences between government bodies, you might never be able to really understand China.
So, when the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs came out with a firm denial on China's hacking efforts, after US security firm Mandiant published their report, I could not help but smile a bit. In cases of a crisis, the ministry of Foreign Affairs is the last one to get informed; they often have to rely on domestic and international media to find out what is really going on. The denial by the Chinese Ministry of Defense sounds slightly more convincing, although China's government bodies do not have a good tradition of informing each other. There is a fair chance the New York Times report on the country's hacking efforts came as a surprise to the leadership in Beijing too, not only to the ministry of foreign affairs.

Just as a reminder a relative recent incident to illustrate my point. Just hours before the US Secretary of State Robert Gates was due to meet President Hu Jintao during a visit to Beijing in January 2011, China's military conducted a first test flight with a stealth fighter. While US diplomats initially thought this was a way the Chinese leadership wanted to put pressure on the talks in Beijing, they found out their Chinese counterparts, including Hu Jintao, did not even have the information on the test flight. Hu Jintao was then the first in charge of the PLA, but even he was not informed about the test flight.
Perhaps the PLA leadership wanted to make a point? But to who? To the US, or to their comrades in the Zhongnanhai, China's political center? Or perhaps there was no point, as the PLA just had the high-level talks not on their radar screen. Only when some of the real decision makers will write their memoirs, we might possibly know.

The problem of the much quoted Mandiant report is that they come closer than ever in linking hacking efforts to China's military, they still fail to produce the smoking gun. Yes, the IP-addresses they found are linked to a neighborhood in Pudong, Shanghai, where a PLA-related offices of the APT1 or P.L.A. Unit 61398 operate. But even an amateur hacker like me knows that hiding your real IP-address is one of the first things you would have to do as a serious hacker.
So, there are two options. Or, these professional army hackers have not been able, or have been slacking, in hiding their real IP-addresses. Or other hackers have cleverly used those IP-addresses to implicate those poor Chinese. Both options look rather unlikely, but I cannot come up with a valid third one.

While I have no inside information on who is hacking who and for what reason, there is one golden rule to explain what is happening in China, also when it concerns the government: follow the money. Who might have a financial interest in hacking a wide variation of targets, from Coca-Cola to pipe-line companies, from government agencies to journalists?
My estimation is that this PLA-office in Shanghai is largely a commercial operation, bringing in money for both the PLA and possibly the units who are directly involved. They might have also worked on more political assignments, as long as that did not interfere with their commercial targets.
Of course, that is bad, whether hacking is done for financial or for political reasons, or both. But it would be hard to imagine that other parts of the world, including Russia and the US, would not have similar hacking operations. In the US it is even legally covered by the Patriot Act - although only legal from a US perspective.
Of course, by now high-level but low-profile investigation team from Beijing have arrived in Shanghai to find out what has really been happening in those office. But we might have to wait for a Chinese Wikileaks to find out what their findings will be.

At best these report can act as a wake-up call. It is not a China versus the US struggle, we are looking at a global threat that can come from everywhere.

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China internet hacks no surprise - Wendell Minnick

Wendell Minnick

Much of the news this week is dominated by the discovery of China hacks into the US, linked directly to the People's Liberation Army, with names, addresses and pictures of offices. Defense analyst Wendell Minnick tells the VOA he is not really surprised by the report. 

The VOA:

A series of recent China-based hacking attempts on high-profile U.S. media outlets, including the New York Times  and Wall Street Journal, have revived concerns about Chinese cyber espionage. U.S. officials have increasingly warned of the threat, but some say Washington has not done enough to discourage the attacks. 

Asia security analyst Wendell Minnick tells VOA that he was not surprised by the report. He says there is little incentive for China to discourage computer espionage activity originating from inside its borders. 

"There's no reason for (the Chinese) to behave themselves. They're a hungry nation and they want to win. And, they want to dominate," says Minnick.

More at the VOA.

Wendell Minnick is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Last year also China telecom giant Huawei found itself in hot water after US Congress released a critical report. The China Weekly Hangout discussed the issue with David Wolf, who wrote a report on Huawei, Andrew Hupert and Fons Tuinstra, president of the China Speakers Bureau.

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China: its own worst enemy - Janet Carmosky

Janet Carmosky

The Chinese hacking efforts of the New York Times, the Washington Post and many other media has proved to be a disservice to China's international reputation, writes China veteran Janet Carmosky in Forbes. "China has a way of being its own worst enemy"   

Janet Carmosky:

What holds China back from sustainable prosperity and stability is not a lack of resources. The country is rich in human, financial, and technological capital. 

Nor is it a lack of skill in dealing with enemies. On the contrary, the obsession with enemies of the state reveals the deeper obstacle to China’s continued evolution: truly abysmal comprehension of the necessity of goodwill, the value of friends. And in the matter of making friends, China has a way of being its own worst enemy... 

The only way to be free of enemies is to do nothing and be nobody. Not an option for China. Since enemies are a given, friends are a necessary counter balance. Especially when China is often – as in the Chinese Media Hacker Ninja incident – its own worst enemy. Get some help. Really.

More in Forbes. 

Janet Carmosky is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.     

In our China Weekly Hangout of October 11, 2012 Janet Carmosky discussed, together with political scientist Greg Anderson and Fons Tuinstra, president of the China Speakers Bureau the ability of China to innovate.    

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China's brain drain to the US - Bill Dodson

Bill Dodson

Not only hot money is leaving China, the country suffers from an ongoing brain drain to the US, writes China veteran Bill Dodson on his weblog. China is failing to foster its innovation incubators, he says. And the parents of those brightest might follow suit.

Bill Dodson:

China, in other words, is suffering a brain drain. One Chinese parent told me that university lecture halls in America in which his daughter is enrolled on the east coast are seeing up to 60- and 70-percent matriculation by Chinese nationals. Of course, the parents of the students pay international rates for their children to attend schools abroad. 

They are paying for an education system that emphasizes participation, personal initiative and application of knowledge over rote learning and slavish adherence to authoritarian diktat. 

Chinese nationals – or at least their children – are maturing in innovation incubators Chinese society does not, cannot and does not want to foster. 

And those Chinese go-getters ain’t going to be returning any time soon to their homeland in the Mainland. One of the big reasons is that mama and papa have every intention of joining their offspring State-side.

More on Bill Dodson's weblog.

Bill Dodson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Next week the China Weekly Hangout will organize its first virtual get-together and discuss why also foreigners are leaving China. Interest? join us here.

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