Western Intelligence Agencies Ban China Lenovo Computers Over Hacking Issues

Britain’s intelligence agencies, including MI6 and MI5, have allegedly banned the use of computers manufactured by Chinese company Lenovo due to concerns that the machines come hardwired with a vulnerability to hacking.

Six Death Crimes Within Seven Days, All in Beijing

China has seen a slew of crimes in a single week, all occurring in Beijing.

China Chemical Plant Exploded On the Same Day State-run Newspaper Claimed It’s Safe

BEIJING, China – An explosion Tuesday at a Chinese plant that produces the toxic chemical paraxylene has added fuel to a growing movement opposing such plants, on the same day that a state-run newspaper prominently urged the public to accept the industry as safe.

Techie Terms Censored Online in China, Revealed by New Study

China’s surveillance of its citizens’ digital activities is common knowledge. However, questions remain concerning what content is targeted by government censors and how these blacklists change in response to current events.

“Top 10 Most Likely Charges” Used by Chinese Government to Against Entrepreneurs

If you have a business in China, then you must be very careful not to be put in prison. A recent media report summarizes “ten most likely crimes” of Chinese entrepreneurs. This shows what a complex legal environment they have to face.

Hence comments that, for all Chinese business owners, they are either in prison or on their way there.

China’s Latest Leadership Ranking Change- Hu and Wen Moved Up, Jiang Zemin Lost Standing

Frequently, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) leadership ranking is displayed in public and it shows who the top dogs are.

Recently, Sichuan Agricultural University academic, Zhou Kaida’s funeral, the CCP top brass attendees’list had big changes. Hu Jintao was listed behind Xi Jinping, Wen Jiabao was behind Li Keqiang. Hu and Wen ranked on 2nd and 4th position.

Bodies at a Vienna Exhibition- Chinese Police, Wang Lijun and Bo Xilai

By ETHAN GUTMANN-

Vienna

I have taken my first steps into “Body Worlds,” an exhibition at Vienna’s Museum of Natural History, and it has sparked a memory. The room where I am standing—dark, somber, strangely hushed—exhibits fetuses at various stages of development, placed on blocks that evoke a pagan circle of standing stones. The show’s mastermind, German doctor Gunther von Hagens, has suctioned all the liquid and fat from the small bodies and filled the soft tissues with hard plastic through his ingenious process of “plastination.” Usually, if you see a fetus in a museum, it is floating in a jar of liquid and is red or yellow and translucent. These bodies seem to be flat gray, and that is what ignites the flashback, a surreal freeze-frame of my son, born a month prematurely by C-section: As the medical staff pulled him out of my wife’s womb, just for a second, his flesh looked gray.

Significant jump of China’s censorship capabilities before the Anniversary of Tiananmen Square Massacre

Beginning early Friday morning, users of Sina Corp.’s massively popular Weibo microblog were able to search for information about one of the most sensitive incidents in recent Chinese history: the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

In a serious shift of censorship tactics just days ahead of the anniversary of the government’s bloody June 4, 1989 crackdown on protestors in Tiananmen, Sina appears to have begun to allow searches for terms associated with the highly sensitive event. But instead of turning up content related to the incident, searches yield results that have nothing to do with the protests or the government’s heavy-handed response.

Chinese Hackers Strike Australian Intelligence Agency 2 Months After “strategic partnership” Negotiation

Blueprints for the new headquarters’ (building) of Australia’s intelligence agency, located in the capital of Canberra, have been stolen by Chinese hackers, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The news, which hit hard in Australia on Monday night, comes less than two months after Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard negotiated a “strategic partnership” with the Chinese Communist Party’s new leadership, and a subsequent Defence White Paper was released stating that the People’s Republic of China is no longer seen as a threat.

China Army’s “Department of Enemy Work” Reachs Out to Western Elites in Australia and US

John Garnaut, China correspondent for Fairfax Media-

General Zhang Yang had been in the elite leadership sanctum of the People’s Liberation Army for barely a month when he took time out to greet a former vice-chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Silicon Valley Inventor Refuses $60M Research Funds From China for “knowing people are losing their lives”

Jeffrey Van Middlebrook, a polymath inventor in Silicon Valley, in 2006 figured out a way to sequester gas from waste combustion that, if brought to an industrial scale, could be worth a fortune.

Middlebrook invented the system in his workshop, and called it the broad-spectrum fractional sequestration combustion gas liquefier. After making it work on a small scale, he went shopping for funding domestically. Neither the government nor private enterprise was willing to offer the kind of money needed to bring the invention from the workshop to an industrial scale.

Blind Chinese Activist Chen Guangcheng Says China Can’t be Trusted

LONDON: “Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai” may be the flavour in Delhi after the recent visit of Chinese premier Li Keqiang. However, a strong word of caution has come from one of China’s most wanted men Chen Guangcheng.

Chen, a blind activist who became an international hero after he became the first person to escape house arrest in Beijing for exposing forced abortions and sterilizations in the country and eventually slipping out of China to take refuge in US, told TOI in a rare interview that “Chinese government can’t be trusted. Chinese people aren’t like that but the government’s word can never be trusted. It is an authoritarian regime.”

Security Report: Chinese Military Unit 61398 in Shanghai is Behind US Cyber Attacks

A Virginia-based cyber security firm has released a new report alleging a specific Chinese military unit is likely behind one of the largest cyber espionage and attack campaigns aimed at American infrastructure and corporations.

In the report, released today by Mandiant, China’s Unit 61398 is blamed for stealing “hundreds of terabytes of data from at least 141 organizations” since 2006, including 115 targets in the U.S. Twenty different industrial sectors were targeted in the attacks, Mandiant said, from energy and aerospace to transportation and financial institutions.

Expert: China hacking “reaching an intolerable level”

A STRING of cyber attacks on major US media outlets has intensified worries over Chinese hackers, who analysts say are probably linked to the secretive Beijing government.

The attacks, part of a series of incidents traced to Chinese servers associated with previous intrusions, underscore an urgent need for Washington to pressure Beijing to rein in its digital warriors, experts say.

Other security professionals argue it is hard to be certain the attacks stem from China or that the hackers acted at the behest of the government.

China blocks magazine over Taiwan democracy report

A Chinese magazine dedicated to history has been forced to halt the release of a February issue that was to chronicle Taiwan’s democratic transformation, a Shanghai-based newspaper reported yesterday.

“National History” magazine, published by the state-run Chengdu Xianfeng Culture Media Co. based in Sichuan province, had compiled a series of articles authored by Taiwanese writers for a special February edition titled “Taiwan’s Foot,” the Oriental Daily News reported.

Top Chinese Official He Guoqiang Talks About “three big losses of control”

A high-level Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official has said the Party is in jeopardy because of widespread corruption, in a series of internal briefings given to high-level cadres in three provinces in China, according to a Hong Kong magazine.

He Guoqiang, the secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) and a member of the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee, which rules China, has repeatedly made comments about the “three big losses of control” and talked about the “paralysis theory” of the Disciplinary Committee during conferences by the CCDI and by the directors of National Provincial Supervision departments.

Chinese Authorities extend censorship, step up reprisals against dissidents

Reporters Without Borders calls for an international reaction to the all-out censorship of information in China that includes website blocking, prior censorship of social networks and the dismissal of journalists who cover sensitive stories. The government is stepping up efforts to silence criticism and independent reporting, taking advantage of widespread indifference in the international community, especially UN bodies.

“It is clear from the latest events that the authorities are keeping their overall control of information with continuing consequences for those who try to use free speech to any degree,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Instead of relaxing controls, the government seems bent on reinforcing censorship of all kinds of media, including print, online, national and foreign. At the same time, the disturbing silence from the international community is not helping.

Southern China Shaxi Riots Escalates, Police Crackdown Ordered, 30 Died

Security forces in southern Guangdong province have reportedly been cleared to use deadly force in an escalating riot in Shaxi township.

Hong Kong’s Apple Daily reports that paramilitary forces and police are to stop the riots and demonstrations that began this Monday with guns if necessary.

Migrant workers are clashing with local residents. The riots began after the son of a migrant worker was beaten by security officials after getting into a fight with a local boy. Riots have been escalating as workers from nearby towns converge in Shaxi.

China Increasingly Repressive, Freedom House 2012 Report Finds

China is becoming increasingly repressive in civil and political life amidst aggressive crackdowns and disappearances, a democracy and human rights advocacy group said Thursday.

In an annual report entitled “The Worst of the Worst: The World’s Most Repressive Societies,” Washington-based Freedom House listed China, Burma, Laos, and North Korea among the world’s worst-rated countries for political rights and civil liberties.

In Asia, North Korea and the disputed territory of Tibet were placed at the very bottom of the list.

How Jiang Zemin and Son Profited from Corruption

Jiang Zemin’s son was found to be implicated in several major corruption scandals in 2007, revealing some of the secrets behind the money laundering practice of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders through the privatization of state enterprises.

Jiang Zemin was paramount leader of China from 1989-2002, and this gave him the ability to abuse his political power and embezzle government resources.

According to Renmin Newspaper, it was reported that Jiangsu was the place where Jiang Zemin originally started his money laundering operations, washing money stolen from Chinese taxpayers.

China Police Chief Wang Lijun Told U.S. Officials of Organ Harvest, Source Says

Former police chief and deputy mayor of Chongqing Wang Lijun made a surprising and hasty visit to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu in February, making international headlines. What Wang said to U.S. consulate officials, however, remained mostly confidential.

Sources told Bill Gertz, a national security reporter, that Wang handed U.S. officials key information about Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang’s planned coup against Xi Jinping, the heir apparent of the Chinese Communist Party. It was also rumored that Wang attempted to defect and sought protection from U.S. officials.

A well-placed source has now told The Epoch Times that Wang gave U.S. officials confidential documents containing critical information about top communist officials’ involvement in the persecution of Falun Gong. The source said Wang provided details about organ harvesting from living Falun Gong practitioners in China’s network of military hospitals, prisons, mental hospitals, and labor camps.

China’s Bo Xilai Wife ‘has confessed’ to killing the British Businessman Neil Heywood

Investigators have said that the wife of the disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai has confessed to killing the British businessman Neil Heywood, according to the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun.

Gu Kailai was detained because she was “highly suspected” of killing Heywood following a row over an unspecified financial conflict, according to official reports. A family employee, Zhang Xiaojun, is also being held.

It would be extremely rare for such a high-profile and politically well-connected figurenot to be tried after being publicly named as a suspect in such a serious crime. Experts on the Chinese legal system have assumed since the announcement of Gu’s detention that she will go to trial and be convicted.

Bo Xilai Rewarded for Torture in China, Awarded Journalist Jiang Weiping Says

The beatings police gave Falun Gong practitioners on July 20, 1999 on the streets of Dalian City were brutal, according to a report on Clearwisdom, a Falun Gong website.

Thousands of Falun Gong practitioners had gathered to appeal for the release of practitioners arrested the night before—the official beginning, in Dalian, of the nationwide campaign to “eradicate” Falun Gong, launched by the then-head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Jiang Zemin.

The practitioners had formed themselves into four lines on the sidewalk near the city government buildings, held hands, and peacefully asked for the release of their fellow believers.