The Global Daily Watch
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World
Did a Cyber-Weapon Blow Up an Iranian Missile Factory—And Is This Cyber-War?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/did-cyber-weapon-blow-iranian-193500313.html
Click here to read the full article.
An Iranian general would not rule out that a massive explosion east of Tehran last week was caused by “hacking,” amidst speculation that the incident was an act of sabotage.
Iranian authorities had attempted to downplay the blast—which tore through a missile factory east of Tehran—as a gas tank explosion at a different industrial park. But one official refused to rule out an act of cyber-sabotage.
“On the explosion of the Parchin gas facilities, it has been mentioned that the incident was caused by hacking the center's computer systems,” said Brig. Gen. Gholamreza Jalali, head of the Passive Defense Institution, at a conference on anti-chemical weapons defense. “But until we come to a conclusion on the dimensions of this incident and the claim, we cannot comment.”
The explosion damaged the Khojir missile production complex, according to satellite imagery, but Iranian authorities have insisted that it actually took place at the Parchin industrial park forty kilometer away.
The apparent coverup—along with international tensions around Iran’s missile program—have raised suspicions of foul play.
Iran’s missiles were a topic of debate at the UN Security Council on Tuesday, which was debating whether to extend an international arms embargo on Iran. The United States is using a recent Iranian space launch to argue that Iran is pursuing a dangerous ballistic missile program.
The United States and Israel have worked together to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program in the past, using motorcycle-borne assassins to kill scientists and a cyberweapon called Stuxnet to damage nuclear facilities. A site like Khojir would fall within the crosshairs of a similar campaign aimed at Iran’s conventional missiles.
Israeli journalist Barak Ravid asked U.S. envoy Brian Hook about last week’s explosion during an interview for Channel 13.
“We don't have any observations to make on that,” replied Hook, the State Department official in charge of Iranian affairs. He added that Iran’s missile program is “very concerning.”
Israeli officials also told the New York Times that they were not involved.
“There is a motivation, when you're using a cyberweapon, to leave attribution murky…to keep cyber conflict below the threshold of armed conflict, and to minimize the risk of geopolitical fallout,” said Daniel Frey, a cyber threat investigator at Advanced Intelligence LLC.
Stuxnet was an extremely sophisticated weapon designed to evade detection. It interfered with the control systems for nuclear centrifuges, causing them to spin too quickly or too slow, while giving false readings to the controller.
Things have changed, however, since the Stuxnet era.
Iran and North Korea are now “second to Russia and China” in terms of cyber-warfare capabilities, Frey said. "It is clear that Iran now poses a threat to critical infrastructure, and the U.S. government itself recognizes this.”
U.S. officials have warned that Iran’s cyber-arsenal is increasingly sophisticated. Advanced Intelligence LLC found that an Iranian cyber-entity named Achilles may have even compromised British government and Australian defense industry accounts.
Yelisey Boguslavskiy, head of research at Advanced Intelligence LLC, claims that Achilles “is not only active but is expanding their hacking activities targeting critical national infrastructure” in cooperation with Russian-speaking ransomware attackers.
Last week, Achilles attempted to sell “3.5 TB of data from a high-profile defense manufacturer that among other services provides ship and submarine manufacturing solutions, land warfare systems upgrades, and R&D services for military aircraft radar systems,” according to Boguslavskiy.
“Iran has some semblance of cyber-deterrence against the United States,” Frey said. “That could affect the United States'—or Israel's, for that matter—risk calculation.”
That didn’t stop U.S. forces from striking an Iranian oil tanker database last April.
There is another risk, as well.
“When an actor attacks an entity in cyberspace, he risks alerting the victim to the presence of the exploited security vulnerability, which could result in a patch, and consequently, lost intelligence,” Frey said.
Matthew Petti is a national security reporter at the National Interest. Follow him on Twitter: @matthew_petti.
Image: Reuters.
Click here to read the full article.
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National Review
India Bans TikTok and 58 Other Chinese Apps following Border Clashes
https://www.yahoo.com/news/india-bans-tiktok-58-other-163358976.html
India announced a ban on TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps on Monday, following clashes between Indian and Chinese forces at the nations’ shared border.
The list of apps also includes Weibo, China’s counterpart to Whatsapp, and Shareit, a file-sharing app that has worked in the past with Google. India’s Ministry of Technology termed the apps “prejudicial to [the] sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order.”
“On the basis of…recent credible inputs that such Apps pose a threat to [the] sovereignty and integrity of India, the Government of India has decided to disallow the usage of certain Apps,” the Ministry said in a statement. “This decision is a targeted move to ensure the safety and sovereignty of Indian cyberspace.”
Clashes between Indian and Chinese soldiers in the Himalayan border region of Ladakh earlier this month saw 20 Indian soldiers killed and 70 injured, along with an unknown number of Chinese casualties. Troops along the border are not equipped with firearms, and the two sides fought using bats and clubs wrapped in barbed wire.
The two nations fought a war in 1962 over clashes in Ladakh. The region is a part of Kashmir and sits at the intersection of India, China, and Pakistan, all of which are nuclear-armed.
TikTok has also come under scrutiny in the U.S., with the military banning use of the app among its personnel. On Friday Apple claimed to have caught the app uncovering personal data on millions of users’ phones.
More from National Review
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World
Indian PM Modi shuts Weibo account after banning Chinese apps
By Pei Li and Sanjeev Miglani
https://www.yahoo.com/news/indias-prime-minister-modi-shuts-032350739.html
HONG KONG/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has deleted his account on Sina Weibo, China's answer to Twitter, an Indian government source and the company said, as tensions between the two countries continue to simmer over a border skirmish.
Since posting on Sina Weibo the first time in 2015 during a visit to China, Modi has been an infrequent user of the Chinese social media platform. He had more than 200,000 followers and 100 posts before the account was shut.
Sina Weibo announced the closure of the account late on Wednesday and the removal comes a few days after India banned dozens of Chinese apps, including Sina Weibo and ByteDance's TikTok, following the border clash between the two nations.
An Indian government source told Reuters on Thursday that it took time to get Modi's account taken down.
"For VIP accounts, Weibo has a more complex procedure to quit which is why the official process was initiated. For reasons best known to the Chinese, there was great delay in granting this basic permission," the source said.
India lost 20 soldiers in the clash last month at the disputed Himalayan border in what it said was a premeditated attack by Chinese troops. Beijing rejected the allegations and blamed frontline Indian troops for crossing into its side of undemarcated border.
Modi was among a handful of foreign leaders with a Weibo account.
Notably, he revealed the birth dates of both Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang by wishing them "Happy Birthday" on Weibo. The birth dates of senior leaders in China are usually not revealed publicly.
Chinese leaders are rarely active on social media. Foreign social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are blocked in China.
The Indian source said all of Modi's posts on Weibo had been deleted except for two showing pictures of him with Xi. "On Weibo, it is difficult to remove posts with the photo of their president," the source said.
(Reporting by Pei Li, additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani in New Delhi; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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World
Hitachi says it has no plans to sell British nuclear project to China
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hitachi-says-no-plans-sell-124348904.html
General view of the decommissioned Wylfa nuclear power station on the island of Anglesey
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese conglomerate Hitachi Ltd said on Sunday it has no plans to sell a stalled British nuclear power project to China.
The group's statement followed a report in Britain's Sunday Times newspaper that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has warned Hitachi not to sell its nuclear site in Anglesey, Wales, to China.
"We are not aware of any plans to sell the project to China," Hitachi said.
China's General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) is keen to buy the site as part of plans to build a fleet of nuclear reactors, the report said.
Hitachi last year froze the 3 trillion yen ($28 billion) Anglesey project and booked a writedown of 300 billion yen on its British nuclear unit, as the project failed to find private investors.
Sources at the time said Hitachi had called on the British government to boost financial support for the project to appease investor anxiety, but turmoil over the UK's exit from the European Union limited the government's capacity to compile plans.
(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Susan Fenton)
|
| General view of the decommissioned Wylfa nuclear power station on the island of Anglesey |
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese conglomerate Hitachi Ltd said on Sunday it has no plans to sell a stalled British nuclear power project to China.
The group's statement followed a report in Britain's Sunday Times newspaper that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has warned Hitachi not to sell its nuclear site in Anglesey, Wales, to China.
"We are not aware of any plans to sell the project to China," Hitachi said.
China's General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) is keen to buy the site as part of plans to build a fleet of nuclear reactors, the report said.
Hitachi last year froze the 3 trillion yen ($28 billion) Anglesey project and booked a writedown of 300 billion yen on its British nuclear unit, as the project failed to find private investors.
Sources at the time said Hitachi had called on the British government to boost financial support for the project to appease investor anxiety, but turmoil over the UK's exit from the European Union limited the government's capacity to compile plans.
(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by Susan Fenton)
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Business
Hidden Back Door Embedded in Chinese Tax Software, Firm Says
Bloomberg, June 25, 2020
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/hidden-back-door-embedded-chinese-130000330.html
(Bloomberg) -- When a U.K.-based technology vendor started doing business in China, it hired a cybersecurity firm to proactively hunt for any digital threats that could arise as part of doing business in the country. The firm discovered a problem, one with such major implications that it alerted the FBI.
A state-owned bank in China had required the tech company to download software called Intelligent Tax to facilitate the filing of local taxes. The tax software worked as advertised, but it also installed a hidden back door that could give hackers remote command and control of the company’s network, according to a report published Thursday by the SpiderLabs team at Chicago-based Trustwave Holdings Inc. (The cybersecurity firm declined to identify the bank).
“Basically, it was a wide-open door into the network with system-level privileges and command and control server completely separate from the tax software’s network infrastructure,” Brian Hussey, vice president of cyber threat detection and response at Trustwave, wrote in a blog post, also published Thursday. The malware, which Trustwave dubbed GoldenSpy, isn’t downloaded and installed until two hours after the tax software installation is completed, he said.
Trustwave researchers determined that the malware connects to a server hosted in China.
It isn’t known how many other companies downloaded the malicious software, nor is the purpose of the malware clear or who is behind it, according to the report. Trustwave said it disrupted the intrusion at the tech company in the early stages. “However, it is clear the operators would have had the ability to conduct reconnaissance, spread laterally and exfiltrate data,” according to the report, adding that GoldenSpy had the characteristics of an Advanced Persistent Threat campaign. Such efforts are often associated with nation-state hacking groups.
Besides its client, Trustwave said it was aware of a “highly similar incident” that occurred at a major financial institution, which it didn’t name. “This could be leveraged against countless companies operating and paying taxes in China or may be targeted at only a select few organizations with access to vital information,” Trustwave wrote in its report. “We believe all corporations with Chinese operations should investigate for presence of GoldenSpy and remediate if necessary.”
Aisino Corporation, the developer of the Intelligent Tax software, didn’t respond to a request for comment, and Trustwave said it didn’t hear back from the company after alerting it to the malware discovery. Hussey said he briefed the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the findings on Wednesday.
Trustwave researchers believe the threat became active in April 2020, but they also discovered other variations of GoldenSpy going back to December 2016. It wasn’t clear what the hackers were after once it had successfully gained access to the tech company’s network, as they were discovered before they could exfiltrate data, Hussey said in an interview. Because the malware is included as part of software recommended by a bank, a target may be lulled into a false sense of security, Hussey said.
The malware was digitally signed by another Chinese company, Nanjing Chenkuo Network Technology, which helped it bypass the U.K. tech company’s anti-virus and security systems, according to Trustwave. When Trustwave reached out to Nanjing about the malware, its emailed bounced back, Hussey said. The malware is built to persist inside of a company’s network -- when one part of the malware is shut down, another part will re-install the malicious program, according to the report.
Trustwave is asking businesses and computer security researchers with information about the malware to contact them.
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The Telegraph
Malware found in Chinese tax program may have been targeting Ministry of Defence
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/hidden-back-door-embedded-chinese-130000330.html
A US cyber security firm has discovered a new form of malware potentially targeting foreign companies operating in China, which has been embedded in compulsory tax software and installs a hidden backdoor to allow remote access to computer systems.
The malware, dubbed GoldenSpy, was discovered by Trustwave Spiderlabs while conducting a threat assessment of a global technology vendor with clients including the British, US and Australian defence ministries.
The investigating team believes that if had remained undetected, the malware could have given hackers a first crucial step towards accessing sensitive data from government networks, presenting a long-term cyber security threat.
A report released by Trustwave Spiderlabs on Thursday outlines the details of the unique software, which it found after identifying an executable file displaying highly unusual behavior and sending system information to a suspicious Chinese domain.
The client revealed that the file was part of their bank’s required tax software that they had been asked to install when they set up operations in China in order to pay local taxes.
“As we dug deeper, we found there was a lot more to this tax software than our clients knew,” Brian Hussey, Trustwave’s vice president of cyber threat detection and response, and a former FBI investigator, told The Telegraph.
“You install this tax software and it works legitimately as it should, but two hours after the installation of the software - when you can assume the administrator has already left and is not paying attention - it silently installs a back door that gives full remote command and control,” he explained.
“It runs at the system level, meaning the highest privileged level you could possibly have. It gives a remote shell, in the sense that I can run Windows commands, create new users, do lateral movements, create new administrators, change passwords, network reconnaissance, execute other malware,” Mr Hussey added.
The investigating team discovered the malware was highly sophisticated and difficult to uninstall, with triple layer protection.
GoldenSpy installs two identical versions of itself meaning that if either stops running, it will respawn its counterpart. It also uses an exeprotector module that downloads and executes a new version if either of the original two is deleted.
Trustwave has identified similar activity at a global financial institution, but it is still investigating whether the unnamed technology vendor was targeted specifically with the intention of zoning in on its defence ministry clients.
“It’s not like you would walk right in but it’s a long game with these threat actors and it would be giving them the first step into the network,” said Mr Hussey.
“Then they would have to be able to move laterally to own this network further and then based on their connections they would have to try to pivot into the Department or Ministry of Defence.”
Trustwave discovered various versions of the backdoor through its investigation but has appealed to other companies who may have been affected to contact them so that they can widen their investigation and determine the scope of the problem.
Their report does not identify who may be behind the malicious technology, citing a lack of evidence.
However, Mr Hussey who worked for several years for the FBI to identify Chinese state-sponsored cyber threats, said the modus operandi of the malware fit with a similar narrative of operating in a stealthy manner to gather intelligence.
“The Chinese cyber army is massive. They’ve got countless full-time operators and intelligence analysts working on hacking into the US, UK, any western country,” he said.
“Sometimes they are looking to government agencies for intelligence, sometimes they are looking at corporations for research and development to be first to market, sometimes they are just looking for a pivot point to get into their final destination but the army is massive and very active.”
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U.S.
Three Accused in China Secrets Theft Put on U.S. Wanted List
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/three-accused-china-secrets-theft-230948688.html
(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. won arrest warrants for the former president of a China state-owned chipmaker and two other engineers charged with stealing secrets from Idaho-based Micron Technology Inc.The effort to apprehend the three men is notable because they were charged in 2018 in the first case filed under the Trump administration’s “China Initiative” targeting trade-secret theft, hacking and economic espionage. A federal magistrate judge in San Francisco issued the warrants Wednesday after the three men failed to show for their arraignments.
While the prosecution of Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co. has hobbled China’s aspirations of mass producing memory chips, the case has crawled along, even as the Justice Department said the China Initiative would prioritize rapid action. The arraignments of the engineers were repeatedly postponed by agreement between the U.S. and their lawyers. Suddenly on Wednesday, in a three-minute hearing, a U.S. prosecutor requested the warrants, telling the judge she knew the defendants wouldn’t show up after talking to their lawyers Monday.“Their clients are not here for different reasons,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Vartain Horn told the judge, without offering details. “The appropriate thing to do, and what the government requests, is a warrant for each of the individual defendants.”
Fujian Jinhua has pleaded not guilty and said it’s eager to go to trial. Taiwan-based United Microelectronics Corp., or UMC, has also pleaded not guilty.
After the Justice Department billed the matter as a banner prosecution under a special initiative, there may be “political pressure to do something about this case and chalk up a win,” said Calvin Lee, a white-collar criminal defense lawyer.Beyond appearances, the U.S. also has a responsibility to pursue the accused engineers, said Preston L. Pugh, a former prosecutor who works with Lee.Even if there’s no way for prosecutors to realistically get the men into a U.S. court, “they can’t lay down and not do anything about it,” he said. The Justice Department may be also be asking Taiwan to extradite the men “in return for the U.S. doing if not the same, some other gesture,” Pugh said.“This is not an off-the-shelf agreement, and not one that happens often but it has happened,” he added.
The warrants were issued for former Fujian Jinhua president Chen Zhengkun, or Stephen Chen; He Jianting, or J.T. Ho; and Wang Yungming, or Kenny Wang. All three are Taiwanese nationals, and legal experts have said there’s little motivation for them to appear in a U.S. court. Neither China nor Taiwan has an extradition treaty with the U.S.
Read More: Engineers Found Guilty of Stealing Micron Secrets for China
Ho and Wang, who previously worked for Micron before moving to UMC, and a third UMC staffer were found guilty by a Taiwanese court two weeks ago of theft or assisting in the alleged theft of Micron’s secrets. The three men were sentenced to jail for periods ranging from 4 1/2 to 6 1/2 years and fined between NT$4 million and NT$6 million. The court also fined UMC NT$100 million ($3.4 million).UMC declined to comment. Fujian Jinhua spokesman Chad Kolton had no immediate comment.Mary McNamara, a lawyer for Chen, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Vanessa Chuang, who represents Wang in Taiwan, declined to comment as she said she doesn’t represent Wang in the U.S. Of the three, only Ho is still working for UMC. A call to the law firm that was listed two years ago in the indictment as representing Ho wasn’t answered.In October 2018, a few days before the China Initiative was announced, the Commerce Department blocked sales of U.S. chip-making gear to Jinhua, grinding to a halt the company’s plans to produce semiconductors. China, by far the largest market for dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, has made its production a national priority so it can end its reliance on hundreds of billions of dollars of annual imports.From the criminal case, prosecutors stand to win an order requiring Jinhua and UMC to forfeit chips and income derived from technology allegedly stolen from Micron, as well as a ban on using Micron’s secrets for as long as five years.
The case is U.S. v. United Microelectronics Corp., 18-cr-00465, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).
(Updates with comments by legal experts starting in sixth paragraph)
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World
U.S. says 20 companies backed by China's military
REUTERS June 24, 2020, 10:36 PM PDT
Video
https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-says-20-companies-backed-053624227.html
The Trump administration has drawn up a list of companies from China that have ties to its military which may lay the groundwork for fresh U.S. sanctions. They include tech giant Huawei, the video surveillance company Hikvision, as well as China Mobile and China Telecom, both of which are publicly listed in New York. The document was seen by Reuters on Wednesday (June 24) and a U.S. defense official speaking on condition of anoynmity confirmed its authenticity and said the document had been sent to Congress. Huawei was placed on a trade blacklist last year over national security concerns and Washington has led an international campaign to convinces allies to exclude Huawei when setting up their 5G networks. The Pentagon putting these companies on the list doesn't trigger penalties per se, but its part of a 1999 law that says the president may impose sanctions, which could include blocking all the companies' property. It will also likely add to tensions between the world's two largest economies, which have been butting heads over a litany of grievances recently, including the global health crisis and Beijing's move to impose security laws on Hong Kong. Most of the companies on the list and the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment. However, Hikvision called the allegations quote 'baseless' saying it was not a 'Chinese military company' and that it had never participated in any R&D work for military appplications.
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World
U.S. Senate backs bill to punish China over HK
The U.S. Senate passed a bill to punish those who back China's efforts to restrict Hong Kong's autonomy on Thursday (June 25), legislation that was unanimously approved by lawmakers. The measure pushes back at Beijing's new security law for the territory, which has alarmed both foreign governments and pro-democracy activists. Beijing says it's designed to prohibit secession, subversion, and external interference in Hong Kong. Critics say it will crush the city's much coveted freedoms. The U.S. bill would slap mandatory sanctions on people or companies who back Beijing's efforts, including banks which do business with anyone found to be backing a Hong Kong crackdown. It could potentially cut these companies off from American counterparts - and limit their access to U.S. dollar transactions. The Hong Kong Autonomy Act must now pass the House and the White House to be signed into law. Meanwhile Hong Kong is bracing for the security law. It's already hit attendance and enthusiasm for Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests. A poll conducted for Reuters shows support for the Hong Kong protests has slipped from 58 percent in March to a slim majority of 51 percent. A draft of the new law has yet to be finalised, and it remains unclear what activities would constitute crimes -- and what the punishment would be. Hong Kong and Beijing authorities have repeatedly insisted rights and freedoms will be preserved under the bill, and that it will only target a small number of quote "troublemakers." However, the law has already prompted U.S. President Donald Trump to announce -- he will begin eliminating special economic treatment for the city. Some key features of the bill have already been released. Communist Party central authorities will have overarching powers over the law's enforcement, including final say on how its interpreted
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Politico
Senate passes China sanctions bill after White House relents
https://www.yahoo.com/news/senate-passes-china-sanctions-bill-171531001.html
The Senate on Thursday passed a sweeping sanctions bill targeting China’s violations of Hong Kong’s independence, a week after the White House helped stall the legislation.
The bill, which imposes mandatory sanctions on individuals, entities and banks that enable China’s encroachments through a new national security law, was adopted unanimously after Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) secured an agreement with the White House. The senators also allowed for their measure to pass alongside a resolution by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) condemning Beijing’s national security law that cracks down on Hong Kong’s sovereignty.
Last week, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) blocked the sanctions legislation at the behest of the Trump administration, even though he co-sponsored the bill. At the time, the White House had proposed what senators described as last-minute “technical” changes.
“They were able to reach some accommodation with the Treasury, and so the White House apparently didn’t object,” Hawley said in a brief interview after his resolution and the sanctions bill were adopted unanimously.
According to an aide, Van Hollen and Toomey amended their bill slightly after the White House proposed its changes, which were minor and did not appear to weaken the legislation.
Reps. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) and Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) have introduced a companion bill in the House.
The breakthrough came as lawmakers of both parties have pushed President Donald Trump to respond more aggressively to an array of actions taken by China in recent months, from its handling of the coronavirus pandemic to alleged human-rights abuses targeting religious minorities in the country’s Xinjiang region.
“It starts with Hong Kong, but we know what Beijing wants to do. They want to impose their will on the whole Asia-Pacific region,” Hawley said, adding that he has told the president directly that the U.S. should use “all tools at our disposal to send a message” to China.
Despite Thursday’s agreement, there is no guarantee that the sanctions will be fully implemented. The Trump administration has declined to implement several mandatory sanctions over the years, including ones targeting Russia for its interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Last week, Trump signed a bill that requires his administration to name potential targets of sanctions over China’s continued detention of Uighur Muslims, a religious minority; but in an accompanying signing statement, the president said he would treat a key provision as “advisory and non-binding.”
Trump also acknowledged in an interview last week that he initially declined to implement certain sanctions against China over its detention of Uighurs, in order to salvage his trade deal with the country — a move that could boost his reelection bid.
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World
Australian intelligence raids target lawmaker over China links
Australian intelligence officers and police raided the home and office of an opposition politician Friday as part of an investigation into alleged Chinese influence operations, officials said.
Security agents searched the properties linked to New South Wales state legislator Shaoquett Moselmane, amid long-standing allegations of links to the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation confirmed to AFP that "search warrant activity is occurring in Sydney as part of an ongoing investigation".
They added that there was no "specific threat to the community."
Moselmane's pro-Beijing stance has long raised eyebrows even among colleagues in the Labor Party.
New South Wales Labor Party leader Jodi McKay told reporters she was informed about the operation on Moselmane's home and office and said she had begun the process of suspending his membership of the party.
"It's dreadfully concerning," she said. "It's important that every MP focuses on the people in their state."
Moselmane has publicly praised Xi Jinping's "unswerving" leadership during the coronavirus pandemic, contrasting it favourably with Australia's own response.
Local media have reported he hired a staffer who trained at Beijing's Chinese Academy of Governance, a school of party members going into public office.
The operation is another signal of Australian authorities' new willingness to tackle allegations of Chinese subversion of Australian politics and is likely to raise the temperature in an already fractious relationship between Beijing and Canberra.
Last year the former head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Duncan Lewis, said China wanted to "take over" Australia's political system with an "insidious" and systematic campaign of espionage and influence peddling".
Lewis at the time cited the case of Labor party powerbroker Sam Dastyari -- dubbed "Shanghai Sam" -- who was forced to resign in 2018 after taking tens of thousands of dollars from a Communist Party-linked donor.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison's government passed foreign interference legislation following revelations that wealthy Chinese businessmen with links to Beijing had been bankrolling local parties and candidates across the political spectrum.
The law notably required the registration of any person or organisation acting on behalf of a foreign government.
As part of that crackdown, the government barred a high-profile Chinese businessman who held permanent Australian residency from returning to the country.
Australian authorities are also looking into a claim that China tried to recruit a Melbourne businessman and get him elected to parliament.
Bo "Nick" Zhao -- a 32-year-old luxury car dealer who was a member of Morrison's Liberal Party -- apparently rebuffed the offer and was found dead in a motel room.
China has branded the claims "lies", accusing "some politicians, organisations and media in Australia" of "cooking up so-called China spy cases".
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World
Australians' trust in China plummets amid rifts
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| Australians' confidence in China's leader Xi Jinping has fallen sharply (AFP Photo/Nicolas ASFOURI, NICOLAS ASFOURI) |
Australians' trust in China has collapsed, according to a public opinion poll Wednesday that showed the impact of rising confrontations between the two trading partners.
A survey from Sydney's Lowy Institute showed the number of Australians who trust Beijing to act responsibly on the world stage fell from 52 percent in 2018 to a record low of 23 percent today.
China has become increasingly assertive under President Xi Jinping, as Beijing looks to translate its rising economic might into political, diplomatic and military power.
But the muscle-flexing has caused a series of disputes with regional neighbours -- from border skirmishes with India to public diplomatic spats with Australia.
Recent months have seen China slap trade sanctions on Australian goods, sentence an Australian citizen to death and mock Canberra's long-standing alliance with the United States.
Beijing had been angered by Australia's push-back against technology giant Huawei, public complaints about Chinese spying and influence-peddling in the country and calls for an independent inquiry into the origins and management of the coronavirus pandemic.
"Trust in our largest trading partner -- China -- has declined precipitously," Lowy director Michael Fullilove said in announcing the survey results.
"Confidence in China's leader Xi Jinping, has fallen even further."
Ninety-four percent of respondents said they would like to see Australia reduce economic dependence on China and 82 percent backed sanctions on Chinese officials linked to human rights abuses.
China accounts for around a quarter of all Australian trade, according to official statistics -- with Australian minerals helping build China's heavy industry and fuel power generation.
The poll has been conducted since 2005 and this year surveyed 2,448 adults across Australia.
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World
Trudeau rejects calls to end Huawei exec's extradition to U.S., even if it would free jailed Canadians in China
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| OTTAWA — Justin Trudeau is rejecting calls to halt extradition proceedings that could send Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou to the United States, even if it would help secure the freedom of two Canadians languishing behind bars in China. |
“If countries around the world, including China, realize that by arbitrarily arresting random Canadians they can get what they want out of Canada, politically, well that makes an awful lot more Canadians who travel around the world vulnerable,” Trudeau said Thursday during a briefing with reporters.
The prime minister has come under domestic pressure from a group of prominent Canadians to free the Chinese telecom giant’s chief financial officer as a way to spring Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor from detention in China. Meng’s December 2018 arrest in Vancouver infuriated Beijing and, days later, Chinese authorities rounded up the Canadians, who were charged last week with espionage.
A letter this week to Trudeau, with signatories including a former Supreme Court justice, former foreign affairs ministers and former envoys to Washington, argued that Justice Minister David Lametti has the legal authority to use his discretion to stop Meng’s extradition at any time if he decides it’s in Canada’s interest. They stressed that ending the process could help release Kovrig and Spavor from what could be years in Chinese detention.
Trudeau shot down the request, saying while he respects the letter’s co-signers, he deeply disagrees with them. Giving into pressure to end Meng’s process, he said, could endanger other Canadians who travel abroad.
“We need to continue to be absolutely crystal clear that Canada has an independent judiciary and those processes will unfold independently of any political pressure — including by foreign governments," Trudeau said. "We will continue to remain steadfast and strong and say very clearly in our actions and in our words that randomly arresting Canadians doesn’t give you leverage over the government of Canada anywhere in the world.”
Meng’s extradition case — based on fraud charges linked to her alleged violation of American sanctions on Iran — has thrust Canada into the middle of a wider clash between the U.S. and China.
Adding to the complexity are public statements made by President Donald Trump days after Meng’s arrest. During a December 2018 interview, Trump said he would be willing to intervene in her case if it would help the U.S. obtain a trade deal with China or serve other American national security interests.
Beijing, which has demanded Meng’s immediate release and has called Canada a U.S. accomplice in her politically charged arrest, appeared to open the door Wednesday to a prisoner swap.
Zhao Lijian, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, suggested that releasing Meng could help the cases of Kovrig or Spavor. During a press conference, he nodded to the public debate in Canada that says Lametti has the legal authority to stop Meng’s extradition process at any point.
“Such options are within the rule of law and could open up space for resolution to the situation of the two Canadians,” Zhao said, according to a Chinese government transcript.
Trudeau, who repeated Thursday that China has made a direct link between the Canadians’ arrests and Meng’s case, said the extradition process does have an element that involves input from the justice minister “at the appropriate time.”
“I feel deeply, not just for the two Michaels who are in a very difficult situation, but their families who have endured a year and a half of difficulties with this arbitrary detention by Chinese authorities,” he said. “But it is not just the two Michaels who are at question here. It is every Canadian who travels to China or anywhere else overseas.”
Earlier this week, Vina Nadjibulla, Kovrig’s wife, told POLITICO in an interview that her husband is an innocent man who is detained in China under extreme, harsh conditions.
“Michael is in the fight for his life — this is extremely serious and he does not have years,” Nadjibulla said. “Michael is a pawn in a broader political struggle, he’s paying a price. It is unjust, it is unfair and his detention has to come to an end."
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Politics
Trump's national security adviser takes aim at China
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United States China
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World
US moves to restrict Chinese media outlets as ‘foreign missions’
The Trump administration has added four Chinese media outlets to a list of organisations that should be considered “foreign missions” because of their ties to the government and the Communist Party.
The move could force some of the outlets to cut staff in the US and is likely to further aggravate relations between the two countries.
State Department officials said the four organisations, including the state-run CCTV, would be required to submit a list of all staff working for them in the US and any real estate holdings, just as they would if they were foreign embassies or consulates.
The other three added to the list of foreign missions are the China News Service, the People’s Daily newspaper and the Global Times.
None are being ordered to leave the US and no limits on their activities were announced.
But five other Chinese organisations were directed to cap the number of people who could work in the United States in March — a month after they were designated as foreign missions.
State Department officials said the organisations were essentially mouthpieces for the Communist Party and Chinese government, not legitimate news outlets.
“The Communist Party does not just exercise operational control over these propaganda entities but has full editorial control over their content,” said Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs David Stilwell.
“This foreign mission designation is an obvious step in increasing transparency of these and other PRC government propaganda activities in the United States.”
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| David Stilwell says the designation move is aimed at increasing the
transparency involving the four organisations and any other Chinese
propaganda activities in the US (Eugene Hoshiko, File/AP) |
It was not yet clear how many journalists work in the US for the organisations.
The US designated Soviet outlets as foreign missions during the Cold War. That precedent reflects the bitter state of relations between the US and China, which are at odds over the origin and response to the coronavirus, trade, human rights and other issues.
President Donald Trump highlighted the dispute over the coronavirus when he spoke to a rally on Saturday in Oklahoma and used a racist term for Covid-19, calling it the “kung flu”.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended Mr Trump’s use of the term on Monday, telling reporters the president was merely pointing out that the origin of the virus was China.
“It’s a fair thing to point out as China tries to ridiculously rewrite history,” she said.
“What President Trump is saying, ‘No China, I will label this virus for its place of origin’.”
US officials say the designated media outlets should be considered foreign missions under American law because they are “substantially owned or effectively controlled” by the government of the People’s Republic of China and should not be treated like traditional news organisations.
“These aren’t journalists. These are members of the propaganda apparatus in the PRC,” Mr Stilwell said in a conference call with reporters.
During the call, the chief State Department spokeswoman, Morgan Ortagus, ordered the line muted of a reporter who asked a question related to the new book by former national security adviser John Bolton, who wrote that Mr Trump had “pleaded” with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a 2019 summit to help with his re-election.
When another reporter on the call noted the apparent contradiction of refusing to discuss Mr Bolton’s allegations during a call about press freedom, the spokeswoman chastised the journalist and called it a “pretty offensive question”.
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| Donald Trump has been ramping up tensions with China, including by referring to the coronavirus as ‘kung flu’ (Sue Ogrocki/AP) |
Asked about potential Chinese retaliation, Mr Stilwell noted American journalists working in China already faced tight restrictions on their activities.
China had no immediate reaction to the announcement but its foreign ministry accused the administration of harbouring a “Cold War mentality and ideological prejudice” when it applied the same designation to five media organisations earlier this year.
At that time, the administration applied the label to the Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network, China Radio International, the China Daily Distribution Corporation and Hai Tian Development USA, which distributes the People’s Daily newspaper.
The Trump administration capped the number of journalists from the five allowed to work in the US at 100, down from about 160.
At the time, the US cited China’s increasingly harsh surveillance, harassment and intimidation of American and other foreign journalists in China.
China announced in response that it would revoke the media credentials of all American journalists at The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
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World
'Trump Superfan' burns posters of Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, to boycott China-made products
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-superfan-burns-posters-chinese-110000817.html
A man burns posters of the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, in southern India to boycott China-made products after 20 soldiers were martyred in a violent face-off with Chinese troops in Ladakh's Galway valley on June 15, 2020. The video was filmed in Jangaon, Telangana on June 19, 2020. The video shows the man identified as Bussa Krishna and is burning the posters of the Chinese leader. Further in the video, he can be seen stomping on the poster while thrashing it with his shoes. He is allegedly known as the 'Trump Super Fan.' He previously erected a life-size statue of Donald Trump when he visited India. India is currently embroiled in a border dispute with China after the clash of troops, the rage that spread across the country with citizens standing against Chinese products. The border clashes evoked a sharp response from Indian social media users who took to Twitter and other social media platforms to mock China and its President, Xi Jinping.
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Reuters
Trump renews threat to cut ties with Beijing, a day after high-level U.S.-China talks
By Andrea Shalal and David Brunnstrom
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Thursday renewed his threat to cut ties with China, a day after his top diplomats held talks with Beijing and his trade representative said he did not consider decoupling the U.S. and Chinese economies a viable option.
The top U.S. diplomat for East Asia described U.S.-China relations as "tense" after their first high-level face-to-face diplomatic talks in months, although he said Beijing did recommit to the first part of a trade deal reached this year and that coming weeks would show if there had been progress.
Trump has made rebalancing the massive U.S. trade deficit with China a top priority, but relations have worsened steadily as his campaign for re-election in November heats up.
"It was not Ambassador Lighthizer’s fault (yesterday in Committee) in that perhaps I didn’t make myself clear," Trump said in a tweet referring to his trade representative, Robert Lighthizer.
"But the U.S. certainly does maintain a policy option, under various conditions, of a complete decoupling from China."
Lighthizer told a House of Representatives committee on Wednesday he did not see that as viable.
"Do I think that you can sit down and decouple the United States economy from the Chinese economy?" he said. "No, I think that was a policy option years ago. I don't think it's a ... reasonable policy option at this point."
His office had no immediate comment on Trump's tweet.
U.S.-China relations have reached their lowest point in years since the coronavirus pandemic that began in China hit the United States hard, and Trump and his administration have repeatedly accused Beijing of not being transparent about the outbreak.
MULTIPLE POINTS OF FRICTION
Among multiple points of friction, the countries are also at odds over China's moves to impose new security legislation on Hong Kong, which have prompted Trump to initiate a process to eliminate special U.S. treatment for the territory.
Trump made clear the deterioration in the relationship last month when he said he had no interest in speaking right now to President Xi Jinping, whom he has hailed as a friend, and suggesting he could even cut ties with China.
Lighthizer said he expected to see more supply chains moving to the United States because of tax and regulatory changes, but also noted that the U.S.-China trade deal would result in significant positive changes and increased Chinese purchases of U.S. goods and services.
The Phase 1 U.S.-China trade deal calls for China to buy $200 billion in additional U.S. goods and services over two years, but skeptics say the pandemic and resulting economic slowdowns will make it difficult for Beijing to reach its targets for this year.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met China's top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, for a day of talks in Hawaii on Wednesday, but those appear to have done little to improve the mood.
As the Hawaii meeting began, Trump signed legislation calling for sanctions against those responsible for repression of Uighur Muslims in China's Xinjiang region, prompting Beijing to threaten retaliation.
David Stilwell, the assistant secretary for East Asia, told reporters that China's attitude in the talks could not be described as forthcoming and described relations as "tense."
He said recent Chinese actions, over India, in the South China Sea and over Hong Kong, had not been constructive and that Washington looked forward to seeing China reconsider its plans for security legislation for Hong Kong. [L1N2DV2N2]
At the same time, Stilwell said China did recommit to following through on the trade agreement and added that efforts to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons were another area of potential cooperation.
"The trade deal – the Chinese have recommitted to that numerous times ... and they insist that they will follow through," Stilwell said. "This is a good acid test to see if they will be cooperative partners."
"We’ll see in the next week or two, or however long it takes, (if) they begin to live up to their commitments," he said.
China described the Hawaii talks as "constructive," but its Foreign Ministry said Yang told Pompeo that Washington needed to respect Beijing's positions on key issues and halt its interference in matters such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang, while working to repair relations.
Hours after the meeting ended, China said its top parliamentary body would review draft Hong Kong security legislation during a session that began on Thursday.
Earlier, foreign ministers of the G7 countries, including Pompeo, issued a statement calling on China not to follow through with the legislation, which critics call an assault on the territory's democratic freedoms.
(Reporting by Eric Beech, Andrea Shalal, David Brunnstrom and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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Time
A Chilly Summit in Hawaii Spotlights Escalating U.S.-China Tensions
The chilliest place in Hawaii this week — other than the summits of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, which barely rose above freezing — was Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu, where Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met his Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, amid escalating tensions between the world’s two most powerful nations.
The frosty atmosphere was evident in both sides’ bland readouts of the meeting, which called it “constructive” but mostly highlighted the issues that divide the nations, including COVID-19, China’s move to strengthen its grip on Hong Kong, Taiwan’s independence, and Beijing’s trade practices and its treatment of the country’s Uighur Muslim minority in western Xinjiang province.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijuan said Yang told Pompeo that while China seeks “coordination, cooperation, and stability,” it will defend its territory, its security, and its interests. Zhao said Beijing “resolutely opposes U.S. interference in Hong Kong affairs,” that Taiwan is part of China, and marking Beijing’s opposition to a law President Trump signed on day the Pompeo and Yang met authorizing sanctions against Chinese officials who participate in the internment of Uighurs in northwestern China.
State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said Pompeo “stressed important American interests and the need for fully reciprocal dealings between the two nations across commercial, security, and diplomatic interactions.” Pompeo said in a June 18 tweet that Yang told him China would honor its commitments to buy $200 billion of soybeans and other American agricultural products under the first phase of the nations’ Jan. 15 trade deal. In his new book, national security advisor John Bolton alleges that Trump begged Chinese President Xi Jinping to make the purchases, which come from states vital to his re-election, to help him win a second term.
Even if China does buy more soybeans, relations between China and the U.S. are in a tailspin, one that experts say will accelerate over the coming months for political and economic reasons on both sides of the Pacific. The tensions extend from the blame game between Xi and Trump over the coronavirus pandemic to both nations’ me-first economic policies, and their escalating jousts from the South China Sea to semiconductors and satellites. “The U.S.-China relationship is heading rapidly downward, and I don’t see many off-ramps in the next six months,” says Zack Cooper, a China expert at the American Enterprise Institute.
Coronavirus’ origins in China and Beijing’s moves against Hong Kong have given China hawks in Washington the upper hand over more moderate officials who have been trying to negotiate trade deals, current and former US officials say. Led by Michael Pillsbury and Lewis “Scooter” Libby at the Hudson Institute, Dan Blumenthal at the American Enterprise Institute, and others, they favor confrontation over compromise, arguing that relations are a zero-sum game.
“As (Xi) built up islets in the South China Sea he promised never to militarize them, then dishonored his promise, disregarded international rulings, and dispatched ships in packs to intimidate neighboring Beijing’s writ,” Libby wrote on April 29 in The National Interest. “Pledging to protect intellectual property, he enabled ongoing theft and coercion, ineluctably undermining industries of the advanced democracies, and then pressed forward on China’s newly gained advantages.”
The upcoming U.S. presidential election has further strengthened the hardliners’ hand. Faceing mounting troubles at home, Trump has flipped from seeking Beijing’s help, as Bolton argues in his new book, to being tough on China as the key foreign policy plank in his re-election campaign platform. Meanwhile, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s advisers are urging him to take a tough stand on relations with China to ward off Trump’s accusations that he’s soft on Communism.
The unsettling question is where the battle lines in an emerging showdown would be drawn. In the Cold War, defining the front lines was risky and costly, but they usually were visible on a map, or at least in a surveillance photo. Today’s flashpoints are nothing like the Fulda Gap, where U.S. and Soviet tanks faced off for decades, a blockade of Cuba, or Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “Crescent of Crisis”, where the U.S. and the Soviet Union fought surrogate battles from Afghanistan to Angola and Nicaragua.
Talk of a new Cold War, with its suggestion of a conventional or nuclear military confrontation, is overblown, current and former U.S. and other officials say, and the talk of Chinese military supremacy in the Western Pacific is “hyperbolic”, says a current U.S. military official.
That doesn’t mean there will be no casualties. The battlefields now are supply chains, trade and investment, 5G and artificial intelligence, semiconductors and strategic metals, cyber security and satellites. That means the U.S. is competing with China on a more level playing field than America has ever faced. “The Soviet Union had nuclear warheads and ICBMs, but that was about it,” says one US intelligence official. “But in every other respect, it was a Third World country. China isn’t anymore.”
The greatest danger of this moment stems from weakness as well as miscalculation, as it often does at turning points in history, as both nations blame one another for their troubles. Trump’s are visible in America’s streets, staggering unemployment numbers, lagging polls, coronavirus casualties, Supreme Court decisions, and angry memoirs.
Xi has his own problems, including unrest in Hong Kong, the reemergence of COVID in Beijing, pushback from China’s trading partners over its treatment of the Uighurs, and record 6.2% unemployment in February. The two main pillars of Xi’s political grip, economic growth and political stability, have been shaken by the pandemic and the unrest in Hong Kong, and the country’s financial vulnerability was visible to some officials as early as 2007, when then-Premier Wen Jiabao warned the National People’s Congress that its economic growth was “unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated, and unsustainable.”
China’s push to regain what Xi considers to be its rightful place in the world also is hampered by the quality of some of the goods it exports. U.S. prosecutors charged June 18 that 140,000 Chinese N-95 facemasks were defective, and a March 2019 British government report found serious flaws in Huawei telecom equipment caused by a lack of “basic engineering competence and cyber security hygiene.”
Beijing’s use of its economic muscle to make developing nations more dependent on its goodwill; its use of Russian-style social media propaganda to exploit social, political, and economic divisions; and its initial tardiness and obfuscation in reporting the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan have alienated nations in Asia, Africa, and Europe it had been trying to cultivate.
Trump, however, has undermined America’s reputation as a competent, robust, and reliable ally, say some current State Department, military and intelligence officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to criticize the president. His feuds with the European Union over taxing the digital economy and other issues and his attempts to bully U.S. allies in Europe, East Asia, and Australia into increasing their defense spending mimic China’s coercive diplomacy more than they do America’s traditional reliance on shared values and international cooperation, said one current official, leveling the playfield with Beijing despite its missteps.
Despite the Hawaii meeting, the tensions are likely to escalate from here. China has promised to retaliate for any effort to sanction its officials over the treatment of Uighurs, and U.S. officials are reviewing retaliatory options that attack what they think are China’s vulnerabilities. More than 270 China-related bills are under consideration in Congress, and officials say that facing growing troubles at home, Trump is likely to impose more stringent options from the list of measures his administration has been considering without first consulting the legislature.
In a tweet on June 18, Trump raised the prospect of the economic equivalent of Mutual Assured Destruction, tweeting that “. . . “the U.S. certainly does maintain a policy option, under certain circumstances, of a complete decoupling from China” The day before, the U.S. Trade Representative had ruled out the nuclear option in testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee, saying that he did not think severing economic relations with China is “a reasonable policy option at this point”.
Complete decoupling is easier said than done. In addition to their mutual dependence on one another’s products, services, and markets, China is holding more than $1 trillion in U.S. debt and some of the world’s largest reserves of the rare earths needed to make a wide range of high-tech equipment. The U.S. dollar remains the world’s reserve currency, and the U.S. is still China’s most important export market.
But it’s now clear that the status quo between the world’s greatest powers is unsustainable, and that a key American assumption about it – that the economic reforms begun by President Deng Xiaoping 40 years ago would draw China into the fraternity of capitalist democracies – may be as fallible as the belief in 1914 that Britain, Germany, and Russia would never go to war because their leaders were all related.
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World
US official says China not forthcoming in talks with Pompeo
WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior State Department official said Thursday that the United States was disappointed by China’s attitude at a meeting between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a top Chinese diplomat in Hawaii this week.
Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs David Stilwell said the Chinese were not “really forthcoming” during Pompeo's closed-door talks on Wednesday with Yang Jiechi, the Chinese Communist Party's top foreign affairs official. The meeting was held at Honolulu's Hickam Air Force Base and coverage of it other than from official statements was not possible.
Although he said the Chinese had made a “very clear commitment” to following through on the first phase of a trade agreement reached with the Trump administration last year, Stilwell said there was little sign of progress on other issues of dispute that have sent relations between Washington and Beijing to new lows.
China has become a key element in the 2020 presidential campaign with President Donald Trump and his supporters seeking to make the administration’s tough stance with Beijing a main foreign policy selling point. Trump and his campaign have sought to portray eventual Democratic nominee Joe Biden as soft on China.
And, following revelations from former national security adviser John Bolton that Trump may have been less hard on China than he presents, the president tweeted on Thursday that “the U.S. certainly does maintain a policy option, under various conditions, of a complete decoupling from China.”
For his part, Pompeo said in a statement issued late Thursday that he had “not read the book, but from the excerpts I’ve seen published, John Bolton is spreading a number of lies, fully-spun half-truths, and outright falsehoods.” He referred to Bolton as a “traitor who damaged America by violating his sacred trust with its people."
Stilwell would not be specific about the contentious issues discussed in Hawaii. He told reporters in a conference call that he wanted to leave the Chinese “diplomatic space” to change course on several matters. But he said they broadly revolve around long-standing U.S. complaints about Chinese behavior.
Those include the Chinese response to the coronavirus outbreak, human rights, China’s policies in Hong Kong, its increasing aggressiveness and most recently its actions along its borders with India, where there have been deadly clashes between the two militaries.
China “could not be described as really forthcoming in all this," Stilwell said. He took issue with the Chinese foreign ministry's description of the meeting, calling it “very one sided," and “shrill and not realistic."
The ministry's statement included a litany of complaints about U.S. activities and attitudes, including Trump's signing of a bill authorizing sanctions to be imposed on Chinese officials for violating the human rights of minorities in western Xinjian province.
Stilwell said Pompeo had made very clear to the Chinese that the relationship must be “more reciprocal” and suggested that the world watch Beijing's actions over the next several weeks to see if they had understood the message.
He said the meeting was organized in part “to help the Chinese get to understand that their actions are working against them. They need to reassess the direction they are going."
On the coronavirus pandemic, Stilwell said Pompeo stressed the importance the U.S. attaches to China opening up all its data and information about the outbreak that originated in the city of Wuhan. “We insist on the Chinese disclosing all they know about how this pandemic began,” Stilwell said.
Pompeo also reiterated to the Chinese that Trump is prepared to let a key nuclear arms control agreement with Russia expire unless it can be renegotiated to include China. China has thus far refused to take part.
“We are looking for positive engagement in high-level arms talks,” Stilwell said. “We would encourage them. We would like them to participate in these talks to prevent an unfortunate outcome.”
Wednesday's meeting in Hawaii got underway just as the revelations from Bolton's book were emerging. Neither the State Department nor Stilwell would comment specifically on Bolton's claims that Trump sought China’s help in winning reelection in 2020 and that he encouraged Chinese leader Xi Jinping to build concentration camps for Uighur Muslims in western China.
World
Galwan Valley: Image appears to show nail-studded rods used in India-China brawl
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| An image passed to the BBC by an Indian military official shows crude weapons purportedly used in the fight |
An image has emerged showing a crude weapon purportedly used by Chinese forces in the fatal brawl along China's disputed border with India on Monday.
The fight in the Galwan Valley left at least 20 Indian soldiers dead and raised tensions between the two powers.
China did not acknowledge any casualties among its forces. Both sides accused the other of an incursion.
The border between the two nations in the region is poorly demarcated and can shift with topographical changes.
The image that emerged on Thursday showed crude weapons that appeared to be made from iron rods studded with nails. It was passed to the BBC by a senior Indian military official on the India-China border, who said the weapons had been used by the Chinese.
Defence analyst Ajai Shukla, who first tweeted the image, described the use of such weapons as "barbarism". The absence of firearms in the clash dates back to a 1996 agreement between the two sides that guns and explosives be prohibited along the disputed stretch of the border, to deter escalation.
The image was widely shared on Twitter in India, prompting outrage from many social media users. Neither Chinese or Indian officials commented on it.
Media reports said troops clashed on ridges at a height of nearly 4,267m (14,000 ft) along a steep terrain, with some soldiers falling into the fast-flowing Galwan river in sub-zero temperatures.
First deaths in four decades
The two sides have brawled along the disputed border in recent weeks, but Monday's clash was the first to lead to fatalities in at least 45 years. Unconfirmed reports in Indian media said at least 40 Chinese soldiers died, but China is yet to issue any information about casualties.
Indian officials said all of their soldiers involved in the clash have been accounted for, following reports some were missing.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said India had crossed the border twice, "provoking and attacking Chinese personnel, resulting in serious physical confrontation between border forces on the two sides", the AFP news agency reported.
China on Wednesday claimed "sovereignty over the Galwan Valley region" - a claim rebutted by India as "exaggerated and untenable".
Members of the public in both nations have since staged protests over the clashes in the disputed Himalayan border area, while officials have spoken cautiously and moved towards a diplomatic resolution.
Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said the foreign ministers of both countries had shared a phone conversation on Wednesday on the developments and "agreed that the overall situation should be handled in a responsible manner".
"Making exaggerated and untenable claims is contrary to this understanding," Mr Srivastava was quoted as saying by Press Trust of India news agency.
An Indian government statement after Subrahmanyam Jaishankar's conversation with China's Wang Yi said Chinese forces tried to erect a structure on the Indian side of the de facto border, the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
The statement accused the Chinese of a "premeditated and planned action that was directly responsible for the resulting violence and casualties" and urged China to "take corrective steps".
Meanwhile, a Chinese statement quoted Mr Wang as saying: "China again expresses strong protest to India and demands the Indian side launches a thorough investigation... and stop all provocative actions to ensure the same things do not happen again."
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| Kashmir map |
Why were there no guns?
The Galwan river valley in Ladakh, with its harsh climate and high-altitude terrain, lies along the western sector of the LAC and close to Aksai Chin, a disputed area claimed by India but controlled by China.
This is not the first time the two nuclear-armed neighbours have fought without conventional firearms on the border. India and China have a history of face-offs and overlapping territorial claims along the more than 3,440km (2,100 mile), poorly drawn LAC separating the two sides.
The last firing on the border happened in 1975 when four Indian soldiers were killed in a remote pass in the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. The clash was variously described by former diplomats as an ambush and an accident. But no bullets have been fired since.
At the root of this is a 1996 bilateral agreement that says "neither side shall open fire... conduct blast operations or hunt with guns or explosives within two kilometres of the Line of Actual Control".
But there have been other tense confrontations along the border in recent weeks. In May Indian and Chinese soldiers exchanged physical blows on the border at Pangong Lake, also in Ladakh, and in the north-eastern Indian state of Sikkim hundreds of miles to the east.
India has accused China of sending thousands of troops into Ladakh's Galwan Valley and says China occupies 38,000 sq km (14,700 sq miles) of its territory. Several rounds of talks in the last three decades have failed to resolve the boundary disputes.
China threatens US with 'consequences' over 'malicious' Uighur law
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| China has been accused of torturing Uighur Muslims in detention camps - REUTERS |
China will "resolutely hit back and the US will bear the burden of all subsequent consequences", the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement after President Donald Trump signed the Uighur Human Rights Act into law on Wednesday.
The legislation, which passed Congress almost unanimously, requires the US administration to determine which Chinese officials are responsible for the "arbitrary detention, torture and harassment" of Uighurs and other minorities.
The United States would then freeze any assets the officials hold in the world's largest economy and ban their entry into the country.
China's foreign ministry said in a statement that the act "rudely interferes in China's internal affairs", and urged the US to "immediately correct its mistakes".
Read more: We must not forgot Xinjiang and the horrors being committed there
"This so-called act deliberately slanders the human rights situation in Xinjiang and maliciously attacks China's policy in governing Xinjiang," the ministry said.
Activists say China has rounded up at least one million Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims and is trying to forcibly assimilate them by wiping out their culture and punishing basic Islamic practices.
Beijing counters that it is running vocational educational centres that offer an alternative to Islamic extremism.
Mr Trump signed the legislation as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met China's top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, in Hawaii. Mr Yang told Mr Pompeo that Washington needed to respect Beijing's positions on key issues, halt its interference in issues such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang and work to repair bilateral relations.
The act was signed just as excerpts emerged from an explosive new book by Mr Trump's former national security advisor John Bolton, who said the president told his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping that he approved of the vast detention camps.
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