-----
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.
-----
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
-----
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)
------
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)
-----
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.
For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com
Subscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
-----
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.”
-----
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)
For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com
Subscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
-----
World
U.S. says 20 companies backed by China's military
REUTERS June 24, 2020, 10:36 PM PDT
Video
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.
-----
World
U.S. Senate backs bill to punish China over HK
Reuters June 26, 2020
Video
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
----
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.
-----
World
Australian intelligence raids target lawmaker over China links
https://www.yahoo.com/news/australian-intelligence-raids-target-lawmaker-over-china-links-022446017.html
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".
----
World
Australians' trust in China plummets amid rifts
 |
| 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.
-----
World
Trudeau rejects calls to end Huawei exec's extradition to U.S., even if it would free jailed Canadians in China
 |
| 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."
----
Politics
Trump's national security adviser takes aim at China
United States China
-----
World
US moves to restrict Chinese media outlets as ‘foreign missions’
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”.
 |
| 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.
-----
World
'Trump Superfan' burns posters of Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, to boycott China-made products
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.
------
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)
----
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.
----
World
US official says China not forthcoming in talks with Pompeo
